Thunder Run

The blackest word in any commander’s vocabulary is ‘mutiny’. Mutiny is a disease that turns soldier against soldier, killing a military from the inside out until all that is left is a lawless mob. Even the suggestion of a mutiny can mean losing a ship, a battle, a war. That’s why the rule most commanders follow is to shoot them all and let the Admiralty Court sort them out later.

Let me tell you about the only mutiny I’ve ever been near -- and how Fitz managed to put it down without firing a shot.

Our involvement began with the Dugong’s engagement at Makoa. Jeanne Fitzgerald was the Captain of the Dugong and I was her XO. We’d been part of the early shock force that was intended to clear a beachhead for the troops by doing precision bombing. But the Dugong was a torpedo cruiser; our job was to eliminate the orbital defenses so that the heavy bombers could do their job.

We’d been told that the Spathe had put up five ravelins and had no pod-cruisers in orbit. The ravelins would be in low orbits, covered in armor and carrying plenty of short-range weapons designed to turn any invading force into so much upper atmosphere pollution. Our plan was to stand off and hit them from a distance with torpedoes until the way was cleared. It should have been as quick as cat piss.

It wasn’t.

What we didn’t know at the time was that the Spathe had built up their orbital defenses at Makoa. Instead of just five orbital ravelins, there were ten. And instead of no pod-cruisers, there were two. Against all that, there was just three torpedo cruisers — the Dugong, the Bajpai , and the Cuesta.

Well, we did our best. The Bajpai took out three ravelins with her first spread of torpedoes but was struck amidships by a lucky hit from one of the pod-cruisers and lost all power. The Cuesta got that pod-cruiser and two more ravelins but then had to withdraw because her reactors began to overload. That left the Dugong facing five ravelins and a pod-cruiser. To put it mildly, we were outgunned.

But orders are orders and Fitz wasn’t the sort to let a little thing like bad odds stand in her way. Fitz decided that the pod-cruiser was the bigger threat, so she headed us straight down its throat, firing torpedoes in staggered spreads. We got lucky and managed to destroy it on the third spread but took a hit that left us blind on the port side. Any other captain would have fallen back, but not Fitz.

“We’ve been given a mission, Singh, and I’ll be hung if we don’t complete it,” she said.

Fitz spun the Dugong on her long axis and dove at the remaining ravelins. I don’t know how they did it, but our Weapons Mate Jerry Norden managed to hit those ravelins one right after the other despite having nothing steady to aim at.

Meanwhile, the Bajpai had started rubbing the atmosphere; her captain, Francisca Leite called for aid. So Fitz dove the Dugong into the atmo and nudged the Bajpai back into orbit long enough for her crew to be transferred to us. But that nudge bent the Dugong’s frame badly enough that when we finally got back to FOB Rill, the mechanics took one look at her and sent us on back to the Yard on Harbor where the heavy equipment needed to fix her was located.

About the only good news we got at FOB Rill was that the Makoa landing was a success thanks to our work. General Taylor was on the ground, directing the offensive and rooting out the Spathe as quickly as he and 10,000 of his dearest friends could.

But when we got back to Harbor, the engineers decided that the Dugong was so badly twisted that they needed to pass the buck upstairs for a “refit or retire” decision. Now I don’t know how fast the military makes up its mind these days, but back then scrapping a torpedo cruiser wasn’t something that you did on a whim. Instead, the brass started arguing about whether it was better to repair the damage or use the Dugong for a morale tour or turn her into a troop transport — and what should be done with the crews of the Bajpai and the Dugong. (The Cuesta had limped back into FOB Rill where her reactors were retuned; she was sent back out on patrol before we made it to Harbor.)

Most of the brass were for giving us leave while the matter was sorted out, but some wanted to throw us back into the fray right away. And Admiral Henry actually suggested that Fitz should have let the Bajpai and her crew just burn up since that would have meant just one ship and crew out of action instead of two.

Fitz looked them in the eye and asked exactly how many tours of duty they’d done. When Henry said that their expertise was more suited to leading from behind, Fitz called them a cowardly paper-pusher who wasn’t fit to polish the toilets on the lowest ship in the fleet. Needless to say, that didn’t earn her many friends among the brass. But she didn’t have to pay for a drink the rest of the time we were at Harbor.

