"Some of you will not survive those situations."
She let her eyes sweep her youthful audience, tasting their mingled soberness and youthful sense of immortality. That belief in their own invulnerability was inevitable in people so young, she knew. All she could do was try to prepare them for the hideous moment of shock when they felt their own ships' bucking and heaving to the enemy's fire and realized death could come for them as easily as for anyone else.
"Even if you do every single thing right, you may find yourself in a situation where all the tactical genius in the universe is insufficient to balance the odds against you," she went on quietly. "It happened to Edward Saganami and Ellen D'Orville, and if it could happen to them, it can certainly happen to any of us. Indeed, I suppose I'm living proof that it can, because that was exactly what happened to Prince Adrian in Adler.
"But whatever you face, you will have three things to support you. One is the tradition of the Royal Navy—and when you graduate from Saganami Island—" she let her eyes sweep all of the middies once more "—that tradition will be yours, whatever the uniform you wear. Listen to it. Strip it down to get rid of all the holodrama heroics and the hagiography and learn what it truly expects of you, and you will have a guide that never fails you. It may get you killed," she smiled wryly, "but it will never leave you trying to guess where your responsibilities lie.
"And the second support you will have will be your own confidence in yourself. In your training, in your hardware, and more importantly, in your people. But most importantly of all, in your own judgment. It won't always be perfect. Sometimes, despite all we can do here at Saganami and in ATC, it will be execrable. But you must have faith in yourself, Ladies and Gentlemen, because there will be no one else. You will be it. Your ship, your people, will live or die on the basis of your judgments and your decisions, and even if you get it all absolutely right, some of them will die anyway."
Her smile had vanished, and her face was stern, almost cold.
"Accept that now, because it will happen. The enemy wants to live as badly as you do, and like you, the way for her to do that is to kill the ones trying to kill her. Which will be you, Ladies and Gentlemen. You and the people under your command. And I can assure you that there will be nights your dead will haunt you. When you ask yourselves if you could have saved a few more lives if you'd only been faster, or smarter, or more alert. Sometimes the answer will be yes, that you could have saved them. But you didn't. You did your best, and you did your job, and so did they, but they're still dead, and whatever the rest of the universe thinks, you will go to your own grave convinced you ought to have done better, should have found the way to keep them alive. Worse, you'll think back to what happened, replay it in your head over and over, with the invaluable benefits of hindsight and all the time in the world to think about the decisions you had only minutes to make at the time, and you'll see exactly where you screwed up and let your people die."
She paused, and beside her, Kriangsak and Captain Garrison, the senior simulation programer for ATC, nodded, their faces as still as her own.
"Accept that now," Honor repeated quietly after a moment. "Accept it . . . or find another line of work. And I warn you all now, as Admiral Courvosier, my own Academy mentor, warned me, that even if you think you understand exactly what I'm telling you, you'll discover in the event you weren't really prepared for the guilt. You can't be, not until it's your turn to shoulder it. But that will be the third thing that supports you in battle, Ladies and Gentlemen: the knowledge that your people will die uselessly if you screw up. It's not your job to keep them alive at all costs. It's your job to be certain they don't die for nothing. You owe them that, and they expect it of you, and that need to keep the faith with your people is what will keep your brain working and the orders coming even while the enemy blows your ship apart around you. And if you don't believe it will, then the command chair on the bridge of a Queen's ship is not the proper place for you."
There was complete and utter silence in the game room, and Honor let it hover there for several seconds. Then she leaned back in her chair with a small smile.
"On the other hand, your careers aren't going to consist solely of desperate battles to the death. I assure you that you'll find the odd moment of relaxation and even pleasure in the Queen's uniform—or that of your own worlds' navies," she added, nodding at Hearns and Gillingham. "Unfortunately," she went on, her tone turning droll, "tonight won't be among them."
Another ripple of laughter answered her, and she nodded to Kriangsak.
