To Honor You Call Us

by Harvey G. Phillips

  “Marines? You’re Union,” the Captain exclaimed, reached into an equipment bin, grabbed something, and had begun the motion of pulling the object free when Sahin flashed out his sword and brought it down, edge first, on the Captain’s arm, slicing neatly through the man’s uniform sleeve but not breaking the skin.

  “This sword, as you can see my dear sir, has a keen edge.” As did Doctor Sahin’s voice. “And, if you do not want me to perform a non-surgical amputation of that arm, you will drop whatever is in your hand and put both hands, slowly, where I can see them.”

  “You’d best do it, mate,” said one of the Marines. “If he’s even a hair slow on the sword this shotgun will do you just fine.” The other Marines covered the remaining bridge crew with their shotguns, carefully positioning themselves so that no one was in anyone else’s line of fire.

  “Truss ‘em, men,” said Kraft. Covering each other in series, the Marines produced wrist ties which they used to cinch the crewmen’s wrists behind their backs. When this task was accomplished, a process completed in about twenty seconds, Kraft pulled out his percom, strapped it to his wrist, and pushed the call button. “Aft party, status.”

  A voice came over the device’s speaker. “We’ve got two men in Engineering and one Krag that was holed up in a cargo bin. It used its sword to express its objections to being taken captive, so I had to blow its arm off with a shotgun. Tell the doctor, though, I put the stump in a tourniquet and I’ve saved the loose arm, it’s still flopping something fierce—don’t know whether he’ll want to try to reattach it, hang it on his wall, or give it to his girlfriend to wear as a stole, but I’ve got it wrapped up. The two humans are uninjured—they’re trussed up nice and neat. Two interesting discoveries, though. First, there was a helluva bomb bolted to the main reactor—set to blow if tampered with or if the ship was hit by weapons fire. Dokate disarmed it and we jettisoned the explosive. Second, we found their cargo. You’ll never believe it, sir. It’s gold. Tons and tons of it.

  Chapter 16

  10:44Z Hours 29 January 2315

  Max and Doctor Sahin were sharing a relaxing, if not perfectly flavorful, dinner in Max’s Day Cabin, which contained a small but comfortable dining area. The hard-working men assigned to the Galley gamely struggled to turn the less than ideal raw materials furnished to them by the Navy into interesting and flavorful food, with mixed success. Tonight was one of their better nights. A spicy vegetable soup, undoubtedly made with frozen vegetables, was followed by an even spicier meat and vegetable goulash (the fewer questions asked about the meat, the better), freshly-baked bread (flour, baking powder, powdered eggs, etc., were compact and easily stored for long periods, so there was always fresh bread on a well-ordered warship), mashed potatoes (dried, reconstituted), green beans (canned), and lemon pound cake for dessert (what goes for bread also goes for cake). All washed down, in Max’s case, with the better than fair but not quite good Ship’s Beer (every ship brewed its own beer unless the CO2 scrubbers were malfunctioning) and capped by the ubiquitous naval fuel, Navy coffee—hot, strong, and black. Doctor Sahin drank fruit juice (reconstituted from freeze-dried powder) with his dinner but shared coffee with Max.

  Having finished the meal, the men moved to the Day Cabin’s sitting area, where both men sipped their coffee and enjoyed a second slice of the really quite creditable pound cake.

  Doctor Sahin had eaten only about half as much as Max, but he had just emitted a long, loud belch of repletion and seemed utterly satisfied with the fare. “The victuals on board this vessel are certainly better than they were on Travis Station.”

  “Really? I’d have thought that the food on a station would be better than on ship. Stations get more frequent resupply, from more sources. The variety should be better, at any rate.”

  “I haven’t been on board ship long enough to develop an opinion regarding variety, but the food here is more flavorful than on the station. Station food was abundant and various but unspeakably bland.”

