To Honor You Call Us (4 page)

“Pardon me, Lieutenant, I am needed at the Casualty Station.  It was a pleasure to meet you.  If I may presume, would you be averse to our speaking again sometime?”

“Sure.  My pleasure,” Max replied.  “You don’t need my comcode—I’m the only Lieutenant Robichaux in the whole task force.  Not many people know how to spell it.  It’s . . . .”

“I know how to spell it, Lieutenant.  I’ve heard of you.” said Sahin.  “Until later, then.”  He turned briskly and strode out of the room in a manner that was both surprisingly inconspicuous and yet extremely fast.  Max wondered how he did it.  Max knew that he had never been simultaneously awake and inconspicuous for more than two or three seconds at any time in his life. 

He finished off his bourbon, paid his respects to the Admiral, and walked slowly back to his tiny berth in Guest Officer’s Quarters, taking several detours, spending some time on the hangar deck watching the Banshee fighters being fueled and serviced, and stopping at the Ship’s Store to pick up a spare battery for his percom.  When he finally got back, having killed a few hours, he could barely shoehorn himself into the cramped space, and then only if he left the shoehorn in the corridor.  By moving slowly and with great deliberation, he was able to take off his Ice Cream Suit (an age-old description for Naval Dress Whites) without banging his hands or elbows on the bulkhead, hang it up carefully in the almost microscopic closet, and change into the Royal Blue jumpsuit and half boots known as the Working Uniform that was the Uniform of the Day today and most days on the
Halsey. 
He had a duty shift in SIGINT in two hours, so he had time to make his way to the Number Five Wardroom, drink some coffee, and maybe shoot the breeze with some of the other off duty officers.  Maybe one of them had an interesting story to tell that was not too obvious a fabrication and that he had heard fewer than a hundred times.

Or maybe not.  Either way, it was better than sitting inside this shoebox and staring at the bulkhead or poking around the news feeds on the berth’s work station. 

In the habit possessed by anyone who wears a uniform for a living and who cares about not getting negative reports in his anachronistically named “jacket,” Max checked himself in the mirror before leaving his quarters.  Max had no thoughts of being handsome.  Coming from Nouvelle Acadiana, Max was mostly a descendent of Louisiana Cajuns, and had the fair skin, prominent nose, dark hair, and dark eyes that sometimes went with that ethnicity.  But, while pure-blooded Cajuns tended to be short and slight, Max was a tall man, approaching two meters in height, but slender and wiry.  As did so many people who were nominally Cajun, Max had some German, Scottish, and Irish ancestors hiding in some of the far branches of his family tree giving him not only his decidedly un-Cajun height, but also a square jaw and high forehead that spoke more of the Gaelic than the Gallic.  Thoroughly unimpressed with his natural appearance, Max made sure that his uniform was unwrinkled and hanging straight on his frame, that the limited badges, decorations, and insignia that went on the Working Uniform were appropriately arranged (especially his new Navy Cross), that the brass belt buckle shined, and that his boots gleamed. 

He had gotten out the door and three steps down the corridor when his percom beeped.  He glanced at the screen.  It read:  “PI MX OR W G-894.”  While the percom had a voice capability, most routine messages were sent by text and used a highly condensed code so that they could be read on the twenty character alpha-numeric only exterior screen of the device, rather than on the color, graphical screen revealed when the cover of the device was flipped open.  The symbols meant:  “Priority Implementation.  Message.  Orders.  Written.  Compartment G-894.  Or, in something more closely approaching normal speech:  “Priority, immediate implementation.  A message for you, consisting of Orders in written form, is waiting to be picked up in compartment 894 of G Deck.”

Max shook his head.  Fifteen strategically located message rooms on the Carrier and leave it to the Navy to have this message printed out for him in the room at the other end of the ship.  At the other end of a ship that was 2,845 meters long.  Actually, the more Max thought about it, it could be worse.  His quarters were almost amidships, so G-894 couldn’t be more than a kilometer and a half away, plus five decks down. 

Fortunately, Max was good at learning ship layouts, so he was able to select the most direct route, find the tram that ran the length of the ship down the Central Corridor, and locate the proper compartment right away.  He reached Compartment G-894 just under twelve minutes after receiving the text and stepped in through the open hatch.

There he found a desk running the entire width of the roughly three meter wide space, manned by a bored-looking Petty Officer Third Class sitting behind a computer-generated name plate that said “MUCH.”  The man did not look up when Max walked in but continued to peck slowly at a keyboard while keeping his eyes fixed rigidly on a display that was located so that the person operating it had to sit with his back nearly to the door.  Max stood at the desk for five seconds without his presence being acknowledged.  Apparently, no one of any importance ever picked up their messages in Compartment G-894. 

