The Merrimack Event (Shieldclads Book 1)

by David Tatum

  “That’s not sufficient” the WISPR officer growled. “Those scientists cannot be allowed entry to the ruins.”

  “What do you expect us to do? These are the top scientists in their field. Denying them entry would look suspicious at this point, and their reputation would make it difficult to arrange for some ‘accident’ to happen to all of them without serious repercussions.”

  That clearly didn’t satisfy the WISPR agent. “I need to speak with your President. If we can’t deny them entry one way, then perhaps we can find another.”

  ——————————

  Earth Alliance Naval Headquarters, Admiralty Building

  Admiral Mumford frowned as he looked down the list that Captain Morrison had handed him. “You seem to be one person short,” he said coolly. “Would you care to explain the omission?”

  Morrison nodded. “Yes, sir. I needed a specialist and knew no-one who qualified. I’m requesting that you find me a reservist for the position. As the head of his department, I would have expected him to be assigned to me, anyway.”

  Mumford nodded slowly. He had given her wide latitude because she seemed competent when he’d talked to her, and because his granddaughter had recommended her, but now he was having some doubts. “What position is it?”

  “I need a chief surgeon. I don’t want a nurse or an intern in a position like that, should an emergency situation arise,” Morrison replied. “Let’s face it – with this many rookies on board a ship, there are bound to be a few serious accidents.”

  He realized she had a point, but the Academy had one of the better medical schools under its care. She was right about the dangers inherent in this exercise, but there wouldn’t likely be too many of them for a Naval surgeon’s first experience. “I suppose we can arrange for a reservist with a medical background to join your crew. I would prefer we use an internist from the medical college, however.”

  “I considered them, sir, but I had to reject the idea of using an internist,” she interrupted without hesitation, surprising Mumford with her boldness.

  “Oh? None of the other instructors complain about using internists, Why is it so different for your crew?” he asked, finally letting his frustration show in his voice.

  Morrison hesitated. She hadn’t expected the Admiral to be this annoyed at her request. She quickly found her resolve, however. Her fainting spells might prevent her from ever commanding a ship, but she didn’t get to the rank of Captain by being completely unable to stand her ground in stressful situations.

  “Simple, sir,” she replied, looking him dead in the eye. “Most of your other instructors were looking for crews for ships that have more than one doctor. Thanks to her status as a former gunboat, the Chihuahua has a smaller medical complement than any other warship in the exercise, modern or restored. Even the other corvettes have billets for two people who can hold the watch as a doctor. In my case, I had only one... and, if there’s a chance of a medical emergency, I wanted the crew to have a seasoned professional who we know can handle it rather than an inexperienced first-time surgeon who has no-one to cover for him if he freaks out.” She paused. “And I did obtain the nurse and both orderlies from the medical college.”

  Mumford checked the crew requirements again. She was right – they did call for a lone doctor to handle the medical care of all two hundred and fifteen personnel. Some smaller ships, such as light transports (when not transporting passengers) could get away with it, but the requirements usually called for multiple doctors – usually one for every one hundred and twenty personnel on board. When the Chihuahua was a gunboat, she only had a crew of ninety. Her expansion into a corvette more than doubled the crew size, and that didn’t even account for the added Marine complement. Apparently, a new doctor was not added to the staffing requirements after the refit... and he hadn’t checked it before handing her the assignment.

  He was tempted to tell her to go ahead and double the requirements for medical staff, giving two more opportunities for the Academy Medical College’s doctors. That wasn’t advisable, however – most of the extra space for crew quarters had been carved out of the missile storage lockers the Chihuahua used when she was a gunboat, and still the crew and even some officers had to hot bunk in order to fit everyone. Adding more medical staff would only exacerbate a different problem. No, a veteran doctor was a significantly more practical solution than increasing the crew size.

