Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (41 page)

“They needed to know who I was, so I could come fetch you. Since there’s only one Terran warship in the area, by wearing my glittery—and with it, the colorful Gatsugi medals the locals would recognize—most of the authorities on the station could figure out who I was without stopping and bothering me,” Ia told her.

Mishka peered at Ia’s jacket. “So what are those medals for?”

“The Red Badge of Combat, the Brown Badge of Courage, the Green Badge of Compassion, and the White Badge of Survival. I earned them helping all those prisoners to escape from the banquet on Sallha last year,” she dismissed.

“Okay, I get the others, but why ‘Survival’ as a badge?” the doctor asked.

“It’s a special category for escaping Salik tentacles after having been captured and presumed eaten.” Ia smiled wryly, her rare, dark sense of humor surfacing. “It means I’m entitled to state-sponsored psychological care, Gatsugi-style, for the rest of my life.”

Jesselle wasn’t xenoignorant. She arched one of her brows. “Gatsugi-style? For the woman who constantly wears nothing but grey-mourning-colored clothes? You
do
realize Gatsugi counselors all have degrees in fashion design and color sense, right?”

“Then maybe you’ll find the fact I’m about to go change clothes and put on bloodred civvies a little disturbing,” Ia
quipped back. “By the way,
you
, Doctor, need to attend Lieutenant Spyder’s tactical debriefing and discussion session with the troops who boarded this station. You need to learn how to gauge a battlefield for strategic defense, offense, and combat creativity.”

Mishka gave her a dubious look. “Me? Excuse me, Captain, but I am a Triphid. A
doctor
. I am not a battle commander.”

Ia caught her elbow, forcing both of them to stop and face each other. She didn’t let go, either. “You have less than two years to learn, Commander. If you do not, you will be
directly
responsible for the lost lives and injuries of over two hundred thousand soldiers and civilians. You were given that fancy medical mechsuit because you
are
going into combat…and at one point in the coming future, you will
have
to instruct the soldiers placed under your command in field maneuvers in hostile enemy territory, because
we
will be on the ground in hostile enemy territory. That means you will
learn
how to be an officer of the Space Force as well as a doctor.

“Do you want to
see
what will happen to all those people if you refuse to learn how to lead them to the best of your ability?” Ia asked pointedly. Mishka looked down at the hand on her arm, but Ia didn’t press her point telepathically or precognitively. Not yet. “You and I follow the exact same code, Jesselle. Our goal is to save as many lives as possible.

“Sometimes you can save them with a laser scalpel, as you did today. But
sometimes
you have to save them with a laser rifle, and
you
need to know how.” Ia released her elbow but held the other woman in place with her gaze. There was a reason why this confrontation was taking place in the docking gantry, rather than on board. This was as close to neutral territory as the two women could come, and both knew the gantry was being monitored.

“I shouldn’t have to go into combat. I’m a
doctor
,” Jesselle argued. “I’m not a soldier!”

“You bought all those fancy medical skills on the Space Force Education Bill,” Ia reminded her. “This is the price you have to pay. You can complain about it all you like, but you’ll have to get in line.”

Jesselle folded her arms across her chest. “Behind
who
?”

“
Me.
I never wanted to be a soldier, growing up,” Ia admitted candidly. “But here I am, doing my absolute strategic and tactical
best to save lives in the face of rampant enemy aggression. And here you are, because you are the
right
woman for the job. That job includes learning how to be a soldier and an officer—if a backwater nobody of a wannabe
singer
like me can do it, you can do it, too.”

Ia pointed up the gantry toward their ship. Muttering under her breath in Russian, Mishka moved. Her accent in Terranglo was nowhere near as thick as one of Ia’s Naval Academy instructors’ had been, but she sounded like a cat fighting to get out of a canvas sack as she started marching that way. Ia followed.

“Report to Lieutenant Spyder tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours in the bow boardroom. You will listen to the soldiers under his command as they dissect their post-combat reports on what went right, what went wrong, and why. Bring a datapad to take notes. You have no patients on board the
Hellfire
who are in critical condition, so you will have no excuse to remain in the Infirmary,” she added.

“Your philosophy of so-called ‘free will’ is a piece of hypocrisy, Captain. You’re ordering me to do something against my will,” Mishka muttered.

“Like I said, get in line,” Ia muttered back, matching her stride for stride. “I suggest you blame the Salik instead of me. If they hadn’t chosen to go to war, we wouldn’t have to be out here to stop them.”

They reached the airlock, guarded by Private First Grade Terry Warren, 2nd Platoon B Epsilon. Clad in light armor consisting of plates of silvery grey ceristeel on plexleather backing and a silvery grey helm, he looked like a redux of a medieval knight. At their approach, he held out a scanner wand. Ia and Jesselle held out their arm units.

“Welcome back, sirs.” Private Warren greeted them as soon as the scanner greenlit their identities. “You’re the last of the stragglers. Yeoman Yamasuka said we’re clear to depart as soon as the three of us are on board.”

“How’s the hull?” Ia asked him, as they moved into the airlock.

“Private Warren to Lieutenant Spyder. Captain Ia and Doctor Mishka are now on board.”
He touched the side of his helmet where his headset rested, then nodded. “We’re gearing up for departure now, sir. Commander Harper told me to tell you most of the panels have been replaced, thanks to the Gatsugi
repair gantries we borrowed. L-Pod 45 will still be out of commission until we can catch up with the replacement parts for the pod turret,” Warren added. “He just needs to know where the Navy should send ’em, sir.”

They stepped through the inner-airlock hatch into the portmost corridor of Deck 12. The door sealed behind them. A moment later, a soft
thunk
warned them that the ship and station were indeed parting company.

