CHAPTER TWO
The next day, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay
13 February 2134 (six days before Incident Seventeen)
Lieutenant Mikko Running-Deer wasn’t used to being starstruck. It annoyed and embarrassed her.
She had never been much interested in holovid stars, or the manufactured celebrities on the vidfeed, that sort of thing. Sam Bitka was different—the most experienced deep-space combatant ship captain in Human history, and a bad boy to boot. He’d almost been court-martialed for calling the Chief of Naval Operations—in a public briefing to the whole task force—just “some admiral behind some desk a hundred light-years from here.”
His romance with that British intelligence operative didn’t hurt his reputation, either. Mikko had seen a segment on Navy Today with a short vidfeed of the two of them together, and they made a glamorous couple. One still picture caught him laughing, the British woman looking at him with delight, but something else, something Mikko couldn’t identify, something held back.
The woman reminded Mikko of a tall, elegant fox—not just the thick mane of red hair, but also her sharply pointed features, and her sly eyes which swept from side to side and seemed to take everything in at a glance. Mikko wondered if she was a dancer. She moved with the grace and constant sure balance of one—or maybe of a martial artist. Still, she thought the British woman was too old for him. Why, she must be almost forty!
Mikko couldn’t see the harm in indulging a bit of a fantasy crush from a safe distance. It wasn’t as if she was ever going to meet the guy, right? But now a wave of panic flashed through her as she realized that in about ten seconds the main entry lock was going to open and Lieutenant Commander Sam Bitka would walk through. She couldn’t let Chief Duransky and the two bosun’s mates of the side party see her flustered. Or him.
You’re a professional! Discharge this ballast.
And then, as if on cue, the ship’s bell sounded twice through the public address system, the duty commspec announced, “USS Puebla arriving,” the lock slid open, and he appeared in his white uniform shipsuit and attached pressure helmet, visor up. The magnetic tabs on his boots clicked on the deck as he walked, holding him down in the zero gee of Cam Ranh Bay’s main hull, just as her own boots kept her from floating away.
He looked just like he did in his pictures.
“Permission to come aboard,” he said.
“Permission granted. Bosun’s party, salute.”
She snapped a salute at the same time as the two bosun’s mates, one to each side of the airlock, while Chief Bosun’s Mate Duransky piped the new captain aboard.
Bitka returned her salute and then saluted the colors suspended on the aft bulkhead of the receiving bay.
“Sir, the crew is mustered in holospace,” Mikko reported. “I am ready to be relieved as captain.”
Bitka lowered his helmet visor and she did the same. Now the receiving bay seemed to grow in length and the entire ship’s complement was formed in two ranks at attention, stretching fore and aft from them, as her holoconference software kicked in. Of course, none of them but her, Bitka, and the bosun’s party were actually in the docking bay. The rest were at various stations throughout the ship, their holographic images arranged and projected by the software in her helmet. All of them stood with helmets on and in standard Navy-issue shipsuits, a combination working coverall and emergency pressure suit: white for officers, khaki for chiefs and Marines, and blue for other enlisted. Bitka raised a data pad and read.
“Outworld Coalition First Combined Fleet order dated Twelve February, 2134. To Lieutenant Commander Samuel M. Bitka: Surrender command DDR-11 Puebla to your senior line officer and report not later than Thirteen February, 2134, to LAS-17 Cam Ranh Bay. Upon arrival on board report to Lieutenant Mikko Running-Deer, Acting Commanding Officer USS Cam Ranh Bay, for duty as her relief. Signed, Vice Admiral A. K. Stevens, Commander, First Combined Fleet.
“Lieutenant Running-Deer, I relieve you.”
“Sir, I stand relieved.” She took a step back and then to the side, in that instant again becoming executive officer, and she felt herself relax. There had been no serious crises during her brief tenure as acting captain, but she had felt the constant awareness that if one would arise, it would be her exclusive responsibility, and she had not realized how heavy that responsibility had felt until it was suddenly lifted from her.
“All hands,” Captain Bitka said, his voice level and without the hard edge she had expected to hear in it. He didn’t sound like a cold, hardened, killer of ships. He sounded nice. Was that part of his secret of command? A carefully constructed veneer, a face presented to the world to disguise the warrior behind it?
“I had a chance to speak with Captain O’Malley by holoconference,” Bitka continued. “He’s recovering from his injury on the hospital ship Mercy Island. He tells me I am taking over a sound ship with a good crew. I look forward to meeting each of you in the next several days before we make our jump.
“Our mission is to transport two companies of Marines for duty on Eeee’ktaa, the home world of the Buran. We will receiver further orders once on station there.