“Ahem,” Max said softly.  Much didn’t so much as twitch.

“Excuse me,” Max said somewhat louder.

Much didn’t budge.

“Petty Officer Much,” Max said just a notch louder.  He pronounced it like it was spelled, rhyming with “such.”

“That’s MUCH,” he replied, pronouncing the “u” as in duke” with the “ch” a Germanic guttural, as in “ach.” 

That was enough for Max.  “PETTY OFFICER MOOK,” Max bellowed in his best drill instructor voice.  He knew that he had mispronounced the name.  His Cajun mouth was perfectly capable of producing Germanic gutturals if Max so chose.  At this moment, however, he was not in the mood.

Much looked up quickly and rotated his swivel chair to where it faced Max.  Max glared at him, lips tightly pressed, until the man was sitting at “seated attention,” knees together, back straight, head high, making eye contact—the appropriate attitude for an enlisted man being addressed by a commissioned officer while seated at his duty station. 

Max lowered his volume but kept his tone as sharp as a razor.  “Petty Officer Mook, I have received a text with a PI code stating that I am to pick up written orders at this location.  Are you going to place these orders in my possession immediately or, when I fail to implement my orders with sufficient
celerity
, should I cite
your delay in transmission
as the cause?”

Much’s eyes widened slightly.  Everyone in the task force had read Admiral Hornmeyer’s First Standing Order issued when he took command.  Rather than the standard  blatherations, this Standing Order contained several pages of clear, incisive, imperative prose, one item of which said that “all operational orders are to be executed with celerity” and that the Admiral “would not tolerate and would swiftly punish any repetition of the delays in transmission that were hitherto endemic in this command.”  Notwithstanding the inevitable fleet joke that half of the task force didn’t know whether “celerity” meant a famous person or a crunchy vegetable, people got the point. 

Much quickly came to his feet, and touched an area set off by a circle a few millimeters in diameter on the surface of the desk that separated him from Max.  A panel silently withdrew revealing square green scanner surface about eight centimeters to the side and a numeric keypad.  Max put his left hand flat on the scanner and, with his right, entered his twelve digit ID code.  Much then walked over to a printer at his station that had produced one sheet of paper about two seconds after Max had keyed in the last digit.  He folded it in half lengthwise, slipped it into a long envelope proportioned for a sheet of paper so folded, sealed the envelope, and handed it to Max along with a stylus.  Max then used the stylus to sign his name on the same scanner that had just read his handprint, creating a signed and time-stamped digital receipt for the message.  When he withdrew the stylus, the panel slid back into place, Max returned the stylus to the chastened petty officer, put the envelope in his pocket, and left Compartment G-894, walking straight across the corridor to another hatch marked with a sign that said “G-895 ORDRDRM.” 

“
ORDRDRM
, try pronouncing THAT,” Max thought.

The Orders Reading Room was a Spartan enclosure, about two meters square, with one standard issue Navy desk chair and a small table.  Max sat down in the chair, ripped open the envelope, extracted the paper, set the envelope on the table, and began to read.

23:14Z 20 January 2315

TOP SECRET

URGENT:  FOR IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION

FROM:  HORNMEYER, L.G. VADM USN, CDR TF TD

TO:  ROBICHAUX, MAXIME T., LT USN

1.  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, YOU ARE RELIEVED AS ACTING COMMANDER AND WEAPONS OFFICER USS EMEKA MORO, FLE 2379.  TAKE NO FURTHER ACTION RE EMEKA MORO.  NEW TEMPCOM ALREADY APPOINTED.

2.  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, YOU ARE RELIEVED OF ALL TDY PREVIOUSLY ASSIGNED.

3.  EFFECTIVE 00:01Z 21 JAN 2315 YOU ARE CIG TO LCDR USN WITH ALL THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES APPERTAINING TO SAID RANK.

4.  YOU ARE ADVISED THAT USS CUMBERLAND, DPA 0004 IS EXPECTED TO RENDEZVOUS THIS TASK FORCE APPROX 07:30Z 21 JAN 2315 UNDER TEMPCOM OF HER FIRST OFFICER LT R.T. GARCIA.  CUMBERLAND FULLY PROVISIONED AND ARMED WITH STD WEAPONS LOAD.  SOME PERSONNEL FROM THIS TF WILL JOIN SHIP AT THIS TIME.

