Whenever I did something unbelievably stupid, as young men often do, my dad would ask me "Did you take a stupid pill this morning, son?"
When I was discharged, after eighteen years in the Terran Marines, to accept an appointment to the Space Academy, I heard his voice. Two years from retirement and I bailed.
I was giving up a career to join a bunch of snotty nosed youngsters being tormented by older snotty nosed youngsters, all in the hopes of becoming one of those officers I had always looked down on.
Yep. That's me, all right.
I did it for several reasons, mostly involving my future. The regs, beloved by all garrison lawyers, contain a curious provision. A Marine with at least fifteen years of service who is accepted into the Academy carries his longevity with him. In other words, I would reach my twenty as a wet behind the ears Kay-det.
It meant a number of other things, as well. My pay would be based on my years of service as well as my rank, so I would be making, on graduation, far more than any of my fellow, newly commissioned second lieutenants. As an officer, upon retirement, I would be entitled to free transportation anywhere in Terran space for life, and the Navy would pay my landing fees should I emigrate to a colony planet.
Oh, yeah, the way things were going in the war with the Bluecoats, an enlisted Marine could get himself killed. Naval officers died in combat far less often. It's my skin and I've grown fond of it.
Planet bound military academies in the old days were four year programs. The cadets had their summers for drill and training. The Naval Academy was a five year program, with the entire third year spent on a training cruise in space. Take a wild guess as to who was low man on the totem pole on these cruises.
I was in good shape, and had lots of zero gee experience, so I wasn't as exhausted by the run everywhere and always be late cruise routine. Book work came easy, so I managed to keep up with the constant assignment of manuals, and schematics, and inventories by hand that also went with the cruise.
I even found time to teach some friendly engine room ratings the probabilities of poker.
I was up several hundred dollars for the cruise when bad things happened.
There are gradients of bad things. Some make you say Oh, shit! Some cause you to exclaim Oh, frack! And, then there are those times when the shit is rolling down hill so fast you don't have time to speak.
The sole official duty of a Space Academy cadet was to be the buoy boy. That's what the Petty Officers called it when there were no officers around. Except me, of course. I wasn't really an officer, just a hunk of meat that was in the way.
Each ship of the Terran Navy carries an Omega Beacon. The beacon is launched when the bridge crew or the ship's onboard computer determines that the ship will not survive whatever is happening. It contains the ship's log and as much of the final sensor readings as it is possible to copy to the beacon before launch. That way, when, if, the beacon's signal is heard and the beacon recovered the powers that be can determine what caused the horrid fate of the ship that launched it.
Since the beacon was a manmade body, and had small maneuvering thrusters, the brass had long ago determined that those qualities made it a space vessel. All space vessels had to have a captain, and all captains had to be officers.
No officer worth his salt wants to be ejected from a fighting ship in the middle of a battle. Thus the position of buoy boy fell onto the broad and manly shoulders of the most junior officer. Um that would be me, in this case.
The drill was that on call to stations, I was to run to the beacon hatch, seat myself in the beacon and seal the hatch behind me. My clue that things had gone awry would be the violent acceleration of the beacon.
Our captain was thorough. We held a call to stations at least once a week, usually at meal time or in the middle of the sleep period. Or, so it seemed. After a dismal showing the first few times, I took a moment to scope out the ship's plans and discovered that I could access any number of zero gee utilities tubes and that I could get to my station far more rapidly that way. All I had to do was not be seen opening the hatch that said No Access or be seen coming out of the one closest to the beacon.
I had also donated a night of sleep to a long and detailed examination of the beacon and the publicly available plans for the beacon. My job would be to flip the switch that scrubbed memory storage if the beacon was picked up by anybody but the Navy. Flip two covers up and flip two switches. I could also maneuver the beacon slightly if I somehow magically discovered that a piece of debris was about to hit us. You see, there were no sensors, no radio other than the beacon's signal, and limited rations and air.