Jethro: First to Fight (36 page)

“True.”

“I for one am glad they will be setting
up Agnosta soon. That will par the ROTC classes down a bit and give us some
breathing room in the classes and dorms,” the dean said with a sigh.

“Until they ship them back for advanced
courses,” the doctor teased.

Matilda's face soured in a grimace. “You
would mention that,” she grumbled. She was actually hoping San Diego would be
online by then. She made a note in her implants to get on Horatio about it
again.

“Well, hopefully the campus on San Diego
will be up and running by then. Do you have the staff problems sorted out?”
Thornby said, almost reading her mind. The dean started and then snorted.

“Almost,” Matilda admitted. “We've made
some headway on the critical staff but I've still got a few holes to fill. I
need a good history professor there, one who's flexible.”

“Ah.”

...*...*...*...*...

The assistant on duty sighed as he
opened the email from the Captain of the Sun-Yat. Lieutenant Commander Harris
was in his usual snit, he was constantly agitating to get off the corvette
Sun-Yat and on to something bigger and better. He wasn't the only one, many of
the captains were. The 2
^nd
Lieutenant acting as a adjunct to Logan
brought it up in a private meeting.

“What's Harris's problem this week? Not
enough computer memory for his sims again?” Logan asked with a sigh.

“No sir. He really shouldn't be trying
full fleet exercises in a corvette, the computer can't handle it,” the adjunct
replied.

“Tell me about it. I still can't believe
he burned out an entire cluster farm.”

“It took some doing sir. Something about
too much realism,” the adjunct confirmed, nodding.

“Realism?”

“He went so far as to model variables
such as crew, morale, speed, specific damage, weapons, supplies, fuel,
astrography, captains and their skill levels, the list goes on and on sir.”

“Talk about overkill! How big a fleet
did he try to sim? Something on our level currently?”

“No sir, actually a bit beyond it. Super
dreadnaughts.”

“Oh.”

“And throwing in the movement of
individual crew members along with parasite craft and their load outs blew the
bank. He hadn't even gotten into an engagement, just loading the fleet did it.”

“Wow. Ambitious.” He frowned again. “And
definitely overkill.”

“Yes sir. But he's learned from the
experience, or so his Chief engineer has said. Or so she hopes,” the adjunct
said ruefully. He'd seen the request for replacement computer parts. Not all of
it was for replacements, apparently he wanted to triple the computer package on
the ship. He for one, wasn't sure where they were planning to put all that
hardware in such a tiny ship.

“Biting off more than he can chew. Well,
I'll have a talk with him. He really shouldn't be trying that in a corvette.
What was he thinking?”

“It's eating him alive sir, being on a
small corvette,” the Lieutenant said, pressing his advantage since her boss
seemed in a good mood. “He has more time in grade than Mayweather and he's
marginally better than her in fleet ops, the last exercise proved that. She's a
damn good tactician and day to day Captain, but she doesn't have the sim
training he does. She's still in lone wolf mode, the 'doesn't work and play
well with others'. Some of the other captains think of her as a glory hog.”

Logan frowned. “Tough.” He had no
intention of upsetting the applecart and swapping the two like Harris wanted.

“Sir, about the academy, specifically
the crusher. If we oh, pull Harris and have him as the temporary commandant,
then he could pass on his limited combat skills to the class.”

“He didn't serve as, no wait, he was tac
officer on Firefly wasn't he?” Logan asked. One of the requirements for the
advanced command course was someone who had real combat experience.

The Lieutenant nodded. “Yes sir.” He'd
heard about the cruiser's original bridge crew.

“All right.”

“And we could make him Captain of the
Damocles. That would free some of your workload up,” the Lieutenant slipped in
slyly. He knew how much the Commander hated the paperwork that went with
juggling so many positions. He hadn't seen how he could relieve himself of some
of that burden now that they had more officers in the pipeline.

