i command armies

[autokinetic]

Sue graduates from Tactical School a year early, he's barely fifteen. He's toned down the flirting - he treats Aegis completely platonically, in particular - and has cut down on the unhealthy amount of sleeping-with-everything-that-wants. And he's apparently, via his independent study, gotten far enough through the curriculum that they're nudging him along to Command.

They've given Sue a strange old man for a tutor, who appeared in his room and started a physical confrontation, which Sue won; Sue related this story to her with something between amusement and irritation.

And a quicker-than-average flurry of notes has been piling up in the psych data since about that time, according to the timestamps.

Aegis knows before they tell her that they're going to send her to Command early too. She's just barely fifteen herself when she gets another update of the psych files and sees that Sue's had - well, the files aren't terribly clear, some of the communication is happening via in-person conversation and memos that don't get stored in these folders, but Sue's had some kind of breakdown and the only things they can think of to get him out of it, get him back into shape to train and fight, are her friendship and Howlett. They have mixed feelings about both - Howlett's insubordination problem; their bewilderment that Aegis and Sue can be so close when "she's the one person he can't link!" - but they're desperate.

Bird? They don't talk as often over the long distance, just as there was a lull when he went to Tactical ahead of her; their schedules have nothing in common and their contexts less. But he knows her, and he can reach this far if he tries. And she wants to know what's wrong.

Comments

[pythbox]

"Unfortunately," he says, "we can't change the schedule of the battles. The fleets arrive when they arrive. Hissy fit included, your friend with you as backup was still our best bet."

[autokinetic]

"Okay. But - we're not buggers, sir, we can use the brains on those ships if you let us talk to them, we can subdivide more and give them their own missions so we're not spread so thin, Sue can link a lot more than eight people if he can reach that far, and I don't share your opinion of their uniform machinelike adherence to their orders regardless of morale anyway."

[pythbox]

"Your simulators can also take direct control of their ships," he says. "You only have to worry about them disobeying verbal orders. And I still don't think you need to worry about them disobeying verbal orders."

[autokinetic]

"Are you actually unconvinced of the usefulness of communicating with them, sir, or are you just not allowed to let me and you're hoping I'll agree with you before you have to tell me flat no so I don't show up to the next battle disgruntled?"

[pythbox]

"I'm unconvinced of the usefulness of communicating with them and not looking forward to arranging it if you somehow convince me," he says. "The simulator system is very well designed, and it's not designed for the kind of communication you're thinking about."

[autokinetic]

"But when we do issue verbal orders, human beings hear them, it's not a sophisticated natural language processor," she says. "Okay. That's useful."

[pythbox]

"Yes," he says. "Sure."

[autokinetic]

"I'd like it in writing that I solicited permission to talk to the fleet officers, sir, and that you denied it, in case something comes up that could have been mitigated with such communication channels," Aegis says, suddenly bright.

[pythbox]

"I'd like you to go away," he says dryly.

[autokinetic]

"Sir," says Aegis cheerfully, "it's an IF bylaw that you must reproduce any orders that are not urgent on a scale of minutes in writing on request."

[pythbox]

"Kid," he says, "if we do something wrong here, the material consequence will be the buggers killing us all. That's enough to keep me up at night already. I'm not interested in your power plays."

[autokinetic]

"I'm not making a power play, sir. I've stopped arguing with you entirely about the object level. If you're wrong, but not so wrong for the situation to be irrecoverable, and you get fired, I want whoever replaces you to have a paper trail that shows that I have historically not been an idiot and should be listened to in any future matters that may come up, so that we can not die."

[pythbox]

"I'm not going to get fired."

[autokinetic]

"I'm sure you think so, sir. I'd like the refusal in writing anyway, and I am entitled to it anyway."

[pythbox]

"And you're not getting it," he says. "Anything else?"

[autokinetic]

"Sir, it is now abundantly clear to me that you and others who are in miscellaneous positions as my superior officers are willing to break international and military law in order to get me and Sue to do what you want. Why should I believe that fleets of soldiers who have been en route for however many years of subjective time will not decide to do the same thing, if ordered into a position that's not immediately, visibly valuable by someone whose voice clearly signifies that we're half their age?"

[pythbox]

"Because you are their superior officer," he suggests. "And the entire premise of the IF school system is that being half their age doesn't make you any worse of a commander."

[autokinetic]

"There have got to be hundreds of people in some of these fleets, any of whom could throw an operation off if they so chose, and all of them belong to a species that produced, for example, Sue. I am not convinced, sir, that the laws governing following lawful orders will hold up any better than the laws governing requisition of written copies, if we find that we have to order some fraction of a fleet into a suicide mission, or if one of us makes a mistake and is heard to say something inopportune by the survivors, or if someone has, as I suggested earlier, a baby on board - those little birth control chips are very effective, but statistically stranger things have happened. If I am not a worse commander because I am fifteen years old, sir - if I and Sue, and not you, are the correct choice for commanding our actual invasion fleet - then I want every resource I can think of to requisition, before I need it so it's there if and when I do, and if you get in my way, sir, then I want you to take responsibility for that choice, obey the law, and write it the fuck down just so you're clear on what you are doing. I have not been just some fifteen-year-old student who should be denied things by default since I was sat down in front of instruments that controlled real ships against live, unfriendly fire."

[pythbox]

"You can't have it in writing because it's not an order," he says tiredly. "I don't need to order you not to establish contact with the fleets outside the simulator, because the only means you have of doing that is your friend Sue, who clearly doesn't give a rat's ass what he's been ordered to do. If I wanted to facilitate that contact through something resembling an official channel, then I'd have to start giving orders. And then you could experience the tedium of ansible communications with a ship in relativistic transit for yourself."

[autokinetic]

"There is precedent for applying the bylaw to requisition denials, sir."

[pythbox]

"You are trying to requisition something that is not available to you," he says. "Your buddy has been known to requisition Mazer Rackham's balls on a plate, and I'm not legally obliged to give that denial in writing, either, although I'm sometimes tempted to."

[autokinetic]

"...Mazer Rackham? The old guy is Mazer fucking Rackham? What'd you do, put him in a ship and speed him up and turn him around just so he could abuse a new generation of students? He shot the right target one time and this makes him worth dilating into the future for his shit teaching skills?"

[pythbox]

"He does understand the buggers better than anyone else alive."

[autokinetic]

"And instead of having him write his insights down or teach a formal class on the subject you have him pick physical altercations with would-be commanders and interrupt their sleep because that will somehow help."

[pythbox]

"He's very attached to this 'learn from your enemy' plan," he sighs. "But it doesn't seem to be working out as expected."