Hannah Sawyer (Kinsella Universe Book 3), page 3
She snorted. Too bad they didn’t know her father! If they knew him, they’d know that he was a far larger obstacle to her plans than anything they could throw up, or what she herself could manage. Her father was an implacable force of nature. Hannah could imagine nothing more implacable.
She left early for her appointment, taking her comp, her wallet and nothing else.
She located the address and found it was indeed the Fleet liaison office. She was early, but she didn’t care. There was a receptionist at a desk in the anteroom. Hannah stopped and told the receptionist that she wanted to see Lieutenant Anselm. How many times had her father pounded into her the utter necessity of remembering names and faces?
The receptionist eyed Hannah curiously and then called the lieutenant.
It wasn’t the lieutenant who came out to greet her. It was the older man. Only now, instead of civilian clothes, he was wearing a dead black Fleet Aloft dress uniform. He had three stars on his collar; his sleeves had three broad stripes, one of them wavy rather than straight, as well as three stars.
Over his left jacket pocket were rows of medals; everything from the Legion of Honor, the Fleet’s highest award, to a half dozen Hannah didn’t recognize. Over those was a row of very small pins: ship service pins. The one on the left of the row stood out from the others -- it was wreathed with oak leaves, with three stars atop it. A vice admiral, who had commanded three ships. Over his right chest pocket was a single, solitary ribbon. The ribbon was plain black, matching the cloth of his jacket.
Hannah remembered what her father had told her, when he taught her about uniforms and the self-importance of those who wore them. “To Fleet Aloft, medals on the left are fluff. They show you were there, did your duty and didn’t slough off. There aren’t many medals on the right side -- those are the real medals. The ones that really count. Only one has been awarded in the last dozen years, for those with then Captain, now Rear Admiral, Saito, who commanded the rescue at Tenebra.”
Hannah saw that medal and instinctively looked down.
“Look me in the eye, girl!” the admiral’s voice was hard and loud. Commanding. Just like her father.
Hannah met his eyes, but couldn’t keep her eyes fixed on his. She concentrated instead on a point on his forehead. He was partly bald, with hair that probably had once been blonde, but was now almost transparently white.
“You’re early, girl!” the admiral went on. “Or do you maintain you are on time?”
“Sir, I want to volunteer. I don’t care if I do it now or later, sir. But I’m going to do it.”
“And you’re really eighteen? You really have a degree from Caltech?” his words were insulting, spoken as if she was obviously lying through her teeth.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been eighteen for a week and a half. I graduated from Caltech just like I said. My father and I were on holiday in New Zealand when we heard about the war. I had a job lined up here in Mojave, my father sent me here while he went to take care of his business.” She was tempted to name her father’s business; the odds were high they would know of it and probably of him. Prudence stayed her words.
The admiral turned to the receptionist. “Have Lieutenant Anselm report to the conference room.”
A few minutes later, Hannah was seated at a conference room table, faced with a pile of forms. She started filling them out, aware that this too was a test. They could have simply downloaded the forms to her computer, she could have set the permissions and her comp would have filled them out in a tiny fraction of the time it was taking her to do them by hand.
A half hour later she finished and handed the papers to the lieutenant. He looked through them, taking his time.
Lieutenant Anselm handed her one last piece of paper. There were six paragraphs on it. “Read this,” he told her. “This is called ‘The Contract’ all the rest is informational; this is what makes it real. Read it. Then sign it, if that is your desire.”
She read it. The text was straightforward English, twelve-point type. It simply stated that she was volunteering for duty with Fleet Aloft, or such other service as the Fleet deemed best suited to the needs of the Fleet, that this was a wartime agreement and was for the duration and a year. They even went so far as to include a clear warning: “This conflict may last for decades and may require extended periods of duty aloft, duty that could take years and be of extraordinarily hazardous nature.” There was also a simple notice that volunteers would be accepted regardless of physical condition.
Hannah read the terms and then put her signature on it. Lieutenant Anselm had her stand, raise her right hand, and then he read the Oath of Service from a card while Hannah repeated his words.
Then he too signed the paper.
“At this point, Miss Sawyer, you are granted a 72 hour leave. Go and say goodbye to your family and friends and all of that. You will see them next when you next see them; it could be years and of course, you could easily die.”
“I don’t have anyone to say goodbye to,” she told him. “I’d rather just go now.”
From behind her, she heard the admiral’s voice. “I owe you a dollar, Lieutenant. Miss, report here no later than 0645 tomorrow morning. We’ll put you on the courier flight to Honolulu.”
She met his eyes for a second feeling mildly triumphant. He almost laughed, “Tomorrow, Miss, you may be as early as you wish. The courier doesn’t arrive until 0700; you don’t want to be late. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Outside Hannah looked up at the blue vault of the sky. The hills around the town to the west were still dotted with a few wind generators, monuments to times gone by. Now, hydrogen fuel cells were used for just about everything.
At long last, she thought, she was going to achieve her dream. She would get her chance to see past the blue vault of the sky. On the flight from Christchurch she’d seen past the veil for a few minutes. Now, she was going there. She would, she thought, be content with that.