  “That won’t be a problem here. You see, before we departed, I was able to draft a few carefully chosen Culinary Specialists (we mustn’t say ‘cook’ you see) who grew up on Nouvelle Acadiana or in Louisiana back on Earth. Our Cajun cooking may be not fancy, but at least it has some taste to it. None of these we just ate were actually Cajun dishes, but they all had what I call the Cajun flare.”

  “I found them very tasty. But, then, my ancestry is mostly Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean and our food is zesty as well. My experience in the Navy is that the cuisine is influenced primarily by that of the Midwest of North America and the Southeast of Great Britain which, as far as I can tell, are vast, desolate culinary wastelands.”

  “Meat and potatoes and overcooked vegetables.”

  “Precisely.” The doctor’s face took on the small smile that Max had come know meant that he was about to utter what he regarded as a witticism. “It is no wonder that Salt Water and Space Navies have long been dominated by personnel from those regions and their stock. They went into space to escape the wretched food.” He looked at Max, as though expecting him to be seized with a paroxysm of laugher. When this did not come to pass, he went on, somewhat disappointed. “I’m going to enjoy this posting. I have not eaten this well in years. My only concern on board ship is encountering swine flesh without knowing it.”

  “Not a problem. Nearly a quarter of the Navy is Muslim, so pork is not a part of the naval diet, with the exception of bacon and ham which are always served separately and with alternative dishes available.” Then he put two and two together. “Doctor? I didn’t know you were Muslim.”

  “I have made no secret of it.”

  Max made a dismissive gesture. “No matter. You know the old saying, ‘We were birthed by a hundred faiths, but the Navy is father to us all.’”

  “I have heard the saying,” said Sahin, “and generally admire the sentiment, but have always thought the saying itself rather strange. After all, does it not seem to imply that you and I and every other man in the Navy is the product of the conjugal union between our father, the Navy, and our respective mothers, the faiths of our people? It seems to border on the sacrilegious.”

  Max chuckled. “I suppose it does. I never thought about it like that. That saying is likely one of those things you need to take figuratively, and—once you do that—not think about it very much afterwards. Some things just don’t bear close examination, you know. They’re like those French paintings made of countless little colored dots instead of brush strokes. If you look at them too closely, you don’t have a painting any more, just a great many tiny specks of paint.”

  “There is certainly a lesson in that,” said the doctor. “And it is a lesson from which I might draw a great deal of profit. I have something of a tendency to over-examine things.”

  “Really?” Max said, with barely a trace of sarcasm. “I hadn’t noticed. Whether the saying we have about it makes a great deal of sense or not, you can be sure that the Navy is friendly to all faiths. If you ever need to know which way Mecca lies, feel free to call anyone in Navigation, as I know you have difficulty with such things.”

  “It is not a problem. Years ago a Muslim navigator invented this device.” He stood up and walked over to a bookshelf from which he retrieved a cube, about 80 millimeters on a side. The cube was black through and through except for a small greenish blue arrow that seemed to float in the cube’s center. As the doctor rotated the cube in his hand, the orientation of the arrow remained constant, always pointing generally aft and slightly toward the lower deck. “As long as the arrow is illuminated, it is pointing toward Earth, and Mecca. If the system has a fault, the arrow ceases to be visible. They are lightweight, discrete, interface automatically with virtually every human computer network, and practically every Muslim who leaves Earth has at least one.”

  Sahin handed it to Max, who turned it over in his hands. “Ingenious. Looks like it runs off a Type 11 Power Cell, just like a percom, probably uses one of the stan
dard eight or twelve channel narrow band transceivers that we put in our simpler wireless devices—that would cover just about every kind of network but still use no power worth speaking of. Very elegant design. I’m impressed. The man was in the Navy, wasn’t he?”

  “Indeed he was. Still is. I suspect you have heard of him. Admiral Ganiyev?”

  “’Go Get-Em’ Ganiyev? I thought he was Russian.”

