BSE Chapter 4-15

Markus hurried through the halls. It wouldn’t look very good if he was late for class, especially this day.

Normally his mother Eva would wake him up in the morning, but she had told him now that he was in the academy, he needed to learn to get ready in the morning by himself.

It was slightly annoying, but he had done as much back in the orphanage. Unfortunately, it proved harder to go back to his old ways than he realized. Over the past few years, Markus had grown way too used to someone else waking him up. The sudden lack of that stimulation was more jarring than he expected.

He had to admit that his Mother was right, which she tended to be most time.

He made it through the door just as the bell rang.

Markus had hoped to go unnoticed as he made his way to his seat, but that wasn’t to be.

“You’re cutting it awfully close, cadet,” Admiral Krieger stated.

The whole room stared at Markus.

“Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again, sir.”

“See that it doesn’t,” the Admiral replied. “Now hurry to your seat so we can get started.”

He found the nearest available seat and plopped into it as quickly as possible. It just so happened to be the one beside Cho, who he knew from the orphanage.

The girl smirked at him and shook her head as he shrugged.

Cho was a year older than Markus at seventeen and had never gotten adopted. That hadn’t stopped her from pursuing her goals once she was too old to remain in the orphanage.

Along with Markus, she was one of twenty cadets in the first classes of the academy. He saw a few from every group on Eden’s End represented in the class.

The cadets differed from normal students because they were taking military courses, which also came with hands-on training. Not every cadet was taking the same classes though. He knew that Cho was in his command and engineering classes, but she was not in the tactics course.

The tactics course wasn’t necessary for a command role. Cho likely wanted to fly a gunship. Markus was taking the course for the same reason, but his tactics course guaranteed he could take the captaincy exam after serving for a few years.

“I know you’ve all been waiting for this day since courses began over a month ago. Yes, today, we will be assigning ship rotations for this semester. Each of you will get to ride along in an in-system patrol for a day. I know this isn’t the most glamorous of postings, but it will allow each of you to dip your feet into how naval ships operate. Seeing as the only fair way to do this is by random, I want each of you to come up and select a number from this basket.”

The Admiral held out a basket with folded pieces of paper inside. “Let’s start from the front.”

Because he was nearly late, Markus had been stuck toward the back of the class. When it was his turn, he hurried up and selected one of the last slips of paper.

When he opened it, he saw the number five on it.

“The number on the piece of paper represents the order with which you will carry out your ship duties. One is first and each day will be the next number. For those who received one, please step forward.”

Cho stuck her tongue out at Markus before standing and heading toward the front of the class along with another boy. Markus only shook his head at the older girl’s antics. Cho had always been rather smug when she won, even back when they were on the station.

Markus didn’t hold it against her, as orphans there was very little to be excited about on most days, but as a cadet, he hoped she would grow out of the childish behavior soon.

“Your IDs,” the Admiral gestured.

Markus watched with envy as the Admiral placed the IDs in a reader before handing them back to the pair of cadets. “The shuttle is already waiting for you outside exit seven, I suggest you hurry.”

Cho and the other boy seemed surprised that a shuttle was waiting for them, but they quickly saluted the Admiral before not quite running out of the room.

Once the pair had left the room, Admiral Krieger turned to address the class. “Each group will be assigned a day of the week, so once every two weeks, you will receive a rotation aboard an active fleet ship. You won’t get many chances before you graduate so take full advantage of that if you wish to impress the captains.”

The rest of the group lined up and got their IDs updated.

While Markus would have preferred to be up in space, he still enjoyed the lecture that Admiral Krieger put on for the remaining time. It was mostly a history lesson that covered certain types of outdated tactics, followed by a holo showing actual battles that used those tactics.

***

Yulia weaved through the track, barely staying ahead of Charlie.

The boy still beat her sometimes, but she had retaken her position as the best driver. While she didn’t want to admit it, her training with Mr. Damien was probably helping.

She was much quicker to react and could anticipate the course farther ahead, which was a good thing since it had been changed up from a simple oval to a back-and-forth design that Alex called a road course.

The oval had been getting rather boring, so this change was certainly an improvement. It also required far more skill.

Yulia cut the next corner tight, preventing Charlie from getting on the inside. She hadn’t quite forgiven him for the last incident, but the boy had been less moody and confrontational since he joined the hand-to-hand training, so that was something.

The pair came onto the final straight before the finish line and Charlie pulled alongside her, pushing his cart to the limit. It wasn’t quite enough though as she crossed the finish line a wheel ahead of him.

She whooped in delight and looked over at the boy, intending to be smug about her win, but she found the boy grinning happily back at her.

Not quite expecting that sort of reaction, she was caught completely off-guard. Instead of rubbing her victory in, she simply grinned back.

Maybe Charlie wasn’t so bad after all.

