Well-Traveled Rhodes (Kinsella Universe Book 6) Read online

  “I have to live with that.

  “And, after Snow Dance, they offered us our heart’s desire. Sophie actually apologized to me for wanting a ship command. I thought I was cheating her -- I got to spend a year bossing a cruiser squadron -- I was, I thought, in fat city.”

  She waved towards space. “Four of my ten ships were gone in the battle in the first half hour. Two others were destroyed later. Sophie was there, Ensign, at the end. Dragon made all the difference. Dragon made it abundantly clear to them that they were never going to sneak a missile through Earth’s defenses.

  “We knew from the experience of Hastings, that once they identify a ship as a particular problem, they go out of their way to kill it. They did that to Dragon, and your Lieutenant Zodiac sacrificed himself for my sister’s ship.”

  She was silent. “So, first, you will accompany me, Ensign, down to Earth. For the time being, you are my junior aide. After the hoopla, I’ve been tasked to command a new unit. I have been, Ensign, just as ignorant and, though I hate to admit it, just as stupid as any in the Federation. I don’t want our species annihilated any more than the next person, and I can learn from my mistakes. So, I will listen to the advice of people I respect or know and respect.”

  “Yes, Commodore,” Cindy said, not really having any idea what the woman was talking about. She kicked herself. If she wanted to personally survive, she needed to start figuring out what was going on!

  Commodore Heisenberg turned to Commander Shapiro. “If you puke in here, I’ll hear about it for weeks. Go to the sick bay, Commander.”

  “Thought you’d never ask, Commodore!” Lynn Shapiro said, snapped a salute and walked away. Cindy was pretty sure that the reason she was going slowly had everything to do with how she felt.

  The commodore stared after her and then turned to Cindy. “Do you understand that in three days she’ll be balder than my old man on his sixtieth birthday? And that three days after that, she has an 80% chance of being dead? And three days after that, if she makes it that long, we’ll be invited to the memorial service, no matter what else?”

  “She said it wasn’t that bad!” Cindy exclaimed, shaken.

  “What, you thought she’d die like they do in an opera, after a long aria? No, she’s like a wounded lion -- they crawl off to be by themselves and let it happen. Fortunately, the Fleet isn’t that cold.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Adjust, adapt, overcome, as our good friends the Marines would say. I've never been able to understand them, you know. I could walk a line of Marines and they would yawn. Sophie would do the same thing and it was like a caricature of old fashioned stomp-salutes. They respected her and they never respected me.

  “Imagine my surprise when the Commandant of the Marines came to see me earlier today with a request that I grant the last wish of Marine Lieutenant Mongo Zodiac. Imagine my surprise that it was a unique assignment that I had thought to reserve for the best of the best in the Fleet? An assignment he wanted me to give to someone who was about as far from 'best of the best' as you could find. Yet, what could I do? That man died for my sister and her crew. What is it he wanted? A stupid assignment, where it isn’t likely you will be a factor one way or another -- you're more likely to be killed than anything else.

  “So, I’m going to throw you in with another person I’d never have given the time of day to, but whom my sister placed extraordinary trust in. Go figure! Now, though, we have to shuttle down to Honolulu for a little hoopla. You’ll need a dress uniform.”

  “Commodore, I’ve been in the Fleet less than a week. I have just two shipsuits and not much else.”

  Commodore Heisenberg laughed. “Ah, well! In that case, my supply chief will have his work cut out for him! We have a quick orbit down, and in three hours there’ll be a preliminary awards ceremony. We’ll get you sorted out before then!”

  Chapter 5 -- A Little Hoopla

  The dress uniform was uncomfortable twice over. It wasn’t something that Cindy had ever imagined herself wearing; it fit only faintly well, it was still new and the fabric was stiff and it chafed.

  Moreover, she was intensely aware of the fact that not only was she the only ensign around; at first she didn't see any lieutenants, junior or senior around, either.

  She met people she had heard of on HDD, names to conjure with. Admiral Turbine Jensen was a man younger than her father, a solid fireplug of a man who looked more like a bouncer than the most decorated officer alive -- the man credited with saving humanity three times now.

