A Just Determination

by John G. Hemry

  Another nod. "Yes, sir."

  "Hmmm." Commander Garcia swiveled to view Chief Imari and Paul squarely. "These look okay. Keep on it, Sinclair."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Did you need something, Chief?"

  "No, sir. As the Divisional Training assistant, I figured I should accompany Mr. Sinclair."

  Garcia looked from Imari to Sinclair, then pulled out the data cartridge and pointedly returned it to Paul before pivoting back to face his terminal. "That's all."

  Paul nodded to the back of Garcia's head and followed Imari out and back to CIC. "Chief, you saved my butt in there."

  "No, sir. I did my job, part of which is to help young naval officers through their learning process."

  Paul grinned. "Thanks. But I ought to take over maintaining these training records. I'm being paid to do it, after all."

  "Mr. Sinclair, how many jobs do you have right now?"

  "Ummm, five."

  "Yes, sir. So if I handle part of one of them, you got to figure the Navy is still getting its money's worth, right?"

  "That's true, but—"

  "But, nothing, sir. I'm the Division's Training assistant. That's official. There ain't anything wrong with me keeping these records up."

  "Commander Garcia told me to do it."

  "Yes, sir. And good officers don't try to handle every task they're responsible for themselves, do they? They delegate them." Imari reached and took the data cartridge from Paul. "Just like you're delegating this particular job to me. With all due respect, sir, you probably don't have the time to maintain these records right."

  "Chief, I can't argue with that. But I do want to go over those records with you and be familiar with them."

  "That's good, sir. Want to do it now?"

  "Yes, I—" Paul stopped, remember the data cartridge he'd received from Commander Herdez. "I want to, Chief, but there's something the XO told me take a look at."

  "The XO?" Chief Imari looked slightly disconcerted. "She's giving you tasking directly?"

  "No, chief, not like that." If the Executive Officer had been directly giving Paul orders on what to do within his division officer's job, instead of routing such instructions through Commander Garcia, it would have been a gross breach of the chain-of-command and poor leadership as well. "It's something to do with my collateral duty as ship's legal officer."

  "Oh." Imari didn't try to hide her relief. "That's okay, sir. You take care of the XO's stuff and we'll get together on the training records later."

  "Thanks again, Chief. Hey, is Kaji going to get those passive tracking quals done?"

  "Yes, sir. We had a little conversation about that and I think she's real motivated now."

  Paul kept a straight face with some effort. "Sounds good. Later, chief."

  Since his ensign locker was both empty and likely to be the best place for any degree of privacy, Paul loaded the XO's data cartridge into the terminal at his desk and began carefully picking his way through the convoluted official wording. The early sections were essentially boilerplate, standard wording with slight modifications to fit the exact circumstances of the Michaelson's upcoming patrol.

  Then he reached the section on operating instructions, and began bogging down. 'USS Michaelson is to conduct a thorough patrol of the U.S. space sovereignty zone, ensuring through her actions that all violations are countered in such a fashion that US sovereignty is unchallenged.' What does that mean exactly? A challenge to sovereignty can be as subtle as somebody sticking their toe into our claimed area of space. But these orders say we have to counter every violation. If the captain lets a single incident go unchallenged, we wouldn't be carrying out our orders. But 'countered in such a fashion that US sovereignty is unchallenged' implies that we've got to really got to hammer anyone trying anything. Or does it? The lawyers who taught me this legal stuff could have taken a phrase like that and made it mean anything.

  Paul read on, a headache growing as he tried to nail down meanings in phrases which seemed to grow increasingly vague. 'Actions are to be tailored to reflect requirements of the operational situation as well as tactical considerations . . . swift and effective response to emerging opportunities is expected . . . care should be exercised in avoiding unnecessarily provocative situations . . . nothing in these orders should be construed as limiting the captain's ability to respond appropriately to any situation.'

  The Rules of Engagement proved even more twisted than the operating instructions. 'USS Michaelson shall ensure that any violations of U.S. space sovereignty are countered with all appropriate and necessary actions.' "Shall" means the captain has to do it, but do what? "Appropriate" and "necessary" are both situational words. What one person thinks is appropriate in a certain case, someone else might declare inappropriate. So the captain has to do something, but they won't tell him what he can or should do. It's up to him to figure it out. Wait. 'USS Michaelson should refrain from any and all action(s) likely to generate activity resulting in adverse consequences for national policy objectives.' So we "shall" do everything "appropriate" but "shouldn't" do anything inappropriate, I guess.

  On one level, the instructions made sense. After all, captains of ships, by long tradition and legal precedent, were given great powers and expected to exercise a tremendous amount of discretion in using those powers. For Earth-bound or near-orbit operations, that old rule no longer really applied thanks to virtually instant communications networks which gave higher authority the ability to monitor and direct any action by a captain. But out in deeper space, the light-speed limit on communications meant that long periods could still elapse between the need for a decision and whatever direction came back from home. Captains had to be trusted to make decisions without precise instructions.

