Claws That Catch votsb-4

by John Ringo

  “There has to be one boss on a ship, XO,” Prael said fiercely.

  “Agreed,” Bill replied. “I’m not going to override one of your orders. Unless it’s going to get us killed and you don’t realize it. I hope that we don’t hit that point. And I don’t want to grapp with your confidence; a CO has to have it. But Spectre could maintain his confidence and ask questions, even in front of the crew. Can you?”

  “We’ll see,” Prael said. “But the thing you need to figure out is that I’ve got nearly twenty years of experience as a Naval officer and this isn’t the Enterprise. It’s a U.S. Naval vessel.”

  “Correction, again, Captain,” Bill said with a sigh. “It’s an Alliance Space Vessel. Why couldn’t they have chosen that for the actual name? And, sir, I have over twenty years of experience in the fields of engineering, quantum physics, optics, physics, astronomy and astrophysics. And, sir, as much as you may know about Naval bureaucracy and the play of wind and wave and how to calculate buoyancy, when we hit zero-G all that experience means exactly dick. And at that point, mine becomes critical. If you cannot handle that or if you cannot figure that out, then please request relief. Because if you’re unwilling to learn, we’re all doomed. As for me, I want to learn how to be a good XO. I’m more than willing to learn to be a good XO. I know that I’m still unqualified to be a CO and I’ll be watching your moves to see how while learning my job.”

  “As I said, we’ll see,” Prael said, standing up. “Miss Moon is still not to be given duties outside her specific area of expertise. At least for the time being.”

  “That’s your right as CO,” Weaver said, shrugging.

  “And you think I’m making a mistake,” the CO said.

  “Several, actually,” Bill replied. “You’ve undercut me with Chief Gestner which means that in the future he’s going to think he can walk all over me. Any time he’s unhappy with one of my orders he’ll cry to the Eng who will, in turn, cry to you. He’s also going to ignore my advice on interacting with Tchar, which will reduce his ability to get things repaired. And from his attitude, he’s going to have a tough time interacting with the Hexosehr but that’s just a guess. On the direct subject of Miss Moon, you’re going to be subject to unintentional and intentional harassment during the cruise. And if you directly control her, such as confinement to quarters, you’ll both lose the respect of the crew, especially those who are veterans of her previous cruises, and you’ll almost undoubtedly get reprimanded upon our return for illegal restriction of a civilian technical specialist. Last, you’re positioning yourself, mentally, to ignore my advice or, more probably, fail to access it. Given experiences from previous cruises, that is likely to be a bad thing. However, none of those are, at this point, critical issues that will kill us. So I’m raising no objection. You did, however, ask.”

  “You’re going to be a pain in the ass, aren’t you?” Captain Prael said.

  “Apparently, sir,” Bill replied, tiredly. “But as my momma used to say, don’t ask me a question if you don’t want the answer.”

  “Well here’s one for your professional development, Captain,” the CO said. “We can have these sorts of differences in private, but you’d better damned well keep them to yourself around the crew.”

  “Aye, aye,” Bill replied. He leaned back and shuddered after the door closed, rubbing his face. “Maulk. This is gonna be one grapped up cruise.”

  “This is maulk,” PO Ian “Red” Morris said, unbolting the separator from its mounts. “I know how to fix this piece of maulk. You’ve got to open it with a melder, though.”

  “And Gestner doesn’t want to hear for melders,” Michael “Sub Dude” Gants said, engaging the jack to lower the multiton separator. “Miriam’d have this thing fixed in five minutes,” he continued, sucking in through his teeth.

  “No chither,” Red said, pulling his Number Two arm off and replacing it with Number Four. Two was good for small work but Four had more power. On each of the previous two cruises, the machinist had been hit by fire in, respectively, his right arm and right leg. He had a human prosthetic arm, a good one, and a Hexosehr prosthetic leg, a better one. He placed his prosthetic leg against the bulkhead, grabbed the hand-hold on the separator and pulled, rolling the massive piece of machinery out onto the deck. “He and the CO are going to be right sorry about that when we’re outside.”

