An Officer’s Duty (68 page)

“They still have those resources, sirs,” Ia confirmed on the heels of Viega’s words. “They just don’t have the
leadership
to
use all of it. Yet. But time will not stand still, gentlemeioas. Every second we waste here is another second they have to pull together enough competency in what’s left of their leadership to resume being a serious combat threat. A very serious threat.”

“Damn straight,” Viega agreed.

“Admiral Viega, as your viewpoint could be considered rather biased in this matter, I must request that you remain silent until addressed,” Myang stated, twisting to look over her shoulder.

“Aye, sir,” Viega complied.

Myang returned her attention to Ia. “All you have said so far, Lieutenant Ia, is what the Dlvmvla like to call ‘all wind and no breeze.’ You have risked your life and your career to barge into a closed session containing Ultra-Classified information. Legally, I have every right to toss you in the Dungeon and throw away the key. Legally, I can have you flogged to the bone.
Legally
, I can have you hung until you are
dead
, Lieutenant.

“Now. Why don’t you try to tell me why you thought it was such a
brilliant
idea to
shakk
away your career, today?”

The nausea was back, cramping in her stomach from sheer nerves. Ia struggled to keep it from her voice and her face. “I am here, sir, to hopefully help prevent you and your fellow Staff members from making a lethal series of mistakes.”

That caused a skeptical outcry among the twenty-plus officers scattered around the room. There was enough room, there could have been eighty or more present, but the materials they were there to vote upon were not something the whole Command Staff had needed to know. Nonetheless, the furor roused by her claim caused enough noise for at least twice their number, if not more.

“A
lethal
series of mistakes?”

“
Who
do you think you are?”

“Of all the unmitigated gall!”

Ia opened her mouth to defend herself, but the two dozen or so generals and admirals in the chamber didn’t let her. She could only make out a few of the outraged shouts and comments being aimed her way.

“You’d better explain yourself!”

“I’ve never heard anything so outrageous in all my career!”

“I don’t see how she
can
explain it.”

“If I were in charge of the Navy, I’d—”

“Sirs!”
Ia shouted, cutting through their protests. “Admiral-General, could I
please
have my five minutes of
uninterrupted
time, so I
can
actually explain?”

The Admiral-General held up her hand. “Quiet, everyone!”

The others subsided. All, that was, save for one of the admirals wearing the grey uniform of the Special Forces. Leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his medal-sprinkled chest, he spoke in the silence following her words. “Technically, Lieutenant, if a single Star of Service was worth five minutes of our predecessors’ time to Shikoku Yama,
you
should be asking for ten. You do have two of them.”

“Fine. Ten minutes, then,” Ia amended, seizing on his offer.

“You are no Shikoku Yama, Lieutenant Ia,” Myang stated. “And this is no AI War…but you have earned your ten minutes. Spend them
wisely
.”

“
Earned
them?” one of the generals in the second tier scoffed. “Have you not read the latest report? She’s a psi! She
manipulated
those medals onto her chest!”

“Clearly,
you
haven’t read her files, nor the correlated reports of the events that
earned
her those medals.” That came from a familiar face, General Sranna, whom Ia hadn’t seen since the incident in the Zubeneschamali System, back when she earned her Field Commission. “Lieutenant Ia’s personal incident reports are rather dry and factual, with no embellishments whatsoever. It is only when you read the
other
accounts, the ones from the other individuals involved in each case, that you get a glimpse of just how extraordinary her actions have been. More to the point, when you contrast the
vid
records of what she has done, versus what she reports, she
consistently
comes across as boring and factual, compared to the actual events.”