  But these orders are still too vague. There's no upper or lower limit on them. "Appropriate and necessary"? That could be nothing. That could be opening fire and destroying another ship. Or anything in between.

  Paul read on. 'The safety and security of USS Michaelson shall be safeguarded against hostile activity by taking all actions required in accordance with the tactical and operational environment.' How does that "shall" rank compared to the "shall" that directs the Michaelson do whatever it takes to prevent US sovereignty from being challenged? What if someone after the fact decides certain actions taken were or weren't "required"? Heck, it says "all actions required." "All"? We could be nailed if they think we didn't do one thing that someone could judge "required."

  He skipped down a ways, suddenly eager to see the accompanying intelligence assessment. 'Aggressive challenges to our sovereign claimed areas may materialize . . . foreign forces encountered may be operating under unknown rules of engagement . . . composition or nature of foreign spacecraft likely to be encountered remains unknown . . . possible hostile action cannot be ruled out but cannot be predicted at this time . . . unconventional threats remain possible . . . warning of hostile action may not be timely . . .'

  Paul rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes but still seeing in his mind the words of the orders he'd been reading. So, if my assessment of the legal meaning of these orders is right, we're being ordered to do everything we should do, but nothing we shouldn't do, against an unknown level and degree of threat, and do all that without making anybody mad that the US doesn't want to make mad. He thought of Captain Wakeman, happily hurling his ship through extreme maneuvers in the hope it might impress anyone who might be watching, without much thought to where the ship was actually going and planning on doing. And the paragon of good judgment and careful analysis who is supposed to decide what's "appropriate," "necessary," and "required" in every circumstance is Cap'n Pete Wakeman. Good grief.

  Paul began writing a report to the XO, working through it word by word to avoid implying anything about his opinion of Wakeman's judgment or ability to execute the orders. Just lay out the contradictions I see, and the areas in which guidance is vague enough to create potential problems. The XO doesn't need me telling her how to operat
e a ship. And I've got a feeling that if anybody on this ship can read between the lines and see trouble ahead, it's Herdez. He wasn't thrilled with the end result, but couldn't think how to improve upon it, so he sent it to the XO's inbox and hoped it would at least come close to meeting her standards.

  Chapter Four

  Lieutenant Jan Tweed slowly reached forward, gently tapping a few controls on her watch station console. In the dim lighting of the bridge, the gentle radiance of the illuminated control panels seemed to glow like small candles behind colored glass. On the screen displaying an image of the outside, nothing could be seen but endless dark spotted with countless stars, each bright and hard as a diamond. Somehow that vision of emptiness sucked the warmth from the bridge, leaving Paul shivering slightly, even though he knew the temperature inside the ship was comfortable for both humans and their machines.

  The ship's night had been in effect for hours now, with reddened, minimal internal lighting which helped keep human sleep cycles on track. When sunrise officially arrived in a few more hours, the internal lights would brighten to mimic daylight on Earth. But for now, darkness ruled both inside and outside the ship, as did a quiet aimed at aiding the sleep of those crew members fortunate enough not to be on watch.

  One month out of Franklin Station, weeks away from routes frequented by humans (though frequented often meant little in the vast spaces of the solar system) the Michaelson proceeded on a patrol marked so far by isolation and emptiness. Paul glanced at the time as Tweed worked at the casual pace of someone who knew they had hours of boredom yet to endure. The midwatch had started at midnight, ship's time, even though Paul had actually been on the bridge a half-hour earlier for turn-over with the officer he was relieving on watch. It would run until four in the morning, or 0400 on the twenty-four hour military clocks. Paul's thoughts idly wandered back to the days when he'd called that time 4 A.M., back before the Academy had rearranged the way he thought about time and a lot of other things. Back then, the eerie quiet of a world where almost everyone and everything else was asleep had been foreign to him. Now, the low lighting, the hushed silence aboard the Michaelson and the cold-beyond-cold outside the ship's hull combined to leave him chilled and subdued.

  Tweed leaned back again. From the speaker near her position, odd sounds began issuing. Something like whale song, veering wordlessly up and down the scale, snatches of almost-words growing to near-audibility then fading away, bursts of random static that somehow seemed to formed patterns just beyond his grasp, and beneath it all a low hiss of background noise.

  Paul shivered again. "What is that?"

  "Space ghosts." Tweed's lips quirked in a smile that was only half-humorous. "That's what they're called, anyway. You lower the noise filters for your radio receiver and expand the frequency reception band. Then you hear them."

  A long, low moan whispered across the circuit. "Jeez. That's weird. I guess it's actually really weak signals, Earth-origin and like that, too weak and distorted to be understood? And background radiation and stuff like that?"

  "Technically, yeah. A physicist can give you a full run-down of the likely origin of every sound you hear. But . . . if you listen to it, out here, you hear other stuff. Stuff that doesn't seem to fit technical models." A sound like a whisper, seemingly just a fraction too quiet to be understood, echoed softly, then vanished into a series of static bursts that almost sounded like Morse code, but weren't. "That's why they're nicknamed space ghosts. If you listen long enough, you start to hear things. Long lost ships calling for help, maybe. Aliens sending messages, maybe threats or maybe greetings. Other stuff." Jan Tweed half smiled again. "I served with a warrant officer once who swore that one night he heard his name called, clear as a bell, by an old shipmate. A shipmate who'd been dead several years."

