Eric Olafson, First Journeys (Vol 2)
Copyright© 2018 by Vanessa Ravencroft
Chapter 21: First Mission
Lieutenant Ovil, our white-furred Nogoll instructor, said. “Today we will exercise in our extensive pool facilities. We want to make sure that all those cadets who can will learn how to swim.”
For once, there was good news in the morning! I thought and looked forward to wetting my gills and swimming and diving.
Potsema wiggled with all his upper tentacles. “I know Garbini can swim. My brother learned it, but I am still terrified!”
I padded his fur-covered torso. “We are there to help you.”
Fectiv cuffed me and said, “Let’s see if you can beat me swimming! I was reading up on Neo Vikings, you know! You are supposed to be amphibious!”
“You read up on Nilfeheim?”
“Pure, and I wanted to know more about you. It is Attikan tradition to honor a friend by learning about his home and family.”
“That is a good tradition, and I will do the same tonight about Attika.”
Two-Three was also excited. “Water, have I told you how much I find liquids fascinating?”
The Elly, both Attikans, and I said simultaneously, “Yes!” All had seen our Non-Corp friend stare at a running faucet.
Then we laughed, and Potsema asked, “What is so fascinating about it? Isn’t a sun’s surface sort of liquid too?”
Two-Three rung his hands, trying to gesture something, and then said, “It is not easy to explain. A star is all chaos, nothing is orderly, and it is only held together by magnetics and gravitons. Do you know how long it takes for a photon that is created inside a star to reach the surface and actually escape? That photon travels at light speed, no less.”
Pure dropped one of his ears and scratched behind it. “It should be almost instantaneous, even the biggest star isn’t big when it comes to light speed, right?”
Two-Three sighed. It can take many hundred years before it reaches the surface. Being bounced around, bent, and deflected. You see, not even light is orderly and straight inside a sun. Water is liquid, but it follows very simple rules, and all the molecules are orderly and in long chains. You have no idea how much I enjoy being with all of you and in an orderly world.” He stomped his suited foot on the floor. “I just love solid things!”
Potsema snaked a few tentacles around Two-Three. “The whole academy thing started out pretty scary, but now I think it is great.”
The Elly crossed his stumpy-looking arms. “You squiggled, Eric, and now Two-Three. I think it is my turn next! I wasn’t hugged by a female in ages!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Potsema is female?”
“Yes, I am. You did not know?”
“No, I did not really look at you in terms of gender, but I guess I always thought of you as a he. How do you tell a female from a male Garbini?”
“There are many ways. I have light brown and red fur and ten tentacles. Males have eleven tentacles and usually black or gray fur and never any red.”
“I now know I should have paid much more attention in school and most of all not secretly skip the Neural uploads with Captain Iron Hand or Navy Magazines.”
Fectiv’s tail swished. “You managed to switch chips during upload hour? Our teacher was always checking!”
“I could have never done it with Mr. Walters, but we had a different teacher before, and Mr. Flensburger was not as hard to fool.” I frowned. “Now I know I should not have done that. You all know stuff about each other, and I can’t even tell a female Garbini and know nothing about the Elly.”
“Don’t feel bad. I know little about humans yet!” The Elly said.
Our white-furred instructor looked at his PDD. “Cadets assemble in Corridor B before the escalators and wait there. Following Cadets are to report in full dress uniform, cover, and side arm at Applicant Road two Dome Exit hall at 0700: Olafson, Eric, Ak Pure, Ak Fectiv, Potsema Pe, Onli Nevar...”
I cursed my luck. Whatever we had to do wasn’t swimming. I was certain that swimming and dress uniforms did not go together; the names he called were the others of my new group of friends. Except we had now three Ellies in the group and Hanlin and Bergdorf; two of our humans walked grinning to the escalators. Pure rippled the upper part of his snout and around the nostrils. “I sure wonder what they cooked up for us. Dress uniforms and side arms. I never heard they issue side arms to Cadets until year three.”
Fectiv pointed at Purse’s snout and said to me. “That’s how an Attikan shows surprise, by the way!”
The Ellies looked all alike to me, and one of them said, “We Ellies do this when we are surprised.” His trunk retracted almost completely into his skull, and his voice sounded meek and high. “If an Ellie gets too excited or surprised, we can choke on our own noses!”
The other two Ellies shook their trunks back and forth, and one of them said, “This group seems fun!”