***

Ezekiel adjusted his uniform in the mirror and picked an imperceptible piece of lint from the shoulder. He tsked at that. He was going to have to reprimand the captain of the Blueridge to ensure his people worked harder at keeping it clean.

It didn’t matter to Ezekiel that this ship had been his only a few months ago and that he hadn’t bothered to maintain it when he was the captain. At the time he had been forced to maintain the bare minimum standards to keep his position. He was beyond such mundane matters now that he had moved up in rank from Senior Captain Willard to Vice Admiral Willard. It all happened when that insufferable Fletcher had gotten himself killed.

“Good riddance,” Ezekiel muttered.

Ezekiel was from a powerful family and while he was not on the best of terms with them at the moment, he still held a firm belief that positions of power should remain in the hands of those who understood that power, not some common rabble who thought they understood how things actually worked. How Fletcher had managed to maintain his position for so long, he would never know, nor did he care.

As much as Ezekiel would like to admit that his family connections got him here, they hadn’t. He knew the only reason he had this position was because of his service to Omni. It had paid off in the long run, but having to debase himself to some corporate goon left a bad taste in his mouth. If he were head of the family, he would put Omni back in their place, but he wasn’t so he had to make the best of a bad situation.

He didn’t mind giving up Fletcher's little projects. Who needed stealth ships anyway? It was much better to face off against your opponent with the most technologically advanced ship you could, that way they could be shown your true power. Hiding that just brought challengers to your doorstep.

Unfortunately, the Blueridge was not the type of ship that would evoke any response other than disdain. Ezekiel had been forced to take it and the few other ships in Varlen when he had gotten orders from Naval Headquarters in Sol. He had tried asking for a few more months to delay those orders so his new flagship could be completed, but Headquarters had shut him down.

The orders weren’t anything grandiose, but he would have preferred to do it at the head of a fleet to make a much more pointed statement. He was to request the attendance of Alexander Kane, the CEO of the backwater company called Blue Star Enterprises for an inquiry into Fletcher’s death.

While the mission was certainly fit for his new title, Ezekiel loathed wasting a month and a half to fly out to this border world.

At least when he arrived, Ezekiel could throw his weight around and demand Kane return with him immediately. He wasn’t going to sit around or humor the man, he wasn’t Fletcher. Big deal if they had one ship.

His task force had seven. They may not be the newest ships in the fleet or the biggest, but numbers had a quality all their own.

He checked his uniform one final time before nodding and heading toward the bridge. People jumped aside and saluted him as he passed.

Ezekiel didn’t acknowledge the lowly crewmembers, but he did smile internally. It had taken a few disciplinary actions to rid Varlen’s naval personnel of the bad habits they had picked up under Fletcher’s watch, but the lackadaisical attitude had finally been wiped clean of the station and the ships assigned to the system.

Two Marines saluted him and one turned into the bridge and announced his arrival. “Admiral on deck!”

These had been Fletcher’s personal guards, but Ezekiel didn’t trust them, so had reassigned them to duty aboard the Blueridge. He would have assigned them to one of the frigates, but there was no room for Marine contingents aboard those outdated junkers.

Ezekial stepped into the room as everyone rose and saluted him. He looked around at the individuals with barely hidden distaste and did not acknowledge the salute. “Captain, I find my room conditions to be unacceptable. Have your people correct this and send me a report on what punishments you will be doling out for this unacceptable behavior.”

The man looked like he wanted to say something, but stopped himself. “As you wish, Vice Admiral Willard.”

Ezekial finally gave the man a minute nod and he dropped his salute, followed by the rest of the crew who returned to their stations.

He moved over to the Captain’s seat without a word and sat down. “How long until we drop out?”

“Ten minutes, Vice Admiral Willard.”

“Good. You have time to have your people run one final combat preparedness drill. I expect it to be flawless.”

Ezekiel didn’t expect any actual combat, but it was important to show that he was involved and in charge.

“At once, Vice Admiral Willard,” the captain stated before turning to his crew and issuing the orders.

Ezekiel thought requiring them to give his full title and name every time they addressed him was a bit much, but he found he enjoyed it more every time that someone was forced to use it.

He wiled away the time by simply staring straight ahead and ignoring everything around him. It was a trick he had picked up years ago when he was first busted down to such an inauspicious position.

Nobody cared about Varlen, if it wasn’t for the shipyard there, there would be no point even having a naval presence on this side of STO space. Who did they have to worry about? The Shican? They had been gone for almost fifty years. The pirates? The ones on this side were so timid that they never even approached the STO border.

It was a system meant to dispose of unwanted individuals, Ezekiel knew that, but now he had an opportunity and a role that might finally seem him away from that god-awful posting.

“Exit into normal space in five… four… three… two,” the captain counted down.

It was about time, Ezekiel thought. Now he could complete his mission and go home. His new flagship might even be close to being completed when he arrived.