Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  She had known this very conversation would happen, though she admitted she hadn’t expected it to be with Fraser, nor so soon. You’re taking apart the established process, she thought, that isn’t going to happen unchallenged. Stick to your guns. “If they do, that’s a criminal-customs matter, and well within the guard’s jurisdiction.”

  “Is it, now?” Fraser asked. “And are you prepared to explain the intricacies of jurisdiction to the skipper of the Chinese frigate that shows up to protect its citizens?”

  This was becoming irritating. She wasn’t a little girl to be patted on the head and scolded. Fraser might disagree with her, but her conduct was hardly egregious. “May I remind you, general, that the guard is an armed military service, same as yours?”

  “You may, and it won’t change the fact that our arms are bigger than yours, and if you wind up on the receiving end of a Chinese particle projection battery, the finer points of jurisdiction aren’t going to count for a whole lot. Also, what the hell is an admiral doing on a boarding mission? A little below your pay grade wouldn’t you say?”

  “What’s a brigadier general doing breaking my balls over a boarding? A little below your pay grade too, wouldn’t you say?”

  Fraser had to take a moment to master himself before responding. When he did, it was clear he was keeping his voice even only with the greatest effort. “Very cute. I’m not going to sit here and compare dicks with you. You are way out of your lane. Quarantine runners are a national defense matter. We don’t answer SAR calls, and you don’t do non-cooperative boardings that could potentially spark a war.”

  Oliver welcomed his anger, used it to fuel her own. “I appreciate your creative interpretation of Title 14 of the US Code. I have an entire JAG Corps that sees it differently. You’ll forgive me if I rely on their view of the matter.”

  “You know I’m going to file a complaint through channels.”

  “I do, and I look forward to seeing it laughed off the Commandant’s desk.”

  She could almost hear Fraser’s smile. “Have you considered one more thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You keep this up, you’re going to need my guns eventually, admiral. You might want to play nice with me.”

  Oliver smiled back. “Haven’t you been paying attention, General Fraser? I am playing nice.”

  CHAPTER 12

  To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

  SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR

  The Captain of the Port’s municipal building looked surprisingly like SPACETACLET, nestled on the edge of the Plato crater, a knobbed tower of combined habs astride a massive concrete pad alive with commercial vessel traffic, their running lights and thruster blooms looking like nothing so much as a tacky Christmas show.

  Oliver was grateful that the COTP didn’t greet her personally. She knew she’d have a reckoning soon enough, but the conversation with Fraser had rattled her, and she wanted to put it off as long as she could. McGrath had merely grunted an affirmative when Oliver asked him how he was doing. Protocol forbid her from insisting he remove his hardshell to check, especially with the failsafes on both of their suits engaged. But she could tell from his voice that he was in pain, even as the instrument panel showed his vitals were stable. Okonkwo cycled atmosphere into the longhorn as a precautionary measure, the failsafes would see them safely back home, and he and Pervez handled turning the captives and the dead body over to MPPD reps who greeted them on the landing pad.

  “You sure you’re all right?” she asked McGrath for what had to be the tenth time.

  “I’ve got it, ma’am. Just tweaked my knee a little. I’ve been through worse.” He paused at that, probably regretting the words. Oliver had been there when he had been through worse. When people both of them cared about had died.

  “Don’t worry, skipper,” McGrath spoke quickly, trying to cover up the clumsy words with new ones, “I’ll be ready for Boarding Action.”

  “I could give a fuck about Boarding Action,” Oliver said. “Just need to know my guy is OK.” But it was a lie and they both knew it. She could feel the sour tug of anxiety roiling in her gut. She still firmly believed that pulling them out of the simulator and putting them on the job was the right move, but people got injured on the job, and if one of her prize horses broke his leg right before the big race…

  It was a short jaunt back to SPACETACLET. A medical detail met them as they docked and gently worked McGrath out of his suit while Oliver hovered over him, impatiently complying with the HS3 who buzzed over her, removing her hardshell piece by broken piece.

