To Honor You Call Us

by Harvey G. Phillips

  Chapter 9

  13:22Z Hours 23 January 2315

  With his XO handling the system crossings and the jumps so well, Max felt comfortable leaving CIC to make the rounds of the ship. He was thorough, going to every deck (there were only three) and every compartment in which there were men stationed or likely to be working. On three separate occasions, he had stopped men from engaging in cleaning and polishing to the insane level established by Captain Oscar rather than to the merely fanatical standard that was the norm in the Navy. All three men followed his orders, but with obvious, visible reluctance. Max made a mental note of their names so that he could check on them later, as he expected that they would return to their old habits if given half a chance. Clearly, not everyone was happy about the new order of things. Spacers are creatures of habit.

  As on all Union Warships, the decks are assigned letters of the alphabet, starting from the ventral level or “top” with “A” and going down. Max was on C deck when he opened a compartment almost all of the way aft toward the Engineering spaces. Max’s knowledge of some parts of the ship was still a bit fuzzy, so he didn’t know what was behind this particular hatch. Most compartments on warships were not labeled, except with compartment numbers, so as not to be of help to enemy boarders. It was not known whether any Krag outside of their Intel sections read Standard, but no one was going to take any chances.

  Opening the hatch, he found the Small Arms and Edged Weapons Training Room, occupied by an older NCO and seven squeakers. In fact, they looked to be the squeakiest of the squeakers, the youngest of the Midshipmen on board. The NCO appeared to be almost sixty, and might have acquired just a tiny bit of roundness around the middle, but he had muscular arms, broad shoulders, and a warrior’s bearing. His iron gray crew cut accentuated a craggy face that had the lines that went in equal measure with a warrior’s grimace and a beloved grandfather’s smile. His service stripes showed that he had probably been in the same training class as Gus Grissom. Max received a quick once over from intense gray eyes that clearly missed very little.

  Max’s recollection of the training schedule for the day told him that these boys were the group who joined the ship at Jellicoe Station just a few days ago. This was their first ship. Today, they were getting their first taste of Basic Combat Instruction from Chief Petty Officer First Class Amborsky, the lead Midshipman Trainer, and the second most senior noncom on the ship. If a man who held this job was well-liked on board, he was generally called “Mother Goose.”

  As soon as Amborsky saw Max, he barked “Captain on deck.” All of the little boys, whom Max knew to be between the ages of 8 and 10 standard years, came immediately to a fairly good version of attention. But not good enough for Amborsky. “My dear little lambs,” he growled ferociously, his words almost a comic contrast with his tone, “when you hear ‘Captain on Deck’ that means you come to AH-TEN-SHUN. Feet together! Arms at your sides! Stomach in! Shoulders back! Chest out! Head high! Eyes straight ahead! Like you are PROUD to be in the Navy, even though the Navy has yet to have any cause to be proud of YOU. That’s better.” As he was talking, he moved around the room, nudging one boy’s chin a little higher, adjusting another’s shoulders a bit further back, pushing another’s feet closer together, his touches firm but not rough or unkind.

  Once the Chief was satisfied that his charges had come properly to attention for their Commanding Officer, he pivoted and saluted the Captain. “Captain, Chief Petty Officer Amborsky, reporting seven newborn squeakers participating in Unit One, Module Two of Basic Combat Instruction. They have just been introduced to identifying the enemy and learned his basic characteristics, sir.” It was apparent that, somehow, the Fates had seen to it that this FUBAR ship had wound up with a solid gold Mother Goose.

  Max returned the salute and the Chief snapped his hand back to his side. He looked at the earnest faces arrayed in front of him. The young, earnest faces. Max put on his Stern Warrior face. “Identifying the enemy—sounds pretty easy to me, Chief. If it’s tall as a man, with a rat face and tiny pink ears, it’s a Krag and it needs to die.”

  “Captain, we were just about to begin the basic instruction with the dirk. Would the Captain like to watch or would the Captain like to conduct the instruction himself?” Aha, the old veteran has decided to administer a test to his new Captain.

