An Officer’s Duty (27 page)

“Engineering reports they have just enough power for either the insystem thrusters or the gunnery pods, but not both, Captain,” Cadet Dostoyevska called out from her position at the monitoring station for that department.

“
Ah
…
ah
…
”
Bruer grunted as the ship rocked again. “Options, quick!”

“Hit ’em back, Captain!” Ia called out from her position at the communications panel. “Take out their weapons, now!”

“This isn’t the Marine Corps, Cadet! We’re carrying vital intelligence that
must
arrive safely,” Cadet Jinja-Marsuu argued back, quoting the scenario. “With communications knocked out, we
have
to deliver it in person. Use the engines, Captain!”

“We don’t knock out those guns, we’re
dead
in twenty seconds!” Ia retorted.

“All engines ahead full!” Bruer commanded. “Head for the ice rings, for cover!”

“Engines ahead, aye, sir!” Dostoyevska repeated, relaying the command. The ship “lurched” forward, some of the vidscreens showing views of the Dlmvla warship at their aft, firing once more upon them. Others showed a view of the nearby gas giant and the rings Bruer wanted to use for shelter. The rest, secondary and tertiary and lesser screens, were filled with scrolling ship’s data, missile trajectories, and so forth.

The projectile missiles were abruptly outpaced by the bright searing lines of laser cannonry. Lists of ship systems started flashing in bands of yellow and red on the screens; the simulated lasers had scored direct hits on the shield panels protecting the gunnery pods from incoming missiles. They were followed seconds later by explosions which shook the
da Gama
like a rat in a dog’s mouth, shuddering everything around them to the right. The
da Gama
jolted abruptly to the left again…and klaxons blared, sharp and sudden, making every cadet wince. The main lighting on the bridge flashed triple time in red, and the ship slowed its shaking, coming to a gentle, upright rest.

“Congratulations, ‘Captain’ Bruer and the rest of Class 1252,” Lieutenant Commander Spada’s voice stated over the intercom systems. “The enemy successfully triggered chain reaction explosions in the gunnery pod ammunition bays. You have just successfully slaughtered your crewmates.”

“Shakk,”
Bruer muttered, slumping back in his seat. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Sorry, meioas. I just can’t get the hang of quick command decisions when I’m in a panic. With my luck, it’ll take ten years.”

“I predict you’ll only have three, maybe three and a half,” Ia told him. Behind everyone, the door to the bridge slid open. She ignored it in favor of giving him a piece of advice. “You’ll be in this exact same position, Bruer, only it’ll be against the Salik, not the Dlmvla, and you will need to tell
your
CO engines or guns. Go for the guns, but tell your gunners to pick their targets as carefully as the Dlmvla picked ours. Don’t just fire in a rush. In a situation like this, they’ll only get one, maybe two shots before the enemy shoots back. Those shots have to count.”

Bruer snorted. “Yeah, right, like when am
I
ever going to be on a Blockade Patrol? God…you’d
think
I’d think of using the
guns, with my background. I just got too focused on completing the mission.”

“Your assessment of the problem is accurate, Cadet Bruer,” Spada stated. His image flashed across every primary screen on the bridge. It was also being broadcast to every other cadet’s station, letting them know what was happening on the bridge.

“Lieutenant Commander on deck!” Ia called out. Everyone sat up a little straighter in their seats, but since they hadn’t been told the simulation was over, no one unstrapped. The lecture their trainers had given them on that little
faux pas
had been lengthy and involved the assignment of more punishment details than the lifesupport filters alone could cover.

“At ease, bridge crew, but remain strapped in,” Spada told them. “Lieutenant Commander Spada to all cadets, remain at your posts. We will be rerunning the simulation in just a few minutes from time index five minutes thirty seconds. Alright, Cadet Ia. You’ll get your chance. Swap places with Cadet Bruer and take command of the
da Gama
. The simulation will start at the exact same point as the last three tries. Let’s see if
your
choice was the better one…
or
if it was the wrong one as well. Lives are in the balance,” he ordered. “The clock is ticking, and the DoI is watching.”

Unbuckling her straps, Ia immediately complied. “Aye, sir.”

“Aye, sir,” Bruer added, releasing his own restraints. “Transferring command to Cadet Ia, sir.”