  McGrath’s knee was bruised and swollen, but Oliver breathed easier when they cut into his underlayer and she finally confirmed that the hornet gun’s munition had truly missed his body. A banged up knee would heal.

  “I’ll file the use-of-force,” Chief said, sitting down at his terminal.

  “Make sure I get to review it first,” Oliver reminded him.

  “Aye aye, ma’am,” Chief said, “nobody will see it until you say so.”

  The HS3 finished her inspection, shining a light in Oliver’s eyes and forcing her to track her moving finger. At last she nodded and removed the blood pressure cuff from Oliver’s arm. “You’re good, ma’am. You got lucky out there.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Oliver said. And here’s hoping my luck holds. “XO?”

  “One step ahead of you,” Ho said.

  “One step… How do you know what I was going to ask?”

  “You want the transcripts of the COTP’s custodial debriefing. You want to know why those idiots were willing to take on the US Coast Guard. There’s… like a ten percent chance I’m wrong, but I’ll bet you they were career quarantine runners, either consignment agents for Helium-3 shipments or just miners who’d grown drunk on their own success evading us.”

  Okonkwo drummed his fingers on the table, stared at his knuckles. Oliver could see his jaw working. “Something on your mind, MK3?”

  “Nothing, ma’am,” he said, staring even harder at his hand.

  “Contubernium, MK3. Out with it.”

  Okonkwo looked up, swallowed. “Ma’am, the Navy has been handling this for… well, forever. Every time these bad guys get run down, it’s by a Navy boat, with a marine complement, and just guns for miles.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Well, that’s intimidating.”

  “Yes,” Oliver said, “I’m sure it is. But that doesn’t explain to me why you’re looking like you’re about to tell me you just borrowed my car and crashed it.”

  Okonkwo looked back at his hand, said nothing.

  “What he means,” Pervez offered, “is that the bad guys fought like that because they aren’t scared of the Coast Guard. That if it had been the Navy, they would have complied.”

  “That what you meant?” Oliver asked Okonkwo. The engineer nodded.

  “It’s a fair point,” Oliver said, “but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter, ma’am?” Chief looked up.

  “Because if it isn’t true, then it isn’t true. And if it is true, then it’s good we broke the seal here. The Coast Guard is stepping into this role. This is a thing that is absolutely happening. And if it is happening, then I need the word to spread hot and fast that the Coast Guard is absolutely not to be fucked with, and that there will be KIAs if you take us on. The networks are going to be on this, and hopefully this boarding will be the bucket of cold water idiots need to keep them compliant in the future. We cannot let the Navy have the conn here. Not if there’s anything we can do about it.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am,” Okonkwo nodded, keeping his eyes down.

  “I’m just sorry you had to get banged up over it, ME3,” she said to McGrath.

  “I’m good,” McGrath grunted, waving a hand. “Banged up worse playing football.”

  “How’s your head, ma
’am?” Pervez asked.

  “Thick as a brick,” Oliver smiled, rapping her knuckles against her temple. “Thanks for saving my skin back there, BM1.” But we still need to talk.

  “Ma’am,” Ho said.

  “Let me guess,” Oliver answered, “you were right about why those idiots resisted us.”

  “I mean, I know I am,” Ho said, “but that’s not it. In a development that I have no doubt will shock you, the Ops Boss wants to talk to you.”

  Oliver arched an eyebrow, swallowed against the nervous churning in her gut. “Put him on my calendar for tomorrow.”

  “No,” Ho said, “the big Ops Boss. Admiral Allen.”

  Oliver exchanged a glance with Chief, the churning rising up into her throat. “Oh,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Ho agreed, “good luck.”

  Oliver considered taking the call in her office, but she saw the eyes of her crew on her and knew that was the wrong decision. She had sold them on contubernium, on them all rising and falling together. She had to walk that walk. She picked up the receiver beside her terminal. “Sir.”

  “Jane.” She had braced herself for anger, her muscles tensing as they did when she walked in a cold wind, but she wasn’t prepared for the worried concern. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine, sir, thanks for asking. Just took a pipe to the backside of my helmet. Failsafe covered me, and the bad guy wasn’t able to get through all the layers.”

