Terms of Enlistment (41 page)

I know that under normal circumstances, the two officers wouldn’t give me the time of day, much less explain enemy dispositions, but I can tell they’re excited about being on the pulse of the action for this momentous event in human history, and their excitement makes them disregard the social and professional gulf between staff officers and junior enlisted for a little while. I don’t share their excitement. I’m tired and scared, and I just want to find a bunk and sleep. I answer their questions, fill in the details they request, and repeat the sequence of events a few more times. Finally, the officers are satisfied with the amount of information they managed to squeeze from my brain, and I am dismissed to rejoin the rest of the crew.

Back in the briefing room, we continue our meals and exchange data to piece together the big picture. Carrier Battle Group Sixty-Three dropped out of Alcubierre roughly four hours ago, and approached our last known location above Willoughby at Combat Stations, ready to do battle with the Sino-Russians. What they found instead was an orbital field of proximity mines that wouldn’t show on radar, and looked like nothing listed in the Spaceborne Weapons recognition manuals. The drop ships of the Manitoba are still shuttling stranded Versailles sailors up from the surface, and rumor has it that the Shrikes have been emptying their ordnance racks at the alien terraforming structures, only to come back for bigger warheads.

“What’s going to happen now?” I ask the Commander later, when we’re finishing the last of the food, and waiting for the rest of our marooned crew to trickle in.

“Well, they’re going to take care of business down there. I expect we’ll see half the freakin’ Navy in orbit around this rock before too long. Then I guess we’ll head back to Gateway. We’ll all end up in the Transient Personnel Unit until the Navy figures out what the hell to do with us. You may yet get your wish about that laundry-folding job, Mister Grayson,” he adds.

“Any chance for some leave, you think?” I ask, and he barks a laugh.

“We just had a run-in with a sentient alien species,” he says. “If you think they’re going to let us back to Earth, you’re in for some disappointment. They’re going to keep a lid on this until they’ve figured out how to break the news to the folks back home.”

He stuffs the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, and washes it down with the last of the juice in his cup.

“You know, it’s kind of funny, in a weird sort of way,” he continues. “Back at Staff Officer school, they have all these wargames and scenarios they throw at you, to see how people deal with command pressure. We used to call the scenarios for alien encounters ‘bug levels.’”

He puts his plastic dishes on the floor next to his chair and leans back in his seat with a sigh.

“Now here we are, in our first real bug war, and
we’re
the bugs.”

When Halley comes back from her debriefing, she waves me toward her as soon as she spots me in the back of the room. I walk up to join her, and we claim a pair of chairs in a quiet corner of the room. By now, everyone in the room is stretched out in a briefing chair or two, dozing or talking.

“They’re loading fucking nukes on those attack birds,” she says to me when we’re sitting down. “We cut across the corner of the flight deck when we got back from the debriefing, and I got a good look. Mark Sixty-Five guided nuclear missiles, fifteen kilotons.”

“Holy crap,” I say. The last time a military used nuclear arms in battle was forty years before I was born, during the last global fracas with the Sino-Russians that left half a million dead and led to the signing of the Svalbard Accords that put an end to direct Earthside conflicts between the two blocs.

“Guess they couldn’t crack the stuff down there with the rack-grade stuff.”

“That’s going to mess up the real estate down there,” Halley says. “If those things set up half the number of atmo exchangers we did, there’s going to be close to a hundred nukes raining down soon. Nobody’s going to farm down there for a few decades at least.”

The idea of rendering a planet uninhabitable just to pry off a competing species seems ludicrous, but that’s how I know the military is going to do precisely that.

We’re assigned a few empty enlisted berthing sections far away from the flight deck to get some rest. At this point, I’ve slept only six hours out of the last thirty-six, and I’m starting to have auditory hallucinations. There’s a pair of medics outside of the berthing section, handing out pilot-grade No-Go pills to anyone who wants them, but Halley and I pass on the sleep aids, since we’re both tired enough to sleep standing up if needed.

The Manitoba is a much newer ship than the Versailles was, and everything is far more modern, but the enlisted bunks aren’t any bigger. Halley and I try to occupy one of the bunks together, but we conclude that the space is barely enough for one person. I let her have the bunk to herself and take the one directly below hers. I close the privacy curtain, and get under the thin blanket without bothering to take off my clothes. All around us, the sounds of a warship underway are ringing through the hull—announcements, tromping boots on metal gangways, humming machinery—but at this point in my short Navy career, I am used to falling asleep to that particular soundtrack.

There are no day times on a warship, just watch cycles. The powers in charge let us sleep through a watch and a half before sending in some petty officers to shake us out of our cots. When I climb out of my coffin-like cot, I have no idea whether we’re on first, second, or third watch, because my internal clock has lost its careful calibration it had just achieved before the Versailles slipped into the Alcubierre chute to Capella A.

