The Nelson Touch

Chapter Three

“They look so young,” Squadron Commander Rose Labara muttered.

Wing Commander Kurt Schneider couldn’t disagree as he watched the trainees filing into the hall. A handful were older, merchant crewmen who had volunteered for service with the Royal Navy, but the remainder looked as though they should still be in school. He knew, intellectually, that the youngest of them were eighteen years old, yet his mind refused to grasp it. The boys looked barely old enough to shave, the girls looked as though they should be more interested in dresses and makeup than flying starfighters against the enemies of humanity.

He shook his head, feeling old. His son was seventeen and planning to join the Royal Navy next year; his daughter was only a couple of years younger. Kurt himself was old enough to have fathered most of the trainees; he’d steered them through the compressed training sessions, knowing that many of them would be dead before the end of the year. The Royal Navy had lost a third of its pre-war pilots in the war, including many Kurt had known personally. There was no reason to believe that it would improve in the years to come.

Oh, they’d learned a great deal about their enemy, he knew. They knew how the aliens fought, they knew how to counter alien tactics and technology… and yet there was still a quiet nagging doubt. The aliens had proven themselves to be cunning and deadly foes. Kurt suspected their recent inactivity was not through caution, but a desire to make sure they held the advantage once again before they started their advance on Earth. When they came, and they would, many of the young men and women in front of him would die.

He cast his eyes over the trainees sitting in the front row, the trainees who had scored the highest in simulation flying. Sonny, a young man with an unerring knack for pulling off impossible shots; David, a merchant crewman who made up in experience what he lacked in polish; Sandra, a young girl with a flair that impressed even Rose… and Charles Augustus, a young man with a permanent scowl on his face, yet possessing remarkable determination to crash through the course and win his flight wings. He’d earned them, Kurt conceded, and yet there was something about Augustus’s attitude that bothered him. Despite being his superior, he still knew almost nothing about the young man.

Rose elbowed him. “It’s time,” she said. “Go speak to them, sir.”

Kurt nodded and stepped up onto the stage. Five hundred pairs of eyes peered at him as he cleared his throat, wishing — once again — that he was better at giving speeches. The trainees didn’t know it, but the ceremony they’d earned had been cut short, just like the rest of their training. They deserved better, he knew, yet they wouldn’t get it. There were few resources available to mark their graduation in the midst of a war.

The Queen came to my graduation, he thought, sourly. But there are no Royals here.

“Three months ago, you entered the Academy,” he said. Over two thousand prospective pilots had entered the academy; three-fourths of them had washed out. He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved the compressed system was still excluding the unsuitable or worried that they were expelling pilots who would overcome their flaws, given time. “Now, you have qualified as pilots. Your assignments to carriers or orbital support bases are already being selected for you.”

A low ripple ran through the gathered trainees. They’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that they wouldn’t be true pilots until they graduated. Now, with the course almost over, they could look forward to having their wings pinned to their uniforms and call themselves pilots.

“But you are still very young, very inexperienced,” Kurt continued. “You have not had the recommended number of hours in actual starfighters, no matter how many hours you have spent in the simulators. You have faced thousands of simulated aliens, yet you have faced no real danger during your training. And you have missed out on countless elements of the pre-war training program, everything from naval protocol to naval history.

“You will be assigned to units commanded by officers who have had all of that,” he explained. “They will also have had considerable experience with actually risking their lives in combat against the aliens. You would be well advised to learn from them, all of you, and not think that you are immortal and invincible. Because, I assure you, the aliens will happily take advantage of any overconfidence you happen to show.

“You have all done well,” he added. “Your presence here proves that, as I think you know. But you have a long way to go.”

He smiled at them. “Enough of that, for the moment,” he concluded. “If the first row would like to form an orderly line…?”

Rose passed him the bag as the front row lined up, producing a ragged line that looked alarmingly unprofessional. Kurt sighed inwardly — standards were definitely slipping — and then opened the bag, revealing the first set of flying wings. His own set were prominently mounted on his shoulder, a memento of his days in the Academy. No matter what happened, he knew, they could not be legally taken from him. Ideally, they would be passed down to his children after he died.

“Form a proper line,” Kurt said, in some irritation. “And try to remember to salute your senior officers when you meet them.”

He sighed at the thought. Military protocol, no matter what the civilians thought, was important. It helped to build up both discipline and comradeship between officers and enlisted crewmen. But the new pilots were very hazy on the finer points of protocol. A number of them had had to practice saluting for weeks before they had it down to a fine art, while their responses were often wrong or badly out of place. They meant well, he knew, but they were going to have a rough time of it. At least the discipline problems had been weeded out early in the training period.

