The Crypt: Shakedown: (A Military Sci-Fi Novel), page 23
That made the ’24 somewhat idiot proof. Somewhat, because no military in history had ever fully proofed itself against idiocy.
Leeds walked through the controls. As he did, he gave an overview of the instant calculations needed to hit targets moving at insane relative velocities. A good gun crew had to learn a specific bit of complex trigonometry, then turn that math into instant-reaction instinct.
While the Type24 had computerized targeting, it was rarely used. In a fight, the typical computer system’s operational efficiency was about ten minutes, fifteen at most, and only then at such ranges the enemy had gobs of time to avoid incoming rounds. When your computer pals went kaput, you still had to deliver projectiles on-target. You did if you wanted to live, anyway.
Firing the weapon manually was surprisingly easy for the three-person gun crew, which consisted of a pointer, a trainer, and a turret master. The pointer, who sat left of the barrel, used handwheels to control barrel elevation. A hydraulic foot switch fired the weapon and cleared the spent shell. The trainer, who sat right of the barrel, used hand wheels to rotate the gunhouse. Both pointer and trainer used identical optical sights to spot and track targets. The turret master stayed in communication with the CIC and selected which type of munition to load: flak for enemy voidcraft, incoming missiles, torpedoes, and exo-troops; high-energy explosive rounds designed to penetrate ship armor; or STC blazers, which let the Keeling initiate space-time fuckery from a distance.
While firing was easy, hitting was another thing entirely. It wasn’t like operating artillery on the ground or a naval ship, where there was a constant horizon, a constant up and down. In a space battle, ships changed pitch and yaw on a whim, they accelerated and decelerated, they rolled—any and all of these movements instantly altered what the gun crew could see and impacted the relative velocity of any target.
“Pointer, elevate fifteen degrees,” Leeds said. “Trainer, rotate to ninety degrees. Turret master, load an AP round.”
Abshire, the trainer, spun his hand wheels, quickly rotating the gunhouse so that the barrel was at a ninety-degree angle to the Keeling’s centerline. As he did, Laior, the pointer, elevated the barrel. It always amazed John how fast manual gears could make a big-ass gun move. Shamdi clearly had prior training—he worked the loader mechanism like a pro and had the round in place before the gunhouse stopped turning.
“Fire now, now, now,” Leeds said.
Without a sound, a funnel of orange flashed from the barrel, there and gone in an instant. A plume of smoke billowed forth, expanding to an ever-thinning cloud. From the opposite counterfire barrel, a far bigger, far denser smoke column shot out into the void, a ballooning puff that slowly stretched to nothing.
What a sight to see.
John heard the ping of someone opening a transmission on the platoon channel.
“Bennett, this is the PXO, do you copy?”
Katharina Winter addressing him on the platoon channel.
“Bennett here, PXO.”
“Meet me forward of the superstructure,” Winter said. “On the double.”
“Affirmative, PXO, on my way.”
John extended his thrusters and stepped off the gunhouse. He flew topside. To port, he saw both Ochthera crawlers practicing combat landing approaches. One pilot, two co-pilots and one engineer-gunner had zero combat experience—Biggie Bang was putting them through their paces.
Winter was kneeling in front of the superstructure’s forward armor, one fist down. Even on a stationary ship with no sign of even debris nearby, her at-rest position gave her three points of contact. A sure sign of a combat vet.
John landed next to her and assumed the same position.
“Bennett, the LT assigned you as a team leader.”
With all the boots in the platoon, John realized he should have seen this coming, should have gotten ahead of it.
“I’m not much of a leader, PXO. I excel at following orders, not giving them.”
“Master Sergeant says different.”
Sands had sold him out. Dammit. If anyone knew John didn’t want responsibility, it was Sands.
“Let’s skip the part where you tell me you don’t want it,” Winter said. “Because I don’t care. Renee Jordan is Alpha Squad leader. Corporal Sarvacharya leads alpha fire team one, you lead alpha fire team two.”
