The Black Sheep (A Learning Experience Book 3) (27 page)

And yet
, he thought,
it would look very good on my record
.

His mouth was suddenly very dry.  “I would be honoured,” he stammered.  He had the feeling he wouldn't see promotion again, if he showed a lack of self-confidence.  The old sweats had warned him that Fleet Command would enthusiastically agree with any officer who declared himself unready for command.  “If ... if you feel I can be of service.”

“You have the training,” the XO said.  His voice hardened.  “What you lack is the experience, but we’re short of officers and men right now.  You won’t have anyone from the ship backing you up - I’d hoped to give you a handful of marines, but they can't be spared.”

Thomas nodded, almost gratefully.  The marines had always scared him, just a little.  He’d had the standard unarmed combat course at the Academy, and he had combat programs loaded into his implants, but he was no match for any of the groundpounders.  They did things he couldn't imagine doing himself.  And yet, he knew he should have prayed for a handful of marines to escort him.  He might need their help.

“The ship should be ready for crewing tomorrow, if the latest update is to be believed,” the XO said.  “I have never assigned an officer as junior as you to a role like this, Ensign, nor have I put one on such an exposed limb.  If you want to back out, say so by the end of the duty shift and it won’t be held against you.”

“I’d hate myself forever if I refused, sir,” Thomas said, fighting down an insane urge to giggle.  When he’d been younger, growing up on sensory programs about spacers blazing a path into the unknown, he wouldn't have needed longer than a second to make up his mind to accept the post.  “I accept the task.”

“Good,” the XO said.  Thomas’s implants bleeped up an alert, informing him that the XO was sending him a datapacket.  “You’re off the duty roster from now, Ensign.  I want you to spend the rest of the day reviewing that packet - if you have any questions, forward them to me - and then get some rest.  And I mean rest.  Tomorrow, you take command of your ship.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.  A patrol boat or a frigate ... either one would be tiny, and probably not designed for humans.  Somehow, he doubted the XO would put a heavy cruiser in his hands.  “And thank you.”

The XO gave him a sharp look.  “Thank me when you come home,” he said.  “And not a moment before.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.  He smiled as a thought struck him.  He could tell Sandra!  “Can I ... can I tell others?”

“It might not be a good idea,” the XO said.  “You’re not the only one being given a command, but not everyone is getting one.  Wait.”

Thomas sobered.  “Yes, sir.”

“Report back to my cabin at 1000 tomorrow, unless I call you earlier,” the XO added, looking back down at the paperwork on his desk.  “Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.

***

Griffin Wilde watched the painfully young - had
he
ever been that young? - Ensign leave his office, then cursed under his breath.  He was experienced enough to read Ensign Howard perfectly, no matter how carefully the younger man tried to hide his emotions.  Howard was excited and scared and willing and reluctant ... a complex tangle of emotion that reminded Griffin, as if he’d had any doubt, that Howard was still a
young
man.  Too young to feel truly confident in himself, too old to accept failure as a possibility.

And it wasn't helped by the fear he would never be offered a second chance
, Griffin thought, darkly. 
It isn't as if we make a habit of offering young officers command billets
.

He cursed again, savagely.  The Captain’s war demanded that a young and inexperienced officer be sent out on a mission that might well be suicidal, in command of a tiny number of largely inexperienced crewmen.  Griffin had never sent someone out before, fully expecting him to die, but now ... now he wondered if he’d crossed that line.  And yet, no matter how he worked the problem, he couldn't see any other solution.  They
needed
to keep the Druavroks off balance, but there was no time to recruit more locals and train them for shipboard duty.

All of those training programs are long-term
, he thought.  It took months to train even a basic engineer - and a full engineer took years. 
Let us hope the war doesn't go on that long
.

