She dove down toward some rocks and Kelly stayed close behind. She stopped, turned toward him, and made a dive under sign with her hands. Kelly followed her down. As he got to the bottom of a rock wall, Kelly could see an opening. Tammy went in and motioned for him to follow. He went in behind her. She switched on her light. Kelly fumbled with his light until his came on too. As he looked up he could see the quicksilver appearance of an air pocket far above him. Kelly was already treading water in the air pocket. He came up beside her, stuck his head up into the air pocket, and took a cautious breath. The air was cool and fresh.
“This is kind of neat. How did you find this place?”
“I came out here with breather units once and followed my nose. This chimney comes out on the island somewhere. I’ve looked but never found it. Come over here.”
Tammy swam over to a shelf along the far wall and climbed up. Kelly followed her.
“Kelly, did I kiss you last night?”
“As a matter of fact, you did, right before you passed out.”
“Good, I planned to kiss you. I’m glad I succeeded. I just wish I could remember it. Do you suppose I could kiss you again?”
Kelly took off his mask, leaned over to her, and said, “It would probably be easier if you took off your mask.”
Tammy pulled her mask off, and Kelly leaned into her and kissed her.
Tammy closed her eyes and leaned back, breaking the kiss. “I don’t see how I could have forgotten that. May I have another?”
Kelly pulled her close and kissed her again. She melted into his arms, but gave back as good as she got. Her wet body felt soft and warm against him. She was a good kisser. Kelly’s breath got a little shallow.
She broke the kiss, looked around at the size of the rock shelf, and dropped back off into the water. She said, “This shelf is a little small for the large ideas I’m getting. Let’s go back to the beach. Watch your head when you come out of the cave.”
Kelly followed her down the tunnel and back out into open water. She broke the surface to take a breath and then dove down a meter below the surface, swimming to shore. Kelly did the same. When they reached the shallows, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the shore. They went over to the blanket and threw themselves down. She passed him a towel so he could dry off.
She dried herself off, made a swipe at drying her hair, and wrapped the towel around her head like a turban. She leaned over and kissed him again and drew back.
“Kelly, I like you. I like you a lot. I would like to have you as a lover, but only on certain terms.”
“Terms? What terms?”
“I plan to make a career in the Fleet. I want to see how high I can go on my abilities. I’d like to be an admiral some day. I know I’m only a planetary shuttle pilot now, but this is only my first assignment and I am a pilot. I’ve got a lot of future in front of me.”
“I’m telling you this because my plans don’t include a husband and children. We can have a lot of fun together, but I’m not looking for a home and family.”
Kelly looked at her for a bit and said, “I understand and support your ambitions, Tammy. I feel the same. I don’t know if I’ll make it to admiral either, but I want the opportunity to try. My own situation as such right now is similar. I’m going to be out on patrol or deployment for weeks to months at a time. I’m not looking for a permanent relationship, either. So, I respect your ambition and support you in your drive. I do have one question.”
“What’s your question?”
“Does this mean we can’t have sex?”
She smiled and said, “Ask me this evening.” She then pushed him down and lay on top of him, giving him a long deep kiss. Things progressed from there.
Later, they lay in each other’s arms, luxuriating in the warmth and feel of their bodies. Tammy looked at Kelly and said, “Kelly, if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll understand. What did you do that got you on General Bugarov’s bad side? Cas has been telling a tale he heard through scuttlebutt. I’d like to hear your side.”
Kelly rolled his eyes. “Cas, what a wonderful individual. What has he been saying?”
“I don’t believe any of it. He’s been saying that you screwed up on a training exercise and almost got some of your squadron killed. Cas doesn’t like you, so we’re all convinced he’s lying.”
“Well, Cas isn’t even close. Quite the opposite happened. I hope you are in the mood for a long story.”
She looked up into his eyes and nodded her head.
“Tammy, are you familiar with the Wall of Fire tactic?”
“Yes, I read about it at the academy, but that’s ancient. Nobody uses that anymore.”
“General Bugarov liked it. She thought of herself as the reincarnation of Marshall Ney, Napoleon’s cavalry chief. She was always reading about ancient battles and drawing all the wrong conclusions from them. She thought she had rediscovered the Wall of Fire tactic and saw it as her master stroke.”
Kelly rolled away from Tammy, onto his stomach and up on his elbows, “I still feel that General Bugarov’s early experience in the planetary defense forces, where most of her combat training was done in the atmosphere, made her too two-dimensional in her thinking and in the tactics she enforced on her fighter units. I once tried to discuss other tactics with her during a post-drill critique and had my head handed to me.”
“Second Lieutenant Blake, when I want your opinion, I will give it to you. As long as I am the Fleet Fighter Commander, we will use the tactics I prescribe. I have spent more time fastening my flight harness than you have in the service. Sit down!”
“It was bad enough to be dressed down by the general, it was worse that she did it in front of my entire squadron. The only thing that softened the blow were the sympathetic looks from my squadron mates.”
“General Bugarov scheduled a major tactical exercise for the entire 15th Battle Fleet. Our squadron commander briefed us that our wing, and those from the carriers Lincoln and Mandela, were to be the blue force and defend against the red force wings of the Juarez and Gorbachev. The battle damage simulator systems on each fighter would be used to count battle losses. They used setting five, so if you were “killed,” your fighter was automatically disabled, your weapons computer would go offline, and your navigation lights would be turned on. Only limited maneuvering was allowed for safety purposes.”
“General Bugarov wanted us to use full squadron formations against the red force to protect the Bolivar and other carriers. Strict formation was to be maintained. We were to use the Wall of Fire tactic against all bandits.”
“I remember inwardly groaning when I heard that.”
“The combination of full squadron formations and Wall of Fire made the fighter pilots’ primary function that of just keeping formation, while the fighters’ networked computers did all the combat work. In essence, the combined tactics required the squadron to fly in a strict single-layered, square formation, much like a flying wall. The computers on all the fighters linked together and in concert chose which fighter would engage which targets. The theory is that the computers can apply firepower much quicker than humans and any enemy will face an impenetrable wall of firepower. The reality is that it made you a very predictable target.”
“The wall of fire is a stupid waste of manpower. The whole point of having a live pilot in the cockpit is to allow the human mind to be creative. In my eyes, the mind processes information as fast as the shipboard computer can. True, drones can maintain large formations, such as the Wall of Fire, much better than human pilots. Unmanned fighters, however, have been tried before, and although they can turn tighter and accelerate faster than manned fighters, the brain is still smarter than a computer. Computers are only as good as the mind that programmed them. If the computer comes up against a situation it was never programmed for, it doesn’t know what to do. A human can improvise. Computers should only assist the pilot, not replace them.”