This story takes place in the universe created by fellow writer "farbeyondourstars".
Olympus Beckons - Part 9: "Convoy Duty."
The command chair, situated in the centre of the bridge, elevated so as to overlook the myriad consoles and stations that surrounded it, as well as the officers who manned them, had, for his whole career, both lured and terrified him.
For years he had aspired to ascend to that throne, to take post as Captain and Commander of a ship o' war. Yet always there was that little refrain tickling the back of his mind,
"Are you good enough?"
In times of peace, it might not have mattered overmuch. A diligent officer could take the time to carefully learn his craft, and eventually, provided he wasn't some kind of incompetent fool or officious poltroon, could earn the trust of his ship's company.
But this Captain apparently had no time for that sort of dillydallying. She had learned her trade in the crucible of war, and apparently, she really liked to shoot things.
When she had taken command, some six months ago, he had bridled at being so overlooked. He had given a decade and a half to the Navy, he was no prodigy, he knew, but he'd worked his way up the ranks, before being promoted to executive officer aboard
Zeus.
To his mind, the ship was
his,
and yet she had just waltzed in and usurped his captaincy. She wasn't even Teraxan, and what was worse, she looked so fucking
young
.
Gods, how wrong he had been. He'd scanned her record the day she came aboard. The woman was a regen and had probably spent more time in various navies than he'd been alive. She'd served through the Cressarion Outbreak, and then the First and Second Colonial Wars. And then, of course, there was the big one.
After the bloodbath of the Thorian war, she'd apparently spent years as a merchant spacer, never settling in one place, never welcome; working passage aboard some of the shittiest rust buckets in space. Because, back then, nobody in their right mind would employ a fucking Thorian. They were literally the lepers of space.
The records got a bit sketchy there, but it looked like at some point she'd been taken on by a merc crew; bounty hunting and killing pirates out in the black, out beyond the Rim. Those sharks didn't give a shit where she came from, only that she knew her business. They were all outcasts, sociopaths, and borderline criminals anyway, and apparently, she'd fitted right in, somehow ending up in command of a privateer gunship.
When the core navies finally abandoned the Rim Systems, basically taking their ball and going home, local outfits were forced to take up the slack. Many of them had folded, or gone down guns blazing, as mercenary gangs, pirate warlords, and organised crime mobs took the opportunity to simply run amok. Those were dark times.
The Teraxan Navy had managed to stand, barely. They had been hammered in the Thorian War, and casualties had been near catastrophic. In the aftermath, they had been forced to build up as rapidly as they could, scrounging, begging or buying whatever second-hand warships they could get their hands on, pushing them into service with half-trained crews, while they worked furiously to construct the newer vessels they needed.
But they'd had to start almost from scratch, throwing together the military shipyards that the war had flattened, before they could get the ball rolling and begin laying down hulls. And given it took almost two years to build even a destroyer, they'd barely managed to put a dozen new warships into space since the end of the war. Construction rates were improving, but it would be another year, at least, before the first major combatant slipped from the moorings.
Even so, they'd been howling for experienced officers, and necessity trumped all. So, six months ago, the Invictus class cruiser
Zeus
had gotten themselves a new CO, and she was Thorian.
And much to his chagrin, it took her maybe as much as thirty seconds to figure him out.
He thought she would bench his whining ass immediately or give him shit assignments until he threw in the towel and quit, and for a while, she did, but Damon was no quitter, no ma'am.
But after a couple of months, he found himself sitting in the command chair more and more. Certainly, a lot more than when the previous Captain had been in command.
Sometimes she'd wait till they were in the middle of an exercise, or a docking maneuver to just get up and 'grab a cup of coffee', or whatever bullshit excuse she came up with. And sometimes she didn't bother with excuses at all. She'd simply turn to him with that fucking smile on her face and go, "Take the conn if you please."
She was fucking
infuriating
, but he had to admit she knew her trade. She fucking loved training, seemingly taking a particularly sadistic delight in tactical wargames. And every single time he was matched against her, she chopped him off at the knees. And the bitch made it look
easy
.
It drove him nuts. He pored over every mock engagement, analysed every after-action report he could get his hands on, studied raider operations until they haunted his fucking dreams, and pulled out every sneaky tactic he could think of. And still she murdered him more or less every time.
But sometimes he got close, especially lately. Though that last one had been particularly horrible. He'd actually bagged her ship for once and was trying hard not to crow about it. But when he picked up her surviving lifeboat, the bastard thing had blown up in his shuttle-bay, taking half his vessel with it. Then the annoying tart had looked across at him with a grin and shrugged, "Oops."
He had come perilously close to strangling her right there on the bridge.
