The Middle of Nowhere Read online

  “I guess we’re going to have to find our own theme music,” Korie said, nodding to the junior officer. “Give it some thought, Mike, will you? Oh, and have Cookie prepare something special for dinner. This crew deserves a break. All right,” he said, raising his voice again. “Let’s get back to work, people. We’ve still got a ship to detox. Chief Leen? I want a confidence test in two hours.” And then he was out the hatch. Leen started barking at his crew, herding them forward. “Come on, you heard the man! Move your butts! Come on, Cappy! MacHeath! You move too long in the same place!” After that, the cargo bay emptied rapidly. There wasn’t anything to say, and most of the crew headed glumly back to work.

  Gatineau stood where he was for a moment, hesitating. Trying to make a decision. He felt like he was walking around with his abdomen ripped open and his guts dripping out. He needed . . . what was the word? Closure. That was it. He needed to feel that something had been resolved. He needed to be heard. He headed down to the keel and forward to the engine room, following Chief Leen. It was the quieter way; he’d run into fewer people.

  The keel was almost familiar to him now. He’d been up and down it so many times in the past few days, he knew it better than the cabin where he slept. He reached the machine shop and climbed the ladder up into the engine room proper. Leen was already at his work station, running integrity tests on the Alpha grappler and hollering at the Black Hole Gang.

  Gatineau’s anger flooded hotly back into him. The feelings of frustration and hurt and embarrassment were even more painful here in the engine room where the whole wild chase started. He was suddenly afraid that if he said or did anything else, it would only make it worse. Nevertheless . . . he came around the containment sphere to the chief engineer’s station with more resolve than he’d felt for a long while.

  He stood directly in front of Chief Leen, and spoke as firmly as he could. “Chief?” His voice squeaked. He tried again. “Chief?”

  The chief engineer looked up from his work station, as if he were acknowledging the delivery of a package. He swiveled on his stool to face the younger man. “What?”

  “You sent me on a snipe hunt,” Gatineau accused. “A wild goose chase. You had me running all over the ship. And everybody was in on it, weren’t they—laughing at me behind my back? That was wrong, sir. That’s an abuse of authority. I trusted you. I came here to be trained, not to be subjected to silly practical jokes.” Gatineau didn’t notice that behind him several of the Black Hole Gang were climbing down from the catwalks and approaching. “You had me embarrassing myself to people I’m supposed to be working with. I busted my ass for you, and for everyone else.” Gatineau’s voice cracked on the last few words. “I did every damn shitwork job on the whole damn ship just because I wanted to be a good crewmember.”

  Leen waited until Gatineau wound down. Finally, he said, “You came here to be trained, right?”

  “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “Okay. How do you get from the yoke to the forward airlock?”

  “Uh,” Gatineau frowned momentarily. “You go aft till you get to the engine room access, you climb up to the keel and go all the way forward. Or you follow the primary fuselage and access through the deck in the auxiliary reception chamber.” He looked puzzled. “But what does this have to do with—?”

  Leen ignored the question. “How do you get from there to the inner hull, seventy degrees, two-thirds aft?”

  “Um. You go all the way back through the keel to the cable access forward of the engine room. Up to the upper starboard passage, aft two doors to the airlock bay. Next to the airlock bay is an access panel. Go past the meat tanks.”

  Leen nodded. “Good. How do you get from the officer’s wardroom to the intelligence engine bay?”

  “There’s two ways. The fastest is to take either corridor forward, onto the Bridge, down to the Ops deck, down and aft through the Ops bay, down to the keel, and up the first ladder. But because Bridge access is restricted, it’s better to just go aft, take the drop chute to the keel, and head forward again.” Comprehension was beginning to show on Gatineau’s face.

  “Good,” said Leen. “What are the specific responsibilities of Reynolds, Stolchak, and Fontana?”

  “Reynolds is the union steward. Stolchak is the duty officer for the farm. Fontana is the chief pharmacist’s mate.”

