Part of her simply didn’t like depending on others who weren’t as adept as she, but it was sometimes good to have mates watching her back.
Naero led her four-person strike squad of Gallan, Saemar, and their other friend Trendan, on a simulated snatch and grab against Jan’s security forces guarding a Corps building.
They got in and got the package–a set of restricted codes–but then alarms went off on their way out.
Jan’s forces outnumbered them three to one. Not good odds. They closed in fast and a pitched firefight erupted.
“You’re boxed in, N. You’d better surrender, sib.”
“He’s right,” Saemar said, returning fire with her machine pistol. “No way out.”
Trendan took a stunbolt, stiffened, and dropped.
Gallan kept firing his heavy pulse SAW. He took out two of Jan’s troops who tried to rush them.
“Better think of something quick,” he shouted.
Naero pulled out a live detonation charge and activated it on the wall.
“Stun grenade!” Saemar yelled.
“Deflector pulse,” Naero ordered. She set hers and hardly turned around.
The heavy EMP pulse and flash from their personal deflectors barely kept the rest of them from getting stunned when the enemy grenade went off.
Naero glanced back at her detonator. “Keep ’em on. Overload them, now. Burn ’em out.”
“You’re insane; that’s a live charge,” Gallan said. “You’re going to kill us at this range!”
Naero reach over and overloaded Trendan’s deflector as well.
“Break for it after the blast. Shield your eyes.”
The shaped-charge micro-explosion flared, knocking an actual hole through the inner hull wall.
The backblast negated their deflectors and knocked them all into Jan and his unit charging forward for the kill.
“Up. Get up!” Naero shouted, forcing herself to rise against the pain in her battered body and her smoldering strike armor.
Gallan and then Saemar struggled to their feet.
They systematically zapped the shell-shocked enemy as they struggled to rise.
Naero pointed her stun carbine at Jan and kicked his weapon aside.
“Bang. Got you, sib.”
They carried Trendan out of the gaping, smoking hole and made good their escape, while real sirens and fire detection alarms sounded.
Aunt Sleak rushed in with a fire suppression team.
She was livid. Her jaw dropped.
“Naero! This is a standard training exercise. What in the holy hell were you thinking? Live explosives? You could have killed someone. And just look at the interior damage to this bulkhead? You put a real live bloody hole in my ship!”
Naero smiled and looked at her team. Then she shrugged. “Some things you just can’t simulate. We improvised. We overcame the odds.
“We won.”
Her aunt’s eyes turned to slits. “Well, savor the victory, because heir or not, you’re on report, former leftenant.”
“Report?”
“You heard me. You know this was way out of line. Maybe losing a stripe or two for a while will make you a little less cocky next time. Not to mention stupid. Now assemble your team and move on to the next training exercise. And you’d better believe we’ll address this matter fully during the strategy and tactics analysis session.”
Sleak shook her head at the damage. “Damnation. Somebody repair this blasted hole.”
Naero set her teeth and snapped to attention, saluting smartly.
The rest of her squad followed suit.
“Yes, sir, Fleet Captain, sir.”
“Get out of my sight, you clowns.”
She might get demoted back down to commander for a few months, but Naero’s friends clapped her on the back for being both brazen and crazy enough to break the rules to get them their win.
Later, when she was studying with Saemar and her other friends, they broke into a running argument concerning the ramifications of her actions, the consequences, and a favorite philosophical hot button: real freedom.
Saemar laughed. “True enough, sweetie, you was free to act, even to use illegal, live explosives in a training exercise. But as our superior, your auntie also has the right to hold you accountable for those same actions, especially when your actions threaten others, and cause significant damage to her property.”
Naero laughed back. “Dad always said that we must aspire to be worthy of our freedom, and responsible for our own lives and actions. Part of being free is to not seek to cause harm to others or enslave them to our will and opinion, even if we are convinced we are absolutely right.”
Saemar reclined back in her gel chair, hands folded behind her head, staring up at the ceiling.