  “Thank you, Chief. I believe I will conduct the instruction, at least for a while.” The Chief nodded, a slight glimmer of provisional approval in his eyes. Score one for Max. Max reached into a slot in the leg of his SCU and withdrew an edged weapon, holding it up before his audience. The old Chief let slip the merest hint of a smile when he saw that the skipper still carried a dirk in addition to his side arm and his cutlass.

  Max gripped the weapon’s hilt between two fingers so that his hand did not obstruct their view. “This, gentlemen, is the General Issue, Union Naval Dirk, Model M 28-2. It is not, I repeat NOT, a ‘baby sword’ as you may hear some people call it. The dirk is a real deadly weapon used by real Spacers to kill real enemies. This particular dirk is the same one I was issued when I was your age. It has drawn enemy blood. I used it to stick a Krag in the gut and then a Marine took off his head. This blade saved my life.

  “Some of you may be wondering why we are issuing edged weapons in the twenty-fourth century. Here we are, on an FTL capable starship propelled by nuclear fusion, handing out a weapon almost identical to that which the British Royal Navy issued to its Midshipmen five hundred years ago on wooden vessels propelled by the wind. Well, as you remember from the tour you got of this vessel when you came aboard at Jellicoe, the Cumberland is a pressurized metal tube surrounded by the vacuum of space, crammed full of pressure vessels, pipes full of toxic liquids and gases, radioactive nuclear detonators, and other things that will kill you and lots of other people if they get holes poked in them with bullets. So, spacers need a weapon that will kill but that doesn’t send little bits of metal flying through the air a 300 meters per second. Second, edged weapons can be used by small people with very little training—you do not need to be taught how to load, aim, fire, field strip, and clean them. Edged weapons do not jam, they do not go off accidentally, and they do not run out of ammunition.

  “According to official naval records, in the course of this war, over two hundred Krag have been killed or seriously wounded by Midshipmen wielding dirks. This simple weapon has saved hundreds of Midshipmen’s lives. It is not a toy. It is the first weapon issued to you in your naval career. It is going to be issued to you today, as soon as you complete this exercise. From that moment until the day you retire and are mustered off your last ship, naval regulations require that you keep it, or some other deadly weapon, at hand at all times. When you receive your weapon, you are no longer a boy; you are a member of the Union Space Navy, carrying arms and trained to use those arms to kill the enemy. From that moment, you are a warrior.

  “The M-28 is approximately four hundred and eighty three millimeters long overall, weighs five hundred and ten grams, and does its work with a three hundred and thirty millimeter long, double edged, high carbon steel blade. It is issued with the edges razor sharp and you are expected to keep them that way, making it an extremely effective slashing and cutting weapon, but that is not how we normally use it.” He slid his own dirk back into its pocket and picked up one of the blunt practice dirks on the table. “We are not going to send you into the fray against the Krag until you are a little bit older, but it is always possible that the Krag will come to you and, if that happens, your dirk is your weapon of last resort. The best way to use it is just like I did when I was fourteen.” He walked over to the Chief. “You hold it underhand like this and you stick it in at the top of the Krag’s belly, right here,” he pressed the practice blade against the Chief’s abdomen about half way between his navel and his solar plexus, “not where the belly ends on a man because Krag have rib cages that come down further than ours but right here in the middle of its upper body. You shove as hard as you can and you
keep pushing until it won’t go in any further, all the way to the hilt if you can. Then, you pull it out so that if you cut open any blood vessels you leave a hole for it to bleed out through. If the Krag does not go down, do it again, and again, and again until he does. So, that’s the drill: stab, withdraw, stab, withdraw, stab, withdraw. Keep it up until the Krag is at your feet in a puddle of its own blood. Now, we’ll pair you off, except for . . . you,” he pointed to the smallest of the lot, “you will be my partner.” Training classes such as this always had an odd number of students for precisely that reason, so that the instructor could pick the student most in need of closer instruction, greater encouragement, or more attention as his partner. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Park, sir.” He managed to choke out, obviously intimidated by the presence of his exalted Commanding Officer. “But everyone calls me ‘Will Robinson.’” The boy couldn’t have been any more than a hundred centimeters tall. He looked far too small to be hundreds of light years away from his mommy.

