Poor Man's Fight (23 page)

“No, sergeant!” Oscar Company shouted in unison to the floor now mere inches from their faces.
Most still grinned. Some of them still struggled to contain their laughter.

“Burpees! Now! Count ‘em out!” S
he stalked through the aisles, listening to numbers shouted out in unison by the company. They had gotten better at this, too. The only real challenge came from the sergeant’s commentary.

“I think some of you have a problem with me,” she scowled. “I think some of you are picturing me sitting at the dinner table with you at home right now. I think you’re afraid to have me over for dinner to meet your mothers. Or maybe your girlfriends. Sinclair, you’ve got a girlfriend, don’t you? Aren’t you planning on marrying her someday? Am I gonna be invited to the wedding? Why is that funny, Sinclair?”

One hundred fifty burpees later, Oscar Company regained its collective composure. The recruits marched out in two columns, up the steps to the main doors of their shelter, then into the grey, rainy, glorious morning outside.

Over the entrance was posted a sign in plain blue letters. It read, “Time Passes.”

***

“Recruits, my name is Lieutenant Miguel Duran. I am the captain of
ANS St. George
. The officer beside me is Lieutenant Kelly, captain of
ANS Joan of Arc
.” Speaking in a loud, clear voice with just enough scratch in it to give the man some extra panache, the handsome lieutenant stood proudly before the front ranks of Oscar Company. He and the redheaded woman beside him wore much the same vac suits as the navy recruits, though theirs bore rank and unit insignia. Both also wore a utility belt around the waist, life support regulator pad attached to one hip and other emergency gear strapped to their suits. It was all the gear necessary and required by regulation while underway in space.

The two white craft looming above and behind them
silently explained why they dressed that way while on a planet’s surface. The ships were shaped much like daggers, only the afterburners gave a more rectangular end. Both ran fifty meters from end to end, with swept-back wings thick enough at the center for a man to stand in, tapering to much thinner ends roughly ten meters from the hull.

Duran
pointed at random to a recruit in the front rank. “What’s your name?”

“Ravenell, sir,” came the answer. Tanner breathed a sigh of relief. He was afraid that the lieutenant had been pointing at him.

“What class of ship are
St. George
and
Joan of Arc
?”

“They’re
Vigilant-class corvettes, sir.”

“What’s their armament?”
asked Lieutenant Kelly.

“Ma’am, each has a forward-mounted laser cannon, twin light laser turrets mounted on her wings, one ventral laser turret in the center and twin missile tubes mounted within each wing, ma’am!”

“Crew compliment?”

“Sir, standard crew compliment of sixteen, sir!”

“Excellent. You, directly behind Ravenell,” Kelly said. “What’s your name?”

“Ma’am,
Matuskey, ma’am!”

“What’s their primary manufacture?”

“Ma’am, domestic manufacture, ma’am! Raphael shipyards, ma’am!”

“Outstanding,”
Duran smiled. “Sounds like you’ve had some excellent instructors.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” answered the company.

“It is our understanding that you recruits have been cooped up in your squad bay, and today is your first breath of fresh air. Is that correct?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“How long has it been?”

“Sir, twelve weeks, sir!” replied one hundred
fourteen voices in unison.

The lieutenant blinked. He didn’t lose his composure, but there was a moment of pause and a curious half-grin thrown to Chief
Everett, who stood at ease beside the company. Duran turned his attention back to the company. “So would you folks be interested in cutting your time in the sun a bit short to go for a ride?”

Tanner felt his heart leap into his throat. He wasn’t alone. Trained though they were to respond with snap and confidence to such questioning, Oscar Company
didn’t expect something like this to follow their first civilized meal in three months. Some recovered quicker than others, calling back, “Sir, yes, sir!”

Duran
couldn’t help but grin. “I’m sorry, what’s the verdict there?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” repeated a much more unified Oscar Company.

“Chief Everett?” he asked.

The chief came to attention. “Oscar Company would be honored, sir.”

“Excellent. It’ll be a bit crammed, but between our two ships we should make it work. It’ll be a short trip. We think you’ll like where you’re going today. You’ll need to be equipped. Chief Cavalli?”

St. George
’s head engineer stepped up from behind the lieutenant, gesturing for five other men behind him to follow with several carts. All of them, like Duran and Kelly, wore grey Navy vac suits fitted out for space. Chief Cavalli launched into a brief recitation of what would be issued to each recruit. The company had trained with everything already, but no one expected to have use for it today. Nor did they expect to be told, as Chief Cavalli explained, that the utility belts, regulator pads, survival knives and the rest were permanent additions to their standard individual kits. It was all for keeps.

Tanner could barely track it all. He listened with as much focus as he could spare, but in the end, that wasn’t much.
Every thought of family and friends fell away. The notion of quitting vanished from his mind. He wasn’t sore. He wasn’t tired.

A junior engineer from the
St. George
stepped up to issue his gear—his vacuum-ready, military-rated, state of the art survival gear. It was a far cry from the courteous, reassuring safety briefing before getting on a passenger liner.

This wasn’t a tourist cruise. He was no longer at some brutal, demented summer camp.

Tanner accepted his gear, checked it to ensure proper operation and strapped it on.

Everyone received instructions on where to sit on their respective ships.
Fifty-eight passengers, counting recruits and instructors, was no small load for a corvette.
St. George
was soon crammed, with every possible seat taken. Much of the company took up spots in the cargo bay. Others sat in the small galley, the tiny crew berths, even a few spots in the bridge.

