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

  She went back to her quarters. Ensign Moon was sound asleep and didn’t stir when she came in. Cindy decided that was a good thing; she really didn't feel much like talking. She put her head down on her pillow and didn’t think about anything at all.

  The next day was filled with work from the time she reached the squadron offices. A lot of it was rote, requiring a quick explanation and that was it. Other times it consisted of simple instructions that required the minimum of thought.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t go on, Commander Shapiro called a mission brief at 2100 and the pilots appeared in the squadron ready room.

  They were quiet and listen attentively. When the time came, Cindy passed out the data disks that they’d prepared earlier, with the mission parameters. Last, but not least, Zodiac went over the overall mission plan one more time.

  At the end of the briefing, Commander Shapiro was succinct: “We’ll reassemble at 0700 tomorrow for final status changes. You’ll board your beasts by 0745 and we’ll start moving fighters outside at 0800. Hopefully, we can get everything out there and ready to go by 0900. You’ll sit there under radio silence until we tell you.”

  There had been few questions before and none then. Cindy was in bed before Ensign Moon returned and what time he eventually did come in, she had no idea.

  She was awake very early and met with Commander Shapiro and Zodiac, then she was making sure the data disks the pilots would carry with them were all correctly updated.

  Then the pilots started to assemble for their final briefing. There was not very much of their usual banter, and Cindy thought that more than one of them was stressed by the short period of time they had to psyche themselves up. Normally on a deployment it took months to reach the operational area and that time was spent in fine-tuning and honing their skills. To be pulled willy-nilly into what, from the reports she was hearing, was going to be the greatest military engagement in human history was a shock. Perhaps the attack was not the largest in absolute numbers of defenders, but no single battle had ever risked everyone on the planet before.

  Then the pilots headed to their fighters and Cindy sat still. She had no experience to base expectations on, beyond stories she had seen on HDD and had read about in books. The good guys always win, right? Surely they would get over their jitters and buckle down and do the job right?

  She looked up to see Commander Shapiro silently regarding her. “What, Commander?”

  “I never thought about the worst down-side to being a non-flight qualified operations officer. Sure, there have been times when I didn’t go out on a mission, and I sweated it waiting for them to come back. But not every time. And I never had to sweat when it was everyone.”

  “Did I meet your expectations?” Cindy asked, a trace of bitterness in her voice. She hadn’t been given much to do.

  “Actually, yes. The problem is that while you can learn about eighty percent of the job in a few hours, most of the rest will take weeks and months. And the last five percent? That’s all inspiration and intuition. Guts and instinct. Some have it and some don’t. We don’t down check those without it, but we start looking for something else they can do.

  “You, Ensign Rhodes, need something to do right now. A very famous lady, then a lieutenant commander and now an admiral, told Hannah Sawyer once, when Hannah was expressing doubts about her courage, that the only time Hannah was afraid or had doubts was when she had nothing to do. Her remedy was to recommend that Hannah keep busy and find something new to do, and when she got done with that... find something else.

  “You, Ensign, need something to do, or you will be a gibbering idiot before we return -- if you’re any good. And I’m pretty sure, based on what I’ve seen so far, you’re pretty good. Stay here, don’t leave.”

  Chapter 4 -- Ragnarok

  Commander Shapiro was up and gone a moment later, leaving Cindy trying hard to understand if these were good things or bad things.

  A few moments later Ensign Moon showed up. “Cindy, would you come with me please? Commander Shapiro sent me.”

  “Sure, where are we headed?” she told him as she stood.

  “Captain Sanchez has granted you freedom of the bridge for the coming battle.” He smiled slightly. “Not, mind you, that freedom is to be construed in any other way than for you to keep quiet and keep out of the way.”

  “Oh.” Again, was this a good thing or a bad thing?

  “You will sit by me at my battle station, where I am an auditor of sorts. I monitor our weapons employment and see if there are problems with how they are used. Computers don’t often make mistakes, but we need to find and isolate any mistakes as fast as possible if it starts happening.

  “You will have no function, Cindy. It is important that you do not talk, no matter what. Nothing you see should ever be repeated.”

  He led the way towards the same place she’d been a few nights before, only this time, to a long line of positions along one wall. He pointed her to a seat and she sat with alacrity. “Strap in,” he told her. “The going will be rough. We will be taking accelerations that may vary by thousands of centimeters per second over very short time frames, and coming from any direction.”

  He pointed at a big clear area in the middle of the bridge. “That is currently the battle area, as up-to-date as we can make it. We’ve timed things as best we can and in about three and a half hours we’ll alert civilian shipping to go to High Fan, if they are outside the fan limit. Anyone else should go inert and try to imitate a black hole.”

  “And Earth?”

  He stared at her and shook his head. “What would be the point, Cindy? We would stress out a lot of people; we would kill who knows how many thousands in accidents and panic. No, the media are locked down, even now. People on the night side of the planet will have the biggest fireworks show of all time. It’s up to us to make sure it’s not the last fireworks show of all time.”

  “I understand.”

  He explained symbols, being careful, she thought, not to explain things she wasn’t supposed to hear. How did he know? Did it matter?

