Witch of the federation.., p.65
Witch Of The Federation IV (Federal Histories Book 4), page 65
“You are to be personally congratulated on bringing together a team of such diverse personalities and getting them to work as a single unit within the timeframe you had to work in. You were given a group of individuals who had failed to find a home in any unit previously.”
“Hey,” Ka protested, but softly.
It was heard, however, and the trio on stage smiled and Commander Geodyne went on.
“In fact, this group of individuals consisted of members known for their pig-headed individuality, inability to follow orders, their issues with discipline, and their overall unruly and sometimes irresponsible behavior.”
“Oy!” came out of Gary before he could stop it.
The three men on stage smiled, but only Geodyne spoke.
“And you managed to weld them into a singular fighting force,” he concluded. “What gave you the idea that you could?”
Todd swallowed against the dryness of his throat. “I… Well, sir, they were Marines. I knew they’d be able to pull together.”
This was met by sputters from around the auditorium. He reddened, resisted the urge to look around, and tried to explain.
“I needed a squad to act as a unit and I knew each member of my team brought a unique set of skills to the mix—and that I would need every single one of them.”
He sensed his team go still and ignored them.
“I knew their lives were my responsibility and if I couldn’t get them to work together, they would all die.” His voice softened and he raised his head. “I’d lost one team already,” he declared. “I did not intend to have that happen again, so it was imperative I got these guys to work together.”
“And how exactly did you do that when quite a few other team leaders hadn’t managed it?” Commander Geodyne’s voice was soft.
“I remembered seeing the Witch take her team through a Navy scenario,” he told him and hoped the fact Stephanie was his girlfriend wouldn’t be held against him.
When no-one called him on it, he continued. “She’d been given a confirmed troublemaker among the Dreth. He was an excellent soldier and known for coming up with unorthodox solutions on the battlefield.”
“He was also known for his inability to get along with any squad when off the battlefield,” Admiral Dailey interjected, and he wondered how the man knew.
Todd assumed he wouldn’t actually tell him, though, and continued. “Exactly, sir. Vishlog was a known troublemaker and misfit and Stephanie had to be able to incorporate him into her team in a short period of time or face the same risk I wanted to avoid—losing her team.”
“And which training method did you take from the Witch’s handbook?” Commander Geodyne asked.
“I took them into a combat scenario and kept them there until they learned to work together well enough to not die. They had to rely on each other’s skills, and they had to learn to trust each other and work together in order to survive.”
“You cunning bastard,” Gary muttered.
“You utter, utter bastard,” Reggie corrected.
“Nice, Lance. Just…nice…” Even Ka wasn’t impressed, and there wasn’t a hope in Hades he would look at Dru to see what she thought of his idea.
Snickers rustled through the amphitheater as the audience heard the suppressed mutiny from his squad.
“For six hours straight?” Commander Geodyne’s next comment quelled them.
He refused to rise to the bait. “The level of teamwork I want is difficult to achieve,” he replied.
Gary was horrified. “Six hours, boss?” he exclaimed and clapped both hands over his mouth.
Todd rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t aware it was that long, but I didn’t want to stop until they reached the point where they worked together without thinking about it.”
“We’ve almost reached the point of murder,” Dru muttered, and the captain who’d winked at him gave a hastily stifled bark of laughter.
“I take it you’ve never discussed the process with them?” Commander Geodyne asked, and he shook his head.
“As you’ve noted, sir, they are very independent-minded and I detected a certain resistance to authority, so discussing the initial phase of training with them seemed unwise.”
“You’re darn tooting it was unwise,” Dru growled, and he sighed.
“As you can see, sirs, the team building activities have done nothing to stifle their sense of independence or improve their attitude to authority, which means I have a team that’s flexible in its approach to difficult situations—”
“You’re a difficult situation, Lance.”
Muffled laughter followed, and Todd was sure the team had begun to enjoy itself at his expense. It was not a comfortable feeling and he hated to think of how this session would probably end.
“Including not stopping the self-destruct sequence as a priority?” Commander Geodyne’s voice was mild.
The team’s response was not.
“Oh, get fucked,” “Fuck you,” “What the fuck, sir?” “You and your horse,” came out as a muted chorus that carried to the surrounding officers and made them laugh out loud. Todd hung his head in shame.
Maybe Stephanie could apply for visiting rights.
“Of all the fucking—” He pivoted to face the team.
“Enough!” he snapped, and they froze. “Apologize to the commander.”
“We’re sorry, sir,” was better than he expected. “Yeah, sorry you’re such a prick,” was worse.
“Reggie!”
“Sorry, sir,” was an improvement, although the muttered, “You gold-spattered shit-stirring asshole,” was not.
Todd raised his head and his hand. “Sir, I respectfully request freedom to speak from the most successful hooligan squad the Federation Navy currently has available.”
Commander Geodyne exchanged glances with the two admirals, and he held his breath while he waited for their response.
Ka’s muttered, “Good one, Reggie, you dumbass,” was less than he wanted to say.
