Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 23


“Combat is condensed into management of fear, movement, psychology, and the application of energy.”


Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror


Commander Susan Roush settled into the aged command seat and surveyed the tight confines of Tanager’s bridge. The contrast between this tiny old vessel and any of her recent commands felt stark. Older instruments, worn fixtures, claustrophobic quarters all slapped her in the face, but the emotion she battled against was joy. She growled quietly to herself and clenched a fist against the armrest of her seat. The lapping waves of ebullience caused a concomitant sense of gratitude to arise within her, and she resented the hell out of this phenomenon.

The very rational part of her mind kept pointing out that her emotional response was the natural reaction of one spared from a fate worse than death. She had only lived a handful of days as a ship-less, untouchable pariah, but it had been enough. Her social peers were all Fleet officers, those she might euphemistically call “lovers” were Fleet officers, her mentors also Fleet officers. Her job, her hobby, her life was Fleet. For decades she had divided her days between long cruises, and short spans immersed in the planet-side swirl of Fleet life.

When all that ended, thanks to the idiocy of planet-bound admirals, Susan Roush discovered that nothing in life mattered to her outside her identity as a Fleet command officer. As she sat in the Tanager’s command seat, she was honest enough with herself to recognize that only one thing had spared her from the path of suicide. As the hours passed following her fall from grace, and the enormity of a ground-bound future struck, her ravaged mind kept circling back to the only nugget of hope left in her hopeless world. She would see that somber young Sinclair-Maru pup in her mind, and she would hate herself for the leap of desperate expectancy the image conjured. When the rumor of Saef’s challenge to Admiral Nifesh blazed through the Nets, Roush’s heart tumbled between extremes. Would Saef dare to consider her now, in the backlash of his conflict with the Admiralty? Was he really considering her at all to begin with? Rot his patrician eyes if he thought she would beg! Was her pride so great that she would blow her brains out rather than bow down and beg? Truly?

Yes…yes, it was…though the image of Admiral Nifesh smirking over her self-murdered corpse galled her to the core.

But here she was, against all odds, seated where she belonged. For ten hours every day she ruled the most insignificant warship in Fleet, with violent action in the offing, if she read the signals aright. Some chance of redeeming glory, or at least a glorious death, seemed likely.

She had told this young, inexperienced captain she would have no patience for his fumbling about, and that was a true sentiment, but thus far her only complaints were stylistic. Still, they stood only days out from the Strand, not many days yet from their transition point, even at the captain’s intentionally sluggish pace. Plenty of cruise remained to be annoyed in.

With ship days divided into two action watches and a five-hour dogwatch, crewing spread thin. Roush got the captain’s leavings, which she understood and did not resent, then the captain shifted Lieutenant Ruprecht to Roush’s watch without explanation. This roused Roush’s curiosity. Was Ruprecht a gift? Unlikely, although his experience and qualifications spoke well of him. A pain in the captain’s arse? More likely. So the captain handed off a discipline problem to the more experienced officer he saw in Roush? Possibly.

Susan Roush eyed Ruprecht’s profile momentarily, then called up the Ops section in her UI. Phillipa Baker, the senior noncom in Ops, she observed, and Amos Cray in Engineering, also under Ruprecht’s sphere of influence. Cray she knew from previous floats, but Phillipa Baker was a new name to her.

“Ops,” Roush said.

“Yes, XO?” Ruprecht answered, glancing at Roush with desultory interest.

“How’s Baker running your section?”

“I run my section, XO,” Ruprecht replied, his face set in rigid lines.

“I see,” Roush replied, and she certainly did…more than Ruprecht might imagine.

At that moment Susan Roush received a ping from Saef, requesting her presence at the captain’s office. She contemplated Ruprecht a moment longer before standing to her feet.

“The bridge is yours, Ops.”

“Aye, XO, I have the bridge,” Ruprecht said, turning back to the holo.

Captain Saef Sinclair-Maru looked up as Susan Roush entered the closet-like compartment of his office.

“Roush,” he said, indicating the facing seat. His expression looked rather forbidding, she thought, but it seemed a common look for him. “Your watch coming together?”

Susan Roush almost shrugged but just nodded. “Well enough, Captain. It’s a routine I’ve been through a hundred times through the years.”

“No,” he said. “That mindset must change. For all of us.”

Roush curbed her angry response with great effort. “Oh?” she said.

Saef nodded. “Only once have you prepared a cruise with likely action facing you. Am I correct?”

She could quibble. Over the years she had crossed swords with a handful of smugglers and pirates, none of whom ever posed a real threat to her command. “Yes.”

“Fleet has become a stagnant pool,” Saef said. “Our habits, our training, our expectations are all driven by the wrong things.”

Roush couldn’t resist sneering as she said, “And the noble House of Sinclair-Maru is going to show all us poor sods the way? Is that how it works?”

Saef shook his head. “No. No one knows how it works anymore, Roush. Don’t you get that? Not Fleet. Not the Sinclair-Maru. Not these rebels.”

Discipline slipped from Roush’s reserve, as thin as it was. “That command test snapped your mind. Because you passed that nonsense you’ve got delusions of grandeur that’ll get us fucking killed.”

Saef calmly regarded Roush for a moment as she remembered that this was the young man who threw his commission in the teeth of the Admiralty for his impugned honor. That Sinclair-Maru honor was a prickly thing, and she could find herself pricked by it, commission or no.

“Everything humanity learned from the Slagger war is gone, Roush. Am I right?”

She pursed her lips. “The Shapers. They showed up and slid that chapter of history into the dustbin.”

“And who figured out the application of Shaper tech for warfare? The Admiralty?”

“I’m guessing you think you have.”

Saef leaned forward and stared into Roush’s eyes. “Can you put your resentment aside and really think? Just for a moment, Roush.”

Roush felt the color leave her face and she did not trust herself to speak.

We have a chance, Roush, you and I. But we’ve got to come up with a new doctrine.”

She found her voice at last. “You’re so certain we face action.”

“I am.”

“Gods…in this little piece of shit…!”

Saef said nothing to this, and the silence stretched uncomfortably between them.

“You really believe we can develop doctrine or tactics that the simulations and rad-heads overlooked?” Roush said at last.

“I do.”

“How can I believe this is more than the hubris of an untried savant?”

Saef’s face lightened into something like a smile. “We’ll take the ship into action, Roush. Daresay that’ll be illuminating, eh?”


Back | Next
Framed