Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Read online

  Tretyak took the rules and himself very seriously. The joke was he must have imported a stick straight from Earth to shove up his butt. Which was all well and fine, but no joke under the circumstances.

  She needed help figuring out what to do.

  Sam Williamson, her friend, ex-marine, and the machinist who Katie inevitably used to make parts for her family's ship, the Dawn Threader, was the obvious person to talk to.

  As soon as she did so, she'd be putting him on the spot.

  She pulled open her cleaned clothes bin as she thought about it. It was always soothing to keep her hands busy on a routine task when thinking hard about something. She folded and stored clothing as she mulled the matter.

  If at some point there was a formal inquiry into the fight with Billy, they were still technically minors, but it was Ceres, and, hey, she had likely given him a concussion, anything she'd shared with Sam he'd have to share with the investigators. Couldn't plead self-incrimination or whatever like Katie and Calvin. Also, they'd take him to task for not reporting it immediately. She was sure he'd not do that.

  Sam wasn't a fan of confusing the authorities with information they didn't need.

  So yeah, she'd be putting him on the spot.

  Only she knew he'd want her to.

  So she would.

  She'd tell Sam and ask him for advice.

  * * *

  Calvin Cromwell was embarrassed. Worried and lovesick, too.

  It made him immensely glad that nobody was home in the family's suite of apartments to greet him.

  He loved his family. Treasured them as they treasured him.

  When he thought of Billy's family, just his harsh busy father, or even Katie's, her two parents lost in each other to the exclusion of the rest of the world, he felt very lucky.

  Just the same, he was glad none of them were home to greet him and ask him what had happened. He was glad he'd not been beaten to an inch of his life by Billy and his hangers on. Who wouldn't be?

  He was even more embarrassed at being rescued by Katie of all people. He wasn't sure he'd rather not have been beaten black and blue.

  Stars help him if one of his older sisters cottoned on to how he felt about Katie. He'd never hear the end of it.

  He'd known Katie since they were pre-school kids.

  They weren't kids anymore. He'd become acutely aware of that.

  Katie, not so much.

  As far as Calvin could tell growing older for Katie meant thinking about advanced education options. Specifically, what school she planned to go away to. Though in truth, she'd seemed to set her sights on the Space Force Academy back on Earth. Calvin desperately wanted to tell her she didn't need to think about going away at all, but he hadn't figured out how to do that.

  Katie bubbled with plans. Most of them didn't seem very realistic to Calvin, but that didn't mean he wanted to bust her bubble. No, he didn't want to do anything to hurt her feelings.

  He'd been hoping his crush on her was a passing phase.

  He'd been thinking that maybe they could be merely the friends she thought they were.

  That didn't seem to be working. A fact the incident with Billy as problematic as it was in its own right had brought home to him.

  Regards Billy and his bully boys, Katie seemed to think it wasn't an issue. So carry on, and act like it had never happened. He could do that.

  Carry on ignoring his feelings for the girl. He couldn't do that.

  Should he tell straight up how he felt and ask her indulgence?

  Or should he maybe prepare the ground some before forcing her to make a decision? Stars knew she could make decisions. Unfortunately, she had a ruthlessly pragmatic streak and could be harsh as well as decisive.

  Maybe he should fess up and show some guts, but he'd rather take the indirect approach.

  He'd start to woe her.

  With luck, she'd notice and approve at some point.

  * * *

  Commander Yuri Tretyak, Space Force commander of Ceres and district, was a happy, if not chipper man. Not as much as usual right now.

  Usually, he knew what to do and had no qualms or doubts about doing it.

  He looked around his spartan office. He liked it that way; free of distractions and clutter. Usually. Right now, some object capable of inspiring a start on a thought about how to solve his current dilemma would have been nice.

  Usually, he didn't feel any great need of inspiration. Usually, he had rules for what to do. Usually, if those rules should clash, which the heavens around knew they sometimes did, he knew which ones to prioritize.