“There’s more to it than that,” another general stated, this one in the brown uniform of the Marine Corps. Ia belatedly recognized him as the general in charge of the segment in which Commander Ferrar’s troops served. “Every report she has filed on behalf of another soldier, making recommendations for granting them honors and medals, have been just as factual, if slightly more detailed, than the reports of her own accounts. Starting from her very first promotion to corporal rank, when
her actions and deeds caught the eyes of her immediate superiors, and all related reports wound up on my desk. Such self-effacing accounts are
not
the acts of a self-aggrandizing glory-hogger. Particularly not when she has so clearly done more to help
others
gain rightful recognition for their own heroism.”

Ia unbuttoned her jacket, shifting the medal-weighted folds aside so she could safely rest her hands on her hips. That bared her blue Navy shirt, and the four colorful ribbon-sashes the K’kattan government had bestowed upon her. “I do appreciate the support, sirs. Particularly from you, General Sranna—and it is good to see you looking so well after all these years. But I will
not
allow the salvation of our future to be derailed by any further sidebars, if you please. Not for ten full minutes.”

“Excuse me, but you will
not
—” the Army woman protested.

Impatient with the delays, Ia snapped back, “Would you
please
be silent and let me explain? I have
earned
those ten minutes, and I will not have them pissed away just because
you
want to talk!”

“You’re not in the military to make friends, are you, Lieutenant?” Admiral-General Myang drawled.

Ia replied candidly, hands back on her hips as she looked at the head of the Space Force once more. “No, sirs, I am
not
here to make friends. I am here to help save innocent lives. Why are
you
here?”

Deliberately, Ia looked around the room, meeting as many eyes as she could in the silence following her demand. Only a handful of them met her gaze.

“Get on with it, Lieutenant,” Myang ordered, avoiding the pointed question herself, though she did meet Ia’s gaze.

Lifting a hand, Ia snapped her fingers. The screens turned back on, surrounding them with images of the project they had been about to discuss. More than one of the men and women around her twitched a little in startlement at the display, though not all of them moved.

“Project Titania, also known as the Godstrike Cannon, is the culmination of several projects run by the Oberon Mining & Research Consortium. A company which is partly a front for the Terran military’s efforts to research and refine increasingly more powerful, more calorie-efficient laser weapons. The 67.19
percent caloric efficiency rating of the standard HK military rifle is
nothing
compared to the Godstrike’s unprecedented 90.3 percent conversion rating.

“You’ve been patting yourselves on the back for the creation of the biggest weapon in Alliance history. The Godstrike cannon, at full strength, is indeed capable of cutting thirty kilometers down through the crust of a planet in one minute flat. But you have overlooked the two biggest flaws inherent in its design, and all the accompanying headaches those flaws entail,” she stated.

Ia shifted the screens electrokinetically to a series of graphs detailing the quarter-scale test cannon’s caloric output versus various targets. Myang sighed impatiently. “And those flaws are…?”

Enlarging one of the charts, Ia explained. “The first one is so basic, we literally learned it
in
Basic Training, as one of the four Rules of the Range. In case it has been a few years, I will remind you of those rules: Always assume a weapon is loaded; Always point your weapon in a safe direction until you are ready to fire; Always keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire…and
Always
be aware of what is downrange of your target. Just in case you
miss
, sirs.

“The caloric diffusion rate of the newest HK-72 laser rifle in the SAC, Standard Atmospheric Conditions, is almost three kilometers. But in
space
, its diffusion rate is almost half a
lightsecond
. Given that the Godstrike cannon is a raging forest fire to the HK’s tiny little match, and that your technicians have been aiming at small moons and large comets for testing its strength, huge, thick targets that are impossible to miss, you have forgotten to consider carefully what that means in relation to the fourth Rule of the Range,” Ia stated. She flashed another picture on the screen, this time an archive file from one of the Border engagements, between a Terran battlecruiser and a small fleet of pirate ships. “This brings into play the
second
fatal flaw in the cannon’s design.

