To Honor You Call Us

by Harvey G. Phillips

  That made sense. A hyperbaric chamber had to be built like a diving bell to withstand the high pressure air it contained, so it would survive even if that part of the station were breached. And the things had to be air tight to work in the first place.

  “Quick thinking. And a helluva stroke of luck,” Max observed.

  “You could look at it that way. I’m wondering if I might have been better off if I had been in the corridor or in the head relieving myself when that part of the station went.”

  It wasn’t the first time Max had heard that kind of talk. Max had gone aboard his first warship as a squeaker when he was eight years old, and the Union had been at war for years before that. Now, at age twenty-eight, Max had a lifetime’s worth of experience dealing with people who had survivor’s guilt. It had to be nipped in the bud or he would soon be reading in the Naval Gazette that the Admiralty was saddened to announce that Dr. Sahin had died in a “regrettable airlock accident.”

  He put his arm around the man, leading him gently away from the window. “Walk with me, Doctor. Let’s both of us get another drink.” The two made their way to the bar and were waited on right after a short Commodore who looked as though he would be better off drinking strong New Lebanon coffee than the Scotch the bartender had just poured for him. Max got another bourbon on the rocks. Doctor Sahin got a glass of Forthian Stout, a dark beer-like brew that contained no alcohol because Forthian yeast produced no alcohol.

  “Been in the Navy long?” It was a somewhat less lame opener than most, anyway.

  “Only four years. When I completed my Residency on Earth and it was time to go back home, there was no home to go back to. So, I joined the Navy, spent two years at the DeBakey Joint Forces Physicians Training Facility and when I graduated was immediately assigned to Travis. I’ve been there ever since.”

  “No home to go back to, you said?”

  “That’s correct,” Sahin replied. “I’m from Tubek.”

  Max couldn’t remember anything about Tubek, except two salient facts: first, it had fallen to the Krag about six years ago. And, second, as with most Krag conquests, no one knew what happened to the people who lived there. Naval Intelligence believed that they were either killed, enslaved, or some unsavory combination of both. So, Doctor Sahin had not only just lost everyone he had worked with his entire professional career, but six years before had also likely lost his entire family and everyone he had grown up with. There weren’t many Grief Counselors in the Union Navy’s Medical Corps, but this guy was a candidate to have one assigned to him full time.

  “My God. How’re you managing?”

  “I manage. I was very busy on the Station. Now, here on Halsey with all the combat casualties, I am too busy to dwell on things. Work is good therapy. My patients need me, and there is satisfaction in helping them, although after I treat them they are evacuated back to the Core Systems or returned to their ships and I never see them again. Work is what gets me through the day. The nights . . . the nights are somewhat more problematic.”

  “I know what you mean. What do they have you doing?” Spacers got the same diseases as civilians. So, some naval doctors treated infectious disease or cancer or neurological disorders or digestive problems, but most patched up the wounded, cared for them and, if possible, started them on the path to being restored to duty.

  “I’m one of fifteen combat/trauma surgeons on the Halsey. We do all the combat surgery for the casualties from this ship, and also get the more difficult cases from the rest of the task force. We are operating around the clock in three shifts. But, they keep on threatening to put me on a Destroyer or a Frigate on detached service.”

  No one got rid of a Naval Surgeon, or even talked about it, without good reason. “Why’s that?”

  “I’m afraid that I am insufficiently diplomatic in my dealings with superior officers. My medical C.O., Captain Choi, has a different philosophy of the extent of reconstructive and rehabilitative surgery that can be profitably performed here, and what should wait until the patient reaches permanent treatment facilities back in the Core Systems. I am of the view that, so long as surgical resources are available, we should treat the patient to the maximum level of cure that our facilities and staff are capable of providing. Dr. Choi, on the other hand, says that the medications and other consumable resources used in these procedures should be conserved in case resupply is interrupted and we need them to save the lives of battle casualties.”

  Max could see both sides and recognized that Dr. Choi certainly had some good reasons for his position. On the other hand, Max asked if he would want to himself to be treated by a doctor who didn’t strive to provide the greatest and highest level of care and benefit that he possibly could every minute he was providing it. Not a chance.

