Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship by Joshua Dalzelle

I suppose that's well above my paygrade."
    "It's interesting speculation nonetheless, sir," Celesta said. "If you have nothing else for me, I think I'll turn in before my watch starts."
    "Of course, Commander," Jackson said with a nod. "Dismissed." She nodded to him and walked out of the office. He hit the control to lock the hatch and to extinguish the illuminated indicator that let people know if he was in or not. He made the pretense of pulling up some overdue fitness reports and going through them. Absently he keyed open a locked drawer at the bottom of his desk, reached past the antique sidearm sitting in its holster, and wrapped his fingers around the neck of a squat, heavy bottle. He pulled it out and set it on the corner of his desk without actually looking at it, continually shuffling around words in the report statements, all the while watching the clock closely out of the corner of his eye.
    When First Watch officially ended he leaned back in his chair and stretched, yawning hugely. Shrugging to himself, he grabbed a short plastic cup off the shelf by his desk and poured a generous two fingers from the bottle into it. He swirled it around in the bottom, bringing it to his nose, giving a little shudder as he did. This was genuine Kentucky bourbon from his home planet, not the rotgut he suspected his engineering staff was making in stills down in the lower decks. Alcohol was strictly forbidden on Fleet starships for obvious reasons, but there never seemed to be a shortage of it once a cruise started.
    Jackson took the first tentative sip, letting the amber liquid play across his tongue before tilting his head up and letting it burn all the way down to his stomach. He followed that with another, more generous sip before setting the glass back on his desk. There were only four bottles left in the case in his quarters so he would need to conserve what he had until he could figure out a way to get another shipment, or at least get some of the acceptable commercial spirits available on any civilized planet they came across.
    He continued pecking at the keyboard for the better part of an hour, draining two-thirds of the bottle away without being consciously aware of it. When he finally grew bored of pretending he was working he shut off the interface to the ship's personnel server and brought up a playlist of soft jazz, piping it into the speakers in the ceiling at a low volume. He grabbed the bottle and, with teeth set, screwed the cap back on before replacing it in the locked drawer. As the soothing music washed over him, the familiar self-loathing rose up in him at his inability to control himself. Sighing heavily, he killed the music, pulled a pillow out of a wall locker, and stretched out on the sofa that ran along the bulkhead. It wouldn't do at all to have his crew see him stumbling bleary-eyed back to his quarters.
    ****
    "These are your new mission parameters," Aston Lynch said, handing Jackson another sealed envelope with hardcopy orders enclosed.
    "You couldn't have given me these before we left Alpha Centauri?" Jackson asked as he plucked at the seal on the envelope's flap.
    "Operational security, Captain," Lynch said in a condescending voice that earned him a hostile glare from Jackson. "If these had been available while still within range of the com drone network the mission could have been compromised."
    "Mr. Lynch, I have a hard time believing anybody would really be that concerned that you are traveling to Tau Ceti," Jackson said, his head pounding as he tried to read the small print on the sheet in front of him. "These are just navigational updates. What could possibly be so secret about these?"
    "Look closer, Captain," Lynch said. "There are also emission security protocols and very specific com instructions for once we arrive."
    Jackson just rolled his eyes and passed the sheet over to Celesta. "Sort it out, Commander," he told her. "If anything appears to be too far out of the ordinary please inform