While the brass was busy polishing each other and Taylor was working on cleaning up Makoa, the Spathe were preparing a surprise of their own. About the time that Fitz was telling that admiral to pound sand, a bracetate was massing at Ritter-5. Before we knew what was up, they burst forth and started an advance that would have recaptured most of the space they’d lost in the past year of fighting and could have actually pushed on to Bonmonde, Godverden, and Mangandang.

The brass did what the brass always does. They threw everything they had into this new fight and forgot entirely about the ones that were going on. In less than a week, every cruiser, bomber, battleship, and destroyer was on its way to stop the advance. Left behind and forgotten were the Dugong , her crew, and Taylor’s troops that had landed on Makoa just a month before. And that was the problem.

I don’t know how much you know about the military, but Napoleon was right when he said that an Army marches on its stomach. Cut off the supplies and you’ve cut off the enemy’s ability to fight. Even if they can scrounge up food, they’ve got to have weapons and ammunition and medical supplies and clothing and a thousand other things if they are to win their fight. But all the focus on Ritter-5 meant that supplies for Makoa had been rerouted. Worse, all of the long-range gunships that would normally protect a supply convoy had been commandeered for the other front.

So when Harbor got a call from Taylor asking where the godsdamned supplies for his troops on Makoa were, the initial response was “What supplies?”

It took another week for the quartermasters to get it through their pointy little heads that there were troops on Makoa who desperately needed resupplying. So they passed the buck to a convoy group headed by Ernie Slovik on the Amphipod. And that’s where the bear really broke its chain. Slovik’s troops refused to deploy. And Slovik backed them up.

And it was at that point that Admiral Henry saw their chance to teach a certain loud-mouthed captain her proper place by sending her orders to take control, quash the mutiny, and get the supplies to Makoa. Or else.

Holding the letter with the orders on it, Fitz just looked at me and said “You told me so, Singh. You told me so.”

The second thing Fitz did was meet with the convoy leader, privately. Just her, me, and him in his cabin. “What exactly happened, Slovik?” she asked as she took what had been his chair.

“We got the request to take supplies to Makoa,” he said. “But no escort to protect us. I didn’t want to take my people into a combat zone without protection, so when my crew decided not to go I agreed with them.”

“I see,” Fitz nodded. As Slovik began to smile in relief, she asked “What makes you think that this is a democracy?”

“Captain?”

“You were given orders. Your job is to find a way to carry them out, not to complain that you might get shot at by the enemy.”

“But what good would our dying do?” Slovik demanded. “There’s no way to get those supplies to Makoa. We’d die for nothing.”

“No, you would have died trying to support those who are dying to support you. Instead, you decided to piss your bed, so now we’ve got a mess to clean up before we can get those supplies where they need to go.” Fitz rubbed her forehead in frustration. “By the regs and under Henry’s orders, I could have you shot. Instead, I’m going to give you one last chance to do your duty. I want you to assemble your crew in the main cargo bay in thirty minutes. Dismissed.”

Slovik stared at her for a moment as he realized that the cabin was no longer his cabin and the ship might not be his ship, either. He gave her a crisp salute then headed out to gather the crew.

“That godsdamned mastigian has put us about one bad day away from a full-scale mutiny,” she said. “I hope this works.”

“It will,” I said. “It has to.”

Thirty minutes later, Fitz walked into the main cargo bay. Facing her were thirty ratings along with Slovik and his XO. None of them looked happy to be there. She waited a minute; when nothing happened, she looked over to me.

“A-TEN-SHUN!” I called out in my best parade-ground voice.

With some mumbling, the crew slowly came to attention. Fitz gave them the evil-eye for a moment, then started to speak.

“A military runs on discipline,” she began. “Without discipline, we are just a ragged mob. Without discipline, we cannot support and protect each other. Without discipline,” she added, giving me the signal we’d agreed on, “there is nothing preventing me from having you all shot here and now for mutiny.”

As she spoke, twenty troops in full battle gear ran into the room, rifles at the ready, surrounding the Amphipod’s crew. Because the first thing that Fitz had done after getting her orders from Henry was to go to the captains of the Racer, the Leatherfin, and the Redtail and ask them if they were up to a short cruise. None of them had the range or the firepower needed for the Ritter-5 campaign, so they’d been left behind to guard Harbor along with twenty other gunships. Naturally, all of them agreed; nothing is worse for a highly-trained crew than rearguard.

The Amphipod’s crew looked at those rifles and then they looked at Fitz. And then they looked at the rifles again as the seriousness of their situation sank in.