  “Yes, I see that now.” Mumford said. His tone surprised Morrison; he wasn’t known as the most forgiving of people. “I’m sorry to say that in the rush to select the ships for this year’s Wargame, we didn’t pay attention to your crew requirements – we just took the old list from when she was last commissioned. I’ll get you that doctor, Captain Morrison. And, as I promised, I will support these other crew selections.” He checked the list she had provided and almost laughed. “Four of the most requested tactical officers are in your crew, and one of them isn’t in your tactical staff. Although I understand why he isn’t – he’s also one of the top ten most requested Engineering officers.”

  “Are you speaking of Cadet Desaix, sir?” she inquired.

  Mumford nodded. “He, along with Cadets Katz, Cohen, and Langer were the four most requested Tac Officers. Ms. Katz was requested personally by every single one of her instructors, and Mr. Cohen and Mr. Desaix by several as well. Langer was too junior for anyone to seriously consider him as their senior tactician, but there were a fairly sizable number of calls for him to be an assistant tactical officer.

  “Dare I ask if any other of my requests will ruin my fellow instructors’ plans?” she joked.

  Mumford laughed. “A few. Mr. Wolfgang Schubert was one of the top ten requested helmsmen and Eric Drake was asked for by quite a few people. Lauren Weber and my own granddaughter, Emily were both requested by other instructors, as well.” His eyes twinkled. “I think your students just might surprise a few people on the Fleet side. Not enough to change the result – the Argus-class battleships just make it too lopsided – but enough to get their names noticed if they do well.”

  “It should be interesting, sir.”

  The Admiral grinned. “Yes, it should be very interesting.”

  ——————————

  Earth Alliance Naval Academy, Earth Campus

  The door chime for the quarters shared by Christopher Desaix and Wolfgang Schubert rang softly, but no-one answered it. Rachel Katz, the sounder of that alarm, was starting to get rather frustrated at the lack of response. She, Schubert, and Chris were supposed to be meeting before the party Robert Orff was throwing. A sort of last hurrah before the ‘big event.’

  They would soon be boarding the EAS Gnat, their transport to the Wargame. Orff, in his capacity as their corvette’s executive officer, had decided that the crew needed to “bond” before they had the stress of refitting a warship on their hands, and this would be the final opportunity to do so. If Chris and Schubert left for that party without her, Rachel would be ‘bonding’ with them using her fists.

  The three of them had started working together with more of a sense of camaraderie since the Morrison project ended. Chris’s nightmares had settled down to more irregular occurrences, according to Schubert, but Rachel was still keeping an eye on him to ensure his stress levels didn’t get too high. Chris was slowly growing on her, though they still bickered from time to time. And she found an increasing level of respect for him rising in herself, as well – she was learning that her initial impression of him as a lazy idiot who got lucky with Admiral McCaffrey’s was very mistaken. He still lacked a proper military attitude, and he still spent an amazing amount of time working on his antiques to the detriment of his class work, but he got away with it because he was very good at the subjects he took. As far as she could tell, he was as good at engineering as he was at tactics, if not better. Besides, he’d shown on their joint projects as partners that he was willing to pull heavy hours for class work when the pressure was on.

  He w
as definitely going to be a very valuable resource in the upcoming Wargame. The Chihuahua restoration project would be difficult even for experienced engineers, but Chris was quite possibly the best man for it. He had the technical expertise for the modern engineering, but his hobby of restoring antiques would help him understand even the most archaic piece of equipment better than most active duty engineers. He would be wasted on the routine maintenance work he would be expected to handle once the Chihuahua was commissioned, though, which made her really wish there was some way of combining the engineering and tactical positions for him. Then again, considering how much pressure that would add (and how many nightmares that, in turn, would likely give him), perhaps it was just as well to leave it alone. Maybe, though, she could convince whoever was assigned as Captain of the Chihuahua to include Chris in the ship’s tactical briefings.