Picking up a datapad, he glanced at the report from the chief engineer. 
Jackie Fisher
had an onboard machine shop, complete with a miniaturised fabber, but even so ... they were pushing their ability to repair their cruisers to the limits.  The Captain might discover that her squadron needed to be refitted at the worst possible time, if she was lucky.  If she was unlucky, something would break at the worst possible time.  And she knew the dangers ...

She's choosing to run a risk
, he thought.  Hoshiko had been completely unconcerned about risk, right from the start. 
And she could easily lose the whole squadron if something goes wrong.

It was a bitter thought.  He would have admired her determination if it hadn't been so dangerous.  As it was ... he hoped - prayed - that they would have the time to do some proper maintenance before they faced the Druavroks once again.  He'd told her about the problem, as a good XO should, but half the ship’s engineering crew had been assigned to other vessels.  It would be ironic, if they lost a battle because something failed, yet he had to concede it was a possibility. 

He shook his head.  It was his duty to support her and yet ...

... What should he do, he asked himself, if her quest led to disaster?

Chapter Twenty-Six

In a speech that has gone viral on the datanet, the leader of the largest militia in California  blamed the city-folk for the water shortage and flatly refused to let the refugees into his territory.  “If you sheeple hadn't voted for dumb-o-crats and cuckservitives,” he said, “you wouldn't be dying of thirst now.”  His words are a reference to California’s democratic deficit, a problem made worse by increased immigration from Mexico and emigration to the Solar Union.

-Solar News Network, Year 54

“It’s time to get up,” Hilde said, pulling Max out of bed.  “You have an appointment on a patrol boat.”

Max opened his eyes, groggily.  Sex with Hilde was exhausting, despite his enhancements; she always left him feeling tender and sore.  She could be strong at one moment, rolling over to pin him beneath her body and having her way with him, and vulnerable the next, as if she expected him to reject her at any moment.  Max honestly wasn't sure why she had chosen him, unless she couldn't risk sleeping with one of the crew, but he wasn't really inclined to care.  He had a suspicion she didn't have any strong feelings for him at all, merely a desire not to go to bed alone.

“I don't,” he said, as she put him down on the deck.  “My day is free ...”

“It just popped up on the datanet,” Hilde told him.  “You’re ordered to board an unnamed patrol boat and interview the crew.”

“Oh,” Max said.  He checked his implants and discovered the message. 
Someone
, probably the captain, was determined to make sure he carried out a few interviews while the squadron was at Amstar.  “I’ll just shower before I teleport over.”

“Good idea,” Hilde said, sniffing the air mischievously.  “You stink of sweat.  And a few other things.”

Max shrugged.  “Do you want to shower first?”

“I’m due in the gym in thirty minutes,” Hilde said, reaching for her shipsuit.  “I’ll shower there, I think.  See you tonight?”

“If I’m back by then, sure,” Max said.  Hilde couldn't fit in the shower with him or he would have suggested sharing the water.  “Have a good day.”

Hilde smirked.  “There are no good days when the major decided we haven’t been tested enough,” she said, ruefully.  “We haven’t seen enough action out here.”

Max frowned, remembering the marine deployments since the squadron had left Martina, then decided not to comment on it.  Instead, he picked up his towel and walked into the shower, washing the sweat from his body.  There was no sign of Hilde when he stepped back out and started to dress; he wondered, absently, what her comrades thought of her affair before deciding it was probably none of their business.  It wasn't interfering with her duties - or his - and therefore it was outside regulations.  He finished dressing, grabbed a ration bar from the drawer and headed down to the teleport chamber.  The codes he’d been given, with the message ordering him to the patrol boat, opened the hatch and allowed him entry.

“You’re going to Boat #34,” the operator said, looking up from his console.  “I’ll just verify access permissions with them.”

“Please do,” Max said.  “I don’t want to end up merged with a fly.”

