The Honour of the Knights, Stephen J. Sweeney [reading women .txt] 📗

than what any of them had expected. From the moment he stepped out of the transport Dodds at once noticed that the station presented an air of being run down, neglected and somehow trapped in the past.

“White Knights?” a deck attendant enquired. Estelle begrudgingly confirmed their identity. “Follow me. There is a shuttle waiting to take you down to the surface.”

Dodds started after the man with the others, catching the sound of chuckling as he did so. He looked around to see a group of service men and women, engineers and various other deckhands watched as he traipsed by, heads turning and grinning to one another. Dodds figured that the Knights were far from the first to feel somewhat repulsed by their new surroundings, and it must have been a great source of amusement for the current residents to see the reactions each time a new set of faces turned up.

Reaching the shuttle, Dodds slung his meagre bag of possessions inside before slumping down onto one of the steel benches that ran the length of the cramped interior. Though he tried to remain upbeat, something about his new surroundings was already attempting to break his spirit.

* * *

Touching down on the planet's surface, Dodds needed no further confirmation that their special treatment was well and truly over. Arriving at their mixed quarters, he and Enrique were dismayed to find they were crammed in with fifteen others. Their appearance at the doorway was greeted by cheers and whistles from their new bunk mates.

“Hey! It's the new guys!” came a cry from across the quarters.

“We've got ourselves a full house, boys!”

“Welcome to Action Central!”

“Hey, you! Think fast!” A ball was thrown towards Dodds. He fumbled the catch, letting it roll out of his hands and bounce around on the floor for a time, before its path was halted by the clutter it encountered there. It looked as though the base - or at least these quarters - was not big on discipline, with clothes and personal belongs scattered all about. It looked like a holiday camp for rowdy teenagers. Kelly poked her head between Enrique and Dodds, who had halted in the doorway. Estelle squeezed past all three and scanned the room.

“oh dear god,” Kelly said in a low voice. “I really wish I was back at Gabriel.”

“Uh huh,” Enrique answered.

“Please sleep next to me,” Kelly said to Enrique. Dodds noted that the men in the dormitory were already eyeing up the two women, and were being anything but subtle about it.

“Wouldn't want it any other way,” Enrique said.

Dodds was in agreement. After three weeks of his own personal space, and five months back home before that, this new regime was going to take a lot of getting used to.

Estelle coped a lot better, striding in, finding a spare bed and claiming it for her own, tossing the random items that occupied it onto another nearby bed. In the hours that followed it did not take her long to discover that she was the highest ranking officer in the dormitory (something that genuinely astonished her) and as a consequence one of the least popular.

At another time, in another place, Dodds would have advised her against flexing her muscles in the very first instance, but right now he was not in the mood.

Chaz found himself a bunk, acting as always with his trademark silence. With his locker filled with clothes, boots and other personnel effects the man kicked back, pulled out his book and disappeared into the pages.

* * *

“Welcome to Mandelah Naval Base, boy and girls; and welcome to Spirit. I'm Captain Meyers and while here you will be acting under my command,” the portly, ginger bearded man said.

The White Knights were seated within a small briefing room, alongside other new arrivals to the Temper system, some of whom shared their new quarters.

The group had been given a brief tour of the base and found that, even though Spirit had an orbital station, the overpopulation of available pilots meant that many of them had to be based on the ground. It also meant that in order to perform their duties, they would have to be transferred back up to the orbital station on an almost daily basis.

This would not have been the case if construction on the orbital ring had been completed, allowing for crew, service personnel and starfighters to be housed within, Estelle grumbled during the tour. As it stood, not even the craft that they would be required to pilot were stationed planet-side. Standard Confederation starfighters were not capable of withstanding the stresses that atmospheres would put upon them whilst attempting planetary leave or re-entry. All this, Estelle had also reminded them, slipping into a sulk, was not something that the ATAF suffered from. Dodds caught Chaz's eye and swore later he saw him crack a smile. For his moody exterior he was starting to find some mirth in Estelle's continued moaning.

Dodds suppressed a small sigh, folded his arms and tried to appear interested in what Meyers was saying. The captain was giving them an overview of what would be expected of them whilst they were stationed at Spirit.

“The Temper system is the principle route, and therefore the closest Confederation border world, to Independent World space,” Meyers went on. “In general terms this means that all sane traffic wishing to safely enter or leave Confederation-controlled space must do so via this system.”

“Why?” a female voice behind Dodds asked. He didn't bother to look around to see who was asking the question. “I mean, we can easily travel all the way from Earth to Kethlan in a single jump if we wanted to.”

“Not any longer, no,” Meyers said. “Owing to recent developments within the Mitikas Imperium, the Confederation is no longer permitting jumpgates, save for those along the border, to allow incoming or outgoing traffic to non-Confederate destinations.”

“So everyone is having to come through here instead?”

“For the foreseeable future, yes.”

“But the volume of traffic must be incredible!” the voice sounded quite taken aback.

“It is, yes, but it's a necessary precaution that the government wishes to take.”

Dodds had the image of an egg timer in his head, the grains of sand being the starships that were waiting - with strained tempers - to pass through the gates and move on to their destination.

