Star Force: Captains Mint (Star Force Universe Book 70) Read online

  Han smirked, but took the cue to shut up as the rest checked in. When the woman finally responded, she did so with her ID tag on her mech rather than her voice, and Han froze up as star struck as he had been when he’d first seen Mina Delari backstage after a concert two years after he’d graduated from the maturia…and she’d been naked. But he couldn’t even see Kara, yet the little Archon ID badge labeled ‘Kara-317’ was enough to make him forget where he was for a moment.

  Captain Nuomo’s mech was the first to move, walking out of formation as everyone else stood in place not saying anything or even moving a mechanical foot until he finally noticed.

  “In case you didn’t catch on, we’re moving out, so follow me single file. The Archon has the rear position, and in the future try to be a little more intuitive. Captains that have to be spoon fed instructions don’t deserve their command chair.”

  Han snapped himself out of his euphoria when the slap of the rebuke hit him, then set his Madcat to ‘driver’ mode where it would go where he steered it, but would manage the steps on its own without his direct input. He wasn’t skilled enough to take manual control, but fortunately he wasn’t going to have to if all they were doing was using the mechs for travel…or were they? They had one of the original Archons here, in this tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere. Did he really think they were just going to take a nice stroll across the frozen planetary fragment?

  “Probably not,” he whispered, trying to think why she would be here. A bunch of newly minted Captains didn’t really rate any Archon. They were busy with a galaxy-ending war to fight, so why was Kara of all people here? It didn’t make any sense unless there was something important going on out here, or maybe this was a staging base for a Rim operation?

  That still didn’t rate her, but he couldn’t think of any good reason for this Archon to be here, so he was just going to have to go along and figure this out. As Nuomo had just said, he shouldn’t need to be fed all information up front. If he was worth his soon to get Captain’s bar, then he better start acting like it.

  But as he walked his mech out of its maintenance stall he was grinning from ear to ear when he belatedly realized that one of the legendary Archons from the ancient history of the Star Force Empire had just said ‘your mom’ to him. He doubted very many people could make that claim.

  Han steered his Madcat through the tunnel then out the heavy doors that had parted to let him enter the outpost, though now they were flung wide open to allow the mechs out. His external temperature gauges dropped from 68F to -21F as soon as he crossed through the containment field, and though his skin couldn’t sense any change from inside the cockpit, he felt the chill and the danger it represented anyway. Without his mech or a set of personal armor he’d lose his fingers from frostbite, or worse, if he was stranded. And with no other known Star Force installation on the planet, every step his mech took away from the tunnel he felt a little more vulnerable.

  The lack of even one starship in orbit made him feel worse. He was used to the comfort of having naval protection everywhere in the empire, and now its lack was becoming a reality to his senses. He had no backup here, other than this mech convoy, but if Kara was here then what was he really worried about?

  “What am I worried about?” he told himself as he saw outside the opaque cockpit via a hologram that wrapped around his forward, rear, and lateral views, making him appear to be floating above the ice inside nothing but a very faint wire frame that displayed his mech’s body so he wouldn’t run it into any other objects accidentally. But other than that, it was a clear external view all around unless he switched viewing modes.

  The mechs in front of him crunched the ice beneath their feet into a path as they tracked behind Nuomo’s Raven-class scout mech. It was considerably smaller than the Madcats that the Captains had, while Kara was bringing up the rear in a Neo. It was a melee mech designed for close in, hand to hand fighting, while his Madcat was a long range fighter. In the navy you had drones configured for both as well, but the warship itself always stayed back, usually out of most of the combat, while the drone pilots were mentally linked into the warzone.

  But still, the ranged mindset fit the navy best, for their idea of ‘close’ combat was still measured in miles. The Archon choosing a close combat mech made sense, Han thought, because they weren’t just trained for Naval, but also Commando, and Commandos had a habit of wanting to close ranks and make it personal rather than get in a shooting fight over distance.

