Authors: Kennedy Hudner
Then calamity stuck. The new wormhole led to an entirely new system, which had not one wormhole leading into it, but
seven.
Worse yet, its wormholes were only a short distance from its principal solar system, which contained five inhabitable planets. The new system was a veritable treasure trove. Its discoverer, of English descent and proud of it, dubbed the system “Victoria Station” because it had so many entrances and exits. After a time, the name was shorted to “Victoria.” Victoria’s five habitable planets had been settled quickly, and Victoria was soon the acknowledged hub of the inhabited worlds. Each of the seven wormholes led to sectors containing at least one inhabitable planet. Virtually all of the commerce of the inhabited worlds passed through Victoria, and with it wealth that quickly made Victoria the richest of all of the systems.
And Victoria’s wormholes were strategically placed. It was four month trip from Cape Breton to the Dominion by the old route through Sybil Head, but it took only ten days to reach the Dominion through Victoria. Hudis gave a mental shrug as Dreyer continued her rant. It was little surprise that Cape Breton’s warehouses were empty and its ship yards vacant. Cape Breton was indeed a back water.
Dreyer finally sat back in her chair, her anger draining away. Hudis studied her, still trying to figure her out. Political neophyte sent on an important mission because she was a trusted minion? Or skilled political operative? She eyed him under hooded lids. “And the Dominion?” she asked. “Little wonder why you have an axe to grind after what the Vickies did to you in Windsor.”
Windsor! Hudis grimaced involuntarily. Windsor was a badge of shame, an on-going reminder that the Dominion did not rule over all of the inhabited planets within the sector. Windsor was a small planet, poor in resources and with a population of barely fifty million. Its chief export was people, mostly leaving Windsor to immigrate to the Dominion’s home planet of Timor. Then, fifteen years ago, the government of Windsor made a bold move. With great fan-fare and a planet-wide vote, Windsor seceded from the Dominion and sought to become a member nation of Victoria. The Dominion’s Central Committee had been caught flat-footed. Embarrassed, angry and anxious to teach headstrong Windsor a lesson it would not soon forget, the Dominion had dispatched four warships to Windsor, only to discover that Victoria had sent six warships of its own, carrying an ambassador who intended to recognize Windsor and welcome it to the Victorian family of nations.
The ensuing battle had been humiliatingly brief. Four Dominion ships were destroyed while the Vickies suffered two damaged. The Dominion had responded with a fleet of fifteen ships, forcing the Vickies to retreat, but then a fleet of ten additional ships came through the wormhole from Victoria. This time the odds were virtually even, which made the outcome even harder to bear. Nine of the fifteen Dominion ships were destroyed, while the survivors limped home, scarred and battered, their crews bleeding or dead. Three Victorian ships were destroyed and several others damaged.
Now, fifteen years later, Windsor remained a Victorian protectorate, a thorn lodged firmly in the Dominion’s side, with four Vicky destroyers in constant orbit above it. The Battle of Windsor remained the only large-scale space combat in the history of the League of Human Worlds. Relations with Victoria had resumed, after a fashion, but Hudis still remembered the bitter defeat as if it were yesterday. And, oh, how the Vickies had crowed about their victory! One man in particular, Vice Admiral Oliver Skiffington, took delight in commenting on the “abysmal ineptitude” of the Dominion military.
He who laughs last,
Hudis thought.
T
he recruiting sergeant wasn’t sure what to make of her.
At twenty-seven, she was older than his usual recruits. Usually he had nervous eighteen year olds, fresh out of high school, clueless and looking for something they really weren’t sure of. Adventure. Excitement. Something other than the home they had grown up in. Sometimes they were miners in their early twenties, thick necked and dirt stained, looking to get off Christchurch and not having enough education to do anything else but join the Fleet. Other times the recruits were bored and restless, or in trouble.
Plus, she had some education. Gods of Our Mothers, she not only went through college, she actually had a master’s degree. Sgt. Martinez shook his head. A master’s degree. He had barely made it through high school. Why on earth would anyone with a master’s degree want to join the Fleet?
