Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(38)

—I’ve been keeping the students strictly away from any depot operations.

—That was a wise policy, until now. If you could show that in the process of working with these ships, the students were learning teamwork skills, inventory and maintenance skills … you know, the kinds of things that they’ll have to know how to manage if they ever actually run a remote colony—

—As if these exploratory missions to nowhere will ever happen.

—Oh, it will happen, and it will be very valuable for you, or your successor, if Fleet School grads play an important role in the exploratory and colonizing missions.

—Or my successor.

—What, were you hoping to stay in Fleet School forever?

—Bog no. I only thought I might be hearing a vague threat.

—There’s nothing vague about it, Urska! How long do you think you’ll remain in your present position if ColMin gets Fleet School on its books?

“You on this side of the room, you’re on the inside team,” said Lieutenant Oddson.

Groans from everybody except Dabeet. “It’s because the mudfoot’s on this side,” said somebody.

“I wasn’t going to send Dabeet outside no matter which team he was on,” said Odd. “The outside team is going to do observation only, because look at yourselves. You’re kids! You think somebody’s going to trust you to attach a fuel hose? To replace vital outside parts? You’re watching.”

Groans from the other side of the barracks.

“Get a clue, bunducks,” said Odd. “Get taller, show you’re good for something, and the brass will trust you. What matters is, we’re starting a new program here, and what you’re going to be doing, inside team, and watching, outside team, is real. When you’re exploring and colonizing, who do you think is going to tend to your ship?”

“Crew,” said Dabeet.

“And which jobs that the crew do should the commander be completely ignorant of?”

“None of them!” shouted everybody, probably more for the pleasure of mocking Dabeet than for any eagerness to give an obvious answer.

“You’re crew, or you can’t command,” said Odd. “You don’t have to be as good at the job as somebody who specializes in it, but you have to know if it’s being done right. And what if the crew member who knows how to do it best is killed? Eaten by an alien, smacked by a meteorite, killed by falling off a cliff? You think kuso like that is never going to happen on our expeditions? You have to know what he does—”

“Used to do,” muttered Timeon.

“Used to do,” said Odd. “You’ve got to know how to do it, how to train his replacement to do it, or understand what the machinery does well enough to jury-rig a workaround. Whatever it takes.”

“What are we going to learn from watching?” asked Ragnar. “A lot of us grew up installing things on ships, in deep space and far away from any kind of supply station.”

“Then you’ll have an advantage in learning,” said Odd. “Unless you get complacent and lazy, and then the other kids who work hard and think harder will pass you up like you lived your whole life in a high-rise in Taipei.”

“But the inside crew?” asked Dabeet. “We’re doing something real?”

“Kind of,” said Odd. “You’re shadowing the people who normally do the jobs. Inside installation, that’ll just be watching, too. But inventory management, checking everything off to make sure nothing is left behind and everything goes where it’s supposed to, you’ll be working with the real software, the real numbers, the real lists. There’ll just be somebody backing you up when you make mistakes.”

“What if we find mistakes that they made?” asked Dabeet. “Will anybody listen to children when we report the error?”

“Won’t it be interesting to find out,” said Odd. “We’ve never done this before, so nobody knows yet what’ll happen. But the people doing these jobs, they know their work and nobody’s been reprimanded or fired since we started letting ships resupply and refit at Fleet School.”

“They never did this stuff when it was Battle School, did they?” asked Dabeet.

Other kids groaned at Dabeet’s asking yet another question.

“No,” said Odd. “But that’s because during the war there was no non-military traffic. Now it’s peacetime, and Fleet School is perfectly situated at L-5, and if we weren’t here some big corporation would build a station on this spot and make money hand over fist.”

“So Fleet School makes a profit from this,” said Dabeet.

No groans. The other kids were getting interested.

“This is not a class in interplanetary economics,” said Odd. “But yes, I think so. I’ve heard that these refitting operations pay all the operating expenses of Fleet School.”

Zhang He chimed in: “And tuition pays for the rest.”

Several people laughed, since there was no tuition.

“You all have two hours of training—useless training, because it’s all lecture, except for those of you working with the inventory software. And then the outside team will suit up and the inside team will wear your pussycat costumes.”

That earned him a chuckle—Odd was always saying that this or that task was so easy that a pussycat could do it—but before Dabeet could get to Odd to ask for more information, he saw that Odd was putting the boy who had called Dabeet a mudfoot on report. Best for Dabeet to pretend he didn’t know what was happening. He slid past them and headed out the door with the rest of the inside team.