Maybe Sands wasn’t a total asshole. The guy could have easily recommended John as squad leader. Better to be responsible for only four other people as opposed to ten.
“Awesome,” John said. “Who do I got?”
“Beaver, Shamdi, Abshire and Laior.”
A fire team where only he and Shamdi of the Always-Running Mouth had combat experience? Wonderful. Just peachy.
“I’ll do my best, PXO. What’s the mission?”
Winter kept a blank expression. “What makes you think there’s a mission?”
John gestured toward the starboard Type24 and to the crawlers doing mock flybys.
“LT just turned on the training afterburners,” he said. “Some of these kids shouldn’t be allowed to look at a twenty-four, let alone fire one. My guess is we depart for an operation in two, maybe three days?”
The corner of her mouth crinkled upward.
“I don’t know what the op is,” she said. “But you’re spot-on. We depart in three days. You help me get these kids ready, okay?”
John nodded. Raiders helped Raiders. It was part of what made the service so special.
“I have something else to say, Bennett. It’s personal. That all right with you?”
“Personal? Sure, hit me.”
“I like the cut of your jib,” Winter said. “I’ve heard rumors that Captain Lincoln isn’t all that worried about fraternization. If that turns out to be true, and if LT doesn’t have a stick up his ass about it, maybe you and I can have a tussle.”
She wanted a piece of him? Fraternization wasn’t easily dismissed—she must have heard wrong. Still, he was flattered. Winter wasn’t young, but she was younger than he was. By a lot.
“I’m old enough to be your father.”
“Good thing I got daddy issues,” Winter said. “Mommy issues, too, but that’s another story. A girl needs her therapy. We get some off-hours, you and I can discuss it. Unless you’re not interested?”
Oh, he was interested, all right.
“PXO, you make sure we don’t get brought up on charges, and I’ll be the best damn therapist you ever had.”
Winter’s grin told him he would be in for a grand time.
She stood. “Good. We’re back on the clock, Spec Bennett. Go inform your team you’re their boss. We’ve got trench training in thirty minutes.”
33
Susannah’s body hurt.
Not just her eye, which had turned horribly purple and yellow, but also her back, her arms, and her legs, all sore from the constant scraping.
“I know this sucks, Ensign,” Hathorn said. “But keep at it.”
The lieutenant was on her knees, using a steel scraper to pry copper film from the base of a workstation.
Turned out Hathorn wasn’t that bad after all. She just needed a little time to get used to new people. Hathorn’s icy exterior had warmed, and now she was treating Susannah—or, rather, treating Bethany—like a shipmate.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Susannah stopped scraping a monitor housing to adjust her already sweat-soaked headband. “Was it like this on the last patrol?”
Hathorn paused. Susannah realized she’d messed up—she wasn’t supposed to ask about previous patrols.
“Yeah,” Hathorn said. “Except it didn’t spread as fast. Finish up and drinks are on me.”
Feeling like she’d dodged a bullet, Susannah started scraping again. Could she get away with asking small questions here and there? Could that get her enough information to make Admiral Bock happy?
Maybe. If so, liquor would help. Hathorn drank. A lot. So did Hasik. And so did Susannah. She had to fit in, didn’t she? If she wanted them to open up, to tell her more about the ship and how it worked, she first needed to be accepted as part of the team.
The hull material was obviously automatonic. The metal-organic framework formed into an equivalent of cells. Those cells self-replicated. How they did that, she didn’t know, and wouldn’t know until she could get some under an electron scope and start experimenting. Whatever the mechanism, the material grew quickly, spreading out in thin filaments that spread onto equipment, terminals, cots… even shoes if they sat in one place long enough.
She desperately wanted to study that phenomena, but Hasik forbade her from even asking about it.
And besides, between learning the basics of the transdim system, going through the XO’s endless drills, and all the cross-training, Susannah’s plate was full. For three hours a day, Hasik gave her to Lieutenant Kerkhoffs. Susannah was learning how to operate the curvine, how to use the fabricator, even how to machine parts the fabricator couldn’t produce. Punch-drive operation and maintenance, though, was a different animal altogether—she wasn’t allowed near the thing.