  Willow Wolf was tall and homely. The woman who had been credited with killing more alien ships than anyone else had skin the color of old shoe leather, nappy hair and was a trifle chunky. She’d been made a captain, Cindy learned, even though she was but four years older than Cindy.

  There were a lot of other officers, most of whom Cindy didn’t recognize. There was a moment early on when someone fetched Cindy a dress uniform and Cindy accompanied Willow Wolf to a bathroom at the Fleet Academy to change clothes. There was a junior lieutenant there as well, doing the same thing. There were no introductions, and after the other woman was wearing the dress uniform Willow Wolf stood in front of the woman and changed the rank insignia on her collar to that of a senior lieutenant.

  Cindy listened to the speeches, watched the expressions of those who received medals. Zodiac should be here, she thought. Commander Shapiro should be here! Any of the pilots of her squadron should be here! Cindy was a bad joke! It was so unfair! She was the one who didn't deserve to be here!

  Most of those receiving medals looked uncomfortable, as if they had done nothing at all like they were described as having done. When Willow Wolf returned to Commodore Heisenberg she made an exaggerated tilt to her right, as if the medals were a burden. Two Federation Stars! More battle stars than anyone else in the Federation -- and the Death Stars! The medal that showed you’d scored in the big game! Willow Wolf had more than anyone, living or dead. More than four hundred enemy ships had died under her hand. Most weapons officers would be happy with one ship! Four hundred! It seemed incredible.

  And then they read the citation for the dark, quiet woman that Cindy had seen changing uniforms with in that bathroom. She was Carmen Irene Hall; she'd been a weapon’s officer aboard Dragon. The reason Willow Wolf had so many awards? She got half credit for every ship Irene Hall had blown up. The compartment Lieutenant Hall been in had taken a debris hit and shrapnel smashed a lot of her fellows down. Lieutenant Hall had assumed control of multiple firing stations and had kept them busy. She’d killed nearly two hundred ships in less than an hour, and destroyed more than a thousand missiles. Lieutenant Hall’s job had been firing the new generation lasers and she had kept firing until Dragon had taken that awesome final hit.

  Lieutenant Hall also had the Legion of Merit as well, for her actions taken during the damage control efforts to save the ship. She’d saved lives, helped coordinate damage control and rescue efforts, right up until she was evacuated from the ship, having suffered back injuries. They couldn’t be too severe, Cindy thought. Her father had back injuries and he was forever rubbing his back, and staying stiffly upright. Lieutenant Hall did neither.

  Finally it was over and Commodore Heisenberg went into a series of meetings; meetings that her junior aide wasn’t to be privy to. Later Cindy was called, and ended up in a meeting room with Admiral Turbine Jensen, Commodore Heisenberg, Captain Donna Merriweather, Captain Willow Wolf and relative low lives like Cindy and Lieutenant Hall.

  At first it was Admiral Jensen seeing if Commodore Heisenberg wanted to command the nearly finished sister-ship to Dragon, the Lion. Commodore Heisenberg had laughed. “Fleets! I want to command fleets!”

  Cindy was appalled at such an ego, but no one seemed to make an issue of it. Then, the command of Lion was offered to Willow Wolf or Donna Merriweather. It was a mystery to Cindy why the two of them agreed so quickly that the ship was Willow Wolf’s and why Commodore Heisenberg had tears in her eyes
when she shook the young captain’s hand in congratulation.

  Donna Merriweather had been, during the battle, the executive officer of the Dragon -- now she was promoted to something called “Air Group Commander,” the person responsible for all fighter pilots in Fleet Aloft. Donna Merriweather was a short red-head with green eyes, and clearly had a fiery temper -- but for all of that, she seemed content.

  For Cindy, she watched Donna Merriweather with much curiosity. According to Commander Shapiro, the captain had been in love with Hannah Sawyer too. It was hard to imagine that someone so hard could love anyone.

  Turbine Jensen spoke at the end. “You are comfortable, are you not, Commodore, with the additional hat that you’ve been given?”

