Authors: Jean Johnson
An Officer’s Duty (19 page)
“And give none of the others cause for doubt, either,” he recited under his breath. Dropping his cheek on her forehead, Thorne hugged his sister.
“Mizzu ’reddy.”
“Gonna mizzu, tu,”
she agreed. One final squeeze and Thorne let her go. Ia stepped back, relieved her gifts hadn’t triggered while hugging him. Looking at the four members of her immediate family, she gave them a wistful smile. “I will miss you…but you are
never
far from my thoughts. I love you all very much. Remember that.”
Aurelia waggled one naturally tan finger at her daughter. “I am
not
Jewish, meioa-e; you are
not
allowed to make me
verklempt
.”
“Go on, Sis,” Thorne added, lifting his chin at the modest-sized spaceport terminal. “That shuttle won’t wait forever.”
Nodding, Ia picked up her kitbag and turned away from her family. She heard Fyfer opening the ground car’s doors for their mothers, before the rumbling of a shuttle lifting off in the distance covered up any further noise. Crossing the road from the parking garage to the terminal, Ia entered the building. She did not look back. Instead, she looked forward, dipping briefly into her future to make sure everything would be on track.
Three years, and counting…Oh, god,
she thought, wincing.
It looks like I
am
going to get stuck next to that chatty grandmother type who will want to tell me all about her current medical ailments. I swear, the Creator has a bowl of popcorn as big as a leafer beast nestled at Her side, tonight…
Why did I enter the Naval Academy, instead of entering a Marine Academy, after my Field Commission? Obviously because I needed to be able to both command a group of soldiers larger than a Squad or a Platoon, and pilot a fair-sized starship. Short-range starfighters, interorbital shuttle craft, and other various forms of troop transport, all of these things can be piloted by a noncommissioned soldier, all under the guise of the yeoman class pilot programs.
Heck, getting a job as an insystem shuttle pilot is one of the biggest and best-paying employment opportunities out there, and the military will actually
pay
you to learn how to do it. Whether it’s cargo, or people, or whatever, so long as it’s a small vessel with a short range in a noncombat zone, employers are going to want the disciplined mind-set of a former yeoman on their freight team.
Piloting an actual starship, however, requires a far greater level of responsibility. Anything with a crew compliment larger than five requires the lead crewmeioa to be a duly trained officer. Particularly if it’s intended to be used in combat in a way that puts more than just a single pilot and his or her gunners’ lives at risk. The military is not in the habit of wasting lives and resources…and the Terran United Planets Space Force in particular is too huge an entity to allow its members to “make things up” as they go along.
Every single soldier, whatever their Branch, goes through Basic Training. In the case of medical and religious personnel, it might be a modified version of Basic Training, with less emphasis on the physical aspects of military life, but they undertake the same mental, emotional, intellectual, and logistics training as everyone else, so that everyone is on the same page.
Whether you’re running with a crew of twenty or a crew of two thousand, it’s a whole new level of command, and a whole new level of responsibility. The military needs to make sure each of its officers understands what that means, and follows the same procedures as everyone else. Precognitive or not, that included me.
~Ia
AUGUST 24, 2492 T.S.
SINES, PORTUGAL, WESTERN EUROPROVINCE
EARTH
A stiff wind was blowing off the Atlantic when the hovertaxi descended to ground level and glided up to the gates of the Academia de Marinha Estrelas. The driver patiently parked it in the entry arch, holding out his wrist unit for scanning. Seated in the front, Ia had to first unsnap the cuff of her Dress Brown jacket, then reach across her body with her left arm to poke her unit out the passenger window, allowing the guards to hand-scan it.
The sensors built into the entry arch were capable of scanning the identification bracelets from a distance, but since she and the driver were new to the campus, they had to be visually identified by the guards, their faces matched to the ident files on the guards’ handheld scanner pads. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to confirm their identities, nor for the car to be cleared to proceed. Pulling forward, the driver followed her directions to the administration building.
Though the materials were modern, most of the buildings on the Academy campus had been built with a medieval flavor, echoing the region’s strong, ancient, maritime history. The administrative center was no exception. Its crenellated roofline and square, flanking towers evoked comparisons to an era a
thousand years before, when the natives of this region had dared to leave their stone castles in order to explore the planet’s waters in ancient wooden ships.
Locally, it was considered fitting that the TUPSF-Navy had one of its top Academies here, in the region given as a feudal fiefdom to the explorer Vasco da Gama. They even had a bust of him over the main entryway. Personally, Ia thought it was ironic; the man had committed various acts of brutality against foreigners, that which would have pleased only someone like V’Sasselli back on Sanctuary.
At home, a hero; abroad, a villain. At least I know the instructors here at the Academia do have a sense of perspective, and don’t whitewash him into a saint.
Offering her bracer-sized arm unit to the driver, Ia paid the cab fare and exited the vehicle. The wind immediately tugged at the brown and black dress cap on her head. Yanking it down firmly, Ia ducked the front of it low, facing into the wind.
Leaving the cabbie to extract her kitbag from the trunk, she hauled out the heavy, wheeled case taking up most of the backseat. Totaling one hundred seventy-three kilos, not including the extra weight of the case itself, the contents were a familiar burden. It contained her exercise weight suit, a webwork of tile-weighted straps that would cover her body from head to foot in order to simulate the strain of heavy gravity.
Technology could create gravity weaves under the floor plates on spaceships, space stations, and even the dome colonies found on asteroids, planetoids, and moons, permitting people a semblance of normal life while traveling and living in space. Gravity weaves could warp the effects of a natural gravity well, giving a lightworlder some respite from the constant drag on their frames. But gravity weaves couldn’t add weight, and gravity deckplates were too expensive to be used casually. Certainly, it would have been ridiculous to expect the Human Motherworld to pave its sidewalks and streets with excess gravity just for her.