“I will be going over drills and procedures with the executive officer and tactical department. As you know, a ceasefire has been in effect with the uBakai for the last three weeks, and so far it’s held, but there’s always the chance we’ll run into someone who hasn’t gotten the word, or who doesn’t agree with the word, and so we will continue to operate under the assumption that we are in a war zone. Everyone stay sharp.
“All hands, dismissed.”
Chief Bosun’s Mate Duransky raised his helmet visor and sounded Pipe Down, and the crew began disappearing as they raised their helmet visors, which cut the data feed from the in-helmet holocon systems. Mikko raised her own visor and saw Captain Bitka extending his hand and smiling.
“XO, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Welcome aboard, sir,” she answered, shaking his hand. He had a firm grip but wasn’t one of those assholes who tried to crush your hand to show their dominance. “Sir, the off-watch officers are assembled in the wardroom per your request. Can I show you the way?”
He looked around the receiving bay and grinned. “I’d appreciate that. I’ve been trying to memorize the deck plan in between everything else in the last twenty-four hours. I think I’ve got it down, but I’d feel really stupid wandering into a Marine squad bay by mistake.”
Wow, he was good! That vaguely lost and helpless act—perfect.
“Boats,” Mikko said turning to Chief Duransky, “have your detail deliver the captain’s gear to his quarters.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Mikko gestured toward the lift which would take them down to the habitat wheel, rotating to provide the equivalent of one gravity. She and her new captain pushed off together to glide the length of the bay in zero gee.
“Sir, I have several revised data files you may want to go over,” she added as they boarded the lift, and she handed him a data pad. “I loaded them in here. In particular you may want to familiarize yourself with the civilian passenger manifest. We have a number of VIPs on board.”
The captain’s head jerked toward her.
“Um, wait . . . we have civilian passengers?”
Either Captain Bitka’s orders had not mentioned civilians or he had overlooked that section. Mikko did not think he had survived four deep space battles by overlooking things, so she wondered why no one had told him.
“I know it sounds crazy, sir,” she explained. “A couple months ago civilian passengers on a military assault transport would have been crazy, but a lot’s changed. When the word of the jump scrambler weapon went public, it caused a big panic and grounded the civilian starships. They’ll sort out all that mess with insurance and shipping companies eventually, but in the meantime interstellar commerce stopped—completely. So, the militaries of all six species of the Cottohazz stepped up and took over the traffic. It’s the only way to prevent a financial collapse.”
“A bunch of people but no bulk cargo?” the captain asked after reading the manifest.
“That’s correct, sir, but since we’re configured as a troop transport anyway, that works out fine. But it puzzled all of us as well until we got a crash course on interstellar commerce. Every inhabited star system has plenty of raw materials, and if they didn’t, starships couldn’t haul enough to make a difference. As far as merchandise goes, fabricators can construct almost anything. Rather than carry manufactured goods around in starships, it’s cheaper to license the fabrication software and just collect royalties. The only things really worth carrying from star to star are key people, data, and devices too cutting-edge to trust to the fabricator software nets. Oh, and unique original art. We’ve carried a bunch of that.”
Captain Bitka shook his head and frowned.
“Maybe someday someone will explain to me how that’s important enough to power—or cripple—the finances of the whole Cottohazz. But it doesn’t need to make sense to me in order to work, does it? Okay. XO, we need to keep the VIP passengers happy enough they don’t bother you and me, because we’re going to have real work to do. Have we got someone entertaining and . . . nonessential we can task with that?”
Why hadn’t she thought of something like that? Probably because Captain O’Malley had enjoyed schmoozing with the passengers, so she’d thought of that as the natural role of the captain, but Bitka wasn’t O’Malley, was he?
“Um . . . we’ve got charming and we’ve got nonessential, but not a lot of overlap. I’m sure I can come up with someone. Can I get back to you on that, sir?”
He chuckled. “Sure. Just don’t let any grass grow under it, okay? What we need is something like a chief purser. Or maybe a cruise director. One more thing. I’d like you to get your chief yeoman working on is a meal schedule for me.”
“Meal schedule. Yes, sir,” she answered, trying to act as if that was a routine sort of request.
“Well, I mean a schedule of guests. I need to get to know the officers and crew, and meals are a good way. I want to breakfast with an officer every morning, starting with you tomorrow, then have lunch with a chief, probably starting with our ‘Boats,’ Duransky, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right. Lunch with Duransky tomorrow. Dinner with an acey-deucy. Have your yeoman set up a rotation so I meet everyone if we stay at it long enough. Officers, I want to start with the department heads and then go to the most junior ensign and work my way back. Same with the chiefs: the bulls first and then the most junior one. For the junior petty officers, just mix it up.”
