First Comes Duty (The Hope Island Chronicles Book 2) (2 page)

Worsfold’s scornful face, so reminiscent of his dead father’s, spoke of a profound sense of disappointment. A pang struck at Nathan’s heart.

“The ensign has no excuse for his actions, Sir.” He pushed down the anguish and resentment.

“You’re not at the academy now, Mister. You are a commissioned officer in Monitor Corps. So the ensign better produce an explanation damn fast.”

Nathan recognized he had taken a risk, but Worsfold’s tirade seemed disproportionate to the alleged crime. At least he showed the professionalism to dismiss the rest of the trainees before reaming him.

“Sir, from a purely tactical standpoint, I believe my actions are justified.” When dealing with officers he respected, Nathan’s lethargic accent disappeared.

“Really?” Worsfold said. “Do tell.”

“Epsilon One was the last of the boat’s fighters. Damaged or not, it was an asset worth preserving. In my opinion. Sir.”

Nathan struggled to keep his expression neutral.

“The tactical situation,” the commander mused aloud, nodding, “saving the boat’s last fighter; all pretty sound thinking.” Again his gaze locked on to Nathan. “That isn’t the only reason you took the action you did, is it?”

Nathan hesitated.

“Tell me.”

“I felt I could do it.”

Worsfold’s frustration returned. “So, you put Chiron and everyone aboard her at risk because you thought you could do it?”

“No Sir,” Nathan snapped, “I didn’t
think
I could do it, I
felt
I could do it.”

Worsfold’s mouth tightened in preparation for launching into him. A flash of anger washed away the last of Nathan’s professional reserve. He took a single step toward the commander.

“No, Sir, I am not playing games with semantics.”

The commander’s eyebrows arched.

“I
felt
the thrusters giving out. I
felt
the starboard engine’s power dying. I assumed Woodley would cut my power and cripple me when he saw what I was doing. Even so, I
felt
, with my best instincts, I could bring the boat safely home. It might not be entirely rational, but … it was a gut reaction to a stress situation. However,
Sir
, if keen instincts are no longer seen as an asset in Monitor Corps pilots, then I guess you’ll have to reassign me to sweeping up after incompetent fuckers like Woodley.”

The words had leapt from his mouth in a heartbeat of impassioned resentment and a total disregard for the proprieties of rank. Nathan’s heart sank. He wondered if growing coffee beans on Caleb’s plantation wasn’t the worst of occupations.

“What if you lost your stern thrusters?” Curiosity softened Worsfold’s snarl.

“I figured Woodley would pull them, so I isolated them on a silent relay so he couldn’t.”

Worsfold shook his head slowly and turned away, facing the far bulkhead. “I told you once about the purpose of this training. Do you remember?”

“Aye, Sir. You said the training is designed for people like me to learn. Or, failing to do so, to screw up without killing either themselves or anyone else. Mistakes happen, but amateurs should not attempt excursions into non-regulation maneuvers.” Nathan finally swallowed the lump in his throat. “The last time I tried something, ah, innovative, you suggested next time I mightn’t be so lucky.” He paused for a moment, then licked his dry lips. “Is that the case here, Sir?”

When Worsfold faced him, the tightness had disappeared from his features. Nathan controlled his surprise on seeing Worsfold’s lazy smile.

“Not this time, hotshot,” Worsfold said. “But I advise you to keep a check on your temper. It is unbecoming to an officer in the Corps, and will be a definite impediment to gaining your own command one day.”

“I’ll remember that, Skipper.”

“See that you do,” the commander said, with false gruffness. He shook his head again. “I have been training pilots for five years, and never in that time, never, has a trainee pilot tried something so — how did you put it — innovative.” He scratched the back of his head.  “They don’t teach those sorts of maneuvers at the academy these days, do they?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Worsfold failed to respond to his attempted witticism.

“It was … instinctual. I guess it comes from all the time I spent in the sims at the academy. I started in my first year, and I suppose the training has stuck.”

“First year?” His eyebrows arched curiously, a smile pinching the corners of his mouth. “Since when are plebes allowed simulation time?”

Nathan attempted to force a wry smile, but the effect felt self-consciously deformed.

