Disgrace and Redemption (Original SF)

[White Haven]

82nd Cruiser Squadron
FNS Hussar's Pride
Executive Officer's Quarters

In between pages seven and eight of a standard munitions expenditure authorization form, a star was born. All things considered it wasn't terribly impressive, merely a brighter speck of light in the void seen through the spacious cabin's wall display, and as such, it went unnoticed. With a sigh, the worn-looking man slouched behind the corner desk thumb-printed the screen of his reader twice, and then flipped to the ninth page with a vague gesture. After a short glance down the page, the reader clattered to the desk's surface as he rubbed tired eyes and then ran his hand through dark brown hair just starting to gray at the temples. Around that time, a second star blinked into life on the wall display, and once again slipped beneath the attention of the tired figure as page nine loomed into view once more. His eyes flickered down to the page numbers highlighted at the bottom of the reader, an exasperated sigh lost in the quiet hush of the ventilation system as the numbers 9 / 26 taunted him from the display.

“Twenty-six pages, just to authorize the use of a missile in a target-tracking exercise. No wonder that bastard dumped this in my lap.” Tired, aging disgust colored the quiet voice that filled the compartment, but the uncaring form simply remained on its ninth page until he scanned down and thumbed the panel. As the image of his thumbprint fixed itself on the form, a flicker in the wall display finally drew his attention away from the latest in a long line of administrative minutia; brown eyes glanced upwards in time to see the birth of another distant sun. In front of his eyes, a fourth bloomed to life even as the first began to fade. A frown tracing across his lips, the man set the reader back down on the desk and rose to his feet in time to see a fifth point of distant light gleam in the darkness. In the time taken for him to reach over and key up the bridge on the ship's intranet, three more glowing white embers awakened. The fresh constellation grew even while older members faded back into darkness, a ripple of brilliant pinpricks clustered in the depths.

“The other squadron...” he murmured under his breath, eyes widening at the thought and then narrowing again as he bent over the cluttered desk and brushed a message pad aside. Before he could do more, a window opened his desk computer's display screen with the image of a woman wearing a similar uniform jacket to the one that's draped across the back of the desk's chair.

“Officer of the Watch. What can I do for you, Commander?” the pale-skinned young woman's voice sounded through the cabin's sound system, her tone stiffly formal.

“About time,” the white-shirted man snapped out, then continued without giving time for a reply, “Get Detection to check the emissions from the last known location of 53rd Cruiser, get Comms to check the logs from the last twenty minutes for anything from the flag or the 53rd, and bring the squadron to battle stations.” At the shocked expression on the lieutenant's face, his voice barked quickly and drowned out any protest, “My authority, now do it, Lieutenant!”

A sharp stab at the console on his desk broke the channel, and he headed for the door at a rapid stride. Peacetime forms and a discarded uniform jacket both lay forgotten in the wake of the call to war.


82nd Cruiser Squadron
FNS Hussar's Pride
Bridge

The white-shirted man blew past the two uniformed guards flanking the bridge's open blast door with a stormy expression on his weathered face, his breath quickened from the rapid trip through the ship's corridors. His head swiveled towards the young, black-haired watch officer upon crossing the threshold, growling out angrily, “I'm not hearing any alarms, Lieutenant. I gave you a direct order!”

Her mouth gaped open, then shut again, no response making it out into the suddenly hushed air of the cruiser's modest bridge. A voice from behind the commander saved her from the need to respond with a dry, cutting interjection, “Yes, you did, Commander Baldwin, and I countermanded it. Now, would you care to explain why you are on my bridge, giving orders you do not have the authority to issue to my officers, pulling me from my luncheon, and doing it all out of uniform?” The dry tone steadily degraded into a coldly triumphant anger laced with smugness as the commander turned to face the bald-headed figure of the ship's captain. Unseen now that he was facing away, the lieutenant who had been the target of his ire sagged in visible relief.

“Captain, I have reason to believe that the 53rd has come under heavy attack,” Baldwin replied, carefully schooling his face and voice to choke back his anger, “Detection and Comms should be able to corroborate, but we need to be at battle stations now if we want to get through this.” Urgency stiffened his words, his tone almost pleading as he stared at the one figure on the ship with the authority to overrule his orders and actions.

“This...theory of yours.” the captain began in reply, starting to walk in a circle around his prey, “You claim that the 53rd Cruiser Squadron is under attack. Oh, I'm sorry,” he held up a finger with a wry smile, “Heavy attack. You know this because, presumably, fairies told you.” A wave of muffled chuckling swept across the bridge as the crew settled in to watch the familiar sight of their captain destroying an uppity underling. “And, acting on the advice of these... fairies... you want to expend hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Solars on the fuel to bring an entire squadron to combat readiness. And you want to do it out of uniform, and by issuing illegal orders on top of that.” He leaned in and took a theatrically noisy sniff, “Have you been drinking, Commander Baldwin?”

Now red-faced with anger at the captain's response, Baldwin shook his head jerkily and burst into a heated reply. The iron control that had masked his contempt and anger at his senior is nowhere in evidence after the verbal assassination, harsh words and an even harsher tone in snapping back, “No, Captain Everett, I have not. I have visual confirmation of an attack on the 53rd. I saw them from my ruin-damned cabin window! If Detection will look at the logs, they should see it. I ran up here as soon as I could, and if you don't send the squadron to battle stations, we're all going to end up dead.” As an afterthought, he tosses in a sullen, “Sir.”