“Well, you didn’t check with me to see if I wanted to get blasted across the room,” she said. “I crashed right into two of Jan’s people. I nearly broke my leg on one of their helmets. I’ll be sore all night and won’t be able to enjoy my nightly exertions as much with whoever, thank you very much.”
“Saemar, there just wasn’t time to take a vote on it or worry about your…exertions.”
“So, then I guess this is a gray area where you decided to make that choice for everyone. Don’t they call that the will of the tyrant, sweetie?”
“I guess so,” Naero said. “To be free, we must allow others to be free, but all within reason of course. Sometimes decisions must be made, and quickly. Freedom is not an excuse for a failure to act.”
“So I guess it was reasonable then to blow us all the hell up?”
“I knew our strike armor and overloading the deflectors would save us…kinda.”
Gallan chuckled. “Glad you did, N. You surprised the holy hell out of me. I like to crapped myself. But you should have seen the look on your sib’s face when he realized he’d lost.”
They all laughed together.
Gallan sighed. “Ahhh...it was classic. But seriously, N. It was a training exercise. So we got stunned. So what? It happens all the time. We don’t have the right to harm or oppress others ourselves by action or inaction. We establish laws and authorities over us to enforce the rational limits we agree to set.”
Naero nodded. “Alright, I admit it. Live explosives don’t exactly fit under the definition of rational limits.”
“Your dad was a philosopher, N. Oops, sorry, sweetie.”
“It’s okay, Saemar. You can talk about him and my mom. Really, it’s all right–all of you. We should talk about them and remember them all we want.”
“But come on, sweetie. Wouldn’t even he agree that if we are reckless or break those laws, we pay the price for those consequences?”
“Yes, but only in a system where the wise temper justice with fair judgment and mercy.” Naero lifted her arms, now missing a stripe of her glowing rank.
“But now this–this is completely unfair. A severe demotion, loss of rank and pay.”
“You aunt said it was only temporary,” Gallan noted. “Just a month or two.”
“Privy to her review.” Naero still sulked.
Gallan patted her arm gently. “Then you’ll be reinstated as a fleet leftenant. At least you’re still a commander; she didn’t take you back down to ensign. See? The individual enjoys freedom in an educated, enlightened culture where he or she can excel and expand their talents and abilities. And shows good judgment. Like not blowing crap up.”
“I’m just saying, the punishment didn’t fit the crime. I’m losing a whole pay grade. Where’s the justice tempered with mercy in that, abani?”
Her big bestest friend pressed his point. “Yet a culture, like ours, a society of enlightened individuals, has a right and even a duty to sustain and even protect itself from the license, poor judgment, and harmful whims of individuals. No one can just do whatever they think is right, regardless of the potential or real harm to others.”
“No one got hurt, Gallan. Well, not permanently. Maybe banged up a bit.” Na
ero winced at her own healing bruises.
“Not this time, N. But if your parents were here, they’d side with your aunt. The universe as a whole and societies within it do not exist for certain individuals to flagrantly ignore their reasonable rules and restrictions and impose their will or opinion on others, for good or ill. Where will that lead?
Naero rolled her eyes and threw up her hands.
“Okay, okay. So, I was wrong.”
Gallan pressed his point. “And what does history teach us? Look at the Corps.”
Naero threw up one hand again. “That lies, sophistry, and individual philosophical deceptions always lead to tyranny. Tyrants tie themselves in knots to justify their self-serving actions, fake traditions, and institutions to entrench and perpetuate their tyranny.”
“How does it feel to be a tyrant?”
Naero smiled. “That’s the worst part about it. I’d say it feels pretty damn good. That’s probably why human beings are so addicted to power and so easily seduced by it.”
Saemar sighed and then chuckled. “Heaven help us if you should ever get a ship of your own, sweetheart.”
“You can count on that,” Naero said. “The me getting a ship part, not all that tyranny crap.”
“Oh? And why not?”
Naero stuck up her nose. “For I, like my my father before me, am a philosopher king. Er, queen. No, I’m a queen. Not my father; he wasn’t a queen, I mean.”
Gallan poked her. “I think you’d better quit while you’re behind, Your Majesty.”
19