An Officer’s Duty (23 page)

Ia cleared her mouth with another sip. “Oh, I know. But the tours of duty are shorter because it’s so stressful on most people, they can only handle four-month stretches at most, rather than six months at a time,” Ia stated, digging into her salad. “If I’m psychologically stable in a combat zone, it makes sense to post
me
there. That reduces the stress on whoever I’m replacing, freeing them up for a more suitable duty, and makes the military more efficient as a whole.”

“How can you be ‘psychologically stable’ for something as dangerous as a Blockade Patrol?” Jinja-Marsuu asked Ia, though she gestured at the others, inviting them to comment as well. “I’ve heard the casualty rate for it is around eighty percent. That’s outright deadly.”

“Casualty rates include all injuries serious enough to warrant treatment in an infirmary, not just deaths,” Harper reminded Jinja-Marsuu.

“The actual death rate is around thirteen percent,” Ia murmured, reaching for the pepper. She dusted her greens with the spice. “But that’s taking into account total crew losses from entire ships being destroyed in starfights, not just individual losses during boarding and inspection. They’re building better ships all the time, though. And a good pilot can get you out of most problems. I have the reflexes for it, and my military tests agree, so that’s the career track I’ve picked.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t explain how you could still be ‘stable’ after several back-to-back combat posts,” Jinja-Marsuu argued.

“I’m a second-generation first-worlder. From the heaviest heavyworld, no less.” At her blank look, Ia elaborated. “I’m from an M-class world. You can’t put counterweaves in the ceiling of an M-class world because there are no ceilings when you go outside. Mind you, Sanctuary’s not nearly as lethal as Parker’s World, but we have our own nasty life-forms, both microscopic and mammoth. Plus the local gravity is over three times Standard. Just
falling
from something as simple as tripping while walking can crack your head literally wide open. By the time I turned ten, I had seen or personally knew of seventeen people who had fallen to their death just from running around on the wrong surface.

“The medical facilities are reasonably good back home, but not like here on Earth, and supplies are often limited. Not to mention the local flora and fauna can be quite deadly. Growing up in circumstances like those, you get used to dealing with danger, violence, disease, injury, and death,” she finished.

The part about the local plants and animals was a slight exaggeration. The interior, where the capital of Sanctuary was located, was fairly mild. It was the coast, where various species dwelled in the gravity-reducing waters of the ocean, that held the real danger on her homeworld. Still, the other dangers did exist.

“I’m not sure I’d want to get used to that,” Jinja-Marsuu muttered. “Death and dying as a daily part of life…”

“Then you’re in the wrong career, meioa,” Harper stated. He glanced at his roommate. “How’s the steak?”

“Good,” Ia admitted warily. “Salad needs something, but the vegetables are cooked right.”

“Do you cook?” Harper asked her, unrolling his
silverware from the napkin provided. The Academy’s dining hall was a step up from the mess hall for recruits back at Camp Nallibong. Then again, they were supposed to be training to be officers, not enlisted soldiers.

“Not if I can help it. I can do prep work and some of the non-fancy stuff, but my parents usually had me waiting tables, scrubbing floors, or washing dishes in their restaurant,” she admitted. Answering his questions about herself made her uncomfortable. Ia didn’t know what his motives were. Instead, she turned the tables on him. “What about you? Do you cook?”

“My cooking’s only okay, but I enjoy baking. Not that I get all that many opportunities anymore,” he added with a shrug. “Welcome to the military life, and all.”

Bruer shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get assigned to a head chef position in the galley of one of the bigger ships.”

“I doubt it. My degree’s in applied engineering,” Harper said. “I just enjoy baking. And track. I heard the Academy here in Portugal has a good track program. They had a cadet who was a runner in the hurdles, two Summer Olympics ago. I remember watching the programs as a kid.”

“That’s right,” Ia said, swallowing quickly. “Commander Spada said this morning that you were hoping for a career in either Logistics or Engineering, didn’t he?”

Harper nodded. “And your subjects were Combat Command and Piloting. What sort of sport will you be doing?”

Ia shook her head. “I’ll probably be running the confidence course in my halfmech. I’m too strong a heavyworlder to get involved in any sort of contact sport with anyone, so it’s either do that or run around the track like you. But since I’ve already been fitted with a suit, I might as well use it. That’ll mesh with my interest in getting posted to a Blockade Patrol anyway, since there’ll be plenty of mechsuited boarding opportunities. Maybe as part of a base ship, but more likely on one of the smaller patrollers. I don’t know yet.”

“I’ll probably end up on one of the bigger ships, or maybe a Battle Platform, something with its own manufactory department. How about you, Cadet Bruer?” Harper asked him. “What are your interests?”

“Combat Command and Munitions, with side interests in volleyball and skeet shooting. My degree is in chemistry,
specializing in things that go
boom
. How about you?” he asked Jinja-Marsuu.

“Lifesupport and Logistics—and I’ll see
you
on the other side of the volleyball net,” she told Bruer, grinning. “I love the sport. As for my education, I have a botany degree, with a secondary major in cuisine. I’m Cordon Bleu trained. Lifesupport and Logistics means that
I’m
the one who’ll probably be put in charge of galley services on a major ship.” The female cadet smiled, then her nose wrinkled wryly as she lifted a forkful of pasta. “This food is good, but this ain’t Cordon Bleu.”

Everyone chuckled. Harper yawned, hastily smothering it behind one hand, before removing it and allowing his other to bring up his fork. “So tired…’scuse me…and we still have the rest of the evening to get through…”

“Oh, c’mon,” one of the other cadets ribbed him. “Those calisthenics before supper weren’t
that
hard.”

