Nevertheless, he entertained his listeners with a series of elaborate space tales that progressed as the evening went on from the mildly unbelievable to the breathtakingly improbable. Many of the stories revolved around the misadventures of the likable but lazy and boastful “Ensign Richard Longman Pickwit,” who Max was convinced was a composite of several real ensigns or, more than likely, an entirely fictitious individual.
The cumulative implausibility of the storytelling was aided, no doubt, by the generous supply of beverages offered. At the beginning of the dinner, Max had seen that every man, with the exception of Doctor Sahin who was an observant Muslim, had a glass of wine and a mug of beer in front of him. While Anderssen and Maynard consumed the wine with some enthusiasm, they quaffed the beer with particular gusto. The midshipmen serving as stewards had refilled the visiting officers’ mugs several times.
“Is this your ship’s beer?” Maynard asked after draining his fifth mug. Or maybe it was his sixth.
“It is,” Max replied, proudly.
Unlike many naval terms, “ship’s beer” was exactly what it sounded like: beer brewed on board the ship. Depending upon the talent of the brewers, there were vast differences in quality from ship to ship. Some ship’s beer was of surpassing excellence and could pass for the best crafted by the most skilled brewmeisters in Munich on Earth or Shiner-Braunfels on Texia. The beer from certain other vessels, alas, was of extraordinary wretchedness and could easily be mistaken for rancid yak piss. The average was somewhere just above “adequate.”
Maynard took another appreciative pull at his mug. “And how long has your man been brewing?”
“Just a few months,” Max replied.
Maynard set his mug down in open-jawed astonishment. “Just a few months? I’m amazed. You know, I’m something of a connoisseur of these things, and I was sure that this brew came from a gray-haired old chief who had been hopping the wort since he was a squeaker. Now, I’m not saying it’s the best I’ve had. But it is the best I’ve had in a while. Our crew is too small to brew our own.” He refilled his mug, took a few swallows, and released a sigh of pleasure. “Your man must be talented. What did your galley chief do to cull this man out of the common herd? Test his ability to judge the quality of barley by its smell? Check for brewmeisters in his family tree?”
“Oh, no. None of that. The story told around the ship,” Max said, giving his head a subtle tilt to indicate that he was not vouching for the veracity of the tale but that he thought it made for a good story, “is that my chief of culinary services ran his finger down a list of new transferees to his department, took one look at the man’s name, and said, ‘Aha, that’s my man. His very name inspires confidence.’ The man had never brewed a single barrel before. Yet the beer started out just on the good side of fair and has been getting better ever since.”
“And the man’s name?” asked Maynard.
Max let the question hang for a few seconds, timing the delivery of his punch line like a nightclub comedian. “Schlitz. Bodo ‘Bud’ Schlitz.” As both brand names, though centuries-old, had survived humankind’s migration into the galaxy and were familiar throughout the Union, Anderssen and Maynard laughed loudly, knowing that they would retell the story, and that many who heard it from them would retell it, and so on.
“So,” inquired Maynard, once he caught his breath, “what do the men call it: Bud or Schlitz?”
“Neither,” answered Max. “As soon as the beer started getting really good, they christened it The Cumberland Tap.”
Maynard suppressed a look of horror, but Anderssen nodded slowly, a knowing smile on his face. “Excellent,” the older skipper said. “Truly excellent. Most crews would do everything they could to forget that old insulting nickname. Mine certainly would. But not your men. From the rooftops they shout it.” He pointed to the image of a cleft in a range of green mountains depicted on the ship’s emblem patch sewn to Max’s right sleeve. “There it is—the Cumberland Gap—right there in plain sight on every man’s uniform. I recognize it because I’ve been to the Appalachian Mountains on Earth and seen the real thing. And there,” his finger traced a long curving arc following the ground, going through the gap, turning to point almost straight up toward a cluster of stars, and ending in a tiny image of the destroyer, “they show themselves leaving the Cumberland Gap behind them and soaring up toward the stars. Your men have a streak of defiance in them—perhaps that’s what men are like when they bounce back from being under the command of a chocolate caramel nut cluster like Allen K. Oscar. I wouldn’t want men with that attitude on garrison duty or manning a refueling depot, but for a destroyer crew, it is a good spirit to have—iron in their backbone to hold them up when other men might bend and break. Men like that can look the devil in the face and spit in his eye. I never learned Latin, though. What does this motto, Per laboram ad victoriam, mean?”