Chapter 2
Early the next morning Hannah went to the hotel office and told them she was checking out; the room had been on the company account so there was no fuss about paying. Hannah had no idea how long it would take for the word to get back to her father. As far as he was concerned she was simply going to drop off the face of the planet.
She rode in a Fleet jitney, a tiny bug of an aircraft with room for a pilot, a few passengers and a tiny amount of cargo. They stopped briefly in Los Angeles and then flew on to Hawaii. For the second time in her life, Hannah got a brief glimpse of the true blackness of space.
The rest of her day was spent processing in and being assigned a bed in a bay with dozens of other women, all older than she was.
A bed and a small locker -- that was it. Even in her House at Caltech they only slept two to a room. Here, there were forty bunk beds in a large bay. Off the bay was a large communal bathroom and shower area. Hannah kept her eyes down, made sure she didn’t stand out and spent her time sitting quietly on her lower tier bunk.
Her phone rang. That reminded her that she still had a father. Hannah took her phone out and turned it off. Let him leave a message. She’d get back to him after the war was over.
A few minutes later her phone buzzed again. So, the suburban apocrypha was true -- they did have a way of turning on your cell phone remotely. This time she popped the battery out and put everything in her suitcase inside her locker. Another story she already knew for a fact was true: the phone company could trace a phone’s location. She should have tossed it in Mojave.
Sleeping had been difficult the night before; now she was exhausted and semi-starved. She slept soundly, dreamlessly.
It was a short sleep; she awoke to someone pounding on the wall of the bay with the metal lid of the trashcan. The noise was enough to wake people sleeping even more soundly than Hannah.
“On your feet!” a voice boomed in the bay.
Hannah staggered upright. A good thing, too, because the Fleet Chief at the entrance to the bay had brought along some friends; friends who carried what looked like short rattan canes. The two Fleet NCOs went down the center aisle whacking anyone still in bed.
Long before the two petty officers reached the end of the aisle, everyone was standing up.
The older woman at the door spoke in a voice that needed no amplification. “My name is Master Chief Petty Officer Woho! As of one minute ago you are in my care until you are forwarded to your school. Is there anyone in the bay who has not applied for Officer Training School? Raise your hand!”
No one raised their hand. “Woo! Hoo!” the Master Chief exclaimed. “The Bureau of Personnel got it right!
“Now, listen up, all of you!
“Later this morning, at 0500, I will be here to wake you all again. My friends will also be with me,” she waved at the two grinning petty officers. “You will want to look alive, even if you’re hung over. At 0600 you will be led outside, where we will muster you. There are seventy-eight of you. I want eight lines of no less than nine of you in each. I want you in alphabetical order by name; you will have no more than five minutes to get into order.
“Then I will conduct roll call by going down the line pointing at you and asking your name. You will give your last name, your first name, your middle name, if any, and your ID number. While I’m doing this, there should be no one other than myself talking. You are mine for eighty-two hours, ladies. I am very fond of the gym and if anyone irritates me off, you’ll spend some hours with paste wax, making my floor shine!
“After roll call, remember which rank you were in, and which file. To help you with this, we’ve painted squares with rank and file numbers on them for you to stand on. You will fall into that same rank and file each day until I hand you off to the school. Miss a scheduled formation and you are in serious trouble! There is a war on, ladies! Absenting yourself from a scheduled formation won’t get you shot -- at least not yet. It will end your career in the Fleet and start your career in the stockade. Don’t do it!
“Some of you will bilge in the next few days. The officers will tell you more about that. If someone is absent from a formation, leave a hole where they were. I, and I alone, will tell you to move. No one at all, not even God, has that authority, just me!
“After roll call will be breakfast. Doors to the mess hall close at 0630, the mess will be empty at 0700 and you will be here in your bay, making sure it is ship-shape as soon thereafter as you can manage. I will inspect the bay each and every day. Each and every day all of the beds will be made, the floor swept, the bathroom and showers cleaned. Failure to make the grade means you will all wax my gym floor -- after you’ve made good the earlier deficiencies. Every last one of you. One hour the first night, two the second and three the third time you fail. Don’t fail!
“At 0730 two petty officers will escort you as a group to the processing center. You will be outside, formed into ranks and ready to go before then. The petty officers will be wearing white armbands. You will follow them and obey any instruction they give to you. If a Fleet officer tells you to leave the group, you will find one of my petty officers and report that fact to her. You will tell her your name and why you are leaving the group; only then will you go where you were told.
“You have volunteered to be officers in the Fleet: Aloft, Port Arm or Marines. I expect you to conduct yourselves at all times as if you were officers.
“This speech is the same one given by every intake NCO since Julius Caesar. The biggest mistake you will ever make in your life is to ignore what I or anyone else in a Fleet uniform tells you!”
She looked up and down the rows of beds, then spat out her last words, “That’s all. Until 0500, ladies.”
She turned and walked out, followed by the two petty officers.