While we were asleep, the Manitoba’s drop ship crews managed to pry another few dozen of our stranded crewmembers off the planet’s surface. When we file back into the briefing room we used before, several rows of seats are already taken by other Versailles enlisted and officers. There’s a general commotion as people rush to meet up with friends and berthmates. I don’t know too many people on the crew yet, so I stick with Halley. She looks around to find some of her fellow pilots, but frowns when she comes up empty.

“Looks like I’m the entire aviation section now,” she says.

I do a cursory headcount and come up with roughly sixty people, less than a third of the Versailles’ standard crew complement. Even allowing for a bunch of injured people in sick bay, our crew received a terrible drumming.

“Attention, all hands,” the XO says to the assembled crew after the first general buzz of excited conversation has dimmed a little. Everyone stops talking and faces the Commander.

“We’re done here,” he continues. “The Manitoba will remain on station and continue combat operations on the surface. Some of you will be hitching a ride back home on the
Bunker Hill
. The Lieutenant here will read off a list in a minute.”

He pauses for a moment to look over the assembled remnants of the Versailles crew.

“You can all look forward to more debriefings, and new assignments to God knows where. That’s for the Navy to decide. I wish they could give us a new frigate, so we could paint
FF-472
onto the side and get back to business, but that’s not in the cards.”

Some of the sailors chuckle quietly and murmur their assent.

“For those of you going to Gateway for reassignment: until you report to a new XO or Commanding Officer, you’re still crew members of the NACS Versailles, and if I hear that any of you don’t act the part while you’re waiting around in the Transitional Personnel Unit, I’ll personally stop by and recalibrate your skulls. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” we shout back, loud enough to make the XO recoil just a little.

“Well, good,” he says. “Glad that’s out of the way.”

“Sir,” one of the petty officers says. “Any word from the skipper?”

“Captain Hill’s pod was recovered last night,” the Commander says matter-of-factly. “Their chute either didn’t deploy, or got ripped off the crash pod on descent for some reason.”

The room turns deathly quiet in an instant.

“There were no survivors,” the XO continues. “In the pod with the skipper were Lieutenant Commander Schiller, Lieutenant Munoz, Chief Petty Officer Ellis, and Marine Lieutenant Connelly.”

For a few seconds, you could hear a piece of lint falling on the ground.

“Spare a thought for the Old Man and the rest of the CIC crew when you’re on the way back to Gateway. You’ll have plenty of time for that in Alcubierre. The skipper was a good man, and a fine commanding officer.”

He looks at the Lieutenant next to him, who carries a clipboard with a bunch of printouts stuffed into the document clasp.

“Mister Benning will now read off the list of personnel who will hitch a ride on the
Bunker Hill
in an hour. If your name’s not on the list, you’re staying with me. If it is, I wish you good luck, and safe passage. I am proud to have served with each and every one of you, and I’ll gladly stand the watch with any of you again.”

My name is on the list for the
Bunker Hill
, but Halley’s isn’t.

I was hoping for some more time with Halley, time that doesn’t involve trying to get out of peril or flying around a desolate planet with an unarmed drop ship. As things stand right now, all I get is a quick good-bye in a busy gangway outside of the hangar deck.

“Isn’t that just fucking fabulous?” Halley says to me as we embrace for our third attempt at letting go of each other. “You pull all these strings to get transferred to my shit bucket, and then they blow it up from underneath us.”

“I think the universe might hate me,” I say.

“I don’t think that’s quite true, Andrew,” she says and kisses me on the corner of my mouth. “You managed to get on the right ship, after all. And we didn’t crash or get sucked into space. I’m pretty sure I’d be a charred spot on the ground down there if I hadn’t ditched Rickman after my watch and come to hang out with you.”

“Well, there is that,” I concede.

“We’ll just do the distance thing again. Who knows, though? It’s not that big of a Navy. Try to get yourself posted to some big bird farm, one with lots of drop ships, okay?”

“I will.”

We embrace one last time, ignoring the looks from passing crew members. Halley kisses me one last time and then gently pushes me away with the palm of her hand against my chest.

“Go, before one of us goes UA and ends up in the brig for missing deployment.”

“Stay safe,” I tell her, and she laughs her dark, cheerful laugh.

“You’ve been there, Andrew. You can’t be careful in the right seat of a Wasp, don’t you know?”

“Later, pilot babe,” I say.

“Later, computer jock,” she replies.

“Last one,” the crew chief of the shuttle Wasp tells me when I walk up the ramp without much enthusiasm. “Get strapped in, we’re running behind already.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” I reply and take a seat near the tail hatch. The crew chief steps back into the ship and pushes the control button for the cargo ramp. I fish for the worn safety straps on my seat and slip into the harness.

“Sorry to hear about your ship,” the crew chief says against the noise of the raising ramp. I merely nod in acknowledgement.

“Well, you’ll be at Gateway in a week. This one’s over for you guys.”

The ship’s engines come to life, and I sit back and close my eyes, forcing myself to look away from the ever-narrowing gap of the rear hatch, toward the spot where Halley disappeared into the corridor a few moments ago.

I doubt that very much
, I think.
This one’s just begun.

—END—