  ”There are Russian Muslims, but I believe his ancestors are from Uzbekistan.”

  “I served under him for a year. I was in the Tactical Back Room when he was Captain of the Battleship Suffolk. The man has the loudest voice in the Navy.”

  “I thought you held that distinction, Captain.”

  “Not hardly. And, when we’re here, you can call me ‘Max,’ you know. In any event, you’re certainly not unique in the matter of your faith here. That would be a hard thing to do, as we have all kinds in the Navy.” He smiled broadly at a recollection. “When I commanded a PC-4 something like five, no six, years ago, I had a man under my command who had no fewer than six wives.”

  “Six! How can that be? I thought that plural marriage was outlawed in the Union.”

  “That is a common misconception. It was outlawed under the old Confederation, which—as you remember—had a habit of passing all sorts of intrusive, busybody legislation telling people how to live their lives and interfering in the member worlds’ internal affairs. That’s one of the many reasons it fell in the Revolt of the Estates seventy or so years ago. Anyway, marriages to multiple partners are against local, planetary law on virtually every world in the Union, but Union statute does not prohibit it. So, and this is not widely known at all, there are half a dozen or so Union worlds where it is permitted and one or two where it is even considered normal. This man came from some out of the way planet—I can’t remember the name off the top of my head—where such things are permitted. Planet was settled by people who subscribe to some modern splinter Jewish sect, totally repudiated by all mainstream Jews you understand, that believes since the old Hebrew Patriarchs like Abraham and that crowd had wives and wives and more wives, so should they. The man on my crew, his name is Moshe Hirschman, Able Spacer First, had something like twenty-four children back then. Probably up to thirty or more by now.”

  “However could a man afford to support such a brood on a Navy salary?”

  “It’s actually rather easier for a Navy man to do this sort of thing than a civilian. His wives and children all get totally free medical and dental care, not to mention a housing and dependent allowance that is scaled to the size of his family. With all those dependents, his pay is about the same as mine. But, it isn’t paying for that brood that would be the concern, in any event.”

  “What would be the concern, then?” asked Sahin.

  “I’ve never been able to get along for more than a matter of a few weeks with one woman, much less six,” Max said. “I honestly don’t get how a man could do it.”

  “I see your point. That has never been something at which I have ever been very successful myself. There are things about them that I simply cannot seem to fathom and I wonder if I ever will.”

  “I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one,” said Max.

  “You are, most certainly, not the only one. And here is what I find most perplexing about them. Why, oh why, must they always perceive and need to discuss some sort of ever so grave problem when everything is perfectly acceptable?”

  Max laughed, “Exactly. You’ve hit the fusion reactor with the missile that time. And, then, once they’ve pointed out this previously invisible flaw in what was a completely satisfactory situation, there’s holy unshirted hell to pay if you ever dare to tell them you don’t see that same flaw yourself.”

  “Stars forbid it!” Sahin raised his hands, palms forward, in mock supplication.

  “Absolutely. From the woman’s perspective, if the man thinks that things are all right and the woman thinks there’s a problem, then it must be because something is wrong with the man. Something so totally wrong with the man, in fact, that the woman invariably finds herself wondering whether the two of them should be together at all. I mean, how could she carry on a relationship with someone so emotionally blind and clueless, right? It sure as hell never occurs to her that the reason she thinks something is wrong is because her expectations are too high for the situation or simply inappropriate for the circumstances.”

  “I would take that as a given, my friend. The scenario you describe is painfully familiar to me. Painfully familiar, indeed. But, it need not apply to the situation of your crewman and his many wives. His culture may have different rules about domestic economy than yours. Or, perhaps, everyone who is a party to the arrangement may have expectations regarding the degree of harmony and agreement in the family that are lower. One of the best ways to guarantee success in any endeavor, you know, is to lower the threshold of what one considers ‘success.’”

  “Still, you know how women are,” Max said. “I’d suspect that there’d be all manner of scratching and clawing between them.”