“Through hardship to victory,” Max answered.
“A good motto for us all,” Maynard said, thumping his fist on the table with approbation. He raised his right hand, extended his index finger, and made a slow, circular motion—the signal throughout the human-settled galaxy for drink refills all around the table. Once every mug or glass was filled, Anderssen hoisted his mug in a toast. “Drink it to the bottom, men! To what lies at the end of our hardships: to victory!”
“Victory!” said the rest. They hoisted their drinks and drained them to the bottom.
“Beats the hell out of the motto from my first ship,” Maynard said, a bit too loudly, as the stewards poured more beer and wine.
“Which was?” asked Wendt.”
“Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.” Having, as a squeaker, committed the dictum to uncritical, unanalyzed memory, along with how to operate a lifepod and the right way to salute, he gave the words a sonorous, hieratic rendering. “It’s got some sort of off-the-bulkhead meaning like ‘over time, different kinds of grapes will grow together.’ I’m guessing that, in a real vineyard, different kinds of vines actually grow together into a single plant, or something like that, but I know a lot more about deuterium pumps and cargo-loading procedures than grapevines.”
Dr. Sahin leaned forward, his face taking on what Max had come to call his friend’s “excited professor” look. “That is indeed what takes place,” he said. “Grapevines of different varieties can fuse or merge, particularly if both vines are injured and the exposed vascular cambium of one plant comes into protracted contact with that of the other. In fact, it is surmised that the practice of grafting plants may have developed from observation of this phenomenon in nature, which is not uncommon.” He paused. “But the usual glazing over of eyes, bored expressions, and fidgeting with coffee mugs tells me that you gentlemen have learned all you care to know about the exposed vascular cambium of grapevines. So I will give lie to the captain’s repeated statement that I never know when to shut up when I am talking about botany or zoology by . . . as we say, shutting up.” He looked pointedly at Max. “In the idiom of your ancestors, c’est tout.” He fell silent.
During the ensuing good-natured laughter, Max looked at his friend’s broadly smiling face. Notwithstanding the danger, the long hours, and the hard work, service on the Cumberland had been good to Dr. Ibrahim Sahin. There were few signs of the intensely sad, lonely, frustrated man Max had met on 20 January. The premature lines in his forehead and around his mouth had eased. The bags under his eyes were gone. His coloring had gone from greenish gray to a healthy brownish olive, befitting his mixed Turkish, Arabian, and European heritage. Even his formerly rumpled, soiled, and mismatched uniforms were now, if not perfect, then clean, unwrinkled, and (mostly) in compliance with regulations. He smiled easily and laughed often. Sahin had not forgotten the deaths of his parents, siblings, and virtually everyone with whom he had served on Travis Station, but the losses were no longer fresh, ragged wounds. On the USS Cumberland, Dr. Sahin had found friends, companionship, patients who benefited greatly from his skills, and duties that suited his talents.
Max knew that now his friend felt needed. His life had purpose.
All men—all humans—need that. They need it like they need air.
Max smiled, his heart warmed by that unique form of contentment that comes from the knowledge that a good friend or loved one is happy. Bram caught the expression and smiled in return, inclining his head slightly. A great gift acknowledged; thanks expressed and accepted.
Anderssen went on, oblivious to this silent conversation. “I don’t know about the vascular cambium, but in terms of naval leadership, that motto about the vines is really quite profound,” Anderssen said. “It’s a metaphor for how a crew, though comprised of many different kinds of men from many different worlds, melds to form a unified whole.”
