For Honor We Stand (40 page)

Although he tried to cover it up, the boy seemed surprised and confused by the question.  After a moment’s consideration, he said, “They call me Fuechtenschnieder, sir.”

“No nickname?”

“Oh, no,
sir
,” he answered, as if the mere possibility of such a thing was unthinkable.  “No nicknames on
this
ship, sir.”  No nicknames.  Then Duflot was an idiot of galactic proportions.  There were whole books written about the individual psychological and ship wide morale benefits of crewman nicknames.  They helped spacers establish individual identity in a Service that tended to reduce human beings to uniforms, grades, and ratings.  Spacers wore their Navy nicknames with pride and often carried them through retirement right into the grave.  Max had known many a long-retired old space dog whose friends could not have told you the man’s given name for a million credits but who was well known to hundreds of men on forty ships and a dozen worlds by a nickname he had earned as a squeaker or a greenie half a century ago.  Max managed to keep from shaking his head.

“Very well, then, Fuechtenschnieder,” said Max, giving the “ch” the correct Germanic guttural and the “sch” the slightly different value it had in German than in Standard.  Just because he
liked
to use nicknames for long, difficult to pronounce surnames didn’t mean he actually
needed
to use them.  “Take me to your leader.”  The boy showed no signs that he was even tempted to smile at Max’s slight joke as he led Max out the hatch and toward the bow. 

“Mister Fuechtenschnieder?” said Max, looking down almost onto the top of the lad’s head.

“Yes, sir?”

“Is there any particular reason why you didn’t want to tell me your name a moment ago?”

“Oh, no, sir,” he replied with defensive abruptness.  “I just didn’t think anyone who commanded a rated warship would want to know the name of a Midshipman Second Class.”

“Fuechtenschnieder, does Captain Duflot know your name?”

“Oh, no, sir.  At least I hope not, sir.”  Max, of course, knew the names of all of his Midshipmen, as well as what planets they were from, what other ships they had served on, if any, how they were doing in their studies and training, and what their current duty assignments were.  Max had never met Duflot, yet he was getting the distinct feeling that, when he did, he wasn’t going to like the man.  No, it was more than a feeling.  Max was sure he wasn’t going to like Captain Duflot at all.

***

“What an appalling breach of military courtesy, not to mention the kind of affront that an officer and a gentleman never inflicts upon another.  It’s an insult to the honor of this ship and every man aboard her.  I won’t stand for it.”  Kraft was boiling over, and he had actually cooled down a little over the past few minutes.  His first responses had been unprintable and were so profane, in both German and Standard, that Max was genuinely embarrassed.  Apparently, on Kraft’s home world, all the best insults were in German and involved ascribing to the insulted man’s ancestors a propensity to engage in sexual relations with various species of farm animals.

“Major, we know the man is an asshole,” Max soothed.  “The days of settling affronts to a man’s personal honor by beginning the day with pistols for two and coffee for one are long past.  He’s a superior officer and he commands this group.  I take his shit and we follow his orders.  It’s that simple.  His insults were either subtle snubs that he can plausibly say were all inadvertent and not meant to offend, or took place in his Day Cabin with no witnesses.  The best I can say about the whole thing is that he was not able to provoke me into an outburst of anger—which for all I knew he was trying to do--and that I managed to avoid being put on report.”

“What would he have put you on report for?”  DeCosta was incredulous.

“Being out of uniform.  He didn’t like that I was wearing my sidearm when the Uniform of the Day on the
William Gorgas
was Dress Blues, not Dress Blues with Arms.”

“That’s . . . that’s . . . that’s . . . just
chickenshit
.  Sorry, sir, but that’s the only word for it.”  DeCosta was inarticulate with anger at first, but once he got pointed where he wanted he steadied his helm on the new heading.  “It’s a purely chickenshit thing to put someone on report for.  Never in a million years would I put a man on report for something like that, unless it was some sort of willfully defiant repeat offense.  I’d point out the error, tell him not to do it again, and be done with the matter.  Life’s too short for that kind of picayune bullshit.”

Kraft smiled ever so slightly, his first display of any emotion other than rage since Max had described his encounter with the Group Commander.  “Not only was the Commander being ‘chickenshit,’ he was also technically incorrect.”