A new instructor we had not seen before. He was human. He sent us through an auto dresser, and we all emerged in perfectly fitted, pressed, real black navy uniforms with golden closure snaps. All that was different was a big green ring around the sleeves and no rank insignia at all. The dress uniform consisted of a stiff collar black shirt with buttons, a waistcoat with a diagonal cut collar that was halfway flapped down, and the inside of this was white contrasting with the otherwise black uniform. The diagonal flap could be raised and fastened with a series of golden-colored snaps. The black pants ended in also black all-terrain boots. There was a white belt with the Union Fleet symbol on the belt buckle. There was an empty holster for a gun and two loops for some missing equipment. Black gloves and a white hat with a black duckbill (called a cover) were carried by the human instructor. He checked us all at least five times, then he was joined by two more who went over our uniforms, made me wear the gloves that came with it, and barked at Pure to do the same. No one really told us what was going on. Two or three leaned over and said, “I think we are going to a state funeral or something like that.”
The nervous human instructor said, “We are now handing out fully functional and fully loaded Union Fleet Standard TKU side arms. Since you are not instructed in using them properly, you are prohibited from touching them. The same goes for the swords and the daggers that are attached to the loops on your belts. While these are ceremonial weapons, they are real. If I see anyone of you so much as touch his weapons, you will wish not to have been born.”
After a while, there were more instructors around us than cadets, and they all were nervous. While we didn’t stand in attention, we weren’t really able to talk to each other. Even more officers appeared, and every one of them carried a PDD in clipboard mode and tried to look important.
We were near one of the Academy Dome entrances. Wide sets of automatic sliding double doors set into the Duro-Crete wall underneath that rim we had used for our first PT exercise. Behind the doors was a waiting room with benches, vending machines, bathrooms, and an air lock that allowed access to the space field beyond at the outside of the planet.
Someone yelled, “Admiral on deck.”
We weren’t exactly old hands, and except for Two-Three, none of the cadets, including me, did anything. Two-Three looked around.“Where is he? Is it a real one?” A Lieutenant hissed. “Did you not hear? Attention, Cadets!”
“Now that was something they had already told and taught us, and I put myself in the required rigid posture.
From the doors emerged an old man. He walked briskly and without difficulty, despite his apparent high age. He wore a black uniform jacket just like ours, but instead of pants, he wore a red skirt that ended just above a set of knobby knees. Among the first instructions we had was a lecture about rank insignia, and if I remembered right, this was a Five-Star Admiral. I was certain even the fleet did not have all that many of those, and this most likely explained the nervous instructors. What it did not explain was what we were doing here, but this was the career I had chosen for myself, and I would have to stand in attention before higher-ranking officers all my life from now on.
The old man said, “At ease, Cadets.”
One of the instructors behind the Admiral slapped his hand before his face as one of my human comrades actually sat down, and one of the Elly took his jacket off. Fectiv waved at the Admiral. “Nice to meet you, Sir. The other human cadet went straight for the Admiral. “Do you think I can get an autograph, Sir? You are the McElligott, one of the Immortal ones, are you not? Oh gosh, to meet you for real!”
Pure snorted. “No, I don’t think he is; the Immortal Admiral has a scar and is taller.”
“Attention!” One of the instructors yelled, red in his face, and we responded as we had learned.
The old Admiral glared at the Lieutenant. “If you allow men to be at ease, you don’t put them back into attention. I can see they are greener than their uniforms, and then he said to us, “I am Admiral McElligott. I am, yes, I am the Admiral of the Fleet. I am the other Immortal Admiral. The old and wrinkly one, not the tall and famous Admiral Stahl.” He waved his hand. “Be at ease, but don’t walk away and listen to what I have to say.”
He gave us a moment. “I am fully aware that you are brand-new Cadets and that you just yesterday received your first drill instructions on how to stand in attention, and it appears they had not entirely covered the subject of how to stand at ease.”
Pure spread his paws. “They did mention it, but at the very end, and they wanted to continue today.”
“I am glad they mentioned it then, Cadet. Now we all will take a little trip to a nearby planet system, and it will actually be your very first real mission as Union Fleet personnel. It is not a training exercise or a test but a real diplomatic mission.”
That did get my attention, and I listened closer.
“We are invited by the Yokuta, and they requested more or less you to be present. By that, I mean a cross-section of Union Youth that has just begun to serve, and they want to hear from you what it means to be a Union citizen and a Union Soldier.”
