Chain of Command

[Jane Hartman]

Long Island Station, Manhattan Geosynchronous Orbit

---

"Contact light." In the wake of the pilot's address a denser breed of silence settled over Fort Wayne's cargo bay. The omniscient hum of the engines faded into gentle nothing, punctuated only by the soft groan of several thousand tonnes worth of star ship drifting to a halt. Beyond the steel and plastic cavern of the bay, Hartman knew that the transport's cumbersome docking tube was inching its way toward Long Island Station along the tracks already extended by the Bison, the station suspended high above Manhattan like a mobile above a child's crib - albeit a mobile with enough firepower to knock a cruiser squadron out of orbit and dent the hull of a battleship.

Since the fall of Melbourne, Long Island Station had become the beating heart of the Navy's central defense grid, the most heavily armed installation in New York space, and a specially tooled manufacturing center for some of the Navy's more outrageous - or dangerous - projects. The station had grown from the experimental outpost first commissioned by Polstari after command had finally pulled the plug on Cape Canaveral into a formidable facility. It was a military base, a command center, and a fully-fledged factory rolled into one, startlingly coherent, whole. It was also, Hartman noted dryly, soon to be under her command. Again.

There was a certain irony to it, she supposed. She had returned from the reserves looking for a chance to get back in space, to get away from the desk-lined nightmare that her working day had become. Combat might have been brutal, violent, and cruel - but at least it was simple, and at least it was honest. An environment where you trusted the people beside you to watch your back, not step on your neck to haul themselves up another link on the chain. Oh, the Navy had carried her back into space, no mistake, but they'd had a desk waiting for her the moment she left atmosphere. Lewis, she had no doubt, would have found the situation endlessly amusing. It was just a damn shame that she had to come up here and take the job off someone else.

"Welcome back Ma'am." The transport commander's voice filtered down into her helmet. "You'll notice that the captain's turned off the seat-belt sign, and you're clear to disembark through the starboard airlock in your own time. Thanks for flying Logistics."

Hartman sent her acknowledgement and began the lengthy process of undoing the various straps and clips securing her to the crash rack. She could have made the journey on the bridge with the crew, kicked a junior officer out of his seat, but she’d been in the Navy long enough to know when to hold off. She didn’t want to become the sort of officer that spent every flight hovering over the shoulders of the ship commander, waiting for a mistake. It was an attitude that may have worked in training, but on an operational command it would immobilise her staff faster than any quantity of anaesthetics. Sometimes, the best way to lead was to stand back and let people do their jobs. When you thought you knew better, it was also one of the hardest.

Hartman had spent the short journey from New London below decks, on one of two rows acceleration couches – crash racks - that sat on either side of the cargo walkway running the length of the Bison. The racks were heavy, bulky, and expensive, but they were infinitely preferable to having your eyeballs pushed out the back of your skull when the transport accelerated. In a troop-carrying capacity the rest of the ship would be outfitted with similar benches, capable of carrying a battle-ready ground regiment and their equipment safely dirtside, but today she had been the only passenger. After her time aboard the cramped confines of Triton and the false gardens of Freeport 11, the sight of the blessedly empty Bison had been a source of welcome relief.

Whatever relief she had felt was rapidly dissipating as pulled herself along the Bison’s rails lining the Bison’s corridors, legs trailing behind her like the tentacles of a particularly inelegant breed of squid. A passing crewman gave an altogether too-cheerful salute as he floated by, navigating the weightless corridors as though he’d been born in a vacuum. By the time Hartman had regained her balance enough to return it, he’d already vanished into the belly of the ship. Amazing, how quickly the body forgot how to function without the crutch of gravity. Hartman had barely been out of space a year, and she was flailing like a child at her first swim. She’d grown too used to the cushy embrace of civilian transports, and their immediate artificial gravity. As ever, the military was slow to welcome the change, the logistics corps in particular. After all, it was a lot easier to shift cargo without the troublesome influence of gravity pulling your shipment out from under you. She would adapt again, eventually, but the eventually in that sentence was a right bastard. Hartman gripped another rail and swung herself to a shuddering stop in front of Fort Wayne’s airlock, pressed her palm to the pad.

A pair of marines at the airlock made the usual show of checking her identification, with all the requisite almost-subconscious courtesies, but the station beyond it had grown well past the point of recognition. Hartman had read up on the upgrades to the station on the way from Bretonia, but the documentation had not quite prepared her for the sight beyond the airlock. Where Long Island had once been little more than a bank of carefully docked compartments, too narrow for two people to walk side by side, that served only to link manufacturing modules, entering the station now was like stepping into a miniaturised Fort Bragg. Clean, sharp corridors branched away from Fort Wayne’s mooring point, red signs on the walls directing visitors to docking control and cargo processing, interlaced with instructions for flight officers to proceed to compartment 2B to log mechanical issues prior to launch. All the signs of a living, breathing base. If it wasn’t for the faint sensation that she was about to float away with each step she took, she could have been on a field base down on Pittsburgh. Cramped and confined, certainly, but for all that it still possessed that strange military charm in that it worked. Here and there civilian contractors moved among the uniforms, their leisurely, almost skipping, gait a mirror of Hartman’s own.

