“All of you are forgetting something,” Brown said. “These men all stand the same station. They are the Number One Missile Fire Control Technicians for the Blue, Gold, and White watches. They are each other’s reliefs and replacements. Now, every man with a Comet is certified as being able to operate missile fire control systems, but these men are the experts on the nuts and bolts, the subassemblies and the workarounds. They are best qualified to maintain, calibrate, troubleshoot, and repair those systems if damaged. If we take a hit to that part of the ship and have to rebuild fire control from spares, those are the men I would assign to do it. There are others who could probably work it out from the schematics in the database, but it would take them at least five and more likely ten times as long. My department cannot spare, this ship cannot spare, these men. Captain, you should know that, if you execute all three, it will be my duty under naval regulations to request formally that we return to the task force and obtain replacement personnel because loss of them will meaningfully impair our combat readiness. And I will do the same if you leave them locked in the Brig for the duration. I need them on duty.”
“But, Lieutenant,” Major Kraft said, “this becomes an issue only if fire control takes severe damage. When is the last time you were on a ship that had to rebuild fire control from spares? I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. I can’t see twisting the aims of justice to preserve our ability to deal with a very remote contingency. If you’re worried about it, take a few of your best men from the most analogous system—pulse cannon fire control, for example—and give them a crash training course in what these fellows did. That will recover much of what you will be losing. Enough, at least, to cover this remote eventuality.”
The Captain raised a silencing hand. “Gentlemen, I thank you for your views. They have clarified my thinking on this issue. My strong personal inclination is in line with Major Kraft. I cannot abide treason and feel that the wages of treason are death. But, my personal wishes can’t be decisive here. These men are valuable to this ship, and they’re valuable to the Navy. I believe that there’s a lot to what the doctor said here, as well—that these men have been damaged in such a way that their choices weren’t their own in many ways. But, I don’t want to be the final judge of that.
“The needs of the ship come first. I aim to return them to duty.” Kraft started to say something. Max stopped him with a warning index finger. “I aim to return them to duty under strict guard. They are confined to quarters when off duty. When on duty, they will remain under observation by an armed Marine, and they will be kept away from any systems other than the one to which they are assigned. We will turn them over to the authorities when we return to the fleet. Admiral Hornmeyer and the Judge Advocate will decide these men’s ultimate fate. Until then, I want you to examine them, Doctor, and to give me a sense of the state of their mental health. I also want to meet with them and impress upon them the seriousness of their position, that if they go astray again they will be shown the airlock, but that they also are being given a chance for forgiveness and redemption.
“Men, many of our ancestors believed that lost souls could be reclaimed and find redemption through the power of mercy, love, and understanding. That’s one of the central teachings of my faith, as well. I’m a warrior, and my areas of expertise are conflict and death. But I’m willing to try my hand at something different for the sake of these men. They are our shipmates. They deserve the best we can give them. I will not cast them into the darkness unless I have no other choice. Dismissed.”
Doctor Sahin remained seated as the rest of the men filed out of the compartment. “Captain, may I have a word with you.”
“Sure, Doctor, what’s on your mind?”
“You issued a set of separate written orders to each senior officer, including me.”
“Right. I wrote them before I assumed command. Is there a problem with any of those orders?”
“Oh, no, not at all. I find them very sensible, very sensible indeed. They were things that I would have done in any case, but your order makes it easier to get them done—they are now Captain’s Orders. It makes them a priority.”
“What of my order, Doctor?”
“As you recall, one of the things I was ordered to do was to review the medical records of the ship’s compliment to determine whether anyone had any special medical needs that were not being adequately addressed. I am constrained to point out to you that there is one such person on board who has a severe and unmet medical need that may adversely affect his ability to carry out his duties. I believe that he requires treatment immediately or his performance is likely to begin to deteriorate rapidly to such a degree that within a very short time he may become unfit for duty.”
“Can the treatment he needs be provided on the Cumberland?”
“Yes. He can receive all the treatment he needs on board.”
“Then he must begin to receive the proper treatment at once.”
“I suspect that he may be resistant to this course of action.”
“Then he must be ordered to submit to treatment. As I said just a minute ago, the needs of the ship come first. Who is this person?”
“His name is Robichaux. Maxime Tindall Robichaux.”
“Doctor,” Max sputtered. “There must be some kind of error. I was slightly—very slightly—wounded during my last deployment and received treatment from one of your colleagues on board the Halsey. I was thoroughly examined and found to be in perfect health back in mid November and again just a few days ago. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me.”
“Really? Are you sure about that? You mean to say that you are not experiencing nightmares, disturbed sleep, exaggerated startle responses, emotional volatility, pain in the extremities, an irrational need to avoid sitting with your back to any room with people in it, difficulty trusting others, and profound feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy?”
Max felt an internal lurch, followed by a sense of vertigo, as though his emotions were riding in an elevator that suddenly dropped three stories. He could literally feel the blood draining from his face. He said, softly, “I’ve never reported any of those symptoms, Doctor.”
