“What’s that?”
“I am required by regulations to relieve you until further notice. You are simply too impaired to function properly. As this and the incident in Engineering demonstrate,” he pointed to Rhim’s injured right hand, “you are a hazard in your present condition, both to yourself and others. You will receive appropriate bureaucratic paperwork shortly, explaining that you retain your current rate of pay unless it is modified or stopped due to a separate disciplinary action by proper authority, as well as your right to an appeal hearing before a panel of enlisted men or to have your case reviewed at a Captain’s Mast, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, within a day or two.”
There was a knock on the examination room door. The doctor opened it to admit two rifle-carrying Marines and Major Kraft. The doctor said sadly, “I’m afraid I called them a moment ago, when I was out of the room. The regulations are quite specific on that point.”
Major Kraft announced, “Spacer Rhim, you are under arrest for consumption of a prohibited substance. After I read the doctor’s report, there will likely be other charges too, but that one will do for now. I need you to come with us.”
Turning to one of the Marines, “Carlsson, go to the quartermaster and draw a plain jane for him. We can’t have this man sitting in the brig in his underwear.”
The Marines led him from the room. Common sense, not to mention a specific naval regulation, said that one did not put a man in the brig in an SCU, with its oxygen generator full of volatile chemicals and various metal hooks, straps, fittings, and other hardware just asking to be used for mischief by a prisoner. So Rhim was issued a plain jane, a standard ship’s Working Uniform, but without any insignia, patches, or other markers of naval rank, occupation, and service history. A Navy man in a plain jane was clothed but visually stripped of his identity.
Sahin picked up Rhim’s SCU and deposited it in a bin for patient clothing. Then he strode to his workstation and wrote a hurried message for the commanding officer. “Need to see you as soon as possible regarding matter of great urgency.”
Less than five minutes later, the doctor was in Max’s day cabin. When a senior officer said “matter of great urgency,” Max took him at his word and acted accordingly. When Max found out what the problem was, he buzzed Garcia, Kraft, and “Wernher” Brown, telling them to meet him and Dr. Sahin in the wardroom. Seventeen minutes had elapsed since the CMO sent the text message, when a steward, having brought coffee to everyone except the doctor, who was “in the mood for tea today,” bowed out of the wardroom and closed the hatch. The meeting came to order.
The doctor briefly explained what he knew and the effects of the Chill.
“That explains a lot,” said Max.
“Explains what?” asked Brown.
“This crew’s performance,” Garcia finished Max’s thought. “Lots of things are just plain slow, slower than they should be, even given all the other problems on this ship. The performance against the enemy when Captain Oscar was in command, the performance in the fleet exercises, the performance in the training exercises I’ve been running since the change of command. I was wondering just a few minutes ago if something like a third of the crew—excepting the officers and the NCOs—was ill or had some sort of mental disorder. Now, I’m betting we’ve got a significant fraction—not most, but a significant minority—on this drug. And at least a few of the NCOs and maybe an officer or two, unless I miss my guess.”
“A third would be about right,” Kraft said. “I was about twelve hours away from coming forward with a program of random neural testing or quarters searches or something. There’s not a doubt in my mind that a lot of these men are on something. A blind man could see it. I watch the Discrepancy Reports from every department, and there are just too many minor errors being made all over the ship, even for a ship in a low state of training. Plus, I can see it in the crew’s eyes and their movements. What I don’t get is why so many? In training for this post, I learned that most ships have some kind of issue with drugs, but usually it’s only a small percentage of the crew. A manageable number. I’ve never heard of anything so widespread.”
“I have,” Max said. “You get it on an unhappy ship. If things are going well, you never have more than 2 or 3 percent using, if that many. But if you have a bastard skipper and the ship isn’t performing well and men don’t have pride in her, if she’s picked up an insulting nickname like ‘The Pitiful Pittman’ or ‘The Cumberland Gap,’ you can get as many as half of the men taking something to get them through it. Having a happy ship, a ship where the men know their duty, a ship that performs well and has a creditable record against the enemy—those things are the long-term cure for this.”