Mikko couldn’t remember a captain having dinner with enlisted personnel, especially petty officers first and second class—acey-deucies—just to get acquainted, but she liked the idea.
“I’ll get right on it, sir.”
The lift came to a halt, the door behind her slid open, and Mikko saw the captain’s eyes widen with surprise. She turned and saw the two vaguely reptilian figures waiting in the corridor.
Varoki were surprisingly similar to Humans in structure and even facial features, despite standing over two meters tall, being hairless and iridescent-skinned, and sporting broad, leaflike, constantly moving ears. Dr. Däng, the famous xenophysiologist, who was also on the VIP passenger list, had told her the similarities were due to “easiest path engineering.” Mikko wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Captain Bitka, let me introduce the Honorable Limi e-Lisyss, diplomatic trade mediation envoy from the executive council of the Cottohazz to the Toomish Consortium of Buran. And this is his assistant, Mister Haykuz.”
Captain Bitka extended his hand and the envoy e-Lisyss’s eyes widened slightly. The assistant took a small step forward, his skin flushing pink with embarrassment.
“The envoy means no disrespect, Captain Bitka,” he explained hastily, “but the human custom of shaking hands is not widely practiced among our people.”
The captain lowered his hand and shrugged. “No offense taken.” He turned and smiled at Mikko. “Funny. Didn’t seem to bother the uBakai naval officers I met a couple weeks ago, and we’re still technically at war with them.”
Mikko had already decided that e-Lisyss’s personality was an odd fit for a diplomat, since he seemed a master at either giving or taking offense at fairly minor things, but maybe he was really hell on wheels when it came to closing a good trade deal. Who knew?
She had wondered how the captain felt about Varoki in general, and specifically the uBakai whom he had fought in the war. Apparently, he’d at least been willing to shake their hands, and she hadn’t seen any obvious sign of animosity.
“The envoy has asked me to inquire why he was not invited to the meeting of senior officers, as he is the most senior official of the Cottohazz aboard the vessel,” the assistant asked.
The captain frowned and glanced at Mikko before answering.
“I wasn’t aware your boss was on board until about one minute ago.”
The assistant and the envoy exchanged a few words in aHoka, which Mikko could recognize from its guttural consonants but could not understand.
“The envoy accepts your apology,” the assistant said. “He suggests we now go and meet our officers.”
Captain Bitka scratched his close-cropped hair and then shook his head.
“Nope. No offense to your boss but they aren’t our officers, they’re mine. I understand he’s a high-ranking official of the Cottohazz but we aren’t operating under Cottohazz authority. This is a United States Navy vessel and you’re riding with us as a courtesy, one we are happy to extend. I’ll be glad to talk with him later but right now my executive officer and I have to be going. Excuse us.”
Mikko hastened to keep up with Captain Bitka’s long strides without jostling either of the Varoki officials as she passed them. She expected to hear outraged protests but for whatever reason they said nothing. Maybe part of diplomacy was knowing how to preserve your dignity when you lost a round.
How had the captain known the Varoki wouldn’t force the issue? Or had he? Maybe he just didn’t care. Whichever it was, she liked it. Varoki were always trying to throw their weight around. Fortunately, they were as divided into competing nations, alliances, and factions as were humans, and every other intelligent species of the Cottohazz. Even divided, they were still the top dogs. In the war they had just finished the Outworld Coalition of four different human nations—The United States of North America, the West European Union, India, and Nigeria—had nearly lost fighting just one Varoki nation, the uBakai. If the Varoki ever all got together and buried the hatchet, it would get ugly.
“So Little Sis and Haiku, what’s their story?” the captain asked once they passed beyond a bulkhead.
Mikko struggled to keep her face neutral. Giggling at the two nicknames would be undignified.
“Sir, they call e-Lisyss a trade mediation envoy. As I understand his function, he goes around strong-arming people over royalty rates for the big Varoki trading houses, but he does it with a Cottohazz official title and expense account. He’s smart, but cold as a polar ice cap. Haykuz, his assistant, is an arrogant little weasel without near as much going on upstairs. That translation stuff was probably an act. I bet e-Lisyss was running high-level auto-trans through his commlink.”
“He was,” the captain said. “You could see in his eyes he understood us.”
Mikko glanced quickly at him. She hadn’t noticed that.