  Max certainly did not want to get into an argument with this poor bedraggled fellow in any event. During their conversation, Max had begun to notice other things amiss with Doctor Sahin, particularly with his uniform. His boots were a bit dull, the creases on his trousers were not as sharp as they might be, there were a few faint spots on his uniform jacket, and his rank insignia and other decorations were less than perfectly situated. He would not pass inspection from a taut commander, that was certain. Max’s own uniform was parade ground perfect.

  “Well, Doctor,” said Max, “I’ve had my own issues with, what did you call it, being ‘insufficiently diplomatic.’” The doctor’s raised eyebrow invited him to continue. “There was the time when I commanded a little PC-4 and Commodore Barber (that was before he became the Famous Throughout the Fleet Admiral Barber) himself ordered me to disengage and withdraw when . . . .” Max was interrupted by a beep from the doctor’s percom. The doctor raised an index finger, indicating that Max should wait while he glanced at the display of the device strapped to his wrist. From his angle, Max could see the text of the message, but didn’t know the medical codes, so he had no idea what it meant, except that the prefix PI meant that whatever it was, it was supposed to be acted on without any delay.

  “Pardon me, Lieutenant, I am needed at the Casualty Station. It was a pleasure to meet you. If I may presume, would you be averse to our speaking again sometime?”

  “Sure. My pleasure,” Max replied. “You don’t need my comcode—I’m the only Lieutenant Robichaux in the whole task force. Not many people know how to spell it. It’s . . . .”

  “I know how to spell it, Lieutenant. I’ve heard of you.” said Sahin. “Until later, then.” He turned briskly and strode out of the room in a manner that was both surprisingly inconspicuous and yet extremely fast. Max wondered how he did it. Max knew that he had never been simultaneously awake and inconspicuous for more than two or three seconds at any time in his life.

  He finished off his bourbon, paid his respects to the Admiral, and walked slowly back to his tiny berth in Guest Officer’s Quarters, taking several detours, spending some time on the hangar deck watching the Banshee fighters being fueled and serviced, and stopping at the Ship’s Store to pick up a spare battery for his percom. When he finally got back, having killed a few hours, he could barely shoehorn himself into the cramped space, and then only if he left the shoehorn in the corridor. By moving slowly and with great deliberation, he was able to take off his Ice Cream Suit (an age-old description for Naval Dress Whites) without banging his hands or elbows on the bulkhead, hang it up carefully in the almost microscopic closet, and change into the Royal Blue jumpsuit and half boots known as the Working Uniform that was the Uniform of the Day today and most days on the Halsey. He had a duty shift in SIGINT in two hours, so he had time to make his way to the Number Five Wardroom, drink some coffee, and maybe shoot the breeze with some of the other off duty officers. Maybe one of them had an interesting story to tell that was not too obvious a fabrication and that he had heard fewer than a hundred times.

  Or maybe not. Either way, it was better than sitting inside this shoebox and staring at the bulkhead or poking around the news feeds on the berth’s work station.
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  In the habit possessed by anyone who wears a uniform for a living and who cares about not getting negative reports in his anachronistically named “jacket,” Max checked himself in the mirror before leaving his quarters. Max had no thoughts of being handsome. Coming from Nouvelle Acadiana, Max was mostly a descendent of Louisiana Cajuns, and had the fair skin, prominent nose, dark hair, and dark eyes that sometimes went with that ethnicity. But, while pure-blooded Cajuns tended to be short and slight, Max was a tall man, approaching two meters in height, but slender and wiry. As did so many people who were nominally Cajun, Max had some German, Scottish, and Irish ancestors hiding in some of the far branches of his family tree giving him not only his decidedly un-Cajun height, but also a square jaw and high forehead that spoke more of the Gaelic than the Gallic. Thoroughly unimpressed with his natural appearance, Max made sure that his uniform was unwrinkled and hanging straight on his frame, that the limited badges, decorations, and insignia that went on the Working Uniform were appropriately arranged (especially his new Navy Cross), that the brass belt buckle shined, and that his boots gleamed.

  He had gotten out the door and three steps down the corridor when his percom beeped. He glanced at the screen. It read: “PI MX OR W G-894.” While the percom had a voice capability, most routine messages were sent by text and used a highly condensed code so that they could be read on the twenty character alpha-numeric only exterior screen of the device, rather than on the color, graphical screen revealed when the cover of the device was flipped open. The symbols meant: “Priority Implementation. Message. Orders. Written. Compartment G-894. Or, in something more closely approaching normal speech: “Priority, immediate implementation. A message for you, consisting of Orders in written form, is waiting to be picked up in compartment 894 of G Deck.”

