Hannah Sawyer (Kinsella Universe Book 3), page 23
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The next days and weeks were incredibly busy ones, even if they were on High Fan and without contact with the “normal” universe.
Exercises and sims, little ones and big ones.
Study group meetings, planning on how to deal with an alien planet’s defenses, without having any idea what those might be.
And for Hannah, more time spent on devising sims that would stretch and exercise everyone aboard. In the next weeks she produced four sims, three of which indeed embarrassed everyone aboard, from Admiral Kinney down to the lowest squadron pilot. Admiral Kinney ordered her not to run the fourth sim, and instead repeated an earlier exercise. People recognized it and sure enough, the bad guys were badly beaten.
“It’s not that I don’t like your latest work,” Admiral Kinney told Hannah, “but it’s time to start working on morale. We will run your sim, I promise, as soon as we depart Adobe. After that, Lieutenant, you will concentrate your time on your squadron. Commander Ferris will occupy only a tiny fraction of your time from then on and additional sims can wait until we are egressing.”
Hannah saluted and left, not feeling terribly bad about the sim being delayed. The admiral was surely right; the crew needed to gain some confidence before they went into battle. Not too much, perhaps, but they needed to be more confident than they were.
She was lounging in her office, her feet on her desk, thinking about yet another idea of a sim, when Lieutenant Shapiro entered.
“I’m back,” the lieutenant said, waving jauntily at Hannah.
“A good thing,” Hannah told her. “We already told your replacement that he’s permanent. You’ll replace Lieutenant Harlan.”
“Not as Exec, though! Right?”
“No, not as Exec. Donna is still debating who it’s going to be.”
“It should be you,” Lynn Shapiro told Hannah.
Hannah laughed. “You need a leader in the slot, Lieutenant! I’m a staff weenie, ask anyone!”
“Sure, whatever you say, Hannah. Want to go to the O-Club? You’re starting to look a little frazzled again.”
“No, thanks. I’m not working. I’m sitting at my desk, meditating.”
“Hannah, I sure hope you don’t try that crap as an excuse to anyone else. Didn’t they make it clear that if you screwed up again, they’ll ground you permanently?”
“I am not overdoing it,” Hannah said patiently. “I’m at my desk, resting.”
Hannah waved at her feet perched on the desk. “Does this look like an officer on duty?”
“In this squadron? Who knows! Lieutenant Merriweather’s goal is to have the best squadron aloft. What you do off duty that doesn’t affect your readiness she pretty much cuts her pilots a lot of slack with. But not you, Hannah.”
“If I went to my cabin, I’d just put my feet up and meditate there.”
“Which is why I’m asking you to the O-Club, girl! There isn’t anyone who is going to mistake someone at the O-Club for an officer hard at work. Please, Hannah, you are really good at what you do. This squadron can’t afford to lose you, and, sure as hell, Rome can’t afford to lose you.”
Hannah contemplated things, then met Lieutenant Shapiro’s eye and told her firmly, “This isn’t a date!”
“Of course it’s not! A date is dinner and movie! Drinks at the O-Club are drinks at the O-Club. Everyone, just about, goes there. Besides, like I said, I want to be in this squadron. I’m not going to get romantic with someone in my chain of command.”
“You’re not going to get romantic with me at all,” Hannah told her.
“Hannah, I’m going to the O-Club. What you do is your business.”
She turned on her heel and stalked away.
Hannah sat unmoving at her desk for several minutes. Okay, she’d been cheating. Times when she was nominally off duty, she thought about duty matters. And everybody else didn’t? Sometimes she would lay awake at night, unable to sleep, thinking about the war. Who didn’t spend sleepless nights? If the rumors were right, half the crew occasionally used sleeping pills.
She sighed and stood, then walked out the door, nearly running into Zodiac. “Come t’ fetch my ops officer for a little drink,” he told Hannah.
“Well, you’re in luck. I was just headed that way.”
He blinked. “Someone beat me to it?”
“Not exactly. Let’s just say, I need some certified time off that no one’s going to ask me awkward questions about tomorrow.”