He reached into a pocket and produced a black and brown object; he fiddled with the thin end, and I thought it was probably a pipe. I had seen a few of those in use by fishermen and Snapper herders. He put one end between his teeth. “While you can’t tell them much about being Officers or soldiers yet, you can tell them why you chose this career. I want you to be honest with them, but try to be positive. The goal of the whole thing is to tip them towards an application for Union membership.”
One of the Elly padded the palms of his hand like appendages together. “I know of the Yokuta. I think they once were a colony of ours or something like that, but they are in Galactic Council space, and the Nogoll won’t allow us to visit them.”
The Admiral put a small flame to the other end of the pipe and then produced a small cloud of blue smoke, much to the utter fascination of most of the Cadets and some of the Instructors too.
Elligott appeared to be pleased about the puff of smoke. “This has changed; the Black Nogoll, at least as you knew them, no longer exist; they have been defeated, and the Yokuta are their own masters once again.”
He looked at something like a wrist PDD and turned to one of the Instructors. “Be a good lad and check on the USS Shetland; she is bound to be here by now, and it is not like Captain Mackenzie to be late.”
“Yes, sir!”
Then the Admiral turned back to us. “Now we are not the Nogoll or Galactic Council, and there is no real reason for us to remain in that system and with the Yokuta after the victory celebrations are over. We can’t simply establish a military base or install orbital platforms. We can’t even use one of the planets as the Yokuta have reached Tech level three, and it is their system.” He puffed another cloud of smoke, and this time I got a whiff, and it smelled not like any smoke I knew.
“Now you may wonder why the Union really needs another star system or is so eager to win the Yokuta over instead of them seeking membership on their own or not.”
One of the Elly, who was slightly taller than the rest, said. “I can think of a few reasons.”
Elligott’s bushy white eyebrows shot up.“Give it laldy, Cadet. Do tell.”
“The Yokuta being on their own could either be taken over by the Kermac or opt to be protected by the Free Space Treaty and deny the area for both Union and Kermac but open it wide for pirates and all the independent nations not bound by the Freespace armistice as it would create a direct connection to the Honaster expanse and create basically something like a corridor of free space.”
“Oh! Cadet, you managed to surprise me and that isn’t easy. That is exactly the reason. How come you know that?”
“My father is the representative of my world and belongs to the Elly delegation and I was always interested in these things. That is why I am here, Sir.”
“We need to talk, cadet. You know there is always room in my administration for a bright officer with an interest in politics and diplomacy.”
I paid no longer attention to the conversation. A part of the mustard yellow sky darkened and then through the swirling clouds a huge man-made mountain descended. It was just like when I saw the USS Ragnarsson for the first time. Here on a planet’s surface it gave a true sense of scale to this behemoth. It was wedge-shaped like most of Union battle ships that had been designed and built after the Uniform design doctrine, making it easier for logistics, service, and repair. Bold letters identified the USS Shetland and next to it the Union Flag. The hull classification code was BBG-32 and if I remembered my nights reading and watching fleet and ship specs it was a Super dreadnought and two of these could, according to the magazines I was reading, take on the Devi.
I would be aboard that monster on an official mission and wearing Union Uniform. I could swim any day.
They made us line up before the airlock doors. A transparent covered gangway rose from the surface and connected with the battleship and a slide belt carried us up. To me it was like stepping into the sacred halls of Valhalla.
A high whistling sound was heard, and now we had to stand in a neat row and get our attention. The Admiral approached a woman of small stature with short, cropped gray hair and four golden rings on her sleeves and said to her, “Captain Mackenzie, permission to come aboard with ten cadets and two Academy Instructors.”
“Permission granted, Admiral!”
The two high-ranking officers walked to the side and talked to each other quietly. Then they left, and one of the Instructors told us to relax but not to leave the area.
We were in a large room; an illuminated sign on the light gray walls identified it as Crew boarding chamber eighteen. The first thing I noticed was the smell of metal and that undefined but still unmistakable scent of new machinery. The deck plates vibrated barely noticeably, making this mountain of metal feel as if it was alive and, above all, the voices, orders, footsteps, and generated sounds, that faint almost undetectable hum of unimaginable energies.
“What has gotten into you? You stand there like an oaf with a dumb grin on your face,” one of the human cadets said.
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