  “Sorry about what?” Chief Gestner said pointedly. Neither of the machinists had heard him arrive.

  “Sorry you ignored the XO,” Gants said, pumping the jack and lifting the separator up to the level of the carry-cradle.

  “Keep your opinions to yourself, PO,” Gestner said angrily. “I get lip from you like that again and I’ll have you up on report.”

  “Chief, maybe you should just ground me now,” Gants said, helping Red get the separator positioned. “Because, honestly, you’re going to hear my opinions if you ask me a direct question. Gonna happen. You asked, I answered. If you consider that insolent, then you’d better ship me out now.”

  “Just get this thing replaced,” Gestner snarled.

  “Aye, aye, Chief,” Red said. “What are we supposed to do with it?”

  “Send it to dock for repair,” the Chief said. “We don’t have room to keep it on the ship.”

  “It’s times like this I wish Macelhenie had survived the last cruise,” Gants said as soon as the chief was out of earshot.

  “It’s times like this I contemplate the pleasure I would obtain by brushing old Numbah Fow across his face,” Red said, holding up the massive prosthetic. “It’d be a right pleasure.”

  “Come on,” Gants replied, shrugging. “Let’s get this thing winched out of the ship and see about finding a spare.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Lieutenant Ross said, looking at the directive.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Eric replied.

  In the last five days he’d seen Brooke exactly ten hours. At the moment he was using the computer station in officer’s Admin to try to catch up on paperwork. The company was doing PT and when they got back there was a field evolution he had to lead. He’d rather be running, but the paperwork just wouldn’t end!

  “There’s a new position called ‘Vac Boss,’ ” Lieutenant Ross said. “He’s supposed to be the go-to guy if there’s an EVA. They’re starting a training class in it, but the boss has to have vac experience. Right now, the guy with the most hours wins. So we, I, am supposed to compute the number of hours each member of the company has in vacuum and find out who is vac boss. It will probably turn out to be one of the sergeants who survived the last couple of missions. How the hell are we going to put them in charge of an EVA exercise? God, I need a cigar.”

  “Quickly,” Berg said, shrugging. “The last mission we did all the way outside EVA stuff. The squids stayed by the ship. Hell, it’s probably Corwin. Heh. That’d be funny. I wouldn’t want Corwin in charge of a day-care center.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me how to compute it,” Ross growled. “How many hours do you have?”

  “Whoa,” Berg replied, not looking up. “Lots. Depends on how you calculate it. I’m not sure if the drop on Cheerick counts or not, but that was just a couple of minutes. Hours and fricking hours at Tycho 714. More at HD Thirty-Seven. Wrestling that comet… When the Karchava dreadnought got evacuated, couple of hours right there… Come to think of it, there’s a vac indicator on the suits. That probably got dumped to the mission log; everything else was. Get Portana to pull the mission logs and look.”

  “I’ve got a better idea, Lieutenant,” Ross said, grinning evilly.

  “Oh, come on, sir!” Berg protested. “I’m swamped!”

  “How hard could it be?”

  “It not in the standart log,” the Filipino armorer said, shaking his head.

  On the previous cruise, Berg and the then new unit armorer had gotten off to a rocky start, a little matter of, well, everything getting on each other’s nerves. Since they bunked right by each other, Portana
’s habit of playing Filipino salsa music at top volume had led to Berg replying with Death Metal and country at same, which led to the rest of the compartment playing a medley of clashing tunes to the point that the CO and the first sergeant stepped in. Berg was big, good-looking, popular, easy-going and a West Virginia country boy. Portana was short, swarthy, caustic and Filipino. They’d managed to get past it during the course of the cruise and were now, to the extent a lieutenant and an enlisted man could be, friends. But it had been a long road to that point.

  “It doesn’t get logged?” Berg asked, shaking his head. “Okay, I guess we’re going to have to…”

  “It get logged,” Portana said. “But it in deep structure. Got to get a program to parse it out. And mission log’s encryp’ed so got to decryp’ first. Not something you can just press a button and there it is. Gonna be work.”