  Max shook his head. Fifteen strategically located message rooms on the Carrier and leave it to the Navy to have this message printed out for him in the room at the other end of the ship. At the other end of a ship that was 2,845 meters long. Actually, the more Max thought about it, it could be worse. His quarters were almost amidships, so G-894 couldn’t be more than a kilometer and a half away, plus five decks down.

  Fortunately, Max was good at learning ship layouts, so he was able to select the most direct route, find the tram that ran the length of the ship down the Central Corridor, and locate the proper compartment right away. He reached Compartment G-894 just under twelve minutes after receiving the text and stepped in through the open hatch.

  There he found a desk running the entire width of the roughly three meter wide space, manned by a bored-looking Petty Officer Third Class sitting behind a computer-generated name plate that said “MUCH.” The man did not look up when Max walked in but continued to peck slowly at a keyboard while keeping his eyes fixed rigidly on a display that was located so that the person operating it had to sit with his back nearly to the door. Max stood at the desk for five seconds without his presence being acknowledged. Apparently, no one of any importance ever picked up their messages in Compartment G-894.

  “Ahem,” Max said softly. Much didn’t so much as twitch.

  “Excuse me,” Max said somewhat louder.

  Much didn’t budge.

  “Petty Officer Much,” Max said just a notch louder. He pronounced it like it was spelled, rhyming with “such.”

  “That’s MUCH,” he replied, pronouncing the “u” as in duke” with the “ch” a Germanic guttural, as in “ach.”

  That was enough for Max. “PETTY OFFICER MOOK,” Max bellowed in his best drill instructor voice. He knew that he had mispronounced the name. His Cajun mouth was perfectly capable of producing Germanic gutturals if Max so chose. At this moment, however, he was not in the mood.

  Much looked up quickly and rotated his swivel chair to where it faced Max. Max glared at him, lips tightly pressed, until the man was sitting at “seated attention,” knees together, back straight, head high, making eye contact—the appropriate attitude for an enlisted man being addressed by a commissioned officer while seated at his duty station.

  Max lowered his volume but kept his tone as sharp as a razor. “Petty Officer Mook, I have received a text with a PI code stating that I am to pick up written orders at this location. Are you going to place these orders in my possession immediately or, when I fail to implement my orders with sufficient celerity, should I cite your delay in transmission as the cause?”

  Much’s eyes widened slightly. Everyone in the task force had read Admiral Hornmeyer’s First Standing Order issued when he took command. Rather than the standard blatherations, this Standing Order contained several pages of clear, incisive, imperative prose, one item of which said that “all operational orders are to be executed with celerity” and that the Admiral “would not tolerate and would swiftly punish any repetition of the delays in transmission that were hitherto endemic in this command.” Notwithstanding the inevitable fleet joke that half of the task force didn’t know whether “celerity” meant a famous person or a crunchy vegetable, people got the point.

  Much quickly came to his feet, and touched an area set off by a circle a few millimeters in diameter on the surface of the desk that separated him from Max. A panel silently withdrew revealing square green scanner surface about eight centimeters to the side and a numeric keypad. Max put his left hand flat on the scanner and, with his right, entered his twelve digit ID code. Much then walked over to a printer at his station that had produced one sheet of paper about two seconds after Max had keyed in the last digit. He folded it in half lengthwise, slipped it into a long envelope proportioned for a sheet of paper so folded, sealed the envelope, and handed it to Max along with a stylus. Max then used the stylus to sign his name on the same scanner that had just read his handprint, creating a signed and time-stamped digital receipt for the message. When he withdrew the stylus, the panel slid back into place, Max returned the stylus to the chastened petty officer, put the envelope in his pocket, and left Compartment G-894, walking straight across the corridor to another hatch marked with a sign that said “G-895 ORDRDRM.”

  “ORDRDRM, try pronouncing THAT,” Max thought.

  The Orders Reading Room was a Spartan enclosure, about two meters square, with one standard issue Navy desk chair and a small table. Max sat down in the chair, ripped open the envelope, extracted the paper, set the envelope on the table, and began to read.

