For Honor We Stand (31 page)

The boy’s recitation was letter perfect.  The kid had a good memory. 

“Very good,” said Tanaka.  “And, now, Mr. Hewlett, since you know what you were supposed to do, do you know
why
you did it?”

That seemed to stump him.  “Because I was ordered to do it by Chief Petty Officer First Class Tanaka?” he said lamely.

“That is a literally correct and responsive answer, but not what I was looking for, Mr. Hewlett.”  The Chief’s voice sounded infinitely patient and understanding, yet, somehow, managed to convey the slightest flavor of disappointment.  “What I want to know is if you can tell me the
purpose
of the exercise.  And, make no mistake, my little tadpoles, although we may call it an Easter Egg Hunt and treat it like a game, it is absolutely not a game.  Not in the slightest.  Does anyone else have an idea?”

One boy stood up.  He was a few millimeters taller than Hewlett, but probably weighed half again as much.  Hewlett, with his blond hair, fair skin, blue eyes, and pink ears blushing from the attention, looked like a tiny Norse elf who should be making toys in Santa’s workshop, not being trained to be a deadly warrior in a desperate battle for the survival of his species.  This other boy was just as fair as Hewlett, but much stockier.  He looked as though he would be a natural wrestler or weigh lifter.  He was going to grow into a big man.

“Yes, Mr. Gunderson?”

“To teach us the ship, sir.”

“What about the ship?”

“Where things are.  How to find places.”

“Very good.  That is the primary reason, the most important one.  There are others.  Can you tell me what they are?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I think I do, sir.”  It was Hewlett again.  Now that he knew the kind of answer the Chief was looking for, maybe he could look back at what he had just done and see what it had taught him.

“Go ahead,” said Tanaka.

“It’s more than just where things are, sir.  You also learn . . . you learn the fastest way to get from one part of the ship to another.”  He stopped talking.  Obviously he thought he had hit upon the complete answer.  But, Tanaka kept looking at him expectantly, silently urging him to dig deeper.  Hewlett’s face became scrunched with concentration, and then suddenly lit up.  “Oh, oh, I see now.  I get it.  There’s
a lot
more.  It makes you see all of the access crawlways and cable conduits and pipes and tunnels from the inside, so you get to know them just as well as you get to know the parts of the ship you see every day.”  He started talking faster.  “And . . . and . . . you learn how to get into things, the crawlways and lockers and storage bins--how to work the locks and the latches and open the access panels and covers and remove the safety grills and work loose the vent bezels.  How to get into them in a hurry, when you’re nervous and in a rush.  And you have to do it over and over for all the different kinds so that, I’m betting after you’ve done several of these Hunts it will be like, you know, automatic.  You won’t have to think about how to get into something.  Your hands and fingers will just know how and go ahead and do it.”

“That’s called ‘muscle memory,’ Mr. Hewlett and, yes, that’s very good.  It is a refreshing surprise for a still wet squeaker to spend an hour and a half doing something and to actually get the point of why he was doing it.  Don’t worry.  I will not expect it to happen again any time soon.”  Then, he smiled.  A brief, reserved, smile that said that he really didn’t expect it to happen any time soon, but that he wasn’t angry about it.  “We do many things to teach you about the ship when you are a Midshipman.  That is one reason you are given so many assignments in so many parts of the ship on such a rapidly changing basis, so you get to see every part of the ship and get an introduction to what every department does, how it works, who is in it, and what they do.  And that is why each of you is assigned to one of the repair and maintenance teams for two watches a week, not just to hand them tools and shine a hand torch where they are working and retrieve dropped screws, but so you follow them around and crawl through the cable conduits and burrow into the nooks and crannies of this vessel.  You see what’s beneath the surface, deep under the skin. 

“So, we want you to know the ship like the back of your hand and we do many things to make that happen.  Which of you gentlemen can tell me why?  Why do we want you to know every little hole and burrow, every locker and latch, every panel and console?”