“How? ‘With Arms’ was not the UOD on the
William Gorgas
and without that additional specification, a sidearm doesn’t go with Dress Blues.”

“True, XO, but, you are forgetting about that.”  Kraft pointed to a small, blue ribbon at the left of the top row in Max’s three-row “fruit salad” array of decorations and awards over his right breast.  The light blue ribbon with seven tiny white stars arrayed in the shape of an “M,” one star for each of the Orion-class gunships of humanity’s first tiny space armada that rode into space on the backs of thermonuclear fireballs that desperate July day in 2034 to take the Moon back from the Ning-Braha and save the human race from slavery or extinction.  The ribbon that graced no other chest on board.  Except the doctor’s. 

“His CMH?”

“Yes, Mister DeCosta, his Commissioners’ Medal of Honor, an award that is not only the highest military decoration conferred by the Union, but that by statute, regulation, and custom carries with it a fairly lengthy list of privileges.”  Kraft lapsed into the tone of voice he tended to use when reciting law and regulations:  a tone somewhere between the one used by pastors when citing Scripture and the one used by secondary school science teachers when they explain a particularly arcane law of nature.  “Some of these privileges are well known, such as the right to wear the uniform after retirement or discharge whenever one pleases, to stand or march in the first rank of any parade or review of naval personnel in which the recipient participates, a lifelong right to have passage on any naval vessel wherever it may be going, a lifelong right to receive food and lodging at any naval base or station in the galaxy, to meet with either of the Navy’s Senators more or less when one wishes, and so on.  And some are more obscure.  Such as . . . .”

The skipper drew his sidearm from its holster and placed it on the table.  “Such as,” he finished, “the right to bear at any time any small arm or edged weapon with which I have personally killed any enemy of the Union.  It has to be that actual weapon, mind you, not just the same model.”  He picked up the M-62 10 mm Beretta-Browning pistol and fixed his eyes on it.  Every eye in the room followed his.  “This qualifies.  Many times over.”  He reflexively press checked the chamber to be sure it was empty, holstered it, and closed the holster with a loud snap.  “Enough of this bitching.  Duflot is running this show and that’s all there is to it.  We’re in the Navy.  We follow orders.  Even stupid ones.”  The comm buzzed.  Max leaned over to the panel and hit the button.  “Skipper.”

“Skipper, this is Chin.”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir, I sent that signal you ordered.  I positioned the transceiver arrays so that I can guarantee that the pennant got none of the leakage.”  Metaspacial signals had no directionality and could not be traced.  But, metaspacial transmitters were not perfectly efficient.  When they sent a signal, part of the energy was radiated as ordinary electromagnetic radiation, known in the fleet as “leakage,” mostly in the long wave radio band.  Chin had made sure that the directionality of the leakage had been away from Duflot’s ship.  “And, I’m such a sloppy Comms Officer there is every chance that the transmission won’t make it into my comm log.  Oops.  But, in case anyone checks the records, they will find that we had not yet logged the order from the pennant imposing EMCOM when the signal went out.  It took a few minutes longer to log that order than it should have, sir.  Oops, again.  I suppose we need to do these things with greater
celerity
in the future.”

“See that you do, Mister Chin.  Be aware that this kind of slapdash, devil-may-care, nonchalant, and . . . ,” he rooted around in the attic of his mind for another suitable adjective, “and lackadaisical attitude toward your duties is not going to be tolerated on my ship.  Consider yourself firmly rebuked on that point.”  Max almost managed to sound stern.  Almost.

“Oh yes, sir.  I do, sir. 
Firmly
rebuked, sir.  Anything else the comms section can do for you, Captain?  Anything at all?”