“I’ll look into it and let him know by the end of the day,” Ia promised. “If you’ll excuse me, meioas, today is my birthday, and I’ve allotted myself half an hour in the Wake Zone to party. If I’m not mistaken, Commander Harper has arranged a surprise party for me.”

Mishka snorted. “It’s hardly a surprise if you already know about it.”

“True,” she allowed, moving away, “but I very carefully did not peek at what kind of cakes he asked the forward galley crew to bake.”

“Captain,” Mishka called out. Ia halted and turned to face her. The older woman sighed. “Our other argument aside…thank you for your KIman’s help, earlier. I hate leaving a Human patient in alien hands, but with your help, at least he’s stable.”

“You’re welcome.” Ia waited, sensing Jesselle wanted to say more. The ship moved away from the station, tugging them slightly aft-ward.

“I am curious as to what information you gave those Gatsugi soldiers,” the doctor added, hands tucked behind her back. “And why now? Why not earlier?”

“The why is easy. It’s the right time to give it to them. Up until recently, no one knew I was a precog,” Ia told her. Behind the doctor, Warren lurked, trying to make himself inconspicuous. Ia knew he would gossip to the others about whatever she said here, so she picked her words carefully. “From this point onward, I have the trust of most of the Command Staff, but that only affects what the Terrans do with the information I give them. The other nations in the Alliance also need to have that level of trust.

“That’s a small part of why we came here to help the people of Beautiful-Blue survive the first attack. To show to them how accurate I am, and how effective my ship and crew can be, so
that they will become willing to follow my directives in the future. We won’t win this war in a single battle, or even a single year. Nor will it be won by a single species’ efforts. Right now, I have the solid trust of the Terrans and the Tlassians, thanks to my friendship with the Grandmaster of the Afaso Order and his connections with his home government. The Solaricans gave me some of their trust when they made me a War Princess in rank, and now the Gatsugi are starting to come around. The K’Katta, V’Dan, and the rest will come in due time.”

“And once you have everyone on your side?” Mishka asked, shifting her hands to her hips. “What then?”

“Then I’ll direct them in ways to save the biggest number of sentient lives,” Ia stated. In candor, she added, “Unfortunately, I cannot save every life. No one can. No soldier, no citizen, no healer can save every single life that crosses their path—you know this as a doctor, try as hard as you might. Today, we helped save that merchanter crewman’s life. Tomorrow, we may or may not be able to save others’ lives. As soldiers, fighting in a war we did not want, we
will
have to take away lives, too. The object is to be so good at our jobs as soldiers, we take away only an absolute few.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to set aside my regrets for all the lives I could not save and the things I could not do, and go reflect on the fact that it was a good day’s work,” Ia told her. “Since it’s also my birthday this week, I have scheduled a Wake to begin as soon as we hit FTL speeds, and I am curious to know what kind of cake awaits me in the rec room.”

Dipping her head in a modified bow, Ia walked off, hands behind her back. A check of the crew’s timestreams showed that Mishka would soften a little bit more toward her in a few more weeks, thanks to today’s efforts. Private Warren would spread the word of what motivated their oddball captain, which wouldn’t hurt things either.

And the Gatsugi are going to become impressed with my prognosticative prowess, particularly once their own military command reviews the precision and timing of everything my ship and my people did for them. I’ll have to remember to remind Grandmaster Ssarra to start searching for trustworthy Gatsugi monks to serve as go-betweens with the Collective in the coming years.

A good day’s work…I wonder if Harper remembered I
had the Deck 7 storerooms stocked with canisters of topado flour and other Sanctuarian foodstuffs? I know I copied some of the family recipes to the galleys’ menu files. I miss my mother’s tasty, bright blue, topado-flour birthday cakes.

The dress was a few years out of style; straps down the shoulders and arms were no longer in fashion. But it was still bright red, and still fit her figure, if a bit loosely. Ia’s bout with blood poisoning had weakened her body. Following that up with more administrative work in the past handful of months than physical work hadn’t been enough to rebuild all of the strength she had lost. She still had visible muscles, but it wasn’t the same.

I’ll have to eke out an extra half hour of weight training every day,
Ia sighed, scraping her pale hair back from her face.
Not to mention, I need a haircut. My bangs are getting long enough to get in my eyes…and I’m procrastinating aren’t I? It’s okay, I can do this. The crew know better than to touch me. They should be safe from me.

Squaring her shoulders, Ia left her quarters and headed down the hall. The former boardroom, located one floor up from the bridge and forward enough that one bulkhead served as the dividing hull between mid and fore sectors, had been converted into a recreation hall. Or rather, a relaxation lounge.

The banks of seats had been taken out and the tiers built up into different layers of platforms, some enclosed in walls that formed private niches, others more open to the room. Off to one side, a buffet had been set up next to the dumbwaiter system Ia had ordered installed to shuttle up food from the galley one deck down. Not just snacks, either; for a modest fee, special meals could be ordered off a single-serving menu if someone didn’t like whatever was on the day’s menu, and there was a liquor dispensary, which would dole out one hard drink or two of wine or beer per Wake-day, provided it was the start of a crew member’s off-duty cycle.

The main floor had been converted into a dance floor, and the standard-issue monitors replaced with floor-to-ceiling enviroscreens. Smaller screens around the room displayed the Wake rules, reminding everyone this was a “civilian” zone.

Those rules were fairly simple, too: that the use of rank and authority was strictly limited to on-duty personnel only, who
weren’t supposed to be in the Wake Zone without due cause; that everyone, on-duty or off, was still responsible for the Lock-and-Web Law of space travel; that no uniforms were allowed on off-duty personnel within the designated zone; and that no law, military or civilian, was to be broken, save that all off-duty personnel in civvies within the zone were supposed to be treated as civilians.