“Congratulations,” he said, as Sonny stepped up to Kurt. He pinned the wings to Sonny’s shoulder, then shook the young man’s hand. “I believe your assignment is waiting for you.”

Sonny’s eyes went wide. “A carrier?”

“Wait and see,” Kurt said. Ideally, he would have preferred not to send any of the trainees to a carrier, not when they lacked true experience. But no one had bothered to ask his opinion, nor would it have mattered in any case. The Royal Navy was desperately short of pilots. “I think you will serve well, wherever you go.”

The next few pilots passed without a hitch, then Augustus arrived. Kurt pinned the wings to his shoulder, then blinked in surprise as Augustus leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “I earned this, didn’t I?”

Kurt eyed him, puzzled. “You passed the course,” he said, dryly. Augustus was an odd young man, definitely. He had a chip on his shoulder, yet Kurt had never seen anyone more driven to succeed. “You earned your wings through your own efforts.”

Augustus smiled openly — the first time Kurt had ever seen such an undisguised expression on his face — and almost skipped off the stage, back to the rear of the compartment. Kurt watched him go, then turned to the next trainee and carefully pinned her wings on her shoulder, putting Augustus out of his mind. He would be his commanding officer’s problem, Kurt knew. However, he was confident that Augustus would do well, even if he did lack spit and polish.

It took nearly two hours to pin the wings on all of the new pilots, but he wouldn’t have passed the duty on to anyone else, even if they’d offered him a million pounds. Finally, it was over, leaving a roomful of newly-minted pilots staring at him. Judging by their expressions, they weren’t in the mood for a long speech. Kurt smiled as he cleared his throat. He wasn’t in any mood for a long speech either.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I believe that you have been cleared for three days of leave prior to departing for your assignments. As someone old enough to be your father” — there were some nervous titters from the pilots — “I should warn you that Luna is full of pitfalls, ready to snare unwary young idiots. If you should happen to be planning a jaunt to Sin City, I suggest you make damn sure you can get back to the Academy if necessary. And I strongly suggest you check their health certificates before you get into bed with anyone.”

He had to smile at some of the guilty looks. Sin City was a semi-independent state, dedicated to drinking, gambling and prostitution. There were few laws and even fewer morals, ensuring that anyone who went there with an open mind was rapidly enjoying whatever pleasure he wanted. Kurt had been once, as a young pilot, and enjoyed himself more than he cared to admit. Now, as a father of two, he would prefer to watch as Sin City burned. But he couldn’t deny his pilots the right to choose their own entertainment.

“I would also suggest that you make sure you are not late to your first assignments,” he added. “It would make a very bad impression on your first commander — and while your records here are sealed, your active duty records are not.”

He paused. “Good luck, all of you,” he said. “Dismissed!”

The pilots cheered, then stampeded out of the room. Kurt rolled his eyes — yep, they were definitely planning to visit Sin City — and then turned to look at the terminal Rose held out to him. After a moment, he pressed his thumb against the scanner, certifying that five hundred new pilots had just graduated. For the moment, his duties at the Academy had come to an end.

“We short-changed them, sir,” Rose said. On duty, she was always professional. “They deserved a bigger ceremony.”

“I know,” Kurt said, recalling his earlier thoughts. Pre-war ceremonies had been something to see, even for enlisted crewmen. Senior officers made an effort to attend, either as participants or just silent observers. But now… now, it was just him and his team of training officers. No senior officer had even attempted to attend. “It couldn’t be helped.”

He gave her a sidelong look, feeling his breath catch in his throat. She was beautiful, even with her blonde hair cut short. Their affair might have been born in tension and the shared certainty of death, but it had endured even after their return to Earth. He felt guilty, sometimes, yet he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. His wife’s face had faded in his memory.

Rose seemed unaware of his thoughts, thankfully. “Do you think we’ll be assigned to the next training cycle?”

“I hope not,” Kurt said. He’d split their time between training prospective pilots and training other instructors from the major interstellar powers, sharing the lessons of war with them. They’d improved remarkably over the last two months. “I’ve applied to go back to war.”

The thought caused him another pang of guilt. He’d accepted the assignment to the Luna Academy without a fight because it would have brought him closer to his family. But his wife had declined to move to the moon, citing the dangers of alien bombardment, leaving him as isolated as he’d been in deep space. He’d barely been able to see them once or twice since his assignment had begun. The only advantage was that he could record messages for them and receive replies within the same day.

“Me too,” Rose admitted. She paused. “Was I as bad as some of these trainees?”

Kurt shrugged as he led her away from the hall and headed down towards Officer Country, where they slept when they weren’t supervising the barracks. “I haven’t seen your training records,” he reminded her. “Were you as bad as the idiot who managed to block the toilet and force us to have it fixed? Or the one who decided to play pranks on the occupants of the other barracks? Or the one who…”

Rose giggled. “I was just an overachiever,” she said. “But I had six months to straighten out and fly right.”