  “Which one of them do I see if I need a case of Martian anchovies for the captain’s pizza?”

  “Neither. You ask Toad Hall, the ship’s dog-robber.”

  “Where do I go for a rotator jacket?”

  “Storage compartment 130-G7, inner hull. Access through the port corridor, down and forward.”

  “Who’s our official warlock?”

  “Mikhail Hodel, sir.”

  “What’s scotatic ventriculation?”

  “Deep-gravity skeltering of chaotic anti-matter.”

  “How do you know if you’ve been in space too long?”

  “Dr. Williger starts to look good to you.”

  “What’s rule number one?”

  “Uh—whatever your superior officer says it is.”

  “Yep.” Leen nodded. “I’d say you’re pretty well trained. What do you think?”

  “Uh—” Gatineau began uncertainly. Fear of further embarrassment kept him from answering what he was thinking. He was thinking he’d done pretty damned well.

  Leen pointed past the crewman’s shoulder. “I wasn’t asking you. I was asking them.”

  Gatineau turned around. Gathered in a group behind him were Reynolds, Hall, Stolchak, Cappy, MacHeath, Fontana, Eakins, Freeman, Hodel, Goldberg, Armstrong, Green, Ikama, Saffari, and just about everyone else who’d been a part of his search for the elusive moebius wrench. As one, they began applauding, laughing, and cheering. “Good job, Gatineau!” Even Commander Brik had paused on his way through the engine room and nodded a gruff acknowledgment.

  “Huh?” Gatineau turned back to Leen, startled and surprised. “But, but—” Understanding came flooding up inside him then. He’d been initiated . He’d been proving that he was a good team player.

  Still flustered, he turned back around to face the other crewmembers, feeling embarrassed all over again, as well as proud and annoyed and happy to finally be in on the joke. And finally... finally, he felt fellowship .

  “You sonsabitches!” he muttered, shaking his head and grinning broadly all at the same time. And then somebody was clapping him on the back and somebody else was shaking his hand and abruptly Irma Stolchak was giving him a kiss that was much more than friendly, and when he finally surfaced for air, all he could say was, “I mean it! You’re all sonsabitches!” But he was laughing and so were they. “And I wanna be a sonofabitch just like all of you.”

  And then he turned back to Leen again. “But . . . just one thing. Tell me the truth. There’s no such thing as a moebius wrench, is there?”

  “Who said that?” said Leen. “I never did. As a matter of fact, I have a moebius wrench right here.”

  “You do?” Gatineau’s eyes went wide in disbelief.

  Leen turned back to his work station and slid open a drawer. He reached in and pulled out a plaque with a golden wrench mounted on it; the handle was twisted around on itself, with a moebius half-twist. Leen stood up and with great ceremony handed the plaque to Gatineau.

  “Congratulations, son,” he said, shaking Gatineau’s hand.

  Gatineau took the plaque, uncomprehending at first, then he stared in surprise and astonishment. Beneath the wrench, the nameplate said:Keeper of the Moebius Wrench

  Engineer Robert Gatineau

  Star Wolf

  “Wow,” said Gatineau. “And wow again. That’s—beautiful! Wow!” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m really . . . wow . . . I don’t know what to say. This is great.”

  “It’s okay,” said Cappy. “We weren’t expecting a speech.”

  Abruptly, a puzzled expression crossed Gatineau’s face. “Uh, can I ask one question? How did you guys do that p
ixie thing?”

  “What pixie thing?”

  “The star-pixie? You know. The one I saw in the farm . . .? Behind the corn . . . With the big eyes . . .?”

  Leen looked confused. So did the others. “Huh?”

  Gatineau’s expression wisened abruptly. “Okay, I get it, I get it. Never mind. One snipe hunt is enough. Keep your pixie. Have your joke.”

  “Hey,” said MacHeath. “I promise you, nobody did anything. We don’t have a lot of spare time around here, as you may have noticed.”