At a hand signal from the captain, the two armed guards on the opposite side of the open hatch stepped through and move to either side of the luckless commander. His jaw clenched, he looked from one to the other, then quickly turned to face the crew. With the object of their disdain clearly falling from grace, few even bothered to hide their amusement at his predicament, and his planned protest died stillborn; they clearly wouldn't be listening to whatever he could say by now. As the two guards grabbed his arms, the captain spoke from behind him, “Guards, please escort Commander Baldwin to the brig and place him under close confinement on charges of issuing illegal orders, appearing out of uniform, conduct unbecoming an officer, and gross insubordination. Subcommander Goslan, congratulations, you are now acting executive officer, pending confirmation from Federal Navy Headquarters”

As the two guards began to hustle the their charge from the bridge, the captain turned on his heel with a theatrical flourish and nodded to the grinning subcommander. A smug tone is clear in his voice as he spoke again, “Now, bring the ship to battle stations if you please, Mister Goslan. Detection, Comms, any progress on that jamming?” Without waiting for an answer, he looked back over his shoulder as alarms began to wail throughout the ship. His smile still firmly in place, he met Baldwin's stunned expression with a few simple words delivered in a quieter voice, “Did you really think you were the only one to notice this? Please, Ryan, that's just insulting. I have to admit, you did beat D&C to alerting me, but I wasn't about to pass up the chance to ruin you.” He flashed a toothy grin, then turned away without waiting to see a reaction.

A fiery protest died unspoken on the commander's lips, his whole posture sagging visibly between the two guards. At their insistent urging he turned and departed the bridge, stumbling over the hatch's threshold.

[The Romulan Republic]

Hmm. Interesting, but you keep switching between past to present tense. Also, I found it a bit melodramatic, the captain coming off as a rather over-the top-asshole. Also, why would none of the ships' sensors pick up what the XO is talking about? Why would no one else notice?

[White Haven]

The past/present flops are my #1 problem with writing...too much text roleplay. I spend an inordinate amount of time correcting tense issues, and the first run through never catches them all. As for the captain's attitude and the failure of the sensor crews, I may need to write some material prior to this so it's more apparent, and I've already got another draft in the works that reworks the second half somewhat. In essence, the navy in question has been the Big Dog of known space for one hell of a long time, and they've gone unchallenged long enough to become more akin to civilian government employees in attitude, only with the complication of a nasty case of nepotism via old-guard military families. Lot of petty empire-building, lot of ass-kissing and favor-trading, and anyone who doesn't participate in that system is the enemy. That's where the captain's coming from. As for the sensor watch, they're just not paying a whole lot of attention, the alarm will end up sounded soon, but this's not a highly-motivated professional military. I'll probably revise the ending of the first part so the alarm goes out a bit sooner, this is all sort of jumbling about in my head.

[The Romulan Republic]

As for the captain's attitude and the failure of the sensor crews, I may need to write some material prior to this so it's more apparent, and I've already got another draft in the works that reworks the second half somewhat. In essence, the navy in question has been the Big Dog of known space for one hell of a long time, and they've gone unchallenged long enough to become more akin to civilian government employees in attitude, only with the complication of a nasty case of nepotism via old-guard military families. Lot of petty empire-building, lot of ass-kissing and favor-trading, and anyone who doesn't participate in that system is the enemy. That's where the captain's coming from.

That makes sense, and I kind of figured that there must be a lot of corruption in the fleet. In any case, I'm interested enough by this to want to read more.

As for the sensor watch, they're just not paying a whole lot of attention, the alarm will end up sounded soon, but this's not a highly-motivated professional military. I'll probably revise the ending of the first part so the alarm goes out a bit sooner, this is all sort of jumbling about in my head.

Frankly, I would have expected that a bunch of mini-supernovas nearby would be unusual enough to catch their attention immediately. These guys are exhibiting a Star Trek-grad lack of military readiness.

[LadyTevar]

I have to agree with the Romulan's assessment. There's not enough information as to why Sensors and Comms picked up nothing.

[White Haven]

Alrighty, revised version up, thanks for the feedback. A little history on why it was a touch disjointed at first, I wrote most of the first half of this a year ago as part of something else that went nowhere, so some bits didn't fit together properly. I think I've got all the tense issues sorted out, and Everett's character should make more sense now.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Have you ever read David Gerrold's Star Hunt? It has thematic similarity with the over- reacting exec spooking at something only he can see. There were two versions of the tale, the original short version in which it really is a false positive on a complicated (transluminal, prone to ghosting) sensor system, and we leave the exec obsessively going over and over the data again and again, and clearly going mad; and the extended version, in which there something out there after all- just struck by the revision, and that diptych repeating itself.

Although I have to find the revised version in some ways even more baffling; presumably as Commander Baldwin has made it this far, he knows the score, knows what kind of an organisation he serves, yes? It was a monumental lapse of CYA on his part to make such a dramatic gesture that left himself wide open to being mocked like that- or had he been "drinking" without his knowledge? Spiked with jugement reducing drugs?

Either way, I presume the second half of the title is going to come into play, and those explosions mean the Federal Navy's long standing supremacy and complacency are being challenged. Good. There should be more.

[White Haven]

Well, Baldwin's still got a ways to fall before he hits bottom. As for him letting his ass hang out, it was more an 'oh fuck, we're in a shooting war' moment, where he was more concerned with that than with service politics. Everett's priorities are just the opposite, and that bit Baldwin in the ass. Of course in short order it's also going to bite the Captain's backside.

[Mr. Coffee]

I'm digging what you got so far, man. Other than the weird persent tense/part tense issues, it's good. If ya need a test reader hit me up on skype.