Though she was stuck on the sidelines, the war still went on. EDF ships went out on recon flights in search of the faeros in hopes of convincing them to become formal allies; other ships attempted to keep track of hydrogue movements. Far too much military energy, however, was devoted to the stupid, red-herring conflict with the Roamer clans.
After destroying Hurricane Depot, the Eddies had gone to two other Roamer outposts whose locations they had discovered, only to find them hastily abandoned. The clans had always closely guarded their hiding places, and now they were slipping without difficulty through the fingers of the EDF. Tasia noted with no surprise whatsoever that the Hansa did not mention their failures.
Because of their doubts and suspicions about her loyalties, Tasia’s superior officers had stuck her here on Mars as a schoolteacher for bottom-of-the-barrel kleebs, most of them obnoxious and unmotivated. She wasn’t in a mood to take any crap from them.
Under olive skies, with her boots planted on rusty rock, she stood on high ground in her environment suit, watching the new batch of cadets as they went through routine on-foot drills. During her downtime the evening before, Tasia had planned the day’s exercises. The students hadn’t learned yet that the worse they performed and the ruder they were to her, the tougher she made their assignments.
In the canyons below, the kleebs marched in four separate groups, struggling to follow computerized topographic maps through convoluted terrain in order to reach a goal. It seemed a simple chart-reading problem, a team orienteering exercise, but she had spiced up the challenge by doctoring their air tanks so that some trainees had a surplus of oxygen and others did not have enough. As soon as their low-tank alarms went off, the cadets had the option of calling for pickup and rescue, but Tasia hoped each group would work together as a team to share resources.
From what she’d seen, though, most of the Eddy recruits had never learned how to think outside the box to fix an emergency. The Big Goose could learn much about survival and innovation from the Roamers; unfortunately, they had made up their minds to harass the clans instead. Their loss. . . .
Here on Mars, Tasia was completely out of the information loop. Without her Manta command, she had no need to know about military actions, and she found out about full-scale operations like Hurricane Depot only long after the fact. Right now, General Lanyan might already be planning another idiotic attack and she would never be able to warn the Roamers, as she had done at Osquivel.
Later that day, her trainees returned to the base, some having failed, some completing their assignment. All together in the waiting room, they shucked off their suits to look at the exercise scores and see what they had done wrong. And they had all done plenty of things wrong. Tasia didn’t pull any punches in her debriefing assessment. She just hoped her students would eventually use their skills against the hydrogues instead of other Roamer outposts.
Two of the kleebs had called in for an emergency rescue. Only one team had taken the obvious solution of sharing air from their tanks so that the entire crew could move on. The fastest hiker from the second team, seeing that they wouldn’t all make it, had abandoned the rest of them for emergency rescue and run ahead just so he could claim a personal win. Tasia came down on that team the hardest—the alleged winner for making such a selfish decision, and the rest of his comrades for letting him.
“It was within the parameters of the exercise, Commander,” said the scolded cadet. “As a representative of our team, I wanted us to win.”
“By abandoning all your comrades? I don’t care if we did have pickup teams waiting. That’s not what we do, Cadet Elwich,” she said. “We don’t leave members of our team behind. I have half a mind just to give the lot of you to the drogues.”
“It’s what the EDF did at Osquivel,” one of the cadets grumbled. “They left a lot of people behind without even trying to rescue them. Didn’t they, Commander? You were there.”
The implicit question stung her. How many did you leave behind, Commander Tamblyn?
Tasia stared at them, reminded of the horrors of that battle. Even though she had gotten her own ship and crew out of danger, they had left behind innumerable wounded soldiers, damaged ships, and floating lifetubes. And Robb was gone, too. . . .
“We were all under fire. Nobody was guaranteed to get out alive. There were no pickup squads. You think that’s comparable to goofing around in an empty canyon to win a game? Shizz, I’m trying to teach you what I know. Listening may increase your chances for survival when you face a real enemy.”
“What’s a Roacher going to teach us? How to run and hide?” the same cadet muttered, barely loud enough for her to hear.
“Elwich!” she roared, and the young man moved to attention, slower than she would have liked. She stepped close to him. “Do you know how to read a rank insignia? Do you understand what this means?” She indicated the polished clusters on her lapels.
“It signifies that you are—were—in command of a Manta battlecruiser.”
“And tell me your rank again, kleeb.”
“Private, ma’am.”
“And in which military does a private speak with such disrespect to a commander?”
“In . . . in none that I’m aware of, ma’am.”
“This rank means that you are a worm beneath the heel of my boot, regardless of where I was born, how I was raised, or the clan I belong to. Spend less time thinking about my parentage and more time remembering my military service record, Private Elwich. I fought the hydrogues at Jupiter, Boone’s Crossing, Osquivel, and Ptoro. I wiped out a whole drogue world with a Klikiss Torch. My piloting scores are the best the EDF has on record. If I looked into your parentage, Private, what species would I find? How much inbreeding?”
Some of the cadets snickered, but she silenced them. “This is the Earth Defense Forces. There is a chain of command. I am your ranking officer, and in all probability I will forever outrank you. Now, as a token of your newfound respect for me, Private Elwich, I want you to give me a hundred push-ups.”
The cadet looked at her in calm surprise. Here on Mars, with only forty percent of Earth’s gravity, simple physical exercise was easy. “Ma’am, yes ma’am. Right now in your presence, Commander?”
“No, Private. I want you to do them in the gravity chamber at a setting of 1.5 Earth normal.”
At last, he gave a satisfactory gulp.
“If anyone else would like to insult my parents, my clan, or my service record, please volunteer now.” When no one answered her, Tasia continued to stare, making sure they understood she meant business. She could not hide her Roamer heritage, nor did she want to.
Instead, she intended to be the best EDF officer they could ever hope to serve under. And sometimes, she very much enjoyed strictly enforcing the military regulations.