  “Right,” said Gatineau, quickly. “Right. Nobody did anything. If that’s the way you want to be—okay, okay.” He accepted a congratulatory tankard of Chief Leen’s finest beer (aged two hours) and demonstrated what else he had learned since boarding the Star Wolf.

  Later, MacHeath remarked to Chief Leen. “That pixie business. You think he was trying to reverse the gag?”

  “I certainly hope so. I’d hate to think we hadn’t trained him completely.”

  Fennelly

  Jon Korie’s first ship was a young ship, the LS-714. Her captain was Kia Miyori, a petite Asian woman who commanded her crew with exquisite politeness and respect. The LS-714 was one link in an extensive pipeline running mail and supplies to several small colony worlds deep across the rift that divided the majority of Allied worlds from the unknown bulk of the Morthan Solidarity. Korie was away from home four months at a time, with only two weeks leave between trips.

  If Carol was unhappy with his long absences, she never said so. She worked hard to make sure that every moment of their short times together was a honeymoon. She voiced no complaint, she listened attentively to his concerns, and she made sure that he went away again with joyous memories and a commitment to come home.

  Korie served as chief petty officer and senior farm officer for thirteen months, increasing the ship’s efficiency rating one point for each month of service. He was awarded a triple bonus and a letter of commendation from Admiral Coon’s office.

  After the third trip across the rift, Korie requested time with his family and was temporarily assigned to the Academy, where he taught other young officers how to manage the complexities of starship bookkeeping and inventory. He was an effective instructor and at the end of his threemonth term was offered a permanent position.

  Carol wouldn’t let him accept it. Although the past three months had seen some of their happiest days—and nights—together, she wasn’t foolish enough to try to make it last forever. “You’ll never be happy until you’ve got a captain’s stars on your shoulders,” she told him. “You’re getting fidgety, Jon. It’s time for you to get back into space.”

  Jon Korie’s second ship was the LS-911. He was appointed her second officer and astrogator. He had helped to build the LS-911; he had installed her farm, and later had been part of the team to certify her singularity stardrive. He proudly showed both his signatures on the inside of the hull to the captain. This turned out to be a mistake.

  Captain Jack Fennelly was a hard man, tough and uncompromising. He’d had a long successful career in the service and he had his own ideas on how a ship should be run. He wasn’t happy with the shape of the new Allied navy. The accelerated pace of production was producing hundreds of new ships and captains; Fennelly resented that these much younger men were earning their appointments so early in life and so easily. He viewed Korie’s pride in the ship and his enthusiasm for her maintenance not as an asset but as a threat to his own credibility.

  Korie worked hard for Fennelly; he recognized that there was much he could learn from the man; but Fennelly never acknowledged Korie’s efforts. No matter how good a job Korie accomplished on something, Fennelly only pointed out how it could have been better, how it should have been done instead.

  Korie withdrew into himself and renewed his studies of the zyne. He refused to let the circumstances control his emotions. During this time, as a way of clarifying his thoughts, he wrote several extensive inquiries into the nature of command; he called the document The Quality of Service.

  At the heart of Korie’s thesis was the thought that loyalty cannot be created by command; it must be created by service. Before a captain can expect loyalty from a crew, he must first demonstrate an uncompromising commitment to their well-being. The quality of the service he receives from his crew is a direct reflection of the quality of service he creates.

  This thought led Korie into a further consideration of the nature of service. After some months of self-examination, he realized that service is the highest condition of human endeavor, not the lowest—that the real measure of a person’s power was the number of people he served. A captain’s job was not only to serve his superiors, but to serve the needs of his crew as well—in fact, if anything took priority, it had to be the well-being of the ship, because without a healthy ship, a captain could not accomplish anything else.

  Korie sent a copy to his old mentor, Zaffron, for comment. He did not, however, submit the work for publication or even put it into any of the networks because he felt that some of his comments might be seen as uncomplimentary to his superior officers. Zaffron wrote a long thoughtful reply, consisting more of questions than of comments. Korie rewrote the work three times, then put it aside for further consideration in the future.

