Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  “Jesus Christ,” Lee muttered, strapping into the conning chair. “Ma’am, respectfully, you have to let me take the stick when we tie up. It’s a lot less forgiving than…”

  “I’ll consider it,” Oliver cut him off, “stand by for lift.”

  The hull shuddered as the crane hoisted them over the bay doors.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lee said again.

  In the end, Oliver relented. The coxswain was right that the complex series of maneuvers necessary to get a small boat to match the rotation of an orbital dock was far less forgiving than in open space, and while she had confidence in her ability to steer the vessel, she wasn’t stupid. Lee uttered a sigh so grand it was almost audible in the vacuum, and gratefully slid into the helmsman’s position for the last leg of their journey.

  OTRACEN was a giant spinning metal donut, festooned with solar collectors and crowded with small boats chasing one another in what Oliver assumed were training exercises. Here and there, two of them were clamped together, looking nothing so much like beetles mating, as their crews practiced contested boardings. A range drifted a few kilometers above it, floating targets riddled with 23mm diameter holes. Like all live-fire ranges in space, its backstop was the distant sun, on the presumption the rounds would travel until incinerated by the heat.

  Their small boat was greeted by a man so tall and thin that he rivaled Ho. But where Ho’s face was open and perpetually amused, this man looked like he’d just funneled a lemon. His pencil-thin mustache fought for purchase on an upper lip that was having none of it. The rest of his head had dispensed with hair long ago. “Captain Oliver,” the man’s voice was reed thin, and his nearly imperceptible lean spoke of a career spent in spin-gravity, “welcome to OTRACEN. I’m Captain Fullweiler. I command here.”

  Oliver shook his hand, suppressed a shudder at Fullweiler’s dead fish grip and smiled. “Nice to meet you, captain. Thanks for having us.”

  “Well, it’s very unusual for us to have an O6 enroll in NCD/0G, especially one who is about to make flag,” Fullweiler said, his patchwork mustache dancing like a wispy caterpillar, “so of course we have to roll out the red carpet.” His tone indicated he was none too happy about that fact. “If you’ll follow me, we can talk more in my office.”

  “This,” Oliver threw her arm around Petty Officer Lee as he exited the hatch and broke the seal on his hardshell helmet, “is BM1 Lee, off the Corvus and he is an outstanding coxs’un.”

  Fullweiler paused before dropping his eyes to the man, wrenching them down with an effort. “Welcome aboard, BM1.”

  Lee looked about as awkward as Fullweiler, “Sir.”

  “I haven’t seen him fly all that much,” Oliver went on, “but he’s got the patience of a saint, and as we all know, that’s the key to running any boat, big or small.”

  Fullweiler looked at her and said nothing. His formal half-smile seemed bolted on.

  “Anyway,” Oliver went on, “I’d be in your debt if you’d square Lee and his crew away with chow and a shower and a ready rack if you’ve got them before you turn them around. They just came off Earth and they’ve got to be beat to hell.”

  It took Fullweiler a few moments to answer, “Of course. I’m sure Master Chief will see to them.”

  “Much obliged,” Oliver said. And now we know that I don’t like you either. She gestured behind him, “ready when you are.”

  Fullweiler’s office was as professional as they could make it, but it still spoke of life in orbit rather than on Earth. No cherry-wood or American flags, just the white paneled plastic and video screens that Oliver knew were standard in any room outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Fullweiler slouched in a swivel backed chair that she assumed was supported on one side to counter the artificial gravity. The other two chairs in the room didn’t have backs at all, which Oliver assumed was deliberate. Assholes were assholes on Earth or off, and their asshole tactics never changed.

  “I’m sure your XO will be more comfortable in his quarters,” Fullweiler began.

  “I’m sure he would too,” Oliver agreed, “but he doesn’t get paid to be comfortable. He gets paid to be here when I need him, and I need him now.”

  Ho simply took his seat, elbows on his knees, looking up at Fullweiler expectantly, his ever-present slight-smile never faltering.

