Kurt eyed him, puzzled. “You passed the course,” he said, dryly. Augustus was an odd young man, definitely. He had a chip on his shoulder, yet Kurt had never seen anyone more driven to succeed. “You earned your wings through your own efforts.”
Augustus smiled openly — the first time Kurt had ever seen such an undisguised expression on his face — and almost skipped off the stage, back to the rear of the compartment. Kurt watched him go, then turned to the next trainee and carefully pinned her wings on her shoulder, putting Augustus out of his mind. He would be his commanding officer’s problem, Kurt knew. However, he was confident that Augustus would do well, even if he did lack spit and polish.
It took nearly two hours to pin the wings on all of the new pilots, but he wouldn’t have passed the duty on to anyone else, even if they’d offered him a million pounds. Finally, it was over, leaving a roomful of newly-minted pilots staring at him. Judging by their expressions, they weren’t in the mood for a long speech. Kurt smiled as he cleared his throat. He wasn’t in any mood for a long speech either.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I believe that you have been cleared for three days of leave prior to departing for your assignments. As someone old enough to be your father” — there were some nervous titters from the pilots — “I should warn you that Luna is full of pitfalls, ready to snare unwary young idiots. If you should happen to be planning a jaunt to Sin City, I suggest you make damn sure you can get back to the Academy if necessary. And I strongly suggest you check their health certificates before you get into bed with anyone.”
He had to smile at some of the guilty looks. Sin City was a semi-independent state, dedicated to drinking, gambling and prostitution. There were few laws and even fewer morals, ensuring that anyone who went there with an open mind was rapidly enjoying whatever pleasure he wanted. Kurt had been once, as a young pilot, and enjoyed himself more than he cared to admit. Now, as a father of two, he would prefer to watch as Sin City burned. But he couldn’t deny his pilots the right to choose their own entertainment.
“I would also suggest that you make sure you are not late to your first assignments,” he added. “It would make a very bad impression on your first commander — and while your records here are sealed, your active duty records are not.”
He paused. “Good luck, all of you,” he said. “Dismissed!”
The pilots cheered, then stampeded out of the room. Kurt rolled his eyes — yep, they were definitely planning to visit Sin City — and then turned to look at the terminal Rose held out to him. After a moment, he pressed his thumb against the scanner, certifying that five hundred new pilots had just graduated. For the moment, his duties at the Academy had come to an end.
“We short-changed them, sir,” Rose said. On duty, she was always professional. “They deserved a bigger ceremony.”
“I know,” Kurt said, recalling his earlier thoughts. Pre-war ceremonies had been something to see, even for enlisted crewmen. Senior officers made an effort to attend, either as participants or just silent observers. But now… now, it was just him and his team of training officers. No senior officer had even attempted to attend. “It couldn’t be helped.”
He gave her a sidelong look, feeling his breath catch in his throat. She was beautiful, even with her blonde hair cut short. Their affair might have been born in tension and the shared certainty of death, but it had endured even after their return to Earth. He felt guilty, sometimes, yet he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. His wife’s face had faded in his memory.
Rose seemed unaware of his thoughts, thankfully. “Do you think we’ll be assigned to the next training cycle?”
“I hope not,” Kurt said. He’d split their time between training prospective pilots and training other instructors from the major interstellar powers, sharing the lessons of war with them. They’d improved remarkably over the last two months. “I’ve applied to go back to war.”
The thought caused him another pang of guilt. He’d accepted the assignment to the Luna Academy without a fight because it would have brought him closer to his family. But his wife had declined to move to the moon, citing the dangers of alien bombardment, leaving him as isolated as he’d been in deep space. He’d barely been able to see them once or twice since his assignment had begun. The only advantage was that he could record messages for them and receive replies within the same day.
“Me too,” Rose admitted. She paused. “Was I as bad as some of these trainees?”
Kurt shrugged as he led her away from the hall and headed down towards Officer Country, where they slept when they weren’t supervising the barracks. “I haven’t seen your training records,” he reminded her. “Were you as bad as the idiot who managed to block the toilet and force us to have it fixed? Or the one who decided to play pranks on the occupants of the other barracks? Or the one who…”
Rose giggled. “I was just an overachiever,” she said. “But I had six months to straighten out and fly right.”
“Good for you,” Kurt said. By the time Rose had entered the Academy, he remembered with yet another pang of guilt, he’d already left active service. She wasn’t quite young enough to be his daughter, but she was alarmingly close to it. “And you did well with the trainees too.”
“Thank you,” Rose said. “I don’t think I was quite that hard to handle when I was a trainee.”
Kurt laughed as he stopped outside the hatch leading into his quarters. “When I was eighteen,” he quoted, “my dad was a moron who knew nothing. But when I was twenty-one… golly! It was astonishing how smart the old man had become.”
He sobered as he led her into the chamber. Life in barracks was never easy, but it was often worse for female trainees. There was almost no privacy at all, while the shared washing facilities took some getting used to. Indeed, a quarter of the trainees who had been evicted in the first week had been booted out for ogling their female comrades. It was a regular shock to politicians, when they found out that men and women were living together, but there was no choice. Quarters on starships, even the mighty fleet carriers, were no larger. Rose had done well in helping new trainees to grow used to their surroundings. By now, most of the trainees were thoroughly professional.
It’s that stupid movie’s fault, he thought, rolling his eyes. They just couldn’t make a realistic movie, could they? No, the main character had to have muscles on his muscles… and his female co-lead had to wear a uniform so tight she couldn’t breathe.
His terminal bleeped as he sat down, so he pulled it over as Rose poured them both a glass of wine. He’d expected a message from his daughter — she was actually doing better in school, now they’d hired a nanny — but instead it was his orders. He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to read them, then cursed his own stupidity as he opened the file and read through the brief message.
“I’m being sent back to Ark Royal as Commander Air Group,” he said, relieved. Requesting a change of assignment was always hazardous, even though he was one of the few officers with experience at fighting the aliens. The Royal Navy had plenty of places to send officers who had displeased the bureaucracy in some way. “And just as CAG this time.”
“So you won’t be flying,” Rose said, regretfully. “I always thought it kept you closer to us.”
“I’ll try and sneak in as many hours as I can,” Kurt said. The pace of combat was often shockingly swift. It was quite possible that the CAG would be reduced to a spectator while his pilots fought and died to protect their starship. “There will be new fighters too, it seems. And bombers.”