Lines of Departure

He produces a data pad, taps around on the screen, and then turns it so I can see the display.

 

“You’ll be reporting to NACS Midway at 1300 Zulu tomorrow. She’s on her way to Independence Station right now.”

 

“The Midway?” I search my mental data bank for information. “Didn’t they decommission her a few years back?”

 

“She was put in reserve. They bumped her back into the active fleet last week. The maintenance crew is ferrying her over from the strategic-reserve fleetyard.”

 

“Wow,” I say. “Fleet’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Pacific-class ships are eighty fucking years old by now. I thought they were all scrapped already.”

 

“All but Midway and Iwo Jima,” the lieutenant says. He puts away his data pad and gets up from his chair. “Fleet’s short on hulls, Sarge. The Pacifics are old, but they’re big hulls. Good luck in your new assignment.”

 

“What about my gear? My bug suit burned up with the Manitoba, along with all my other stuff.”

 

“Ask the supply guy in charge on the Midway. They’ll reissue everything, I’m sure.”

 

When they fitted me for my bug suit, I had to come to the fleet’s Special Warfare Center on Luna to get fitted, and the process took three days of adjustments and a week of field testing. I know without the trace of a doubt that the supply monkeys on that scrapyard candidate won’t have a new bug suit in storage. I know I’ll be sent into battle against the Lankies without proper armor, on a ship that got a last-minute reprieve from its date with the scrapyard’s plasma torches. But the personnel clerk in front of me doesn’t care about any of that, nor would he have the clout to do anything about it if he did, so I just salute and watch him walk out of the storage room.

 

As a civvie station, Independence has some luxuries that austere Gateway can’t match. Many of the public areas have viewports that offer a good vista of Earth through multiple layers of inch-thick polycarb panes. On Gateway, you can look at Earth through external camera feeds, but nothing can match seeing the planet with your own eyes. There’s a small lounge in our restricted area, and I spend much of my remaining idle time until Midway’s arrival sitting there, watching the orbital traffic and the swirling weather patterns in the atmosphere below. Somewhere down there, beneath the cloud cover, Mom is going about her business in PRC Boston-7, warming up her BNA ration while watching Network shows. Luna is on the far side of the station, out of my field of view, but I know that Halley is in a classroom or a drop-ship cockpit right now, teaching the next batch of space bus drivers how to fly a Wasp. The only two people I care about are closer to me than they’ve been for most of my half-decade career, and my travel and comms restrictions mean that they might as well be sixty light years and half a dozen Alcubierre hops away.

 

For the first time in my life in the service, I don’t want to leave Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 13

 

 

 

The Midway is a relic, a loose confederation of parts flying in vaguely carrier-shaped formation. When I arrive at my new duty station, there are still swarms of civilian fleet yard techs everywhere, hammering the ancient carrier back into fighting condition. Everywhere I look, there’s evidence that the Midway had a long and rough life in the fleet, and that she didn’t get the benefit of a final overhaul before being mothballed. The lining on the deck floors is shot, the paint on the bulkheads is old and faded, and the whole ship smells like a long-disused storage locker. I look around for some redeeming feature, but after a few hours on board, the best thing I can say about the old warhorse is that her hull still seems to be mostly airtight.

 

“I know what you’re thinking,” my new commanding officer says. His name tag says MICHAELSON. He’s a captain, not a major like all my other COs. The special-operations company on a carrier is usually headed by a staff-officer rank, but the fleet seems to be running out of even those.

 

“I’m not getting paid to think, sir,” I tell him. “That’s for the ranks with the stars on the shoulder boards.”

 

I take stock of the cloth badges on the captain’s fatigues. I’ve never met him in the fleet, but he looks vaguely familiar, and he has the proper credentials—SEAL badge, drop wings in gold, all the right specialty tabs, and a SpecWar badge on the black beret tucked underneath his shoulder board. The fact that he’s in battle dress instead of Class A rags is somehow comforting.

 

“Yes, I’m active duty,” he says when he notices my glance at his patches. “I’m the new CO of the SpecWar company on the Midway. Such as it is.”

 

“If you don’t mind me saying, sir, I’m surprised they assigned a full company of podheads to this tub.”

 

He gives me a curt smile and folds his hands across his chest.

 

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