Theirs Not To Reason Why: An Officer's Duty Part 26

In fact, the group moved so quickly, the camera had barely focused for more than a few seconds when they vanished through a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Proof that their presence was indeed sanctioned by the station's governor.

A bit over the top at points, Ia decided, pausing in her exercises to check the timestreams. But otherwise more or less on target. You shouldn't have mentioned that you have a sister, Little Brother...but good job all the same.

The cameras for Nebula News swerved back to the reporter. Finally, the show had a view of the crowd of sentients behind him, almost two dozen bodies who had won the chance to travel with the Lottery members directly. Others no doubt were arriving on the station elsewhere, hoping to get an interview, but it was too late.

The correspondent for Nebula News was willing to acknowledge that much. "...Well. There you have it. One of the richest, and quite possibly one of the most headstrong, meioas in the known galaxy. Given the speed of our arrival via OTL, we have a mandatory two-day waiting period before we can safely turn around and head back home. I shall be bringing updates on Meioa Quentin-Jones's background, education, and other news from interviews with those locals who may know him in the meantime...since the meioa-o does not seem inclined to grant further interviews at this time.

"Hopefully in the future, that will change. But for now, that seems to be all. I'm Mark Optermitter, reporting live for Nebula News, currently in orbit around Independent Colonyworld Sanctuary," he concluded.

A brief holding message covered up the handful of seconds it took for the main anchors at Nebula News to come back on screen. Just as they reappeared, the channel switched back to the Olympics. Ia smiled wryly and switched positions again on the hydraulics machine, this time working her abdominal muscles.

Apparently Commander Salish doesn't want to hear the "post aftermath wrap-up" speeches. As far as I'm concerned, that's great, because neither do I-ah, even better! she thought, peering at the mid-race scores posted in the corner of the screen. L'k'tikkitt is in second place in freestyle ice climbing. There's a 58 to 42 percent chance he'll win. I bet Bennie another lobster dinner on this one. The probabilities were stronger on the biathlon, but this one is a much more honest wager, since ice climbing is so difficult to master. Or so I've heard, offworld. Anything to do with moving on ice or snow is far too potentially deadly, back home...

Back home. But it wasn't home, anymore.

With all that money, my brothers are going to change, well, not the face of Sanctuary, but they'll definitely change its future...and what a relief to know they've pulled it off. One less worry on my mind.

Resting back on the bench, Ia stared up at the pale grey ceiling and smiled. She even closed her eyes for a moment. The deep pleasure of having surmounted this major hurdle-funding the survival of her homeworld-unfortunately didn't last very long. Once again, she was running out of time. She would have to finish exercising soon, prepare for hyperjump, and then try to get at least three hours of sleep before the Audie-Murphy would run up against a trio of pirates.

They would be caught skimming rare isotope vapors from one of the gas giants in the next system, and do their best to outflank and outfight the Audie and the Murphy. Which meant it would take all of Ia's concentration to make sure she navigated the fight to a Navy-favorable outcome, but still allow one particular pirate vessel to escape. Which goes against my orders, and will count as a black mark on my record. A very black mark, if I don't position things just right and they figure out it was deliberately let go, on my part.

Unfortunately, I need that particular ship to still be out there, and to have a very good, repeated reason to hate b.l.o.o.d.y Mary in the coming year, in preparation for three years down the road. Which means at least three more black marks on my record in the near future. Then again, having perfect records would start making the DoI suspicious of my success rate.

APRIL 28, 2494 T.S.

BATTLE PLATFORM.

MAD JACK SIC TRANSIT.

Arms tucked behind her back in Parade Rest, Dress Blues cap squarely leveled on her brow, Ia tried to flex her knees subtly. Light gravity or not, standing in one position for a long time was tiresome. Her efforts to shake the numbness from her muscles did not pa.s.s unnoticed, however. Commodore Deng looked up from the desk-level screens and printouts he was reviewing.

"Feet getting sore, Lieutenant?" the commanding officer of Battle Platform Mad Jack asked.

"Sir, no, sir. Just making sure the blood is still flowing, sir," she explained.

"Bored, Lieutenant?" Captain Yacob asked next. He was seated next to the commodore, reviewing the same files with his superior. On Deng's far side was one of the other officers in charge of Delta-VX patrols, Captain Harrison.

That question was low on the list of probabilities. Ia consulted the timestreams briefly, lightly. She shook her head slowly to stall for time. "No, Captain. Just...concerned about time, that's all."

"Oh? What sort of time, Lieutenant?" Commodore Deng asked, glancing up at her.