  He could almost wish that the Academy didn't insist on having field commanders involved in their recruitment process. Only that would have been an abdication of responsibility. Yuri Tretyak did not dodge his responsibilities.

  Sitting on his desk, his virtual desk, not the scarred heavy metal object propping up the screen holding it, he had a file. A file that had just been forwarded by the SFHQ Induction and Training section. A regional commander wore a variety of hats, and one of those hats was regional head of recruitment.

  For the bulk of recruitment in the district, this was not a heavy burden. Most of it was of enlisted spacers and the Commander delegated the day-to-day responsibility to a senior NCO. Said NCO who supervised a small team of more junior NCOs.

  Occasionally Yuri would check recruiting reports for anomalies and trends or do the rounds to see morale was fine. At regular intervals, he'd preside at small signing in ceremonies. He say a few solemn words. Look on as recruits pledged themselves to their new lives. Give a few more grave words of optimistic welcome. He took these responsibilities seriously, but they weren't arduous or problematic.

  He had direct responsibility for the recruitment of officer candidates from the district, too. In practice, that wasn't much of a problem either. There were almost never any viable candidates. Only a tiny fraction of humanity's billions ever became Space Force officers. There were barely a thousand of them. The Academy only needed to have a very small intake of candidates. At most a couple of dozen candidates a year. That even though most of the graduates of the Space Force Academy returned to civilian life after their obligatory four years of service.

  It meant brutally high academic standards. In most years, no one from the district qualified.

  In most years, he'd have been happy someone had. Not in this case.

  In this case, he knew the young lady in question altogether too well. Worse, he knew her family too well. They were a continuing blot on his existence as far as he was concerned. Katherine Anne Kincaid herself was a loose cannon. Energetic, dangerous, and out of control. Not somebody he wanted in the Space Force. Not somebody he wanted to be on record as having recommended for the Academy.

  He did feel bad about it. As irritating and worrisome as the girl was, he couldn't blame her for being who she was. He didn't doubt if her parents had stayed on Earth where they belonged and fulfilled the social obligations they'd fled that it'd be different. She'd have a bright future in front of her. Perhaps even one at the Academy.

  Only they hadn't and she didn't. She was largely unsocialized, and the little socialization she'd had was all the wrong sort.

  He couldn't refuse to endorse her candidacy without reason. The Academy had been under heavy political fire about its narrow source of recruitment. A few very powerful and rich families on Earth dominated the annual intake. Worse, there was a definite gender unbalance. The Admissions Board would jump all over the chance to add a Belter girl to the mix.

  It'd be highly irregular if he failed to endorse Kincaid girl, but she was admitted anyways. It wasn't beyond possible. Not if he didn't give convincing reasons for not endorsing her. They might put his lack of endorsement down to personal animus. In any event, it could be career limiting. He was already a little over due for his next promotion.

  He needed good, solid reasons he could put into writing. That he thought she'd be a bad fit wasn't good enough.

  It
was true. She was too young, only fifteen. Most of the other cadets would be eighteen. Three years was a lot at that age.

  She tested very well on technical knowledge. Only she didn't have the networking or social skills most candidates did. So she'd be a bad fit. It didn't matter.

  The Admissions Board couldn't, for political reasons, admit that fit mattered. The Academy was in good part a chance for the children of a small elite to build their personal networks while still young. It wasn't something they were eager to tell the voters. It wasn't something they could admit. Usually, that wasn't a problem.

  Most Belters would have failed on the physical criteria. Most of them could handle light duties under one Gee for a short time. The sort of hard competitive physical training the cadets were subjected to on the Earth surface part of the campus was not something they could be expected to succeed at. Unfortunately, the Commander knew Kincaid was an exception. With a large expensive survey ship, one bigger than most Rock Rat mining rigs, they had a large full Gee gravity ring and being from Earth originally they used it. The Commander had also heard informally that ex-Chief Williamson, who the girl apparently had some sort of crush on, was including her in the Gee-plus marine training regime he still maintained. Once a marine always a marine. The Kincaid girl was fit as well as smart.

