Rescue Branch (Kinsella Universe) Read online

  Becky shied back a bit. “That's... not a proper order.”

  “Of course not. He'd have a hissy fit if he heard I did anything like this. He's one of my few friends, Ensign. I value my friends far more than gold. More than anything, for that matter. There's nothing I wouldn't do to see them safe -- except save them from themselves. All you have to is be is close by and do your best.”

  “Doing rescues?”

  “Just that. You will find that rescues will be the hardest row you will ever hoe in your life. And the least satisfying.”

  “Is this about the rescue out at the Jovian Trojans?”

  “The Fore Trojans,” the admiral said absently. “We rescued one person, we lost one person from the rescue party. Pity about the others we lost.”

  “Was Captain Gilly involved?” Becky asked.

  The admiral heaved a sigh. “Directly? No. But that was because he didn't have the duty; now he does. I make no bones about this, Ensign. I want my friends safe.”

  “At the risk of other lives.”

  “Yes. On the other hand, you're not a stupid person; if someone presents you with a stupid idea I expect you to recognize it and react accordingly.”

  “This isn't going to help my naval career,” Becky observed. She was unprepared for the admiral to laugh.

  “Look around! Where are you? Is doing a makee-learnee about a naval nuclear reactor what you wanted? What you expected? Do you think you can handle it?”

  “I've learned, Admiral, that they only believe what they see.”

  “They believe only what you rub their noses in. I will rub their noses in it; you will as well, or I can't use you. Be ready.”

  Then she was gone, and Becky was left to contemplate what she'd meant.

  Her duty assignment was leading a tech team on the third watch on the nuclear reactor. Evolutions and tests only happened on the first watch; the third watch were placeholders with no function except to hold the “First Team's” coats.

  She'd heard enough from her father and brothers about what naval life was like, so she simply relaxed and picked up what she could. She was unimpressed with the educational opportunities aboard a ship like the Nimitz.

  Three days after she’d talked to Admiral Kinsella she reported for duty and heard the drone of the ensign she was relieving.

  “Section three is running hot for some reason,” the ensign told her. “It's just a couple of degrees centigrade, but we haven't isolated a cause yet. Officially, you're supposed to monitor it carefully; unofficially Commander Shepherd says that these anomalies pop up from time to time. Then they go away. Be alert, but odds are, it's just a sensor glitch.”

  She simply saluted. But, as soon as he was gone, called her best petty officer. “It's supposed to be a sensor glitch,” she told the man. “It's probably a sensor glitch, but no one has ID'd the problem. I want to ID the problem.”

  “First watch will handle it,” he told her.

  “Third watch will get the answer first,” she told him. “First watch can then do whatever they please.”

  Lieutenant Jerrod showed up a few minutes later, the senior officer on duty in the reactor room. “You need to let this go, Cooper. Day watch will handle this.”

  “I'm exercising our people. All I'm looking for is the cause -- day watch can put it right. No problem.”

  It was a sad thing, Becky thought. He took the obvious out. “Carry on, then, Ensign.”

  If anyone complained -- she'd be the goat. If her team succeeded, he'd be commended for initiative.

  She could tell that her techs were dogging it -- right up until they hit gold. Her chief was on the horn seconds later. “We found a crack in section three. The water there is bubbling; there is indeed a sensor glitch -- it's reading low.”

  Per her SOP she let Lieutenant Jerrod know and logged the malfunction. It turned out that the lieutenant didn't want to know and tried to bury the report -- however such reports were automatically copied to the captain of the Nimitz as well as the chief engineer.

  That got Lieutenant Jarrod a written reprimand and earned Becky an enemy forever.

  There had been no real danger of the reactor vessel rupturing, but it had been about twenties minutes from SCRAMing itself. That would have left the Nimitz powerless; they were out in the middle of the ocean and could have quickly rigged a tow -- but it would have looked bad.