"Well, sirs, if you deem me still psychologically adjusted and fit for continued duty on Blockade Patrol, I should be returned to duty. The Audie-Murphy is scheduled to drop and depart for her next patrol as soon as we hit the Annabelle 27 System, which is in about one hour. If I'm fit to continue, I should be on board and ready to go when that happens," Ia stated. "And if you judge me not fit for continued Blockade duty, sirs, I need to be dismissed equally soon so I can go pack up and remove my things from the Audie-Murphy."

Commodore Deng shook his head. "We already knew the answer to that particular question before you even came in here, Lieutenant."

"Sir?" Ia questioned. She wasn't questioning the outcome; she knew-all three of them knew-that she was as stable as anyone could hope to be in a high-stress zone like the Blockade. More stable than most, really. Instead, she was questioning why she had been kept here.

Captain Yacob answered her one-word query. "We're debating whether or not to promote you."

"Do you have an opinion on the matter, Lieutenant?" Captain Harrison asked Ia. She lifted her chin as she did so, no doubt waiting for Ia to eagerly promote herself. Ia wasn't about to play that game. That was the wrong way to advance. But neither would false modesty help her cause.

"It would depend on what a promotion meant, sirs," she said instead. "I feel I've managed to strike up the right level of camaraderie and leadership within the rotating crews of the Audie-Murphy. They've come to trust my judgment. I also feel there is still much I could learn under Commander Salish. Her battle instincts are more finely tuned to the needs of Blockade work than most. I've missed some calls that she's made, much to the detriment of our work.

"If you feel I'm ready for a promotion, then I would do my best to live up to your expectations of me. Perhaps I simply am in need of cross-training under another commanding officer, to get more seasoning under my cap-if the lattermost is the case, and you're moving me from the Audie-Murphy to another Delta-VX, then I'll still need time to pack and board the next ship, depending upon its own patrol schedule."

"And if we feel you have peaked in your promotable career track?" Commodore Deng asked her. "If we choose to mark your file as unpromotable?"

"If my superiors and the Department of Innovations feel, in your best judgment, that I have peaked in my capacity for leadership, then that would be your prerogative, sirs," Ia admitted. "I will continue as I have done, trying my best to lead by good example, and doing my best to figure out what a good example actually is." She smiled slightly, wryly. "After that, the only objection I could possibly have is if I served for several more years but never got another pay raise, sirs."

Captain Harrison leaned her forearms on the edge of the table, her face twisting with sarcasm. "Wow, Lieutenant. You have every possible answer oh so neatly covered in your reply. Did you practice that little speech in your cabin before coming to this performance review?"

"No, sir." She couldn't dip into the timestreams deeply enough to read the other woman's motivations, since Ia needed to be here, aware of what was happening in the real world. But she could sense the possibilities branching out immediately before her.

"Somehow, I don't believe you, Lieutenant." Sitting back, Captain Harrison spread her hands. "In fact, I think you're grandstanding. Manipulating the system, so we'll be convinced... or rather, conned...into giving you greater responsibility."

"Commodore Deng, permission to speak freely?" Ia asked, shifting her gaze to the older of the two men.

He studied her for a moment, then nodded. "Permission granted."

Ia looked back at Harrison. "Either stuff your att.i.tude up your recharge socket, Captain, or you can kiss my asteroid."

Captain Harrison widened her eyes, affronted by the insult. Captain Yacob frowned at Ia. "Lieutenant!"

"Sorry, sir, but it goes against my nature to tolerate the grandstanding of a hypocrite," Ia growled. Externally, she glared at Harrison. Internally, she was enjoying the ride. There were ways, and then there were ways, to advance her career. This was-at least to her warped sense of humor-one of the more enjoyable routes she could take. "I have never asked for a promotion. I have never asked for any of my medals. I have never once filed an incident report glorifying or exalting my actions. I have simply stated the facts of each matter, and moved on to the next task.

"I'm sorry if you think my standards are so low as to fake my devotion to service...and you may have the right to bust me all the way back down to Private for saying all of this...but I refuse to do less than my best just because you want to call it 'grandstanding.' So. If you have a problem with me, Captain Harrison, then I suggest you get over it. You can demote me, or promote me, or put me in charge of a garbage scow, it will not change my efforts, sir. You can slur my reputation all you like, even to the point of casting lies, but don't expect me to just stand here and take it."

"You're not in this to make friends, are you, Lieutenant?" Captain Yacob asked dryly, sitting back in his seat.

Ia relaxed her hard stance, shrugging slightly. "I'd say I'm quite capable of making friends in the Service, Captain. In fact, I have made several friends. I just refuse to lick asteroid while doing it. Sycophancy will only weaken and destroy the effectiveness of the Terran military. That's why we have the Department of Innovations, to make sure that nepotism and backroom deals don't ruin the quality of our leadership."

