COMMANDER

“. . . responsible for saving the ship and all aboard from certain annihilation,” I finished, ignoring his interruption.

He was breathing deep, quick breaths and remained flushed and wide-eyed.

“Oh, wouldn’t I?” I finished after we had stared laser bursts at each other for a moment. I leaned forward a little and spoke quietly, “I am done taking any shit from you, Lewellyn. I recognize your feelings about me and the promotion action forced upon you! But there is no excuse for refusing to provide a fellow officer of flag rank the respect due in front of the crews. You may demean me all you want. I don’t really give a damn! But you are not going to demean the Marines in front of anyone. Treat me any way you like when we are alone together, but when we are in front of any of our subordinates, we will treat each other with the respect for the rank regardless of how we feel personally.”

He blanched visibly. After a moment, he leaned back just a little in the chair.

“Of course, you are clearly correct, Commander Rawlings . . . all threats aside. There was deep, mutual respect between myself and your former commander. I shall endeavor to remember that respect and bestow it upon the rank rather than the man.”

Politi-speak for “Go fuck yourself, you insolent pup!”

I smiled. “I believe you and I, and our staffs, are overdue for a briefing, Captain.”

“See my . . .” he began, then stopped and looked at me. “When would your team be available for the briefing, Commander?”

“We will be happy to make ourselves available at your discretion, Captain.”

“We are above the ecliptic and settled in position for the moment. It is imperative we gather raw materials. Shall we say 1000 tomorrow, here in the Ready Room?”

This was the norm, as practiced by my predecessors.

“Very good, Captain.”

I left Lewellyn sitting in the conference room and headed for Marine country. I didn’t shut the door behind me.

His decision to move the Rontar toward the asteroid belt before we had gained a current mapping of the whole system was not an actual crime as defined by regulations, but it certainly was a monstrous mistake in terms of accepted protocol and normal activity. With no sensor confirmations, he had moved the ship into mortal danger on an assumption.

Could he over-ride such protocols? Certainly. He was the captain, and had total authority and total responsibility for the ship and his sailors. But he risked his reputation and his command when, or if, he did so and something went wrong.

Despite the currently un-explained distorted shape of the asteroid belt and the odds of such a thing happening without it being reported being in the trillions to one, his decision to move the ship could still be interpreted as wrongful and of reckless endangerment. My threat to him was real, as was his fault, and he knew it.

Then, again . . . were any of us blameless of emotional and psychological “out of balance” moments and poor decision-making after the massacre of Epsilon Wrangor B?

My session with the hotheads remained in my mind. Most of all, I remembered the strange looks given me by the female, Carla Donner, and the large male, Henry Bolton. Donner was a T1 Assault Gunner on a fire team in Harlan’s wedge, while Bolton was T3 Demolitions for a team with Gene’s wedge. Notations in both their files by line officers were “walk on water” type good, espousing Donner as completely fearless yet intelligently controlled, and Bolton as an absolute wizard with heavy weapons. So, they had significant skills, and they had the respect of their teammates and their line officers. They each also had a latent fire in their eyes.

Despite putting Donner down twice and Bolton once, both out cold, the same fire was in their eyes when they opened once again. I had not beaten them. I had only stopped them momentarily. In their minds, and in their hearts, they had not been beaten. They would never be beaten until that day their hearts stopped. I clearly remembered Donner’s attitude; those blazing, determined eyes as she staggered and gasped for breath and tried to speak to me with puke and snot dribbled down her chest. But she had not been beaten, or even bowed.

Like Bolton, whatever was inside her, driving her, it would never stop. Her body might collapse from fatigue or shock but her spirit would never be defeated. Were there others like this in the clan? There must be. Those were the troopers I wanted to be around! Those who, just like me, refused to ever be beaten. Those who would do whatever it took to answer the call. So we fell down a time or two, or got knocked down a time or two, we would not be beaten or broken.

