by Diane Duane
The exec looked quickly toward O'Neill at the comms station, but got only a shake of the head. "Still no clear message from Nor-Pac Command," he said. "I guess the other subs are also calling for orders."
Stark knew that much already. At least with seaQuest's state-of-the-art communications gear, if any instructions were trying to filter through the natural and man-made interference, hers would get there first. The knowledge didn't make her any happier. "Dammit!" she snapped. "How many of these standoffs are we going to have before somebody makes a decision?"
"I figure as long as none of those other captains lose their cool, nothing ugly's gonna happen," said Ford with a reassurance none of them really felt. Cool or not, there was always the X factor—errors, accidents, malfunctions. Too many risks.
Captain Stark nodded absently. Like all the other times. "And we'll all move away," she said. "Continue our patrols. Always waiting. Always on the brink."
Like someone who climbs to the high board, she thought, but never takes the dive. Do that enough times and people will start to believe you don't have the nerve, and never will. They won't show you any respect. They'll think you're a coward, an easy mark, a pushover—because when it comes to the hard shove, you've always backed down before, and why should this time be any different? And when that finally happens, a lot of people are going to get killed. Better to lose a few right now, and get back the respect.
"How many of these stalemates have we engaged in over the past twenty months…?" she muttered to herself. Ford heard her plainly enough, but said nothing; the question hadn't been directed at him, and most likely didn't need an answer in any case. Dropping into the command chair, Stark looked around the bridge. They were all at their posts, intent on doing an efficient job, even though when the orders finally came through that job would likely be to disengage from combat stance and return to another standard patrol routine.
Until the next time. Or the time after that. Stark grimaced inwardly. This was a good crew, maybe the best she had ever commanded, and the constant roundabout of alerts and stand-downs was running them ragged, blunting their edge. It was wasting them. She gestured past the exec, a quick sweep of the hand that took in not just the bridge but the entire boat, and all the skills, all the weapons, all the potential that it contained. Reluctantly, Stark let just a little of the anger inside her creep into the open.
"Don't they understand that the only way to secure the peace is by strength? That this cat-and-mouse game will go on forever unless somebody takes a stand?" She looked sidelong at Ford. "This crew is ready. We've been ready for years." He said nothing, and that was as Stark expected. Ford, and all the command cadre aboard seaQuest, knew how capable the personnel aboard this boat could be if Nor-Pac Command just gave them the chance. But they didn't know, couldn't know, how deeply the Captain felt about it.
"My father faced a similar situation in Vietnam," she said. "Nineteen sixty-nine. Just a few years before I was born. Enemy right in his sights, superior firepower and tactical advantage. But he couldn't get through to his command for the green light." She glanced hopefully at communications, only to get another head shake from O'Neill. "You know what he thought of? Something my grandfather the general told him. Sometimes there's nobody to give you orders. Sometimes you gotta weigh up a situation and make your own choice. Just so long as you're ready to stand by it, right or wrong."
She saw Ford's expression change; just a little, but enough that his face couldn't hide what he was thinking anymore. The story—and the connotations behind it—had unsettled him, and it showed. His problem: if he wanted to make any higher than exec, if he wanted a command of his own, it was time he started considering all the implications of command decisions. The bad as well as the good ones.
"My father weighed the situation, he made the choice, he stood by it. And he took the shot. It earned him his gold bars." Stark finished speaking in a soft voice that was more for herself than for Ford. Then she rotated the command chair toward the helm station. "Come around, two-zero-niner and hold her steady."
"But we're not at war, Captain," she heard Ford say behind her.
Marilyn Stark's lips thinned in a tight, humorless smile as she mentally scrawled unsuited to promotion beyond present rank across her executive officer's file. "Neither was he. Officially."
The deck tilted slightly as seaQuest's bow began to swing, then evened up as the helmsman stabilized his controls. "One-niner-five, two-zero-zero, two-zero-five, zero-seven... Holding at two-zero- niner, Captain, and steady as she goes."
At the main sensor suite, Maxwell started punching buttons. "Whisker data coming in! Four class C shooter subs…"
The big main screens had been showing computer-enhanced views of the four threat subs since seaQuest came up out of the trench. They had been nothing but plain-vanilla observation images—until now. The new displays of relative bearing and range-to-target data scrolling along the sides of the screen were meant for much more than just observation.
"Target status?" Stark rapped at Maxwell. She could sense Ford moving closer behind her, and feel the pressure as his fingers dug into the padding of the chair.
"Captain, may I remind you that—"
"Not now, Commander." The hard, flat voice was almost a dismissal, and Stark ignored him. Ford might be on her bridge, but so far as she was concerned, right now he was no longer a useful part of her crew. "Mr. Maxwell…?"
The sensor chief eyed his monitors like a man staring down the barrel of a gun. "All targets— seventy-eight percent vulnerability. We're locked in attack position."
"Target grids."
"Grids activated."
The system was already on standby; it powered up at once, throwing targeting pinpoints over the primary strike areas on each enemy vessel. Stark favored the four submarines on the forward: screens with a speculative stare, then opened the covered panel set into the arm of her chair and flipped an independent-use weapons control pan-el up out of its recess.
