Assault on Ambrose Station: A Seth Donovan Novel (23 page)

36.

To say my spar with Kekkin had caught everyone unawares was an understatement. Watching their champion felled must have been a heavy blow to their morale, for that reason alone I regretted beating him. It had to be done, however.

Despite Garner’s staidness of the situation, or Ormund’s words of encouragement, I could still see the same machismo and bravado in many of the crew. For months, or years, they had been in the system facing down the tiger in the cage and never once seen what happens when they step into the cage themselves.

Were they brave? Or were they foolish, as we were all those years ago. The Push taught me many things – lessons I hoped to impress upon these men and women before they learned the hard way. They weren’t blind to the dangers in the Gossamer System, they just didn’t think they would affect them.

As I wrapped up the fight with Kekkin, moving into a dressing room with my friends, I decided that I would talk with Garner about a more robust ship-wide training schedule.

Zoe, as you could guess, was ecstatic about my victory.

“That was amazing! My gun really worked out there!”

“I’m not sure what hurt more, beating Kekkin, or crushing the spirit of so many of the crew like that.”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve never seen you fight like that before!”

“She’s right,” interjected Artemis, “That was some grade A moves out there.”

“I got lucky and I technically cheated.”

“Ha, what would Crege say to that?”

Tac had his turn, “Pilot Crege would remind Seth that any fight you win was a good fight.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m more concerned with the morale of all those enlisted out there. Was that the right move? By beating Kekkin I may have alienated myself to them.”

“You didn’t see the look on their faces.” reminded Art, “When they picked their jaws up from the deck, most of them were in awe.”

“As am I.” came a voice at the door.

Kekkin and Renthal stepped into the room. They both wore solemn looks, the big Garz’a nursing his sword hand in an ice pack.

“Are you okay?” I asked, “Do you want Zoe to have a look at your hand?”

“No,
naga-zak
, warrior will be fine. We came to offer our apologies.”

“What? What for?”

“For our bullshit earlier today in the armoury.” said Renthal.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I just hope that everyone who watched learnt something. Other than how to cheat at a swordfight, I mean.”

“Warrior understands the lesson,
naga-zak
. Warrior will make sure everyone else does too.”

“I didn’t mean to pull a shirt over your eyes out there, sarge. I saw how everyone was rooting for you. I didn’t mean to make you look bad in front of the crew, I just saw an opportunity to start everyone on the right path.”

“You honour me. You are a formidable opponent, one who warrior will never underestimate again.”

“Oh, dear,” said Renthal, “This means your next fight with him will be to the death.”

Zoe’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. I laughed, holding my hands up in mock surrender. “No more sparring with the sergeant, then. Got it.”

“I think you blew your ace up your sleeve anyway,” said Artemis, “Next time Kekkin will know about your NP, and your little pea shooter. He’ll drop you like a bad habit.”

“Warrior should always be ready for the unexpected.
Naga-zak
reminded me of this, when warrior had forgotten. The
calak
will not be so forgiving.
Naga-zak
may have saved this warrior’s life out there tonight. Crege has taught you well. I would be honoured to duel him when he is healed.”

Before I could object, Renthal held up a hand to stop me. “It’s a platitude, not a promise. I don’t think they’d actually fight, not while they are both your ally. I think.”

“Human speaks the truth. Warriors will not duel while we are both useful to
naga-zak
.”

“Thank you. I mean that. Crege would be proud. He was wounded in one hell of a fight, one I didn’t think we’d survive.”

Art gave a short grunt of approval. “Those Frikk were tough bastards, no bullshit there.”

“You two are both actives, then?” asked Renthal.

“We both fit that definition, yes.” I said.

“What’s it like, earning a living like that?”

“You thinking of mustering out, soldier?” asked Art, eyeing him up and down. He suddenly got self-conscious.

“Eventually, maybe once this tour is over with.”

“Well, depends on which line of work you choose to specialise in, and how good your crew is.” I said.

“Or who your clients are. How well they pay, what type of jobs they ask you to do.”

“How willing you are to get your hands dirty. And how much blood you can stand getting on your own hands in the process.”