  “It’s not my idea of difficult duty, Admiral. Review a few records and select some crews. Two years from now, review reports and make some recommendations. Piece of cake.”

  “We were going to launch First Payback in three weeks, Commodore. That’s no longer possible. We lost Athens and our fighter squadrons have been dialed back to virtual zero. The Babylon will be ready in three months and Nineveh will be ready a month after that. Payback is going to have to wait until then.

  “Nonetheless, the basic mission of those ships is more important than ever. I happen to have Master’s Game available. She is fitted out with cargo hookups and we can easily adapt them to the needs of this mission. Captain Drake will no doubt be a great asset for the mission as well.”

  “Indeed she will, Admiral!” Commodore Heisenberg averred.

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  A few moments later the only people left in the room were Commodore Heisenberg, a full commander who was her senior aide, Cindy and Lieutenant Hall.

  The commodore turned to Lieutenant Hall. “Willow Wolf has asked for you in Lion, Lieutenant. You would be the assistant weapons department head.”

  “That is my wish, Commodore!” Lieutenant Hall told her.

  “It is my understanding that you still wanted to shoot the bastards yourself, Lieutenant.”

  Lieutenant Hall shrugged. “Captain Wolf told me that she wanted me where I could be of the most use -- that if I was the assistant weapons officer, I could teach people to kill them wholesale. Yeah, I want to be the one who drops the hammer on them, but she’s right too: I want to do it to as many of them as I can, and if I can teach others to do so, that would be better.”

  Commodore Heisenberg held up two small objects. Belatedly, Cindy recognized them as ship pins. They’d made a big deal of finding a Rome pin for her, earlier.

  “This one,” the commodore said, holding up a crouching lion, “is for Lion.”

  She smiled slightly and held up the other one, only keeping it hidden in the fold of her hand. “This one, though -- this is the magic key to the kingdom of heaven. Take this one, and you can call yourself Captain Hall -- even if you’re still a lieutenant. You will command your own ship. You will be, however, constrained in that you will have a single blue laser, much like Starfarer’s Dream once had, and four blue missiles.”

  “I don’t understand, Commodore,” Lieutenant Hall replied.

  “Very simple. The Pixie is the first of a new class of ships; one we never envisioned before. Just like we never imagined fighters.

  “It is first and foremost, a scout ship. It is designed for extremely long endurance. It is intended that Pixie and her sister ships go out into the area where our enemy is known to exist and start surveying systems, with the intent of learning as much of the astrography of our enemies as they seem to know of ours, in as short a period of time as possible.

  “You will be acting on draconian orders -- you are not to engage unless you can be certain to survive and certain that any data you have collected can reach home.

  “Pixie will have a crew of thirteen. A captain, an executive officer, an engineering officer, two technical officers, plus nine enlisted personnel.” She waved to Cindy.

  “Ensign Rhodes has been tapped as the Pixie's executive officer. She has served as a fighter squadron operations officer, and then the XO of the squadron, and then commanding officer of her squadron.”

  Cindy blinked, astonished. “I did what?”

  “Ensign, if you have trouble with that, consider how I feel,” Commodore Heisenberg told her. “And yes, Lieutenant Hall, Ensign Rhodes’ experience isn’t what one would expect from the job titles, no matter how technically correct.

  “Ensign Rhodes served as the squadron's operations officer for exactly two days. She was the executive officer about twelve hours and the CO for about an hour... because everyone else in the squadron was dead or critically wounded. She did nothing but preside while she held those hats.”

  Cindy was totally unprepared for what was said next. Willow Wolf laughed. “Ensign Rhodes has also been recommended for the slot by the Commander of Fleet Operations Admiral of the Fleet Nagoya; by Admiral Ernest Fletcher, Deputy for Fleet Operations; by the Commander of Earth’s Defense, Admiral Turbine Jensen; by Major General Brad Winslow, Commandant, Fleet Marines; Admiral Alfred Tennyson, Rear Admiral Roberta Kinney, Captain Ernesto Sanchez, Captain Donna Merriweather, and Commander Lynn Shapiro.”

