Though I had not been told that these men were pilots, I had no trouble identifying them. Pilots were natural-born and came in various shapes and sizes. Being officers, they also did not carry duffel bags. You’d never see officers washing their own laundry or carrying their own bags. They left such menial tasks to enlisted men.
“I am Lieutenant Commander Mack Callahan,” the lieutenant commander said as his new pilots stepped forward. “I run the fighter squads on this bucket.” He approached one of the pilots and read the name tag on his uniform. “Where
were you stationed last, Jordan?”
“Mars, sir.”
“Mars?” Callahan nodded his head. “Some of you flew in from Orion? Long flight. I’ll tell you what, Jordan, why don’t you and the boys unpack, get plenty of rest, and report to my briefing room in thirty minutes.” The pilots groaned, then followed Callahan off deck.
The captain stepped forward. “At ease.” He reviewed at our ranks. “I am Captain Gaylan McKay.”
From the side of my eye, I watched the pilots vanish down a gleaming hallway. I did not see so much as a finger smudge on the walls. Every light in every ceiling fixture shone brightly, and the floors sparkled. Captain McKay looked as if he had been polished, too. He was small for a Marine, certainly no more than five feet six inches tall with a wiry build. A strip of blond stubble covered the top of his head, and the sides were shaved clean. He had more of a smirk than a smile, but I liked the informal way in which he appraised us. He’d probably be a prick most of the time, but that came with the uniform.
“I’ll take you to your quarters.” As we followed McKay down the hall, he continued his orientation. “You boys are lucky,” McKay said. “Marines get a good shake in this fleet. Admiral Klyber doesn’t play favorites with pilots and sailors. Sea-soldier chow is as good as any on this ship.”
McKay led us to a series of cabins in which bunk beds lined the walls. Reading from a list, McKay sent men to various barracks; but when he came to Lee and me, he said, “Let’s talk in my office. Harris, I’ll start with you.”
He led me through an empty barrack. “Throw your bags on any rack.”
I dropped my bags on the nearest bunk.
“Is your gear in working order, Corporal?” McKay asked.
No one had asked me about the condition of my armor since the battle on Gobi, nor had I thought about it. “No, sir,” I said. “The interLink is out in my helmet.”
“Bring it along, Harris,” McKay called over his shoulder as he walked off. I quickly snatched my helmet and followed the captain down the hall. He entered a small office. I
stepped in after him.
“Take a seat, Corporal,” McKay said.
“We’re starting up a new platoon. Your sergeant arrives tomorrow. He’s transferring in from the Inner SC Fleet,” McKay said with emphasis, as if that sector should have meant something to me. It didn’t. “Admiral Klyber believes that something is going to break loose in outer Scutum-Crux.”
McKay waited for me to respond. When I said nothing, he picked up my personnel file and began reading.
He turned a few pages, reading quickly, apparently taking in the details. “Ah yes, I remember your record. You were the one who made corporal in three months …Must be some kind of a record. Exactly what sort of meritorious service did you perform on Gobi?” As he asked, McKay closed the folder and watched me carefully.
“Terrorists attacked our outpost, sir. I…”
“Attacked an outpost? Were you working out of an embassy?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“You mentioned a problem with your helmet.”
“Yes, sir. My interLink equipment failed during the battle.”
“I don’t know who designed this shit, but you can always count on something breaking when you need it most. My visor went black during a firefight, and I nearly shot my commanding officer.” McKay smiled as if thinking about what might have been, then continued in a more businesslike tone. “Around here you turn your headgear in for routine maintenance after every battle. Fleet policy. We take maintenance seriously in this fleet. Show up for an engagement with a broken helmet, and you’ll be lucky if the enemy gets you before I do. Got that, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can bring your helmet back from battles melted to your head if you like. That’s your business. But show up with broken gear, and I’ll send you to the brig.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Corporal, in case you have not guessed, showing up to new assignments with busted gear makes a bad first impression.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Leave the helmet; I’ll requisition repairs.” Changing subjects, McKay pointed to the Scutum-Crux Arm insignia on the wall behind him—a fleet of ships in silhouette superimposed against the whirlpool shape of the Milky Way. “You have been assigned to the flagship of the Outer SC Fleet, Corporal. We don’t put up with sloppiness on this ship.”
He handed me a three-inch stack of papers. “Get this read ASAP. That will be all.”
Without looking up, McKay added, “Send in Corporal Lee.”
Until Amos Crowley’s visit, the U.A. Marines maintained Gobi Station with forty-one men, one man shy of a full platoon. The bowels of the Kamehameha housed two full divisions of Marines—over twenty-three hundred of the Republic’s finest.
Bryce Klyber’s authority extended beyond the ship and even the fleet; every unit in the Scutum-Crux Arm was under his command. He was the only officer in the U.A. Navy to hold the rank of fleet admiral, a rank generally reserved for wartime.
Captain Thaddeus Olivera commanded the Kamehameha, and Vice Admiral Absalom Barry commanded the Outer Scutum-Crux Fleet. Klyber, who I soon learned was a notorious microcommander, preferred to work out of an office on the ship so that he could observe operations firsthand.
There were three fleets in the Scutum-Crux Arm, placing more than one thousand ships, more ships than the Earth Fleet, under Klyber’s command. That did not mean he could stage a revolution. Unlike Caesar, crossing the Rubicon line as he brought his forces into Rome, Klyber would never be able to bring his fleet to Earth. Klyber’s Rubicon was the Mars discs of the Broadcast Corridor, which were too small to receive or send capital ships such as fighter carriers and destroyers. The Broadcast Corridor ensured that Klyber’s ships remained in place. Without the discs, it would take a thousand lifetimes to fly from Scutum-Crux to the Sol System in the Orion Arm.
The documentation McKay gave me described the protocol and command structure of the Outer SC Fleet. Most of the information was standard procedure, but I needed to relearn standard procedures and chain of command after three months on Gobi. Judging by the way Klyber ran the Scutum-Crux territories, he was the kind of commander who required his subordinates to march to his own drum.
As a young Marine, I did not know much about Navy workings. It struck me as odd that Klyber, supposedly a powerful admiral, retained an old ship like the Kamehameha for his flagship. The Kamehameha might have worked well as Klyber’s movable command post, but it was obsolete as a fighter carrier. Klyber built each of his three fleets around a core of twelve fighter carriers. The Kamehameha was an old Expansion-class carrier, the only carrier of its class that was still in operation. All of the other carriers were Perseus-class, a newer breed of brute measuring forty-five hundred feet long and almost fifty-one hundred feet wide—nearly twice as long as their Expansion-class predecessors. Perseus-class carriers bore a complement of eleven thousand Marines, five times the fighting force that traveled on the Kamehameha. Perseus-class carriers stowed three times more tanks, transports, gunships, and fighters than Expansion-class carriers and had much quicker means for deploying units.