“But what about everyone else? If they have their own jump drives they don't need to use the gates. Somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of all spacecraft can form their own jump points.”

Dodds met Enrique's eyes and raised an eyebrow at the comment from the well versed informant.

Meyers put up his hand and waved the woman down. “We'll get on to how we are tackling that in a little bit. For now, all of the Confederacy's navigation buoys are refusing to supply data on routes towards non-Confederate systems and, in particular, the Mitikas Empire. Without that data, space is once again as the sea was to early sailors on Earth: a treacherous place with little to no landmarks.”

“Until they learned to use the stars to navigate,” another voice chipped in.

“True,” Meyers began to chuckle. “But you'd have a hell of a time doing that up there.” He nodded towards the ceiling. “Now...”

“Excuse me, Captain, but what are the government taking precautions against?” yet another voice piped up.

“Mass immigration,” Meyers said simply. “The increased instability of the Imperial systems has led to a greater amount of traffic coming into Temper, and from there into further sectors of Confederation space. Most of these are traders attempting to find new avenues of business now that their old ones have closed. Unfortunately, organised crime is also suffering the same loss and you can bet that they will also come flooding in with them. Now...”

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

Dodds found that Meyers was proving to be incredibly patient, given the continued interruptions. He'd heard that the man was like that though: very pleasant and accommodating; and that was also why he was still a captain and not a commodore. Heads turned around, following Meyers' eyes. Dodds looked about this time, seeing an olive-skinned man with a puzzled expression holding his hand in the air. For a moment Dodds thought he recognised him as one of the five men from the lecture theatre all those weeks ago, but realised he was mistaken. Meyers scratched at his beard as the man spoke.

“I'm sorry, Captain, but this sounds like a job for the local police, not the Navy.”

“True, but the police forces throughout Temper have come under increased stress whilst attempting to handle this issue and have requested our assistance. You should be aware that it could also soon no longer be a matter for the police; remember that this is also a game of politics: whilst relationships are now good with previously troublesome Independent World systems, a show of strength is no bad thing.”

“Sounds like they're turning us into the flood barriers,” Dodds heard Enrique whisper to Kelly. He noticed Kelly appear to snap awake, as if she had been daydreaming. He could relate: he was drifting in and out of the room himself, trying to think of a way he could escape to somewhere more interesting and not involving apples.

“So we're going to be making pre-emptive strikes against known pirate bases and insurgent strongholds?” the questioner asked, his face brightening at the prospect for some action. At the man's words the assembled pilots all became much more awake and alert. Dodds imagined that they, like him, were visualising scenarios in which they were performing important and heroic services to the Confederation, none of which went unnoticed, and all of which resulted in a great deal of action, grand recognition, and well-deserved promotion.

“Not at this point, no,” Meyers said, almost as if he was apologising. “For the foreseeable future you will all be assigned regular patrols within the Temper system.”

“Oh dear God, please just kill me now,” Enrique said under his breath and slid down in his seat.

“Make that a double,” Dodds requested, his own dreams of valour vanishing before his eyes. It was as if some twenty four hours previous he had been quaffing the highest quality Dom Pérignon, but was now being force-fed cheap plonk. Estelle, seated in front of the pair, turned around and shot them an angry glare that said, “Sit Up, Shut up and Put Up”. Enrique and Dodds pulled themselves both upright and attempted to stay focused.

Meyers, with the aid of a map of the Temper system, went on to list patrol routes, potential trouble hotspots, (Yeah, right, Dodds thought to himself) and schedules.

“White Knights?” Meyers asked as he ended the briefing with the flight roster.

“First Lieutenant Estelle de Winter, White Knights,” Estelle said, standing up and saluting.

“I wonder where she learned that one?” Dodds muttered sarcastically to Enrique, lowering his voice a lot more this time so as not to enrage his superior.

“Lieutenant, you will be performing your first patrol tomorrow afternoon at fourteen hundred hours. All route information will be provided to you on Spirit Orbital before the start of your patrol. You and your team should be ready one hour prior to commencement for transfer to orbit. So, thirteen hundred hours at landing zone D.

“That is all boys and girls. Please ensure you check the flight roster regularly, as it will change. Dismissed.”

* * *

Tuesday, June 10th 2617

I have to confess that I am actually enjoying my posting to Spirit a lot more than I first thought I would. When we were initially transferred here I thought it would prompt the end to my time in the Navy and I would hand in my resignation. I'm glad that I didn't as I would only have been disappointed with myself upon returning home. I haven't been in contact with my family for a few weeks now, not since arriving. But I don't expect they will be concerned.

When I first arrived here it was like my first day in the service all over again. That's what too much pampering will do to you, I guess. I figured that Spirit would be a dull, lifeless rock with nothing to keep me sane between the endless patrols. As a matter of fact there is quite a lot to do here and I've taken up running and some other activities with Enrique and Dodds. The planet is quite temperate, not as hot here as I would like (shouldn't expect it to get any hotter than 22c, I'm told) but it could be far worse.

We get most of our evenings free here, though not the weekends any more. The schedule of the patrols means that our days off vary, but we usually don't have to do more than five days on the trot. We don't have to patrol at night either