The Odyssey and the Iliad (Kinsella Universe Book 7) Read online

  “Right now, one is enough.”

  “Tomorrow is another day, Trevor.”

  He laughed at himself. Sauce? Meet Goose. Goose, meet Gander. Sauce meet Goose and Gander. Enjoy! Bon Appétit!

  *** ** ***

  Almost a kilometer away, Gail Kim met a friend in a corridor. Fleet brats really did look out for each other. “Gail, her name is Sheila Harrison. Please, a couple of people told me that she has personal issues with Barnes -- don’t overreact.

  “Your mother named you Shiloh Hicks; I never paid your name any attention before -- current events. That’s the name of the cruiser where your parents met -- I can understand that. I never understood until the war warning what the message in a name is.”

  Shiloh laughed. “And my mother harped on it from the time I was three years old. Never forget, she told me. I don’t know. I just don’t know. My father died at Tenebra a decade ago. She was off on survey, and I was supposed to be safely preparing to study colonial ecology.”

  “I’m not going to ask you if you want to hook up,” Gail told her.

  “That’s not my thing, but looking at the passenger manifest, I expect it’s going to depend on the itinerary.”

  “I’m going to shoot for the moon. Barnes and I have something in common now.”

  Shiloh laughed. “So, I should have saluted just now?”

  “Probably,” Gail replied with a laugh as well. “Shiloh, you never belonged with survey; that was just your mother talking.”

  “Navigation is my true love,” Shiloh admitted.

  “Trot that shapely bottom up to the bridge. Talk to the colonel; tell him about the navigation. Like I said, I looked at the public records -- it’s all there. We’re lost, far, far, far out lost. Navigation is a critical skill. And who knows, if Barnes can get lucky, maybe you can score.”

  “You think...?” Shiloh exclaimed.

  “If not today, then tomorrow. It’s a matter of time.”

  “We’ve never been -- close,” Shiloh said, “but I’ve never had a better friend.”

  “Friends, Shiloh, come in all shapes and sizes. Right now I want to meet and greet this Sheila Harrison.”

  Gail had no trouble finding the right compartment; Harrison was talking to three other young women, wide-eyed women, amazed at her stories. “Harrison, a moment of your time out in the corridor.”

  The woman came out. She was a plain woman, nothing special to look at. Only her red hair set her apart, and it was rather pale.

  “I have been appointed the weapons officer,” Gail told the younger woman. She wanted to laugh. She hadn’t been able to say that the way she’d wanted -- she didn’t know the name of the ship.

  She lifted her right hand and made a fist. “Do you know what this is?”

  The other was new, not used to the way things worked. She blithely answered, “Your hand.”

  “My fist,” Gail told her, punching her firmly, but not too hard, in the nose. She slapped her knee. “This is my knee.” She slammed it into the woman’s crotch -- not as painful as it would have been for a man, but still painful.

  She grinned at the startled expression on Harrison’s face. Gail reached out, twisted her hand in the other woman’s hair. “This is me tearing out a handful of your hair.”

  Harrison squeaked and sank to her knees, begging for mercy.

  “Mercy? You have to be kidding! You diced with my life earlier, when you challenged our CO! Like he said, we’re in this together! You go trying to challenge that again and I’m going to declare you surplus to needs. You’ll probably appear in the flower recyclables -- I’m fond of vegetables.”

  “He promoted that woman! He had no right!”

  “Stupid woman! Now he’s promoted me! He has every right! He’s captain and commander. He can point at any of us and declare us flower fodder. Fodder for his blooming ship.

  “I’m not dead, you stupid git! And I’m not going to die when there’s something I can do about it. Keep your hole shut unless you have something real to add. You get just one strike -- the second and you are out of here.”

  “It wasn’t right -- the daughter of the president! Getting promoted over us!”

  “I read the public records. Did you listen to what I had to say?”

  “How is that fatcat rich bitches get promoted, no matter what?”