Another boy stood up.  Tanaka motioned for Hewlett and Gunderson to sit down.  The new boy was a handsome lad, a head taller than the others, with the darkest skin Max had ever seen on a human.  “Mr. Koyamba, do you have some light to shed on this subject?”

“Sir, my father is a Marine, and he always talks about how a Marine knows everything about his rifle.  He can take it apart, clean it, oil it, and put it back together in the dark really, really fast.  He also used to talk about how important it is for a fighting man to know the ground he is fighting over.  Isn’t the ship kind of both, sir?  It’s what we fight with, but it can also be where we fight.”

“Excellent, Mr. Koyamba.  That is truly a perceptive observation.  There are many full-fledged Spacers who don’t have that figured out.  You are absolutely right.  This ship, for all practical purposes, is your entire universe.  Right now, you could go ten billion kilometers from here in any direction and not find a rock bigger than Mr. Hewlett, much less something with water and an atmosphere to keep you alive.  Your ship and your shipmates are everything to you.  The ship is your world that sustains you with air and water and shelter.  Your shipmates are your family that provides you with care and support and companionship and even love.  Together, ship and crew are your hometown that contains your restaurants and entertainment and school and even your hospital as well as the people who make all those places work.  When we encounter the Krag, it is your weapon.  If we are ever boarded, it is your battleground.  In order to do your jobs you will be required to have intimate knowledge of this ship.  Intimate knowledge of this ship, or of any other ship on which you serve, may save your life and the lives of your shipmates.  In a boarding action, knowing all the hidden places and paths can give you ways to outflank your enemy, to sneak up on him from behind, to surround him, to escape him and, if things go badly for you, to hide out, perhaps for days at a time.”

“Chief?”  It was Mr. Hewlett, again.  He always seemed to be asking questions.

“Yes, Mr. Hewlett.” 

“I heard a story from one of the senior Mids that once a Midshipman hid out from the Krag for weeks and weeks on a ship that got taken, out smarting them day after day.  That’s just a legend, isn’t it?  No one could hide for that long, right?”

Tanaka was in a difficult spot.  On one hand, he didn’t know his Captain well enough to know whether his experience on the
San Jacinto
was a proper subject for discussion with the squeakers.  On the other, there was the near sacred naval tradition that a Midshipman Trainer must always be truthful with his Mids.  Not just that he not affirmatively lie to them, but that he must be
truthful
:  he must not mislead them, in any way, ever.  He could choose to be silent on a subject, as one might expect in a military organization where much information was distributed on a need to know basis, but if he spoke, every word, every implication, every nuance had to be as perfectly truthful as he knew how to make it.  Young people need to have at least one adult authority figure in their lives in whom they can have unqualified trust.  The Navy understood that, and provided them with one.  The Mids knew that, from their Trainer, they would hear only Truth.

There was only one thing to do in this situation.  American Football was still played on several dozen worlds; hence, mankind had not forgotten the meaning of the word “punt.” 

“Captain, this might be something that you can answer better than I.”

Well, Bram
did
say that he was supposed to talk about his experiences, right?  He mentally sprayed a few gallons of insecticide on the butterflies in his stomach and stepped carefully into the breach.  “It’s no rumor, Mr. Hewlett.”  Deep breath.  Do this the Navy way.  Just the facts, man.  “The Cruiser USS
San Jacinto
was boarded and taken by the Krag.  The logs record that active resistance ceased at thirteen forty-two hours on September 10, 2296.  She had a compliment of four hundred and forty-six.  Four hundred and twenty-one gave their lives defending the ship.  Twenty-four were taken captive.  Most of those were killed later.  All of them were tortured.  That leaves one, a Midshipman Second Class who, on the orders of his Mother Goose, hid himself as the ship was being taken.  After that, he continued to evade capture, eluding the Krag in the access crawlways, the cable conduits, the spaces between the false ceilings and the pressure bulkheads, empty food lockers, voids left by equipment upgrades, and all the other nooks and crannies and hidden ways inside a ship that you learn about as a Midshipman but that a Krag wouldn’t know about.  He got water from the water reclamation condensers.  He stole food, even going so far as to trigger alerts that would send the Krag running out of the mess to action stations so he could grab the rations off their plates.  For twenty-six days.  On October 6, at seventeen fifty-seven hours,
San Jacinto
was lured into a trap by a small task force under the command of Commodore, now Fleet Admiral, Charles L. Middleton.  The Midshipman and two other survivors—the Chief Medical Officer and the Communications Officer--were rescued.  Oh, and the ship’s cat, wily old Sam Houston.  The Krag never caught him, either.  He lived for several more years without once leaving the ship.” 