"Admiral Kriangsak, with Captain Garrison's able assistance, has very kindly constructed a small tactical problem for you, Ladies and Gentlemen," she informed them, and several apprehensive glances flickered towards Kriangsak, who simply smiled benignly. "We'll be dividing into three teams. Admiral Kriangsak will serve as the adviser to one team, Captain Garrison will advise the second, and Captain Thoma—" she nodded to the red-haired woman whose tunic, like Honor's own when she was in uniform, bore the bloodred ribbon of the Manticoran Cross "—will advise the third. Captain Henke and Commander Jaruwalski will play the role of referees and umpire the exercise."
"And you, Your Grace?" Jaruwalski asked, as innocently as if she didn't know already.
"And I, Commander," Honor told her with unconcealed relish, "will command the op force." One of the midshipmen groaned, and Honor gave them all a wicked smile. "This one is pass-fail, Ladies and Gentlemen. If you still have a ship left at the end, you pass. Otherwise . . ."
She let her voice trail off menacingly, then bestowed another smile upon them.
"And on that note, people, let's be about it!" she told them briskly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"Well that certainly went much better. In fact," Scotty Tremaine said judiciously, gazing at the scores for CLAC Squadron Three's latest engineering inspection, "one might even say that it went quite well, mightn't one, Sir Horace?"
"One might," Sir Horace Harkness growled back. "I guess. Sort of."
Unlike the youthful commander, the burly warrant officer's expression was not a happy one. Indeed, an objective observer, if asked to describe it in one word, would have been hard-pressed to choose between disconsolate, surly, or just plain disgusted. The less charitable might even have suggested "petulant."
Despite the fact that the Book said the senior engineer in any LAC wing was supposed to be a commissioned officer, an awful lot of engineers, at both the squadron and wing levels, held warrants rather than commissions. Normally, a warrant was offered to a noncom who, because of his special knowledge or depth of expertise, or because he was needed for duties normally assigned to an officer, had to be placed on a footing of equality with at least the more junior of the commissioned officers with whom he dealt. Warrant officers stood outside the executive line of command, for the WOs might actually be thought of as the noncommissioned equivalent of staff officers. Even the design of their uniforms indicated their unique status, for their tunics were tailored like those of officers, but they carried sleeve stripes (although in silver, not gold) similar to those of petty officers and silver or gold crowns, depending on grade, as collar insignia. In addition, each WO's sleeve carried the insignia of his specialty above the stripes.
A WO-1 was equivalent to a junior-grade lieutenant in a nonline specialty, while a chief warrant officer, or WO-3, like Sir Horace Harkness, was equivalent to a senior-grade lieutenant. A master chief warrant officer, or WO-5, was actually equivalent to a full commander . . . and had reached the highest rate any member of the Navy could attain without a formal commission. Given the basis on which they were offered their warrants in the first place, a WO was usually somewhat older than the average commissioned officer of his equivalent rank. On the other hand, the more youthful commissioned officers who found themselves warrant officers' legal superiors knew those WOs had been given their warrants expressly because they were so good—as in, much better than any wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-Saganami-Isl
and, young whippersnapper could hope to be, though he might someday approach their abilities, if he worked really hard and listened to the voice of experience when it deigned to share its wisdom. As a result, the RMN's warrant officers carried far more clout than most civilian observers would have expected.
Nonetheless, BuPers really had wanted commissioned engineers for any slot above the individual LAC squadron. BuPers, however, had been disappointed, and the reason its desires had never been more than a rather wistful hope was simple enough. The sudden, explosive expansion of the Royal Manticoran Navy's light attack craft strength after decades of steady build down had simply caught the Fleet short of LAC engineers. Severely short, as a matter of fact.