  Korie’s preoccupation with this private project also served to keep him out of Captain Fennelly’s way. Fennelly noticed only that Korie had become extremely subdued in his demeanor and believed that he had finally broken him to the saddle; as a result, he eased up on the young officer and much of the tension on the Bridge began to dissipate.

  Halfway through this tour of duty, the military tensions between the Allied Worlds and the Morthan Solidarity became even more aggravated. Allied intelligence revealed that the Morthans were now building up their fleets at least as aggressively as the Allies.

  Sensing that war was becoming a very real possibility, Korie expanded his studies to include numerous texts on strategy and tactics. Despite the fact that the Alliance’s intelligence engines had been running extensive conflict scenarios for decades, Korie still felt frustrated at the lack of an overall vision of the nature of war in space. He began assembling his thoughts into another set of inquiries, this one titled Working Toward a Theory of Conflict.

  In this work, he did not attempt to resolve the issue; that would have been premature and presumptuous. It was his feeling, however, that because there had never been an interstellar war on the scale that was now possible between the Allied worlds and the Morthan Solidarity, that all previous models of conflict had to be reexamined in this larger context.

  While certain fundamental aspects of war would always remain unchanged—such as protecting supply lines, holding and keeping the high ground, and knowing your enemy’s strategy at least as well as your own—the specific applications of these principles to FTL situations represented a whole new domain of strategic possibilities and dilemmas. The potential for disaster terrified the young officer. It was Korie’s purpose to distinguish those areas which he felt needed a much deeper examination. While his essays were ultimately intended to sound a cautionary note to those who determined strategy, they were more immediately a way for him to clarify his own thinking.

  For the most part, Korie approved of the Fleet’s killer bee strategy, but it depended to a great deal on the resourcefulness and courage of individual starship captains. That was both its strength and its weakness. Working at FTL velocities, it was impossible for a central command to coordinate the actions of a thousand, ten thousand, or ultimately a hundred thousand separate destroyer-class cruisers. Therefore, each and every ship was on its own—and each and every captain had to behave as ferociously as possible. Each and every captain must act as if his or her actions alone would determine the final outcome of the war . . . because they very well might.

  It seemed to Korie that if there was a weakness in the strategy, this was it. The accelerated program of ship building, the rapid rate of training and promotion, did
not provide the experience or the seasoning that captains and crews would need to behave appropriately in a battle situation. In the confusion of a major assault, some ship captains might hold back; others might even panic. This would put an increased burden on every other Allied ship, both strategically and psychologically, and would seriously weaken the assault.

  If a battle swarm were to fail—and fail badly—Korie wrote, the psychological blow to the Allied fleet would be devastating. It would be impossible for any captain to engage in a swarm if he did not believe that his colleagues were equally committed. Therefore, appropriate psychological screening of all captains was mandatory, as well as intensive training in dealing with combat situations.

  Korie also postulated an alternate strategy, one that he felt could be implemented with minimal effort; it would include most of the same strengths of the killer bee strategy while minimizing its weaknesses. He called it the killer shark strategy. In this scenario, the swarm would be broken up into many small task forces, each with a single area of responsibility. Within each task force, each destroyer would have its own area of responsibility, either defense or offense. If any individual vessel encountered a Morthan warship, it could send out a coded hyperstate burst and every task force member in range would home in on that signal like a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy.

  Decentralizing the fleet would allow space battles to be fought as skirmishes instead of major confrontations and would reduce the opportunities for the enemy to inflict a devastating blow to the Allied fleet in a single battle. Additionally, the spreading out of assault forces would make interception much more difficult, especially if all of the ships engaged in an attack were coming in from radically different directions.

  Korie spent months working out the dynamics of these battles, running simulations on the 911’s HARLIE unit. There were assumptions in his work that were quickly proven false; he removed them from the main thesis, and added appropriate discussions to the appendix. There were other extrapolations, however, that brought him ultimately to the most stunning realization of all about the nature of conflict at FTL velocities.