The bridge went very quiet, and Stark saw several crewmen exchange worried glances. She could understand why, and even sympathize with them. This was getting too close. seaQuest had never gone weapons-free in any of the past encounters with other confederation vessels. Now she had done so without orders, on nothing but her own captain's discretion.
But that big step had to be taken someday, and who better to take it than somebody at the sharp end, somebody who had more immediate concerns than votes and public opinion. Somebody who had the training to see an opportunity and put it to good use. Somebody like Marilyn Stark . . .
seaQuest's torps were loaded, the tubes flooded, the bow caps open to the sea, and with the Whiskers deployed, there was no need even for the betraying ping of a targeting sonar. Just like her father: enemy right in his sights, superior firepower and tactical advantage. The parallels were too close for this to be a mistake.
"Captain. I strongly recommend that we wait for clear orders from Nor-Pac…” Ford leaned over the command chair, his voice pitched low, doing her the courtesy of keeping their difference of opinion private. For the time being.
Stark returned that courtesy by deigning to notice his existence again. She gazed up at him from the chair, noting the sweat on his skin, the fright in his eyes, the reluctance to admit that she was right. No, she concluded, not suited to command rank at all.
"Clear orders? Aren't you tired of this game?" she said, jerking her chin toward the main screens and the target displays that glowed on them. They looked like a computer game indeed, though for a higher score than mere points. "We aim at them, they aim at us, and the world waits. For what? Nothing. Until the next time. Every-body's too afraid to fire. Afraid of what it might start. They're forgetting that if you want to finish something, you have to start it first."
She slapped her hand against the chair, close enough to the control board's firing toggle that she saw him wince. "We shouldn't be afraid. Look at this boat: the ‘ultimate war ship.’ We have the strength and the adva
ntage. Don't you understand? We have an opportunity to end this madness once and for all. Do what we've been trained to do."
Her voice rose, so that heads turned all over the bridge. She didn't care anymore; this matter had gone beyond mere theoretical discussion. It was only right that the crew of the finest submarine in the fleet should know what the best captain in the fleet intended for them. Glory...
"I've weighed up the situation for years, Mr. Ford," she said, and grinned at him. "I've known this decision would have to be made sooner or later. But I'll stand by it. My name deserves a place in the history books. Maybe they'll mention you, too..."
O'Neill's urgent voice cut through anything else Stark might have said. The comms officer was almost on his feet with excitement and relief. "Captain!" It was just short of a shout. "Confirmed orders are coming in from Nor-Pac Command: Do Not Fire! Repeat: Do Not Fire!" He recovered control of himself as the entire bridge crew let out a collective sigh of relief, and delivered the rest of the message in a more normal voice. "The other subs are receiving similar orders…”
The Captain didn't move. Stark gazed fixedly at the main screens as if she hadn't heard— or had decided not to listen. They wanted her to back down again. To deny her ancestry, to throw away the accumulated respect of generations just because they were afraid of the consequence of actions they were afraid to take. Nothing but fear and lack of resolution. Lack of moral fiber. In older times, soldiers had been discharged from the service for that, or been put up against a wall and shot. Somebody had to take a stand. Somebody like Marilyn Stark..
Her hand moved toward the firing toggle.
"Captain...!"
The cold stare she shot at Ford was no different from the way she had been gazing at the target submarines. It held a promise of imminent disciplinary measures, on top of a demand that he be transferred somewhere, anywhere, just so long as it was of seaQuest. A man like that didn't deserve to stand on the bridge of a boat like this, to be part of a crew like this, to serve under a captain like this.
"History is waiting, Commander. And I won't make the excuse that I was only following orders..."
She reached for the toggle, but Ford's hand was there first, slapping it back down into its molded recess to disarm the weapons control. Then he grasped her arm and held it, preventing her from reactivating the system. Stark glared at the fingers on her wrist, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. It had gone beyond the countermanding of an order: this was mutiny!
"I can't let you do it, Captain." Ford sounded anguished, whether from the fear she had seen so plainly on his face, or because he still respected her and hated what he was doing. Good, bad or indifferent, the reasons didn't matter to Stark. Only the action they had prompted. Her eyes narrowed, a focus for the fury burning behind them.
"You are relieved, mister!" The voice was a whipcrack, a sound that in all her fleet career had never been disobeyed. If Ford wouldn't back down, Maxwell or one of the others would come up here and make him. It had always been that way before; there was no reason why it shouldn't be that way again.
She was wrong...
CHAPTER 3
Thirteen months later the darkness had passed, and there was light everywhere.
The burning blueness of clear afternoon light in the Caribbean is hard to believe even when you're in the middle of it. Sky mirrors sea, and sea reflects sky... until the eye is baffled and looks for somewhere to rest, anywhere, any difference of color. It soon finds them, for here in particular the sea is not just one color. The warmth and clarity of the water clearly reveal what more northerly seas cannot—detail of color and texture on the bottom, and most particularly, detail of depth. Here and there, offshore, as the whites and pinks of sand shade down through pale aqua toward turquoise and cyan, there appears something abrupt to break the smooth transition of shades—a sudden patch or hole of pure deep indigo, indicator of much deeper water, a blue hole leading downward and perhaps away. The sea bottoms are not solid, here: they have known too much activity in the past four or five millennia, and caves and substrate tunnels are everywhere in the warm darkness, for those who know how to find them.