  Becky was surprised though, to be called to the Captain’s cabin a week later. She thought she’d done as well as could be expected. If the ship’s CO thought you’d earned a little attaboy, you’d get a letter and a copy went in your records. A big enough attaboy and you got that letter, and a mention in the ship’s daily news. However visits to the Captain’s Cabin usually ended badly for the person called on.

  She knocked, and when told to, entered. There was a lieutenant in an aide’s uniform who ushered her into the captain’s august presence. Becky wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that the captain promptly dismissed his aide.

  “Please, Ensign, be seated. Coffee? Tea?”

  Becky politely declined, waiting for the shoe to fall.

  He saw her expression and smiled slightly. “From where you are, Ensign, I have an exalted position and virtually unlimited authority. Actually of course, that’s an illusion. If they call me back to the Pentagon for duty I’ll be hustling coffee for admirals.

  “This is career counseling, Ensign. Relax.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled again. “You have a number of friends, people that I hold in the highest regard.” He seemed to change the subject. “Did you know they made Kinsella a rear admiral?”

  Becky had never exactly figured out what the professor was trying to accomplish by her visit. “She visited me once, sir. I wondered about her rank.”

  The captain chuckled. “There are some idiots who think she should ‘have paid her dues.’ That’s a crock. If you build humanity’s first starship, you’ve paid every due imaginable. It was funny, really. The Air Force had the Space Service -- and they didn’t want her. She was, they told the President, not a team player.

  “The President might once have been an Air Force officer, but he has long since moved on. He laughed at them and asked the CNO if the Navy could use her. The CNO grabbed her. They were discussing what her assumed rank would be; she didn’t much care, but then she thought of something and then it did matter. ‘Is it true that flag officers may design their own uniforms?’ and the CNO told her it was traditional, but not many people went far from traditional. She told him she wanted to be an admiral and he could expect her uniform to be ‘rather distant from current tradition.’

  “So she became an admiral. She wears a duty uniform that’s a one-piece jumpsuit thing. Then the Air Force lost the Space Service to the navy and Admiral Kinsella asked Admiral Delgado if he would change the Air Force ruling that ship crews would have a patch on their uniforms; she wanted, she said, a pin like they have for sports at the Olympics. Admiral Delgado had much bigger fish to fry, so he told her sure.

  “Do you know what she did then?”

  “I can’t begin to guess, sir.”

  “She had a project plan. She told him to his face she’d expected opposition and was prepared for it. It was a staff study showing how much money the Space Service would save with detachable pins instead of sewn-on patches. It would save about a hundred millionth of what a starship costs.”

  He picked up a cup of coffee and sipped it. “So, now we come to you. Lieutenant Jarrod left on the COD flight first thing this morning. Maybe he’ll find something useful to do on the beach -- he’ll never be trusted aboard a warship again.”

  “I didn’t have it in for him, sir. We didn’t get along, but I wasn’t out to hurt him.”

  “I know. But he was determined to screw you, Ensign. He lied on your Efficiency Report. I realize that civilians don’t understand their importance, nor do they understand the importance the Navy places on a man’s word. Ensign, understand this: the sea ca
res not a whit about honor and duty. It just is. We’ve learned the hard way that you can’t lie about things in the Navy. Jerrod now has an absolutely fatal knock on his own Efficiency Report: ‘The subject officer lies about subordinates to cover up his own failings.’ Jerrod will never supervise anyone, ever again.”

  “I take no pleasure in it, sir.”

  “You’re not supposed to take pleasure in someone’s comeuppance, even if you were their target.

  “In two months Ad Astra departs for their three month voyage to explore another star. Oh yeah, they’ll orbit the moon, land on Mars and all of that. But their final port of call will be at another star. You, Ensign, may play lookie-loo until that departure. You will be there. You will the be the assistant to the deputy project engineer.”

  Becky swallowed. She’d never expected something like this. “I don’t know what to say, sir.”

  “Ensign, the Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away. You’ll watch the ship depart -- then you’ll report to Admiral Delgado at the Space Service headquarters, for eventual assignment to the Rescue Branch.

