“Then why not just give her what she wants in the first place?”
“It is not so simple.”
“You mean what she wants is not simple?” Nathan was getting more confused by the moment.
“That? No, it is easy! One day, at most.” Vladimir could see that Nathan was not following him. “If I always run when she calls, then I am running, running, running, all the time. This way, we fight, she gets mad and leaves me alone for at least an hour, maybe two. This way I get work done. And she thinks twice before asking me for something else.” Vladimir smiled, sure that he was making perfect sense.
“Okay.” Nathan was still confused, but he was pretty sure that Vladimir had things well in hand. “You were right about one thing, though,” Nathan agreed. “She is hot.”
“Yes! I told you this!” he exclaimed as they started walking down the corridor towards engineering. “You know, I was not kidding before, I will not salute you.”
“Calculating new course,” Cameron said. “Transferring course to helm.”
Nathan watched as the new plot drew itself out on his navigation display. He was about to change course when he realized she wasn’t sending him in the direction he asked. “Wait, that’ll take us around the debris field. I wanted to go through it.”
“It’s safer to go around,” she argued, confident she was correct.
Nathan couldn’t believe she was doing this to him again. Ever since the captain had made him the helmsman, she had taken every opportunity to get in his way. “We don’t have the time to go around. Besides, the sensors show most of them are no bigger than a meter. And the shields can handle that.”
“If we go around, or more precisely up and over, we can skim through the less dense edge of the field, thereby reducing the risk to the ship. Once we come out above the field, we can punch it up to twice light and then drop out again a few minutes later on the far side of the gas giant. At the most, we’ll lose five minutes.”
“But that’ll put us in the wrong tactical position,” he insisted. “If we plow straight through, the debris will scatter their sensors and they’ll never see us coming. And when we come out the star will mask our sensor signature and obscure a visual track. We’ll have a clear shot!” Nathan was beginning to lose patience with her.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit obvious?”
“It’s obvious 'cause it works, Cam!” Now plot the course I asked for!”
“Fine, if you want to take unnecessary risks, just remember I’m on record as being against it.”
“The course?” he pleaded.
“It’s coming.” Cameron began plotting the course, but in no particular hurry.
But it was too late, as the ship was already entering the debris field. And with the radioactivity from the debris scattering their sensors, Cameron wouldn’t be able to plot a course with any degree of accuracy.
“Well, great,” Nathan exclaimed in frustration. “Forget it, Cam. You’re too late.”
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked as she realized they had already entered the debris field. “I didn’t get the course plotted yet!”
“No kidding,” Nathan said. It was the third time today he had been forced to ‘wing it’ because Cameron was too busy arguing with him to do her job in a timely fashion. And each time the scenario had ended poorly. It had been much the same way for the last few days. Every time he asked for a course, she objected. Every time he tried to deviate the slightest bit from flight protocols, she would quote the manual, chapter and verse. A few times she had been right, and Nathan had been the first to admit it. Even if it had been after the fact on a few occasions. But most of the time, he had good reason to stray from protocol. And to make matters worse, he knew damned well that she was aware of it despite her usual objections.
“You’re too far below your proposed route,” she insisted.
“How do you know?”
“We’ve been on this course for two minutes. You changed your angle slightly on the way in to avoid that large piece of debris in our path, and you didn’t compensate with a course correction afterward.”
“Probably because my navigator didn’t give me a course to begin with,” Nathan mumbled.
“You still need to come up at least two degrees.”
Nathan was getting tired of her games. “You know what? Thanks, but no thanks. If I’m gonna screw up, I’d rather do it on my own.”
Cameron said nothing. And a few minutes later they exited the debris field, out of position, the sensors immediately triggering a contact alarm. Nathan could feel his heart sink as the inevitable downward spiral that had recently ended so many of their simulations was about to begin.
“I’ve got four Jung ships, closing fast dead ahead,” Cameron announced, satisfaction evident in her voice.
“Like we didn’t see that coming.”
“They’re firing missiles. Tracking twelve inbound. Impact in three seconds.”
For a split second, Nathan contemplated maneuvering to avoid the incoming ordnance. But with the missiles only three seconds away, there wasn’t much use. And the simulation ended poorly, yet again.
Cameron felt a slight bit of guilt as Nathan resigned to inevitable failure. But as far as she was concerned, it his own fault for not listening to her in the first place.
The lights came up, and the screens again switched back to pale blue as the back half of the room swung slowly open.
“Scott and Taylor, you’re ordered to take a fifteen minute break, and then report to the captain’s ready room,” the sim controller announced over the comms. It had been entertaining to the sim technicians at first. They all knew there was going to be friction between the two of them after the captain had promoted Nathan. But after three days of the same old arguments, it was beginning to look like they were never going to get past their differences. And apparently, the captain had grown tired of it.
“You know, if you’re gonna keep sabotaging me at every opportunity, we’re never going to get out of this simulator and onto the bridge,” Nathan said.
“Don’t try to blame me because your crazy ideas never work.”
“They never work because I never have any solid navigation behind them! And who’s fault might that be? Oh, I don’t know, the Navigator, maybe?”
“You just want me to sit idly by and watch while you fly us into who knows what? Well that’s not the way my job works, mister.”
“That’s Lieutenant to you, Ensign!” Nathan knew that pulling rank on her was not the best strategy. But of course, that hadn’t stopped him from saying it.
“I believe, Sir,” she responded, emphasizing the word ‘sir’. “That it’s my job to point out available alternatives, Sir.”
“Point out, yes! But you argue with me until my only choice is to do it your way or fly by the seat of my pants! I’m pretty sure that’s not in your job description, Cam. But I’m sure you’ll check the book and let me know if I’m wrong.” Nathan got up and left the simulator. He needed to be as far away from Cameron as possible right now, even if only for a few minutes.
Cameron topped the ramp leading to the command deck and turned toward the bridge. It had not really come as a surprise when the simulation control officer told them to report to the captain. She knew that Nathan and her were not meshing as a team. But she was equally sure that she had been correct to point out the flaws in his unorthodox solutions. It wasn’t her fault if he couldn’t admit when he was wrong. If he would just heed her advice more often, she was sure that they would be doing a lot better in the simulations.
The more she thought about it, the more she felt like he was out to get her, to make her look bad. But surely the captain would see through his little charade? Surely the captain would recognize that Nathan had no discipline, and no respect for procedure. The guy just jumped in and made things up as he went, with no planning or foresight. That was probably just fine for him before, when his daddy’s money and power could pull his butt out of whatever fire he inadvertently jumped into. But this was different, he might be taking the entire ship into the fire with him.
Cameron tried to calm herself. After all, he was just the helmsman. It was the captain that would be making such decisions, not Nathan Scott. And the captain knew what he was doing. He had an exemplary record, she had checked. He had demonstrated the ability to innovate while respecting established protocols and procedures. If the