Spada nodded and strode back out, not bothering to stay and watch the two cadets swap places. Then again, he had a perfectly good view of everything back in the observation cabin, along with his fellow instructors.

Hooking the straps into place on the captain’s chair, Ia punched a few buttons on her console, changing the priority of the displays to suit her own preferences and needs a little better. “Okay, bridge crew, I want a slightly different set of priorities. The moment that ship pops up on the screens, I want a fast tactical analysis of its hull. Every single weak point, starting with shield nodes, gun pods by category, engines, and sensory equipment, in that order, but
not
the comm dishes. Relay exact coordinates of priority listed targets to all gunnery pods on whatever flank any enemy ship appears.”

“On whatever flank it appears?” Bruer asked. “It’ll appear on the
starboard side, like it has for the last four simulation tries!”

“I don’t care if it’s appeared on the starboard for the last fifty-
six
simulation tries,” Ia countered briskly. “If it appears on the starboard or the port side, fore or aft, dorsal or ventral, I want this crew ready to act.” A touch of her station controls connected her headset to the rest of the ship.
“This is Acting Captain Ia. Prepare for resumption of simulation at time index five minutes thirty seconds, by order of Lieutenant Commander Spada. Repair teams, if you can get me a short-range communication bandwidth operational without sacrificing energy to engines or guns as needed, I’ll give the first one to pull it off my next Leave voucher. All hands, this is a ready check, greenlight for go.”

Her fifth tertiary screen—the farthest right in the row of smaller screens lining the bottom of her primary and two flanking secondary screens—started lighting up a large list of names, first in speckles, then in broader swaths, most of them green. A few stayed neutral yellow for several long seconds before they, too, turned green.

“Acting Captain Ia to Lieutenant Commander Spada, we are greenlit for go,” she stated.

Spada’s voice came back across the ship intercoms, though not on their screens.
“All hands, brace for simulation. Resuming scenario in ten…nine…eight…”

The ship thrummed and rocked hard at
zero
, struck by both the bright red bolts of laser cannonry and the thumping of simulated munitions attempting to slam their way through the
da Gama
’s shields. Braced for it, Ia rolled with the impact, then danced her hands over the keys at her control station, setting up her counterattack.

“Ship’s on the
starboard
, Ca—aaahptain!” Cadet Jinja-Marsuu told her. Her voice jostled into a yelp at the end as they were struck by another attack. Now that the simulation had begun, she had dropped the “Acting” part of Ia’s title, and was treating the scenario as if it were real, as all of them had been instructed to do. “It’s on the starboard, just like it was
last
time.”

“The last of the external comm systems are down, Captain!” Bruer told her. “They took out the fore and aft insystem dishes.”

Ia flicked on her headset with a tap of her finger.
“Starboard
L-pods, target and destroy all shield nodes, and
only
the shield nodes, fire at will! Engines full forward, get us the maximum insystem speed.”
Switching it off with a second tap, she called out, “Cadet Jimenez, on my mark, I want you to crack to five percent width the doors on the airlock list I’m sending to your station. Blow them, but only on my mark.”

“Sir?” she questioned Ia. Jimenez had to raise her voice over the distant, thrumming pulses of their own laser cannons firing back. “I don’t understand…”

“Careful observation brings comprehension—
Ungh!
” Ia grunted as the ship rocked under another hard blow, hand going back to her broadcast controls.
“Ventral P-pods, prepare to target enemy engines and laser gunnery pods. Do not, I repeat, do not target enemy P-pods until ordered to do so. Target only the L-pods!”

“They’re digging a hole through to Engineering, just like last time!” Jinja-Marsuu warned Ia.

“Lieutenant Harper, get those repair teams on the communications arrays, bounce it triple time!”
Ia ordered.
“Get me anything, so long as it broadcasts past our hull.”

“I’m on it personally, Captain!”

“Good meioa,” she muttered under her breath, off-mike.

“Captain!” Cadet Ng called out from his position overseeing the gunnery teams. “We’ve destroyed their forward shields. I’m ordering the P-pods to fire at will.”

“Belay that!” Ia snapped, toggling on the intercom.
“Starboard P-pods, hold your fire. I repeat, hold your fire! L-pods, concentrate your fire on their aft shields and take them down.”