  Han wondered if they were actually going to use the mechs for firing practice, or maybe a mission. Maybe a final challenge…except Nuomo had said there was none. Just a lesson.

  What lesson required a bunch of mechs with Naval Captains piloting them, plus a legendary Archon thrown into the mix?

  “Illo, back off a bit,” Kara said over the comm, which was apparently set to the group setting, because ‘Illo’ was one of the Captains in the back line of the mechs, all of which now had their IDs visible when Han turned his head around and looked behind him in the cabin just in time to see a patch of ice crack beneath one of the mechs…Illo’s…and his Madcat stumbled forward in response.

  The two big guns for arms the mech had dipped down slightly, and one of them hit the Madcat in front of Illo in the leg, causing it to stumble as well, but the automated balance programs were enough to keep both machines on their feet and moving.

  “The ice here is not packed as tightly as you’d expect,” Kara went on to explain, with Han eager to listen as he adjusted his own comm settings to the group mode so that anything he said everyone else would also hear. “Some of it formed before the planetary breakup when the gravity field was much higher, but the rest formed after. The stuff after isn’t as dense, so there are pockets of instability for something the size of a mech to walk over. They’re usually shallow, so they’re not going to show up on your proximity warnings unless you set them to paranoid mode. Don’t. Just use your eyes and keep to the tracks ahead of you that are already smashed down.”

  “Are we allowed to ask questions?” Captain Janke asked in her Kiritak voice.

  “No, I’m here to babysit you without answering any questions whatsoever, because that’s a much better use of my time than my typical Archon duties.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Every Captains mint requires a field Captain and an Archon. You guys got me. It’s no more complicated than that.”

  “Why aren’t you fighting the Hadarak?” Captain Pov’nik asked, clicking that last word in a Bsidd gesture of disrespect for Star Force’s primary enemy.

  “There are plenty of Naval officers and Archons to handle the space combat, and the trailblazers are taking care of the V’kit’no’sat annexation. Clan Ghostblade doesn’t need my direct leadership right now, so I decided to fill the current lull with this Archon duty.”

  “And what is this duty?” Han asked.

  “That’d be spoilers. But right now I believe Captain Nuomo is about to give you a lecture on how to be competent Captains. I’m just going to listen and pull anyone out of a crevice who is stupid enough to walk into one.”

  “The Captains Mint,” Nuomo began seamlessly, “is designed to take you from Naval officers into something more. Ever officer works as a team onboard a starship, whether it’s a tech fixing a jammed door or the helmsman flying the ship who has everyone’s lives in their hands during tricky maneuvers through a nebula. But the Captain is the one person in the team that cannot think like part of the team. They can pull on all the skills, experience, and strengths of the crew, but it is the Captain that is responsible for the starship. Everyone else aids you in this, and that is their duty. Making sure the ship does its duty is yours.”

  “You must understand, that the positions you were in prior to this…most of which were first officers…are far different than Captain, even though you are dealing with the exact same issues on the ship. As first officer, while you are capable of commanding the ship in the Captain’s absence, it i
s only temporary. You do not set policy on the ship. You do not coordinate with other Captains, Admirals, or Archons. You may be privy to some of what goes on, but that is as an observer. When you are onboard a starship, that starship is your home, your family. You live and die together, whereas another ship in the same fleet doesn’t share your fate. You are separated by the void of space, and while you move in concert with the other starships, they are cousins. Not your brothers and sisters.”

  “Your crew are your immediate family, and ship dynamics are all about the crew. We train our people well, and always have, so we don’t have the myriad of issues that other navies suffer from, but you know well by now that not everyone meshes instantly. That’s a feat of magic I’ve not seen any but the Archons pull off. I’ve asked before, but all the Archons have simply said it occurs naturally. Can you add anything to that, Kara?”

