To Honor You Call Us (37 page)

“I can see why the men might be experiencing unusual cheer.”

“You don’t know the half of it.  Prize money includes the cargo of the captured vessel, which can come to quite nice little sum.  You see, in this case, that smallish freighter was carrying forty-two metric tons of gold.”

“Really?  That much?  All I saw was two chests, and not very large ones at that.”

“You forget how dense gold is.  A single cubic meter of gold weighs more than nineteen tons.  Each of those chests contained just over one cubic meter of pure gold, in twenty kilogram bricks.  The value of that gold at the current market price is just over a hundred and thirty million credits.  Each man on board ship has earned more money than most of them have ever had at one time in their lives and her Captain is now a moderately wealthy man.  And that doesn’t count that sweet little freighter.  I’ve sent it back to Lovell Station with a four man prize crew.  She will be sold privately or used by the Navy which is always in need of cargo vessels of various sorts.  In either event, we will share in either her appraised value if the Navy takes her or in her sale price if sold.  She’s fast, has reasonably comfortable accommodations, and a superb sensor suite for a civvy.  She’ll fetch at least ten or eleven million if she fetches a dime.”

“With fourteen million credits, or so, you could retire from the Navy.”

“Perish the thought, Doctor.  The Navy is my family, my vocation, my life.  I know no other.  Besides, with this war going the way it is going, the Navy cannot spare any competent officer, particularly one with my combat experience.  I’m in this until I’m killed, crippled, too old to fight, or the war ends.  My hope is to see this war through to a victory for the Union and my goal is to be instrumental in that victory.  I am ambitious enough to see myself hoisting my flag and leading a task force in the decisive battle that wins the war for us.  Absurd, I know.”

“I think not.  Seriously, my friend, while you have your foibles and human weaknesses, you clearly and obviously have a gift for leadership and inspiration.  You are a leader classically defined:  men follow you.  And, although I am not equipped to judge this aspect of your performance, I am told by people who are so equipped that you display a certain gift for tactics.” 

“Who told you that?”

“I’d rather not say.  It is, however, the general opinion of the knowledgeable people aboard.  Such consensuses of informed crew members are invariably correct, or so I have heard.  They regard you highly, as a commander and as a man.”

“I’m not so sure about that.  I almost got every man and boy of us killed the other day.”

“You mean the incident with that new Krag weapon?”

“Exactly.  I was so intent on what I was going to do to the enemy, I forgot to consider what he could be doing to me.  It is so fundamental a mistake that I think even U.S. Grant warned against it.”

“You would not be the first to make that mistake, surely.  General Grant must have seen it many times.”

“No, I’m not the first, but the next time I make that mistake, it might be my last.  In that case, everyone on board would die with me.  It was an unforgivable error.”

“Nonsense.  Ridiculous.” the doctor said with unexpected vehemence. 

“No, Doctor, you weren’t there.  It was a clear error in judgment.”

“I’m not disputing that it was an error.  In fact, for the sake of argument, I am willing to grant you that it was a profound error, of incalculable enormity.  What I am disputing is that the error was unforgivable.  There is no such thing as an unforgivable error.”  He grew grave.  “Truly.  I mean this most sincerely.  That is one of the most important things that you, I mean you most personally and particularly, must learn as a commander and as a man.  There are almost always chances of ameliorating the consequences of the wrong and there is always the prospect of forgiveness.  Always.  We are all the children of a merciful God.  We are all imperfect, flawed, weak, limited, and prone to temptation and error.  If we are contrite, strive to right our wrongs, and to abjure that transgression in the future, and if we earnestly and humbly beg his forgiveness, Allah will bestow it upon us.  And, if you are yourself forgiving of faults and errors in others, you will find that men will forgive your errors as well.”

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

“What’s that?”

“A line from the most famous prayer in my faith.  I’m not sure I ever understood, really understood, what that meant.  Until now.”

