Turner scanned the room, picked up a drink from the bar and made straight for their table. The two stood up as he approached.
"Relax, gentlemen, sit down."
Geoff saw Turner glancing at Vance's orders, which were lying on the table.
"Sir, I suspect you're tied in with these orders," Geoff ventured.
"Why's that, Mr. Tolwyn?"
"Well, sir. They're rather cryptic and out of the ordinary. We come here, as ordered, and less than five minutes later you wander in."
"And the connection is?"
"Well, sir. Last I saw you was Earthside on graduation day. While I was dealing with my-" he hesitated for an instant, " — problem, I hear this report that you'd taken an early retirement along with a lot of the other professors. That struck me as strange."
"Why so?"
"Well, sir. I know you're good friends with Admiral Banbridge. I know you love the Fleet. I figured you to be one to stay on no matter what. Now you suddenly come walking in here, fifteen jump points away from Earth. So I guess our orders have something to do with you, sir."
Turner smiled. "Mr. Tolwyn, you always were an observant student, and yes, my being here has to do with your orders."
"How so, sir?" Vance asked.
"The two of you have been assigned to me."
Turner watched their reactions. He could almost sense relief from Geoff, who had undoubtedly been stewing in his own juices during the long transit out from Earth, wondering what godforsaken outpost he'd finally wind up in. As for Richards, the reaction was different. The announcement of a transfer meant that he was most likely grounded and the young lieutenant was obviously not very happy about the prospect.
Vance stirred uncomfortably. "Sir, in last week's issue of Fleet Proceedings I saw the notice about the shutting down of the Academy and your name was on the list of early retirements. How can we be assigned to you if you're officially on the way out?"
"I'm not quite out of the picture yet." Winston chuckled. "You'll notice my early retirement notice didn't specify a date. There's still one last assignment to be done and you two gentlemen have been nominated to give me a hand."
Geoff didn't know whether this was a compliment or not. After all, on the day before his encounter with Senator More he had already received his official orders posting him to Lunar orbital base five to start orientation training for the Wildcat fighter. He truly admired Turner, and would be the first to admit that the commander had done much to shape his own thinking about the fleet, its mission, and the inner sense that a crisis unlike any ever faced by the Confederation was about to unfold. Though he would never admit it to anyone, he sensed as well that there was a destiny to his life that meant that, when the time came, he would have a major part to play.
That belief, however, had been sorely tested by what happened after he had crossed the bow of Senator More's political machine and fired his pathetic shot. So now I'm attached to someone on the way out. He knew that he should feel uncomfortable with that thought. After all, Turner was one of the most respected intellectuals in all of the Fleet… but he was not a fighting commander and, by heavens, fighting was what he had trained for.
"You seem troubled, Mr. Tolwyn," Turner said softly, interrupting GeofFs musings.
"Well, sir, just curious, that's all," Geoff quickly replied and he motioned towards the orders which were still sitting on the table. "I mean, this is rather unusual."
"All in due time, Geoff, but first a couple of questions if you don't mind."
Turner looked over at Vance.
"How were things in your squadron, Mr. Richards?"
"Sir?"
"Just that. Not the type of crap you boys have to pump into your efficiency and readiness reports. I mean underneath it all. Your gut sense, what are you seeing, how do you feel about it all?"
Vance chuckled softly. "You got a couple of weeks, sir?"
"We might have more than that to get into the details, but give me the short form right now."
"Well, sir, regarding the men and women who fly the crates, they're top notch. The Academy, and even the outer world flight schools, are turning out some damn good pilots. They're dedicated as all hell, you'd have to be dedicated just to put up with all the crap. I'd stack them against anything out there."
"And the nonflight personnel?"
"The same." You know the old saying, "You have to be half mad to join the Fleet, and fully mad to stay with it'? Well, it's true. You've got to be mad about the Fleet to stick with it. If there's a problem, it's the fact that we lose too many good people to the merchant fleets and commercial lines. They get through their six-year enlistment, some of them have families, they have damn good training, and you can't blame them for jumping. Sure, we have a lot of the old guzzler types, who could never find a job outside of the fleet, but even they know their jobs. So on that score I think we're in good shape."
"What about readiness, though?"
Vance sighed, exhaling noisily.
"If things should ever blow, we're going to be in the barrel."
"What do you mean blow?" Turner asked quietly.
"Come on, sir. The Cats, we all know what you're talking about. The damn Cats are just waiting for the chance to jump."
"What makes you think that?"
"The Varni should have taught us that," Geoff interjected. "The Cats come up to their border, there's a period of peace as the Cats figure them out, then a jump that ended the war in the first thirty days."
"That was forty years ago," Turner replied. "You'd think they might have done something before this. Hell, we didn't even have any kind of direct contact until just five years ago, and not a peep since."
"Just because they haven't doesn't mean they won't," Geoff continued. "Remember that rumor a couple of years back about their taking some settlement beyond the frontier before the demilitarized zone was established? Hell, if that's true, they can deduce a lot even from the standard equipment a group of colonists might have."
Richards shook his head. "Hell there's at least a thousand or more uncharted systems between our border and the Cats, thousands more out in the other directions. There's rumors of incidents like that all the time."
"Well, true or not, I think the Cats are gearing up for us," Geoff replied.
"Your friend Senator More might say you're paranoid," Turner said, a thin smile creasing his wrinkled features.
"Just because he's paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get us," Vance interjected, changing tack and coming about to Geoff's support. "And if they do, we're going to get our butts kicked."
"Why?"
"Sir, I saw some of your articles in Proceedings, why are you asking us?" Vance asked.
"Indulge me. I've been locked away in the Academy for years. I send you young men and women out, but I rarely hear what's going on afterwards, other than what I see in reports."
"Sir, it's the same old story. There's only six carriers for this entire sector, nine in the entire fleet. The appropriation of five years back under the old administration, right after we first ran into the Cats, called for a building program of eight more carriers. We only got two, one of them the new Concordia. The others were shut down and abandoned in Lunar orbit."
"The carriers we do have, other than Concordia, were launched before I was even born. They're antiques, held together with spit and duct tape. Even though Soryu is listed as being on-line, the truth is she's nothing more than a floating stockpile for spare parts, which get stripped out to keep the other five like her going. The fleet spends nearly sixty percent of its time docked right upstairs to save on engine time," and as he spoke he pointed up to where the fleet was now docked at Alexandria.
"That's only the carriers," Turner said. "We've still got the battlewagons and heavy cruisers."