She sat still, looking at him. She was attractive, but hardly glamorous. Small, almost petite, with coffee skin, very dark eyes and black hair, all pretty much average for a woman born on Christchurch. But she held his gaze without looking away, showed no anxiety or discomfort. He almost had the impression that she was interviewing him, not the other way around.
He just wasn’t sure what to make of her.
Sergeant Martinez glanced at her application folder once more. “Says here you got a college degree,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes.” Nothing more, just “Yes.”
“What was your degree, Miss Tuttle?”
“History.”
“And what have you been doing for a living?”
Her mouth twitched then, a mere hint of a smile. “I’m a sales clerk in a furniture store. Or was, anyway.”
Martinez raised his eyebrows in question.
Tuttle shrugged. “Christchurch is not exactly at the heart of Victoria’s economic juggernaut, Sergeant. The furniture store closed and I was laid off.”
Martinez felt himself grow irritated. “So you can’t find a job and decided you might as well join the Fleet, is that it?”
She shook her head, her black hair swirling around her neck. “No, I had already decided I wanted to join, but my mother was still alive. She needed me to take care of her.”
“Fleet doesn’t have a lot of use for history majors, Miss Tuttle.”
Her black eyes fixed on him for several beats. “I would have thought I would be an attractive candidate, Sergeant.”
“You’re pretty small to be a soldier,” he said.
“I want to join the Fleet, Sergeant, not the Marines.” She looked at him appraisingly. “Anyway, I bet they said the same thing about you.”
Sgt. Martinez, all five feet one inch of him, blinked twice, then laughed out loud. “Yes, Miss Tuttle, they certainly did.” He laughed again. “They certainly did.”
She smiled for the first time. Her black eyes grew luminous with their shared mirth. Sgt. Martinez felt the force of her smile, felt a little tingle. Then she leaned forward, earnest and intense. “I want to join, Sergeant. I’m educated, single, no family ties. I’m smart and…” Unexpectedly, she faltered.
“And?” he queried.
She took a breath. “And…I want to serve something bigger than myself.”
Well, well. Just when you think they can’t surprise you anymore...
Martinez drummed the table with his fingers. Then he stood and reached out a hand. She took it and he shook her hand. “Welcome to the Fleet, Miss Tuttle. I hope you are as happy with it as I think it will be with you.”
It wasn’t until later that he noticed her field of studies for the master’s degree: the History of Conflict. He thought for a few minutes, then took a pen and carefully put a check mark in the top right corner of her application. It was a sergeant-to-sergeant thing. Her applications papers became part of her personnel file and would go with her to the two-year training program on Aberdeen. The check mark meant, “Watch this one, she could be good.”
He didn’t use it often.
F
or Emily, the first two months of basic training was like watching a laboratory experiment in behavior modification, but from the rat’s point of view.
The space flight from Christchurch to Aberdeen had been uneventful. When they arrived, she and hundreds of other recruits had been kept waiting for hours until the buses came to take them to Camp Gettysburg, the sprawling military base that was the training center for some twenty thousand recruits each year.
The buses reached the camp in the middle of the night, causing one of the recruits– a teenager, really – to groan, “God, I’m looking forward to some sleep!” Emily had suppressed a smile. She had read enough books on military training to know that none of them would be allowed to sleep for some time yet. Sure enough, they were herded off the buses, run across a large parade field, and then pushed into a sloppy semblance of order by screaming drill sergeants. As tired as she was, Emily wanted to laugh. It was all so obvious. A quick glance at her fellow recruits, however, revealed the Fleet’s time-tested formula for basic training was working. To a person they looked scared, flustered and unsettled. Ready, in other words, to be broken down and then rebuilt to fit the needs of the Fleet.
The first weeks passed in a haze of fatigue and pain. Emily was assigned to Training Company Baker, run by Drill Sergeant Kaelin and ten Drill Instructors. She slept in a barracks with forty-nine other women, but all of the training was co-ed. The three weeks were occupied with nothing but physical strengthening and verbal intimidation from the Drill Instructors. No recruit could do anything right, and the Drill Instructors made sure they knew it. Every day each of them had one or more DIs screaming spittle in their face. Each night some of the women recruits cried themselves to sleep. One of the men lost his temper and when a Drill Instructor pushed him, he pushed back. A mistake. An instant later he was on the ground, his eye already swelling shut from the blow that put him there, and then he was yanked to his feet and dragged away. They didn’t see him again.
