To Honor You Call Us (44 page)

            Max was probably not wearing the most receptive looking face when he looked around to see who had called for him, but his expression rapidly turned to surprise.  The Spacer who had yelled at his Skipper was pointing to the line in front of the Ship’s store.  The line that had twenty men standing in it.  Max had never seen so many as two people in line before.  Careful to stand slightly to the side to make it clear that he was not cutting in front of twenty men who were waiting patiently for something, he stepped up to the store’s window, a roughly one by two meter opening set chest high in the wall of the corridor, opening into a small shop behind manned by a clerk who sold the items and handed them over the counter to his customers.

            The clerk visibly brightened when he saw Max and began to talk breathlessly.  “Captain, sir, we just got these out of the FabriFax half an hour ago and we done more business in them thirty minutes than in the last ninety days put together.  We got the T-shirts, the ball caps, the pins, the coffee mugs, and the pillow cases right now, and by tomorrow we gonna have the pendants, charms for the wives and sweethearts’ charm bracelets, polo shirts, shot glasses, T-shirts in kids sizes, and workout shorts, all with the new emblem thing.  It’s gonna be a few days on the throw pillows and Christmas tree ornaments, but there’s no rush on them ornaments it being only February and all—”

            “Petrone,” Max broke in, clueless, “what ‘emblem thing’?”

            “This.”  Wearing the biggest grin that Max had ever seen on this ship, Ordinary Spacer 3
^rd
 Class Walter Petrone held up a T-Shirt with an enormous emblem on it that Max had never seen before.  But, after looking at it for a few seconds, Max found himself grinning even more widely than Petrone.

            The emblem covered the entire front of the T-shirt and was almost twice as large as such things were customarily printed.  The whole thing was encircled by a gold ring, two or three fingers wide, into which was inscribed along the top in Navy Blue, “
U.S.S. Cumberland
DPA-0004.”  Below that, inside the circle, was depicted a deep cleft in a range of green-forested mountains, presumably the Cumberland Gap on Earth.  Beyond the Gap, one could discern a tiny image of the Destroyer herself, leaving a stylized “swoosh” in her wake from having flown level through the Gap, her bow now pointed almost straight up at a cluster of stars in the sky high above her.  And, perhaps the best part, Max’s rudimentary grasp of Latin let him instantly understand what the men must have just made the ship’s new motto inscribed in the bottom of the gold ring:  “Per laboram ad victoriam.”  Through hardship to victory.

            Right on. 

***

A few minutes later, having been rebuffed in an effort to buy a T-Shirt and a ball cap by Petrone who informed him (quite correctly) that, under immemorial naval custom the Captain never pays for anything with his ship’s name on it so long as it is for his personal use, Max had stowed his new shirt and cap and was in his Day Cabin sitting at the coffee table sipping some truly outstanding coffee with the doctor and Jones.  Jones?  Yes, Jones.  The doctor was speaking.  “Have you decided what to do with the Krag?  I ask purely out of academic interest because, if you intend to kill him, I was hoping you would do so in such a way that would preserve as many of his tissues as possible in undamaged condition and cause minimum biochemical change.  An air embolism perhaps?  I have never gotten to dissect one, and after having repaired this one’s arm, I am very curious about many of the details of his finer anatomy.”

“Doctor, I’m afraid that you will have to do without the dissection.  I am planning to let it live.”

“Really?”  Jones smiled enigmatically, like someone who has heard something he wants to hear but is very surprised to hear it.  “Why is that?”

“I generally kill only when I have good reason, and I don’t have any good reason to kill it.  This particular Krag has committed no crime for which I am required to execute it.  Since there are no other Krag on board I can’t use the death of this one to threaten the others.  There’s just no percentage in killing the thing and letting it live doesn’t do any harm that I can see.  Maybe someone at an Interrogation Center can get more out of it than we have.  This one has basically had its incisors pulled.  It’s got no bite left.”