“But you are experiencing them, nonetheless, aren’t you?” Realizing that he had sounded as though he were cross-examining the Captain, he adopted a more sympathetic tone. “Please, sir, I am not asking for the benefit of any report, but because as a physician I have sworn an oath to alleviate human suffering, and I have every reason to believe that you are suffering. Further, as you said yourself, the needs of the ship come first. In the coming days, this ship and this crew are going to need a Commanding Officer who is not coping with the additional burdens imposed by serious emotional impairment. Captain . . . Max, you have done me more than one kindness in these past few days. Let me do you a kindness. I know what you are experiencing. I am an extremely acute observer. I miss very little.”
Max sat silently, of two minds. He had survived and functioned all these years by keeping these problems sealed off behind a heavy pressure bulkhead. But, as a perceptive leader, Max knew enough about how the human mind worked to know that under the added stresses of command, that bulkhead might be starting to crack. Perhaps, this brilliant and perceptive physician was already starting to see the signs. This wasn’t just about him any more. Max realized that his mind, intellect, his judgment, were the most critical systems on board.
“Doctor, I will not lie to you. The things you describe are a part of my life. But, I’ve lived with them ever since I can remember. They’re a part of me. I don’t know what they are, or how they might be connected, and I don’t know what you or anyone else can do about them.”
“Captain, these things are not disconnected from one another. Together, they are all symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I believe they stem from two events in your childhood that I know of, and—perhaps—other events of which I do not know.”
“Absurd. You can’t mean to tell me that I’m today, at age twenty-ei
ght, having trouble sleeping and jump at sudden noises because of something that happened when I was thirteen or fourteen.”
“No, I do not mean to tell you that. I do mean to tell you that you are today having trouble sleeping and are jumping at sudden noises because of events that transpired when you were eight, and when you were ten.”
The emotional elevator dropped another three floors. “Oh, you mean . . . .”
“Exactly, Captain. I have pieced it together from hints in your jacket, peculiar turns of phrase you have used in your After Action Statements, reports, orders, and memoranda, from things I have seen you do or heard you say, and from news items. It is all very subtle, but the conclusions are plain for anyone with eyes to see them. At age eight, you were not merely orphaned by the Gynophage. You were horrifically, searingly scarred by it.” Sahin did not relish what he was about to say, but knew that this man’s defenses would shrug off anything less than a brutally vivid explanation. “If I am not mistaken, on the first day of the attack, you were at home with your mother and your sisters when the weapon struck without warning. You, an eight year old boy who had never seen physical disease or severe pain in your life, helpless, unable to summon assistance over the jammed communication systems, watched as your mother died in screaming, writhing agony before your very eyes. Unless I miss my guess, she pleaded with you to help her and all you were able to do was to stand by and watch her die. Am I right?”
“Yes.” A whisper.
“Then, before you could find another adult to help you and before your father got home—was it only an hour or two later?—you watched the same thing happen to your twin sisters, infants less than a year old. You were just as helpless, equally alone. Your father came home six hours later, and found you with only corpses for company. From what I can tell, he was shattered emotionally. So, he sent you into space a scant two weeks later. The Chief Medical Officer of the San Jacinto noted in his log that you were dehydrated and malnourished from having hardly eaten or drunk for what he guessed to be about two weeks. Captain Lo noted that you hardly spoke a word to anyone for nearly a month after you came on board.
“Then, sixteen months later, your world came apart around you again when your new home, the Cruiser San Jacinto, was boarded and your new family, its crew, killed by the Krag. All but about twenty of its crew of more than four hundred perished. According to the special commendation given to you by Commodore Middleton, you hid in the air ducts and access crawlways and eluded them for twenty-six days, stealing food from the cargo holds and drinking from the water reclamation units. I suspect very strongly that you watched with your own eyes—through the vent gratings perhaps?—as the Krag tortured your shipmates for information or merely tortured and killed them because we all know that is what the Krag do. And they hunted you, day and night, did they not? Relentlessly. Day after day, exhausting sleepless night after exhausting sleepless night. Is it any wonder that you continually wake in the middle of the night, screaming, drenched in sweat, dreaming of being pursued?
“Finally, by a miracle, the ship was retaken by Union forces and you were found. When you heard human voices in the corridor, you sprang out of an air duct and hacked off the arms of two Krag from behind with a boarding cutlass you grabbed from an arms locker when the Krag boarded the ship. You carry that same boarding cutlass to this day. My guess is that you sleep with it near your bed and you like to have it within reach whenever you are under stress. I ask you, sir, with every kindness, am I incorrect as to any material fact?”
Long pause. “No. You’re not.” He shook his head, stunned by the accuracy of the doctor’s deductions. “Even if you’re right, though, what can be done? I have a ship to command. I’ve no time to engage in extensive self examination and navel gazing. I don’t have endless hours to spend lying on a couch in your office talking about my dreams and telling you what I see in ink blots.”
