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

  “And where does she stand, rank-wise?”

  Lynn clapped him on the shoulder. “Captain Merriweather wants me yesterday. Our new ops officer stands just about where you’d expect a fifteen and a half year old ensign with three days of service stands.”

  She zipped into Rome’s flight ops office, leaving Jack with his mouth hanging down about crotch high.

  Donna Merriweather gestured at a chair. “I hope the delay was worth it. There are a whole lot of things we gotta get done and not much time to do them.”

  “Admiral Nagoya sent me a non-flight qualified ops officer. A concept whose time, I think, has come.”

  You don’t make a full commander in six months in Fleet Aloft, war or not, by being stupid. You don’t get promoted to captain and set commanding the entire Wing aboard Rome six months later by being stupid. As important as what Donna wanted to tell Lynn, this was something to think about.

  “Good!”

  “Donna...” Lynn wasn’t sure how to go on. They were friends, after a fashion. Rivals, each in her own way, for the love of someone they had both been totally devoted to, someone now dead, someone who’d never looked at either of them.

  “It’s a good idea. I assume you know I have to go?”

  “I heard.”

  “I’m the new exec for Dragon. They put Sophie Heisenberg in command and she's asked for me by name. So I’m tagged. The Laser Lady is the weapons officer.”

  Lynn had been about to interrupt; instead she stopped. Willow Wolf was one of the top tier of the “natural leaders.” In fact, she was the top tier, now that Hannah Sawyer was dead.

  They’d created a medal called the Federation Star, right after the war started. The Federation gave two of them to Turbine Jensen, who’d saved humanity twice in six weeks.

  They’d given another to Charlie Gull, for what he’d done at Snow Dance. Two corvettes and a research vessel against twelve capital ships. Humanity had gone twelve and zero in the battle. Battles, really, because they hadn’t come all at once.

  And then there was Willow Wolf, the Laser Lady. She’d built one of the new generation lasers with a few hands -- Marine hands. Not the usual crew you’d choose to help you build a cutting edge weapon. She fought two battles and destroyed two alien ships in each battle. She had saved both systems, including habitats under direct attack.

  Then she’d gone out with the Picket Force; eight heavy cruisers had started that deployment, seven came back. Willow Wolf, who had been, Lynn remembered, about the same age at the start of the war as Cindy Rhodes was now. Willow Wolf had racked up forty more kills on that deployment. The person who dropped the hammer on the alien ships.

  Now Willow Wolf had nearly fifty solo kills of major ships after her third deployment. Until Hannah Sawyer flew, that had been the record. It was still the most kills for a weapons control officer -- the next highest total was four. Hannah had killed more of their ships than anyone else. Most of the survivors from First Rome had killed as many as Willow Wolf. But no one was close to Hannah Sawyer’s total of sixty-one.

  Willow Wolf had been nominated twice for the Federation Star; they’d finally given it to her, because the brass hats didn’t have the brass balls to let a seventeen-year-old girl be a full commander. Well, that had changed now! Willow Wolf was now the weapons officer on the largest warship mankind had ever flown. As a commander aboard Dragon she had more people under her than any cruiser captain.

  “So, Commander Shapiro, I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “Anything, Captain.”

  “I was told I could nominate whomever I wanted as Wing Commander and they’d get it.”

  Lynn felt a stab of fear in her heart. She set her jaw and prepared her counter-arguments.

  “I know we’ve never been friends and I want you to know that I’ll never repeat anything of what we talk about here. I don’t think you want the job, but because I don’t want there to be any doubt between us, I’ll tell you that if you want it, I’ll put you up,” Donna told her.

  “Never!” Lynn didn’t even have to think about that! “I’m the skipper of my squadron. I never expected to be that. I’ll die being that and happy to have had the honor. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Lynn, I hope you make it. I hope we all make it. But I’ll tell you the truth: you and I, we’re alike. Too damn much alike. They let you off this time. We both know where you should sit your britches for this deployment. After this, you’ll either take a bump or you’ll be an instructor until hell freezes over and you’ll never go out again.”

  “I don’t have to be in a rush.”

  “Well, just so long as you’re careful. We can’t afford to lose you.”

  “I will be careful,” Lynn told her. “I love my people; I’ll do what I can for them, where I am. I can’t do squat, as an instructor.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with that either, but I surely told them where they could put the instructorship they offered me!” The two women smiled at each other.

  “Well, if it’s not you, it’ll be Tommy Mikklejohn from Tiger squadron. Lucky Thirteen.”

  “He’ll do,” Lynn agreed. Before the war, Tommy Mikklejohn had played soccer better than anyone before him. He’d been on First Rome, and even then it was clear he had a knack for worming his way into the center of an enemy formation and then shooting them up. Then he brought his people home.

  *** ** ***

  A bit later, Lynn was sitting atop her desk, cross-legged, reading reports. There was a knock, and her yeoman stuck his head in. “Ensign Rhodes, Commander.”

  “Send her in.”

  The girl came in and saluted, taken mildly aback by seeing her CO sitting on top of a desk, instead of behind it.