  She had also established a better rapport with Schubert. Her only real complaint with him in the past had been that he’d always sided with Chris in the ‘epic battles of wit and wisdom’ they had. While the man was much too brash – and occasionally foul-mouthed – for her taste, she had learned to respect the navigator-in-training’s steady resolve. And his loyalty to his friends.

  She had been disappointed some four days beforehand when Schubert had been suspended from the Academy for three days after a bar fight. She later was astonished to learn that someone she didn’t even know named Joel Farmburg was badmouthing her, and Schubert only got into the fight because he spoke up for her. She didn’t know what rumor Farmburg tried to spread, but from the scuttlebutt flying around the dorm it was, “something she would have kicked the bastard’s ass for,” as Jeff Cohen had put it. Schubert sent the man to the hospital, but had only been suspended for three days – whatever was said must have been bad enough that the Academy’s disciplinarian had even sympathized with him.

  When she’d asked Schubert about the matter directly, he’d answered with a rather cryptic, “It wasn’t exactly the gist of what he was saying that I objected to, Ma’am. Rather, it was the tone of his voice and the crudity of the words he chose to express himself with.” She didn’t quite understand how that explanation would match with what she’d heard, but she intended to find out. Especially considering how formal and stilted the obviously prepared line he had used, with “Ma’am” instead of the usual “Rache” he had adopted from his roommate. Chris seemed to be just as perplexed by his answer as she was; apparently he’d been treated to the same speech, word for word (he’d even accidentally started to say “Ma’am,” according to Chris).

  Regardless of what was said, Schubert had leapt to her defense against the one who said it. She had briefly feared he had a crush on her or something – she definitely didn’t want to deal with something like that – but apparently not. Oh, he had flirted with her on occasion, but in ways that made it obvious he was joking around rather than in any serious way. Rather, he seemed to have decided that “any friend of Chris’ is a friend of mine,” as he once said. She would definitely have objected to the term of “friend” to describe that relationship, but Schubert apparently thought she was close enough.

  And perhaps he was right, at least in a sense – Chris seem to have very many people whom he could even consider long-term acquaintances. Jeff Cohen was a “chess partner” who Chris hardly met outside of class. Lots of Rachel’s fellow classmates were jealous of Chris’s accelerated promotion or were intimidated by it. Worse, she’d been given (with some censoring, as she was only his superior in cadet rating) a copy of his personal information file when he arrived in the dorm hall. She was the Commanding Officer of Dorm House Seven (a position similar to the RA in civilian college dorms) and received files on all of its residents, but she almost never looked at them. In recent days, she’d pulled that file out and taken a look. A lot of the file had been redacted, especially when it came to “personal history,” but she noticed a conspicuous absence in the field labeled “Next of Kin.” He had once mentioned a sister, but it was the wistful reminiscence of someone who hadn’t spoken to his family in years.

  It was unfortunate. He was a nice guy who deserved friends and family in his life. It was also unfortunate because he might need a next of kin if he didn’t open that damned door pretty soon – she was starting to get frustrated enough to kill someone and he was one of the two most likely targets.

  Rachel sighed. She had the skeleton key for all of the rooms in her section, and it wasn’t as if it would be the first time she’d barge in on the privacy of the occupants of this particular room. She pulled it out and typed in the code for entry to the dorm room, slid the card into the optical reader, and waited impatiently for the overrides to take effect. She always felt it was counterproductive for the skeleton key to give a ten second warning chime. She had yet to figure out why that particular part of the procedure was included, but it didn’t usually matter in the performance of her surprise inspection duties.

  The door finally opened and she stormed inside, intent on tearing a hole into both of her fellow cadets for taking so long. She finally realized the reason for that ten second alarm when she caught Chris hastily wrapping a towel around his waist. His hair was dripping wet and a formal set of clothing that unexpectedly complimented her own choice of civilian attire was laid out on the bed. He looked somewhat embarrassed.

  “Hey, Rache,” he said a touch too quickly. “Sorry I’m running late – Wolf was supposed to let you know. Where is he, by the way?”