This last I said while staring at Art. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and her grin vanished. Renthal caught my look, and started to sense there was something between us.

“I always said I’d go AWOL,” I said, “the moment I was asked to do something distasteful, rather than compromise my own integrity or creed.”

“Some of us don’t always have that luxury.” said Art, addressing me while she spoke.

“I’ve never liked taking on a job where there wasn’t complete transparency, unknowns were always anathema to our style of working on the Dreaming. And we never, ever, did work for criminals.”

“If you ever find a crew that were dependable, and willing to lay down their lives for you, keep them.” Artemis had turned to Renthal again, “Otherwise, stay freelance – don’t get tied down to one location where you can build enemies. You never know when one will get the upper hand and force you to put your integrity on hold for a while.”

“Is that what happened to you?” he asked.

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s it? No advice on that?”

“It’s about all I’ve ever managed to get out of her, too.” I said.

For once, Artemis had no bluster, a look of shame had crossed her face while we had sparred with our words. Zoe stepped up and put a hand on her arm.

“She’s not a bad person. She risked her life to save mine once. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.” She smile up at Artemis, who eventually gave her a sheepish grin.

“I was ordered to help you, cupcake. And you returned the favour, right away.”

“Ah, but it was my job to tend to your wounds, remember? We can both downplay our parts in the journey to get here, but it doesn’t change anything between us. I hope your circumstances improve, when all this is over.”

For a second there, I thought the two would actually hug. I was as motionless as I could be, as if I would startle them and spoil the moment, but Art regained her composure a moment later and merely nodded her thanks to Zoe.

“Well,” she said, “All this testosterone in the room is getting me horny. Unless you two are going to start showering, I’m going back to my quarters to play with myself.”

Kekkin nearly choked. Renthal’s jaw dropped open, for the second time tonight. As she left the room, she ran her hand over Renthal’s forearm.

“I could use a playmate?” she said seductively over her shoulder as she left.

Renthal’s face had gone pale, looking longing at the door. He took half a step towards it before Kekkin grabbed his arm, jolting him out of his stupor.

“Human will remember his place.”

“Yeah, sorry sarge. It’s been a long deployment.”

I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him, or happy that she’d found a new ‘luverboi’ to torment. I decided on a comfortable middle ground.

“I think you’re going to have some competition with Harris, if you plan on pursuing that. He’s had his eye on her rear ever since she stepped on board.”

Zoe slapped my arm playfully.

“You guys are terrible!”

“Hey! She encouraged it.”

“Well, I’m encouraging you to get back to your cabin and clean up. I need to take a look at some of those cuts, too. Did you have to cut him so many times, sergeant?” she gave Kekkin a reproachful look.

“Warrior apologises, ma’am. Will not happen again.”

“Now that we’ve all found out who has the biggest penis, can we put an end to all this violence? There’s enough of it in this system that you’ll all get a turn.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Practice blades only, from now on? Just like Max asked you?” she was really pushing the point, and Kekkin was mollified enough that he acquiesced.

“Yes, ma’am. Warrior will try to reduce level of injury during training.”

“Good, and I want to see you in the med bay tonight before lights out. I don’t care what you say about that hand, I want to be sure there’s no damage that you’re hiding.”

“Ma’am!”

“Just do it, Kekkin. It’s easier if you just do what she says.”

Renthal started chuckling.

“Careful, Corporal. You and your squad mates are nearly due their annual physicals.” He shut up real fast after that. I just started laughing, though. I couldn’t help it.

“Go easy on them, love. Let’s get out of here. I’ll see you gentlemen tomorrow morning for PT. I think you were right on the money about my fitness, Renthal. I’m exhausted!”

37.

The next day, I met with Captain Garner to discuss a more rigid training plan. I laid out my ideas for him, one at a time, and he listened quietly to each one in turn. When I was finished, he simply leaned back in his chair and silently pondered my suggestions. I could already tell his leadership style was vastly different to Maxine’s, as long before I would have finished Max would have already thrown a dozen questions at me.

