Free The Fleet 01 by David Drake (ed), Bill Fawcett (ed)

the Alliance. Enthusiastically Gill requested more information. He was ecstatic to see the officer was from a well-established Fleet family. Itnever hurt to make friends among the brass. Better yet, the commodore was the commander of an entire base, meaning whole fleets were involved.
    Leaning back with a satisfied smile, Gill punched in the codes that would call up the relevant reports. This was what he needed. Cannons blazing, fleets maneuvering and the hero diving to certain death yet saving the day. The visuals alone would sell half the people!

FOR THE LAST seven hundred years every Monthly Mess in the Fleet had always been scheduled for precisely noon. When the Commodore had not arrived by half past the hour the base’s officers shuffled aimlessly around the formally set tables. Each man was in his dress blues with an ornately decorated sword.
    Normally the officers of the Fleet tolerated or even occasionally reveled in their service’s numerous traditions. Had they held their new leader in more esteem, they might have waited respectfully for hours ... but the new commander was a quartermaster, and these battle-hardened soldiers didn’t respect him that much.
    Outside it was a relatively cool day for McCauley, but the temperature was still over forty degrees Centigrade. The brilliant blue sun baked the walls of the concrete mess building, straining the building’s heat exchange system to its limit. The men in their dress blues were uncomfortably warm.
    “Here he comes,” muttered a captain, squinting toward the compound through several layers of polarized glass.
    Their new commanding officer hurried through the shimmering waves of heat that rolled across the compound from the Communications Center. His uniform clung moistly to his back. One of the planet’s local pests made a few halfhearted efforts to land before being driven off by his flapping hands. White dust was lifted waist high with every step and coated what had been polished boots.
    Commodore Abraham Meier, the tenth generation of his family to serve with the Fleet, was miserable.
    This misery had little to do with the high temperatures or other physical concerns. McCauley’s windless heat made it a wretched post, but he could live with that. He always dreaded the stiff formality of the Monthly Mess, but at least it would be a familiar torture. He could even face as a challenge the opened contact with the seemingly hostile Tripean Visualate. What Commodore Meier could not accept was the printout rustling in his breast pocket. Headquarters had just replied to his urgent plea for reinforcements when the Tripeans’ hostility became obvious.
    “Request Denied. No support available.”
    Evidently the Khalian crisis was tying up every unassigned ship in the Fleet. McCauley’s garrison had been stripped to provide ships for an attack force, leaving Repair and Restocking Base K2/McCauley with less ships than there were planets they were assigned to protect. Meier’s predecessor, a full admiral, had chosen to lead the bulk of his forces against the Khalians.
    Even more depressing was that the denial was signed by his sole living relation, Isaac Meier, Admiral of the White and Commander of all forces in the Eastern Sectors. When he had received the assignment as commandant of the repair and supply facility, Abe Meier had been grateful to his grandfather’s influence for getting him out of Port. He had really hoped grandfather Isaac would provide some help, if only to save the family name from disgrace. Evidently he had been wrong.
    Since his father had died fending off a pirate raid near Freeborn a decade earlier, he had seen little of his grandfather. It hadn’t mattered at Port, when he could see him if he really wanted to. Now it was apparent he had been completely abandoned.
    Beneath the signature was what was probably meant to be a morale-raising addendum in the Admiral’s own handwriting. In this it failed miserably, adding to the tension the young