Yet the benefits of heavyworlder strength and speed couldn’t be denied. Nor could it be denied that a heavyworlder’s muscles and reflexes atrophied when stuck in a lightworlder environment for more than a few weeks. So, in an elegantly simplistic solution, the Space Force had decreed that all heavyworlders—those whose normal gravity exceeded 1.5Gs Standard—had to wear weight suits while exercising. No matter where she was sent,
Ia was condemned to lug the suit from duty post to duty post. Hauling up on the handle, she lugged the heavy case onto the sidewalk with a
thump
.
When the cabdriver handed her kitbag to her, by comparison, it was negligible. Ia slung the duffel strap over her shoulder and thanked him in the local tongue. Most of her Marine uniforms had already been sent either to storage or to the military’s recyclers; the only items she carried in the brown bag were her toiletries, her writing station and supplies, the square of velvet on which she had pinned her various medals and ribbons, and two changes of red-colored civilian clothes. The only items she would be retaining from her time in the TUPSF-Marine Corps would be her service record, her Field Commission, and her glittery, military slang for the various medals and service ribbons she had earned.
Even the Dress Browns she wore, with their crisp black stripes down the brown jacket sleeves and matching trouser legs, would be sent into storage by the end of the day, replaced by TUPSF-Navy blue. Leaving the cabdriver to point his vehicle back toward the gate, Ia tugged her dress cap more firmly on her white locks as the wind tried to play with it again, grasped the handle of her weight suit box, and hauled everything into the administrative building.
Once the automatic doors slid quietly shut behind her, the wind stopped. Compared to the warm but windy weather outside, it was comfortably cool in the broad foyer. Ia glanced up, checked the various signs posted near the tops of doors, and turned to her right, heading down the side hall. Three doors down was the admissions center. Dragging her case in her wake, she approached the front desk.
The Human at the desk was a fellow lieutenant, though his single brass bar meant Lieutenant Second Grade, not Lieutenant Second Class, like hers did. Since she was from a different Branch and clad in her dress uniform, the burden of saluting first fell upon her. Resting her case on its end, she draped her kitbag over the handle, then gave the man a crisp salute.
“Lieutenant Second Class Ia, TUPSF-Marine Corps, reporting for transfer and admittance into the TUPSF-Navy Academia de Marinha Estrelas as scheduled, sir,” she stated, holding her pose.
The blond man eyed her up and down. His gaze fixated on her
glittery, pinned to the left side of her jacket. Returning her salute, he lifted his chin at the collection of ribbons and medals. “Welcome to the Academy, Lieutenant. You didn’t have to wear your full glittery, you know. You only have to wear the bare minimum when in Dress Colors, even if it’s Marine Browns. You won’t impress your instructors by dressing yourself up in everything you own. We believe our cadets should earn their respect on merit.”
“Actually, I didn’t wear everything, Lieutenant,” Ia told him, her tone mild. “Regulations stipulate that when traveling between duty posts, an officer is to wear ‘half glittery,’ which is the bare minimum of one of each type of medal. I have honors in twelve different categories, not including my Field Commission and my Service pins. I am therefore wearing twelve different medals, plus my Border Patrol ribbon, which is the bare minimum of glittery required.”
The lieutenant peered at her chest, taking in the fact that there was indeed only one of each type. “Huh. I guess that is half glittery.” He returned his attention to his workstation console. “We have…two meioa-es scheduled to arrive this week from the SF-MC. What did you say your name was again, Lieutenant?”
“Ia. Spelled I-A, not E-A,” she added in clarification. “Just the one, first, last, and only name, no others.” Digging into her trouser pocket, she fished out a datachip and offered it to him. “Here is the chip with my official transfer orders, military records, and datafile links.”
“Just the one name? You’re not actually Conequa or Janniston?” he asked, glancing up at her again. When she nodded, he sighed and tapped in a few commands. “Huh. Looks like you’re not listed. Wait, let me check the pending files…
Ah
, here it is. There’s a flag on your records; it says your name is incomplete, and when it arrived, we didn’t have your collegiate degree on file, so we didn’t process the paperwork. But…it looks like your college credits have come in. Military History? Good choice. So. What’s the rest of your name?”
“That
is
my full name, Lieutenant. Just the one name, legally, fully, and duly registered as Ia. Nothing more, nothing less; two letters, two syllables, that’s it,” she told him patiently. Mostly patiently. Clasping her hands together, she rested them on the counter. “I know the Marine Corps had no difficulty in registering my name exactly as it legally stands.”
He took in her mild tone, slight but pleasant smile, and sighed. “Ident number?”
“Ident number 96-03-0004-0092-0076-0002. I am registered as a former citizen of Independent Colonyworld Sanctuary, by Charter rights a duly oathsworn citizen of the Terran United Planets via service in its Space Force.”
There, that ought to cover all bases,
she thought, stifling an impatient sigh. The hovercab hadn’t taken too long to soar from Lisboa to the outskirts of Sines, but she was going to need a restroom break soon. “I could quote the relevant Charter sections and subparagraphs if you insist, but the rules and regulations governing I.C. transferal of citizenship have already been checked, cross-checked, and covered by the Marines…and by the Department of Innovation.”
That last bit was a blatant name-drop, but a glimpse into the immediate future gave it a calculated 83 percent chance to work, cutting off a good half hour of tedious extra paperwork processing. The other lieutenant raised a brow, but tapped a few more commands into his workstation. Sighing, he dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Right. Since you have a Master’s degree, and you’ve had more than two tours of duty as a noncommissioned officer…and half a tour as a Field Commissioned officer…you are indeed cleared for the one-year fast-track program. Provided you can keep up with it.”