  She blinked. He didn’t know where Schubert was, either? “Good question. I thought you two had forgotten about me, you were taking so long... I wonder what happened to him?”

  Chris grabbed his clothes and headed to the bathroom, closing the door only part-way so they could still talk. “He told me he was going to let you know I was going to be late. I thought he was going to comm you, but apparently he forgot. When did you get here?”

  “I’ve been waiting at your door almost ten minutes. Why are you so late, anyway?”

  “Got held up talking to Admiral McCaffrey,” Chris answered. His voice was so casual Rachel wondered if he didn’t have “chats” with the Admiral every day.

  “Uh, what about?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Technically it’s classified, but I suppose your clearance is as valid as mine,” he said, emerging from the bathroom as he buttoned up his shirt. Rachel was watching, and noticed him accidentally skip a button. She was going to say something, but decided to wait to see how long it took him to notice. “I was under the impression it was only classified because he doesn’t want certain people to know he thinks they’re absolute imbeciles. He warned me that I would quickly learn the man who has been put in command of our Fleet in the Wargame is an effective desk officer but tactically incompetent. He cautioned me that it would probably be unwise to criticize him.”

  “I’ll say it would be,” Rachel squawked. “Criticizing any superior officer is contrary to discipline, and can ruin the career of anyone foolish enough to say something where the person in question can hear it!”

  “I know that much, I’m not a complete idiot,” Chris muttered, tucking in his shirt without ever noticing the missed button. “But apparently our ship’s CO doesn’t. The Admiral was asking me to quietly relay that ‘suggestion’ to him. He even gave it to me in writing.”

  “Any word, yet, on who the regular Navy people are?” Rachel asked, trying to distract herself from his shirt, again.

  “For the Academy side or the regular Fleet?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, our captain is going to be one Lieutenant Commander Conrad Burkhard, a veteran XO from a frigate. He’s up for promotion, and I’m told he’s very good, but he has a habit of arguing with his senior officers if he thinks they’ve made a mistake.” Chris grinned. “Mike said he’s usually right.”

  Rachel shuddered at the use of “Mike” as a nickname for someone as exalted as Admiral McCaffrey. As a four star Admiral, only the Navy’s senior-most flag officer (Admira
l Pratchet) and the Acting-Chief of Naval Operations (who, by quirk of fate and the premature retirement of the former CNO, was also Admiral Pratchet) officially outranked him. Admiral McCaffrey was treating Chris as his newest protégé, so possibly they really were familiar with each other enough to address each other so informally, but even so the thought of a mere cadet like Chris (or herself) talking about a four star Admiral that way gave her the chills.

  “Well it sounds as if we’ve got a good captain, at least,” she said, trying to recover. “We’ll need a good veteran officer, given what we’re going to be flying. Any others?”

  “The man Mike warned me about is a Captain John Green. He’ll be the Commander-in-Chief for our fleet. He’s known as a poor leader and a terrible tactician, but he’s an excellent diplomat. The Senate loves him, and they requested him personally.”

  Rachel winced – this time for more than Chris’ casual use of the Admiral’s name. “I can see why Admiral McCaffrey gave you that order.”

  “I’ve heard the Army is lending us an officer to be our ship’s Marine CO, but there’s no word yet on who,” Chris said, sitting down and slipping on his shoes. “Other than that, the only person I know who’s going to be involved on our side is Lieutenant Raymond Sharpe, the captain of the Gnat. He and his ship are going to be acting as ‘civilians’ that will need to be protected.”

  “Do you know anything else?”

  “Well, fortunately for us, Admiral Mumford will only be observing us from a ‘designated-neutral’ ship and will not be leading the regular Navy forces, as I feared. Unfortunately for us, the person he picked was Vice Admiral Lee Craig.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened. “She’s going to be in charge? Wasn’t she supposed to be the brains behind that operation in Castor Sector a few years ago?”