"Well, that's what we're ordered to do. It's Orange Five."
"Shit," Turner sighed. "Either all out or nothing with the Cats, this halfway war measure is nuts."
"Remember, old friend, it's election year. No one wants to go into it with the responsibility for having launched a full-scale war. It'll be limited strikes only."
"As if the damn kitties will then roll over and beg us to stop."
"That's what they think will happen. CIS claims their evaluations indicate the Kilrathi are being pressured from other directions. We slap them back and they stop. Punch too hard and they fight all-out."
"Confederation Intelligence Services have had their heads up the wrong place for years."
"Well, it's the branch the government's listening to."
"Because it's what More and his crowd want to hear," Turner snapped. "What about Fleet Intel?"
"That's why I'm pulling you in. Even Fleet Intel is rusty. I want a new perspective on it and that means you. I want you to look over Speedwell's report. He'll tell you right up front we're in the dark and, damn it all, we are."
"Any idiot can see that," Winston replied. "There's a wall there and they ain't letting us look over it, under it, or around it."
"But we sure as hell are letting them look over ours," Skip snarled.
"That's what's got me really steamed at More. Between us, Winston, I just got out of a hearing before coming over here that More and a few like him were sitting in on. We're not getting the new appropriation request for those three carriers and six battleships I wanted. We're told to make do. If there's a signal to the Cats that we're walking around with a 'kick me' sign strapped to our naked butts, that's it right there. More was actually so damn stupid as to say that building those ships would be a 'provocative signal.»
"You know, and I know, that will be on the news links by this evening and across the Confed within a month. They've got listening posts. Why is it we broadcast in the clear, but from their side of the fence we don't hear a damn peep? Nothing but static. Hell, that must tell us something right there. I want you to look that report over and get back to me by tomorrow."
Skip watched Turner's reaction as he tossed a memory cube onto his friend's desk and motioned for him to upload it into his system. As the several hundred pages of the report started to race across the holo field, Turner remained silent, pausing for a moment to scan a few lines, then scrolling forward.
He finally looked back at Skip.
"I take it my summer research leave is canceled," Winston finally said, and Skip smiled.
"Let's just say you're gonna do a little field work for me."
"Such as?"
"You'll walk out of the door here wearing the blue suit for starters. There are a couple of bases and such where I want you to do a personal look-see to get a feel for things. But from there? My first suggestion would be to go out and buy some civvies. Hate to tell you this but, while you're out there, we're officially going to put you on the inactive list."
Startled, Turner again was unable to conceal his surprise.
"Come on, Winston, we both know they're gonna gut this Academy. It's going to be downgraded over the next year to strictly a one-year program. More was here today to gloat. They've decided they'll simply recruit kids out of college, send them here for one year, then pack them off to the fleet."
"Damn it all, Skip, they're killing hundreds of years of tradition! Five years here conveys the traditions, the esprit of the fleet. Sure, the kids we get from other colleges are good, but it's the Academy that creates the spirit of the fleet."
"Well, More wanted that terraforming project for one of the moons around his planet, and he got it by taking our blood. It was the old guns or butter argument, and the butter is getting lathered onto his district."
"Damn it all, Skip, I wish a hundred years ago we'd built our main base on his world rather than over at McAuliffe. He'd be kissing our butts now if it was."
Winston sighed and looked around his office. Even though he might complain about being sidetracked in his career so that the pennant of admiral, or even a command of capital ship as captain was forever out of his reach, still, in his heart this was what he really wanted. After what he felt was the fiasco of losing Marine Six, the thought of putting yet more men and women in harm's way was unbearable. If he was ever to accept a captain's rank, or worse yet a flag pennant, that responsibility would again be on his shoulders. He realized that now more than ever.
"Anyhow, we'll work up a cover for you, a little archaeological work perhaps, maybe a little trading in rare artifacts."
"Like black market trading in out-of-the-way places?" Turner asked and Winston smiled.
"On occasion."
"Look, Skip, I think you're overrating me a bit here. I'm not the field intel type."
Skip looked at him with a jaundiced eye. "I thought you were the best. Remember, old friend, your prolific pen wrote more than one of the training manuals."
"Let's not talk about that yet again," Winston replied coldly. "Hell, I can't even remember the last time I held a modern gun and did my qualification shooting."
"You still fire antique powder weapons every weekend."
"That's a hobby."
"The skill's the same."
"You're thinking about sending me through the lines, aren't you?"
"Look, Winston. We're ramming our heads against a blank wall here and getting absolutely nowhere. They got tabs on most of our Fleet Intel personnel. It's so bad Speedwell's convinced we've got a leak, and a bad one. So I'm going outside the loop. I want someone with some brains out there, and when I think of brains I think of you."
"Bull. And besides, you're talking hero stuff. That may might be my stock and trade, pitching it to wide eyed fleggies, but actually wandering around out there?"
Again Skip smiled and looked over at the print of Torpedo Eight going in to the attack at Midway.
"I think you've got some good blood in your veins."
Turner looked down into his empty glass and, reaching for the bottle, he refilled it. He gazed at the picture of his old comrades and then at the print of Torpedo Eight. So now the cards get called in, he realized. I've been pitching the line about duty, honor, sacrifice for so long and then this old SOB calls me on it. He almost wanted to laugh at the irony of it.
Refusal was not even an alternative.
"If I get killed, this will be your damn fault."
Skip smiled. "And Janet will make my life hell for the rest of my days."
Winston lowered his gaze. That was something that, after thirty years, he still did not like to talk about with his oldest friend. After all, both of them knew Janet wanted him first, but then settled on Skip when he had refused. Skip worshiped her, but in his heart he must have known that if the game had played out the way she had wanted, Janet would be married to a professor at the Academy rather than the Admiral of the Fleet.
Poor Janet, the loss of their two sons in the Miaquez incident five years ago was something she never had recovered from. He looked back up at Skip and realized that his old friend's pain was barely concealed as well. A case of mistaken identity, the Kilrathi claimed, and the apology was accepted, and Janet stayed locked away in mourning.
"I'll assign a couple of youngsters to you," Skip finally said, breaking the painful silence.
"Who?"
"I was thinking, Vance Richards."
"Good lad there," Turner said, nodding in agreement. "Top of his class when he graduated from here. Even taught basic flight here a couple of summers back. Hell of a pilot, just like his old man," and the two smiled at the memory of Quentin Richards, another comrade, lost somewhere out in the darkness. Fleet tradition was to take care of its own, and having young Richards along would be a pleasure.