First Command (12 page)

The Captain strode out of Engineering without another word. Hartic and Smith followed close behind. After they were out of earshot of the men, Smith stepped in front of the ladder leading up to the aft gun deck. He looked at the Captain with a confused expression.

“Sir, why did you let that go?”

The Captain in turn responded with a raised eyebrow “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Smith, care to elaborate?” Smith started to but his words failed him. Hartic winced. Smith was just more comfortable around machines than people.

“What Mr. Smith means sir, begging the Captains pardon,” Hartic said doing his best to sound respectful. “Is why find an illegal still then not smash it to pieces and clap the man who admitted to running it in irons, sir.”

The Captain looked at them quizzically, “You would rather that I punish him? Have an obviously competent Engineers Mate who cares enough about his shipmates’ health, and safety to sell them professionally fermented shine in reasonable quantities. Should I have such a man flogged and replaced by a half dozen imitators with neither the experience nor the inclination to effectively manage the supplementation of the men’s alcohol ration?”

“Naaaa..naaa..NO Sir,” Smith managed to stutter out. “It’s just..” words failed him again.

“It’s just that most officers wouldn’t put it in that perspective Sir,” Hartic said again.

Jonathan smiled, “Well gentleman you’ll be quick to find out I’m not your normal officer. I grew up on ships and I learned very fast that if not for a happy and functioning crew, a ship falls apart very fast. Now we have a gun battery to inspect.”     

Hartic and Smith accompanied the Captain on the remainder of the inspection. Hartic’s attitude for his new CO began to change from something like sullenness to something near awe. He’d known intellectually that the Captain was void born, and had grown up on a freighter, but knowing something and seeing it was entirely different.

This was reaffirmed when inspecting the crew quarters the Captain suddenly paused, and asked,

“Master Chief, a multi-tool if you will?” Hartic fished the tool out of his pocket while, Spacer’s Hirfan Jones, Tumas Janero, and Albert Sand, the three men who shared the room at the end of corridor D3 shuffled nervously. Hartic handed the Captain the small multi-tool and the Captain walked over to the ventilation duct. The duct was supposed to be sealed, but the Captain popped it open easily, reached in and pulled out a number of syringes.

The Captain looked up mournfully, “Dextro jabs gentleman.” The Captain looked at Hartic. “Master Chief clap these three in irons. They’ll go before the Captain’s mast the day after tomorrow.”

“Aye sir,” Hartic replied as he grabbed, Jones, the biggest one, by the scruff of the neck. 

“Come on you dogs.”  The three men tried to protest but Hartic wouldn’t have it.

After clapping the three men in the brig, the rest of the inspection proved uneventful aside from the Captain finding a few short cuts in maintenance and repair that even Hartic had missed.

“Well Boats,” Jonathan said to Hartic as they walked back toward the Captains quarters. Smith had returned to engineering. The Captain addressed Hartic with the informal title of the ship’s senior NCO.

“Things seem to be in fairly good shape. A green crew true, but one that’s eager to learn and do their duty.” The Captain continued.

“Aye sir,” Hartic answered. “They’re good lads,” Hartic hesitated, “Permission to speak freely sir?”

“Granted Boats,”  Jonathan answered.

“Sir, you’re going to push them hard, but be careful not to break them. She’s a good ship and this could be a good crew, but they’re raw and eager, and due respect you are too sir.”

Jonathan smiled, “I trust you’ll rein me in when I get to over-eager, Boats, because I think we share the same goal.”

“Which is sir?”

Jonathan tenderly reached out and touched the bulkhead. “This girl’s a young lady less than five years out of the yards, and her honor has been handled rather roughly. I intend to give her a shiny, new reputation, making the respect the rest of the Fleet holds for her equal to the
Republic
if I can.” Considering the
Republic
was not just a ship, but
the
ship, flagship of the home fleet and namesake of a dozen other famous Solarian naval vessels, the Captain was clearly ambitious.

“Trust me and I’ll trust you Boats, and together we can make this girl the finest vessel in the fleet,” the Captain continued.

Hartic nodded. Normally when officers waxed elegantly about their soaring ambitions, old hard shells like Hartic rolled their eyes, but Jonathan Pavel didn’t speak like a man looking wide eyed toward his own future. His tone was serious and his expression earnest. He gave Hartic the feeling that not only did he mean what he said, not only would he try to match his words with actions, but he would do as he said come hell or high water.

Nodding solemnly, Hartic offered the Captain his hand, which Jonathan accepted.

“I think we’ll get along just fine Skipper,”  Hartic said levelly; using the informal title for the ships Captain for the first time, a sign of respect and acceptance. Jonathan smiled gratefully, and left the Master Chief with a renewed sense of purpose.

On board
RSNS Titan
DD-0023 Solaria System, Solarian Republic,

En route to the Kaplan Wormway

January 31st  841 AE  (2802 AD) 09:00hrs

Punishment in the Solarian military was harsh and meted out swiftly and publicly. The morning after his inspection Jonathan ordered the crew and officers to assemble in the primary mess hall. This was the only place in the ship big enough for them to all gather in one spot. The three Spacers Jones, Janero, and Sand who had been caught with Dextro shots hidden in their bunks were brought up from the brig. All three looked glumly at the deck as the Master Chief read out the charges. When that was done, Jonathan who was in his full dress uniform including his ceremonial dagger asked,

“How do you men plead?”

All three cried out they were guilty, but immediately began begging for mercy.

Under both military and civilian Solarian judicial code, knowingly pleading not guilty to an offense was considered a crime in itself and one that was punished harshly. Holding up his hand for silence, Jonathan spoke again.

“Does anyone here intercede on these men’s behalf?”