While Max and Bram were nodding their understanding, Maynard said, “Far, far too subtle for me,” thumping his now-empty mug down on the table a bit too loudly. “I like my mottos simple. Fortune favors the bold. Don’t give up the ship. Death before dishonor. That sort of thing. Something you can tell the guys on the lower decks without having to explain it to them.”
“I suppose there is something that can be said for that point of view,” Max allowed. Maynard was a guest, after all.
The stewards came in to collect the plates, leaving behind any pitchers, mugs, and glasses that still contained ardent beverages, just in case the diners weren’t finished drinking. They served coffee. Talk resumed when they were done.
By unspoken agreement their discussion turned to the mission. “The only thing that I don’t like about the part of the mission in which our ships operate together is the ingress phase,” Anderssen opined. “Cumberland is stealthy enough that, absent a stroke of some very bad luck, she can slip in undetected. Sneaking my ship in, on the other hand, would be like trying to sneak an elephant onto the ice rink in the middle of a hockey game. So, we’ve been furnished with a set of transponder codes from the Krag data core the Vaaach gave us. They’re supposed to spoof the Krag into thinking that the Nicholas Appert is the USS Peter Durand, a tender from the same class captured by the Krag a few months ago. The paper-pushing penguins in Plans and Dispositions think that, if we offer up the right code, the Krag—whom you and I know to be the most paranoid species in Known Space—are just going to smile, bow, and wave us from the FEBA into their space without being inspected or challenged. I don’t know about you, Max, but I’ve been in this man’s navy since Litvinoff and Hornmeyer and Middleton were eating applesauce and playing with little toy spaceships, and I’ve never known anything to work that easily.”
A short laugh had escaped from DeCosta near the end of Anderssen’s remarks. Max regarded him with something less than total approval. “What’s so funny, XO?”
“Oh, I was just imagining a miniature Louis Hornmeyer in short pants playing with brightly colored plastic toy spaceships and yelling in a high-pitched voice at the tiny, little imaginary captains inside them that they need to get off their little fucking plastic asses and execute his orders with celerity.”
The other men at the table tried not to laugh. They really did. But the image of a boyhood version of their theater commander giving orders to a mock battle fleet using his trademark phrase was simply too funny.
“I’m not just talking about Murphy’s Law, either,” Anderssen continued once the mirth had dissipated. “We got our hands on that data core at the end of March. Now, here we are in mid-May. We haven’t used that data much, but we have used it more than once to catch the Krag with their breeches around their knees. By now their whiskers must be twitching enough that some kind of precautions must have been taken by now. Even if they suspect nothing, we know that they change transponder codes at random intervals. If they haven’t changed those codes already, they’re going to do so soon. And not just the transponder codes, but passwords, encryption protocols, call signs, blinker recognition signals, the arrangement of mines in their minefields, and everything else that can be changed to make that captured data as useless as they can make it. Now, that’s not to say that the data won’t be useful to us. Hell, just knowing their method for jumping more than one ship at a time is worth a king’s ransom, not to mention having the plans and specifications for all their military hardware, weapons, and installations, but they are for sure going to change the locks to the front door, and—in my view—they’ve already done it more likely than not.”
“I don’t doubt for one second that the life expectancy of this little secret is pretty short, Sig,” Max said. “I just think we’ve got another two to four weeks before the Krag can wrap their brains around the magnitude of what we have.
“I feel that I have a certain latitude with regard to the methods by which I accomplish the objectives set forth in my orders. So, if anyone knows any other way to get past the two layers of sensor drones, the early-warning sensor stations, and the patrol ships that the Krag have in place to stop Union ships from doing what we are about to attempt to do, I’m certainly willing to consider it in place of relying on the captured transponder codes.” He let five long seconds of silence pass, during which he looked at Anderssen, whose face conveyed his misgivings about the proposed course of action but also his lack of any viable alternative. “Very well, then.”