“You are starting to look a little peaked, Lieutenant! But, not to worry! Ol’ Zodiac has just the thing!”
Zodiac’s idea of “just the thing” turned out to be ballroom dancing. Hannah had learned years before, but hadn’t done it very much. Hindsight suggested that was because there was nothing dangerous about it.
Had her father seen the way Zodiac danced, he’d have changed his mind almost at once. Zodiac glided and twirled, there were spins and jumps, most of which left Hannah breathless. And that was the first dance! Moreover, he wasn’t that good of a dancer, trying to let his enthusiasm carry the day.
Then she danced with Lynn Shapiro, who was more restrained. Where Zodiac was athletic and freewheeling, Lynn was elegant and precise, keeping Hannah at an arm’s width plus twenty percent.
Hannah was resting for a moment when Admiral Kinney walked up to her.
“Look, Admiral!” Hannah said pertly. “I’m relaxing!”
The admiral chuckled. “So am I. I was looking for a certified excuse; it seems that Captain Sanchez thinks his admiral is as guilty as too many others about overwork. Please, Lieutenant, I was watching just now. Dance with me.”
Hannah swallowed. What if the next piece was one of the wilder pieces of music?
Admiral Kinney grinned. “Not to worry, Lieutenant! The DJ has orders that when I’m in the O-Club, the music will be properly sedate!”
If Lynn Shapiro had been proper plus twenty percent, Admiral Kinney danced with Hannah as if she was Hannah’s mother.
At the end of the music Admiral Kinney grinned at Hannah. “Well, I have my excuse. Now I have to get out of here, because admirals have a tendency to seriously dampen the spirits of their officers. Please, Hannah, walk with me.”
Like being asked by an admiral to dance, a request to walk was pretty much the same as a command from on high. Actually, it was a command from on high.
Hannah walked with the admiral off the dance floor, then out of the compartment. Admiral Kinney laughed when they reached the elevator. “Most people your age would have been terribly embarrassed to have everyone in the compartment staring at her.”
Hannah shrugged. “People have stared at me my entire life.”
They exited at the bridge level and a few minutes later were in the admiral’s conference room, just off the bridge. “I have to admit,” Admiral Kinney told Hannah, “to a certain embarrassment. In the old days of science fiction, captains and admirals had view ports that allowed them to look out at the universe drifting past. Except while we’re on High Fan, there’s nothing in the universe out there to look at.”
Hannah nodded. This was something she knew. Admiral Kinney walked a few feet and touched a screen. One entire wall of the compartment vanished, showing a star field slowly drifting past.
“This is a minor vanity,” Admiral Kinney told Hannah. “So far as I know, no one knows about it. But when I come in here and request it, I’ve programmed Rome to show me what the stars would look like if I could see them. It’s not a terrible vanity -- for instance it consumes about a thousandth of a percent of the available CPU cycles, and I have Rome calculating the view for days in advance, so I can drop the demand to zero at need.”
“It’s pretty,” Hannah said. She was a fighter pilot; normally she didn’t even bother to look at a video feed of what was outside the cockpit. What was the point? But she’d been curious enough to want to know what the feed would look like.
“It is.” The admiral was quiet for a few minutes, staring at the stars that filled one wall. “You and I, Hannah, are polar opposites. I was born into a large family, and that family had a larger one behind it. I wanted such a family myself and I got it.
“You, on the other hand, never got to meet your mother. Your father is, by all accounts, not the finest father who ever lived. Mine wasn’t either. Once, when I was nine, he lectured me, quite sternly. If I wanted to fly to the stars, he told me, I’d better never get another B on another math exam.
“No other threat, Hannah, could have gotten my attention so rapidly and completely. I just wish that wasn’t the only time he talked to me that year.
“So, here we are, you and I. I no longer have a family and you’ve never really had one. Lieutenant, I beg your indulgence. Humor an old woman. Be my daughter. A daughter not of my womb, but of my heart.”
“I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” Hannah said, cautiously.