Commodore Deng raised one brow at that. "Is that what this is all about? Are you aiming for an eventual transfer into the DoI?"

Ia blinked, her surprise genuine. She hadn't expected him to draw that conclusion, and shook her head. "Ah...no, sir. To be honest, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind. I'm good at combat, and I always figured I'd be in combat. The DoI strikes me as too much of a desk job for my particular skill set."

Harrison studied her for a long moment, then tapped something into her workstation. Yacob blinked, glanced at her, and tapped something into his own. Between them, the commodore nodded slowly.

"Are you going to apologize to Captain Harrison, Lieutenant?" Commodore Deng asked her.

"If I am ordered to, sir, I will, since I do still respect each of you...but I should point out that you did give me permission to speak freely," Ia reminded them. "Apologizing for free speech when given permission to use it seems a bit contradictory to me."

Captain Harrison chuckled at that. The other two glanced at her. From their puzzled looks, neither man could figure out what she found so funny. Lifting her palms, she shook her head.

"No apologies are necessary, Lieutenant. You did have permission. For the record, I was playing Devil's Advocate. You do have a track record of...mm...bluntness about your devotion to duty, and I wanted to test it. By that, I mean more in your deeds than in your words, but I won't fault you for turning around and matching words to deeds, this time."

"In that case, I do apologize for any offense given, sir," Ia stated.

Harrison snorted, mouth twisting wryly, then turned to look at her companions. "Are we ready, then, Commodore, Captain?"

"Quite ready, Captain." Commodore Deng neatened the stack of printouts in front of him, then clasped his hands together, regarding Ia steadily. "It is the judgment of this review board that you are indeed stable enough to continue serving in a Blockade Patrol combat position. You will retain your current rank of Lieutenant Second Grade, and your current rate of pay. As you yourself have pointed out, you are best placed continuing to serve on board the TUPSF Audie-Murphy as its second-in-command. You will therefore do so."

"Thank you, Commodore. I shall do my best, sir," Ia promised, not at all disappointed at retaining her exact same rank for the next little while. It would give her a chance to prove her words were true...which ironically would help convince her superiors the next time her rank was up for review.

"You'd better. Dismissed, Lieutenant," Deng told her.

Nodding, Ia saluted the three of them. They saluted her back, and she turned to go. Palming open the door to the review room-used by officers for evaluating fellow officers; enlisted went through a different, less face-to-face process-she stepped into the corridor beyond. That had gone well. Her little display of rebellion and disrespect had proven to her superiors that she wasn't an entirely "perfect" soldier; that she had an all-too-Human side. Being too perfect would've been detrimental to her goals. It didn't hurt that her little tirade was the honest truth about how she felt.

Just before the door slid shut, she heard Harrison's voice. "Hey, Jake? If you ever don't want her, I'll take 'er."

"Oh, h.e.l.l, no. I'm-" The door sealed, cutting off the rest of his response.

Ia permitted herself a tiny smile.

CHAPTER 17.

My time on Blockade Patrol was fairly predictable-yes, I know that's an ironic choice of words for someone like me. But it was. Scout star systems, match lightwave information with system buoy data, check for any ships and either inspect or fight them. One four-month tour of duty became two, and two became three.

Commander Salish retired from the Blockade to go serve a normal six-month tour on Mars. I was eventually promoted to Lieutenant First Grade, and given command of the Audie-Murphy. Yeoman Weavers stayed on as co-pilot, and Kipple and Sikmah stayed as well. Others came and went, some due to injuries, some due to stress. A lot of them cycled through the Interdicted Zone, though at least I was able to cut down on the number of unnecessary deaths. And I was finally free to alter our routes within our patrol zone as I saw fit.

They actually encouraged us to do that in Blockade Patrol, since being unpredictable meant increasing the odds of catching the enemy by surprise. But most of what we did was routine, for the Blockade. Dangerous and messy, but routine. I will admit a few incidents do stand out in my mind, though.

~Ia OCTOBER 3, 2494 T.S.

NUK NUK 1338 SYSTEM.

"C'mon, stay with me, stay with me," Ia murmured, hands working swiftly as she mopped up Private Dixon's wound. "Don't you go anywhere, Helia, that's an order! You are not following Private Kings into the afterlife, you hear me?"

Engineering rocked with the force of another explosion. She swayed with the quake. Private Natmah was less skilled; his fingers slipped off the grey material cupping Dixon's inner thigh, allowing blood to spurt through what used to be her knee.