“I thank you, Max, gentlemen, for a most delightful dinner,” Anderssen said, exercising his traditional prerogative as the elder of the two skippers to end the gathering. “We should have Cumberland refueled and resupplied within the next eight to ten hours. Then we will be ready to go pay a visit to Mr. Krag.”
“You are very welcome, Sig, Mr. Maynard.” Max gave the formal reply required by naval custom. “We’ll set out for Krag space as soon as those operations are complete.”
Anderssen and Maynard shook hands with all of their hosts and bid them good night. Using his joystick-like hand control, Anderssen backed his Autochair away from the table and headed for the hatch. While seated at the table, he looked like any other man who ate while keeping his left hand in his lap. But without the table in the way, it was obvious that Anderssen’s left arm was an inert mass of burned, scarred tissue, that much of his lower torso was simply gone, and that he had no legs at all. From the chest down, his body was encased in an intricate assembly of tubing, pumps, and support systems that kept him alive. Max watched the Autochair deploy a set of treads that allowed it to climb over the hatch coaming and carry Anderssen out of the Wardroom into the corridor, where the treads retracted and the Autochair went back to riding on wheels.
Once their guests were out of sight down the corridor, the contingent from the Cumberland slowly left the compartment, except for Max and Bram. The doctor had given Max a look that indicated that he wished the skipper to linger. Both pretended that they wanted to spend a few more moments drinking coffee.
When he was sure they were alone, Bram spoke. “Max, I’m outraged. Totally outraged.”
“At what?”
“The total callousness of the navy and the damnable unfeeling human calculating machines who run it, who keep returning men grievously injured, both physically and psychologically, to space duty.” Bram vented, and not for the first time. “That man,” he said, pointing toward the hatch from which Anderssen had just made his exit, “has no business running around in deep space. How does he manage his CIC, for stars’ sake? Does that contraption he drives around in bolt to the deck at his console?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Medically speaking, a man wounded so horribly needs to be in a long-term care facility or at home being cared for by his family under full-time supervision of a practical nurse, not in the CIC of a starship. What happened to him?”
“He was on Sengupta-Patel IV about two years ago, the first time the Krag invaded it.”
“First time?”
“They invaded twice. The first time, the marines, navy personnel stationed at the training center located there, planetary militia, and armed citizens defeated the invasion. The rat-faces came back four months later with a much larger force and took the pla
net.”
“That’s all very interesting.” He paused and shook his head. “Actually, no, it is not. I haven’t the slightest interest in the military history of Sengupta-Patel IV. What I wanted to know was precisely how he sustained the injury. The damage to that man’s body certainly wasn’t inflicted with an assault rifle.”
“Plasma torch. Anderssen was an Olympic-class marksman. He had personally shot two dozen or so Krag officers at long range, and he was climbing a ladder to get to the top of a distillation column at a chemical plant to use it as a sniper position. The Krag climbing after him on the same ladder hit him with a plasma torch. Fortunately, he hadn’t climbed very high yet.”
“A traumatic event, to be sure. Which brings to mind the further issue of his mental and emotional state. Two years is not nearly long enough for an emotional recovery from so horrific an event. A man who has literally had the lower half of his body incinerated has endured a traumatic experience of such magnitude that I find it inconceivable that he could function in any kind of command capacity. He should be receiving intensive multimodal therapy: individual counseling sessions, group therapy, progressive desensitization, guided hypnovisualization, psychodrama, Sigur-Grimsal-Venissat recitative neurolinguistics—everything in the psychotherapy toolbox. Yet I’m quite confident he’s getting nothing of the sort. Tell me, does he even have a qualified physician over there to look after his medical needs, which, I imagine, are quite considerable?”
“He does. Quite a good one, I understand. A fellow by the name of Delbosque, Dr. James Kelly Delbosque.”
Brothers in Valor (Man of War Book 3) Page 19