  “I’ve seen Commandos do it too,” she explained. “The really high end ones whose roles are very specialized. When you meet strangers, they are different than you and then you have to go through a process of learning what the differences are and accommodating them. You learn how much space to give those that are not identical to you, and you learn how close you can get to those that are. An exceptional crew will be able to work in and around each other’s bodies in cramped and chaotic areas without incident because they are familiar with each other. Strangers are not.”

  “Archons are chosen because we are all the same. Doesn’t matter where we were born, or even what cultures we came from. Star Force has many cultural subsets now, but it’s still only one culture. Back when I became an Archon, Star Force didn’t even control Earth, and all the Archon recruits came from very different backgrounds. We didn’t all speak the same language naturally. Many had to learn it as a secondary language, and that had some issues with subtlety of meaning, but those got washed away as we calibrated with each other. But when I first met the others in my class, I was dumbfounded how we were so identical.”

  “We didn’t look the same. Didn’t talk the same. And we had very different lives from each other before coming to Star Force…but we all were the same. Director Davis and a man named Wilson had somehow figured out how to screen for very specific profiles that to this day I still do not understand. They won’t tell me how they did it, and none of the other Archons know either. We’ve figured out the basics by remembering what tests they put us through, but we can’t figure out what exactly they did beyond the trick of having us think we were off camera when they were actually recording. But somehow they knew, and still know, how to find Archons. So when we came together, it was like looking in the mirror. There was almost no friction between us, and what there was disappeared within weeks.”

  “That’s why Archons who have never met before can link up in battle and fight like we’ve known each other for years. That’s not technically accurate, because we do get better coordination as we work with someone, but the starting level of efficiency is so high compared to others that you probably wouldn’t notice the difference. The Commandos are similar in that their very selective roles require very selective mindsets, so when they meet up there’s not a lot of differences to work out.”

  “For those of us,” Nuomo continued, “who are not Archons or elite Commandos, we have to take various individuals and meld them into more than just a good crew. We need to be as resilient and efficient as we can to aid the fleet, and I’ve seen many identical ships with radically different combat ratings, and that’s due only to the crew, not the equipment. A starship lives and breathes as one entity, and in that way it is insular. But the Captain cannot be. He is the link to the rest of the fleet, and to the galaxy. Most of the crew never see outside the ship, and the work they do relies on them trusting the bridge crew to take them where they need to go. Likewise, the bridge crew has to trust that the Captain knows where to go, and that’s more than just about location. It’s about mission.”

  “The Captain sets the mission, the first officer and crew follow it. If an Admiral gives an order, the Captain considers it, because the Admiral is not on the ship and is not part of the crew. It is the Captain that is responsible for the crew of his ship, not the Admiral of the fleet. Because of this, Captains are a different breed of Naval officer. An independent breed that matches the physical reality of space travel. A starship is isolated from planets, stations, and other ships by the void of space. And each ship has to operate as a sovereign entity in alliance with the others in the fleet. Not be bound to them.”

  “If you want to leave a starship in space, you can’t. The void will kill you. You have to be ferried away by dropship…”

  “…or armor,” Kara quickly added.

  “…and that means you are being transferred rather than choosing to leave. The starship becomes a world unto itself, no matter what the size. That is why the Captains from every size of ship in the Star Force navies have to go through the Captains Mint. Doesn’t matter if it’s a warship, cargo ship, or scout ship. A Captain is a Captain, and every Captain has the same flexibility and same responsibility. The starship lives or dies based on the skills of the Captain, and as Captains we have to be worthy of the trust of the crews we command. For if we screw up, we get them killed, and we have no right to do so. They are our wards, not our servants. They are our team, and while their job is to operate the ship, ours is to be the ship as far as everyone else in the galaxy is concerned.”

  “That’s why we see other ships not so much by their class, but by who commands them. Some Captains will outright refuse an order they don’t like. Others will rewrite them to their liking. Trust must also exist between Captain and Admiral, because if the Admiral orders a Captain to do something and the Captain says no…well, the Admiral can’t walk over there and take command of their ship himself, now can he? The starship is sovereign because of physical reality, and no command authority can supersede that. So Star Force doesn’t try to. We embrace it.”