Suppose . . . just suppose . . . I might be able to put a team together, comprised of these superlative troopers. With attitudes like theirs, and advanced training, what might I do with such a team?

Back in pre-space history, before mankind developed starships and Transition Jumping, before the Clone Trials and the Brazil Protocols, most militaries of any note had a small number of elite troops who were specially trained in advanced warfare tactics and capabilities. I had been doing a little research on these elite troops, trying to learn up on management and leadership thinking and methodologies to help me be a better clan commander. Now, though, a new thought was worming its way through my mind.

Could I resurrect a team of elite warrior/soldiers with advanced training and capabilities? Make them incredibly skilled at counterterrorism, insurgency, and other covert operations? It was an intriguing thought!

To me, and many of the fine soldiers who turned instructors and military authors over time, there was a big difference between soldiers and warriors. A warrior fought because they liked to fight, and were incurably aggressive and violent, all the time. Their very attitude of being, existing, was for battle and rage and violence, and the only way to stop them was to kill them. A soldier, on the other hand, was just as violent and aggressive, but only when necessary during active battle. Otherwise, they were intelligent and well-adjusted individuals with superb training and inquisitive minds.

What I wanted was to find those soldiers, controlled and well-balanced, who yet had the warrior spirit, indomitable, unconquerable.

I sat in my office and dug into the clan records in the Combat AI, searching for special people. They had to be smart, very sharp, so high grades were mandatory. They had to have battle experience and specialized training in weapons or hand-to-hand or blade, or any one of a dozen different specialty skills required by exemplary troopers; marksmanship, demolitions, comms, suits, computers and networking, tactics, the list went on and on. After several days of searching and interviewing I had found nine more troopers who seemed to have what I was looking for and inserted them into the training process. I only had to go through ninety-two interviews to find those nine. Ten percent . . . not bad at all.

Not only was I looking for skills, I was also looking for something intangible. A restlessness, a certain rebelliousness, a wary and ever-present readiness to fight, that latent “Fuck You!” hiding in their eyes. All these were needed yet all needed to be under control, as well. This attitude is not the easiest thing to see. Many times you can find it in the hotheads. Yet other times you find it in the most quiet and easygoing exterior demeanor.

Despite not even being able to describe well what I was looking for, I found I became better at spotting it as time went along.

Dull acrylic and polycarb practice blades spun and flashed, striking each other with a tack sound. A medium-sized man in fatigues with short, dark red hair leaped and whirled with astonishing grace and fluidity. Gunnery Sergeant Flynn was the clan blade expert with knife, katana, and lance. He was showing the group before him, clearly, he was a master bladesman. It stood to reason—to have obtained the rarified rank of gunnery sergeant was something only a very small percentage of Marines ever accomplished. Flynn was the only one aboard the Rontar, and one of only three in all the ships and thousands of Marines which had died at Epsilon Wrangor B. Each of the eleven troopers in the group already had multiple welts and bruises where the blunt practice blades had struck.

The group was training in the bay of Hangar 10, where twenty of the big heavy fighters were stored and maintained. The launch pad made a great practice area and it was away from the Marine area. However, the more I watched, the more I was bothered. This didn’t seem like training, to me. It seemed to be a stage where Flynn was showing off and taking the opportunity to beat the crap out of troopers just because he could. No tell, just show. Well, maybe it was his method. After all, I hadn’t held back, had I? On the other hand, I hadn’t taken any delight from it, either, and I explained in order to teach.

I was watching from the hangar control cabin catwalk twenty meters above and fifty meters distant. Flynn was a marvel! His fast, sharp, and defined movements made the others seem like they were sleepwalking. I watched quietly for twenty minutes.

Trooper Donner was literally staggering with pain and fatigue but she refused to quit or to slow down at all, nor did the big man, Bolton. But Donner had . . . something . . . yet more than any of them. She had some aspect of raw courage and indomitability which showed so brightly it nearly glowed. Her determination was mirrored by some of the others. She was inspiration for them.