Accustomed to being dismissed by his seniors, the doctor was openly surprised that his observations were immediately being taken so seriously by the other officers. “Thank you all for being so ready to act to resolve this problem. I can identify who is using with comprehensive neural testing. The neural performance—”
Major Kraft’s percom beeped, halting the doctor in mid-sentence.
“Major,” Max said, annoyed. “Decorum dictates that an officer mute his percom when meeting with other senior officers, particularly when one of them is the CO.”
“I understand that very well, sir, but begging the Captain’s pardon, I assigned this sender a tag that would let the call come through. I believe it to be urgently relevant.” He flipped the cover open to reveal the main screen. He read for less than a minute and then nodded.
“When arresting a man for any drug offense, SOP is to conduct a thorough search of his quarters and all other areas under his control. The search of Rhim’s quarters turned up seventeen very small blue tablets that were not in a standard Navy prescription container as required by regulations. We brought them to be analyzed by Pharmacist’s Mate Nguyen. The results are on data channel 208, classified for access only by the people in this room. The tablets are clearly Atanipine. I’m betting Dr. Sahin here can tell us more than that from the analysis.”
Sahin had already gotten up from the small meeting table and helped himself to the captain’s workstation. He studied the screen for a few minutes, scrolling up and down, occasionally nodding to himself or quietly saying “ahh” and “hmmm.” Then he turned to the others.
“This sample was synthesized in a MediMax Mark XIV. All MediMax machines insert a microscopic marker chip, called an Auster dot, in every pill or capsule. The Auster dot is stamped with the make, model, and serial number of the machine; the name of the medication; the dosage; and the date the drug was made. And don’t worry—it is quite harmless. It passes through the alimentary tract and is eliminated in the feces. Very useful, by the way, as a simple fecal sample tells us what medication the patient is taking. So unless the marker routines have been tampered with—and this is very, very difficult—the time stamp shows that the tablets were made only yesterday. As we have been in deep space all that time, it is clear that someone has a MediMax on board and has gone into the recreational pharmaceuticals business.”
“And we have no reason to believe that the bloody thing is being used only to make the Chill, either,” said Brown. “Whoever has this beastly device could be making God-knows-what other pills for the men to pop and is selling them all over the ship.”
“Say, Doctor,” he continued, “what exactly are those Auster dots made of? Is the material anything that would break down in shipboard waste processing?”
“The material is some polymer that is impervious to digestive fluids. It is biologically inactive, so I never had any reason to learn the composition in more detail than that. I think it is very likely to be impervious to breakdown by saprophytic bacteria as well as by the kinds of enzymes used in waste processing.”
Brown seemed to have grasped the thread of an idea in his hand. “And what is their size, exactly?”
“One thousand microns.”
“That big? That’s a tenth of a millimeter! I’ll be able to te
ll you exactly what we’re dealing with here. Captain, if I may use your workstation, I need to get my people on this.”
“Help yourself, Wernher.”
Sahin relinquished the workstation to Brown, who pulled up the text message utility before typing furiously for two or three minutes. He hit SEND with a certain relish and leaned back in the chair. “There. That should do it.”
“Care to let us in on your brilliant plan, Wernher, or are you going to keep it to yourself until you have results to announce? We know doing it that way is good for increasing the dramatic tension.” Max’s light tone took the sting out of the words.