  Fullweiler sat in silence for a full thirty seconds before shaking his head and giving an exaggerated shrug. He reached into his desk drawer and drew out a bottle of pills, thumping them down hard enough to make them rattle against the plastic. “These are for you.”

  Oliver took them, turning the plastic bottle over in her hands. It wasn’t labeled.

  “I wanted to give them to you personally,” Fullweiler said, “rather than having them issued by one of our staff. You’re going to have to command out here, and it won’t help anyone if folks start off seeing you as…”

  “As what?” Oliver asked. “As weak? As an old woman? Jesus. Anyone looking at me can see that I’m an old woman.”

  “Lunar coasties are a different breed,” Fullweiler said.

  “You forget that I did a tour out here.”

  “You did less than half a tour out here,” Fullweiler corrected her, “otherwise you’d know that the pills in there are calcium supplements. You’ll be spending a lot of time in micro-g. That’s going to hit you particularly hard.”

  “It’s not going to hit me any harder than…”

  “It’s going to hit you particularly hard because you are, as you just said, an older woman. You have early onset osteoporosis as it…”

  “How the hell would you know…”

  “…Which I know because I have read your medical file, which I am authorized to do because I command OTRACEN and while we are equal in rank, as long as you are enrolled here, you are a student and your care is my responsibility.”

  Oliver closed her mouth so hard her teeth clicked. Her mind raced to find a retort, but Fullweiler had it right. She was a student, he was the school chief, and that was that.

  In the end, Ho broke the tension, coughing softly.

  “You have something you’d like to add, commander?” Fullweiler asked.

  “If you knew anything about Rear Admiral Select Oliver, sir,” Ho replied, “you’d know she doesn’t need me to add a thing.”

  Fullweiler turned back to Oliver. “Look, I know we’re off on the wrong foot, and I get why you’re doing this, but I want you to know that it isn’t necessary, and I’m asking you to reconsider.”

  “Reconsider?” Oliver asked.

  “That’s right. Stay here for one day for a ‘facility familiarization,’” Fullweiler softened his tone and smiled, “then head on to Pico to take your command. NCD/0G school is not a game and it’s not a joke. It’s punishing work, and it’s punishment that, with respect, I don’t think you’re up to just now, Jane. May I call you Jane?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Well, Captain Oliver, I hope you understand that being out here could do real and lasting damage to your body.”

  Oliver had had enough. She stood. “Well, it’s like you said, I’m an old woman. I won’t be needing it much longer anyway. Just point me to my quarters, please.”

  Fullweiler sighed and spread his hands. “I’ll take you personally–”

  “Directions will be fine, thank you. I’m sure you have plenty to do.”

  Fullweiler pursed his lips. “All right. Two adjoining staterooms are waiting for you in O-country. Just turn spinward out the door and head straight down. The duty PO can show you your quarters.”

  Oliver nodded, and left. It wasn’t until the door shut behind her that she turned to Ho. “Which fucking way is ‘spinward?’”

  Ho jerked a thumb to his left. “He means with the station’s rotation.”

  “Of course,” Oliver said, “I just wanted to see if you knew.”

  Ho grinned and they turned to make their way down the passage toward officer’s country. “That man,” he said, “is a specia
l kind of asshole.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Oliver said. “I am an old woman.”

  Ho shrugged. “Way I see it, the guard allowed you to enroll here, and that means you’re not the only one who thinks you can hack it.”

  “You don’t think there’s just a hint of pity driving that decision? The old man feeling bad for the poor Widow Jane?”

  Ho stopped, looked at her, his expression horrified. “Absolutely not.”

  Oliver held his gaze for as long as she could. “Come on, Wen. I am an old woman. An old woman who’s been running a school for years! I’ve been out of the game for so long. Am I ready to go back to operational command?”

  “I hate to break this to you, Rear Admiral Select…”

  “…Stop calling me that!”

  “…Rear Admiral Select, but I, as your chief of staff, will be doing the commanding, in concert with whoever the acting CO happens to be. Your primary mission is to make the Boarding Action team ready to win.”

  “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch. Do you honestly think I’m going to let you run my shop, Wen? Have you met me?”