Tanner was one of the lucky ones. A crewman strapped him into the starboard dorsal laser turret.
He could actually see where they were going.

St. George
was clean and neat, but she wasn’t a showpiece. She bore small dents in the bulkheads and scuffs on the deck from any number of heavy jobs. Signs of patch jobs and jury-rigged equipment showed up here and there. Everett had told the recruits many times of how often military space travel was a game of improvisation and ingenuity. Popular media and fiction in Tanner’s day tended to portray military activity as a matter of precision and smooth, seamless expertise. Reality hardly matched the image.

Excitement rose as the
St. George
’s antigrav drives kicked in, putting a low but discernible vibration through the bulkheads, the decks and everything attached to them. Tanner felt a slight moment of nausea as the vibration died out and the antigrav steadied itself. He chalked it up to nerves. Commercial space travel hadn’t made him sick since he was a little boy.

The ship floated up from the ground, at first with just a lurch of a few inches but then a steady rise. Again, Tanner felt butterflies in his stomach lightheadedness, but it quickly
vanished.  The skyline fell away, soon leaving only sky.
St. George
’s main engines engaged with a rumble and shudder felt throughout the ship.

Seconds later, they were through the clouds, then high above them. The blue sky
swiftly grew dark, then black, and shortly thereafter Tanner had an unfiltered view of thousands of stars.

He didn’t have long to take it all in. The ship banked to starboard and tilted ninety degrees. Tanner looked up from his turret seat at the planet he’d been on only
seconds ago.

Something beeped next to him. Tanner looked over at a control panel next to the turret controls. A green indicator light came on as the intercom spoke. “So as long as you guys are sitting in the turrets, there’s no reason not to put on the targeting displays,”
said a female voice. “We’ll control them from the bridge. Don’t touch anything. We wouldn’t want a friendly fire incident.”

It was nice to hear a friendly voice out of someone other than a fellow recruit for a change. Tanner watched as the display
activated all on its own. It displayed the ship’s position relative to other objects in orbit, their ranges, transponder signatures and more.

“As you may have been taught,” the woman on the intercom continued, taking on a pleasant, lecturing tone, “corvettes form a considerable portion of the Archangel Navy. We’re big on versatility. We handle everything from system security and customs patrols to search and rescue to courier duty. Smaller crews mean greater responsibilities for lower-ranking crewmen than on most other ships. The
crewman driving the ship right now is only six months out of basic herself.”

Tanner grinned. That had all been part of the company’s “book learning” curriculum while imprisoned in the squad bay, but now that he was on such a ship, it all fell into place for him. It all became real.

It became something he actually wanted.

The ship turned again, wheeling on its axis. Tanner saw on the targeting display that they were headed for a specific contact. The nameless crewman on the bridge remotely controlling the targeting displays paged through a couple of different read-outs before settling on one that offered a clear, detailed image. Half a minute later, Tanner could make it out with his naked eye through the turret canopy.

The last few weeks had caused him to reflect constantly on how far he had come from his old life in such a short time, all as a result of his own choices. The thought hit him again as he stared at the massive, gleaming white Archangel Navy cruiser up ahead.

***

Andrea Bennett had been on larger ships, but those were civilian transports designed for luxury. She had been on military craft, as well, but nothing like this one. CDC Shipyards Cruiser NN-1221, still officially unnamed, outweighed and outgunned all the other cruisers of the Archangel Navy… and it was still, formally at least, an “it.” NN-1221 would not become a “she” for another three days.

Given the historic nature and PR value of the occasion, the choreography of that ceremony fell in her hands. It was a significant if lighthearted responsibility.

“Don’t get me wrong, Commander,” Andrea grinned as she walked through the passageways with the ship’s executive officer, “The First Lady would probably be thrilled to walk out onto the bow of the ship in a vacuum suit to crack open the bottle.”

“We can make that happen, ma’am,” grinned Commander Sutton. He was tall, muscular and handsome, wrapped up in a dress uniform bristling with ribbons and insignia. Andrea found him charming enough, and wondered how often women swooned for that smile.

“Still. I think she’s better off doing it on the bridge,” Andrea chuckled.

“She’d be perfectly safe,” the commander offered.

She’d probably throw up in her helmet
, Andrea thought, but couldn’t make that comment out loud. They had a silent companion. Walter Lowney from the
Raphael Chronicle
tagged along with her to work up a “behind the scenes” piece. If all went well, it would offer a brief revival of the story once the initial media attention passed.

On one hand, it demonstrated President Aguirre’s commitment to transparency and media access. On the other, it meant that someone from the media followed Andrea’s every step and heard her every word.
It also left her continually dodging questions of how the government planned to cover this new ship and the others it procured in its budget.

The ceremony still lay
several days away. Work crews performed their tasks with vigor. Technicians installed secondary backup cables and wiring along the bulkheads. Specialists replaced the original computer terminals with systems preferred by the Archangel Navy. Smaller touches were put in place as well, like name placards, warning signs and color-coded paint jobs.

There was also cleaning. An endless amount of cleaning, Andrea figured, but the XO and the captain both vowed
to have the whole enormous ship ready. The confidence of the ship’s command officers impressed her.

“So, Commander,” she said, turning her head curiously at a cleaning detail of young personnel in plain grey and blue
vac suits, “I thought you didn’t have your full crew compliment yet?”

“Not entirely, no, ma’am,”
replied Sutton. “As you can see, a number of civilian specialists are at work here alongside the ship’s crew. We’ve also borrowed more than a few technicians from other ships and planet-side installations. Quite a lot of temporary duty in place here.”