  “Rescue Branch has lost more people than they’ve rescued, Ensign. I personally think a fine young officer has been sent to her death. Like I said, others that I respect, think that the solution is competent officers. They feel you are one.”

  “I’m not afraid, sir.”

  He smiled slightly. “None say you are, Ensign. What I want to say, however, is that I want you to survive -- to learn the things you need to learn to keep yourself -- and others -- alive.

  “One last little thing, Ensign. You can, after today, call yourself ‘Lieutenant Cooper.’”

  “Sir, I thought I had to be an ensign six months.”

  “You don’t have to be an ensign any longer than I will it. I will this. The difference, Lieutenant, between an ensign and a lieutenant, is that an ensign is directed where to sit it in the mess. We assume junior lieutenants know their place.”

  “Aye, sir,” Becky responded. She pondered for a moment, and then spoke hastily. “Why me, sir?”

  “Call it karma, call if fate; mostly it’s just how things work. At some point in our lives, Lieutenant, it falls to those of the older generation to turn things over to the next generation. We might fight it, we might hate it -- but we need to be resigned to it.

  “The simple fact is that we have to turn our duties over to those who come after -- and it was up to us to do a good job training them. If the next generation doesn’t measure up -- it was because we didn’t do our duty. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Becky replied, subdued.

  * * *

  A few days later she reported to Admiral Delgado in Hawaii. She should have known that the orders weren’t complete in that regard. She never actually saw the admiral; just an aide who shepherded her through the personnel office.

  It took a day to do the paperwork, and then she was told an office number to report to.

  She found it was a busy office; the person she was supposed to see wasn’t there just then. A half hour later Anna Sanchez breezed in and was told that Becky had reported.

  The next thing Becky knew, she was sitting on an overstuffed chair in front of Ms. Sanchez, who was Becky’s age.

  “I asked Steph for someone to carry my pencils. Someone bright, ambitious, and willing to listen and not to offer her unvarnished opinions unless they are solicited. I’m not in the Space Service; I’m a highly paid civilian contractor -- the deputy project manager. Actually, in most senses, I am the project manager, because Steph is busy with other things.

  “So, if you can keep your mouth shut, if you’ll accept that you don’t know much, can you work with me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yes, Anna. Like I said, I’m not in the service. Right now we’re strange birds. Steph hired a lot of people based on their abilities, not because they belonged to the service or had this or that rank or professional credential.

  “You are going to see tasks headed by a service-appointed manager; usually they have a deputy. The real person in charge is one of the shift managers.”

  “Steph is Admiral Kinsella, Anna?”

  “Steph is Admiral Professor Doctor Kinsella, yes. She has the final say on virtually everything around here, at least so far as the ship’s construction is concerned. Not so much with the crew and the like.

  “You heard about what happened at the Fore Trojans?”

  “Yes, Anna.” Becky didn’t react to the change of subject.

  “Officially, they have no idea what caused the accident. What happened was that the people being rescued walked across the surface of that asteroid. They picked up regolith -- only it wasn’t all that much -lith. It was more like what you track in after you come in from the snow.

  “Snow is water ice; cold, uncomfortable, but not lethal. The surface of the asteroid was a mixture of powdered rock and ices... mostly methane and other organic gases similar to methane.

  “They tracked it in; once they sealed the doors and pressurized the crew compartment, that shit started to melt... actually, it sublimed... there was no liquid. At some point, someone did something that caused a spark -- after the mixture had reached explosive levels. It exploded. Period, finish, end of story.”

  Becky nodded.

  Anna laughed. “Steph despises Malcolm, the pilot who was on the rescue vehicle. Not because he’s a bad pilot -- I suspect he’s the best there is. What he did should be mandatory reading for everyone who goes into space. His copilot had gone back to help berth the survivors of the habitat. The habitat manager had gone forward and was sitting in the right-hand seat of the ship.

  “She saw or sensed something; she doesn’t remember what. She slammed the cockpit hatch shut before the explosive wave reached it. Malcolm and the woman survived where the others did not. Honestly, it makes Apollo 13 look like a cakewalk.”