  Ho sighed. “Yeah. Well, I was hoping that maybe once you got the bit in your teeth training this crew up, you’d let me help you out a little.”

  “Not a chance. This is my job.”

  “Ma’am, I’ve been working with you since God was a non-rate. I get the in-the-trenches-sharing-the-load mentality, but you’re going to be an admiral, and you can’t save the world all by yourself. You have to learn to delegate. You have to let someone else take care of you once in a while.”

  “Well, that’s the one advantage of being an old lady. I don’t have to change.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s true! My brain is a fossilized sponge. My personality is completely crystallized.”

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  “Accommodating my irascible whims, as always. And my current whim is chow and a rack. Go forth and find the duty PO, grandma needs her nap.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Entropy Abounds @Entropos6 – 4m

  How you gonna fight china you cant even win a game show lmaooooooo

  David Appelbaum @daveyappelbaum – 5h

  You’ll forgive me for thinking that just maaayyybbbeee we want the Navy to fight China rather than the guys who count my life jackets

  TWEETS REFERENCING THE LEAKED VIDEO OF ADM ZHUKOV AND VADM DONAHUGH’S TESTIMONY TO THE SENATE ARMED SERVICE’S COMMITTEE

  Muster at 0600 was no problem, but the makeup of the class certainly was.

  The syllabus instructed Oliver and Ho to report in PTs, and the two stood in their short blue shorts and gray T-shirts, Oliver painfully conscious of the varicose veins in her legs and the love handles that bloomed over the sides of her elastic waistband. Ho looked like a toothpick with blue and gray tape stuck to it.

  They were the only two officers in the class, and the only two people over thirty. The remainder were what looked like a scattering of children to Oliver, men and women just out of their teens. Every single one of them wore the tan and green PTs of the United States Marine Corps. The entire class had instinctively struck the pose that was common to all training evolutions, dressed in ranks, at parade rest. Oliver and Ho were fallen into one corner of the formation, in no special order, but it seemed to her that the distance between her and the marines was greater than the spaces they created between one another. They kept casting quizzical glances over their shoulders at her, which didn’t help matters.

  She thought of Tom. He’d have laughed himself into stitches seeing this.

  “They should have painted us hot pink,” Oliver whispered to Ho, “we would have blended in better.”

  “It’s a joint training center, ma’am,” Ho said. “Taking in everyone is how the Coast Guard shows we’re in charge.”

  “Then why are we the only coasties in here?”

  Ho jerked his chin to the front of the classroom, as if that was answer enough.

  Fullweiler stood there, at parade rest, flanked by two instructors. “Good morning! I’d like to welcome everyone to first platoon, alpha company of NCD/0G. This course will teach you the fundamentals of non-cooperative docking maneuvers, more commonly known as ‘boarding actions,’ in a micro-g environment. In a moment, we’re going to stop the rotation of this chamber, and you will begin to experience orbital weightlessness. Before we begin, do you have any questions?”

  No one spoke, but Oliver could see the question the marines wanted to ask burning in their eyes. Who the hell are these two and what are they doing here?

  “All right,” Fullweiler said as his instructors fanned out. “Here we go.”

  Oliver wasn’t a stranger to micro-g, but neither was she a veteran. She certainly had more experience than the marines who began to push off as the chamber ceased its rotation and their bodies went into the weightlessness of freefall. But sometimes, the sensation could catch you flat-footed, and she couldn’t deny the vertigo as her body lost all sense of which way was up. She could feel the fluids in her stomach rising, her half-digested breakfast bar no longer held down.

  Ho executed a neat flip, hugging his knees to his chest. “You OK, boss?”

  She fought the urge to swallow, worried it would make the sickness worse, and shot Ho a thumbs-up, not trusting herself to speak. The marines were laughing, pushing one another, flipping off the walls, or the floor, or maybe the ceiling, Oliver wasn’t sure which was which. One or two of them looked sick, but they were green recruits getting their bearings. She was a skipper who had already done time on the 16th Watch. Must. Not. Puke.