Garner was the contemplative type, who let his delegates explain their ideas fully before asking questions. It was a little unnerving, to be honest, I was fully prepared to defend each and every one of my plans and when he didn’t ask me a single question I started to think I hadn’t worded my thoughts properly. I was about to put them to him again, in a different way, when he held up his hand to quiet me.

“Let’s do it.” was all he said, after a minute of brooding.

The general theme to my idea was to keep the crew on a heightened state of alertness. One way to achieve this was by removing the artificial day / night routine that the ship ran. Most space faring vessels keep their ship’s clock by a galactic standard time scale – thirty hours in a day, six days in a week. Hours 0600 to 2600 were considered ‘daylight’ hours, while 2601 until 0559 were ‘night’ hours. A ship would normally reset their ship’s clocks to whichever station they docked at last, especially if they were to spend at least a full day and night docked.

Most military ships across the galaxy had various states of readiness and ships in the Gossamer System were no different – except they tended to remain at the upper end of the readiness scale. We were currently operating around a three watch rotation called Defence Watches, which meant that at any one time, a full third of the crew were awake at all times. Each watch would keep a ten-hour shift, called a ‘trick’, and then spend the next five to ten hours on regular daily activities such as maintenance or training, depending on workloads. The remaining time was theirs to do with as they pleased. For any event, should the general alarm be called, everyone was to close up at their battle stations.

As many of the maintenance and housekeeping services were handled by synthetics or automated systems on modern warships, this usually left a sizable chunk of free time for crew to relax, while still maintaining an acceptable level of readiness.

I wanted to remove this free time and replace it with damage control exercises and roleplaying scenarios. I suggested collapsing the three watches into two, each holding ten hour tricks. By doing this, we could also remove the ‘night’ and ‘day’ cycle of the ship, keeping it permanently on a ‘day’ routine. A very small number of crew would remain ‘day hands’ – usually people of significant value to a process or department – to oversee regular service and monitoring of subsystems.

At least once a watch I, or the Captain, would initiate an exercise. The results would be graded and presented to the following watch, who would then be encouraged to meet or exceed the grade of the previous attempt.

The general principle of running damage control events was not a new one, especially in the military, but I wanted to throw in something special for the Gossamer System. The secret ingredient to all this? Not all of the exercises were meant to be ‘survivable’. In fact, very few of them were.

Individuals in a team who quickly proved to be instrumental to performing well were ‘killed’ off as casualties first. This forced the surviving crew to innovate or think outside the box. They had to review their own training and find gaps in their ship knowledge. They had to re-learn how to
fight
the ship.

The exercises didn’t just involve the Fleet personnel either. I spoke at length with Ormund and Kekkin about instigating hostile boarding actions. With Tac’s help, we had small squads of synthetics repurposed and reprogrammed to act as roving marauders who would stun unprepared crew and take over compartments. Naga Team, and the few security personnel on board, were issued modified energy weapons that would react with synthetics to simulate a killing shot. Each member was to upload an App for their overlays that would tell them when they were ‘killed’ by an enemy mech. Except, we would randomly deactivate some weapons on a team, or simply not register hits.

By the second day, two full ship exercises later, everyone was tired and had sore muscles. However, I was only just getting started. I wanted to push the crew hard, bring them to the brink, so to speak. The third exercise was a big one, six hours of simulated battle, raging infernos and berserk fake Ghantri. Poor Zoe was probably one of the most hard working people, her and her two subordinates had to set up a triage station – I had Tac issue each ‘wounded’ an overlay message to inform the medics of their injuries and they had to prioritise the treatment. I had to use Tac because I knew next to nothing about anatomy, while I knew Tac had access to the medical system database. Eventually, when the bridge was ‘wiped out’ by enemy fire, an engineer had to take charge and ordered a full evacuation of the ship. When the survivors all reported in to their lifeboats, I called the exercise to a close and reported to the crew the outcome.