"Tighter!" Ia snapped. Dixon grunted as Natmah regained his pressure on her femoral artery. There was also a tourniquet around her lower thigh, but it couldn't be applied for very long. The other woman grunted again as Ia rubbed across the torn flesh with the sc.r.a.p of cloth she had found. It was dirty with petrochemicals, but that didn't matter; water-based moisture was Ia's enemy right now, moisture which would make cauterizing this wound rather difficult.

The hissing sound of welders stopped. "Sir!" one of the other members of the boarding party shouted. "The last hatchway to Engineering is sealed. I don't know how long it'll be until they bring up cutters of their own, though!"

"Understood!" Ia called back. Shifting back, she picked up her mechsuit rifle. It really wasn't designed to be fired by someone outside of their suit, but she'd had no choice. Fixing the biggest problem on their hands meant ditching both her and Dixon's armor. A crude cauterizing had cut down most of the bleeding from the other woman's maiming, but the future needed Helia Dixon to survive. Ia needed her to survive. Dixon's leg from the knee down could be regenerated, given enough time. Her whole life couldn't be restored if it was wasted.

"Brace yourself, Dixon; this is going to hurt like v'shova sh'naan..."

Aiming carefully, arms stretched to their fullest to clutch both the oversized trigger and the matching e-clip brace, Ia pulled the trigger. Deep red light seared slowly across the edge of Dixon's flesh. Dixon screamed and slumped, pa.s.sing out.

Steam and smoke boiled up from the wound. She cut off the beam two-thirds of the way through, rocked with another deck-shaking explosion, and finished searing the last few centimeters of the stump. Stripping the e-clip from the rifle in a swift, subtle move, she tossed the bulky weapon aside and leaned forward over the comatose private, fluttering her hand to signal Natmah to let go of the comatose woman's artery and strip off the tourniquet.

Nothing leaked. The cauterization was solid.

"Stay with me...Stay with me..." Energy crackled into the fingers of her left hand, jammed as they were against the power points at the top of the energy magazine. Her right hand pressed over Dixon's throat, ostensibly to feel for a pulse. Instead, Ia spun the electrical energy from the clip into her biokinetic gift, and poured that into the unconscious young woman.

Nothing seemed to happen. Then again, only another psychic, one trained to sense the subtle flow of kinetic inergy, would have noticed anything. Beneath her fingertips, Ia could feel the private's faltering heartbeat strengthen. She couldn't forge miracles in flesh, unlike her father's kin, but she could give the other woman enough biokinetic energy to survive. As soon as her instincts told her Dixon would survive within a comfortable probabilities margin, Ia slumped back, exhausted but relieved.

"She'll live."

Private Culpepper turned to face her, his fear visible since he had raised up both his outer and inner faceplates. "She'll live? The h.e.l.l with that, sir! n.o.body's gonna live! Kings is dead, Dixon's down-they've got us trapped in here. We're helpless!"

The sheer absurdity in his claim p.r.i.c.ked Ia's rare sense of humor. Sagging back onto her p-suited hip, she laughed. Culpepper did not take that well.

"You're laughing?" he demanded. He pointed one servo-hand back at the main doors, almost smacking it into Corporal Kipple, who was obeying the s.p.a.cer's law of Lock and Web by carefully returning the welding gear back to its storage locker, even though it was Salik gear on a badly damaged Salik ship drifting dead through s.p.a.ce without any functional engines. "Any minute now, the G.o.dd.a.m.n frogtopuses are gonna cut through those seals, and have us for dinner, and you're laughing?!"

Corporal Kipple grinned through his faceplate. "Eyah. You haven't served with the Lieutenant very long, have you, Culpepper? What, two patrols, now? Not quite two and a half?"

"What has that got to do with anything?" Culpepper snapped.

"Everything, Private," Ia stated, drawing in a deep breath. "Kipple knows I don't believe in the 'no-win' scenario. We have plenty of options, if we just open our eyes."

Pushing to her feet, she swayed a little, exhausted, but made it over to her mechsuit, open and waiting in standby mode. She didn't climb back into it, however. Instead, she dug out her holdout knife from one of the thigh compartments, then crossed to the pile of dead Salik which Privates Bissel and Lee had dragged into a corner. Bracing herself for the disgusting task, she sorted out one of the tentacle arms, and started sawing through the flesh just above the macrojuncture, where the bone ended and the lithe muscles began.

Culpepper gasped, then gagged. "Sir!"

"If you are having problems with the sometimes extreme requirements of Blockade duty, Private, I'd quite understand," Ia told him, most of her attention on her task. "But I'd prefer you to wait until we have escaped this situation before voicing them. In the meantime, please remain calm. What I am doing does not violate the protocols of Blockade Service. He's already dead, so this isn't torture."