Admiral Dailey looked at Commander Geodyne. “Are you sure this is the team that defeated the dreadnought?”
The commander’s response earned him Todd’s unwavering gratitude.
“This is precisely the attitude that enabled them to achieve the impossible,” he replied. “Anything more disciplined, and they might have had the common sense to stop and realize that what they were doing simply couldn’t be done.”
“Hey!”
Todd reached the end of his tether. He turned sharply. “Enough!” he roared, and the team stopped. He pointed to their seats. “Sit!”
They complied, and he turned to the stage again. “Commander, Admirals, I am very, very—”
“Lucky,” Admiral Seljack snapped, “that you and your team have been transferred to the Witch’s command and that we happen to need this attitude at this point in time. The fact that you have any control over them only justifies the decision to put you in charge of them—and proves we have finally found a home for this particular group of misfits.”
He fixed the team with a disgusted glare. “Or we’d simply throw the lot of you in the brig for insubordination pending your dishonorable discharges.”
Ignoring the team’s shocked faces, he returned control of the meeting to Geodyne with a nod. Todd stiffened as the commander held his gaze.
“To answer your question, Lance Corporal, the hooligans may speak freely as long as they don’t besmirch anyone. Is that understood?”
The man’s gaze traveled from him to the seated team, and he was relieved to hear his “Understood, sir,” echoed respectfully by the rest of his squad.
“Now,” Geodyne continued, “Let’s get down to the foundation of how you and your team did the impossible—and how you will do it again.”
Reggie broke the spell. “Well, shit. We are fucked.”
“Royally fucked,” Gary agreed morosely, and the commander turned to the two admirals.
“See?” he asked. “As undisciplined as they are, they are now a perfectly unified team.”
“Well, that’s something, at least,” Admiral Dailey murmured, and Todd’s face heated again.
It didn’t help that Ka flashed the boys a grin. “We’re only fucked if we don’t come back.”
Henry had a response to that. “The Morgana’s people do it. We can, too.”
“I like their confidence,” Admiral Seljak remarked, and Todd groaned.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
“Well, sirs, doing the impossible requires the right equipment—or as much of what you think you’ll need as you can get hold of,” Todd began.
“Or get away with?” Admiral Dailey interjected, and he blushed.
Hell, he thought, and I didn’t think I could get any redder.
His team snickered, but their faces were perfectly straight when he glanced at them. At least they made some small effort to behave.
Strangely enough, the admiral wasn’t looking directly at him. He followed Dailey’s gaze and saw the man had settled his focus on Piet. Stifling another groan, he wondered what the man knew about his explosive expert’s load-out that he didn’t.
Whatever it was, neither of them seemed inclined to share.
“Speaking of equipment,” Seljack broke in, “we’ve noticed you’ve added quite a few…shall we say, ‘non-standard’ items. In addition to Meligornian grenades, you have sealing tape, tube explosive…”
Now he looked at Piet as well and Todd stifled another groan. The blast bunny would be the death of him—or his career.
“Extra rebreathers,” the man continued. “What made you think you might need those?”
“Well, sir,” Gary began and ignored the fact that their team leader was the one who was supposed to answer, “if you’ve ever shared a cabin with either of these two”—he paused and indicated Henry and Jimmy—“after they’ve been into—”
“Gary, we were told not to besmirch anyone,” Todd warned, and the man subsided and shrugged. “Let’s simply say close quarters makes you think of things that might be useful in other confined spaces—and the longevity of said items.”
Seljack pulled his tablet out and glanced at it. “You’ve also added portable drives to your kit as well as enrolled two of your team members in hacking courses. Is there any reason why?”
Todd cocked his head and arched an eyebrow, then remembered who he was speaking to and that he was supposed to set a good example for his men.
“We encountered a situation in the pod scenario where we had an opportunity to obtain intelligence, but we didn’t have the equipment to do so.”
Again, Seljack glanced at his notes. “Ah, I see—and you blew those computers up.”
“Denying intelligence to the enemy, sir,” he told him. “We didn’t want to have to do that in the real.”
“I see. Can you tell me what you learned from the situation you encountered when you arrived at the Devil’s Care?”
“That some loadmasters have a very large stick u…” Gary let his voice fade when he caught his team leader’s look.
“That we need to call ahead if we have non-standard loadings,” Todd replied and kept a wary eye on his teammate, “and that arriving earlier rather than on time would be better.”
“Given that your team had proved to be close to the peak of its performance during the simulations,” Admiral Dailey asked, “why did you deem it necessary to continue their training once you’d boarded the Devil’s Care?”
“If there’s one thing Marine training taught me, sir, it’s that consolidation is the key to establishing a good behavior pattern. I didn’t want the team to fall out of the habits they’d formed when they were in the sim.”
The man was solemn. “So you were concerned they would stop functioning as a team if you let up on the training?”
“Almost, sir. I was concerned they’d forget what had worked for them in the scenario, and I wanted them to have a good chance of survival. The extra pod training was to ensure that happened.”