It was certainly true that LACs allowed enormous reductions in manpower on a per-weapon basis as compared to regular, hyper-capable warships. By the same token, however, the manpower they did require tended to be more than a bit specialized. Nursemaiding one of the new fission plants, for example, was just as complex a job as running one of the far larger fusion plants aboard a hyper-capable combatant. The engineer running it might have instrumentation that was at least as good, and a lot more (and more sophisticated) remotes, proportionately speaking, but he was still one man, with only a single human assistant, running an entire fission plant, two impeller rooms, environmental, not just two but three sets of sidewall generators—four, actually, on the even newer Ferret-class LACs—and handling all power allocation and repairs (if needed) for at least one revolver missile launcher and magazine, point defense, sensors, ECM, and one humongous graser. The tac officer and captain had similarly outsized workloads, and their remotes and AIs weren't the same as having real live assistants to help spread the burden. To be sure, their instrumentation and computer support set new standards for capability and user-friendliness, but it was still one hell of a load to carry. It was also one which required high and consistent skill levels, since LAC crews were too small to rely on someone else catching a mistake, and the manning requirements for each bird were repeated over a hundred times per wing.
All of which meant the Navy had discovered it had no choice but to reach down into the ranks of its noncoms to find the warm and, especially, competent bodies it needed. At least BuPers had been able to keep up with the demand so far without diluting skill levels, and the shutdown of so many forts should ease much of the pressure shortly. But it hadn't eased it yet, and the fact that the petty officers BuPers was tapping for the new slots and offering warrants to tended to be older and more experienced than the commissioned officers junior enough to be assigned to the LACs also offered a useful leavening of seasoned judgment to rein in the youthful exuberance that was part of the emerging "LAC jockey" mentality. That was good, but some of the purists among the commissioned officers deeply resented the sudden mass elevation of senior chiefs, chiefs, and even a few PO 1/cs to fill slots that ought properly to have been filled by lieutenants and lieutenant commanders.
That attitude, in Sir Horace Harkness' considered opinion, was stupid. Actually, he usually appended a few colorful adverbs to his opinion, if only to himself. It was also hurting the acceptance of the new LACs and their carriers—or, at least, the notion that "real" officers should associate with the jumped-up riffraff who crewed them.
The RMN's officer corps, as a whole, was among the most capable in space, but that didn't mean it wasn't riddled with its own careerists. And in those careerists' view, nothing so minor as a war for survival should be allowed to interfere with the appointed unfolding of God's plan for the universe . . . otherwise known as the seniority system. They'd always hated officers like Honor Harrington for their meteoric rises and the way they kept jumping the zone, leapfrogging those ahead of them on the basis of mere achievement and, in the process, pushing back the regular, seniority-based promotions on which any good careerist relied. But now they had something even worse to worry about—a situation in which noncommissioned peons were receiving warrants in job lots in order to occupy slots in which their more deserving (and commissioned) betters could otherwise have been accruing the seniority which would lead to the promotions they so earnestly desired. Even worse, a lot of those ex-noncom warrant officers were almost certain, eventually, to wind up exchanging the warrants they ought never to have been offered in the first place for regular commissions. Not only that, the miserable wretches and their irritating LAC carriers were going to be in the thick of the new offensives, if the tea leaf-readers had gotten it right, which meant they would also be the ones picking up the medals, being mentioned in dispatches, and generally acquiring all the other career-enhancing benefits of combat experience. (Of course, they would also be getting shot at—a lot—while zipping around in the most fragile warships in the RMN, so perhaps, on more mature consideration, that last point could be considered a wash.)
Among the undeserving souls, who, strictly on the basis of their unfair advantages in experience, training, and ability, had received warrants, however, was a surprisingly large leavening of men and women like Sir Horace Harkness. Individuals who would have been happier to cut their own throats than accept regular commissions. Who'd seen the world of the officers' mess from the outside and much preferred a slot that let them get their hands dirty, tinker with the hardware they loved, and avoid the increasing levels of executive responsibility that were part of the commissioned seniority track. It wasn't that they were afraid of responsibility per se so much as that they preferred to remain with the type of responsibility they understood and stay well clear of the threat of ever commanding an entire starship and finding themselves in the hot seat, responsible for hundreds or even thousands of other lives, when it all fell into the crapper.