“Perhaps.  Or perhaps there is more for you to learn.  In any event, the crew certainly knows all about the incident with the Krag weapon and, almost to a man, they hold you blameless.  You are very well liked by all but a few on board.”  

“Well, maybe I won’t be so popular after I do what I have to do with these human prisoners off the freighter.”

“You’ve decided?”

“There isn’t much to decide.  Their IDs were all forged, so we ran their DNA through the system.  It turns out that they are all in the database.  They’re citizens of the Union, every one.  So, they’re not enemy combatants, to be treated as prisoners of war.  They’re not neutrals, to be sent to a labor camp for five years or so and then repatriated.  They’re traitors, plain and simple. 
Fils de putain.
”

“Why would anyone do such a thing?”

“Thirty pieces of silver.  The same old low treachery repeated down through the ages where a man takes his noblest loyalty and sells it to the highest bidder for a greasy bag of dirty coins.  They didn’t do a very good job of covering their tracks in the ship’s computer.  On delivery to a Krag Cruiser just inside their space, the freighter Captain was going to get three percent of the gold and each of the rest of the crew one percent.”

“What were the Krag going to buy with the gold anyway?  I thought they usually used their pharmaceuticals and high speed computer cores for foreign exchange.”

“Not a thing.  They have plenty of purchasing power.  What they don’t have plenty of is gold.  I mean the actual metal—it’s an accident of geology that most of their planets are poor in heavy metals:  gold, mercury, and so forth.  They need gold for industrial purposes, mainly for electrical contacts in precision equipment on their warships.  Intelligence says they have a real shortage, even to the extent that it is becoming a bottleneck in their industrial production.  And a little goes a long way.  Forty-two metric tons is at least a year’s needs for their whole military industrial complex.  Taking this cargo will put a real dent in their plans.”

“But, if Gold is so precious, why would the Krag pay the freighter crew with it rather than something else that is less valuable to them:  Romanovan Sestertii, notes on a neutral bank, pharmaceuticals that are readily sellable on the black market?”

“My guess is that the freighter rats wouldn’t have been paid at all.  Once that freighter got into Krag space under the guns of their Cruiser, the Krag would just kill the crew and keep the gold.  The ship, too.” 

“I cannot say that they would not deserve it.  So, what’s to happen to the freighter crew?”

“I will be consulting with Major Kraft and completing some documents in a few moments, but it’s all just a formality.

“You mean that you . . . that they . . . “

“Yes, Doctor.  They die.  Firing squad.  Right before breakfast.”

“Sudden death tends to ruin my appetite.”

“It never did much good for mine, either.”

Chapter
17

05:59Z Hours 30 January 2315

Like all but the smallest naval vessels, the
Cumberland
had a shooting range, so that men and boys alike could acquire and maintain proficiency with firearms in the only way possible:  shooting real weapons with live ammunition.  The range was not very large, and the maximum distance between shooter and target was only fifteen meters, but most shooting by Naval personnel takes place in close order combat, often at arm’s length or even less, so this limitation was not considered much of a problem.  When not being used for firearms, the room doubled as a small gymnasium.

This morning, however, the armed men arrayed on the firing line were not going to be shooting at targets.  They were going to be shooting at their fellow men.  Men with mothers and fathers and wives and children.  Men who, like them, were citizens of the Terran Union but who, for reasons that the men holding the M-88 Pulse Rifles could not fathom, had decided to betray the Human Race to an inhuman enemy bent on the annihilation of Mankind.

And, for that, they would die.  Today.  Minutes from now.

The five condemned men stood in a line against the armored back wall of the range—the one that was built to stop bullets.  They looked mostly dead already.  Pale, drawn, unshaven, bleary from lack of sleep, eyes vacant.  Two appeared to be in a near stupor, perhaps from the injections they had received from the doctor because they were shaking so hard they could not stand or walk.  These were not military men, hardened to danger and long accustomed to the idea that death might claim them on any given day.  They were freighter rats, and not particularly successful ones at that, whose consciences were barely flexible enough to allow them to sell cargo to the enemy in exchange for enough wealth to settle down on some nice planet with a house, a little bit of land, and a nest egg.  But this was more than they bargained for.