  Still, a half hour later the fighters were all outside and secured to the hull and Rome went to High Fan. For Cindy it was her first time traveling faster than light. She’d always heard about the mild nausea caused by it, and she was pleased that at least for her, it was something minor that she could deal with. From Ensign Moon’s pale complexion, he was having more trouble dealing with it.

  Time crawled after that. There was a continual low grade bustle around the bridge; most of it inexplicable to Cindy. Admiral Kinney was there, so was Captain Sanchez. They stood a few feet apart, not talking to each other, and not seeming to talk to anyone. She remembered Rome's computer and snorted. Odds were they were swamped.

  For a moment she wondered where the woman from the other night was -- this was to have been her first day with the squadron. Cindy hadn't seen her since the Captain's Mast.

  She logged into the computer terminal she was at, and asked Rome. It was all there, in black and white. Obviously, they hadn’t wanted to distress her with side issues. Lieutenant Servien was dead, shot late the evening before, after a Special Board.

  The lieutenant and her boss had both made serious errors of judgment. Her boss had sent her down to Earth on some make-work errand and then had her transferred elsewhere. The woman should never have gone without checking with Rome first -- she had been shot for desertion in the face of the enemy. Her boss was now a lieutenant, in command of one of Rome’s damage control parties. After the battle he was slated to return to Earth for reassignment and the recommendation from Admiral Kinney was that he supervise flatware inventories at the Yellowknife Fleet base.

  Zodiac -- and by extension, Cindy -- had killed a woman. They might as well have taken a gun to her head and shot her themselves. Sure, she had been rude and obnoxious; clearly she was stupid and ignorant both. But was it worth killing someone for that?

  She’d like to think it wasn’t. But then again,
Admiral Kinney and Captain Sanchez had lost sleep dealing with the woman’s idiocy. Commander Shapiro had lost personal time, as had Cindy and Lieutenant Zodiac. All in the days immediately preceding what was going to be one of those “hellacious” battles Lieutenant Zodiac had talked about.

  Briefly she considered her parents. Her father had been cold and distant since she could remember. He glad-handed and back-slapped everyone the rest of the time. At home he tended to be surly and private.

  Cindy’s mother was a woman with unquenchable ambition, thinking her husband would one day be the Federation President. Cindy had never thought he had a chance, but her mother surely did. And, aside from personal ambition, Cindy’s mother was determined that her daughter would do as well or better.

  In just the few days she’d been aloft, she knew the bankruptcy of what she’d been taught in school. She had to sweat to learn what six-year-olds learned on the Rim! She was abundantly aware of the inadequacy of her preparation for where she was and what she was doing. If the computer hadn’t done the computations for her, she’d never have been able to do the scheduling she was required to do.

  She spent a lot of time thinking, not really paying much attention to what was going on around her. Of course, history was happening around her and it rolled inexorably onward.

  A simple chime sounded and Admiral Kinney’s voice spoke through the ship. “Okay, they’re broadcasting the warning to the civilian shipping now. Show time in thirty to forty minutes!”

  As if to show them how foolish their plans were, Cindy thought a few seconds later, a sensor officer spoke. “Admiral, they’ve stopped short of the solar system.” That was followed a moment later by the terse statement, “Enemy fighters being launched.”

  Cindy looked across the bridge compartment at Admiral Kinney who anyone would cherish as their grandmother. Abruptly Admiral Kinney spoke, “Captain Mikklejohn, send your fighters to High Fan. See how many of the bastards we can keep from even getting this far. Captain Sanchez, jump to Romeo Two as soon as their fighters start going to High Fan.”

  Cindy mentally saluted Commander Shapiro. “Good luck, Commander... come back Zodiac!”

  Then there was mild nausea again as they entered High Fan once more. It wasn't much and Cindy just shut it out, watching the myriad fighters from Rome heading towards the cluster of enemy ships a few light weeks short of Earth.

  “The enemy is launching significant numbers of fighters, Admiral. Thousands,” someone announced.

  Next to Cindy, Ensign Moon paled. She watched him but didn’t ask any questions.

  Minutes ticked by. The enemy’s fighters were moving now on High Fan again; a swarm, they were told, of some eleven thousand fighters. They’d gone to High Fan before Rome’s fighters could reach them, as had the main enemy fleet. It was clear to Cindy that Rome's fighters had wasted their time and now were stopping, picking up their new orders and heading back towards the Solar System.

  An hour later the Solar System was a total zoo. Thousands of fighters were engaged, more thousands of ships were engaged in a blaze of combat that seemed to develop far faster than any mortal could follow.

  Fortunately, they had computers on their side, computers that could hold all of the elements and recommend options to their human masters.

  It went on and on, with Cindy completely unable to follow the events. Ships died by hundreds and the thousand. Fighters were swatted out of the sky by explosions designed to shake planets.

  A quiet voice, sharp in tone, spoke up. “Athens is gone.”