  “Hah!” Gail said. “That says it all, doesn’t it! You’re not only a dirty-foot, but you are one of the really stupid dirty-feet! I’m in compartment CJ-32. You will be there at 0600 tomorrow. Not a second later, because I intend to report to my duty assignment an hour early! You will be in a black shipsuit, with no stripes on your sleeves.

  “You are, Harrison, going to become the second best weapons officer aboard. You are going to have to try very, very, very hard, because you are not only going to be second best, but you are going to be meters, kilometers, AUs, hell maybe even light years behind first place! Parsecs, Harrison! Parsecs! You are going to be parsecs behind first place!

  “And if you are late or blow me off? Tomorrow at this time, you’ll be fertilizer.”

  *** ** ***

  Dahlia Frazier, a third-year engineering major, was as close to an engineer as Trevor found. She was aghast. “I can’t recommend anything, sir! There are too many passengers!”

  Since that was what he thought, he couldn’t very well disagree with her.

  “Sir, my only suggestion is to try to go to High Fan with just the right side fans. They are the minimum number; they suffered no malfs, and visual and more detailed inspection hasn’t revealed any damage.”

  He reminded her, “We didn’t find any damage to the fans on the left that didn’t fail either. Yet I am confident that said damage would have quickly manifested itself, if I’d hesitated.”

  Neither Frazier nor he doubted that.

  Still, she had the best suggestion he’d heard. “Turn off the left side fans; just run with the right. True, they won’t be synced, but that’s not the issue, is it, sir? It won’t be hard to sync them, if we can run on just them. And if one busts as we go? We just go cold, dark and change it out.”

  “That almost sounds like you are recommending a return to Federation space as the first order of business.”

  Frazier was the strangest-looking woman Trevor had ever seen. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, plain. She had plain brown hair, plain brown eyes, a plain face, nothing much in the way of breasts or bottom -- she was just altogether plain. She wasn’t ugly, she wasn’t cute, and she was just -- plain.

  Her suggestions were like she was -- plain. No nonsense, no spectacular risks, no risks at all that he could see -- just reasonable. “No, sir. We should continue to head for the F star that’s close by. While we have adequate consumables, additional oxygen and water wouldn’t hurt. Topping up the fuel as a first priority isn’t really necessary, but on a voyage as long as the one we’re contemplating, it wouldn’t hurt either.”

  *** ** ***

  Shiloh Hicks was another of the young cadets that stood out. She tore into the navigation with a will. Granted modern computers, particularly the half-aware computers that the Fleet -- and Trevor -- used made the work fairly simple, but there were still a lot of details to check, and then recheck. She’d been at it two days when she reported to him. “Sir, no one ever pays much attention to red giants. There is one not far from the F-class star that we are headed towards.

  “It’s in an alignment that is -- odd, sir.”

  “Odd how?”

  “Sir, it is about half the distance to that blue giant star -- that star is a B class. The red giant is an M-class star. The really odd thing is that from that F star, orbits inside two AUs of the star have the feature that the M star occults the B. In a couple of thousand years that will change, but in the meantime, even if the B goes supernova -- it wouldn’t disrupt life on any planet inside 2 AUs of the F star. It might get pretty sporty a few thousand years after the supernova, but the M, while puny, is going to have thousands of yea
rs to affect the trajectory of the gasses ejected by a supernova.

  “And, even now, while the B star’s UV would be a factor at the F-star’s distance, it’s not because the M giant is blocking it. It’s odd, sir. Stars rarely occult each other and this far from the galactic plane, stellar density has dropped by half.”

  “That is odd. Is there any sign that this isn’t an accidental alignment?”

  “You mean, has someone been moving stars? Sir, I’ll set the spectrographs to gather and record data on all three stars. I never thought it might not be natural and the vectors are the usual ones -- random.”