Go to bed with the devil.  You wake up in hell. 

The prisoners stared at the line of armed men in unconcealed horror.  The Navy did not believe in blindfolds or hoods; more than thirty years of brutal war had taken away whatever squeamishness the Service may once have had about death.  The shooters looked into the faces of the men they were killing and the condemned watched death coming to meet them.  The only sounds were the faint hum of the air handlers, weaving an almost subliminal, bass-clef harmony with the distant thrum of the engines.  All present stood in grim silence:  five condemned, fifteen shooters, the Commanding Officer, the Executive Officer, the Chief Medical Officer, the Marine Detachment Commander, the non-entity assigned to the ship as Chaplain, and, for their education and instruction, the three Chiefs who had tried to sabotage the Atmosphere Manifold.

The shooters had been selected at random by computer from the one hundred and sixteen men on board who had qualified as “Marksman” or higher with the M-88 Pulse Rifle.  Eleven spacers and four Marines.  The rifles were not loaded with the standard expanding/tumbling rounds used for Krag, but with old-fashioned full metal jacket ammunition.  The wounds would be neat.  No unnecessary blood would be spilled. 

At precisely the stroke of 06:00, Kraft hit a comm switch already configured to pipe sound to every comm unit in the ship and video to whoever wanted it.  Max produced two pages from his tunic and began to read.

“On 28 January 2315, as evidenced by the affidavits of a Commissioned Officer of the Union Space Navy and a Commissioned Officer of the Union Space Marine Corps, which affidavits are attached hereto and made a part hereof for all purposes, the five men present here today:  George M. Tremonte, Hikaru Akazaki, Alexander Wong, Mohammed Bahir, and Seamus O’Leary did give aid and comfort to the enemy by knowingly transporting cargo useful as materiel of war for the purpose of selling, bartering, or otherwise transferring said materiel to the enemy, the accused being citizens of the Terran Union and the Union being in a state of war at the time.

“Under the Fourth Revised and Supplemental Articles of War of September 9, 2112, by the authority vested in me as an officer of Command Rank in actual command of a Rated Warship on Detached Service in a War Zone, I hereby sentence the five men named above to death by firing squad, said sentence to be carried out immediately on this day, the 30
^th
day of January in the year two thousand, three hundred and fifteen.  May God have mercy on their souls.  Signed, Maxime Tindall Robichaux, Lieutenant Commander, Union Space Navy, commanding the
U.S.S. Cumberland.

“Chaplain, have the prisoners been given opportunity for the religious observances associated with impending death in accordance with their respective faiths?”

“They have,” responded the Chaplain.  None had wanted so much as a prayer.

“Chief Medical Officer, are the prisoners of sound mind and competent to stand for execution?”

“They are,” responded the doctor.  Not much competence was required.  So long as a man understood that he was about to be shot and why, he was fit to die.

“Advocate Officer, have these men been given the protections and legal process that they are due under the circumstances?” 

“They have,” responded Major Kraft, the vessel’s legal expert.  For traitors caught in the act these days, under the rules of “due process,” very little process was due.

“Executive Officer, have all procedures required for the execution of these men under the Articles of War and Naval Regulations been fully and completely carried out to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief formed after reasonable investigation?”

“They have,” responded the XO whose job it was to ensure that, if men were to be shot, they would be shot According to the Book.   

“Does any officer present know of any reason why these men may not be executed by firing squad here, on this day, at this time?”  Everyone stood silent for the prescribed count of five.  “Hearing none, we now proceed.”  Max took a deep breath.  He had never done this before.  He had seen this done before only once:  when he was twelve as a Midshipman on the old
Agincourt
.  He had thrown up on the deck.