“Slave driver,” Dru muttered as Angus murmured, “Control freak.”
Todd breathed a muted sigh of relief when the admirals seemed to ignore them. They were much more interested in what had happened when the team had reached the Dreth system.
“We understand you stopped pod training and put the team on standby once you reached Dreth space.”
He nodded and Seljack gave him a puzzled frown. “Why was that, when the pod training was so important to them functioning as a team?”
“I needed them to be fresh if trouble occurred,” he replied. “Pod training is effective but it’s tiring, too. I wanted them to enter any battle ready for anything that came at them.”
“How could you be so sure there would be a battle?”
“There had been a spate of pirate attacks,” he explained, “and reports were that the pirates had become bolder and attacked in larger numbers. I wanted the team to be prepared to handle anything and everything.”
“Which is exactly what you got,” Seljack noted and glanced at his tablet. “Security footage shows you moving toward the launch hangar before the pirates appeared. Why was that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I guess I merely wanted my people in position before anything happened.”
“And did you expect it to happen so soon?”
Todd shook his head. “No, sir. I thought we’d have at least two days’ comfortable cruising before anything showed on the scans.”
He ignored Ka’s whispered, “Psychic,” and waited for the admiral’s next question.
“And instead, they appeared shortly after the Devil’s Care arrived in system. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t explain it, sir.”
“Well, your best educated guess then.”
“If I have to guess, sir, I’d say they knew the arrival point of the convoy in advance and were lying in wait.”
“But our routes are classified. No one knows them in advance, not even the captains. They get the coordinates sent in tight-burst minutes before the jump.”
“Then you have a problem in Naval communications, sir. No disrespect intended.”
Ka snorted, and the admiral looked toward her.
“Did you have something to add, Marine?”
His second in command frowned as she blushed. Todd held his breath. Of all his team, she had the worst problem with authority. Gary was a lightweight compared to her. Reggie, too.
He saw her face harden and waited for the admiral to be told the unforgivable. Her next few words exceeded his expectations.
“I merely thought the lance had a point, sir.” He had almost breathed a sigh of relief when she added, “And that you’d be too stupid to pay any attention to it and solve the problem.”
Several gasps from the row behind them confirmed that she’d gone too far. Todd prepared to intervene, but the admiral’s response told him he didn’t need to.
“Yes, well, I can see why your team leader asked permission for you to speak freely.”
“She only opens her mouth to change feet, sir,” Gary interjected.
Jimmy couldn’t resist. “Says the man who only doesn’t need a bigger shovel.”
Todd held his hand up and the team settled. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The admiral cast him the glimmer of a smile. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with them, Brogan. Anyone else would have had them charged and they’re all on their last warnings as it is.”
That was news to him and he stared at his superior, who continued. “As to the point your trooper raised, we have already investigated the secure communications section and removed the program diverting our coordinates to a secondary destination.”
That caused uneasy murmurs to ripple through the auditorium, and Admiral Dailey stepped up beside Seljak.
“We have also located and neutralized the technician responsible for introducing it.”
“Neutralized?” Todd thought that question sounded too highly strung to come from a Naval captain, but it had.
Dailey’s reply was dry. “They tried to run.”
It was accompanied by a small hand signal and several Marines surrounded the questioner. One of them carried a small metal bar.
“If you’d go with the Marines, Captain,” the admiral suggested, and his tone made it an order.
The captain complied and Dailey surveyed the auditorium.
“Neutralized,” he repeated, and no one else had anything to say.
Welcome to the war, Todd thought and met the man’s gaze when it settled on him again.
“There are some among your team who think you’re psychic,” he began. “What do you have to say to that?”
His face burned and he shook his head. “It was merely logic, sir. There are times I wish I was psychic, but I’m not.”
The man smiled. “That’s good to know, Lance Corporal. Otherwise, I’d have to transfer you to an entirely different section and your team would be in all kinds of trouble.”
Ka’s rebellious mutter carried. “Not as much trouble as the Navy.”
He tensed, but the admiral continued as though nothing had been said.
“I believe you encountered some obstructive behavior when you reached the hangars.”
“Not from my team, sir,” he replied, and Dailey shook his head.
“No.” He glanced down at his tablet. “This behavior came from the flight controller. He wouldn’t let your people board early, I believe.”
“This is true, but he did have his reasons. I don’t have a problem with his decision.”
His superior grimaced. “What was it he referred to your Marines as…”
This time, Todd was fairly sure the glance at his tablet wasn’t needed.
“Ah, yes. Here it is—joystick-happy jockstraps.” Dailey looked expectantly at him. “Would you care to explain that remark.”
He sighed and hung his head momentarily while he made a mental note to strangle Gary later.
“Well, sir,” he replied and looked up to meet the man’s eye without flinching. “It seems he had a run-in with one of my team members during one of their more…uh, irresponsible moments and hadn’t forgotten the incident.”