  “I’d hate to think we ended up where our enemies live; the odds would be astronomic -- but if it did happen, it could ruin the rest of our lives. Check, check again, and then double-check each of the first two times.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Shiloh went off to busy herself with her tasks.

  Trevor contemplated what to do. He was minimally qualified, and it was going to be up to him. He told Lieutenant Barnes she had the con, startling her, appointed Simon Gifford as pilot on duty and headed for the fan room.

  The habitat had a cab service for the passengers that ran around the residential part of the habitat, but it also had a separate group of taxis that only went to duty areas of the habitat that were available only for the habitat’s crew. The cabs were simple electric carts that could carry a ton of cargo or up to four passengers.

  Duty areas of the habitat were doubly locked down. You not only had to be cleared for crew access, but you had to be cleared for duty access. So far he’d granted both sorts of access only to Kim, his weapons officer for the weapons spaces, and the bridge crew for bridge access.

  He arrived at the fan compartment and at least the reworking the controls of the fans was blessedly simple. They were designed to be quickly isolated, and in ten minutes he’d shut down the surviving fans on the left, and configured the ones on the right to be the only ones to be active. This entailed shutting down a half dozen fans, and he waited until they had stopped spinning before he returned to the bridge.

  He simply put a message into the system for the pilot’s attention. If any threat was detected, they were to go to High Fan and if Trevor wasn’t present on the bridge, he was to be called at once. As if he’d not notice having gone to High Fan!

  He returned to the bridge and spent some time going over the public records. After four hours of fruitless search, Commander Robinson came to report on crew issues.

  “We’ve activated the kitchens,” she told Trevor. “Meal quality is improving hourly and in that respect morale has improved. We have also activated the community laundry and that revealed a good many of the passengers left with little or no personal items, including clothing.”

  “There should be plenty of shipsuits,” Trevor told her.

  “Indeed so, Colonel, but these are young people. While they will wear shipsuits if there is nothing else, they prefer anything else. There is already a brisk black market trade in used items of apparel. They are trading rations and personal items at this point. Pretty soon the more enterprising young people will begin to bring value-added items -- like beer and booze -- to market.”

  “Make it clear that people can trade their individual rations. Make it clear that I can and will enforce the rules about theft of community property with such penalties as are available to me. No one wants to be my first example of just how little I will tolerate theft from their mates.”

  “Yes, sir. One thing I have done to perhaps alleviate the situation, is there is a fair supply of fabrics in a variety of textures and colors. I’ve allowed people to withdraw supplies in personal use quantities for now. I have, however, announced that I will trade additional fabric for items of finished apparel. That seems to have hit a responsive chord among a number of the young people.

  “We’ve opened up many of the recreational facilities. The most popular sport is simple running, next is ping-pong, and after that volleyball. There are a number of voluntary associations on various scales in the process of formation.”

  “I have been reviewing the public records,” Trevor told her. “A solid fifteen percent haven’t swiped their ID cards. Announce that anyone who hasn’t swiped their ID in the next twenty-four hours will be refused admittance to the mess. If someone doesn’t have their card, we’ll reconstruct their records manually. They shall have reported their ID missing within the twenty-four hours.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right now they are still in shock over what happened,” he explained. “They are settling in and gradually returning to what passes for normal. Very quickly, boredom will set in. I want schooling plans prepared as quickly as possible. Anyone who hasn’t had the standard post-secondary aptitude tests is to be scheduled as soon as possible if they are in the last two years of secondary school. I want volunteers in the post-secondary ranks to serve as tutors; I want everyone else in class five days a week, six hours a day. Classrooms are configured as both computer learning centers and lecture facilities.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s already in progress. I’ve announced to everyone that educational opportunities are available, but I wasn’t going to make it mandatory until we’ve been aboard a week.