“I’ve been up for over twenty-eight hours Standard, meioa-o,” Harper told him. “Two of the last four systems on my flight to Earth had ion storm problems. We had to hover for hours in the nearest planet’s magnetosphere because we were too small to risk that much radiation during the fluctuations in the front of the storm, and we couldn’t open a hyperspace rift until the worst of the trailing particle clouds had passed. Courier shuttles have ceristeel plating, the same as any other spaceship, but not quite thick enough for that heavy a storm.”

“You could afford to take a courier shuttle?” Jinja-Marsuu asked him, eyes widening.

Bruer stretched his arm over Ia’s back and tapped Harper on the shoulder. “Saaaay, can I borrow fifty thousand credits?”

“It was a
military
shuttle. Half the adults in my extended family serve in the military,” Harper explained, rolling his eyes. “When I asked my uncle which Academy he’d recommend, he told me the Academia de Marinha Estrelas would probably be a good fit, and he hooked me up for a string of fast flights.”

“You’re brave, meioa,” Bruer murmured, digging into his own salad. “Stringing other-than-light jumps would make me heave up all over the place. I’ll stick to faster-than-light, thank you. Slower, but safer.”

“Some of us don’t have any choice,” Ia pointed out. “My homeworld is on the backside of Terran space, over seven hundred lightyears from here. It took me two weeks of swapping between OTL and FTL to get here. I actually started out from the Terran–Gatsugi Border, in a region about thirteen hundred lightyears from home. That’s three weeks of stringing mostly hyperjumps with only a few days of FTL in between to recover. If I’d tried to take strictly faster-than-light transport, I wouldn’t even have
reached
my homeworld before I would’ve had to change course in order to get here in time. I was lucky to get three weeks of Leave plus travel time as it was.”

“Seven hundred?” Jinja-Marsuu muttered, gaze looking upward and inward, “Backside of…” She lowered her gaze to Ia’s face and smiled. “You’re from Sanctuary, aren’t you? That’s an Independent Colonyworld, if I remember right.”

Ia nodded. “That’s right. You’re good.”

The other young woman smiled. “I almost went into Astronavigation, since I have a real spatial memory for star system placement, but I’m not
that
fond of the math required. I’d rather work with aquaculture systems and hydroponics.”

Bruer grinned. “
Aha
, so
you’re
the one I have to butter up if I ever get stuck on lifesupport filtration duty.”

Jinja-Marsuu made a face at him. The others turned on Bruer, ribbing him back. Ia focused on her food. She still had to eat about twice as much as the average person just to sustain her higher heavyworlder metabolic needs but had to do it in the same amount of time as all the lightworlders around her. Next to her, she saw Harper was eating quickly as well. Like her, he had worn a specially made weight suit during their exercise period right before supper. Not as heavy as hers, but still a burden meant to compensate for the lighter gravity here on Earth.

From what she was slowly learning about him, they had a number of things in common. It was everything else about him which she still had no clue.

Why can’t I sense him in the timestreams?

Ia couldn’t sleep. Not even three meters away, the biggest blank spot in her life slumbered in near-silent innocence. The one person she couldn’t predict. The one person she couldn’t confirm existed in the timestreams.

Or is he innocent?
Ia wondered. Twisting onto her back, she stared up into the shadows. The nightlight from the bathroom spilled a small amount of illumination into the rest of the dormitory room. With her eyes adapted to the darkness, she could have seen his dark hair on the pale blue of his pillow. She didn’t look, though. Nor did she flip her mind inward and out onto the timeplains.

What could he be, then? He’s not the Immortal One, I know that for a fact. She’s currently lurking on the V’Dan homeworld. I also know I’m going nowhere near her. She’d want to “help” me, and that would ruin the timestreams. I don’t have to look for effects to know she’d muck everything up. And she wouldn’t leave me alone once she found me.

Her and her silly notions of Fate; she doesn’t yet have a clue what it
really
means…Not that I myself understand. I can only See it; grasping it isn’t up to me. At least, not in this life…

So what is he? Could he be an AI? No…he couldn’t be. For one, the vast majority were destroyed in the AI War. For another, the only intact survivors are the few remaining loyalist members, but they’re mostly resting in shutdown mode in the Immortal One’s Vault, waiting either for her next visit, for their turn at dusting and watching over her archives, or for the day when Humans are again willing to accept their help. For another…alive or not, truly sentient or merely programmed to think they are, I
know
I can see their movements in the timestreams. They may not have souls and thus may not be alive, but they are there in the waters. Visible. Meyun Harper is an
invisible
fish, not a visible one.

Unless…could he be a Feyori? They
are
hard to track. They are living energy beings, capable of shielding themselves from all sorts of detection methods, physical and psychic. But I should be able to sense him anyway. I can most of the other Meddlers, particularly this close to one.

For that matter, why would a Meddler want to go into the TUPSF-Navy? The one I met back at Camp Nallibong, “Dr. Silverstone”…well, okay, it could be ruled in the Great Game that the Navy and the Marine Corps are two different areas of influence. Especially since the doctor is outside the direct chain of command…They also could be faction members. Or they could be counterfaction, and Harper is making a move against the plans being laid by Silverstone
…She winced and lifted a hand, rubbing at her forehead.
Ugh, trying to keep up with the Feyori mind-set is a headache.

Of course, this is all just speculation. Even the most paranoid Feyori can still be seen by me in the distant waters of the timeplains. It’s when they get up close that their efforts at
cloaking their movements work best. Invisible fish in the local pond, and all that. But…not Harper. Why can’t I predict him?