He shuddered at the thought.  Beaming a bomb onboard was such an obvious ploy that even the Tokomak, notoriously unimaginative, had built jammers into their starships to prevent uninvited guests.  Anyone who tried to beam onboard without permission would wind up scattered across the solar system, if they were lucky - and, if they were unlucky, they’d be the subject of countless horror movies.  He’d had nightmares after watching the one where a small boy was tossed into a defective teleporter and turned into a monster.

“Ah, we’ve got filters to keep that from happening,” the operator said.  He grinned as he looked back down at his console.  “You know they were messing about with teleport transmutation?  Some egghead had the bright idea of adjusting the particle stream in flight, allowing for bodily adjustments?”

“Sounds awful,” Max said.  “What happened?”

“None of the animal subjects survived,” the operator said.  “The experiments were shut down long before they moved on to human testing.”

“Oh,” Max said.  He vaguely recalled reading a news report about the experiments, although it hadn't stuck in his mind.  “Why did they fail?”

The operator shrugged.  “Even the smallest change in the matter pattern can cause instant death,” he said.  “That’s why we have so many filters built into the teleporter.”

He looked up and gave Max a wintery smile.  “You’re cleared to board the patrol boat,” he added.  “Step up onto the pad.”

Max swallowed, realising that the operator had intended to rattle him, then stepped up onto the pad and turned to face him.  The operator nodded and tapped a switch.  A low hum echoed through the chamber as the world dematerialised into shimmering white light and reformed into a tiny bridge.  Max stumbled forward as the teleport field released him.  He would have fallen if a uniformed officer, standing beside the pad, hadn’t caught him with one hand.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Think nothing of it,” the officer said.  Max looked up and recognised Ensign Howard, now wearing a pair of captain’s stars.  “The gravity is a little lighter than Earth-normal.”

Max nodded, making a mental note to walk carefully until his body adjusted properly.  Living on Luna was fun - a human could fly with a pair of wings - but newcomers always lost control of themselves and bumped their heads against the ceilings.  His enhanced body would adapt quickly, of course, yet it wouldn't spare him from embarrassment.  He looked around as he took a step forward, testing the gravity, and blinked in surprise as he realised just how tiny the bridge actually
was
.

“This is a patrol boat that has been passed down through at least a dozen owners,” Ensign Howard said.  “Someone actually removed the flight records box years ago, leaving us without a clue to her history.”

Max smiled.  “I thought that was against Galactic Law?”

“It is,” Howard said.  “Judging from the number of different components that have been crammed into her hull, I have a strong feeling she was a pirate before being captured and placed into storage.”

“I see,” Max said.  He looked around, taking note of the different models of console that had been crammed into the bridge and the handful of human crew.  “Is she a reliable ship?”

“I certainly
hope
so,” Howard said.  “The real test will be just what happens when we light up the drives.”

Max felt a stab of sympathy for the younger man.  Human engineers were
very
well trained, capable of fixing everything from the plumbing to the FTL drive; human
starships
were designed to allow the engineers to go to work without needing to return to a shipyard.  But Galactic ships were not ... and if anything went wrong on the patrol boat, Ensign Howard and his makeshift crew were doomed.  Unless, of course, they managed to limp to safe harbour ...

He’s more worried than he lets on
, he thought, grimly. 
Very few officers would admit to hoping for anything
.

“I hope she works like a dream,” he said, instead.  “And what do you intend to do once you’re on the way?”

“Hunt enemy shipping,” Ensign Howard said, immediately.  “We have a hunting ground inside enemy space, where we will prowl around and watch for enemy ships.  If we find something we can take out, we’ll hit it and then vanish into FTL.”

Max nodded.  The Druavroks would probably expect pirates, either
genuine
pirates or the remnants of the navies they’d already overcome and destroyed.  But interstellar piracy was only cost-effective if the targeted ships were captured, looted, renamed and then sold onwards to unscrupulous buyers.  They’d be surprised when the ‘pirates’ blew freighters out of space instead of trying to take them as prizes.

He frowned.  “Isn't it worth trying to capture the ships?”