  “A respected and time-honored naval nickname—I carried it myself for sixteen weeks.”

  “You did, sir?”

  “Absolutely. I was the Will Robinson of the Cruiser U.S.S. San Jacinto, old number CRM 1228, back in 2295. That’s back when starships had steam engines and we punished disobedience by keelhauling.” The little boy smiled at that. “Where are you from, Mr. Park?”

  “A small town in Korea. On Earth, sir.”

  “All right, Mr. Park. Just do what I show you and you’ll do fine.”

  He then proceeded to have one member of each pair pick up the practice dirk and hold it as if to stab a Krag in the belly. Max went around the room, correcting their grips. Once the grips were right, he showed them the stance that would deliver the most power, weak side foot slightly forward, strong side foot slightly back, leaning forward just a few degrees, and then thrusting with the strong side arm while bracing the body by pushing forward with the legs. Finally he came back to his partner. He made sure that the boy had the correct grip and the correct stance.

  Once everyone had the stance and the grip right, Max made sure each boy knew what to do with them, practicing stabbing and withdrawing over and over, with Max and the Chief correcting their form. The boys who were initially handed the dirks then traded with their partners, Max and the Chief again going around the room, gently correcting grip, foot placement, and body posture.

  “Now,” Max announced when that was accomplished, “some of you may have noticed that Mr. Park had some difficulty reaching the right point on my belly. You will not always be able to get to the Krag’s abdomen. You may be out of position. The Krag may be standing on a higher level than you are. You may be too short. But, that doesn’t mean your dirk is useless. In a fight, stab or cut whatever you can reach. Even if you don’t kill the Krag, you may help your shipmates by wounding it enough to put it of the fight or even by hampering and distracting it enough so that other naval personnel can attack it successfully. When I was sticking that Krag in the gut with my dirk at age fourteen, I had his undivided attention, and that allowed Marine Lance Corporal Halvorsen to come up behind it and take its head off with a battle ax.

  Max stood on a six inch tall wooden box, about half a meter square, apparently constructed for precisely that purpose. “Now, Mr. Park, suppose that I am a Krag warrior and I am drawing my sidearm to shoot you right in the head. There is nowhere to hide, so if you run away, all that will accomplish is getting you shot in the back of the head rather than the front.” Max pointed his finger at the boy with his thumb stuck in the air, the universal pantomime for a handgun. “I’m drawing this pistol and I’m about to shoot you. What do you do?”

  “Well, sir, I guess . . . .”

  “No, son. Don’t tell me. Show me. Use your weapon. Do it. Now.” The boy didn’t move, but just stood there, looking at him timidly, as though afraid to attack the bulky, not to mention high-ranking, fully grown man in front of him. He seemed frozen in place. “Son, listen to me. I’m a Krag, just like the one who killed most of the women in your family. I’m the reason you never got to meet your grandmother and your great-grandmother. I’m the reason all the old men in your home town live out their lives in loneliness and sadness. Me and my rat-faced kinfolk have killed or enslaved billions and billions of human beings. What’s more, I’m going to shoot you right between the eyes in about two seconds. And, after that, I’m going to go over there and I’m going to shoot Chief Amborsky, too. And, once I’m done with him I’m going to shoot all your bunk mates here one by one in the belly and watch them die. Slowly. You and your dirk are the only thing between your friends and certain death. ARE YOU JUST GOING TO STAND THERE?”

  Max’s harangue finally jarred the boy from immobility. He gritted his teeth and, letting go an inarticulate shriek of rage, ran at Max full tilt and stabbed him in the groin with the mock blade, the thick SCU preventing any injury. After that blow, the boy kept on stabbing: first at the inside of Max’s thigh right over the femoral artery, then at the back of Max’s knee, then the other thigh, then the other knee and, finally, he made repeated hacking motions at Max’s hamstrings. Abruptly, the boy stopped, stood up straight, and smiled. “Like that?”