Unlike Fort Wayne, Long Island Station maintained a semblance of gravity – at least in the administrative wing where Graham kept his office. It wasn’t particularly strong – an enthusiastic jump would still wind you up in medical with a nasty headache – but compared to the shifting acceleration of transports tugging at her guts, it was a welcome change. Hartman took it in while she could, walking the knots out of her muscles and shaking the fog from her mind. Graham's office, like most of the station's command facilities, rested where the rotating habitation module joined the low-G docking bays - a configuration that put as much matter as possible between the base commander and his staff and any potential attackers. In that regard, Long Island was no different to any mobile warship in the fleet. It was a notion Hartman found strangely comforting, floating office or not.

She tugged her slides back in to place and knocked.

---

| Character Sheet | Laws of Liberty | Hartman's Theme | Feedback |

[Wildkins]

---

LNSP Long Island, Manhattan Orbit
November 8, 821 A.S. - 1349 hours local time

---

Were one to simply live their entire life in the administration section of Long Island, it would be very easy to confuse it for a civilian installation. The clean and expansive space that made up Administration was home to a variety of offices and facilities, most notably communications and system-wide, long-range radar. Naturally, it also hosted rooms such as the Officer's Quarters, and the office of Long Island's C.O.

The stomping of boots, whines of cargo lifters, and blaring klaxons bringing notice of docking vessels faded out the farther you moved from the docking bays of Long Island. Near the armored command center of the station, where Cmdr. Graham made his quarters, the only noises one could make out where those of steel-toed boots clacking as officers moved from meeting to meeting, shift to shift. Hushed conversations could be heard filling up the corridors of the administration block, and the faint sound of a classical opera could be heard spilling out into the hallway flanking Graham's office door.

Here Graham sat, reclining in an office chair that seemed slightly too small for him. A sleek radio terminal near the door blared the sounds of a rich opera singer and accompanying orchestra, full of harmonies and disjunct melodies that blossomed and filled the entirety of the room. His desk was rather clear: save for a few Quartermaster's reports and a tablet, only the wood furnishing could be seen. The lights had obviously been dimmed to a low level, as Graham had planned on a rest.

A small yellow light blinked on the wall, signalling that a new ship was docking with the station. The holographic ticker above notified Graham that it was, in fact, the Fort Wayne. Knowing that the good Captain had come to re-assert command of the station, he began to prepare his office - powering on the lights, lowering the volume of the opera, and cleaning off his desk a bit. Before long, he heard a knock at his office door. He took a deep breath, and opened the door.

---

RP Feedback

[Jane Hartman]

Jane Hartman

---

Graham's office was sparse. The commander sat behind a tasteful wooden desk - real wood, Hartman noted. It must have cost a small fortune. Lifting it into orbit was no great hassle but timber, solid hardwood, was expensive enough to make her credit card weep. Part of the reason her own quarters remained plastic and steel. The rest of the reason was that she never saw the place. When she did, it was only for the hazy few minutes between awake and asleep.

"Commander." Hartman's arm snapped up to return the man's salute. He looked older than when they had last met, older than time alone accounted for. Wartime command came with the sort of weariness that sunk into your bones like an insidious cancer.

"Thank you, as you were. I trust I ain't disturbing you." It wasn't a question. Hartman pulled out a chair opposite the young officer, and lowered herself into it. Carefully. Dress uniforms were a pain in the ass to iron. "Take a seat, Commander. Don't be uncomfortable on my account."

It struck her again, how young Graham was. His skin was smooth and unlined. In the low-light, he looked as though he could have just as easily been stepping off the latest shuttle to West Point as departing it. Graham wasn't a bad officer. Teerin didn't tolerate bad officers. The Navy didn't tolerate bad officers. A bad officer would not have experienced the meteoric rise Graham had. To climb from a boat commander to head of a station and wing in less than a year was unheard of in the peacetime Navy. It was an ugly reminder of just how far they were from peacetime.

God, though, he was young.

"Appreciate you keeping things running while I was gallivanting through the Omicrons. I'm sure you're aware that the Fleet Admiral's seen fit to appoint me to Logistics Command." Again. She considered telling Graham she had requested assignment to a combat wing and decided against it. It wouldn't do the boy any good to know that stealing his command out from under him hadn't even been her first choice.

"I've read through the official reports on the corps." Administrative jaw-flapping that they were. "But I'd like to hear the situation from you, sans bureaucratic doubletalk. Where are we strong, where're we falling apart? I know the fourth's been going hell-for-leather hauling this station together, and it shows. I want to know how the rest of the corps is holding up. How your staff is holding up."

Hell, Commander, how you’re holding up. At your age, I was still kicking around looking forward to shore leave. That could wait. The unit had to come first. It was the strange duality of military command. Care about your troops. But not too much! Ask about their personal lives, children, families, and be ready to toss them into the fire regardless. No-one had ever said it was easy, and Hartman was damned if she felt any closer to figuring it out then she had as a fresh-faced boot nearly two decades ago. It was the way of things. She tugged at a crease in her trousers, waited for Graham to speak.

OOC: | I went and assumed that Graham would offer the usual courtesies to keep things moving. Let me know if that’s not the case, and I’ll jump back in and tidy things up. Oh, and (belated) Merry Christmas! |

---

| Character Sheet | Laws of Liberty | Hartman's Theme | Feedback |