“We don’t have the manpower to attempt to board them, not against fanatical resistance,” Ensign Howard said.  He didn't sound too pleased by his own words.  “If we had a reason to believe the ships would surrender, we might try - but, so far, the Druavroks don’t seem to allow other races to crew their ships.”

“Not an unwise decision on their part,” Max agreed.  A single bulk freighter would make one hell of a mess if it rammed into a planet; indeed, there had been whispered rumours of genocidal war long before humanity had encountered the Druavroks.  “You don’t think we could use the ships?”

“I’m sure we could,” Ensign Howard agreed.  “But trying to capture even a single freighter introduces random elements into the equation.”

He shrugged and led Max on a tour of the patrol boat.  She really was a small ship, Max noted.  Most of her bulk was nothing but drives, sensors and weapons; the crew had a handful of tiny compartments at the front of the vessel.  A single antimatter warhead - or a nuke, perhaps - would be enough to inflict crippling damage.  The Tokomak clearly hadn't intended the patrol boats to be anything more than a tripwire, if war actually threatened their domains.  Ensign Howard’s ship couldn’t hope to stop a destroyer or a frigate, let alone a capital warship.

“I meant to ask,” he said, as they returned to the bridge.  “Does the ship have a
name
?”

“Not as yet,” Ensign Howard said.  “She has an ID code from the last set of owners, but no actual name.  I’m planning to choose a name just before we depart.”

Max wondered what Hilde would say, if he proposed naming the patrol boat after her, then decided it was probably better not to find out.  Instead, he spoke briefly to the remainder of the crew, all of whom were humans who’d been born on Amstar.  Their Gal-Standard One was far better than his, but their English was non-existent.  The Tokomak hadn’t bothered to allow their human captives and their descendents to remember their original tongue.

“I’m surprised the crew is only human,” he said, finally.  “Aren't you going to have aliens on the crew?”

“It’s tricky to provide life support for more than one race at a time, at least on a small ship,” Ensign Howard said.  “Even the most
human
-like races have differences that make it hard for them to work alongside humans.  In the long term ... I think we’re going to have to work on a handful of multiracial ships, but for the moment single-race crews may be the only way forward.”

“Particularly if the Solar Union starts taking in more non-human citizens,” Max commented, dryly.  “They’ll want to serve in the military too.”

Ensign Howard considered it for a long moment.  “I knew a Hordesman at the Academy,” he said, thoughtfully.  “We had to make a number of allowances for him - he wasn’t stupid, by any means, but he was shaped differently from us and it caused problems.  He couldn't climb a ladder, for example.  It might not be practical to build a starship that allows all known races to serve without problems.”

“I see,” Max said.  “And what is that going to mean for the Grand Alliance?”

“I think Captain Stuart will have to answer that question,” Ensign Howard said.  “But, for the moment, we need to finish our preparations and depart.”

Max nodded, recognising the polite dismissal.  “If you’ll teleport me back to
Fisher
, I’ll get on with my latest story,” he said.  “Did you see my earlier one?”

“I saw your description of the Battle of Dab-Yam,” Ensign Howard said.  “It was very ...
dramatic
.”

“I hope so,” Max said.  He’d put the story together carefully, detailing the resistance to the Druavroks, the fate of those unlucky enough to be caught outside the planet’s colossal defences, the steady enemy attacks ... and, finally, the Grand Alliance arriving, like the 5th Cavalry, to save the innocent Dab-Yam from being eaten alive - literally.  “The story is on its way to Sol.”

“They’ll love it,” Ensign Howard said.

Max smiled as he turned and walked towards the teleport pad, barely large enough to accommodate a grown man.  It would be at least three months before Sol heard
anything
of their adventures, let alone sent out other reporters to cover the story.  By then, he would be firmly established in the public’s mind as the
only
reporter with access - to the squadron, to Captain Stuart, to the growing Grand Alliance ... he’d be unbeatable.  His reputation would be made once and for all.