  Commodore Heisenberg interrupted, in order to continue. “For that matter, I think I’ll go with the flow and recommend her myself.”

  Willow Wolf smiled slightly and continued. “I’m sorry, Irene, I know you want to kill them -- I do too. But we need to find them first, and moreover, we need to get the data back. You were outstanding on Dragon preparing sims, Lieutenant. You showed us how to kill a lot of the bastards, and we went out and did business. You had a lot of good ideas and I have to think they’d be important in figuring a way to get back with the word. As much as I’d like to have you for Lion, this is more important.”

  Lieutenant Hall held out her hand to Commodore Heisenberg, palm up. “Do you have another Pixie pin?”

  The commodore handed two of the pins to Irene Hall. Irene pinned one of them on her uniform and then turned to Cindy and lofted the pin, clearly asking for Cindy’s opinion. Cindy nodded and the woman tossed a pin to Cindy, which Cindy fielded neatly.

  Then the commodore reached into a pocket and handed Cindy a medal and a ribbon. “You earned this -- the 'I was There' medal for the battle yesterday.”

  Cindy donned the ship pin first, then the ribbon for the medal.

  There was a brief commotion and Cindy turned to see her father coming towards her. He was his usual self when he spoke to her. “What are you doing here? With these people?”

  Commodore Heisenberg laughed. “She’s here because I ordered her here. Who are you to care?”

  “I’m Jason Rhodes, Federation Senator for Hawaii and the north Pacific and Cynthia’s father. Are you another one of these people who will threaten me with death if I try to speak with my daughter?”

  Commodore Heisenberg chuckled. “If you saw your daughter a bit ago, that pretty much means you had to have seen her on the reviewing stand. Do you have the least comprehension that there are ways to approach the people who were standing there, but that butting in on them uninvited could have, shall we say, a very negative impact on the personal safety of every man, woman and child on the planet? And that others of us have the mission to prevent that?”

  “I have my senatorial immunity. I just want to talk to my daughter.”

  “Sir, your daughter is about to undertake an assignment of critical, vital importance to the Federation. You must understand that if you were to interfere with that mission, a mission of considerable importance, that it's likely that a Special Board of your peers would waive your immunity? And then they would have you shot forthwith for causing a delay in the defense of the Federation?”

  “My daughter? That’s absurd!”

  “I invite your attention, sir, to the decoration over your daughter’s right hand jacket pocket. She’s already served in that capacity once and now she’ll be doing it again. I am, however, not arbitrarily cruel or mean. You ca
n have a half hour.”

  She turned to Lieutenant Hall. “Let Ensign Rhodes finish here, then the two of you shuttle up to Grissom and from there on out to your ship. Orders will be waiting for you at Grissom.”

  “Aye, aye, Commodore,” Irene Hall said formally.

  The commodore turned Cindy’s father. “You really don’t want to delay your daughter. Not so much as a millisecond longer than necessary.”

  She left along with Willow Wolf, leaving Cindy with Lieutenant Hall and her father.

  “I have no idea what to say,” her father told Cindy. “I’ve tried everything I know to get you out of this. I swear I’ll redouble my efforts as soon as I walk outside.”

  “Don’t do that, please.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “I’ve learned a few miscellaneous facts in the last few days, Dad. The most important lesson was the realization that my education has been a crock and that I am profoundly ignorant of the facts of life.”

  “There was no need to rush into the hurly-burly of being an adult,” he said automatically.

  Cindy laughed. “Pragmatically, empirically, I beg to differ. The single most important thing I learned, something that I was the most proud off in my first few days, was something I learned that proved I was dumb as a stump as far as people like Commodore Heisenberg and Captain Wolf are concerned. I can’t help but think the regard I’ve come to have from most of these officers would turn to dust if I mentioned it.

  “Now, please. I have places to go and things to do. I’m sorry, but if what I’ve heard about mission times are at all accurate, I’m not likely to be back for at least two years and perhaps longer. If I even survive.”