Brown nodded. “Gentlemen, as you know, the waste that goes down the head in your quarters and all the drains around the ship is rather heavily processed, particularly to extract the water for reuse. Virtually all of the mass is taken out, either by water extraction or by enzymatic and bacterial breakdown of the solids, but there is always a residue. We irradiate the residue to kill any remaining microorganisms and then compress it into rectangular shapes that we call ‘black bricks’ because they are very dark, hard, and dry. And rather than tossing them into space, we generally store them until we get back to a base because some captains,” he said, throwing a significant glance in Max’s direction, “are paranoid about an enemy being able to track our vessel or glean some intelligence about us if the bricks were found in deep space and their contents analyzed. We completely cleaned our treatment plant at Jellicoe Station, and we’ve produced several kilograms of black bricks since then.
“I just ordered that representative samples be pulled and pulverized finely, before being run through a particulate screen set to trap every particle between 950 and 1050 microns in size. My people will deliver the resulting particles to the Casualty Station, which has equipment for scanning objects of that size in detail, and we’ll know what our people have been taking.”
“Outstanding,” said Max.
“Let me call my people and give them instructions on how to get the results we need,” said Sahin. “They’ll need to exclude from the results the Auster dots from the pharmaceutical synthesizer in the Casualty Station, the ones from Jellicoe Station and the Casualty Stations from ships in the Task Force, and those from the five or so drug companies from whom the Navy buys pharmaceuticals.”
“Why not just look for dots from this one MediMax?” asked Brown.
“Because we aren’t certain that there is only one MediMax,” Kraft said. “We might have two or more capsule capitalists on board ship.”
The doctor went to a corner of the room to have a lengthy conversation with his percom.
“Let’s assume, for now, that we just have one,” Max said. “How do we catch him?”
“That is a standard law enforcement problem,” said Kraft. “Generally, this is accomplished by having an undercover operative or a confidential informant put out the word that he is in the market for a purchase, after which he’s contacted by the seller, a controlled buy is made, and the seller apprehended.”
“That’s fine when you’re on a large station or planetside, or even a large ship like a battlewagon or a carrier, but it doesn’t work on a small ship like this one,” Max said. “The seller knows his buyers all too well. Except for some officers and a few senior NCOs, this crew has been together for well over a year, most of them for several years. Our man is not going to sell to someone he doesn’t know, and we can’t turn one of his customers into our undercover buyer because the jungle telegraph on this ship is way too efficient. This seller will know almost right away if we pick up one of his users.”
“Why not just search the ship for the machine then?” Kraft asked.
Max shook his head. “Ships are thoroughly searched for contraband every time they put into a station or receive any repair or refit. It this man has a MediMax on board, he’s found a brilliant hiding place for it, or it would have been turned up in one of those searches. If the refit crews didn’t find it, we’re not going to.”
“Until now, I’ve always been on stations or planetside, Captain, so I don’t know this. How do you get these people on board ship?” Kraft held up his palms in a gesture of inquiry and ignorance. Max was impressed that Kraft was so ready to admit his own lack of knowledge and to learn from someone with greater experience. This trait was anything but universal, particularly, for some reason, at the level of seniority occupied by Max and Kraft.
“You catch them by being observant and patient. It’s a standard command problem. Over time they always make mistakes,” Max explained. “The crew goes on shore leave and there are rumors about some able spacer second being flush with cash, buying drinks for all his buddies, eating at the high-end restaurants, patronizing glamorous call girls, picking up expensive souvenirs and luxury items—that sort of thing. Or some crewman turns up in the Casualty Station obviously beaten by two or three other crewmen who are overheard yelling at him about cheating them or not giving them the stuff they paid for or going up on the price or cutting off their credit. Maybe you have a crewman who is a complete slacker, but seemingly, as if by magic, he has a superior who never puts him on report and two or three other crewmen who are all too willing to do his work for him.
“You see, one way or another, a man selling drugs on a ship is an anomaly, a deviation from the pattern. He has too much contact with too many people, spends too much money, receives too much deference, garners too much attention, and exercises too much power. Over a period of weeks or months, he stands out.”
“I’d rather not wait that long,” said Kraft.
“Neither would I,” said Max, “but I don’t know if we have an alternative.”