  “You never know. Women are often more capable of rational cooperation and collective action than we are, and frequently with less need for individual dominance. They might get along like sisters, and present a united front vis a vis the husband, prevailing in all things through the concerted and cooperative exercise of their womanly wiles. In many ways, women are vastly more wise than men. Every study shows that their Emotional Intelligence, on average, significantly exceeds ours. They are much better at getting their way with us than we are with them. I suspect that women are the true rulers of all Human Space, sitting back in the Core Systems like queen bees in the center of the hive with us, the worker drones, buzzing about the galaxy bringing in the pollen of resources and commerce while keeping the Krag at bay. Yes, I think that outcome is the most likely one. Given the relative ease by which men are manipulated by the use of sexual charms, a society such as the one from which this fellow comes would likely be a paper-thin veneer of patriarchalism covering a core entirely dominated and ruled in every important respect by the females.”

  “You may be right at that, Doctor. Either way, I don’t think that either of us will ever understand them. Fortunately, in the Navy as it is currently constituted, that is not a handicap. If we understand men, we know what we need to know.” A moment’s pause while he sipped his coffee. “When I mentioned scratching and clawing earlier, it reminded me of your newest patient, the man wounded in the boarding expedition. How is he faring?”

  “Spacer Alvarez will be fine. The sleeve of his SCU—remarkably tough garment—took the brunt of the attack, although I did have to repair some lacerations in his left hand. It is always surprising to me how much damage can be done by the comparatively short claws of a domestic feline. They can be surprisingly dangerous animals.”

  “Well, you can’t blame the cat in this case. The crew of that freighter had the poor creature shut up in a tiny storage locker to keep it away from that Krag they had on board, and when Alvarez opened it as part of his search, it came out of there like a Talon missile with claws.”

  “And, I understand it ran out of the compartment, up the corridor, and straight across the boarding tube right onto the Cumberland.”

  Max smiled beatifically. “Yep. Ain’t it grand? The men could not be more pleased. It’s a big, fine-looking, black cat too.”

  “I seem to recall having heard somewhere that there is an old superstition about black cats being lucky for a ship.”

  “Sure is. There’s nothing better, especially if it joins the ship voluntarily like this one did.”

  “What difference could that make?” The doctor shook his head with incomprehension. “I can never manage to understand the workings of the superstitious mind. I would think that, either you have a cat and it is lucky or you do not and you are, therefore, not the beneficiary of its luck. It is a simple binary decision set.”

  Max managed not to roll his eyes.
Barely. “The cat’s choice is very important. According to Spacer lore, cats have nine lives and are said to be able to sense whether a ship is going to be safe, and so a cat would not go aboard a ship if something bad was going to happen to it. Given a choice between two ships, the cat, especially a black one, will always go to the luckier of the two. So, if a cat decides to join your ship, you know the ship will fare well. Similarly, if the cat abandons your ship, it is seen as a very bad thing, indeed.”

  “I understand. From a scientific and rational perspective, it is still pure nonsense of course, but I understand. Pray tell, how common are cats on warships?”

  “The Navy actually collects statistics on such things, and the last time I checked the figure was about a quarter of all ships of all Types. I don’t remember if they calculated separate figures by Type, but from what I’ve seen they are more common on fighting vessels. My experience is that, for one reason or another, most of the better ships—that is, the ones in the best order with the highest combat effectiveness and the highest moral—have a cat. Not all, but most.”

  “Have we inquired of the freighter crew what the animal’s name is?”

  “Certainly not,” Max said, appalled.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he explained with exaggerated patience, “according to custom, when a cat changes ships, it gets a new name. One selected by the enlisted and the Mids. It always amazes me that two hundred men and boys can manage in an amiable fashion to agree on a name, but they always do, and in short order. The animal had not been on board more than an hour or two before the lower decks determined that his name was ‘Clouseau.’”