“For what it’s worth, I concur,” said Jones.  “It was a low level operative possessing a tiny sliver of compartmentalized knowledge, which we have successfully extracted.  It may prove useful in the future if we can break it to voluntary cooperation and we capture another Krag that it knows.  Then it might help us break the second Krag who might possess some knowledge that is more valuable.  Not a likely scenario but, in total war, you don’t throw away any tool, no matter how small or apparently limited its usefulness.”

The doctor shook his head.  “You two offer the most cold-blooded reasons for an act of generosity, mercy, and humanitarianism that I have ever heard.” 

“Doctor,” said Max, “for all you know, all I told you was a tiny portion of my true reasoning on the issue.  Perhaps I am sparing the Krag primarily because the Sermon on the Mount says ‘blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’”

“I would feel better if that were your true reason, but if you do not open your mind to me, I will never know.”

“Then you will never know.  Besides, we have bigger fish to fry now.  The first transponder shows that one of your art dealer friends’ freighters carrying Krag cargo left Rashid IV several hours ago.  According to the schedule, it will be jumping into the S’regor system at 00:14 tomorrow and rendezvousing with the other freighter to transfer its cargo at 05:52.  There’s only one jump point in that system that leads to anywhere near Krag space.  It goes to Keldof.  It will take the freighter at least fifteen hours to get from the rendezvous point to the jump point.  We’re already on our way to Keldof following a different route.  We’ll get there a few hours ahead of him and lie in wait, then either take or destroy the freighter, depending on what kind of ship it is and what kind of escort it has, if any.”

“If that’s all you have for me, Captain, I have a report to write,” said Jones, thoroughly uninterested in the business of attacking and taking freighters.  He left.

“I heard that the crew has finally come up with a coat of arms, as it were, for the ship,” said the doctor.

“Indeed, they have.  Take a look.”  Max retrieved the T-shirt and unfolded it on the table in front of the doctor.

“Very, very interesting,” he remarked.  “One might even say ‘fascinating.’”

“How so?”

“As a Captain, you must yourself be aware of the significance of the men having finally come up with a design.  That says a lot for the success of your leadership.  But this design itself . . . I am truly moved.  There is a profound message here.”

“Message?”

“Oh, yes.  A message.  A very strong one, I might add.  You see, when men create symbols to represent themselves to others, they invariably invest a great deal of themselves in those symbols.  They are a kind of language that speaks very eloquently about what their creators think and feel, as long as one knows how to read it.”

“OK, Doctor, why don’t you translate it for me?”

“I shall.  I shall, indeed.  First, I am assuming that this notch in the mountains is a representation of the Cumberland Gap, am I right?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Very well, then.  You know the derogatory nickname for this ship.  Rather than choosing some other image that somehow says ‘Cumberland’ or even an image or symbol unconnected with her name, the largest feature here calls that insult directly to mind—it dominates the entire emblem.  But, where is the ship?  Is she approaching the Gap, perhaps, or crossing through it?  No, she is far, far beyond and above the Cumberland Gap, showing that she has gone through it, surpassed it,
overcome
it.  The men acknowledge the old insult and are laughing at it, thumbing their nose at those who have demeaned them, proclaiming that they know of the slur and have left it far behind them.  It is a part of their past.  It is rather a defiant yet strangely noble sentiment.”

“I see what you mean.”

“And, look at the trajectory of the ship, as shown by the trail she has left in the air.  For most of the image it is near the ground, straight, and level, showing her lack of achievement for most of her history.  And then, right here at the end, she suddenly and radically deviates from her prior path, turning her nose sharply upward and zooming in a nearly vertical ascent.  One moment, she was flying low and the very next she is quite literally reaching for the stars.  This speaks rather evocatively to a change of fortunes, does it not?”

“So it would seem.”  Max was amazed that so much could be deduced from a simple image, and yet the reasoning seemed valid and tracked absolutely his observations of the mood of the crew.