The verbal abuse and intimidation did not bother Emily. She knew what they were doing. She would play the game. She would run and sweat and scream ‘Sir, yes Sir!’ and do whatever they wanted her to do. She had a goal: she was going to be a Fleet Historian. If she had to get through basic training to accomplish that goal, she would, and she was not going to let some screaming DI rattle her.
But in the third week, Sergeant Kaelin found her out.
It was her own fault. Drill Instructor Johnson was giving hell to another recruit. The recruit – Jeffers – had gotten so nervous that he had hyperventilated and, quite suddenly, crumbled to the ground, out cold. DI Johnson had stepped back, a look of astonishment on his face. The astonishment was soon replaced by irritation.
“Get up, damn you!” he roared at the unconscious form on the ground. “I’m not finished with you yet!”
That was too much for Emily. Laughter spluttered from her lips before she could stop herself, then she realized that Sgt. Kaelin was staring right at her. Still fighting the giggles, she thought,
What the hell…
and winked at him. Kaelin continued to stare at her without any change of expression, then abruptly turned and walked away.
Later that afternoon, dragging in from a five mile run – her years in the library had not prepared her for this – Sgt. Kaelin was standing in front of the administration building, hands on his hips.
“Tuttle! My office. Now!” he bellowed. Sure she was in for it, Emily broke ranks and walked quickly to his office. By the time she got there, he was already behind his desk. She marched up to his desk, stood at attention and saluted.
“Recruit Tuttle, reporting as ordered, Sergeant!”
Kaelin looked at her in silence for a long minute. Finally, he leaned back in his chair. “Tuttle, you are a problem, do you know that?”
“Sir, no Sir! Emily shouted, wondering ruefully what had possessed her to wink at him earlier.
“What are you, Tuttle, twenty-seven?”
“Sir, yes Sir!”
“And you’ve studied some, got yourself a fancy degree.” He gestured idly to a personnel folder on his desk. “I’ve looked at your transcripts, Tuttle. You’ve studied a lot about military history and structure.” He tapped a file with one calloused finger. “A lot about military culture, too.” He pursed his lips together and nodded. “Yeah, and I looked at your intelligence tests, Tuttle. You are pretty bright, pretty damn bright.” He looked at her coldly. “In fact, I’ll bet you think you are better than anybody else here.”
This time, Emily did not shout her response as all recruits are supposed to. She looked right at Kaelin. “No, Sergeant,” she said softly, “I don’t. Older, maybe, but not better.”
Kaelin sighed, then, curiously, ran his finger over the corner of her personnel folder, as if touching something there. “Tuttle, the average age of the kids coming through here is nineteen. They’ve had almost no experience at anything other than high school. They are as green as green can be. They think they’re all grown up, but they’re still kids. Hell, most of them haven’t even been laid.” He looked up at her. “You know what we do here?”
Emily knew. The Fleet took raw, scared kids and taught them discipline and skills. It showed them that they didn’t know a damn thing, and then taught them what they needed to know to be soldiers. It taught them they could do things they never would have dreamed of a year earlier. It taught them pride. It taught them that failing your fellow soldiers was worse than death.
“Yes, Sergeant, I know.”
“And do you know why, Tuttle? Do you understand the purpose of the training?” He paused a moment, then answered the question himself. “Someday, Tuttle you may be at helm of a war ship going into harm’s way. Perhaps against bad odds. You are going to give an order to attack, and you have to be able to rely on the fact that your crew – some who will be only a little older than the kids we have here – will obey that order, will follow you and attack because
you
have told them to. That all starts right here, Tuttle, on these training fields.”
He stopped talking for a moment and turned away, staring out the window.
“I know that, Sergeant,” Emily said.
“You are a bit older, Tuttle. You know what we are really doing when we get into a recruit’s face and give em’ hell,” he continued, still looking out the window. “But they don’t.” He turned back to her and his eyes bored into hers. “Do
not
interfere with what we are doing here, Tuttle, or I will have your ass. Do you understand me?