  “I don’t suppose…” Berg said, grinning.

  “I got fifteen Wyverns to configure,” Portana said. “You know how long t’at take. Not sure I’m going to be done by mission time. One being you new one. But, good news, you mission log survived. Well, right up to when you get all fried and stuff.”

  “Chither,” Berg said. “Dump the raw mission logs to my computer and I’ll see what I can do…”

  “Well, I guess it’s good I’m working so late, lately,” Eric said as he got in the truck. “How was work?”

  “I’m trying to learn how to tell customers, ‘Sorry, I’m married,’ ” Brooke said, sighing exasperatedly. “Actually, I just hold up the ring. But some guys can’t take the hint.”

  “Try ‘I’m happily married to a Force Recon lieutenant who’ll bust your face if you don’t keep your hands off me,’ ” Eric said, closing his eyes and leaning back in the seat.

  “That won’t exactly help with the tips,” Brooke pointed out. “Not that this particular group of jerks left much of a tip, anyway. One of the other waitresses handles it just fine, but she’s been doing this for a long time. I’m trying to figure out how she does it. But most of the time, it looks to me as if she really is willing to go home with them. Then if they get too crude she just… hammers them flat and they like it.”

  “It’s a game,” Eric said, shrugging. “Nobody really expects to go home with the waitress. Well, except The Envoy. You just have to come up with standard answers to the come-on. ‘Sorry, but unless you can touch the back of your head with your tongue I’m not interested.’ ”

  “Eric Bergstresser!”

  “ ‘Well, gosh, sir, I would go home with you. That is, if I didn’t have a husband with the stamina of a lion and hung like an elephant…’ ”

  “I could never say that!”

  “Why? Waitresses said both of them to me,” Eric pointed out.

  “You… oh!” Brooke replied, shaking her head. She looked over at him and frowned. “Are you shiny, honey?”

  “Beat,” Eric said. “I got a new duty dumped on me today and it’s kicking my ass.”

  “More VD reports?” Brooke asked, dimpling. “I never thought I’d say something like that in my life.”

  Given that things like VD reports and MWR reports were anything but classified, Eric had willingly discussed those with her. He opened his mouth to reply then closed it with a clop.

  “No,” he said after a moment. “Something… else. One of the things I’m not supposed to talk about. Which is why I didn’t bring it home.”

  “Shiny,” Brooke said, restraining her curiosity with difficulty. “Did you hear there’s going to be some sort of broadcast by the President tomorrow night? And that it’s going to run over an hour?”

  “No,” Berg said. “What about?”

  “Nobody knows,” Brooke said. “The TV said it was on a matter of great importance that has been, up to this point, classified.”

  Eric’s eyes flew open and he looked straight forward. Just then, his implant dinged.

  “Tomorrow?” Weaver screamed, looking at his secure e-mail. He’d just gotten home and keyed on his computer to find the warning message. “No, no, no, no!”

  “Weaver,” Prael said over his implant. “Back to the office, stat. We’ve got a secure link with the secretary of Defense in thirty minutes.”

  “I’m on my way, sir,” Bill replied, picking up his uniform blouse. “Chither! Why now?”

  “Not by our choice,” the secretary of Defense said. “What the Times has been able to piece together about the Blade is coming out in the morning edition. What they don’t know, though, is that we effectively lost the Blade and got a new one from the Hexosehr. They did, however, piece together the ‘helicopter crash’ with the first mission and speculate on casualties from the second. They don’t know about the Dreen. Bill, you had some conversation with Robin. I pulled the transcript when I got the news. Anything you want to add?”

  “I tried to throw him off-scent, slightly, sir,” Weaver said. “Best I could do. I could tell he knew about the Blade, pretty solidly, and that we’d run into something that killed Marines. He didn’t mention the scientific losses or the SF or the Cheerick or the last mission’s results. But my contact report stated that he was going to do a piece on the Blade.”