“There is no couch in my office. Perhaps I should requisition one. But, no, I do not propose any of those things you see in those overdone Trid Vids. After all, as you can see, I have no beard, no Viennese accent, and no cigar. We would start by just talking. We would work around your schedule—perhaps we would talk over dinner now and then, much as friends would. Let me be your confidante. I can listen to you. You have not even admitted much of what you are experiencing to yourself, much less expressed it to another human being. By speaking to me about it, you will be teaching yourself about your feelings as well. Unburden yourself to me from time to time. My guess is that you have never had a true, confidential friend. You need one. Let me fill that role.”
The two men sat together in silence for several seconds.
The comm buzzed.
Max stabbed the button. “Skipper.”
“Captain, this is Rochefort in Crypto. You were right. The data is a cartographic file, not text. And you’ve got to see this.”
“On my way.” Max smiled. “Later, Doctor.” Pause. “Ibrahim.”
“It’s ‘Bram.’ My friends call me ‘Bram.’”
Chapter 8
07:47Z Hours 23 January 2315
Naval regulations prescribe that, fifteen minutes before the beginning of any watch, any man who feels as though he is too ill to report for duty is to report to the Casualty Station for Sick Call. Officers, of course, have the privilege of seeking medical attention at any time, but the naval custom is that they check in by comm to make sure that the Casualty Station is not busy. As the Union Navy follows the time-honored three watch system, dividing the men into three teams known as “Blue,” “Gold,” and “White,” standing five watches, each of which is four hours long, and two, two hour “dog watches,” there are seven sick calls a day. With a crew of only two hundred and fifteen men and boys on board, most in the prime of life, physically fit, living on board a scrupulously clean starship, eating carefully selected and professionally prepared food, and isolated by light years of deep space from most sources of disease, Sick Call is not exactly the lunch rush at Feinberg’s Deli in Silverstein City on Alphacen.
When setting up the Casualty Station policies for the ship, Doctor Sahin directed that he would take two of the seven sick calls per day, rotating through the schedule, with the others delegated to nurses. Of course, if anything more serious than a headache or a runny nose showed up, the nurse was to call him. And, when he took Sick Call, he did not have a subordinate screen the men who reported, but greeted them himself and took their histories personally.
So it was that, a few minutes before the beginning of the Forenoon Watch—the one that runs from 08:00 to 12:00—the doctor personally greeted a crewman who reported for Sick Call. Sahin had him sitting on the examining table in his underwear, having stripped off his SCU, while the doctor sat on the little stool with wheels that physicians had been putting in their examining rooms for nearly half a millennium. “What’s your name, Spacer?”
“Rhim, sir,” the man answered slowly.
The doctor touched his padcomp a few times to pull up the man’s records. “Ordinary Spacer Second Class, right?”
“Right.” That answer seemed sluggish as well, which struck Doctor Sahin as odd. Spacers were not slow. They had to score in the 85th percentile in general intelligence just to be accepted as Midshipmen and the ones who were not also quick witted never made it to Recruit Spacer. And what was it about this man’s eyes that seemed odd?
“Been on the Cumberland for thirteen months, correct?”
It took the man a few moments to count the months. “Yea, that’s right.”
“Born on Jeffries IV, right?”
“Right. No. Jefferson IV.” He blinked. For the first time since the doctor had been speaking with him. That is what was odd about his eyes. The man was hardly blinking.
“All right, I have your medical history right here. Nothing unusual that I need to be worried about. Now, why are you reporting here this morning?”
“It’s my hand, Doctor.” He held up his right hand. “I’ve got this feeling, a ti
ngling but it’s almost painful, and it’s been getting worse the last few hours.”
“I think a colloquial expression for that, Spacer Rhim, is ‘pins and needles.’ Is that it?”
“Yeah, exactly. That’s what it feels like.”
“Let me see it.” The man extended his hand and the doctor took it, carefully checking the texture and rigidity of the skin, the color, its size relative to the other hand, its temperature, how damp or dry it was, and several other characteristics that he could not have named without careful thought but that, nevertheless, were a part of his examination. Sahin trusted his senses first, before having recourse to instruments and laboratory tests. He noticed that the hand was slightly inflamed, being redder, larger, and damper than the other. It was almost as if the hand had suffered a mild sunburn or been very lightly scalded in hot water. One thing that could cause that kind of injury on board a starship came immediately to mind. “Let’s see what your duty assignment is. I’m going to guess you work in Engineering somewhere around the compression drive.”
Before Rhim could respond, the doctor had the information in front of him. “Indeed. My surmise was correct. You are a Compression Drive Operation, Maintenance, and Repair Technician, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.” During this conversation, the doctor was shining his pen light into Rhim’s eyes checking his pupil response, looking in his ears, feeling his pulse, checking his cervical glands for adenopathy, and so on.
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