Flynn finally called a halt. Inspiration and determination were fine attributes but these troopers were so exhausted they had lost too much control and were likely to really hurt each other. Troopers dropped to their knees and plastic swords and knives fell from hands as though too heavy to be carried any longer.

There was a master bladesman in every clan as instructor, expert, and maker of the fine knives and katanas we used. Somewhere in the deep past, along with conflicting legends of how and why, some Marine officer had made the decision to incorporate blade training along with the martial arts we used for hand-to-hand combat. Probably because it made sense to him at the time. It still does. We all learned about bushido and samurai because it helped to instill a good bit of self-respect and a sense of honor in the troopers.

Today, it was just smart tactics to have a long blade to serve you when the enemy was all around and in close quarters combat, and when using a gun was not advisable because you might hit another Marine or something combustible or explosive when you really didn’t want to. We learned the use and violent application of edged weapons in lances, swords, knives, axes, and tomahawks, and in several configurations of each. I returned to my quarters thinking about Flynn and the “lesson” he had given.

Far too much, it reminded me of my first meeting with Inoke. Inoke Kirin was a hand-to-hand instructor on my second assignment. I’d been reassigned to KiloMike Clan as a T3 after I had gotten out of the hospital and recuperated from the injuries received in the pirate battle. Pirates were still the main concern of the Fleet and the Marines then, years before we discovered the Shaquaree. I was aboard the frigate Romulus, and part of our normal rotation was advanced hand-to-hand to teach us things we hadn’t learned in basic.

I was a real tough-guy! I had battle scars to prove it and an attitude to match. I sauntered into my first class with Inoke with a chip on my shoulder and nearly laughed when I saw him for the first time. He was almost half my size. I couldn’t help the half-stifled guffaw which burst out of my mouth. There was a ring of nearly fifty troopers surrounding him in a big, open circle and he stood alone in the middle; this little, brown-skinned, black haired man of some Oriental heritage. His dark eyes flashed toward me as he heard my snort. Without speaking, he just motioned me forward to join him in the center with a crook of his finger.

No problem, my attitude said. If the little shit wants to get his ass kicked it’s no concern of mine. I stepped forward. He didn’t bow, he didn’t speak, he just attacked. In moments, my nose was smashed and bleeding fiercely, and my eyes were watering so badly I couldn’t see. It wouldn’t have mattered. I never saw the attack coming, anyway.

I thought I was quick and tough. I thought size mattered. I was wrong.

Inoke Kirin took me apart like a brick wall, one brick at a time. The first brick to go was my nose so I couldn’t see well and was debilitated by the pain. The next bricks were my shoulders with hammering, pinpoint strikes at the joint where the collarbone met the shoulder. The pain was unbelievable, and I couldn’t even lift my arms after those blows. Next, he took the bricks of my hips with two strikes each, one by hand and one by kick. I was staggering, stiff-legged and barely able to stand. Then it was my knees. He didn’t hit the knees themselves because it would take too long to heal. Instead, he hit me in the muscles where they joined the ligaments attaching to the knee joint and bones. I went down like a sucker-punched drunk in a bar fight.

The little prick didn’t stop. He started kicking me. Not to hurt me but to humiliate me. My rage rose and I found the strength to fight through the pain and climb back to my feet, swaying and staggering. Kirin finished me off with two shots, one just below the sternum at the diaphragm and, as I was falling, he hit me with his thumb in the pocket at the top of the sternum and the base of the neck.

Not only had he forced the breath from my body, he had made it impossible to draw in another breath by shocking my throat below the larynx. I lay on the floor, struggling and squirming, thinking I was going to die because I had been arrogant. Even through the pain and the struggle, I realized I had never even attempted a blow, or raised my arm to strike or even form a half-assed block. It had all happened much too quickly in a handful of seconds, and he had never made a sound or uttered a single word or cry.