  23:14Z 20 January 2315

  TOP SECRET

  URGENT: FOR IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION

  FROM: HORNMEYER, L.G. VADM USN, CDR TF TD

  TO: ROBICHAUX, MAXIME T., LT USN

  1. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, YOU ARE RELIEVED AS ACTING COMMANDER AND WEAPONS OFFICER USS EMEKA MORO, FLE 2379. TAKE NO FURTHER ACTION RE EMEKA MORO. NEW TEMPCOM ALREADY APPOINTED.

  2. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, YOU ARE RELIEVED OF ALL TDY PREVIOUSLY ASSIGNED.

  3. EFFECTIVE 00:01Z 21 JAN 2315 YOU ARE CIG TO LCDR USN WITH ALL THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES APPERTAINING TO SAID RANK.

  4. YOU ARE ADVISED THAT USS CUMBERLAND, DPA 0004 IS EXPECTED TO RENDEZVOUS THIS TASK FORCE APPROX 07:30Z 21 JAN 2315 UNDER TEMPCOM OF HER FIRST OFFICER LT R.T. GARCIA. CUMBERLAND FULLY PROVISIONED AND ARMED WITH STD WEAPONS LOAD. SOME PERSONNEL FROM THIS TF WILL JOIN SHIP AT THIS TIME.

  5. AT 09:00Z 21 JAN 2315, YOU ARE REQUIRED AND DIRECTED TO REPORT ABOARD SAID VESSEL AND ASSUME CHARGE AND COMMAND OF HER SUBJECT TO ALL APPLICABLE LAWS, REGULATIONS, STANDING ORDERS, AND OPERATIONAL ORDERS THAT SHALL ISSUE FROM DULY CONSTITUTED AUTHORITY FROM TIME TO TIME. SEPARATE WARRANT OF APPOINTMENT WILL ISSUE.

  6. AS SOON THEREAFTER AS PRACTICABLE, BUT NO LATER THAN 09:15Z 21 JAN 2315 USS CUMBERLAND UNDER YOUR COMMAND IS TO PART COMPANY THIS TASK FORCE, ACCELERATE AT STANDARD TO 0.01 C, AND PROCEED TO NAV BUOY JAH1939.

  7. UPON REACHING DESTINATION, YOU ARE TO IMPOSE COMPLETE EMCOM ON VESSEL AND EXECUTE SEALED ORDERS IN CAPTAIN’S SAFE.

  8. KICK ASS AND GODSPEED.

  He read the orders again, more slowly. After he finished, Max realized he had
been holding his breath and slowly exhaled, took in another slow breath, and let it out slowly.

  Max fought to slow down his thoughts and to process what he had read. He remembered what his old mentor, Commodore Middleton, told him: “All operational orders contain good news and bad news.” So, good news: one, promotion to Lieutenant Commander, the next step up. Two, his own command. And, big three, a new, powerful, Khyber Class Destroyer. The class, although new, was getting a reputation as being good ships.

  Bad news: one, the Cumberland, a known “problem ship” that had turned in a disappointing performance in two fleet actions (or, as Caesar might have said, she came, she saw, and she ran like hell) and was becoming known around the fleet as “The Cumberland Gap.” Two, her skipper and XO had recently been relieved and the rumor said that many of her senior noncoms had been reassigned to shore duty back in the Core Systems. Three, whatever problems the ship had, there would be plenty of leftovers still aboard for Max to deal with as the new CO.

  The rest? A mystery until he opened the sealed orders, but there were hints that gave him hope. The orders directed him to part company no later than fifteen minutes after his appointment as Skipper became effective, which said that Old Hit-em Hard was in a hurry. And the “kick ass” part smelled like orders for combat. He wouldn’t say “kick ass” if Cumberland were going to be assigned to patrol a rear area or escort a hospital ship back to Earth or Alphacen, right?

  Max had a lot to do and not a lot of time in which to do it. For the next several hours, he was going to be nothing but assholes and elbows. His first errand, though, was going to be a pleasure—a trip to the Quartermaster to draw the uniforms, patches and, most important, the coveted Command in Space Badges (one for each uniform) and Lieutenant Commander’s insignia that went along with his new posting and rank. Then, he needed to belly up to a work station to access everything he could learn about the Cumberland and her crew.