Brown smiled. “What if we don’t approach it as a law enforcement problem or as a command problem?”
“What kind of problem would it be then,” asked the major.
“An engineering problem.”
An hour and a half later, Major Kraft, Lieutenant Brown, the doctor, and Garcia were in the captain’s day cabin, ostensibly to share with their skipper a mid-morning cup of coffee. There was coffee, and there were even some reasonably appetizing breakfast rolls, but a morning pick-me-up was not the purpose of this little get-together. The men were present to implement the engineer’s idea without alerting the ship’s ever-churning rumor mill that something was afoot.
With a nod from the captain, Kraft kicked things off. “The doctor has gotten the results of the Auster dot screening. There’s lots of Chill being taken; we estimate somewhere between thirty and sixty users, depending on how many are purely recreational and how many are heavy addicts. There’s also a smattering of other recreational drugs: mainly an assortment of the current generation of stims, a couple of the more popular pain meds, one or two of the muscle relaxants that people like to take with alcohol, and it looks like we’ve got one or maybe two men on ‘lucies.’”
They needed to find that last person or persons right away. A crew member on hallucinogens was a serious hazard. “Every one of the dots came out of the same machine, so we’re looking for one guy. We ran the serial number and it’s a naval machine, last in official service on a Corvette, the CMD-1815. She made a forced landing on an asteroid in 2311 in some out-of-the-way system, and the crew died of hypoxia before they could be rescued. The ship was salvaged last year, and the salvage crew logged the Corvette’s MediMax as having been destroyed. So, somehow, the MediMax from the CMD-1815 got from that asteroid onto this ship, where it is poisoning our crew.”
“Then we need to catch the bastard. Well, Wernher, we are going to catch him, right?” Max asked.
“I am loathe to make promises, but it is very likely we shall. The doctor gave me access to his database on the MediMax Mark XIV, which contained a complete set of specifications and schematics. Unfortunately, it did not contain the data that I needed about its electrical characteristics when in operation, so we built one.”
“What?” Max interrupted. “You built a working MediMax! In an hour and a half? That thing mu
st have over a thousand separate parts.”
“It’s not as though I worked some sort of miracle, you know. I had five men working on it in addition to myself, and some of those men are truly promising engineers. We got it done in just over an hour. In point of fact, it has only 193 parts. We used all eleven of our FabriFaxes to churn them out. The main problem was the operating software, but we were able to copy the operating system from the ship’s unit, which is compatible with the smaller machine. We got it built, calibrated, and tested. It is working exactly according to the manufacturer’s specifications.”
Max looked at the doctor, who confirmed Brown’s statement. “Indeed. I manufactured several samples of some of the more difficult pharmaceuticals, and the device produced them in a manner identical to the factory unit. As far as I can tell, it is indistinguishable from the real thing except for the manufacturer’s markings and the color.”
“The color?” Max was curious.
“Yes, sir, the color,” Brown answered. “The real thing is mostly green and yellow, the colors of which the Krag are so fond. Ours is in a proper naval color scheme: Blue and gold.”
“Ça c’est bon,” Max nodded his approval.
“We tried to see if it gave off any special EM that we could pick up or had any other characteristics that would let us find it, but we couldn’t turn up anything. Then two of my brighter electrical and environmental systems guys, Aaron and Liebergot, thought to measure the current this thing pulls when it’s producing medications. It turns out that when the MediMax is in the chemical synthesis phase of production, it draws different amounts of power, depending on what it’s making, but at one point in the process, it runs a nucleon spectrographic analysis on the product, and when it does that, the machine pulls a current load of exactly eighteen-point-two-seven amps for three-point-two seconds, which is a lot for a device that’s not hardwired directly into the ship’s power grid. So, I’ve set the computer to monitor electrical usage in every compartment throughout the ship, and when we see a spike of eighteen-point-two-seven amps, we have our man.”
To Honor You Call Us (Man of War Book 1) Page 16