  Lynn returned the salute. “Ensign, I have another order for you. Unless we are on parade, you will never again salute me while aboard this ship.”

  “Aye, aye, Commander. I don’t really understand hardly anything.”

  “It’s a different tradition is all, Ensign,” Lynn said, trying to be kind. Take what you can get, for as long as you can get it, girl. It won’t last long and it won’t amount to much.

  “Now, Ensign. Do you want to be my operations officer?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “You are going to take loads of crap, Ensign, tons of it. I will be able to stop two thimblefuls of it. I’ll do what I can, but it won’t be much. It will be entirely up to you.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Just so we’re clear. You’re out with Fleet Aloft now. Admiral Nagoya will get a message from Admiral Tennyson reporting that you arrived at such and such a time and that you were assigned to Rome, such and such squadron. We will report to Admiral Nagoya that you arrived at such and such a time and that you were appointed operations officer of this squadron.

  “At that point, the Grand High Poobah’s interest in you will pretty much vanish. Ensign, say the word and I will see you placed in a training school of your choice, in any assignment I can trade a favor to get you into. I have a bunch of them outstanding, and I know people with even more. I can do almost anything in regards to a training billet.

  “On the other hand, if you want the job, you’ll do the job. Failure will have the most dire and profound consequences on your career in the Fleet -- although not nearly as dire or profound as what Admiral Nagoya threatened. Your career would be stunted. Even if you found another job you were actually ideally suited for, promotions would be difficult and slow if, at first, you fail.”

  “Commander, I will do my best. Admiral Nagoya might not think much of me or my ideas; you might not. But I do. It’s true, isn’t it, that as an operations officer, I will have a say in conduct of a battle? Of the war?”

  “You’re an ensign, Ensign. For a long time you will have a tiny voice among a thousand people who can veto anything you propose. But yes, at some point, if you succeed, if you stick with it, if you survive, you would.”

  “Then, that’s what I want to do.”

&n
bsp; Lynn nodded. “In a moment, I’ll want you to go into the outer office and start reading personnel files on our officers. Start getting a feel for who we are. You and I will have long talks, usually with my Exec, about our candid opinions of people. You understand that you will never talk about those opinions, Ensign?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Do you know why you’re staying and not leaving?”

  Ensign Rhodes shook her head.

  “I loved Hannah Sawyer, Ensign. The kind of love that tears your heart out of your chest. Donna Merriweather loved her; Ernesto Sanchez loved her and Donna both. Hell, if Hannah would have asked for volunteers, nearly the entire crew of the Rome would have volunteered to be her lover.

  “Before she went out on her last mission, she cried on my shoulder for an hour. She didn’t want to do it. “We’re better than this!” she told me. “I don’t want to do this!” A little later, she went down the rails and did it. Blew the bastards and their planet to dust.

  “I watched that planet die on the replay; my friend was already dead. I exulted in their deaths! Payback! Payback for Hannah, payback for so very, very many other deaths! I watched the planet burn, Ensign. Long before it was truly dust, I was crying, just as Hannah had. What had we done? We’d done unto them just like they’d done unto us. What’s right about that?”

  Lynn looked at a spot about three inches over the ensign’s head and focused. She was quiet for nearly a minute.

  “I vowed on my dead friend’s memory that I’d find a way, if there was a way, to stop it. We aren’t like that, Ensign. You’re right, the politicians and the terrified public are wrong. We won’t gain anything if we lose our humanity; if we become like them in order to win. So, hang in there! We will have a particular spot of business to do here in a few days; you do not even want open your mouth to talk about anything! Then, after that, another spot of business and that business will take more than a few days! Maybe, then, girl. Maybe then.”

  Chapter 2 -- Party Time

  Cindy turned over on her bunk, still unable to sleep. It had been too quick; entirely too quick. She could look back and at each step along the way everything seemed to make sense. It was just when you put all the steps together that she had trouble understanding how she had gotten here.

  Her roommate got up from where he’d been sitting on the edge of his bunk and headed for the bathroom.

  Cindy hid a smile. A week ago, her mother would have been on the phone calling the police at the thought of her daughter exposed to a man in his boxer shorts. And she was sleeping in a long t-shirt, with no bra and no panties. She’d have been tossed into a convent, she thought and the key lost.

  “I’m sorry, Ensign,” the lieutenant running the billeting office had told her. “I have Commander Shapiro’s request to give you a private compartment, but that’s not going to do much. You’re an ensign. I just can’t assign an ensign into her own compartment. You have to share. Ensign Moon is one of the spooks; I’m not permitted to room someone with him without the requisite clearance.”

  The billeting officer had laughed then. “So, I’ve applied for the clearance. I’ll look for it after we get back from Third Rome.”

  She’d smiled too -- that had been pretty clear. Rome was just starting to work up for its third major deployment; each deployment was close to a year. Say, a year or so from now.

  Ensign Sung Moon came back and resumed sitting on his bunk, his legs folded lotus style, as Commander Shapiro had sat on her desk. He looked at her curiously.