  “It sounds scary,” Becky said.

  “Who thinks mud tracked in could kill so many people? Space, Becky, is a scary place. You have to think about everything you do -- but on the other hand if you don’t do anything, it’ll kill you just as dead.”

  Becky nodded, but not sure what this had to do with her current assignment.

  “So, you will follow me. Be prepared to take notes -- lots and lots of notes. I will give you various tasks with various priorities. I will do what I can to make sure those priorities are consistent -- I will fail. There will be times where you will have to exercise judgment. Most times, lives won’t be on the line, although our schedule might be.

  “We’ve been ordered to launch in five more days instead of the original two months as first scheduled. Once Ad Astra is on the way, well, you’ll go back to Admiral Delgado and I will go forth and explore ‘other opportunities.’”

  “Yes, Anna.”

  Anna tossed her a PDA and Becky fielded it. “Can you work that?”

  “Yes, Anna.”

  Anna chuckled. “I know every time you reach the point you’d say ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ you substitute my name. I’m not fond of it, but I understand.”

  For the next five days it was a whirlwind. Anna Sanchez went everywhere, doing everything. A day before the actual departure of the Ad Astra, she even took Becky along on a test flight.

  Anna was sarcastic. “I’ve told everyone that their crap hasn’t been properly secured. We’ll boost at a gravity and a half, until we are just short of LEO, and then we’ll bring her back. How long will we be thrusting to assume altitude, and to get back?”

  Becky had been exposed to Commander Jacobsen’s pop questions. This was on a shorter time frame.

  “Fifteen meters a second delta V?” Becky asked and the young manager nodded.

  “Five hundred and forty seconds to reach 8100 meters a second; that’s roughly velocity at LEO.”

  “Wrong.”

  Becky blinked, and reconsidered her assumptions. She grimaced. Why had she been so hasty?

  The more she thought
about it, the more complicated the problem became. She had to compute how long they’d need to accelerate to reach orbital velocity; nothing had been said about an actual LEO. Distance travelled was equal to the half of the acceleration times the time squared.

  Except rocket flight paths were arcs. Only this wasn’t a rocket. Ad Astra could go straight up and come straight down. She made the calculation and then realized that she only had half the answer. Worse, while the answer she had was an approximation, the fifteen minutes that had them reach LEO heights wouldn’t be the same when they were letting down. And there was the distance traveled as a consideration.

  “Anna, I don’t know the answer. Roughly fifteen minutes to reach orbit; we’d already have done part of an orbit, we’d have to slow down and start going the other way, then slow down to land again. If I had some time, I could come up with a better guess. But at least sixty minutes.”

  Anna laughed. “I don’t know the answer either -- Malcolm says an hour, more or less. I forgot to mention the three gravities we would brake at, when we reached the orbital altitude. I want everyone’s shit on the floor, broken if at all possible. This is serious.”

  “Yes, Anna.”

  “Ad Astra might be called upon to make sudden accelerations along unexpected vectors. Loose gear will become missiles, if that happens. Unsecured critical equipment could be damaged and risk the mission. Having an oscilloscope land on your foot will rather limit your subsequent mobility.”

  The trip went off without any technical hitches -- although a lot of stuff went flying around. The lesson, made clear, helped a lot of people to learn about what was going to happen when they really left.

  The day of the actual launch dawned and Becky was once again at Anna’s side. “Is there anything for me to do?” Becky asked.

  Anna laughed. “A favor, Lieutenant Cooper.”

  Becky turned to her, surprised to hear her last name and rank.

  “In a short while we’ll launch Ad Astra. I don’t see that there is much risk.”

  “No, Anna.”

  Anna laughed again. “You don’t understand, Lieutenant, and that’s no bad thing. Tonight I thought seriously about going past my usual limit on beer. Since I took this job, I’ve limited myself to one per Saturday night. Two beers and I start feeling very good -- and start looking around for the nearest well-endowed fellow. I was thinking I’d stop at three tonight.