There was a buzz of conversation, but Hannah didn’t care. She’d listened, now she set her watch to vibrate a quarter hour early and put her head back down on her pillow. It was just a few minutes after midnight.
She thought that getting up early would give her a head start in the bathroom, but about a quarter of the women were already up and in there ahead of her. Still, it was better than it was a few minutes later.
When they were outside, she went at once to the back row and, well before the time limit, she was in the right place. At least a half dozen women had started at the front and asking people their names. Hannah mentally shook her head. She’d seen people like that, particularly in her first year at Caltech. They were weeded out quickly. The school was difficult and expensive: why waste everyone’s time with someone who wasn’t up to it?
Breakfast was easily the worst food she’d eaten in her entire life. The meals at Caltech had been in something approaching a restaurant and while they hadn’t been great, they weren’t awful. The food in the mess hall was awful and she didn’t eat much.
They didn’t march to the processing center, it was just the group broken in two sections, walking in their ranks, now sideways.
The first day was physical exams and written general tests, all sorts of tests. The second day consisted of interminable waits to be interviewed by a variety Bureau of Personnel officers.
At the end of the second day Hannah was waved to a seat by a man who was, she was sure, pushing seventy.
“Candidate Sawyer,” the man said, while looking at her records on a comp screen, “you are a little young, but you have some nice marks at Caltech. It’s too early yet for evaluations to be on file from your professors. Tell me, Candidate Sawyer, do you think their overall impression of you will be favorable or not?”
“I received recommendations from my faculty advisor and two of my senior lab professors for advanced work at the university.” Hannah basked in the memory of that. “They didn’t want me to leave and go elsewhere.”
“But you weren’t going to continue your studies. You were taking a job, instead, as I understand?” the BuPers officer inquired of her.
“My father arranged it, sir,” Hannah told him. “He thought some practical experience for a year or two would serve me better.”
“And your parents...” he stopped, looking at something in her file. “Ah, your mother died some years ago, I’m sorry for your loss, Candidate. Your father approves of your enlistment?”
“I haven’t told him, it was my decision to make.”
“Of course,” he said, giving the distinct impression that it was a pretty dumb choice.
“Most officers are older than you. In fact, I do believe you are the youngest I’ve seen today.”
“I want to serve,” Hannah said simply.
“You understand that because of the current situation, that Fleet Aloft, the Port Arm and Fleet Marine assignments will be based on the needs of the branches and may bear little or no relation to your wishes or desires?”
“I understand that, sir.”
“Do you understand that the Fleet, on its whim or your inability, may determine that you are not fit to be commissioned? That you would then be enlisted in a branch of the Fleet’s choice? Even if that means you were to become a Life Support Technician, third class, with a job specialty of Green Manure Spreader?”
“I want to serve, sir.”
He looked at her steadily and, as she always did, she kept her eyes down.
“That will be all, Candidate Sawyer.”
She left and went back to waiting with the rest.
On the first day perhaps a half dozen women did not return to the bay. The second day, the number doubled. Sitting on her bunk on that second evening, Hannah decided that she was going to stick with it. One way or another, she was going to serve.
Everyone had comps, but it was odd how they were used -- it was very different from Caltech. In the evenings, people would gather around a few bunks, almost always on the lower level, and they would listen to the news reports. They talked about what they heard, nervous and excited. At Caltech it would have been considered gauche to look over someone’s shoulder to watch what was on their comp screen.
Hannah had seen the video they played of Gandalf, the pictures taken there as the Fleet ships based on the planet had retreated.
Hannah couldn’t imagine how someone could be considered a hero because he tucked his tail between his legs and ran away as fast as he could. Could she face more than eighty-to-one odds? Not! She had no doubts about her own actions in a situation like that. She had thought better of Fleet Aloft and its officers -- that they too would run strained her imagination.
But the man who’d led the four ships away from Gandalf was considered a hero. It mystified Hannah. They had fought their attackers -- of course they’d fought! Then they left the planet and the four hundred million people who lived there behind. They had already seen that the planet was being destroyed, the people massacred in numbers almost inconceivable. And they’d fled anyway.
They had copied the transmissions from the planet; they’d made observations of their own. What they recorded was horrible. Beyond horrible. What possible excuse did they have for leaving? It was inconceivable that someone could turn their back on what was happening to all those people, leaving them to their fate and saving themselves.
Now Hannah had seen actual pictures of the explosions; the ones in her dreams were pale shadows of the real thing. Huge explosions, you could see each fireball consume a chunk of the planet. You could see the shock wave travel out, preceded by the heat flash. The last shot of Gandalf lingered, as if the person with the camera was in total shock and disbelief and no longer capable of taking their finger off the record button. The fireballs had merged. There was nothing but flame and smoke on the planet’s surface; fat, huge pillars of flame punching out of the atmosphere.
Gandalf was gone, but Fleet World had survived. Now news had come that Shackleton, a small colony, was gone, but Khansas, a colony the size of Gandalf, hadn’t been attacked. Word of the attacks was being spread through the Federation as fast as ships could carry it.