  It was such a surprise; much of this had been a surprise! As much of a surprise as how much fun you could have, knowing if you screwed up once, they’d shoot you. That had dominated her thoughts for the first day or so. The fear had declined, but hadn’t vanished. Several times people had hinted that the threat hadn’t really receded that much. As a result, she was more focused than she’d ever been in her life. It was an odd, exhilarating feeling that she didn’t entirely understand.

  “You’re not sleepy, eh, Ensign Rhodes?” the man on the other bunk said.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “I found it interesting that when I looked you up a while ago in the ship’s records, I found that you are in a lieutenant’s slot and are the operations officer for one of the fighter squadrons.”

  “God moves in mysterious ways, I guess,” Cindy told him. Commander Shapiro had told her to keep her mouth shut. She was going to do that.

  “Did you look me up?”

  Cindy laughed. “I haven’t a clue where to go or what to ask.”

  “Your desk,” he waved at one of the four desks in the compartment. “You log in and ask the question. Rome tells you the answer if you’re authorized.

  “Do you understand about certificates?”

  “Commander Shapiro said something about certificates. The one I have isn’t something to brag about.”

  He nodded soberly. “No, although I suppose it’s a mark of confidence that you are alive and not dead.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  Her roommate laughed. “One thing you will have to do tomorrow, given a little spare time: my boss will want to see you. You will have to sign a secrecy oath to guard against if I talk in my sleep, or if I make an unguarded slip of the tongue. You will have to promise not to reveal what you’ve learned.”

  “No problem from my end. Is my certificate going to be a problem for your boss?”

  “My boss? No.” He paused, and then laughed. “Now, if I had that other woman as my supervisor, I suspect it would be. But, just remember, it’s classified. You can’t talk about it.”

  “I wouldn’t, anyway.”

  “You really have no certificates?”

  “Not one I want to admit too,” Cindy repeated.

  “I will look into something for you on proper certificates. It’s really important.”

  “I thought certificates were just that: proof you passed a class.”

  He shook his head. “That’s what dirty-feet think. No. On the Rim a certificate is proof you’re competent at a task. Dirty-feet might be comfortable being bossed by someone without basic certificates, but Rim Runners -- we won't! Cindy, you need those certificates!”

  “Commander Shapiro let me start up her fighter, today. I got to push Master Start.”

  That seemed to set him back on his heels. After a second, he shook his head. “Don’t tell that story to anyone else.”

  “Why? I figure it meant something.”

  “I learned about ‘Master Start’ when I was four. I did it for the first time on my fifth birthday and on my sixth birthday I sat for the basic certificates. All of them. And I maxed every single one, including the basic flight certificate.”

  Cindy realized that telling the story of a fifteen-year-old pleased to be allowed to push the button five year olds were trusted with would go over like a lead balloon.

  “I have a lot to learn,” Cindy said, trying to keep despair from her voice.

  “Before you throw yourself off a cliff, remember one thing: most of the early certificates an adult can pass with a few hours or so of occasional study. You do want to be careful, because anything less than a max makes people laugh. And that’s if you miss just one question by mistake. Miss more than one, and...”

  “Like I said, I have a lot to learn,” Cindy repeated.

  “Do you understand about your squadron commander?”

  “She’s a survivor.”

  “That she is,” the other ensign replied. “She should have been the wing commander, except she turned it down. I was told she was up for it again today, because they’ve transferred Captain Merriweather to Dragon, to be exec there. And she turned it down again.”

  “Is that a problem, if she’s in a job she likes?”

  “We have a shortage of capable senior officers. It’s why you’re here; it’s why I’m here. Two years ago, Commander Shapiro was a just-promoted junior lieutenant, wondering how many years it would take to make se
nior. Now she’s turned down a captaincy, twice. She could have a ship of her own, if that’s what she wanted. God! Anyone halfway good right now gets a ship command, if that’s what they want! We need senior commanders very badly! Fleet Aloft will do almost anything to increase the number! One thing they will not permit is someone who is qualified to advance, who chooses not to. Then they believe that they have promoted the individual beyond their abilities and will seek to adjust their duty assignment accordingly.”

  That was, Cindy thought, monstrous. Just because you didn’t want to be a boss? What a load of crap!

  She opened her mouth to say something and for the first time in her life, she had the wit to close it, without saying a word. She’d said enough; more need not be said. She was in enough trouble -- who needed more?

  “You stopped talking,” her roommate said.

  “I think I’ve said too much already,” Cindy told him.

  He nodded and pitched his voice low. “Security bugs every single compartment on Rome. This one time, Cindy, I’ll tell the truth. Don’t talk around me, okay? Not about anyone you like or care about, because I have to report anything of consequence, be it good, bad or indifferent.”

  He waved at the door. “I’d like to tell you that what we say here, stays here, but it’s not true. I’d rather have you know now, instead of later, thinking I’d snuck behind your back.”

  “And doing it in front of me is better?”

  “At least I have a balm for my conscience,” he replied. “In my job, you take the balmy locations and days where you find them.”

  There was a knock on the compartment door and Ensign Moon got up and answered it.