CHAPTER 2

Body and spirit I surrendered whole to harsh instructors — and received a soul.
Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Wonder’,
Epitaphs
, 1919 AD.

Date: 8
^th
September, 321 ASC.

Position: Monitor Corps Fighter Training School, Minos, planet Crete, Athenian core systems.

Status: Metier Training. Downtime.

Nathan stepped from the simulator training building into bright afternoon sunshine. The early spring breeze carried a biting edge common for the planet’s southern hemisphere at this time of the year. The blue sky was clear except for the occasional high-altitude vapor trail from a training flight. Taking a sharp left turn at the administration building set him on a course for the junior officers’ quarters.

The day after graduation he and Livy, now free of academy restrictions, had married. Nathan had been deeply touched that the one hundred and twenty Kendo team members had delayed their furloughs by a day to form an enormous arch of raised swords to greet the newly married couple as they exited the chapel. 

His nine months at Minos had rushed by with unnerving pace. Every year, the school accepted a mere one hundred and ten of the academy’s best into their advanced training course, Metier. Officially attached to Training Command’s Flight Training Center, Metier compressed a two-year flight training schedule into a highly intensive twelve months.

On the morning of his first day on Minos, he reported to the base infirmary for his communication implants. 

Moe had needed to restrain him when one of the quacks said the words guaranteed to boil his blood.

“Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.”

Quick and painless, the quacks said. A week after the “painless” procedure, all of the trainees were having difficulty swallowing and some continued to suffer from ringing in the ears. The experience did nothing to lessen Nathan’s hatred of medicos.

At the base administration building, he was assigned to a training flight. Fortunately, Monitor Corps believed in keeping a working team together. Nathan and three of his teammates who had distinguished themselves while serving aboard the monitor
Truculent
were assigned to Epsilon Flight. The rest of the team comprised star students from the academy’s Kendo teams, all of them known to him.

Initially, the Epsilon students did cartwheels when they heard Commander Henry Worsfold, call sign “Skipper”, had been appointed as their senior training officer. Athletically lean and slightly taller than Nathan, with gold wings on his flight suit, he was a giant in the trainees’ eyes. The commander had once skippered a monitor. Nathan could not help wondering what could possibly have induced a man like Worsfold to relinquish command of his own boat for the mundane duties of Chief Flight Instructor.

The trainees’ celebration quickly dissolved into a state of sour incredulity.

Worsfold’s ludicrously cautious attitude began to wear thin with both students and instructors alike. Ensign Gillespie finally tagged the commander with the secret call sign “Wary Worsfold”. No one openly disagreed with the assessment. Other teams were getting further ahead of them, which did nothing to improve their sour mood.

Nathan could not understand how someone of Worsfold’s background, a former fighter jock and monitor captain, could have become so circumspect. Monitor skippers were renowned for their aggression. They were said to have “fangs”. Thus far, Worsfold had acted like a mother hen with a brood of chicks rather than a warrior bent on producing offspring of similar persuasion.

Next week they would say farewell to the routine of ANS Base Minos for three months. This section of training contained the most rigorous pressure of all: fail carrier qualification, and all the work done before counted for nothing. Nathan could hardly wait.

He rounded the corner into the area set aside for the junior officers’ married quarters. The drab practicality of the base facilities fell away before uniformly neat rows of small bungalows. Complemented by white picket fences and modest garden plots, the bright white color of the buildings made the area feel as though it belonged in another reality.

Entering the mundane billet, he once again marveled at what Livy had done with the place. As countless wives before her had done, she had taken the basic accommodation package and turned it into a home. Colorful curtains hung from the windows, pictures of family and friends festooned the living room, with a couple of spirited tapestries draped over the dreary walls. As usual, she hunched over the kitchen table, marking homework on her computer. For a time he felt content to simply take in her thick chestnut hair and fine lines.  

“Hello my darlin’.” He hugged her around the shoulders.

Livy leaned against his chest and sighed. His kiss lingered on her lips briefly. She had trained him not to interrupt her during work hours.

“How was your day?” Nathan asked.

“Good, and yours?”