  “That’s good to hear. I’m told your boarding officer took a hornet round.”

  “His hardshell took a hornet round. Exited over his shoulder. I’m more worried about his knee. The impact tossed him over sideways before his boots fully disengaged.”

  “Can he walk?”

  “Nervous to test it yet, but once the HS is done with him, I promise to give you a full report.”

  “I’d appreciate that. Look, Jane… I’m in a really uncomfortable position here. I just got a call from…”

  “Brigadier General Fraser, I know, sir.”

  Oliver could hear Allen swallowing his impatience on the other end of the connection. “No, Jane. I got the call from Vice Admiral Donahugh.”

  “The CO of 11th Fleet?” Oliver knew damn well who she was, she asked the question to give her spinning mind time to catch up.

  “She’s kind of a big deal around here, Jane.”

  “I know it, sir.”

  “Well, she’s fit to be tied. Fraser is spinning her some yarn about you playing chicken with a Navy small boat and putting all the marines at risk. Then giving him a smart mouth when he tried to talk to you about jurisdiction. Fraser’s telling it like you threw your people in there unprepared and nearly got everybody killed. Actually, I’m not being fair. Maybe Fraser isn’t telling it like that, but that’s sure as hell how Donahugh sees it. Meanwhile, I’ve got the COTP lighting up my other ear about you preempting his assignment authority. Jane, this is putting me in an impossible position. You tell me how to defend you here. We’ve given you a mighty free hand out there, and I warned you that taking SAR-1 out of the simulator and putting them into the field was risky.”

  “You did, sir. And we agreed that was the way we were going to play it anyway.”

  She heard Allen pause, the sharp intake of breath as he marshaled his patience. “Maybe. But we most certainly did not agree that you could get one of your crew injured and go to war with both the Navy and the Marine Corps at the same time. This is going to go all the way up the chain, Jane. The old man’s probably reading a gist of it as we speak.”

  “Sir, respectfully, if he wants me to save him the trouble of reading it, patch me through. I’ll explain it to him personally.”

  “Jane, please don’t be…”

  “Sir, again with all due respect, you know I am a team player, and I will follow your orders. But you have to make a decision. If the Coast Guard wants to be a homeland focused bit-player and accept a subordinate role on the 16th Watch, then that’s fine, but you need to make that clear, at least to me. But if you agree with me that the Coast Guard is in its lane here, you have to back my play.”

  “We sent you out there to win Boarding Action.”

  “No, sir. You sent me out here to stop a war. We both know that’s what happens if the Navy get their way here.”

  “Winning Boarding Action is how we do it, Jane. We win that prized media attention, we leverage it to change the public’s mind.”

  “Boarding Action is the sizzle, sir. The mission is the steak. You don’t get sizzle without steak. Admiral, this team is grieving.” She could feel the crew stiffening around her, deliberately kept her eyes focused on the middle-distance. She wasn’t saying anything they didn’t already know. It wasn’t a secret what was wrong, and what they needed to set it right. “These people need a reason to fight, and a simulation, an exercise, even an important one, isn’t that reason. They can’t go on like their life is what it was before. Things are different for them now. They will be different forever. They have to live for something more. Something else. The mission is that something. The real mission, not what the Navy says it is.”

  She held her breath, waiting for Allen to respond. She could feel her crew all around her, could feel their eyes on her like the pressure of the spin gravity, the gentle but constant push that tied her guts in knots. At last, she could hold her breath no longer, and inhaled loudly. Still Allen said nothing, and Oliver realized that she’d pushed him too far, said too much, not just in front of her crew, but to the head of operations for her service, whose favor she’d need to be successful in this mission.

  She opened her mouth to say something when he finally broke the silence. “You sound so… sure.”

  “I am sure,” she said, “because… I know. You know that I know.” She choked off the words, swallowed. She allowed her eyes to drop, to meet the gazes of her crew. Ho watched her evenly. Chief’s mouth hung open, and Okonkwo looked terrified, but Pervez’s face was more open than Oliver had seen since she’d met her. She leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, raised her chin. Go on, her expression seemed to say.