  “They apparently got some video from our Russian friends,” the secretary of Defense said. “I’m sure the Russians will be running that one down. But this changes… Well, it changes everything. Commandant, I want Lieutenant Bergstresser available for Dog and Pony.”

  “Yes, sir,” the commandant said. “I’ll inform his CO.”

  “Ditto Spectre and you, Bill. Anyone else you’d suggest? Any of you?”

  Weaver had a suggestion but given his rocky position with the CO he wasn’t about to bring it up.

  “That linguist,” Admiral Townsend said. “Miss Moon. Good looking, obviously articulate. And I’ve seen the way that she looked in the documentary. I especially loved the parts where she was repairing the ship on the last mission. Painted every steam pipe in the ship? That took determination, by God. It puts a human face on the whole thing. Cute lady who talks to strange aliens and still wields a wrench when she has to. What do you think, Captain Weaver?”

  “Sounds good, sir,” Bill said, trying not to sound strangled. “She’s going to need a heads up, though. First, she’ll need at least ten minutes to panic, then a day to do her hair. She might have to go home to see her usual stylist.”

  “We need to centralize this,” the SecDef said. “Get all the people down here in DC. I know you’re preparing for deployment, but this takes precedence. Get to work on this tonight.” The video of the SecDef cut off leaving only the commandant and the CAO.

  “I’ll order up Bergstresser and, hell, one of the enlisted,” the commandant said. “People always like junior enlisted for this sort of thing. I’m sort of shamed to say I don’t know the Marine players all that well. Captain Weaver?”

  “Lurch, sir?” Bill replied. As well hung for a sheep and all that. “That is, Sergeant Lyle? The guy who was injured in an accident and worked his way back to line. He’s not all that articulate, but…”

  “Good call,” the commandant said, nodding. “Good human interest angle. The first sergeant’s been on both missions, what’s your read on him?”

  “First Sergeant Powell is one of those rare NCO’s that really could take over as a commander, sir,” Bill replied. “Smart as a whip intellectually — hell, he’s got a degree from the Sorbonne — good common sense, experienced. But the company’s preparing for deployment. Dragging him away may interfere.”

  “If the company commander can’t do without his first sergeant for a few days, I need to find a new CO,” the commandant said. “Sergeant Lyle, Lieutenant Bergstresser and First Sergeant Powell. Got it. Good line-up. I’m done. Out here.”

  “Since everyone else is asking,” the CAO said, chuckling.

  “Well, you’ve got myself and Miriam, sir,” Bill replied. “Admittedly, Miriam’s from the civilian science side. If you want enlisted personnel…” Bill paused and thought
about that, running through the list and then chuckling.

  “Something funny, Captain?” the CAO asked.

  “Just imagining the COB being interviewed, sir,” Bill replied. “ ‘So you are the chief of boat? What’s your name?’ ‘C-O-B.’ ‘How do you spell that?’ ‘C-O-B. Chief. Of. Boat.’ Sir, in all honesty, no, I can’t think of any others unless the CO wants to go. In that case, I’ll stay back and get the boat ready to go. That’s my job, after all.”

  “The Marines are sending enlisted people,” the CAO said. “And Captain Prael hasn’t been on the previous missions.”

  “Then I’d suggest Red, sir,” Bill replied, then blinked rapidly, realizing he could not for the life of him recall Red’s real name. “Petty Officer First Class Ian… Morris. Not particularly articulate, either, but with two prosthetics from two missions, he’s not going to have to be.”

  “Get that done, Captain,” the CAO said. “Make sure he’s available and everybody gets down to DC tomorrow. Early.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Weaver and Prael both replied, simultaneously. Weaver didn’t look over to see his CO’s reaction.

  “Any questions, Captain Prael?” the CAO asked.

  “No, sir,” the CO replied.

  “Then I’m out,” the CAO said.

  The screen blanked and there was an uncomfortable silence.

  “You’d better get moving, XO,” Prael said after a moment. “You’ve got a lot of work to do.”