  “I have been organizing the passengers as well. I’ve required each compartment to give me the name of the responsible person for the others. The laterals hold twenty compartments, usually of four people. I’ll be asking people for names of those they want to lead their lateral. Nothing will be required of those nominated -- but three days later, there will be the first round of elections. Anyone who has a majority of the votes of a lateral will be elected -- it should be a rarity this first round. Then I will look over the results, establish a cutoff minimum number of votes received to go to a second round. I still don’t expect many with majorities, but the third run through will be the top vote getters. If there is a tie, we might have to have a few runoff elections, a fourth round.

  “I will then entertain nominations for a ‘passenger’s assembly.’ I hope you will give some thought to some minor responsibilities they could assume, and if they undertake them well, those responsibilities could gradually be broadened. I envision an assembly of fifty to one hundred members.”

  “You shouldn’t announce it, except for maybe the first one, but I’d schedule elections for about every four to six weeks for a time. That way people will have a chance to quickly get rid of the clowns, and see what new blood has to offer.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s a good idea,” the commander said.

  “Colonel, Lieutenant Kim is a capable young woman. Perhaps too capable. She thinks a very great deal.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” Trevor replied dryly.

  “She has two suggestions that she’s approached me with for forwarding to you. She says she understands the principle of ‘chain of command’ and that’s why she brought these things to me rather than you, Colonel.”

  “What sorts of suggestions?” he queried.

  “The first is a good idea -- the habitat, so far as I can tell, was never named beyond the original astronomic nomenclature. I don’t think the orbital elements apply any more, sir. Does the habitat have a name?”

  “Not anymore. I had the papers ready to file, naming it after my two daughters. Once I lost interest, I shredded the paperwork. Still, Lieutenant Kim is correct. We need a name. I am not open to a crew contest, Commander. I’ll name it.”

  “Yes, sir. A contest would just be a waste of time, I think.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Fifteen thousand random suggestions. Probably twice that, because some people would have more than one name. And Lieutenant Kim’s other idea?”

  “She says that traditionally a ship was commanded by a captain, not a colonel. She doesn’t know what would be the legal consequences if you named yourself captain. I have to admit, Colonel, I have no idea myself. I looked it up and could find nothing on the subject.”

  Trevor grinned. “As a hermit, I had a lot of fr
ee time. I read a lot. Back on Earth, before we got into space, the Japanese attacked the United States, kicking off the biggest war ever fought until this one.

  “The Japanese invaded the Philippine Islands -- then a dependency of the Americans. The US Navy was in tatters, the majority of effective weapons platforms had been destroyed -- it would be years before they recovered. The Philippine invasion succeeded, cutting off many American and Philippine native troops, who didn’t look on the idea of occupation as acceptable -- they went into the hills to fight as guerillas. One of those was a man who was a captain of engineers whose claim to fame up to that point was blowing up a lot of bridges.

  “He was promoted major before the islands fell, and he, too, joined those in the bush prepared to do war against the Japanese. As a man who’d only been a captain a few days before and was then a reserve major, he realized that he would have no moral suasion to speak of if he called on the people in the name of a major. So, he promoted himself to ‘General’ carefully not describing which flag rank he held -- and issued orders under his assumed rank.

  “Thus, Commander, you missed the first paragraph of the Fleet Regulations. The part where the regulations are for the guidance of commanders.”

  “I’m not sure I follow, sir. Doesn’t that paragraph mean you’re supposed to follow the regulations?”

  “Guidance, Commander, doesn’t mean direction. It gives the generally accepted rules of behavior, but a commander’s mission takes precedence over regulations. This is rather a blank area in most Port Arm officer’s experience -- they aren’t commanders in that sense. I am. Basically, like ‘General’ Fertig, I can do whatever I want. If I mess it up, the responsibility is mine. Of course, if I don’t mess up, the glory is mine.

  “Lieutenant Kim is a clever, clever woman, Commander. I am a Fleet reserve officer. I wasn’t recalled to duty at my original rank, so I can recall myself to duty with whatever rank I want. Captain sounds good -- although I don’t recall a captain ever having this many serving under him.”