“Got anyone in mind?”
“Martin’s XO and also Lieutenant Feldstein.”
Whatley raised an eyebrow. “Feldstein’s your XO. Damn good Sabre pilot too. Why transfer her?”
“Because she’s due for a promotion, sir, and I don’t want to hold her back.” It also might help make things a bit less awkward. Ever since the incident a few months prior when they’d almost kissed each other in a moment of weakness, Justin had felt a gulf between them. Probably because I put it there.
“Well, I think she’d be great in the position, but you need to ask rather than assign. Flying a Sabre is a hell of a lot more fun than flying a Mauler.” Whatley snorted. “Damn things turn like a pig.”
Justin snickered. “Yes, sir.”
“What’s the readiness level for our refitted Sabres and Boars?”
Much like the Greengold, upgrade packages had come through for both fighters she carried. Crew chiefs, aviation division personnel, and defense contractors had strived tirelessly to ensure everything worked as advertised. “On schedule, sir. The last of our checkout flights should happen tomorrow.”
“Make sure it happens. We will not be what holds Colonel Tehrani back from getting underway.” Whatley smirked. “I’d never hear the end of that either.”
“Can’t let the squids hold one over on us, sir.”
“Damn straight, Spencer.” Whatley leaned back in his chair. “Anything else going on?”
“Wrestling with the idea of being at war for almost a year, sir.” Justin paused. “Part of me relishes the combat.” He narrowed his eyes. “That seems wrong.”
Whatley shrugged. “Not to me. Out there is the only time in my life I feel alive. So trust me. I get it.” He scrunched his nose. “I wouldn’t go around telling civilians that, though, because they won’t get it.”
“The other side of me wants to go back to my family and the boring job I had writing software.”
“Now we’re getting to the point I throw you out of my office,” Whatley replied. “If you need counseling, go see Chaplain Elliott.”
“I, uh, have been.”
Whatley’s jaw seemed to bounce off his desk. “You’ve been to the chapel?”
“Several times.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Spencer, but I thought you never darkened its door.”
“I didn’t.” Justin narrowed his eyes. “But some things changed over the last year.”
Whatley tilted his head to one side. “I see. Personally, my relationship with God and the comforting thought that someday I might go to a better place is the one thing keeping me on an even keel.”
“I thought it was raining death from the void on our Leaguer friends, sir.” Justin smiled.
“Ha. I’ve told you before—leave sarcasm to the professionals.”
Justin leaned back. “For what it’s worth, I don’t know what I believe yet. Only that I’ve come around to the idea of there being more to the universe than what I can touch.”
“Have anything to do with your experience on that League cruiser?” Whatley asked with a piercing stare.
Memories of landing inside the Rand-class cruiser’s hangar bay, stealing a fighter, and disabling the ship on the way out flooded into Justin’s mind. “Yeah. Something like that, sir.”
“Well, sounds like something to ponder… when you’re off duty.” His normal gruff tone returned. “Now, get back to work,” he said with a sheepish grin.
“Yes, sir,” Justin replied and sprang from his seat. “Godspeed, sir.”
“Godspeed to you, too, Spencer.”
As Justin walked down the passageway toward the hangar deck and his cramped cubbyhole of an office, he pondered where his mind was. The idea of becoming a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, or a Sikh or accepting any other religion seemed so foreign. Yet he was inexplicably drawn to the Bible that Father Elliott had given him. Perhaps returning to the front will make things easier to process. Something about combat seemed to do that.
After six weeks of space dock time, Colonel Banu Tehrani was ready to get back into the void and fight the League of Sol. An operational pause was nice, but the constant drumbeat of headlines regarding the enemy’s capture of Eire gave her motivation to finish as fast as possible. Annoyed by a pattern of delays from the Lawrence drive and fusion reactor refits, she’d insisted on a tour of the work in progress. Major Benjamin Wright, her executive officer, and Major Carlyle Hodges, the Zvika Greengold’s chief engineer, led the walkthrough.
“As you can see, ma’am, we’ve replaced the entire inner shell of the torus,” Hodges explained, gesturing to a control panel showing an interior view of the reactor chamber. The vessel was consuming power from the shipyard they were docked in rather than generating its own.
Tehrani crossed her arms. “Major, I see a bunch of shiny toys and many status reports promising my ship will be ready to return to the fight. Yet our reactor isn’t producing plasma, and the Lawrence drive remains inoperable.”
Hodges frowned. “The engineering team is going as quickly as possible.” Fire crept into his eyes. “These things cannot be rushed.” The man’s Cockney accent grew stronger the more upset he got.
“How soon?”
“Ma’am, if I may,” Wright interjected. “Our esteemed chief engineer is having some issues with personnel. We’re getting replacements, but it’s the same problem we had after the battle of Canaan. These kids CDFPER is sending us… they suck, ma’am.”
“Is that your professional opinion, XO?” Tehrani snorted.
“Well, I mean to say, they’re green—”
“Of course they’re green,” she snapped. “There’s a war for survival on, and our ranks are filling with conscripts.”
Wright bit his lip. “Ma’am, it’s more than the typical green privates. These kids are getting six weeks of basic training followed by another eight weeks of advanced MOS education.”
“Eight weeks?” Tehrani asked, shocked. Typically, CDF enlistees received a ten-week basic training course followed by twenty to sixty weeks’ worth of military occupational-specialty education. “That’s not enough to know a wrench from a multi-tool.”
“And you see my problem, ma’am. They’re eager, but our newly minted privates aren’t adequately trained. My understanding is it's like