  “Poo yai, son,” Max said. “I think you’ve got the makings of an Admiral.”

  ***

  After having most of his lower body perforated in simulated fashion by the diminutive Midshipman Park, Max turned the combat training back over to Chief Amborsky and started to make his way forward. He was tired. Brutally tired. He had barely slept since taking command, but there was still so much to do in order to get this poor, warped and misused excuse for a ship ready to do battle with the Krag. And that was leaving to the side everything that would have to be done when Lieutenant Brown managed to find the miniature drug factory on board. The doctor was already making surreptitious preparations to detoxify up to fifty crew members, but Max doubted that it was possible to be truly ready for something of that magnitude.

  He came to an airtight hatch in the corridor, one of dozens throughout the ship present to provide airtight compartmentalization in the event of a hull breach or toxic gas leak. It was an oval steel door just wide enough for a large man to pass through, set in a metal frame that ran around it and filled the roughly square shape of the corridor. Max did what tired men often do when stepping over the raised edge of the hatch—he didn’t raise his foot high enough and he tripped, falling on his face right onto the deck. Thankfully, no one was there to see it. Lying face down on the deck, Max discovered that his eyes were scant centimeters from a deck gun socket—a deck gun socket that had been worn into brilliant but useless smoothness by pathologically assiduous polishing.

  Deck gun sockets allow the crew to deploy and securely mount various heavy anti-personnel weapons directly to the deck without having to lug around a large, cumbersome tripod in the confined quarters of a starship. These weapons, including various machine guns, high capacity fully automatic shotguns, and light cannon for penetrating Krag armored fighting suits, are fitted to swivel mounts, each set on top of a roughly meter tall pole with a base consisting of a probe and latch mechanism that fits into sockets set flush into the deck. These sockets are found every several meters along every corridor and in every large interior space on board, such as the cargo holds and the hangar bay. The probe slips into the socket and is rigidly locked into place by the latch, with the socket, in turn, firmly secured under the deck to the supporting members of the ship’s space frame, forming a rock-solid mount to support a heavy weapon and that can stand up the recoil of even a heavy machine gun. There were more than a hundred deck gun sockets all over the ship, each a prospective site for a heavy defensive weapons position to stiffen the ship’s defense against boarders.

  And this one had been shined within a millimeter of its life. Or, maybe past that. It had been polished so much, in fact, with so abrasive a polishing agent, that the array of metal lips and ridges engaged by the latch mechanism to hold
the weapons mount in place was worn nearly smooth. Max would bet his last credit that the latch would not engage or that, if it did, the socket would not hold the base securely enough to withstand the weapon’s recoil.

  He got up from the deck, no bones broken but sore in several places. At least he still bounced well. A few steps brought him to the next socket. Same thing. And the next. And the next. After eight sockets he stopped looking and went straight to his Day Cabin damning Commander Allen Kent Oscar, U.S.N., every step of the way.

  He dropped into the chair of the Day Cabin work station and logged in. He was about to ask the computer to tell him exactly how many deck gun sockets were on the ship and start writing a memo to order that they be swapped out when he saw a text message received from the XO about fifteen minutes earlier and marked “URGENT.” Anything from the XO with an “urgent” stamp took automatic precedence. He pulled up the message. It was in the format used for written naval communications of this type at least since the time of Admiral Chester Nimitz, if not the time of Admiral Horatio Nelson. None of those men, however, wrote memos the way Roger Garcia did.

  To: Robichaux, M.T., LCDR USN, Commanding U.S.S. Cumberland

  From: Garcia, R.T., LT USN, XO U.S.S. Cumberland

  CC: MAJ G.A. Kraft, Marine Detachment Commander

  LT V.J. Brown, Chief Engineer

  Date: 23 January 2315

  Priority: URGENT