Admiral Kinney chuckled. “Actually, it’s not a good idea at all. You and I, Hannah, have different duties, different backgrounds. But we’re human, both of us. You’ve never had a mother and I’ve never been more than a biological mother. It’s time we each compromised.”
She watched Hannah’s expression, then laughed. “Right now you’re wondering what this means in personal terms. Nothing, Lieutenant. You and I will share a few meals, spend some time talking. Your duties won’t change, nor will mine. A polite fiction for an old woman, bereft of her family in her later years.”
Hannah was surprised over the next few days. Admiral Kinney had spoken the truth. She was moved to the Admiral’s table in the mess, but down at one end. Admiral Kinney frequently had a pleasant word for her, and Hannah returned those words in kind.
Other than that, nothing changed.
After another week enroute to Adobe, there was a meeting of senior officers to go over the planning group’s final ideas.
“I really expected more,” Admiral Kinney said, looking up from their report.
Commander Ferris shrugged. “Ma’am, we simply don’t have the data. We don’t know what sort of resources our enemies possess either in toto or at fringe colonies. It could range from almost none, to enough to swamp anything we send against them.
“Our thought, Admiral, is that our job is to obtain data to guide the Federation in its planning and fighting. Thus we have developed three scenarios for exploring a system we discover. The case we all fear is the most likely: an entire squadron dispatched to scout a system is destroyed. In that case, we suggesting dropping squadrons well away from the center, until we finally draw a serious response. We evaluate that response and decide how to proceed from there.
“The second alternative, where some of our fighters survive -- we evaluate the damage done and measure our forces carefully against the enemy. The last scenario is really the same as the second, where the initial response is light or nonexistent. We move very cautiously to explore, to make sure we aren’t committing the bulk of our forces to a trap.
“I think it’s clear that no matter what else we know about our enemy, we know they are capable of planning, they are capable of subterfuge. After what happened at Gandalf and Snow Dance, there is a serious risk that they are hoping that any large force we have might be sucked in close to a system where they can swarm it and destroy it.”
The admiral nodded. “So, it’s all going to depend on intelligence?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Commander Ferris replied.
“Flesh out your scenarios a bit, then get with Captain Huygeens and assist with the plans for intelligence gathering.”
A day before they were going to stop a half dozen light years from Adobe, Hannah was working in her office when Lynn Shapiro knocked on her door.
Hannah took a deliberate second and blanked out her screen, hiding the last refinements of the coming battle scenario she was working on.
“Come in, Lieutenant Shapiro,” Hannah said formally.
Lynn did, glancing at the dark screen on Hannah’s comp. “So it’s true, isn’t it? You’re working on the king of all sims? Once again you’re going to show us how to do it.”
Hannah smiled. “The queen of all sims... and one of these days, you’ll surprise me.”
“I hope so,” Lynn told her. “Hannah, I have a request of you.”
“Ask away, Lieutenant. I assume it has something to do with training.”
“Indeed so, sir. Lieutenant Zodiac has asked Commander Merriweather if he can organize a class on unarmed self-defense. I was hoping you would join us.”
Hannah smiled slightly. “That sounds interesting. Lieutenant Zodiac thinks I need instruction in self-defense?”
“He thinks that it wouldn’t hurt if everyone in the squadron was a least a little proficient.”
Hannah wanted to laugh. “And is there a reason why you’re here instead of Lieutenant Zodiac?”
Lynn grimaced. “Okay, unenlightened self-interest.”
“You’re barked up the wrong tree, Lieutenant.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not barking very loud. I’ve explained about that before. I’m just raising the flag, so to speak. So you don’t forget I exist.”
“Tell Lieutenant Zodiac I would be honored to join him in unarmed combat instruction, if he... and you... would join me in a little armed combat demonstration afterwards. The two of you against me in a sim.”
“Two of us?” Lynn asked. None of them flew better than Hannah, but two? Two might give them a chance...
“Yes, the two of you.”
“As you wish, Lieutenant. I’ll accept on both of our behalves.”
“Good choice of word, Lieutenant Shapiro. We’ll run the sim two hours after unarmed combat instruction. Oh, I trust you ran this past Lieutenant Merriweather?”
