They waited over twenty minutes for the rest to finish making their choices, standing in a comfortable silence. Once the last ensigns finally separated into pairs under the stern gazes of their lieutenants, one of them shouted, "Form up!"
. . . which led to an amusing few minutes of confusion as roughly a hundred ensigns from four different ships tried to figure out how to make a square without losing their partners.
"We're not very good at this, are we?" Taylitha whispered to Alysha.
"I seem to remember spending about a day on parade formations at the Academe," Alysha said. "That seems like very long ago, though."
"One day!" Taylitha said. "One hour, maybe."
Their superiors didn't seem overly pleased with their disorganization, but also didn't interfere with their efforts. Their distance intrigued Taylitha, since most of the time she could count on anyone above her in the chain to help. As their ragged square was led to a field with benches and a dais, she snuck a few quick peeks at the formal faces of their lieutenants and wondered what was in store for them.
Once they were seated on the benches, an exotic-looking Ciracaana in a lieutenant commander's braid flowed up the stairs to the dais and towered there. Taylitha had never seen a Ciracaana in person before, and she wondered how hard it was for him to coordinate all four feet along with two arms, a head and a tail. The centauroids had always fascinated her, but the Ciracaana seemed even more alien than the squat, bizarre-looking Glaseah . . . it was something about the seeming bonelessness of their limbs, their great height, and the sharp points of their whiskered muzzles.
"Welcome to this year's leadership retreat at the Fleet Quickwater Reserve," the centauroid said. "By now you've all received your mission briefs and chosen a partner. In a few minutes, we'll separate you into teams and send you up the mountain. What you do there is all up to you. You can choose a leader or not. You can go up with your partner or plan to meet the rest of your team partway up. You can choose which goals to meet, how to meet them, when to give up and when to move on. In short, nothing about this mission is planned for you.
"One of Fleet’s defining characteristics is its reliance on officer-trained personnel for all its jobs. You are all expected to choose your destinies and get there on your own. Whether you intend to be the Chief of Medical, a biochemist in the science department, a captain or a ship's chef, you'll be charting your own course up the ranks until you reach your goal. No one can tell you what that goal is but you. And while we can tell you over and over how to work with other people to do what we expect to be done, the only way those lessons will stick for most people is to actually try . . . and fail . . . in a closed environment."
The Ciracaana's gaze roved over them. "That is not to say this is a safe place. There are a lot of ways to get hurt while hiking. We're not going to offer you any help unless you get into trouble so badly you've forfeited your mission . . . and the only way to forfeit the mission is if your team doesn't make it down in one piece, together. Keep that in mind.
"As part of the Alliance's Fleet, you will be called on to do many duties, from excavation of archeological sites to police-work, from rescuing stranded ships to fighting any enemies we may in the future develop. You're our first faces to our citizens, our allies, our friends and neighbors. It's up to you to uphold our values, not just in the presence of people outside Fleet, but to those within it too.
"Now, line up at the tables and we'll assign your teams and trails."
As the ensigns stood, Taylitha felt a shadow cross her back. She glanced at the sky in time to catch the silhouette of a broad-winged bird of prey. She bumped into Alysha in her surprise, managed to point.
"A good omen," Alysha said with a chuckle. "It did look like the Fleet eagle, didn't it?"
Taylitha nodded, then added, "We'll need all the luck we can get. Did I hear him right when he said there would be no help at all?"
"No help offered," Alysha corrected. "I suspect if we ask, we'll receive."
"I hope so," Taylitha said.
There were over a hundred trails up the mountain, more than enough for each pair to use alone; most of them converged at the mountain's top and the canoe rental cabin, and some of them had merged checkpoints with first aid and communication facilities. Taylitha stood in line with Alysha and watched their hapless lieutenants attempt to organize the assignments. The officers in charge of the ensigns' retreat were chosen by lot from the lieutenants on participating ships; it was considered a proving ground for their organizational skills. Coordinating the movements of roughly a hundred ensigns through a nature reserve sounded like fun to Taylitha, but she was considered odd by most of her friends, and the men and women at the head of the line looked tired and stressed.
"Your assignment," one of them said when she and Alysha finally reached the table. They received paper maps along with their data tablet loads. "You'll be meeting up with group four over there at your checkpoints. Go talk with them."
Taylitha studied the map as she followed Alysha over. It looked like a gentle route: four days up the mountain and two to three down, depending on the river they chose. She gazed up past the buildings at the tree-blanketed slopes and lifted her shoulders in a long, pleased breath. "This is going to be fun."
"It should be," Alysha agreed.
Which was before Taylitha saw the ensign holding forth in their group. She didn't recognize him, but from his pompous expression and tense stance she knew the type. As they drew near, the conversation—if it could be called that with the man giving orders—only confirmed her misgivings.
"So, we'll all wait at the checkpoint until the last group arrives before we keep going," he said. "Then I'll lead us to the cabin. We're supposed to be up the trail in a little under four days. I'd like us to get there first."
"Why?" Taylitha interrupted.
The human rolled his eyes. "Haven't you been reading the briefs, fur-for-brains? The first group to make it to the bottom of the mountain gets a commendation. It's good for those of us who want to make captain."
Taylitha bristled, but found a gray hand on her arm. She glanced at Alysha, whose calm seemed to counsel patience. Taylitha set her ears back but forced herself to relax, and Alysha nodded before resuming her read-through of their new tablet material.
Apparently emboldened by Taylitha's dissent, one of the others asked, "Why should you be the leader?"
"Because I grew up in the mountains," he said. "I know my way around."