  Perhaps she was smart enough to see with a little encouragement that the Academy wasn't for her. If she failed to accept the invitation, the Academy had sent her to apply, then his problem would go away. Only he knew the girl was stubborn as well as fit and smart. She came by it honestly, he had to admit. Her parents were the same way. Why a young Rock Rat girl had set her heart ongoing to the Academy, he didn't know. Probably her idolization of Williamson had something to do with it. In any event, she had. It was a widely known fact. He'd try talking to her, but he didn't hold out much hope she'd change her mind.

  It was intensely frustrating. You'd think a fit, smart, and determined candidate would be exactly what the Space Force wanted. Only he knew in his heart and guts it wasn't true. She'd be a disaster. A worse disaster if she made it into the Academy and somehow graduated to become a Space Force officer.

  Her aggressive character coupled with her almost complete lack of socialization to large groups and teams made her a dangerously poor fit for the real Space Force. The real Space Force wasn't the daring fighting force of stalwart heroes that one saw in the vids.

  The real Space Force was in the main a stodgy bureaucracy that existed to enforce safety rules. Its main tool was the stifling degree of paperwork it required before allowing anyone to do anything in space.

  Its enforcement arm was basically a collection of auditors, custom officers, and traffic cops.

  The traffic cops in particular would bridle to hear themselves called that, but that was what they in truth were.

  The only things that kept a different image in being were speculative fiction works. They leveraged off the existence of actual aliens in the solar system. Also the fact that the aliens wouldn't reveal any significant details about the wider galaxy. In particular they were mum about its political geography. Left the fiction writers free to speculate it was a version of the seventeenth century Spanish Main. Pirates, men of war, and plenty of colorful action. It made for great fiction.

  The Commander doubted it had much relation to reality.

  He suspected humanity was more like Pacific islanders on a small island in the nineteenth century. Only the Star Rats had assured humanity they didn't need to worry about being decimated by epidemic disease. Which was a relief. But in any case he suspected any aliens out there would look on the ships of the Space Force much as the nineteenth century Europeans had looked upon the war canoes of the Polynesians. If they thought of them at all, it wouldn't be to factor them into the naval balance of power. Once true galactic contact was made, it was going to be careful diplomacy that was needed, not derring-do.

  He suspected very strongly that displays of aggressiveness would be throughly punished.

  Not at all the right setting for the aggressive, but not very diplomatic Katie Kincaid.

  So he'd work hard to reveal these facts to both the Admissions Board and Kincaid herself, and then hopefully once he refused his endorsement it'd be clear it was the correct decision.

  2: Katie Dines

  Sam sometimes regretted not having kids of his own.

  Sometimes he didn’t.

  Sometimes he thought it was just as well he hadn’t. Even the best kids could be a handful. You tried to teach them. You tried to keep them safe and watch out for them. Still they’d get into trouble. You couldn’t protect them. Not from themselves, and not from the world.

  Katie Kincaid was the daughter Sam had never had. He loved her as much as he could of any daughter he was the actual father of.

  Right now she was seated on a stool next to his workbench while he refurbished a fuel injector off of a mining rig. He could tell she was working up the nerve to tell him about the latest trouble she’d gotten herself into.

  “Out with it,” he said.

  “Coming back from class in the tunnels found Billy Boucher and his gang picking on Calvin.”

  “And?”

  “There were six of them.”

  Sam gave Katie a hard look she knew when she was making excuses.

  She returned a lop-sided grin. She also knew Sam didn’t have the heart to be truly angry at her. He’d told her himself in the course of multiple stories that hesitating and holding back when threatened and out numbered was the worst thing to do. That the predators would surround you, edge in, and finally take you down.

  “You hurt some of them?”

  “Knocked Billy out. Probably gave him a concussion.”