And, against his better judgement, and so obviously contrary to any and all fucking common sense, he was really starting to like her.
It was just... infuriating.
A light flickering on the command board pricked at his awareness, and he flicked a switch.
A moment later, he looked up, "Miss Kristianson, the Captain sends her regards and requests the company of you and Miss Romero for dinner this evening," he turned, "you too, Lieutenant Collingwood."
The fair-skinned navigator tilted her head, "Dress?"
"Captain's table, but dress informal; supper only."
The woman turned to meet the eyes of the rating manning the next console, a mischievous smile playing on her lips as she murmured, "Supper only; what a pity."
...
The meal had been, well, not as awful as it could have been. Ration packs found aboard the captured prison barge had obviously been stolen from someplace with expensive tastes, as they were from one of the better civilian outlets, and though they were maybe a bit past their expiry date, they still tasted better than the usual shipboard fare.
Frances had somehow scrounged a couple of bottles of Helion red, and she poured each of her four guests a generous measure as she moved about the table, collecting the used plates and shoving them into the recycler. Helen had been mortified at being served by her Captain and had risen awkwardly, "I-I can get that for you ma'am."
The woman had waved her back into her chair with a wry smile, "Thank you kindly, Helen, but relax. It's been a bit of a day, and it's not going to get any easier, so best take a load off while you can."
Slumping back into her seat at the head of the table with a sigh, Frances took a generous swallow of her own wine,
"Hmm, not bad."
Refilling her glass, she studied her four guests. There was the therapist Felina Romero, still looking a little frazzled, but while Frances saw the woman periodically looking to young Helen for reassurance,
"Or was it comfort?"
there was no panic in her eyes. The therapist had been dumped right in the deep end, without warning or preparation, and as far as Frances was concerned, she was showing remarkable strength.
She nodded internally, the woman had been thoroughly shaken, but she was tougher than she knew.
Then there was Helen Kristianson herself, the young midshipwoman so recently posted aboard her ship. She was turning into a fine young woman, and a good officer. Frances had read the report about the most recent covert operation on Zesta. She'd also spoken to the marines who'd been there, even the notorious Private Lightfoot. The hulking marine had been less than pleased with the Captain, and he wasn't shy about letting her know it. But it wasn't too hard to figure out where that anger really came from, and so no great chore to overlook his insubordination. And, to the man's credit, after getting it out of his system, he'd actually mumbled an apology. She grinned at the memory; he was a good man.
Helen had done well, but what impressed the Captain most was how she had not remained a passive member of the team. The account of her interrogation of that thug showed the woman had some steel in her spine, and that was all to the good.
Selene Collingwood had a slight, delicate, almost bird-like frame, but if she was a bird, it was a bird of prey. She was a lovely creature, with elfin looks that wouldn't have gone amiss on a catwalk, and a mind to match her beauty. Frances knew the woman had a distinctly 'chequered' past, but there was no doubting her ability as a navigator. What was yet to be evidenced however, was her ability to command. Unknown to the navigator, that was about to change.
The fourth guest was Lieutenant Darya Satlykova, the second in command of her marine detachment. She might be hawk-like in attitude, but other than that, there was absolutely nothing delicate about this woman. No, if she favoured any animal at all, it was a tigress. She was lean, lethal, and fierce, probably quite capable of killing everyone in the room using only the cutlery lying on the table. Frances had always had a thing for 'dangerous' characters and had to admit she had to suppress a tiny frisson of excitement every time the deadly woman met her eyes.
She brushed the distinctly improper thoughts aside,
"To business."
Clearing her throat was enough to garner the attention of her guests, "So, enjoyable as it is to have you as guests at my table, I'm afraid this is a working dinner. So, shall we?"
There were murmurs of assent around the table, and Frances nodded, "Right, first things first," she turned to the marine, "Leftenant?"
Darya put her glass down, "Not a great deal to report, ma'am. We boarded the prison transport, she's called the 'Elmira,' by the way, and took control without incident. The crew didn't put up a fight. We released one hundred and forty-seven women from confinement and placed them in the crew quarters. They have all suffered from various degrees of abuse and are pretty traumatised, ma'am. I had the prisoners fitted with shock collars and incarcerated in the slave-cages in the hold."
Frances looked up, "Not the cells?"
The marines' features did not so much as flicker, but her voice was flat, "Nope."
"Fair enough, and Leftenant Hopper?"
The marine's expression was carefully neutral, which in itself was telling, "We had words, Captain."
"So, the marine Leftenant is sleeping with the drop-ship pilot. Gods, it sounds like an episode of 'Solarian Passion,'"
she crushed the smile that was threatening to appear on her face, "and the result?"
The woman blushed ever so slightly, "Um, mixed."