  “Excuse me,” Captain Ghoro interjected. “You’re saying we can disobey orders without a problem?”

  “If the orders are bad orders, you’re not allowed to disobey them. You are expected to disobey them,” Nuomo hammered into him. “If you can’t do that, then you’re not Captain material.”

  “Or Archon,” Kara quipped.

  “The starship lives on orders,” Nuomo continued, because the crew must be in sync with each other, and when they are the orders are not restrictive, they are wise and welcomed. But if a Captain orders the crew to do something stupid, like overload the reactor, the crew should not follow that order immediately, and they won’t. They won’t kill themselves because they are told to do so, and a Captain cannot get his ship killed for the same reason. It is the responsibility of those who give orders to give wise ones. If they fail to do so, that is on them, but you are not required to suffer because of it. Do what’s right. Do what’s wise. Do not let your ship suffer because of a fool miles away in another vessel that won’t suffer the same fate as yours. The Captain goes down with the ship and crew, but the Admiral who gave the bad order does not. Tattoo that into your brains for later. For now, just follow me in silence and let that sink in while we travel to our destination. We’ve got several hours to go, so get comfortable as you ponder the wonders of freedom that go with being Captain, as well as the perils.”

  3

  Han didn’t believe it, but once they reached their destination at the foot of an ice mountain the mech convoy stopped and they were ordered to get out of their machines. Fortunately he realized the cargo canisters inside his cockpit contained environmental armor specifically designed for cold weather survival, along with components for a prefab building.

  It wasn’t a tent, but what he had in his mech was part of a much larger structure and pretty much useless on its own, yet when he hauled them out and dropped them down to the icy ground below, Kara began drawing them to her telekinetically…which was freaking amazing to watch…and she laid out the base components into a perfect hexagonal
base, upon which the rest of them were needed to help assemble the barracks.

  Given the amount of food, water, and additional supplies assembled, Han was beginning to think they were going to be out here for a long time, and what ‘lesson’ they were supposed to learn was becoming even more elusive. But he’d taken Nuomo’s instruction to heart and accepted the challenge of trying to figure it out rather than just waiting to be told as he and the others ran laps around the barracks and a few marker posts Kara had set up to define a half mile track that she was blazing around doing her own workout.

  Nobody told them to join in, but after several hours cramped up in a mech all the Captains felt like stretching their legs, with them heading out in small groups to begin with, but Han went solo because he was apparently faster than the others…or they just didn’t feel like pushing as hard as he did, for he was feeling a mix of inspiration and shame at how easily Kara was lapping them.

  But that only let him soak in the experience better. They were out in the middle of nowhere with the ice mountain on the far side of the barracks and the impromptu track reaching out ever so slightly onto an icy plain that stretched to the horizon. Above it was a nearly black sky, with the rotation of this fragment being painfully slow, but based on his observations so far they were actually losing a little light, so if this trip lasted more than a day or two they’d end up in total night.

  Maybe that was intentional, or maybe it was coincidental. One thing you learned in the Star Force Naval division was that it didn’t matter. What mattered was whether the change was bad or good, and how you were going to deal with it. The universe was so big you’d never find out the ‘why’ to everything, and if you had a mindset that you needed to before acting then you’d sit on your ass and never go anywhere.

  The space navy was the primary line of defense for the Empire, and they didn’t have the luxury of waiting to think things out. Han had to learn to think on the go from an early stage in his training, and nothing he had experienced since then had shied him away from that lesson. He’d been told by the crew that he and Captain Kiljarro seemed to know everything before it happened, but that wasn’t true. Not by a long shot. They had just become experienced enough to plan ahead when they could and improvise when something surprised them, but Han still dreaded the day when something would come his way that he couldn’t handle fast enough and his ship would pay the price for it.