“No, thank you, Mister Chin.  That’s fine for the present.  Skipper out.”  In response to the inquiring looks, Max made a dismissive wave of the hand—a wave those present had come to recognize as the signal for “it’s better that you not know right now.”  “And, you heard right, we’re on full EMCON.  Here’s what’s up.”  He hit a key on the control pad for the Wardroom 3D tactical projector.  A black cube sprang into being, salted with the tiny, white dots of stars, each labeled with the name or catalog number of the system.  “Here’s this sector.  We’re here, in the Svenskanorsk system.”  He hit a key, and one of the stars started blinking red.  Our destination is the Four Power Conference in Harun on Rashid IV, here.”  He hit another key, and another star, about 60 centimeters away in the projection also started blinking.  “We’re crossing this system at point-four-five c to the Bravo jump point which will take us to this system.”  He hit a key and a second star, very near the first, started blinking red.  Once we get there, we begin . . . .”

At that moment, the blonde head and conspicuously pink ears of Midshipman Hewlett inserted themselves into the Wardroom, followed—quite boldly given the circumstances--by his small form.  “By your leave, sir,” he said to the Captain, saluting, “I simply need to retrieve a tool and then I’ll be out of your way.”

Slight smiles appeared around the room, despite the irritation of enduring a second interruption in the middle of an important briefing.  A Midshipman appearing in the Wardroom during a Senior Officer Briefing to “retrieve a tool” could mean only one thing.  Max returned the salute and eyed Midshipman Oliver R. Hewlett, whom he knew to be from the planet Archopin.  Max recalled that the boy excelled in physical sciences and mathematics to such a prodigious degree that turning the boy into a naval officer (for that is the direction in which he, clearly, was already headed) instead of the brilliant scientist he so obviously could become might be a waste of material.  Max even knew that Hewlett loved the writings of Homer and J.R.R. Tolkien of Earth, as well as Graknar-Toth 242 of Pfelung whose writing was influenced by both.  Max wondered if Captain Duflot knew as much about his Weapons Officer or his Chief Engineer as Max knew about this child who was almost certainly one of the four or five least important persons on the ship.  But “least important” didn’t mean “not important.” 

“Mister Hewlett, what tool are you to retrieve and who sent you to retrieve it?”  Max’s asked.  

“Chief Farnell sent me to get the Gimbal Alignment Tool for the Port Auxiliary Guidance Platform.  He said that the platform went into gimbal lock a little while ago and needs to be realigned, so he needs the alignment tool.”  The child smiled at the Captain, proud of himself for delivering the recitation in letter perfect fashion without scrambling the unfamiliar technical terms.

The smiles in the room grew broad.

Max sat so that he could be at eye level with the boy.  “Hewlett,” he said, nothing but interest and patience showing on his face, “do you remember your basic lesson on the ship’s inertial guidance system?  You would have gotten it . . . let’s see . . . ‘round about your fourth or fifth day on board.”

“Yes, sir,” he said enthusiastically.  “Well, most of it anyway.”

“Outstanding.  Now, tell me what you remember about the
Cumberland
’s
Inertial Measuring Units?”

“Sir, this ship has three fully independent and redundant Inertial Measuring Units or IMUs, at widely separated locations in the ship, each of which is individually capable of performing all inertial measurement functions.  They measure changes in the ship’s attitude along the x, y, and z axis by means of three orthogonally mounted ring laser gyroscopes,” he said, reciting words painstakingly memorized, “which use the Sagnac effect to detect rotation by the use of two circular beam path lasers in coincident counter-directional modes.  These lasers, which have no moving parts to wear out or become misaligned, replace . . . .”  It finally hit him and his tiny form seemed to deflate, “Oh, no.  Sir, this is
terrible.
”

“Go on, Midshipman, take your medicine.”

The young man went on, deeply embarrassed.  His ears went from pink to bright red, with the blush spreading to his pale, cherubic cheeks.  “Errmm. . . . replace mechanical guidance platforms, not used since the early Twenty-First Century,
which employed rapidly rotating motor driven gyroscopes mounted on gimbals
to maintain a stable frame of reference from which vehicle attitude was measured.”  He reverted to a more normal tone of voice.  A dejected tone of voice.  “So, we don’t have a tool to align the gimbals on the guidance platform.  Our IMUs don’t have platforms.  No platforms means no gimbals.  No gimbals means no gimbal lock.”  The boy had it exactly right and, despite his embarrassment, it didn’t take him long to put it together.  Smart.  Can think on his feet.  Doesn’t go to pieces when he learns he’s made a mistake.  Who knows, the kid might be sitting in the Big Chair someday.