Sir Horace Harkness had many friends among that particular group of individuals, including one Warrant Officer Scooter Smith. WO-1 Smith had been only a petty officer first before the Second Battle of Hancock, and he was considerably younger than Harkness, but he was also very good at his job. Which was the problem. Smith's ability and willingness to dig in and heave when the going got rough accounted for how much Harkness liked him. Those same qualities, however, also helped explain how Captain Ashford's wing readiness rate had just edged Harkness' by exactly three percentage points. Which meant Incubus had won the competition Admiral Truman had organized to see which LAC-carrier would be the senior ship of CLAC Squadron Three. Ashford's seniority to Tremaine had given his ship the inside track for the job, but Hydra's captain was senior to Incubus' by over six T-months. Had Hydra's wing—which meant Sir Horace Harkness' wing—aced the competition, Admiral Truman might well have decided (as the outraged traditionalists insisted she ought) to go on the basis of the seniority of the two CLACs' skippers rather than that of the commanders of the LAC wings.
"Oh, come on, Chief!" That was another thing that tended to confuse outsiders to whom the Navy's inexplicable customs remained a foreign language. There were chief warrant officers, and there were chief petty officers. Properly speaking, a CWO was always addressed as "Chief Warrant Officer" and a CPO was addressed as "Chief Petty Officer" or "CPO" to avoid confusion. In fact, the Navy tended to be much more informal in practice. Besides, Harkness would always be "the Chief" to Scotty Tremaine, and although Captain Adib, Hydra's CO, was known as a stickler for correct etiquette, not even she would have protested in this very special case.
"Stew and Scooter beat us fair and square . . . and we beat everyone else!"
"They don't give out anywhere near the same prizes for second-best, Sir," Harkness grumbled, "and if that beta node on Twenty-Six just hadn't—"
He made himself stop and breathe deeply, then grinned at his youthful boss.
"All right, Skipper. Guess I was venting just a bit much. But it really frosted me to lose over a component that passed every preinspection test and was supposed to have another three thousand hours on its clock! I swear, I think Scooter bribed the damned thing to fail just when it did."
"That, Sir Horace, is because you are a devious and unscrupulous sou
l. I, on the other hand, as the trusting, honest, and open sort I am, rather doubt Mr. Smith would stoop so low. And even if he would have stooped so low—which," Tremaine admitted thoughtfully, "upon more mature consideration, I don't suppose we can quite rule out—I don't see how he could have pulled it off. Besides, we're still the senior ship for Division Two, and that's nothing to sneeze at!"
"No, Sir, it isn't." Harkness gazed at the results for one more second, then shook his head and turned away with an air of resolution. "And now that that's outta the way," he went on more crisply, "what do you want me to tell Commander Roden?"
"I don't know." Tremaine rubbed his nose in a gesture uncannily like one Harkness had seen scores of time from Lady Harrington. "I can't fault his eagerness, but I'm not sure what Dame Alice would think of the idea. Or if this is the right time to be tinkering with it in the first place."
"Never gonna know if we don't ask, Sir," Harkness pointed out reasonably. Then he cocked his head. "You want me to write up a proposal?"
Tremaine's eyebrows rose. Harkness must feel pretty strongly about Roden's suggestion if he was actually volunteering to write a proposal which he knew was certain to end up on at least one flag officer's desk. And which, under the circumstances, might go all the way up the chain to Vice Admiral Adcock, the Fourth Space Lord, at the head of the Bureau of Weapons.
And he may have a point, Tremaine mused. Besides, I sort of think I may be waffling because of the rarified heights to which any such suggestion is likely to ascend.
He grinned at the thought, then folded his arms and leaned back against the bulkhead while he replayed the idea once more.
At twenty-seven, Lieutenant Commander Robert Roden was even younger for his rank than Scotty Tremaine. And he didn't exactly look like an HD writer's concept of the steely-eyed, courageous warrior, either. He was a bit on the plump side, stood just under a hundred and seventy-six centimeters, and wore his dirty-blond hair quite a bit on the long and shaggy side by current RMN standards. Thanks to the fact that he was third-generation prolong, he looked a lot like a pre-prolong sixteen-year-old, and his guileless eyes and innocent expression contributed to an impression of youthful diffidence.