Logan rubbed his jaw. Slowly he smiled.
“And since the ship will be in dock another 3 months until we get more of the
new parts into her, he can focus on the crusher.” Damocles had done okay in the
initial war games but she'd come up short when they'd tried to do a full drive
burn. Also her starboard weapons mounts were still... hinky. Her port side
shields were nonexistent. Stretching the nodes from the other quadrants to
cover the weakened side caused a lot of problems... and fatally weakened them.
A third of the bow nodes were close to their mandatory overhaul already, and
the ship had spent most of the past three years in drydock laid up.

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Get it sorted out.”

“Aye sir.”

“That leaves a hole in Sun-Yat though,”
Logan reminded him. Which was true, Sun-Yat was a corvette though. She was
small, normally commanded by a 1
^st
Lieutenant, not a Lieutenant
Commander like Harris. Horatio frowned. He had been under-utilizing the
Commander's talents. He sighed, sitting back. He still had a ways to go in
learning to delegate, to let his people take up some of the slack. He'd been
almost a one man show for over a century in Anvil's Engineering department,
running the Fusion reactor through his implants. Now was a good time to ease
up.

His problem was his fear of their
failure. If it was bad enough, it could and probably would mean lives lost. The
political fallout he could deal with or ignore. It was the lives that mattered.
He shook himself as the Lieutenant continued.

“Yes sir, but she's down for routine
maintenance for a week. I was thinking we could transfer first Lieutenant
Waters to the post and the move someone else into his post.”

“Musical chairs,” the Commander
grumbled. “Is Waters agreeable to this? He's rather fond of Warthog.”

“I didn't know that sir.”

“She's a reserve ship, he's a reserve
officer. They signed on together when the pirates came calling.”

“Oh.”

“Next time do your homework before you
get in with the bright ideas,” Logan growled. “But I agree, don't go asking
them until you get approval from me.”

“Aye sir,” the very confused Lieutenant
JG replied carefully.

“While we're playing musical chairs I
suppose we can swap some people around with command of the stations.”

“Sir?”

“Admin people need refreshing too. And
we've got that lovely fort to man. Look into staffing that. That and the
crusher. The crusher requires people with good tactical scores and combat
experience. Navy personnel.  Preferably combat veterans, but we don't want
to lose too many from command posts. Good luck with that too.”

“Aye sir,” the Lieutenant said ruefully.
He made a note to talk to the G-5 Decius. He really was in over his head and he
realized he was probably in for a chewing out by the Centilian  Lieutenant Commander
for taking over his department. If he was around. The Centilian had been thrown
for a loop after his rescue from the White star with Commander Vargess. He'd
done well while the admiral had been here, but his body had been drawn to the
surviving Centilian clan here in the system. Since he was a rare find, a member
of their species who hadn't bred yet, his bloodline was pure and therefore
precious, they needed it to reinforce their species and halt the down slide of
inbreeding. Doctor Martel was involved in the project. To top it off, after
they molted and mated, the species were forced into hibernation for a full 3
months. He'd have to check on that, they were incredibly grouchy when they
first awoke. He winced, now he wasn't happy about opening his mouth.

“Don't get me started on personnel to
command the bases and facilities in Agnosta,” the Commander said, now smiling
ever so slightly. He really should have cut the lad off and had him send a
suggestion memo to Decius. The Centilian was feeling a bit overwhelmed being
pulled in so many directions at once, but he should be the one to go through
all this and sort it out. “Make sure G-5 is in on this.”

The Lieutenant threw his hands up in the
air. “I surrender sir,” he said. Horatio chuckled.

“Just don't think about trying to slip
yourself in one of those positions. For now you're needed right where you're at
son,” Horatio said, patting the young man on the shoulder.

“Yes sir,” the Lieutenant replied with a
fatalistic sigh.

“And write me a memo castigating Harris
for damaging his ship with that sim. Remind him it reflects poorly on his
career.”