“Same old, same old. How have the mini-monsters been treating you?”

“My students aren’t monsters,” she said, rising to the bait. “They’re adolescents.”

“Same thing.” He grudgingly broke contact. “Is she up yet?”

“No, so don’t disturb her. You know what you’ll have to do if she doesn’t get her sleep, don’t you?”

“Yes, dear,” he said, talking through his nose. “I’ve got Kendo classes tonight, so I’m going to grab a quick shower and head out.”

“Again?”

“That’s the price of popularity.” 

Nathan knew he shouldn’t, but couldn’t resist checking in. He opened the nursery door so quietly no sound came from the old hinges. With all of the stealth of a monitor he crept to the edge of the bassinet and peered in. Ellen Bernice Telford lay in the crib surrounded by white sheets and a menagerie of soft animal toys. Although she was only six months old, he could tell that she would develop her mother’s thick, lustrous hair. The fine-boned features were her mother’s, but she was most definitely daddy’s girl. He reached down to brush a strand of hair from her sweet little face, but resisted the urge. If she awoke now, she would awake again in the wee hours of the next morning and he would need to attend to her. Not that he minded.

Nathan forced himself to leave and hit the shower. Two minutes of hot water followed by two minutes of cold swept away most of his fatigue. Dressed in a fresh flight suit, he grabbed the duffel containing his fighting suit, light armor and sword.

Passing the nursery, Nathan checked in on his girl again. He tiptoed inside and stared into the bassinet, to be greeted by two large, grey eyes. The obscured blue flecks behind those eyes said better than anything else that they belonged to a Telford. Ellie squealed with delight as he scooped her up. Holding her at arm’s length, he recited the old song: “Hellooo baaaby!” She gurgled her approval, then went quiet when he held her close to his beating heart. Whenever he held her in his arms, he felt as if his heart would break from pure joy.
Like mother, like daughter.
  

The exercise would cost him sleep at some obscene hour of the following morning, but at the moment he could not care less. 

CHAPTER 3

Date: 8
^th
September, 321 ASC.

Position: Monitor Corps base Minos, Planet Crete, office of the commanding officer, Flight Operations.

“You’re kidding!” Captain Palter blurted.

Worsfold grinned and shook his head.

“He dodged the bullet in the ambush scenario, then brought his damaged boat into the boat bay sternward? How could he do that with his flight controls out? You
did
cut his flight controls?”

“I took his mag plating first, then his engines, one at a time, then his thrusters. I thought I had him.” Worsfold took a sip of his coffee and snorted. “The young buck saw me coming and rerouted stern thrusters to a silent relay.”

“Didn’t you keelhaul him for not aborting?”

“I tried to, but he talked me out of it.”

Palter chuckled.

“I swear, for a moment I thought he was going to take a swing at me.”

“Who is this kid?”

“Oh, Rosie, you should see him: fire and passion clamped down by an iron-willed determination. He’s the best natural pilot I’ve ever seen.”

“Better than Jenny Teal?”

Worsfold nodded slowly, staring into his coffee mug.

“It wasn’t your fault, Henry.”

“I pushed her too hard.”

“You push them all hard, that’s your job.”

“There’s a line you’re not supposed to cross with grommits. I pushed Jenny over that line, and it killed her. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“But you will, Henry,” Palter said, her voice turning appropriately formal. “Our sole purpose is to prepare these kids for the real thing, to push them to their limits before they go into a shooting match.” She hated having to say the next words, but as commanding officer, Flight Operations for Minos, being a hard case came with the job. “If you can’t give these kids your very best, you might want to consider taking a shore posting. With Peggy gone these last five years, I’m sure your kids would be pleased to see more of you.”

Worsfold stared at her without blinking for far too long, then broke eye contact to take a sip of coffee. “Perhaps,” he finally whispered.

Palter leapt from her chair. “Perhaps, bullshit. Henry, you’re the best CFI and best individual flight instructor I’ve ever worked with. You have consistently turned out the best-trained pilots in the school’s history. And now, because you see a young officer who reminds you of a lost chick, you want to throw it all away. That’s an obscene waste of talent. If this kid … what’s his name?”