They rocked hard to the left. Jinja-Marsuu cursed. “
Shova v’shhh
—aft shields are gone; we’ve lost engines, Captain! Power dropping rapidly. We’re deadheaded on course, no maneuvering capacity.”

“Midsection shields dropping,” Cadet Smith warned everyone. “A few more hits on the starboard and we’re done for!”

“Jimenez, blow it!” Ia ordered.

“
Ahh
—aye, sir!” she replied, jabbing at her own controls. The ship jolted and rotated, rolling under the force of the escaping gasses from the upper starboard and lower port airlocks. “That…that’s doing it, sir. We’re rolling!”

“You’re presenting fresh shields to the enemy? It’s brilliant!”
Bruer praised. Then grunted as the ship rocked again. “Unfortunately, they’re still killing us, just a little slower.”

“Captain, I have EM radio online. Sending it to tertiary two.
”

“Good meioa,”
Ia praised, this time into her headset. She dragged the packet she had prearranged from her middle tertiary screen to the second screen from the left on the bottom of her bank of monitors. The look Bruer shot her through the transparent display told her she was usurping his duties as comm officer, but Ia didn’t care. “Cadet Bruer, prepare to fire off that comm packet on all available bandwidths on my mark, and ping me an open broadband cast to the enemy. Tell me the moment you get any return response. Cadet Ng, tell the portside L-pods to prepare to continue firing on the targeted enemy. Starboard P-pods are to target sector zero by two seventy and prepare to rapid fire three volleys each, five degree spread, odds on the long, evens on the lat, on my mark.”

“Sir?” Cadet Ng asked, confused. The ship shook again, but not quite as hard this time; the enemy weapons were having to contend with undamaged shielding, which meant it would take more time to hammer through and cause damage.

“
Careful
observation leads to comprehension, Cadet,” Ia repeated tersely. “Do as you are ordered. Relay those commands!”

Ng turned back to her console, fingers flying over the keys and jabbing at the screens.

Bruer looked back at Ia. “Captain, sir, broadband channel is open, tertiary one. We have received a ping from the enemy; they are listening.”

Ia activated her headset again, this time broadcasting to the alien ship, ring finger hovering over the switch before cutting it off between sentences. “
Behold, the doors of the Room have opened wide, and the dead were embarrassed with shame, for the living had none!
Cadet Bruer, fire off that data packet lightspeed only, all bandwidths!”

“Aye, sir,” he confirmed. “Data packet awa—
Shova v’shakk!
Captain Ia,
that’s
the information we stole!”

“Careful observation brings comprehension—lock and web it, Cadets,” she ordered, cutting off not only his protests, but any attempts from the others. “Cadet Ng,
fire
!”

“Firing now, sir.” The ship
thu-thu-thumped
, jolting to the
right as the projectile guns fired, following her orders. Some spread up and down relative to the ship, others spread fore and aft, following the longitude and latitude of the
da Gama
.

“Holy
shakk
—there’s a second ship out there!” Jimenez exclaimed. “I’m getting missiles impacting on
their
incoming missiles and shields!”

Ia flipped open the external comm again.
“Greetings to the new Dlmvla warship. Welcome is your presence. Target your sister ship and attack, if you please.”

The Dlmvla responded, their words filling the bridge.
“Poetic is your illogic, yet requires explanation still.”

Ia smiled. She loved the Dlmvla mind-set, because they loved illogic. They
used
logic, harnessed it for their science as any other sentient species needed to do in order to attain the stars, but they
loved
illogic. It was poetry to whatever passed for their souls. So in answer, she replied by referencing a bit of actual poetry. Dlmvlan poetry, to be precise.

“‘The doors of the Room have opened wide.’ The crew of your sister ship are following orders from a faction whose acts are in violation of the Alliance Treaty. Compliance in their designs will bring shame to all your nests. The confirmation you need is in the information we have broadcast—to our attackers, I say: ‘Shame be upon the living, and your nests shall burn. With you in them, if cease you do not your attack on our sovereign nest.’”

“Thieves! Dwell in your nests of egg-suckers!”
The words came from the vessel that had started this scenario.
“Enter the Room ovulations first!”