  “They want to make it right for me, sir,” Oliver spoke to Allen, but held Pervez’s eyes. “They feel like Tom, like Kariawasm and Flecha are… are their fault. Winning an exercise won’t make good on that debt. They have to do something real. They have to save real lives.”

  “It’s not their fault, Jane.” The edge was gone from Allen’s voice. He sounded bewildered. “They should know that. They did their jobs the best they could. It’s not like they were investigated for dereliction. Sometimes people die in this business.”

  “Come on, sir. I know you made flag long before me, but surely you still remember what it’s like to run ops. Escaping punishment doesn’t stop them from blaming themselves.”

  “I do remember my ops days, thank you. And I’ve lost crew before. It doesn’t always eat you. Maybe they’re handling it better than you think. It’s not like you can read their minds.”

  “I don’t have to. I blame myself, so it’s a pretty good guess they do, too.”

  “Jane,” Allen said, “don’t do that. You couldn’t have saved them. I’ve watched the tapes, I’ve read the reports. You did absolutely everything you could, and probably a bit more than that. What were you supposed to, Jane? Take the round meant for Tom’s boat?”

  And now it was Oliver’s turn to let the silence stretch. Allen tried to sit with it as long as she had, but at long last he sighed. “OK, Jane. I get it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Donahugh said she’s going to put one of her Quick Reaction Force mobile boat launches out there on the edge of Sea of Rains.”

  “Right on top of us. She wants to be able to launch quickly and from the ground so she can beat us to radio calls.”

  “I can’t stop her, Jane. It’s not on SPACETACLET’s footprint, and the COTP has assignment authority for unstaked territory so close to the Chinese EEZ. You know Admiral Santos won’t say no.”

 
; “Sir, how do you think the Chinese are going to react to a warfighting unit, no matter how small, positioned right on top of their EEZ border? This is provocative as fuck.”

  Allen sighed. “To Donahugh’s mind, I’d say that’s a feature, not a bug.”

  “This is as risky as that collision when I was in NCD/0G, sir. Whatever favors you called in then, I’d call them in again now.”

  “Well, you certainly gave her the excuse she needed.”

  “No, sir. I’m not wearing that albatross. 11th Fleet has been looking for a fight since before Tom died. She’d have found another excuse.”

  “You’re right, Jane. I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do about Donahugh. Just… Well, I guess telling you to lie low for a bit isn’t going to register, is it?”

  “Not remotely, sir.”

  “You know, Jane, you’re not alone on this. You need to remember that all of us in the head shed here are on your team. We’re working our own angles. You have to trust us.”

  “I appreciate that, sir, but you know the view is always different when you’re actually out on the water.”

  Allen sighed. “OK, Jane. Good luck.”

  Oliver set the receiver down, put her fists on the table, allowing the adrenaline to course through her and feeling the fatigue that inevitably came behind. She felt like she’d lived a lifetime in the past few hours. “I say anything there that anybody disagrees with?”

  She looked up after no one answered, met their eyes. Each of them shook their head. “You’ve got it right, ma’am,” Chief said.

  “Good,” Oliver said. “Hate to be a liar in front of Ops.”

  She rose, shaking off the fatigue, not wanting to deal with what had to come next. At last, she walked around the table, tapped Pervez on the shoulder. “Let’s take a walk, BM1.”

  Pervez looked up, peeved, but not surprised. “Contubernium, ma’am?”

  “You just watched me hang my ass out in front of the head of ops for the entire service,” Oliver said, “that’s contubernium enough for one day. This one’s just for us girls.”

  Pervez shrugged and stood, followed her out into the corridor leading from the ready-room to the heads. Oliver walked far enough from the bulkhead that she knew they wouldn’t be overheard, and turned, leaning against the wall. She deliberately kept her hands down, her shoulders slouched. Non-threatening. You’ve got to get through to her. You can’t have her shutting down.