  Paul fought down another shiver. "He was probably just messing with you. You know warrants. They love to play games with the minds of junior officers."

  "Maybe."

  "Mr. Sinclair?" Paul turned as his name was called. Petty Officer Juniro, the quartermaster of the watch, was nodding solemnly. Usually, the quartermaster and the bosun mate of the Watch sat in the rear of the bridge, conversing among themselves in a social world separate from that of the officers until professional duties required communication. "Sir, there's stuff out here that doesn't belong in any technical manual. That's a fact, sir." The bosun nodded as well, her face somber. "You heard of the Titan Expedition, right?"

  "The Titan Expedition? Which one?"

  "The second, sir. Where they lost those people?"

  "Oh, yeah. An ice quake, wasn't it?" He glanced at Tweed for confirmation. "They'd landed on what they thought was a stable section of the ice sheet covering that moon of Saturn, but then the sheet started breaking apart and throwing out plates of ice that could have sliced through the ship, so the lander had to do an emergency lift off to avoid being destroyed. Several members of the exploration team didn't make it back in time."

  "Right, sir. And then the fourth expedition."

  "The fourth? That had two landers, if I remember right. That's about all I know of that one."

  Juniro nodded, his eyes intent. "Right, sir," he repeated. "The third expedition, that one went somewhere else on Titan, but the fourth came back to near where the second one had landed. And it had two landers. Well, they hadn't been down long, the first ship's night in fact, when the watch standers on the first lander spotted some people moving on the surface." Paul raised his eyebrows to indicate interest as Juniro continued. "They was surprised, you see, 'cause there wasn't supposed to be anybody out exploring just then. But they spotted these suits moving. After they saw the first couple of them they tracked back and spotted the others coming up out of a cleft in the ice. Then they watched 'em, six of 'em, walk up to the second lander and walk up the access ladder and into the airlock."

  Paul glanced at Tweed, then back at the quartermaster. "So?"

  "So, like I said, sir, there wasn't supposed to be anybody on the surface just then. The watch notified the expedition commander and he called the second lander and demanded to know who the hell had sent a party out. And the second lander says 'Nobody.' They said they hadn't sent anyone onto the surface. So then the commander asks 'em who just came aboard the lander and they said 'Nobody.' And sure enough, the auto-logs for the second lander didn't show anybody coming in through the airlock. But the three watch standers on the first lander, three of 'em, sir, all swore they'd seen six suits walk to that lander and climb aboard."

  Juniro paused, looking from Paul to Lieutenant Tweed to the bosun. "That's when they remembered the second lander had been the same lander used in the Second Expedition. The one that left those crew members behind, sir." Juniro paused again. "And there'd been six of 'em, sir. Six crew left behind to be swallowed by the ice. Well, the instruments all said nothing had happened, but the watch standers on the first lander, they knew what they'd seen. Those six crew members, they'd finally made it back to their lander."

  Silence stretched, before Paul became aware he was holding his breath and inhaled deeply. He glanced at Tweed, who was frowning at the deck, then at the two enlisted. The quartermaster and the bosun nodded at each other, apparently sharing in a knowledge born not of physics but of years riding the deck plates, no trace of covert mirth on their faces. A long, undulating rhythm of static rolled out of Tweed's speaker, ending in a brief shriek which seemed to choke off abruptly. Outside, the stars glittered coldly.

  * * *

  Carl Meadows chuckled softly. "Juniro's a bull artist, Paul. He can spin a great sea-story, but don't buy any bridges from him."

  "So that stuff about the fourth Titan expedition isn't true?"

  Carl shrugged. "I've no idea. Could be."

  "The logs from the expedition—"

  "Wouldn't prove anything. If the incident wasn't there, you could argue the commander ordered them not to log it, or that the logs had been censored afterwards."

  Paul frowned. "I thought logs could
n't be altered once they were recorded."

  "Oh, hell, Paul. Maybe I ought to try to sell you a bridge. Of course they can alter logs. They're just electronic data. I don't care what safeguards officially exist, I'll guarantee you there's ways to get around them. Stuff happens that no one wants to be in logs, right? So you change history a little. Click, click, click. Never happened. All is right with the world."

  Paul laughed. "Okay. So I'm naïve. I'm an ensign."

  "You've been one for a few months, now." Meadows grinned. "You've got to start learning sometime."

  "Yes, sir, Lieutenant Junior Grade Meadows, sir. So what do you, personally, think? Is that Titan stuff just a ghost story?"

  Meadows pursed his lips, then shrugged again. "Hell if I know. Sometimes that stuff is easy to believe. Other times it sounds like nonsense. On the bridge, on the mid-watch, in the middle of nowhere, it plays real. But tell it in a bar on Franklin Station and you'd probably find yourself laughed out of Earth orbit."