“But sir,” it was Hewlett again.  He asked enough questions for a whole class of hatch hangers.  “What about the Midshipman?  Almost all his shipmates were killed.  All his friends.  His bunkies.  His Mother Goose.  His CO.  And then he had the rat-faces chasing him for almost a whole month.  Wouldn’t he still feel guilty for living when they died?  Wouldn’t he still feel afraid?  What happened to him?  How’s he doing?  Is he OK?” 

From the mouths of babes.  That’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it?  How
is
he doing? 
Is he OK?

Max looked at those faces, all etched with concern, anxiety, and worry for a little boy whom, as far as they knew, they had never met.  Yet, to these Midshipmen, this boy was a brother—someone like them who Wore the Blue, slung his hammock in a small compartment with his six bunkies, went on Easter Egg Hunts, surreptitiously turned off the artificial gravity generators in the cargo holds and played Zero-G Tag, breakfasted on “spam, spam, eggs, and spam,” and was drilled by Mother Goose on how to use his dirk and put out fires and patch hull breaches and operate an Escape Pod.  And, Max remembered the utter horror that had galloped across those young faces when he had described what he had been through, even though he had done it in the most clinical and bloodless terms.  Those Mids had taken a brief glimpse at what he had endured for twenty-six days, and found it unimaginably terrifying.

Max had spent nearly twenty years telling himself that what he had gone through wasn’t so bad, that it was little more than an unpleasant memory not to be dwelt on.  He had consoled himself again and again with the rationalization that it was well within the range of normal experiences of the millions of human beings who had gone into battle with the Krag during the long course of this horrible, deadly, destructive war. 

All lies. 

The edifice of self deception that Max had been carefully building and repairing for the better part of his life collapsed in an instant.  For years he had been telling himself one thing, but those faces—
those faces
--told him another.  Those faces told him, instantly and with a power that could never be conveyed in words, that it
had
been so bad.  They convinced him in a second of what Ibrahim Sahin had been trying to get him to believe for months:  that he was “in denial” about just how utterly, soul-breakingly terrifying those twenty-six days had actually been.  The Midshipmen’s faces were like a mirror, allowing him to see the experience of those twenty-six days reflected back to him, not from the perspective of the man he was today, but from the perspective of the small boy who actually went through the ordeal.  To those boys, what he survived was a thing of such unimaginable horror that they couldn’t conceive of enduring it without some sort of crippling consequences. 

And they were right.  But, now he knew.  He really knew.

And, with that knowledge, came power.  Commodore Middleton never tired of quoting Sun Tzu.  One of his favorites: “Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a thousand battles you will never be in peril.”  All this time, he had not known his enemy.  He had thought his foe to be weak and inconsequential.  Wrong.  His enemy was strong and terrible.  Now he knew.  And now that he knew, he could fight effectively.  Now that he knew, he could win. 

All of this went through his mind in less than five seconds.  The Mids wanted to know about the boy.  How is he doing?  Is he OK?  Well,
is
he?  Let’s find out.  “Gentlemen, let me ask you.  How does it look like I’m doing?  Do I seem OK to you?”

It took a full second for the boys to reason through the implication of their Captain’s questions.  When they got there, the shock in the room was palpable.  The boys’ faces were an amalgam of wonder, amazement, surprise, and awe.  It was Hewlett who managed to say what they were all thinking, “Sir, that . . . it . . . the Midshipman . . . was
you
?”