“Aye aye sir.”

“Anything else?”

“Just another complaint about Captain
Aisyah binti Tam on Wendigo from her first officer Lieutenant Ssri'allth. She's
a Neo-orangutan and prefers it hot and humid, as a Naga, he prefers it
dry
and hot. Too much humidity gives him lung infections.”

“Boy I don't envy that crew,” Horatio
muttered, imagining it. He sighed. He had quite a few requests to transfer from
the Neo-orangutan's command. Both Neo-orangutans, Aisyah and Maya where Ensign
Musa bin Osman was first officer. “It must be like a sweat-box there, good
place to lose weight.”  The Lieutenant smiled. After a moment his boss
waved a dismissive hand. “I know, I've heard it all before. I think maybe we
can use your idea to solve that problem too. The two fight over the life
support but did well otherwise. And Aisyah gave Ssri'allth full marks. I'll
think about it.”

“Aye sir.”

All three of the officers in question
were outstanding. Sure the Neo-orangutan's were quiet and standoffish. That was
their nature after all. But they were also devilishly clever. They were subtle,
and the Ensign was a known prankster. His soulful innocent act fooled a lot of
people on first glance. His pranks were funny, rarely ever mean or demeaning.
They tended to build morale on the ship rather than cut it apart. Maya's crew
tended to take bets on when a newcomer to their ranks would finally realize who
was subtly hazing them. Twice the XO had led them astray, making the victims
think that another had been involved. That had also been a source of humor and
good natured ribbing.

Of course most crewman would have filed
a complaint long ago if the XO hadn't been so good at his job. He listened,
helping the homesick cope with their first deployment, or helped get a few much
needed time off when the occasion arouse. His tactical suggestions during sims
wasn't lost on the crew either. They had bested ships like Wendigo and even
Sun-Yat once, ships that were three times their tonnage and nearly four times
their firepower. That bought a lot of slack with the crew.

He also could take a joke, realizing
when to back off when the crew started to prank him in retaliation. The crew
was impossible in dock, setting up some rather elaborate hilarity on some poor
unsuspecting schmuck wherever they went.

Like a lot of officers the three
resented the changing events. All the captains had taken the shitty jobs
of  gunship Captain in order to gain experience and the promise of bigger
and better ships to come. That had changed the instant Destiny had jumped out
of the system 2 years ago. Morale had been a bitter thing for some time, and
Destiny's return had been a needed jump upward. Some of the gunship captains
had been resigned to their lot in life, but a few were now looking for new
opportunities once more.

It wasn't just the captains though,
their executive officers had also anticipated a rapid rise in rank. In some
small way, the admiral's departure had helped them, cooled their over eager
anticipation, taught them patience. He hoped the lessons lasted.

“Get Decius on the line. We'll hash this
out. If he's not conveniently available get an appointment for ASAP. And damn
it, if he's busy for longer than 2 days then he better damn well say so and
we'll find a temporary replacement. Enough is enough.”

The Lieutenant gulped.  He hadn't
expected such a drastic reaction. “Aye sir.”

“We're going to need one anyway when the
good Lieutenant goes down for his three month nap. Which means you may be
wearing more than one hat soon.”

The Lieutenant blinked in consternation.
“Me sir?” he asked, voice squeaking slightly.

The old man eyed him. “Yes you. Unless
someone else becomes available. Since you've got such an interest in it, I'll
put it to Decius. Unless he has someone else in mind, you'll probably be it.”

The Lieutenant nodded slowly. “I'll try
not to let you down sir.”

“Do that. And remember, Decius wakes up
in three months and everything is subject to his approval. His and mine. Keep
that in mind before you go upsetting the apple carts and playing musical chairs
and causing uproars.”

“Yes sir. But I think it's past time we
did some shifting about. Maya and Wendigo aren't our only problem children sir.
Firefly is settling in nicely, but the other smaller ships...” he shrugged
helplessly.