  “He’ll be seeing a medic then.”

  “Have to.”

  “So no pretending it didn’t happen. It’s not over,” Sam summarized.

  “I guess not,” Katie admitted. “Sam, I got an invitation to the Academy today. I think I aced some of the standard tests. I didn’t expect this. Those tests were hard.”

  Sam was an ex-Chief in the marines. He had hard, implacable, and impassive down to an art. On the other hand, Katie wasn’t one of his jarheads. Too bad maybe it’d be easier to knock some sense into her if she was. He allowed himself a small sigh. “Billy’s not likely to make a formal complaint,” he said. “He will tell his father something. His dad’s pals with Commander Tretyak. You’re worried that whatever Billy’s story is, it won’t incline the Commander to endorsing your application. Correct?”

  “That’s right,” Katie replied. “What do I do?”

  “First off, we do a post mortem,” Sam said. “Figure out where you went wrong.”

  Katie frowned at that. She quite obviously didn’t accept she’d done anything wrong at all. The girl’s moral certitude was disconcerting at times. It also made for a lot of trouble.

  “You understand they likely wouldn’t have done Calvin any visible let alone permanent harm, right?” Sam asked.

  “They’re snakes who don’t want to be caught,” Katie replied, practically spitting.

  “Yes, and somebody should rein them in sometime,” Sam said. “But it didn’t have to be you right then. Your intentions may have been good, but it’s results that count.”

  “So, I should have let them bully Calvin?”

  “By intervening you upped the ante,” Sam replied. “You increased the odds Calvin was going to get seriously hurt and added in the chance you’d get seriously hurt yourself.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” Katie replied. “Proof’s in the pudding,” she added defiantly. Sam knew he should knock that attitude down, that it was doing her no good. Only he couldn’t. She reminded him of a lion cub he’d seen on a nature show whacking his father, King of all he surveyed, on the nose. The cub had no clue of the risks it was running. It’d been insufferably cute, and somehow admirable, for all of that. The girl probably had no idea what the saying meant. Pudding was likely just another labe
l for a type of goop that came out of ration tubes for her.

  “But somebody did get hurt, didn’t he?” Sam said.

  “Billy deserved it.”

  “Really? Who appointed you judge, jury, and executioner?”

  She crossed her arms and glared back at him. “My own conscience,” she said.

  Sam did suppress his sigh this time. She was quoting him back to himself. “What works in the jungle, or the savanna, or, the good Lord help us, the streets of the inner cities back on Earth doesn’t necessarily work on Ceres,” he said. “People here live in each other’s pockets. They try to be civilized, or at least to maintain the appearance of it.”

  “So we abandon all principle for the sake of appearances?”

  “That’s politics. Sometimes it goes too far, but if large numbers of different people want to get along they have to make compromises.”

  “Bottom line; no way I’m ever abandoning a friend,” Katie declared.

  “I’m not knocking the sentiment,” Sam said. “Sometimes you have to think of the longer-term consequences of your actions though. You haven’t stopped Billy’s bullying, just made him look like a victim and maybe killed your chances of ever getting into the Academy. People problems aren’t like engineering problems they’re a lot less clear, much messier and less certain. You have to consider the optics of what you do as well as the immediate results.”

  Katie visibly struggled with herself. Arms crossed, hunched over, head down but a scowl still visible. Sam figured she’d have to learn to hide her feelings better than that, but that was a lesson for another day. The girl had enough on her plate for today. “You really think so?” she finally said.

  “I do.”

  “I threatened to gouge his eye out if they didn’t back off,” she said.

  “Which I imagine was effective at the time,” Sam said. “Suppose Billy mightn’t mention that to his Dad, and his Dad might not pass it on to Tretyak, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I imagine they’ll mention it and use it to suggest you’re an untamed animal. A vicious animal that’s good at math, but an animal all the same. Not a person fit for civilized society, let alone one that should be allowed any power. You see the problem.”