“I think that there is a lot in this motto, too.  These men recognize that they have been struggling and that they have struggles ahead of them, but they are also confident that they will emerge the victors.  They don’t just feel they will be the victors; they loudly proclaim it:  that they are equal to the challenges they will face and will emerge triumphant.  Max, whatever your drills and efficiency ratings are telling you, this emblem that you hold in your hands right now says that you have already won the most important battle—the one for the hearts of the crew.  You have turned these men around.  You have given them back their pride, their honor, and their self-respect.  And, experience shows that once you have done that for a group of men, they will follow you to the very gates of Hell.

Chapter
21

00:12Z Hours 8 February 2315

The freighter turned out to not have any escort at all.  When the ship carrying the Krag-purchased cargo arrived in the Keldof system, the
Cumberland
was already doing its now well-rehearsed imitation of a Romanovan Revenue and Inspection Cutter.  Since it had apparently proper documentation showing its cargo to be entirely legitimate, the Igandii freighter
Frenkung-Tan
had no reluctance whatsoever about heaving to for inspection by the apparently official representatives of the Romanovan Imperium. 

When the appropriately costumed Doctor and Marine boarding party went aboard her, they were not surprised to see the vessel crewed by humans, as the Igandii rarely ventured into space themselves and usually crewed their ships with humans from one of the neutral systems.  “May I see your ID cube please,” the doctor asked the freighter Captain, who identified himself as Brigham Johnson.

As the man fished the cube out of his pocket, the doctor noticed that the front zipper of the uniform, a utilitarian jumpsuit that had one zipper running from the crotch to the neck, was pulled down to roughly the middle of the man’s sternum, revealing a bare and distinctly hairy chest.  The man was not wearing any kind of undershirt, which was nothing unusual for a freighter rat.  A quick scan of the Bridge showed two other crew members at their stations, one of whom was drinking a steaming hot liquid from a mug.  The aroma told the doctor that it was coffee.  A quick peek at the mug sitting at the Captain’s station showed that he was drinking coffee as well.  One of the crew, a hard-looking sixtyish woman at the maneuvering station, appeared to have just noticed that a pack of cigarettes was protruding from a stack of personal items in a rack near her seat and was trying to cover it up without drawing notice to herself. 

The cube reader showed that the ID cube was a forgery that Romanovan equipment would read as the genuine article.  The Captain’s entire false biography appeared on the screen, including his date and place of birth, residence history, piloting certificates, and so on.  “So,” the doctor said, in a conversational tone, “you are from New Zarahemia.” 

“Yes, I am.  We all are.”  That, too, was nothing out of the ordinary.  A lot of people from New Zarahemia became freighter rats.  The local economy had been struggling for the past several years, the planet had a strong space faring tradition, and transit companies liked to hire from there because the people of that world had a reputation for being honest, hard working, reliable, family-oriented, and for being less prone than most to abusing alcohol and drugs on long, lonely freighter runs. 

“Raised there?”

“Yes.  We all grew up there together.  We’re old friends and we like to ship out on the same crew.”

“Yes, many freighter crew do that.  I envy you, coming from such a world.  I’ve always wanted to visit New Zarahemia.  Especially the beaches.  I hear they are beautiful.”

“Yes,” the Captain responded, with the rest of his crew nodding their support.  “Absolutely beautiful.  I love them, in fact.” the Captain started a mollifying patter.  “I was born and raised close to the water, right there on a bay.  Practically lived on the beach.  Went fishing every day.  I love fishing.  Are you a fisherman, Captain?”  The doctor shook his head.  “Any ways, I remember my father telling me over and over again about how he had this little cypress skiff that he would row out to his favorite fishing spot, an oyster shell reef in a shallow, muddy bay that he would find by lining up a wind turbine with gap between some trees.  He’d catch redfish and speckled trout and a really tasty but hard fighting little fish that we called a ‘croaker’ because of the noise it made.  He’d bring the fish back and his mother would fry them up in this little cottage we had right on the water, beautiful place with a screen porch where we used to sit in rocking chairs and enjoy the breeze off the water.  I’ve got a holocube of it right here.  You’ll see that it was really quite quaint the way they built them back then.”