“Yes, of course, Hannah. She thought it would be a good idea.”
In the back of Hannah’s mind Gloria was rolling on the floor laughing. “I think our squadron commander and I are thinking the same thing, Lynn. This will be a good idea.”
The next evening they met in one of Rome’s gyms. Donna had waved Zodiac off when he asked her if she was going to participate. “No, that’s okay. It was part of my training, back on Campbell’s World. Unarmed combat of a dozen sorts, plus knives and firearms. No, concentrate on someone who needs it. Hannah, for example. I’ll bet she has wet noodle muscles and no idea of how to defend herself.”
Hannah thought that was lathering it on pretty thick. You couldn’t have wet noodles for muscles and fly fighters. How could it be that everyone had forgotten the stories about her and Admiral Swenson?
“Well, what I thought we’d do, Lieutenant Shapiro would discuss basic moves while I would demonstrate the move with a volunteer.”
Hannah raised her hand, wiggling it like an over-eager third grader. “Oh, pick me! Pick me! I volunteer!”
Donna was standing behind both Lieutenant Zodiac and Lieutenant Shapiro and it looked like she was trying to smother her laughter.
Sure enough, Zodiac picked Hannah.
He held up a rubber knife. “This is a demonstration of how to defend against a simple knife attack. Lieutenant Shapiro is from Barrio, which had one of the more hostile biospheres humanity had settled. Lieutenant, if you would, tell them what they’ll see. Hannah, listen carefully and Lieutenant Shapiro will talk you...”
He’d been holding the fake knife loosely in front of him, when Hannah lashed out with her right hand, hitting him on the wrist. Even as she was doing that, she had started to fall, sweeping his legs as she did. She spun around, the knife now in her hand, “stabbing” him in the chest as he lay half-stunned on the gym floor.
She never stopped moving, grabbing Lynn’s hand, held at her side, twisting and spinning her around. The knife slashed across Lynn’s throat, a fatal wound if the knife had been real and a fraction of a centimeter closer to her skin.
Hannah started to push Lynn forward when she sensed movement behind her, so she stopped pushing and turned slightly. Donna grabbed Hannah’s shipsuit and heaved, trying, Hannah thought, a judo throw. The problem was, the sixty centimeter difference in height didn’t give Donna sufficient leverage. For a second Hannah carefully judged the strength of her attempt to pull away, then when Donna was over-committed, went with the pull.
Donna had no time to react, falling on her backside as Hannah had planned. Hannah had a grip on Donna now as well, and she continued the momentum of the motion, this time planting her foot firmly in Donna’s stomach. Only at the last second did Hannah remember that if she pushed as hard as she’d intended, Donna would end up half way across the gym, going splat on the hardwood floor.
Donna traveled only a few feet and she too was stunned. After a second, she pushed herself up from the floor, only to be hit at once with the rubber knife, thrown from a few feet away.
Hannah hopped to her feet, looking around, a puzzled expression on her face. “Okay, that was good! I liked that! But I’m not sure that most of your students are up to the lesson learned.”
Zodiac heaved himself erect and swayed, still trying to recover from having his wind knocked out of him. “Know your enemy!”
Donna was coughing from the blow to her chest. “Yeah, next time I tell you she took out a four star admiral, you might want to exercise some caution, believe me!”
The worst was Lynn Shapiro, who was rubbing her throat and looking at Hannah. “If I was to take away a lesson from this, it’s never trust your intel. Sure, it might seem good, but gosh, are you ever screwed if it’s wrong! Worst case planning, always!” She then blew a raspberry at Donna.
Donna decided to make it three to one against Hannah in the fighter sim, but it didn’t make a difference. Hannah hid in an asteroid belt, would drop a missile off, go someplace else and then the missile would go active and chase someone down. Hannah had three shots and got three hits; they never saw her.
“How did you hide from us?” Donna asked afterwards. “I can understand the trick of leaving the missiles for a while; I did something like that at Caravalos. “But we should have seen you.”