No one did which didn’t surprise Jonathan. The men were well known troublemakers. Nodding Jonathan continued,

“Having admitted your guilt, it is my decision as your Captain that each of you is to be flogged ten times rather than scourged. Nor will you be fined pay since there is no evidence you used illegal narcotics while on duty. Had you done so, it would be the scourge.” Turning to Petty Officer Lawrence Hun-Chi the ship’s Master at Arms, Jonathan said,

“Carry out the sentence.” 

Petty Officer Hun-Chi saluted and went to make it so.

The three prisoners were stripped to the waist, and each in turn tied to a central post in the center of the room and whipped across the back with a knotted cord. Though painful, the punishment was mild compared to the scourge. A Solarian Navy scourge was a twelve- tailed whip with metal hooks to dig into the victims flesh. It was modeled after the ones used by the Roman legions. Ten strikes with a scourge were unpleasant, and twenty could be fatal. As such, it was an instrument often threatened but seldom used. The flog, on the other hand, the knotted cord with which the three Spacers were struck, caused pain and bruising but did little permanent damage. Although scarring was a frequent side effect when a Spacer was beaten so many times the skin broke. The Solarian Navy and by extent the Republic’s embrace of corporal punishment was not uncommon among colony worlds. In places where labor and resources were or had been scarce confining someone and feeding them for an extended period of time, was much less economical than the older more direct punishments such as flogging or standing stocks. What set the republic apart, was that it had kept these punishments along with execution, and hard labor.  Most civilized worlds had gradually fazed them out in the name of fair treatment and human rights. Jonathan didn’t know if the Solarian system was superior or not, but he did know that for his purposes corporal punishment served as a useful disciplinary tool. Still, Jonathan reflected as he walked toward his cabin, it was like all things made by man - open to abuse. Jonathan remembered, not too fondly, a nasty little shit of an Ensign from his cruise aboard Republic who tried to order at least three floggings a day. Although Jonathan couldn’t remember the pissant’s name, he recalled the fellow was from a more than well-off Steader family, and seemed to be afflicted with the complex many richer Steaders had of being unable to earn the respect of their social betters. This was a situation all too common in Solarian society these days. An individual was considered Landed or not, based solely on their family name being placed in the Roll of Land Owners, a cumbersome tome, which recorded not only every single Landed Family on Solaria, but their entire tree going all the way back to the founding. Jonathan had seen one of the earlier Rolls at the National Archive. It made for ponderous reading, but the Roll played a vital part of Solarian society and its function was embedded in the Constitution.   Only those of the Landed Class could put their name forward to the people of the Estates as candidate for Senator. Up to a century and a half ago, the Roll had been open to new admission provided that the applicant could meet the property requirements set forth by the Association of Land Owners, the official forum of all those already on the Roll who voted whether or not to admit new members. These days though, the Roll was closed so no new members had been added in the better part of a century. This was by in large a by-product of the Republic’s two decades under Military Rule. This occurred after the second constitution had collapsed into paralysis, and the nation had been on the cusp of another civil war between Liberal and Conservative factions. The Coup had stopped all that, and produced the Third Constitution, which had created the Quorum of the People replacing the ineffective Tribunate. It also combined the powers of Speaker of the Senate and First Tribune into the Executive office of the Premier. Jonathan never much dwelt on societal flaws, but politics he paid attention to. Too many good officers found their careers in jeopardy because they had a political tin ear. Jonathan had no plans to be one of those. Returning to his desk, and before attacking the drill schedule his officers had submitted for their departments, he wrote a short polite invitation for the official first dinner in the Wardroom. First dinner was suppose to take place the first night a new Captain was aboard ship, but Jonathan had been too busy getting
Titan
underway to concern himself with it. Still, there was not caring for social frills and there was being antisocial, and Jonathan had no plans to be the latter. After all, First Night was an established navy tradition, and any Captain who wanted to command a ship again stuck as closely to tradition as he could.

Down the hall from Jonathan's quarters,
Titan’s
first and second officers were having breakfast. William Trendale and Nathan Gopal were fast friends, though by all rights they shouldn't have been. On the surface they had nothing in common. William was from Junopolis the second son, and third child of a middle wealth Landed Family a very old name, but not a lot of money.  This was thanks to William’s father’s habits to squander almost all of what was left of a steadily declining fortune on cheap women, bad investments, and gambling. William had been well aware of Terrance Trendale’s excessive nature as he bounced from boarding school to boarding school. His father enrolled him for a semester at a time so he could take the other semester’s tuition to the racetrack. Despite the wide array of schools he’d attended, William had managed to score sufficiently well on the entrance exam to secure an appointment at Overwatch, and pursue a career in the navy. William’s older brother Edmund had managed to halt the families’ financial decline, and now held a VP position at Quintrel Heavy Engineering. He continuously wrote William reassuring him he could secure him employment, but William was a navy man in large part due to the distaste he held for his family and the fact that his duties took him far away from them. There was Edmund, the brooding older brother whose disapproval of William’s career colored all aspects of their relationship, Bethany, their sister who was between them in age, and a constant feature of the
Daily Inquisitors
Landed’s behaving badly section as she drank, snorted, and smoked her way through the family assets almost as quickly as Edmund could replace them. William’s biological mother had moved to Earth more than a decade ago after her husband’s exploits with a pair of models, who happened to be identical twins, were spread across the front page of every celebrity mag in the Republic. William only heard from her on his birthday in the form of a text message. She couldn’t even be bothered to spring for the Video. William’s father who was still alive, God only knew how considering all the things he’d done to himself, lived in a beach condo in Southtown with his sugar mommy, Tara Danken, Tara was a Vinland Expat who ironically enough William actually liked, and she was the only one he regularly communicated with.