"That's not going to help any of us who aren't your partners," the dissenter, a stubborn-looking Aera, said. His long ears telegraphed his disgruntlement even in the crowd, they were so big. "You won't be around to guide us while we're actually doing the hiking."
"Why do we need a leader anyway?"
"All groups need a leader, or else how do things get done? By committee?" The human sneered. His name tag read 'Mike Beringwaite.'
"Sometimes committees work," an uncertain girl said.
"You obviously haven't sat on any committees," the man said with rolled eyes. "Besides, that's not how we do things in Fleet. Have you seen a ship with a team for a captain? No? Didn't think so. Now, how many of you have mountain experience?"
The group had grown to twelve members during the discussion, but no one raised their hands.
"You see? You'll need me if you want to know how to do this the fastest way possible."
"I see there are other goals we can receive commendations for other than 'First Group Back,'" Alysha said into the uneasy quiet. "There are several based on bringing back certain specimens of plant; at least one for capturing footage of a rare bird. One for least use of Fleet resources. Given the inexperience of the group with moving quickly through this kind of terrain, wouldn't it make better sense to try for one of these other goals?"
Beringwaite folded his arms and guffawed. "Right. The inexperience part will apply to people tramping through woods trying not to scare birds away as well as not being able to hotfoot it through the hills."
"But they don't involve the same level of time pressure," Alysha said. "That gives us a greater chance at success."
"Plants! How much trailfood we eat! We're Fleet, not some mewling group of civvies," the human said with scorn. "Do we want to win this for the honor of the Fleet, or do we want to just grub around in the forest? We're tougher than that. We're better than that!"
"Now would be a good time to give that speech about needing all sorts in Fleet," Taylitha said sotto voce to Alysha. The woman flashed her a small smile, then shook her head and indicated the other members with the tip of her chin. The same people who'd seemed so uncertain before were now wearing prideful looks to match their would-be leader's.
"It's settled then," he said. "We're getting up that mountain and down it first. And I'll lead you there!"
Amid the cheer that followed, Taylitha looked at Alysha with wilted ears.
"The guy's an idiot," Taylitha said, tail lashing as she rooted through the supply shed. "He's going to get us all killed. Why didn't you say something?"
"You expected me to say something?" Alysha asked in a curious voice. She picked up a walking staff and examined it.
"Well, yes!" Taylitha exclaimed. "You'd make a better leader any day than that overstuffed ego. "Fur-for-brains" my backside!" She tossed a few packets of K-plus rations into the mound with their backpacks. The groups had been sent to the storage sheds to choose their equipment; the larger sheds were well-organized, but rumor intimated that the sheds no longer maintained by the storekeeper contained more interesting items for those willing to paw through them. "Seriously. Why didn't you challenge him?"
Alysha put the walking stick on their pile and pushed past a stack of hiking boots into the next aisle. "Because he's my learning experience."
"How in the twenty midnight hells can that pompous bratling be your learning experience?"
Alysha looked over the aisle at her, laughing. "Besides giving you an opportunity to increase my vocabulary?"
Taylitha glowered at her, and Alysha chuckled. "Sorry. Look, Taylitha, we're not always going to be able to work for people we agree with or like. That doesn't change that we'll be expected to carry out their orders to the best of our abilities . . . and that sometimes, doing so will require us to stretch what we already know, or require us to do things we don't have the first clue how to accomplish. I'm not a speed-hiker, and I certainly don't know how to canoe down a mountain. But I'd like to see if I can learn. Quickly."
"What about the rest of us?" Taylitha asked. "Don't we have a right to a safe commander?"
Alysha paused.
Taylitha's ears perked. "Ha! You don't have a ready answer for that one, do you?"
"No," Alysha admitted. "I have feelings about it, but I haven't spent enough time with them."
"So you should have been leader," Taylitha said, investigating what appeared to be a bundle of tents of various types. She plucked one of the M-rate collapsibles from the mess and tossed it into their pile. "So you could have that time to think about what it means to have people under you."
"I've already thought about that part," Alysha said, her voice growing quieter than usual. "It's whether we've waived some of our rights by joining a military organization that I'm still considering." When Taylitha opened her mouth, Alysha said, "And yes, I know all the arguments about Fleet not being a military organization, despite our trappings. But if something threatens the Alliance, we're going to be the best thing, probably the only thing, between it and its enemies. Maybe we shouldn't lose sight of that."
"I'm partnered with a philosopher," Taylitha muttered.
Alysha stepped around the corner and looked down at their tiny pile of supplies. "And I, apparently, with a logistics specialist. Did you choose all these things for a reason, or are you operating on instinct?"
Taylitha joined her. "Oh, no. While I was in the Academe I worked Stores part-time. We deprecate a lot of supplies every year. Sometimes because they're not as good as the things that are becoming available . . . but just as often because what's available now is cheaper, or not as heavy, or not the right color, or not from a manufacturer we have a contract with at the time." She pointed at the rations. "The vitamin-plus rations went out of fashion for logistical reasons . . . each species gets a different spread of vitamins, and keeping track of how many of every species was in a group was too much trouble. The M-rate tents get too hot in desert conditions, so they should keep us pretty warm on a mountain. The gel is good for Pelted with foot pads . . . we'll probably do better hiking without boots in this terrain, but unless you've done a lot of walking we'll need something to keep the pads from cracking. That kind of thing."
Alysha shook her head. "Amazing."
"It's not really that special," Taylitha said. "It's just about keeping details in your head."
Alysha chuckled. "I see. Are you done?"
Taylitha glanced over her shoulder. "Yeah. We should have enough time for our last shower for a week."
One of Alysha's ears drooped, and Taylitha chuckled. "Me too."