  Cindy saw the intent faces around her. The death of their sister ship seemed to simply motivate everyone even more than they'd been before. Ten minutes later the same voice spoke again. “Dragon is gone...” the voice paused and for the first time sounded stunned. “Oh my God! She’s still there! Sensors say she masses five sixths of what she did a few moments ago! She took a hit and survived!”

  Another voice reported without emotion. “Enemy ships are breaking off. The number of missile tracks is now declining steeply.”

  “Their fighters aren’t bugging out,” Admiral Kinney’s voice rode over the compartment. “Don’t slack off now! Not until every last one of the sons-of-bitches has been put down!”

  Time marched on, the last missiles died; the last enemy fighters hurled themselves at ships, intent on suiciding, with their other weapons expended. The Fleet was only too happy to oblige them.

  There were only a few enemy tracks left, being worked now by hordes of fighters. Rome briefly dropped off High Fan and landed on a squadron of fighters. Cindy heard that and turned to Ensign Moon, ignoring her orders to be quiet. “Which squadron?”

  He looked at her steadily for a long moment. “Odds and sods, mixed squadrons.” He chewed his lip for a second, obviously debating if he wanted to say more. Finally he did. “If you look to the screens above and to Captain Sanchez’s left, those are the telemetry flags from the individual squadrons.”

  Again he paused as Cindy focused on the banks of lights. The vast majority were black. “Second Squadron is the second bank of twenty-one, on the top left.”

  Her eyes darted to the block he named. She felt like she’d been punched. Just one light was still lit. In fact, the bank to the right was out and so was the next bank to the right. One fighter in sixty-three had survived?

  She put her head down, choking back tears. All her life she’d felt confident, able to meet any challenge. In truth, in spite of the shock, she’d thought she’d be able to meet this one as well. But how do you handle remembering a compartment with twenty-two people in it, twenty of whom were now dead? A compartment she’d sat in, watching the eager and intent eyes of the pilots only a few hours before?

  Dead now, all dead!

  She had no business being here, dealing with this sort of thing! She was fifteen years old! In spite of what she thought was an adequate education, nothing in it had prepared her for this! Not in any way!

  No one disturbed her, no one bothered her. Finally she stood up and turned to Ensign Moon. “We’ve stood down from general quarters?”

  “No, not for a few more hours. They are making sure that there aren’t any ships hiding in debris fields, looking to sneak a shot in when our guard is down. On the other hand, you may return to our berthing compartment if you wish. You never had a real purpose here and have even less reason to be here now.”

  She realized that he was dissing her; dismissing her as a person who was a distraction, not someone who could be of use. It stung, but she had to admit to herself that his observation was certainly true.

  She got up and walked off the bridge, being ignored by everyone around her. She stopped before she got to her berth. None of them thought she was of much account. She had helped prepare for the battle in ways that had to be simple enough for anyone to do.

  Her comments in the planning meeting had consisted of her telling everyone she had not the least idea what she was doing. She doubted if anyone had any regard for her for that!

  The ship was still at general quarters. In theory the enemy could still be out there, waiting to pounce if someone made a mistake. And here she was, not a factor and she had never been one!

  It sucked, it really did. What of her hopes of helping to determine the course of the war? She laughed at her hubris. In order to do that, she’d have to stand out, stand out in a way like Hannah Sawyer had or any of the other heroes of the war. But who was Cindy Rhodes? An indifferent high school sophomore! With no preparation for what was involved in space at all. She was now barely as competent as a Rim Runner six year old!

  She stiffened and changed course. A moment later she was in the education compartment. The master chief who ran it was sitting at his desk, reading reports. He looked up at her and frowned. “Ensign, we’re still at general quarters. You should be at your squadron ready room, if no where else.”

  “Why?” she asked him, bitterly. “I saw the display on the bridge. Only one of them is still alive. What possible purpos
e would I have?”

  He sighed. “Ensign, in a battle like that, a lot of equipment malfs. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that others survived, but with their data link relay broken.”

  She told him succinctly where he could put that idea. “I am, Master Chief, a person who, for the first time in my life, has profound doubts about my basic competence as a human being. I want to take those general knowledge tests. Now.”

  He looked at her, his chin resting on his steepled fingers. For a long time he was silent, making Cindy nervous. “Please, Master Chief.”

  “No,” he said, finally. “I’m cheerfully willing to violate regs and give people exams early if I think they have a chance of doing well on them. I looked at your educational records, Ensign. I’ve seen students from that sort of school before.

  “One thing I will not do is ignore failing grades. I can’t, Ensign. It goes against every rule and regulation that I know -- and every bit of common sense more than three hundred years of experience in space has taught us.

  “So no, I will not let you take the general knowledge test. I already know the answer to that, and I think you do too -- you lack the preparation required for duty in Fleet Aloft.

  “But, right now I don’t legally know that -- all I can do is surmise from prior experience. One thing we’ve learned on the Rim, however, is that people surprise you and how poorly reliable assumptions are. Now you have the presumption of competence, bestowed on you by Admiral Nagoya. Return to your quarters for now. Tomorrow, at the time you would normally report for duty, do so. This is something that has happened before and there are procedures in place to deal with it. Don’t presume, Ensign! And don’t write yourself off because today was particularly hard.”