5.  AT 09:00Z 21 JAN 2315,  YOU ARE REQUIRED AND DIRECTED TO REPORT ABOARD SAID VESSEL AND ASSUME CHARGE AND COMMAND OF HER SUBJECT TO ALL APPLICABLE LAWS, REGULATIONS, STANDING ORDERS, AND OPERATIONAL ORDERS THAT SHALL ISSUE FROM DULY CONSTITUTED AUTHORITY FROM TIME TO TIME.  SEPARATE WARRANT OF APPOINTMENT WILL ISSUE.

6.  AS SOON THEREAFTER AS PRACTICABLE, BUT NO LATER THAN 09:15Z 21 JAN 2315 USS CUMBERLAND UNDER YOUR COMMAND IS TO PART COMPANY THIS TASK FORCE, ACCELERATE AT STANDARD TO 0.01 C, AND PROCEED TO NAV BUOY JAH1939. 

7.  UPON REACHING DESTINATION, YOU ARE TO IMPOSE COMPLETE EMCOM ON VESSEL AND EXECUTE SEALED ORDERS IN CAPTAIN’S SAFE.

8.  KICK ASS AND GODSPEED.

He read the orders again, more slowly.  After he finished, Max realized he had been holding his breath and slowly exhaled, took in another slow breath, and let it out slowly. 

Max fought to slow down his thoughts and to process what he had read.  He remembered what his old mentor, Commodore Middleton, told him:  “All operational orders contain good news and bad news.”  So, good news:  one, promotion to Lieutenant Commander, the next step up.  Two, his own command.  And, big three, a new, powerful, Khyber Class Destroyer.  The class, although new, was getting a reputation as being good ships. 

Bad news:  one, the
Cumberland
, a known “problem ship” that had turned in a disappointing performance in two fleet actions (or, as Caesar might have said, she came, she saw, and she ran like hell) and was becoming known around the fleet as “The Cumberland Gap.”  Two, her skipper and XO had recently been relieved and the rumor said that many of her senior noncoms had been reassigned to shore duty back in the Core Systems.  Three, whatever problems the ship had, there would be plenty of leftovers still aboard for Max to deal with as the new CO. 

The rest?  A mystery until he opened the sealed orders, but there were hints that gave him hope.  The orders directed him to part company no later than fifteen minutes after his appointment as Skipper became effective, which said that Old Hit-em Hard was in a hurry.  And the “kick ass” part smelled like orders for combat.  He wouldn’t say “kick ass” if
Cumberland
were going to be assigned to patrol a rear area or escort a hospital ship back to Earth or Alphacen, right? 

Max had a lot to do and not a lot of time in which to do it.  For the next several hours, he was going to be nothing but assholes and elbows.  His first errand, though, was going to be a pleasure—a trip to the Quartermaster to draw the uniforms, patches and, most important, the coveted Command in Space Badges (one for each uniform) and Lieutenant Commander’s insignia that went along with his new posting and rank.  Then, he needed to belly up to a work station to access everything he could learn about the
Cumberland
and her crew.

Chapter
2

08:53Z 21 January 2315

Max sat in the co-Pilot’s seat of the transferpod as it glided across the seventeen kilometers of space that separated the
Halsey
from the
Cumberland
.  There was no sense of motion, except when the pod was nudged gently every few minutes by short growling burns from its maneuvering thrusters.  He would have preferred to pilot the pod himself, but there were things that Commanding Officers of Rated Warships did not do.  They did not carry their own gear (his gear had been sent over by a different pod and, presumably, had already been stowed in his quarters).  They did not pour their own coffee, unless they were alone.  They did not shine their own boots.  And, most emphatically, they did not pilot their own transferpods. 

At this distance, and with the fleet moving slowly through the shadow of the tawny, ringed gas giant world that was the fourth planet out from this particular star, not even the outline of the
Cumberland
could be seen—only the winking pinpoints of red, green, blue, and white running lights and the barely visible white rectangles of the occasional viewport.  Max longed for a good look at his new command, even though Union warships were never very exciting to look at.  They were all essentially long squared cylinders (or long rounded boxes) with the rounded bluntness of the sensor array fairing on one end and sublight propulsion systems on the other, with much of everything in between studded with an apparently haphazard array of smaller cylinders, antennas, weapons ports, point defense turrets, missile launch tubes, field emitters, and other mechanisms that helped the ship find the enemy, elude the enemy, confuse the enemy, or—Max’s favorite—blow the enemy to hell.