The crew worked frantically, one of them finally taking a laser cutter to slash the cockpit open. The cockpit canopy blew back, flame exploding upward, the crew sticking a hose straight in, a crew member climbing in, ignoring the risk from the fire and a possible cook off of the ejector. He pulled a blackened, struggling form out, shrieks echoing across the flight deck. Another body was dragged out, and horrified Jason looked away; fortunately that one was already dead. A look at the rear turret, crushed beneath the collapsed landing gear, made it clear that there was no survivor in there either.
He turned away and O’Brian was standing before him, hands on hips.
“Satisfied, Commander?” O’Brian snarled.
“Just what the hell do you mean, sir?”
“You pushed them too hard. You pushed them too hard the first day out and you killed a crew, smashed up a Sabre worth tens of millions and damn near blew out this entire ship. Now just how the hell do you think this is going to look on my report?”
“Sir, perhaps you’ve forgotten we’re at war,” Jason replied coldly, “and people get killed. That boy screwed it, then disobeyed my orders, and he died. It’s tragic, but damn it, sir, it happens. These kids have got to learn how to fly in combat, and some of them might die in the learning, but better now than when it’s the real thing.”
“You coldhearted son of a bitch.” O’Brian snapped, his voice almost breaking.
Jason could not even reply, realizing that the exchange was being observed by everyone on the deck.
“Is that all, sir?” Jason asked, the rage in his voice barely under control.
“No mister, that’s not all. Oh, I’m going to file a report on you. I never did care for you hotshot fly boy types and now I see why.”
“Then may I ask, sir, if you don’t like pilots why are you in command of a carrier?”
O’Brian’s features flushed and he raised a threatening finger, pointing it in Jason’s face.
“I’ll make sure you get taken care of,” he finally cried, and then he stormed off.
“The kid screwed up, not you.”
Jason turned to look at the landing and recovery officer.
“I didn’t ask for your input mister,” Jason snapped and turned away.
“All right people, I want you to take a long hard look.”
Jason stood before the wrecked Sabre, hands on his hips, glaring at the assembled pilots. There was a distinct smell heavy in the air, cutting through the stench of scorched wiring, burned metal, and fire retardant. One of the recon pilots suddenly ran to the corner of the flight deck and rather noisily threw up. Jason tried to ignore the sound of retching and the cloying scent of burned flesh.
“Rodriquez is dead, gunnery sergeant Singh is dead and his copilot Emilia died an hour ago. I want all of you to take a damned hard look at their ship. If you don’t make mistakes you just might outlive this war; if you do make mistakes you’ll end up like they did. I ordered Rodriquez to abort the landing but he thought he knew better, and now he’s dead. Now get this straight, people. When I or the landing control officer says break, then damn it, break and the hell with your pride.
“In two hours we’re going out again so get yourselves ready, but before you do I want each one of you to go up to what’s left of Rodriquez’s ship and take a damned hard look inside. Dismissed.”
He turned and walked off.
“Coldhearted son of a bitch.”
The words were just barely audible but he recognized Tolwyn’s voice. He kept on going and retreated into his office.
Pulling up a chair, he settled down. After a long minute he finally opened his desk and pulled out a pad of notepaper and a pen. It was an old-fashioned gesture, but it was a long-standing tradition with the fleet. He took the pen up, feeling a bit clumsy, and started to print out the words.
My Dear Mrs. Rodriquez … I had the honor of serving with your gallant son as his commanding officer …
He paused. Did I kill her boy, he wondered? God help me, did I kill her boy? What could I have done better? He felt a flicker of doubt, a feeling that he knew could be fatal if allowed to take permanent hold. God, my first command and am I screwing it up?
He looked down at the paper, a painful memory rushing back to the day when his mother had opened a similar letter that told her about her now dead husband. It was a week after that day when he had forged a birth certificate form that he stole from the town clerk’s office, went down to the recruiter, and signed up at the age of sixteen. Four years later his mother received another letter, this time for his brother, killed in the defense of Khosan. He could imagine Rodriquez’s mother standing in the doorway of her home, hands shaking, reading what he was now attempting to write, the gold star hanging in her window now replaced by a blue star. “God damn this war,” Jason sighed.
CHAPTER III
Doomsday came into Jason’s office, carrying three cups of syrupy coffee and he placed one down on Jason’s desk and then passed the other to Janice.
“I think they’re showing some improvement,” Doomsday said. “Noragami scored twenty out of twenty-one today on the simulated missile strike, the best score yet.”
“Same here,” Janice interjected, “I’m marking three of my people down as still unsatisfactory, but that’s better than all fourteen of them on the list three weeks ago.”
Jason nodded, leaning back in his chair, aware that the back of his neck was still stiff from putting in nearly ten hours of flight time in the last twenty-four.
There were three weeks into their run, another week to go till the nine marine transport ships they were escorting docked at Khartoum Station and then deployed for the ground assault exercises. Moving some of the best marine regiments of the fleet to a quiet sector for this training run just didn’t seem right, and Jason couldn’t shake the feeling that the so-called “exercises” were a cover for something else. It was stretching the number of assault regiments up on the front far too thin to suddenly turn around and pull a reinforced division off the line. The run itself was uneventful, except for the fact that their last two jumps seemed to be curving them fairly close up to where the action was. But their ultimate destination, whatever it was, didn’t concern Jason at the moment. Whether it was cover for a combat operation or not, the training time this milk run had allowed him had become his sole focus, that and the running feud with O’Brian.
“Still a long way to go before they’re combat ready,” Jason said, as he picked up the coffee mug and took another long sip, glad that the caffeine was kicking in.
“Or for that matter this entire ship,” Doomsday replied. “Morale is lower than a snake’s ass in a mud hole.”
“I wish someone would space that damned jerk up on the bridge,” Janice snapped.
“All right people, enough,” Jason snarled.
It was hard to be in command; only weeks before he would have gladly joined in their gripe session about the captain. The man showed a maddening inconsistency, one minute almost too friendly with his subordinates, the next minute climbing up on a high horse to lecture and shout. It was obvious he knew nothing about the running of flight operations, and on one occasion even attempted to usurp the launch and recovery officer’s job in the middle of a highspeed combat recovery simulating a full bomber return, refit, and relaunch. The launch officer demanded that the captain leave the launch control room, an action which was within his right, and now the man was up on court-martial charges. There was the other dark rumor as well, that on several occasions O’Brian appeared on the bridge smelling a little too strongly of his precious claret. Fleet policies about alcohol were strict and demanding. The only drinking allowed aboard ship was in the observation lounge.