One of those who did was gliding some feet under the surface, over the deep downward plunge of one of those holes, when he heard the noise overhead. The dolphin cocked his head upward; even with the poor conductivity that comes with airborne sound impacting into water, he could tell it was nothing normal. He headed topside.
As his sleek, beaked head broke the surface, the noise became almost unbearable, ratcheting and howling against his skin, a deep, thrumming roar that slapped across the water of the lagoon and drove outraged birds skyward from every tree in sight. He winced a bit and looked up as the blocky, angular shape whooshed across the water. It was riding across the waves in a churn of creamy foam, moving as fast as a shark, but nowhere near as quietly. It headed for the shores of the island that surrounded this hole in the water, slowed as it surged up onto the beach, then began to settle downward, kicking up a great storm of sand and noise as it did so. Finally it was still on the sand, and the dolphin looked at it for a moment as something like a mouth began to open in its side. He could see movement in the shadows within. That made up his mind about what to do, and with much less fuss than the hovercraft had produced, he dove again.
From a blue pool not too far away, the dolphin's shape broke the surface, and then, right by it, a man stood up from the water, wearing a suntan and nothing else. He shook the water out of his hair and made his way to the shore with the fish he had speared; he shook out the clothes that had been hanging on a nearby branch, slipped into them and started into the undergrowth.
The man walked up the path he had made through the tropical plants, brushing them aside, occasionally muttering as one of them sprang back and hit him in the eye. I should take a machete to these things. They're getting out of hand again, he thought, but who has time? He switched the spear and fish to the other hand, shrugged to resettle the monitoring device slung over his shoulder on its worn strap, pushed back another big branch of bougainvillea and stepped out into the fringes of the clearing—
And stopped. There were people, uniformed people, outside his house. Practically inside it.
The eyes in his craggy face tightened like a trap about to snap shut. He could just imagine what they thought of the house. Well, the outside of it, anyway, was just a thatched shack on stilts: but the way they were forgathered on the ramp leading up to his front door, goggling at the inside, suggested that the house's contents had caught them by surprise. Good, he thought, annoyed.
He paused a moment, considering, and then decided to take it lightly. He came out from under the shelter of the palms and strode up among them, whistling, finally shouldering them aside—politely enough—as he went up the ramp. "Excuse me. Pardon me. Stepping past... so sorry...”
Right past their astonished faces he went, and into the house, feeling them staring at him from behind, and smiling slightly at their discomfiture. If they had been surprised by what was in the house, heaven only knew what they thought of him: tanned dark, scruffy-bearded, carrying a wickedly sharp fishing spear with three big bluefish impaled on it, wearing an ancient faded Hawaiian shirt and old khaki shorts, sandals and the baseball cap he had woven himself out of palm fronds, with the scribbled intertwined NY of the Yankees on it. A sight, he thought, glancing around to make sure that no one had slipped in and touched his equipment.
There was enough of it, but it was mostly the kitchen side of it he was interested in at the moment. He had cleaned the bluefish down by the water; now he slipped them off the spear, picked up a knife and started to work on them. The visitors took the excuse to slide into the main room behind him, staring at everything. Well they might stare. Packed into this twelve-by-twelve space, racked up against the rough walls, was enough scientific equipment to remind a casual observer of a homemade Mission Control, or possibly some old TV starship's bridge. All carefully chosen over a matter of years
to do exactly what he needed, regardless of price, the banked instruments and their controlling computers sat quietly doing their jobs on storage power.
One of the people, a woman, stepped forward and looked at him. She was uniformed like the rest, tropical shirtsleeve order, with the rank bars of a full commander on her shoulder boards and a dinky little badge that said "Webber" over one shirt pocket. "Captain Bridger...?"
He shook his head, put the first bluefish aside, started in on the second. "Bridger?" he said, flattening the fish with a crunch to get backbone and ribs all out in one. "Bridger... Not around here. Have you tried the other side of the island, around Seventy-seventh Street? I think there's a Bridger over that way. Mind you, he leaves for work early, so you better hurry..." He inclined his head to her, the gesture of two strangers meeting in the street, and eased past; then looked at another of the intruders and gave this man a long, slow top-to-toe examination. "Nice outfit." That was all.
Webber looked at him incredulously, then beckoned to the officer whose neat recruiting-office appearance had been so casually dismissed. He stepped up beside her and offered a readout on a small pad. Webber glanced at it, then nodded and smiled.
The second fish was done: the scruffy beachcomber reached sideways for a pan and poured a little olive oil into it, ignoring the two who looked from the readout to him again. "The man we're looking for is Nathan Bridger," persisted Webber. "Former American naval captain—served nine years in the North Pacific Confederation forces. Submarine commander. Everybody, including his enemies—especially his enemies—called him the best."