Susannah hated cross-training. Not counting the three-person xeno team, the engineering department had five women and eleven men. When she trained with those men, she felt eyes upon her. Eyes filled with lust. Some, like Corporal Salvatore and Staff Sergeant Marchenko, had the decency to look away when she caught them checking her out. Others—like that perv-eyed electrical tech, Brian Goldsmith—kept on staring. Staring, and smiling, in a way that wasn’t at all about happiness or joy.
Those hungry gazes… Susannah knew where they might lead. What if she wound up alone with Goldsmith? Or with Michael Camp, a spec-1 machinist mate, who always found a way to brush up against her.
Susannah didn’t feel safe around those men.
But if she said so to Kerkhoffs, or the XO, or the COB, or even the captain, how would that go? Would they believe her? If they did and took action, would those men know it was Susannah who ratted them out? She was going to be here for a long time—she didn’t need to make enemies who would try to get her alone, try to assault her the way Bratchford had.
Maybe Hathorn had insights on how to manage unwanted attention.
“Lieutenant, can I ask a question?”
“Is it about the ship?”
A friendly warning in that tone—Hathorn had let one question go, she did not want to be asked another.
“It’s not about the ship,” Susannah said in a rush. “It’s about the crew.”
“If you’re going to ask me what so-and-so did to get assigned here, that’s almost as bad as asking about the ship itself. Other people’s pasts are not your concern, Bethany.”
Bethany. Not Ensign Darkwater or Newb, but Bethany.
“No, not that, either,” Susannah said. “When I’m in engineering, some of the men… they… um…”
“Mike Camp rubs up against you any chance he gets?”
Hathorn smiled. A real smile.
“Yeah,” Susannah said, a little stunned. “And it’s not just him.”
“Let me guess—Goldsmith and Montgomery?”
Sal Montgomery was a propulsion mate, spec-3.
“Goldsmith, yes,” Susannah said. “He’s creepy. I haven’t had any problems with Montgomery.”
“Oh, you will. That guy’s cock is a stray dog in a rainstorm looking for any porch he can crawl under.”
Hathorn understood. She’d endured the same things. That realization flooded Susannah with a sense of relief. To have someone on this ship, anyone, who was on her side would make things vastly better.
“What do you do about it?” Susannah asked.
Hathorn returned to scraping.
“Depends on the guy,” she said. “I was alone with Goldsmith in the fabrication bay. He tried to come on to me, told me not to make any noise or he’d hurt me. I punched him in the throat. While he was struggling to breathe, I told him if he tried it again, I’d wait until we were in the Mud, then I’d find him and slice his sack clean off.”
Susannah’s jaw fell open. “Oh my goodness. Did he stop?”
“He sure did. Hasn’t bothered me since.”
“What about Montgomery? What did you do to him?”
“Him I screwed rotten.”
Susannah’s scraper ground to a halt. “You mean you had sex with him?”
“I sure did.” Hathorn leaned close to the terminal’s base, scraped hard at a resilient bit of foil. “Have you seen that man? He’s gorgeous.”
Susannah couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“But he’s enlisted and you’re a lieutenant. Isn’t that fraternization? What if the captain finds out?”
Hathorn stood. Hands on hips, she leaned left, then right, working the kinks out of her back.
“If the department head doesn’t care, the captain doesn’t care,” she said. “People are stuck in this hell hole for two-year stints. When the ship is in port at Gateway Station, we all get put in the same barracks. There’s no real liberty, because of oh so many secrets. For the most part, all we see is each other. Think the captain wants to tell a bunch of horny eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, a bunch of people in their early twenties, that they can’t get laid for two years?”
Susannah hadn’t had sex in over a decade. She didn’t see the problem. But then again, she’d been nineteen once—things had been different back then.