  She forced herself to do a roll and immediately regretted it, covering her eyes with a hand as her head spun. Closing her eyes somehow only made the queasiness worse. “Oh, God,” she managed. One of the marines barreled past. “Chin up, ma’am! You’ll get the hang of it!”

  God. Is it that obvious?

  After what seemed hours of free play, during which Oliver desperately strove to will her inner-ears to orient her and decide which direction was up, Fullweiler called the class to order.

  “Some of you,” he paused just a hair and pointedly looked at Oliver, “look a little green. That is because you are fighting against the environment. You are insisting on reckoning the cardinal directions. You must not do this. In space, up and down no longer have meaning for you, and so long as you insist on trying to find them, you are going to be one miserable marine… service member. Let go, start thinking of space as multidimensional; you are relative to other surfaces or objects, nothing more. The more of you grasp this, the less puke I’m going to have to clean up.”

  Ho drifted next to her. “You going to be OK, ma’am?”

  “I don’t understand why this is so hard on me,” she said. “This isn’t my first time!”

  Ho smiled, “Well, you’re ancient for starters. And its been a long time. It’s not like riding a bike, ma’am.”

  “We call the next exercise the waltz,” Fullweiler called, “and its goal is to familiarize you with some core concepts. The first is closing with and grappling a hostile opponent. The second is what I just explained to you about directionality.”

  He divided the class into two halves, and sent them to opposite sides of the room, where Oliver saw handholds had been bolted to the walls. She clung there, her stomach gurgling, blood pounding in her veins. She could feel the pores of her forehead open, the first beads of sweat beginning to form there, even though the room was not hot. Fullweiler gestured for Ho to take up the position opposite her. It wouldn’t do for a captain to be grappling with a private.

  “On my mark, you will launch yourselves at one another, grasping your opponent’s shoulders firmly, and letting momentum do the rest. This will be more like bumper-cars than an actual waltz, so let’s keep those knees up and feet in. Ready? Mark!”

  Oliver pushed off with her feet, saw Ho do the same, his narrow face growing larger as he sped toward her, arms outstretched. She heard g
runts and laughing as some of the marines crashed head first into one another, leaned her own head to the side to prevent the same thing. She let her hands drift forward, felt Ho’s slim shoulders and grabbed handfuls of his PT shirt just as his own hands found hers. Their momentum ran counter, and they began to whirl together, the walls and their classmates’ faces turning into a spinning mass. Oliver felt her gorge rise and struggled not to inhale. The smell of Ho’s breath was overwhelming.

  “Ma’am,” she heard her XO hiss, “do not puke on me!”

  Her vision went gray, she felt her pores open fully, sweat sheeting down her face.

  Ho’s grip remained tight. “Ma’am!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said… except she hadn’t spoken. When she’d opened her mouth, her stomach had seen its chance, and she failed Ho for the first time since they’d boarded the rocket from Earth.

  Oliver wasn’t the only student to lose her breakfast in that class, but she was the first. Fullweiler’s smile was smug, but his words were decent at least. He nodded as she apologized for the mess and said, “That’s why we train, captain. And you’re sure as hell not the first student to puke in this classroom.” But you’re sure as hell the first in this particular class, her mind added for her.

  She had miraculously gotten absolutely none of the contents of her stomach on herself, and her classmates had the presence of mind to steer clear of the cloud of vomit, which turned into a spray and finally a rain as the gravity came back on.

  Ho was much less fortunate.

  He sat next to her on the floor, wiping his head and shirt with a towel as some poor sailor on punishment detail finished mopping. “I don’t know why you hate me so much, ma’am. I’ve only ever been nice to you.”

  “This is so humiliating,” Oliver said.

  Ho looked down at his shirt. “I am going to have to burn this, then invent a machine that burns things that have already been burned, and fucking burn it again.”

  “Who’s that?” Oliver pointed to the glass windows of the observation deck, high above them. A man stood there, built like a linebacker, but without a linebacker’s beer gut. He was too far away for her to be able to make out the name tape or rank on his crisp marine uniform. His head was shaved to reveal his dark pate, dark eyes and sharp features. He looked grim, and Oliver could tell even from this distance that he was beautiful.