“Because of the massive amounts of energy required, and the refraction rate of the focusing crystal, it takes ten seconds to charge the Godstrike cannon. At the end of those ten seconds, under the current design, the cannon
must
be fired or it will overload and cause a potentially catastrophic
thermal reaction that will overload the thermogenerators, send feedback into the hydrogenerators, and run the risk of blowing up the entire ship.” She nodded at the screens around the room. “As you can see, a
lot
of maneuvering takes place in ten seconds in a standard stardogging fight. It is very difficult for even the best of combat-seasoned pilots to gauge exactly where the enemy will be, ten seconds down the road.

“The sheer caloric force of the Godstrike cannon makes the Fourth Rule
vital
, sirs, because even with the barest minimum burst, at one twentieth of a second, its diffusion rate in the vacuum of space is
four lightmonths
. It’s even greater than that if the cannon is fired for longer than its shortest possible burst.” Another flick expanded the view on the screen to a systemwide diagram. Ia streaked a line of white from the dot where the fighting had taken place to a point well beyond the system’s edge. “Though it
is
possible for a combat-seasoned pilot to gauge where enemy ships might line up in the next ten seconds, ten seconds is nothing compared to 10.5
million
seconds. That, sirs, is the number of seconds that will pass if the Godstrike cannon
misses
its target.

“I will also remind you that the caloric force of that cannon will require a minimum of seven medium-sized warships
or
three capital-sized ships in alignment to be able to absorb the force of a single, twentieth-of-a-second strike. If things don’t line up just right, you will literally be endangering shipping lanes for
months
to come.”

“So what, do you expect us to scrap Project Titania? Is that it?” one of the blue-clad admirals asked.

“Or do you expect to pilot it yourself?” the admiral in grey asked, arms still folded over his chest.

“I’m the only one who safely
can
,” Ia answered the second man. She knew his name and his face very well through the timestreams, though they had yet to be formally introduced. “Yes, the Space Force has great pilots, but they aren’t precognitives. And your typical military precognitives have spent their careers wrapped in cotton wool, not in combat.

“Very few of them are capable of predicting anything in the chaos of combat, because they are not trained to do so,” Ia said. “They cannot focus that well, and they cannot predict most combat situations with the necessary level of pinpoint accuracy.
I
am
that capable. My entire service record
proves
that I am. That I
have
.”

“Yeah, right,” one of the brown-clad generals on the second tier snorted.

Ia stared at the older woman for a moment, then shrugged out of her jacket. Holding up the heavy, lumpy garment, she nodded at it. “
This
says I can.
Everything
I have done in the Space Force has been predicted. Every objective that I could safely meet, most of them under the heavy restrictions and hobbling parameters of my orders, which I have followed to the best of my abilities, I have met.

“Ironically, the reason
why
I was such a valuable war-prize to the Salik for their little prewar meal was one of the few times I deliberately disobeyed orders, sirs. I deliberately strayed far beyond my assigned patrol zone, and I successfully destroyed a major Salik warship, because I
knew
it was carrying some sort of psychic interference capability. With nothing but a Delta-VX at my command, I destroyed an entire enemy capital ship, one the size of a Battle Platform,
and
I got my dual ships and her crews out of that fight alive.

“Now, meioas. Imagine what I could do for you if I had your trust and your confidence backing me,” she coaxed. “If
all
of my moves could be made that freely. Because we
are
going to war. You don’t have to be a precog to see that much…and I can see that they are scrambling faster than anticipated to relaunch their war efforts against us. I am here to warn you that we will have barely half a year to get ready for the first wave of the coming frogtopodic tsunami, and you
will
need the Godstrike effectively wielded in combat to save the people on the shore. Scoff all you may want,
resist
all you may want…but I am your
only
shot at safely wielding it.”

“You’re rather full of yourself,” one of the generals in green on the first tier snorted.

Ia lifted her jacket a little higher. “Am I?” She lowered it to her side. “Anyone else want to discuss the proof of my qualifications? Medal for medal, kilo for kilo, wound for wound? All I ever have done is my assigned
job
, sirs. But that job has
not
utilized my abilities to their fullest extent, yet.”