“They never tried pulling rank like that on Captain O’Malley,” she said. “I think they were trying to snow the new guy, but you didn’t fall for it. All due respect to Admiral Stevens, sir, but he should have at least told you about those two.”
Captain Bitka smiled. “Maybe he figured this would be more fun.”
It sounded as if the captain had a complicated relationship with the fleet commander. Mikko had never met anyone who knew a fleet commander well enough for their relationship to be complicated.
“Here’s the wardroom, sir.” She followed him in.
“Attention!” she called out and the dozen officers present, already standing in anticipation of their new captain’s arrival, snapped to.
“As you were,” Captain Bitka said.
“With your permission, sir, let me introduce your department heads.”
She did so in order of seniority. Like her, they were all full lieutenants so date of commission counted: Ka’Deem Brook from operations, Rosemary Acho from logistics, Koichi Ma from engineering, and Homer Alexander from tactical. Also like her they were all about thirty years old, plus or minus a couple years, except for Rosemary Acho who was closer to forty. She was a mustang: enlisted as a common mariner, rose to the rank of chief petty officer, and was then commissioned.
Mikko watched the captain carefully for insights into how he sized up his senior officers. She knew—well, she’d heard gossip—that he had little use for Annapolis-educated regular officers and even less for astrogators. She saw no evidence of either in his greeting of Ka’Deem Brook, their chief astrogator and the only academy graduate—other than herself—among the department heads. If the captain had already memorized The Bay’s deck plan, he surely had read the service jackets of his senior officers.
Did he recognize in Brook, the Ops boss, the crippling need to avoid conflict at all costs? Did he see their TAC boss, Lieutenant Alexander, as the cocksure loner who had become nearly unbearable since learning their new captain was the most famous Tac-head in the navy? Did he see Acho as self-conscious and unsure of herself, hiding her doubts behind a wall of authority and neurotic attention to administrative minutiae? Did he see Ma as a talented engineer too lazy to do the work himself and uninterested in supervising his subordinates? If he saw any of that, he sure could keep a secret.
And what does he see when he looks at me?
Mikko introduced Major J. C. Merderet last, because as a Marine she was not technically a member of the crew, but rather a passenger. Merderet was the only one of them who had met Bitka before, and she had told all of them about the meeting as soon as they heard about his posting as their new captain. The meeting had taken place on K’tok after the ceasefire.
“Introduced himself to every officer and command NCO in the cohort,” she said, “and thanked us for the job we did. Only Navy officer who ever did. He said he was sorry they hadn’t done more to help. After the beating they took, can you imagine that?”
Mikko wondered if Bitka even remembered the encounter.
“I believe you already have met Major Merderet,” Mikko said. “She’s commanding our embarked Marine contingent.”
Mikko saw Bitka’s face brighten and Merderet even managed a rare smile in reply.
“Last time we met weren’t you wearing captain’s bars?” Bitka said as they shook hands. “Congratulations on the promotion. How’d they pry you loose from the 24th MEU-MIC?”
“Brought it with me sir,” she answered. “Two companies of it anyway.”
“Really? We’re carrying two companies of Mike Marines? Jesus! I knew we had some grunts but I thought it was an embassy guard detail or something.”
“My orders say the Buran want a demonstration of concept, sir,” she said. “We’re going to do six company-sized meteoric inserts from orbit to show them how it’s done. Not sure why, but that’s not my department.”
“Nope, mine neither,” the captain answered. “After that fight on K’tok, I thought the 24th earned a rest.”
“Well sir, some might have said the same about you. I guess they decided sitting on our asses eating Crab a la K’tok for eight weeks was rest enough. You ever figure out why the hell the Navy does stuff, you let me know.”
To Mikko’s surprise, Captain Bitka laughed and nodded. Between a Marine NCO and a Navy petty officer, those would nearly have been fighting words, but watching the easy banter between Bitka and Merderet, Mikko realized those two really were on the same team.
The Twenty-Fourth MEU-MIC—short for Marine Expeditionary Unit, Meteoric Insertion Capable—had been one of the two “Mike” cohorts that inserted from orbit in individual reentry pods and captured the capital and needle downstation on K’tok at the start of the recent war. That was already talked about as the most audacious operation in modern military history—anyone’s modern military history. Merderet had commanded a rifle company in the first assault wave.
Mikko knew Merderet and the captain hadn’t met until after the fighting was over, but whatever experience they held in common had rendered them comrades in a way that made her ashamed—not because she had not been there to share it. That was beyond her control. She was ashamed because she was jealous of them. She was certain they’d both lost people they cared about in that fight, and that was nothing to envy, and doing so was a shameful thing, but she still did.