Poor Man's Fight (34 page)

It wasn’t what Tanner wanted to hear, but he sucked it up and moved back into the dining area. He found a place to stand out of the way until called upon
.

“…continuing fallout after last month’s unprecedented pirate raid on
Qal’at Khalil in Hashemite space,” said the news anchor on the viewscreen. “Violence has been reported on several Hashemite worlds and colonies, sending many citizens of the kingdom fleeing. During today’s daily press conference, Press Secretary Andrea Bennett reported on efforts by the Archangel Navy to address the growing crisis in our largest neighboring state.”

“Shit,” the captain grumbled, “this woman again.”

The screen cut to the familiar scene of Bennett standing in a courtyard amid a semicircle of reporters. “As of noon today, system mean time, Archangel Navy ships have intercepted eleven ships from Hashemite space with crews and passengers requesting asylum,” Bennett announced. “These ships are often crammed, with those aboard requiring emergency resupply and sometimes medical attention. They have been brought to shelters on Augustine, where we will continue to provide aid.”

“Andrea,” asked one reporter, “does the administration intend to allow these refugees to settle in Archangel?”

“Andrea,” cut in another, “we have reports of Prince Murtada and Prince Kaseem both denouncing these refugee flights, calling the people aboard thieves and traitors and demanding the return of stolen ships and of those aboard to stand trial. Has the administration responded to this?”

“
Neither prince is head of state. The asylum requests are under review.”

“Will the ships themselves be returned?”

“I don’t have any information on that right now.”

“Andrea,” called out a third journalist, “given the increased traffic into the system, does the administration plan to scale back on its new policy of intense physical inspections of each ship entering the system?”

“Absolutely not,” Bennett answered firmly. “Once again, the events on Qal’at Khalil have spelled out in graphic and horrifying detail the need to know who and what is coming here.”

“Does the administration have any comment on complaints from business interests on the resulting slowdown of traffic in and out of the system?”

“Yes, Mike, I’m glad you asked. The President asks all the people of Archangel and all of our native companies to work together in ensuring that we keep our system safe and secure. As for the complaints lodged by NorthStar, CDC and numerous other interstellar corporate interests, the President would like to remind everyone that Archangel’s numerous security agreements with those corporations that have so far failed to protect Archangel or her neighbors from pirate attacks and smuggling. If our security measures come at an inconvenience, our security partners would be well-advised to fulfill their agreed-upon duties.”

“That woman loves being a snot,” Stevens said, turning his gaze down back to his plate to pick at his food with thinly-masked irritation. “I like how she throws around statements like that as if she’s ordering us around.”

Tanner frowned thoughtfully, wondering what the captain’s problem with Bennett might be as the broadcast continued.

The anchor’s face returned.
“In related news, numerous other Union systems have adopted similar measures of intensive ship inspections. Demand for increased security coverage by the Union fleet has increased dramatically, particularly in the outlying states.

“Orders for armed ships and planetary defense equipment have skyrocketed in the last few weeks according to market observers. Major arms suppliers such as Lai Wa, NorthStar and CDC have all justified price hikes by pointing to this sharply increased demand. Yet Defense Minister Robert Kilpatrick says that these price hikes will largely not affect Archangel’s recent defense expansion.”

The screen cut to the defense minister in his office, speaking from his desk to a single reporter. “Expense was certainly a primary consideration from the outset,” he said, “and we took advantage of several cost-offsetting opportunities when we started. We locked in our deals at prices from six months to a year ago. If anything, we saved the system money by buying early.”

“Yeah, like that was intentional,” Stevens snorted. “They make out like they saw all this coming.”

“Well, gotta score your political points wherever you can, sir,” Chief O’Malley shrugged.

“It’s all a smokescreen anyway,” Stevens pressed, waving his hand at the screen. “They’re paying for the expansion by blowing off interest payments on corporate debts. They’ll have to make those debt payments later, anyway, and when they do, it’ll be at a higher rate. We’re not getting away with anything here.”

“Boot,” grunted Morales, pulling Tanner’s attention away from the broadcast and the resultant conversation. “You’re on the next bridge watch rotation with Freeman and Miller in twenty minutes.”

Tanner glanced at the clock on the wall. That hardly left time to clean up after everyone and have things set for the crewmen currently on watch, let alone get lunch for himself. As if Freeman read his mind, the bos’un said, “Might wanna eat fast.”

Not a seat remained open. Nobody looked like they would finish soon. Tanner ducked back into the kitchen area, picked up his plate, and found a place to stand where he’d be out of the way as he ate.

The food was good. Flores had skill. Tanner wished he didn’t have to just shovel it down.

***

Watch relief as Tanner learned it on
Los Angeles
was something of a scripted affair. While no one exercised stiff military formality—it was routine repeated several times a day, after all—regulations mandated a certain process. There was status info to pass along, orders to relay, and at the very least there was the need to confirm in a clear, unambiguous manner who was in charge on the bridge.

With that in mind,
Tanner’s jaw all but dropped when Freeman simply took Reed’s seat on the port side of the bridge without a word about anything other than what Flores had cooked for lunch. Freeman barely glanced at the status boards before assuming a relaxed posture in his seat.

Reed’s companion on the bridge watch had been Miller. He sat with his feet kicked up on a console until Freeman and Heifer arrived with Tanner in tow. Heifer gestured for Tanner to stand
with him at the operations console at the back of the bridge. Miller passed along no info; like Reed before him, he simply rolled out of his seat and headed for the hatch.

“First thing you do is check the ops table, boot,” Heifer said, gesturing to the broad worktable. A three-dimensional display of space around
St. Jude
floated over the table. At the moment no contacts appeared within the ship’s immediate space. Floating at the edges of the display board were points and distance markers referencing other ships, space buoys and natural bodies like Augustine and its moons, all of them beyond
St. Jude’s
two light-minute “bubble.”