“Good for you,” Kurt said. By the time Rose had entered the Academy, he remembered with yet another pang of guilt, he’d already left active service. She wasn’t quite young enough to be his daughter, but she was alarmingly close to it. “And you did well with the trainees too.”

“Thank you,” Rose said. “I don’t think I was quite that hard to handle when I was a trainee.”

Kurt laughed as he stopped outside the hatch leading into his quarters. “When I was eighteen,” he quoted, “my dad was a moron who knew nothing. But when I was twenty-one… golly! It was astonishing how smart the old man had become.”

He sobered as he led her into the chamber. Life in barracks was never easy, but it was often worse for female trainees. There was almost no privacy at all, while the shared washing facilities took some getting used to. Indeed, a quarter of the trainees who had been evicted in the first week had been booted out for ogling their female comrades. It was a regular shock to politicians, when they found out that men and women were living together, but there was no choice. Quarters on starships, even the mighty fleet carriers, were no larger. Rose had done well in helping new trainees to grow used to their surroundings. By now, most of the trainees were thoroughly professional.

It’s that stupid movie’s fault, he thought, rolling his eyes. They just couldn’t make a realistic movie, could they? No, the main character had to have muscles on his muscles… and his female co-lead had to wear a uniform so tight she couldn’t breathe.

His terminal bleeped as he sat down, so he pulled it over as Rose poured them both a glass of wine. He’d expected a message from his daughter — she was actually doing better in school, now they’d hired a nanny — but instead it was his orders. He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to read them, then cursed his own stupidity as he opened the file and read through the brief message.

“I’m being sent back to Ark Royal as Commander Air Group,” he said, relieved. Requesting a change of assignment was always hazardous, even though he was one of the few officers with experience at fighting the aliens. The Royal Navy had plenty of places to send officers who had displeased the bureaucracy in some way. “And just as CAG this time.”

“So you won’t be flying,” Rose said, regretfully. “I always thought it kept you closer to us.”

“I’ll try and sneak in as many hours as I can,” Kurt said. The pace of combat was often shockingly swift. It was quite possible that the CAG would be reduced to a spectator while his pilots fought and died to protect their starship. “There will be new fighters too, it seems. And bombers.”

“Curious,” Rose said. “Do you think that means they’ve improved the torpedo systems?”

Kurt shrugged. The pre-war bombers hadn’t been designed to face alien plasma weaponry and the one attempt to test pre-war doctrine against the aliens had resulted in a horrific failure. Their torpedoes were simply not capable of breaking through enemy point defence systems, even if they fired a massive salvo. But now, if the system had been improved…

“We’ll find out, I guess,” he said, reviewing the message again. “I’ve got two days of leave on Earth, then I have orders to report to Ark Royal prior to the arrival of new pilots. And apparently I’m expected to brush up on international relations too.”

Rose gave him a puzzled look. “International relations?”

“That’s what it says,” Kurt said, swinging the terminal round so she could see the message. “But not much else.”

“They probably want us to go into battle with allies,” Rose suggested, after a moment. “The Royal Navy can’t bear the brunt of offensive operations on its own.”

Kurt nodded, sourly. The loss of two modern carriers at New Russia had cost the Royal Navy dearly. Given that it took at least three years to build a modern carrier — and longer, if they wanted to add heavy armour — those ships would not be replaced any time soon. If humanity wanted to go on the offensive, it would have to be a joint operation.

He took a sip of his wine. “And your own orders?”

“Probably waiting for me,” Rose said. “I’ll look at them later, afterwards.”

She put the glass down and leaned forward to kiss his lips. Kurt hesitated, tasting the wine on her lips, then kissed her back. Part of him cursed himself angrily — what had started as a fling before certain death had become something more — while the rest of him urged that he move forward as fast as possible. His hand reached up to feel her breast, straining against her uniform. Slowly, he undid the zippers, allowing them to spring free…

Afterwards, when she had showered and left, he felt torn in two. He felt deeply for her, yet he also felt deeply for his children. How could he hurt them by having an affair? At best, there would be a divorce; at worst, a long bitter court case. And he might well lose his career in the crossfire.

You’re a fucking idiot, he told himself, as he scrambled to his feet and headed towards the shower. You should never have gotten involved with her.

But now, he knew, he could never bring himself to break it up.

A moment later, his terminal bleeped. It was a message from Rose, informing him that she had been assigned back to Ark Royal too. Kurt stared at it with mixed emotions, then turned and stepped into the shower. Perhaps cold water would make him feel better.

“Yep,” he muttered out loud. “Definitely a fucking idiot.”