{"id":4562,"date":"2017-01-01T20:11:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T01:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=4562"},"modified":"2017-11-08T20:27:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T01:27:43","slug":"chain-of-command-by-frank-chadwick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/chain-of-command-by-frank-chadwick\/","title":{"rendered":"Chain of Command by Frank Chadwick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chain<\/a>Frank Chadwick\u2019s latest novel in his Varoki\/Human universe moves away from the seamy underbelly of crime society he showed us in How Dark the World Becomes<\/strong> and Come the Revolution<\/strong> to his first full-on space navy novel as the Varoki decide it\u2019s time to preempt human expansion. Earth\u2019s coalition Navy is out there to protect the colonies, but they haven\u2019t fought a war in generations, so their focus has become looking good for review boards, rather than keeping the pointy edges keen.<\/p>\n

With the alien Varoki posturing increasingly aggressively, Earth decides to increase its military presence near K\u2019tok, the only world besides Earth that supports human-compatible life, but which also has a Varoku colony on it. Navy reservist Sam Bitka gets pulled from his ascending career track at a fabricator (read 3D printer plus) to head the tactical department on the USS Puebla, heading for K\u2019tok. As a reservist, he\u2019s not a\u00a0candidate for any of the operations slots, which are reserved for career Navy and Academy grads, rather than ROTC types like Sam. Because In a peacetime navy it\u2019s important to look like you can fight, but it\u2019s more important to look like you fit in, which Sam just doesn\u2019t. Fortunately for everyone.<\/p>\n

When the task force gets hammered by a stealth attack, Sam finds himself first elevated to XO to a captain that majors in the minors and falls apart as the conflict escalates. Taking command isn\u2019t anything Sam wants, but ultimately, it\u2019s thrust on him. The aliens have come up with a bag of dirty tricks that we didn\u2019t see coming, including a way to turn the ftl\/jump drives on our bigger ships against us. Fortunately, the destroyers are too small to have jump drives, so when the fleet pulls back, it\u2019s up to a handful of these ships to stand in harm\u2019s way and block the alien aggression. With their backs to the wall, the destroyers must hold the line alone.<\/p>\n

Sam has a hands- on technical background and a knack for tactics, but pulling a ship together and overcoming the crew\u2019s peacetime inertia just wasn\u2019t on his bucket list. Nor did he expect the ships upgraded missiles to be unusable due to insufficient testing. The Puebla isn\u2019t without teeth, but it\u2019s not all it should be, which describes both ship and crew. Bit by bit, Sam figures out how to patch up both, and bit by bit the Puebla takes the fight to the enemy. The cost is considerable though, and Sam discovers the weight of command.<\/p>\n

He has a penchant for asking questions that others have been trained out of, and he\u2019s especially keen on why we\u2019re at war, and why we fight at all. Trying to understand what the Navy means is as hard for him as uncovering what the aliens really want. His internal struggles come from dealing with his conversion from citizen to soldier, or at least citizen-soldier, and from the loss of a crewmate he\u2019d been close to. Close, but not close enough to cross over into fraternization, which has interesting consequences in his inability to get past her loss.<\/p>\n

The future Navy is a mixed bag of pompous politicos and hardworking enlisted types, with a fortunate leavening of capable officers in the mix. Sam builds alliances in the fleet, but in the end, he\u2019ll make decisions and do what needs doing alone.<\/p>\n

Chain of Command<\/strong> is very smartly put together, which is probably a testament to the author\u2019s previous career as a role-playing game creator with the Game Designers’ Workshop, which he helped start. The trend of game designers turned SF writers is really working out for us, if authors like Ty Frank (The Expanse<\/strong>) and Frank Chadwick are any indication. Chadwick gets the details right, whether he\u2019s talking about the effects of prolonged weightlessness or the intricacies of geo and interstellar politics and economics, but he doesn\u2019t let the details get in the way of the story. Weill, hardly ever. He does inject a bit of exposition in here and there, but it\u2019s good exposition.<\/p>\n

Technologically, Chadwick plays it straight. No anti-gravity, force fields, tractor beams or magically efficient engines that can push you around at high gees for hours on end. The sole exception is the \u201cjump drive,\u201d which is alien tech developed by the Varoki and the backbone of the economic and political empire they\u2019ve been creating. It\u2019s also the source of conflict with the humans, who stubbornly won\u2019t stop trying to crack its secrets and build their own, which the Varoki fear would destabilize the Cottohazz,<\/em> their \u00a0federation of worlds, and let the \u201caggressive, violent, and impulsive humans\u201d become their rivals and eventual usurpers.<\/p>\n

You almost feel sorry for them<\/p>\n

The story could easily have been dragged out into a series of books, but it\u2019s satisfyingly complete. That doesn\u2019t mean there isn\u2019t room in this universe for more, and Chadwick\u2019s previous two novels show his willingness to follow a character for more than one book, so we can hope for either a sequel or spin-off from the books events. I\u2019ve only noted the main character here, but there are plenty of interesting folks that would merit exploration, notably the fleet intel chief, Cassandra \u201cRed Duchess\u201d Atwater Jones (Royal Navy) on the human side and her alien opposite number, \u201cSpeaker for the Enemy\u201d \u00a0Vice-Captain Takaar Nuvaash, who is almost as puzzled about the reason for the war as our hero.<\/p>\n

Chain of Command<\/strong> is a solid piece of mil-sf writing that pulls from many historical sources and manages to convey a lot of what the Surface Navy is like. Chadwick isn\u2019t prior military (as far as I can tell) but he\u2019s steeped himself in WWII histories and novels and taken excellent notes. Like the destroyer sailors of the Pacific, he shows that it isn\u2019t the steel hulls that make the navy tough, it\u2019s the sailors that crew them.<\/p>\n