Just as the crew realized just how far over the line they’d stepped, Fitz gestured again and the troops thundered back out of the cargo bay.

“I could have you shot, but that would be a waste of bullets. Instead, I’m going to give you a chance to regain your honor. A chance to show those godsdamned Spathe and the brass just what kind of people you are. You may die. I may die, because I’m going with you. But if we die, then we’ll die knowing that we did our duty to those brave troops on Makoa and to the Confederation. We’ll die knowing that we’re not the sort of cowards that only play it safe — that only do what is easy. We’ll die knowing full well that we met the Spathe in battle and we made them pay for every single one of us that they killed.

“Are you scared? So am I. I know that every time that I go into battle could be my last. I know that somewhere out there is a Spathe soldier just waiting to wade in my blood. But I also know that Spathe soldier is pissing its pants because to get to me they’ve got to go through the whole godsdamned Confederation military. Starting with those ten thousand poor bastards on Makoa.

“Did you eat today? On Makoa there are ten thousand troops waiting for the food that’s piled in the Amphipod. Did you sleep today? On Makoa there are ten thousand troops going without sleep as they try to keep the Spathe away from our homes for just one more day. Did you kiss your husband, your wife, your parent, your child? On Makoa, there are ten thousand troops who haven’t seen their loved ones since they left here a month ago. And they won’t ever see them unless we get off our asses and get them the supplies they need to win back Makoa.

“I know what you’re thinking. It can’t be done. They’re there and we’re here and there’s a week’s worth of Spathe bracts standing between them and us. Well, I don’t believe in ‘can’t’. I believe in those troops. And I believe in you. That’s why I’ll be in the lead ship in this convoy, the Leatherfin . That’s why I’ll be on a gun on the Leatherfin, hoping those leafies show just one frond so I can blast it back into mulch. And that’s why Slovik is going to be on a gun in the last ship in this convoy, the Racer, trying to regain his honor by making sure that none of those leafies can stab us in the back. And that’s why your XO, Francine Crozier, will captain this ship. So she can lead you as we get these supplies to those troops.”

Turning to Crozier, Fitz saluted and said “We depart in one hour.”

Crozier saluted back and replied “One hour. Aye, ma’am.”

Fitz seconded me to the Amphipod as acting XO, so I didn’t see her again until five days later when we made orbit around Makoa. In the meantime, we ran the gauntlet from MOB Harbor to Makoa and met surprisingly little resistance. There was a quick firefight around Erandi that blew out the Racer’s rear guns and killed Slovik, but most of the Spathe pod-cruisers had apparently moved over to Ritter-5 to join in the fight there.

As a result, the gunships spent most of the trip clearing stealth mines from our path. And since Fitz had told the captains that she didn’t want to bother the quartermasters on Harbor by bringing back a lot of ammunition that had to be counted before being restocked, they were more than willing to use a thousand rounds to take out one stealth mine.

On Makoa, Taylor met and thanked all the captains personally for bringing the supplies his troops needed. He loaded us up with about 700 casualties, which left the Amphipod packed to the gills, and sent a personal letter of commendation for Fitz to Admiral Henry. The trip back was even easier than the trip out had been but took a little longer as Crozier no longer saw the need to run the Amphipod’s engines at 110%.

I don’t know if it was Taylor's letter or Henry’s fear of what else Fitz might do if she stayed on Harbor with nothing to do, but two days after we got back, the Dugong was recommissioned and sent off to aid at Ritter-5. I heard that some of the engineers were still on board wiring up the secondary circuits when she broke orbit.

Much to my regret, I wasn’t sent along. Crozier had been given command of the Amphipod and asked that I remain as her XO and Henry made it official as their last little bit of revenge.

In the end, what I remember most about the thunder run isn’t the terror. It isn’t the mutiny and it isn’t even the smiles on the Makoan troops’ faces as they got their first hot meal in weeks. What I remember is that despite the worst that Admiral Henry, the Spathe, and block-headed quartermasters could do, Taylor took and held Makoa. And he did it because of what Fitz and her little convoy did for honor, for love, and for the Confederation.

THE END

Bio: John E. DeLaughter is a retired planetologist who lives on a sailboat with Missy the cat. He has previously been published in Youth Imagination Magazine, Aphelion Webzine, and Pilcrow and Dagger. I also have stories in the Strange Wars and Strange Economics anthologies.

E-mail: John E. DeLaughter

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