He knelt beside me and grabbed my head in both hands and forced it backward on my neck. I thought he was going to kill me. What he was really doing was opening my larynx so I could breath. When I did take a shuddering breath, he sat back on the floor in a cross-legged position and made a motion with his arm. All of the other troopers sat immediately. There was complete silence while I recovered.

I was in a daze. I had never been hit so hard in my entire life, and I’d been in a fight or three with much bigger guys than this little prick. My whole body was on fire, in agony.

I saw Inoke’s face bend over me to look into my eyes and he motioned me to stand up. It took me nearly a full minute to climb agonizingly to a stand. Inoke stood beside me and began motioning. It took me a moment to figure out he was pantomiming to the other troopers the strikes he had made. I couldn’t follow his movements, his miming and signing. My mind was still clouded by pain and lack of breath. I backed away a couple of staggering steps and fell right on my ass.

He just stood there looking at me with those glittering black eyes. Hell, everyone was staring at me and there were some half-grins involved. It pissed me off all over again. I lumbered to my feet. No one was going to humiliate me like that. No one! I struck the best guard stance I could and snarled at the little bastard.

He smiled at me. It was the last thing I remember from the session.

When I woke up in the hospital, he was there and still smiling at me. He reached up and pulled down the neck of the odd suit he wore so I could see. His neck was a twisted mass of gnarly scar tissue where his voice box should be.

Crap! I thought he had just been showing off! Some little asshole with an attitude he was so much better than the rest of us that he didn’t need to speak.

He began signing to me. I was not very good at sign language. I hadn’t been paying enough attention in class. I screwed up my face in concentration and he began all over again, much slower.

“What have you learned?” he asked me.

I tried to sign back and he just tipped his head as if he were laughing and motioned me to speak.

“I learned I am an idiot,” I said.

He peeled back the neck piece a little further and I saw the senior sergeant tattoo.

“Sir!” I started over. “I have learned I am an idiot, Senior Sergeant, sir!”

“No!” he signed. “What have you learned?”

I thought hard, trying to dig through the urge to tell him what I thought he wanted to hear to get at the truth. What had I learned?

“I have learned to not assume, sir. To not simply accept things at face value. And learned my perceptions are colored by my attitude and self-perception.”

“How will you improve?” he asked next.

“I must always be willing to learn something new, sir. I must never think I am in control of a situation, because it means I have a closed mind.”

Inoke smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. Crap! Even that hurt!

Inoke Kirin and I became good friends. Over the course of my two years with the Romulus I attended his classes as much as I possibly could. He could not speak, so he let his actions speak for him. But after every demonstration he would go through the moves again in ultra-slow motion for the rest of us. He showed each strike or block or kick and pantomimed the results or the reason why it had been struck, and then helped us practice each of them.

Inoke taught me two things; how to be a good student, and how to be a good instructor.

The briefing with Navy began with a situational statement from the captain as we sipped coffee. I was in the Ready Room with Timmons and Jenkins, and the captain had brought Dotes and two other command officers. As committed, Lewellyn had been courteous and respectful to all of us.

“The Rontar is currently five degrees above the ecliptic and in matching orbit to numerous large and dense asteroids within the belt at an average distance of 50,000 kilometers. The ship is in no danger from any other orbiting body. Full sensors came back online last night at 2340 hours, and the first thing we did was validate position and situation relative to this system. Commander Hampstead, our science officer, will take over. Mr. Hampstead?”

Hampstead was a full Navy commander, a slightly chubby man who looked to be in his early fifties.

“Sir. Sensor validation,” he began speaking in a sonorous, pedantic tone, “has shown the most recent star charts we possess of the system are grossly incorrect. In point of fact, no astronomic points of reference we can detect are exactly where they should be based on projections from the last known validation.”

Jenkins leaned forward with an astonished look and asked, “Are you referencing the galactic scale?”

Cmdr. Hampstead smiled very slightly and responded, “No, Lt. Jenkins, I am referencing all known galaxies. Frankly,” he stated, placing his hand over his heart in a dramatic gesture, “I don’t think we are in the correct temporal plane.”