Back when she’d been with Melanie.
Susannah forced the thought away. She wasn’t like that anymore. She’d never been like that, not really, she’d just made mistakes in her youth, mistakes she prayed High One would forgive.
“Montgomery’s got a cannon, but he’s terrible in the sack,” Hathorn said. “I was hooking up with Fuentes, but we stopped until we figure out how Kerkhoffs feels about people in her department getting it on. Why do you ask, Bethany? You like Goldsmith? Montgomery? Because if you like Fuentes, I got dibs.”
“I don’t want Sergeant Fuentes,” Susannah said. “I don’t like anyone in that department.”
“Fair enough.” Hathorn hung her scraper back up on the bulkhead. “Other than the engineering guys, anyone else been sniffing around you?”
Right after the dive, while in triage, that Shamdi fellow had seemed interested. There been something… familiar about him. Not him personally, but rather the way he spoke, the way he carried himself. She still couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Well, there was this Raider. When I was in the mess after I fell and hit my head. He was… well, he wanted to have coffee with me.”
Hathorn grinned a grin that would have looked right at home on Goldsmith’s leering face.
“Coffee, huh? I’ll bet that’s what he wants. He look like he’s hung?”
Susannah’s cheeks instantly burned hot. She stared at the monitor bracket, unable to look at Hathorn.
“Sorry, Beth,” the lieutenant said. “I gather you’re not quite as open about sex as I am. That’s cool.”
Not as open? How about not as crass? Not as wanton?
“It’s not a big deal if you want to spend some downtime with a Raider,” Hathorn said. “If his LT doesn’t care, no one cares. Just don’t think you can use the atrium for a quick fu… I mean, don’t bring him here for hanky panky.”
Susannah’s face felt like it was about to catch fire.
“I’d just want coffee,” she said. “That’s all. I’d just want to talk.”
Hathorn walked to her bunk and dug under the mattress for her flask.
“Then you’re home free.” She took a swig. “No one cares about two crewmates having coffee. If it becomes more than that, though, I can tell you where to go. Even on a tiny ship like this, there’s spaces where you can spend some private time with an interested party. Looks like you’re done with that monitor bracket.” She held up the flask. “Want a snort?”
Susannah did not want a snort. The booze went straight to her head, and then came the hangovers. But she had to fit in. She had to be like the others.
“Yes,” she said. “I could use a drink.”
34
“I hope I don’t get killed this time,” Abshire said. “I think there’s something wrong with my suit.”
There probably was something wrong with his suit—there was something wrong with everyone’s suit—but that wasn’t why he’d been killed. In a platoon full of sacrilegious dumbfucks, Abshire was the dumbest. And, oh joy, he was in Nitzan’s fire team.
“You died because you forgot your training,” Bennett said. “This time, remember it. The name of the game is repel boarders. Keep inside the trench curve, stick to the ribs. If comm goes out—and it will—remember your hand signals. And never, ever, leave your notch until you’re ordered to.”
It was amazing that last bit even needed to be said, yet Abshire had poked his head out—twice—and eaten a simulated bullet both times. He wasn’t the only moron in team Alpha-One; Laior couldn’t seem to understand the concept of a backblast. She kept standing directly behind someone instead of behind and two steps to the side.
Beaver, though… he was good. Surprisingly so. Although if Nitzan heard Beaver say scream, aim and fire one more time, he might shoot the guy in the face.
Nitzan was pissed he hadn’t been named squad leader, or at least a fire team leader. Whatever information he gathered here was of no use to the Nation if he got dead. The best way to get dead? Be the guy ordered to move toward the bullets instead of ordering others to do so.
It wasn’t that bad, though—Grampa Bennett knew his shit. He’d seen more action than anyone in the platoon. By far. Bennett had boarded enemy vessels four times. Anyone who could do that and keep on breathing was worth paying attention to. Nitzan had boarded just once. He’d lost two squad mates, even though the enemy ship had been mostly under control.