To their credit, they took the loss of the ship in stride. They were solemn faced, many still damp with sweat, while they were told of the many areas lost to damage and the casualties that they had suffered. The air in the ship started to take on a slight acrid scent, as we used special training smoke canisters to simulate fires so much, that the oxygen scrubbers were struggling to remove all the particulates from the air. Crew began to dread the smell and I started to see many people alertly sniffing the air occasionally.

The fourth event was as large as the third, and it was then that I started to see a few cracks in the veneer. One crewmember had to be disciplined when he wouldn’t play along. Sure, he had had little sleep in the last day, but during a real event, he wouldn’t have that luxury either.

By the third day, performance started to slide. I had been expecting this. I talked with Ormund and Garner about this eventuality, saying it was part of the plan.

You see, during the Push, we suffered some harrowing catastrophes on our ships. The invasion of Ambrose Station, meant to be a large Protectorate force hammering a relatively weaker Ghantri defence before deploying troops to liberate the refugees, turned into a space battle that raged across a week before we got close enough to put boots on the ground.

My first ship, the Sardonis Mist, was damaged in a battle that had spanned thirteen hours, with two hundred and seventeen Protectorate ships being destroyed. Another hundred and nine were too disabled to continue. Not six hours later, while repairs were still being conducted, the second engagement began when the fleet that was supposed to be destroyed by Task Force One reached Ambrose Station. This second wave took nearly twenty hours to force a withdrawal, in which time both sides reorganised for another attempt.

In all that time, not a single person slept. We finally got a respite after the withdrawal immediately after, while our fleet waited and watched, hoping in futility for reinforcements or word from Task Force One. Every day, more and more Ghantri ships arrived and sorties were sent to try to intercept them, attempting to stem the tide of the Ghantri. By the fourth day the Fleet decided an all-or-nothing assault was required, and the Star Marines got their chance to do their part, ill-fated though it was. By week’s end, with the remaining fleet bolstered by Task Force Two, they called a retreat and collected most of the ground forces before we could secure a victory.

The thing that I noticed the most during that terrifying time in space, was that there always seemed to be certain individuals who worked well within a team. They were the foundation of a good, solid group who could be counted on to get the most out of every section of the ship regardless of the problem.

Ships that lost the fight often had imbalances of these people, while ships who did well often had an even spread of these leaders across all departments.

By day three, we could spot these people while we roved about the ship, or reviewed the action on the ship’s security monitors afterwards. We started to focus our attention on these people and started to shuffle them about. We stopped killing them off, too. Instead, we briefed them personally afterwards, sometimes giving them restrictions on what they can do in an exercise, which people they could help, or using them to create problems for other people to be challenged by.

By day seven, I had a solid core of exceptional Damage Control Coordinators – DCCs. The exercises ran themselves, at this point. Everyone was used to the new routine, their body clocks had reset. They were more alert, they were hardened and they were quick to respond to any threat or problem we could throw at them. Surprisingly enough, the first crewmember we had disciplined turned out to be our best DCC, a Leading Serviceman Ferol Ackerman. Normally, he was a maintainer assigned to one of the ship’s Class 1 point defence weapons – the Port Battery. Now, I had him loaded up with smoke canisters, stalking the passageways at odd hours looking for good spots to set off fake fires. He would wait nearby until a crewmember noticed to smoke then initiate the exercise. He would spend the next few hours yelling at damage controllers trying to put out blazes and generally exciting the hell out of everyone. We wanted to exercises to seem real, after all.

By the end of my training schedule, I had a crew who were steely eyed, tired but mentally and physically prepared for the worst possible scenarios. I felt that I had given these men and women the best possible chance that I could give them, that all the lessons I had learned from the Push were put into effect. I made sure that I spent time with everyone, whether during a meal, in the few free hours between shifts when they could actually rest, or during a lull in an exercise. I made sure they understood the reasoning for this. I told them my story, sharing some of my experiences.

Artemis had been right. Many remembered the first lesson I had taught them, when I beat Kekkin in a sparring match – something many of them never thought could happen. They actually listened, too. I came to feel pride for these people, I cared for their survival - they were not just a tool to get me to Ambrose.

I began to think, what if I had had this preparation the last time I was here? How many lives could it have saved?