“But you see there’s nothing going on,” Heifer shrugged, “We make sure we have courses drawn up for home, for major space lanes, for wherever we might be going…and they’re right here,” he said, tapping a light on the table surface without even looking at the readings it displayed. “So that’s good. You check the comms traffic, which says here that it’s all been relayed to the OOD station and copied to the captain and XO’s personal holocoms like always, and then you’re set.”

With that, Heifer left Tanner to stare at the operations table. The blond crewman nonchalantly took up the empty starboard seat. Tanner looked over his shoulder as Heifer opened up his personal holocom. Nothing on the projection in front of Heifer looked like it was military or ship’s business. It was just a computer game.

Tanner turned back to the ops table and the bubble. He didn’t know where to begin.  Could Heifer really have understood and evaluated all the contacts on the sensors that quickly? How could he know the message traffic
held nothing important without at least skimming it?

Minutes passed before anyone spoke. “So, Tanner, did they teach you anything about watchstanding in basic?” Freeman asked.

“Yeah,” Tanner blinked, turning around to face him only to find that Freeman wasn’t looking back. He apparently just stared off through the canopy at the stars. “Yeah, we had several weeks of an apprenticeship phase on
Los Angeles
. The ship was in orbit, so everything was simulated, but they had us rotate through bridge posts.” Tanner had met the cruiser’s standard qualifications for standing watch on each post. Most of Oscar Company did.

They had also been warned by
Everett not to make too much of it when they got to their first assignments. He was proud, he’d told them, and their accomplishments had been real, but they shouldn’t presume they were ready for prime time until their new commands said so. Weapons and tactics school repeated that advice:
Don’t get cocky. Don’t boast. Trained or not, you’re still the new guy
.

Freeman snorted. “Yeah, well on a cruiser like that, you’ve got a guy for every job, and assistants for half of ‘em, right? And you had an officer at each position?”

“There were several officers on the bridge at all times, yes,” Tanner said.

“Right. Well, we do more with less on a corvette. Right now Heifer’s the helmsman and I’m the Officer of the Deck. Helmsman handles astrogation, takes care of the logs, monitors the message traffic and comms, maintains sensor lookout and operates helm at my direction. Watches are four hours each.”

“Okay,” Tanner said. As Freeman noted, these were all individual jobs on a larger ship. Tanner had expected this, and had expected to be busy. He didn’t expect to see the helmsman kick his feet up on the control console and play computer games.

“You’re going to be the apprentice helmsman until you’re signed o
ff on all that. That means you’ll stand a one-in-three watch rotation for a while. Once you’re signed off, we’ll put you in the helmsman rotation and then things’ll be a little easier on you guys. You’ve got four weeks to get signed off. If it looks like you’re falling behind or whatever, we put you on every other rotation.”

“What do I need to do to get signed off?”

“Computer over there has all the manuals and the qual sheet. Download it to your personal holocom. We test you on each piece and sign you off, then give you a board examination on the whole thing.”

“Okay,” Tanner nodded. He turned to the ops table’s computer to retrieve the material. “When do I get tested?”

“When we think you’re ready,” Freeman shrugged. “Read up on everything and try to find answers in the manuals before you come to us—unless you’re actually on watch and something comes up. If you’re on watch and you’ve got a question, just ask. Better to ask than fuck anything up.”

“Understood, BM1,” Tanner said.

Heifer snorted. “He’s still in boot camp mode, Ben.”

“Ah, that’s fine,” Freeman said, waving one hand. “Tanner, you make sure you call the chief a chief and you say ‘sir’ to the officers and salute ‘em the first time you see ‘em on a given day. Do that and you’re fine.”

Tanner felt as much relief at what Freeman had to say as he received from getting an explanation of anything at all. He let out a breath. “That’s really all there is to worry about?” he asked. “I kinda feel like I’ve been putting my foot in my mouth all day long. Like everyone’s having a shitty day and I keep making it worse.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Freeman gave another shrug. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You’re the boot. You’re bound to get a lot of shit around here until you can pull your own weight. Plus we’ve been working like dogs for a long
time and it’s only getting worse.”

“Yeah, we have,”
chuckled Heifer. “Ben, did you hear what the chief said about being on the news again? Can you believe that came out of his mouth?”

“
Oh, he said that on purpose just to fuck with the skipper,” Freeman smirked. “O’Malley’s a snarky bastard.”

“Why was that a bad thing?” Tanner asked.

Freeman and Heifer shared a thoughtful look before the older man finally said, “Ah, you’re gonna hear it anyway. Everyone knows. You remember that luxury liner that got hit by pirates out here a few months back?”

“Sure,” Tanner said. Of course he did. The news hit on the worst day of his life since his mother died. How could he forget?

“We were the first ship on scene. The pirates must’ve had pretty good jamming tech, because at first all we got was garbled transmissions. The captain decided to go check it out, but we were pretty far away at the time. We were still inside the system, so an FTL jump would’ve required emergency authorization and the skipper didn’t think the info met that threshold. Can’t really blame him for that. Anyway, we got closer and then we started picking up the beacon from the lifeboat.

“The whole scene was pretty bad,” Freeman continued, choosing an obvious understatement rather than grisly detail. “We shot straight past the bodies before we even really realized they were there, but then we wheeled back. Started looking at visuals.”

“That whole mess was so fucked up,” Heifer shuddered.

“Got that right,” Freeman agreed
. “Anyway, the captain called for aid on an open frequency, which is what he was supposed to do. Nothing wrong with that. No threats in the area and we were obviously gonna need help.