Swords and Saddles

by Jack Campbell

  Carr smiled at Wilmont in a way that made the master chief suddenly jerk backwards slightly, looking nervous. “You might be surprised what lawyers understand, master chief. To summarize your position, then, orders must be obeyed when given and without questioning, and there are no circumstances, especially in combat, in which it is acceptable to turn a blind eye to a clear order.”

  Wilmont sat silent, then nodded quickly. “Yes . . . ma’am.”

  “Do you recognize the ‘blind eye’ reference, master chief?”

  Wilmont gazed back, plainly uncertain.

  “Vice Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801,” Carr continued. “While Nelson’s ships were engaged, his superior officer, some miles distant, hoisted a flag signal ordering Nelson to break off the action and withdraw. Nelson raised his telescope to his blind eye and announced that he could see no signal, then went on to win a decisive victory. He openly and publicly violated a clear order, master chief. You therefore believe Nelson should have been court-martialed, correct? Because he had no alternative but to obey that order, correct?”

  Carr had taken a half-step forward with each sentence, and now her face was less than half a meter from Master Chief Wilmont’s, her eyes fixed on him. Wilmont was pressing himself hard against the seat back.

  “Objection, Your Honor.” Major Hue was shaking his head. “Defense counsel is now introducing hypothetical situations into the trial.”

  Without moving or taking her eyes off of Wilmont, Carr spoke. “Is Trial Counsel prepared to argue that well-documented historical events are inadmissible in this court? If so, I would remind Trial Counsel that the events on this station on 6 July are also well-documented historical events.”

  Halstead smiled thinly. “Objection overruled.”

  Wilmont had been trying to look elsewhere, but found his eyes caught once again by Commander Carr’s. “Well, master chief? Should Nelson have obeyed that order? Should he have been court-martialed for disobeying it while facing the enemy? Yes or no?”

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Why can’t you give me a yes or no answer, master chief?”

  “Because I don’t know his reasons!”

  “You don’t know his reasons. Do you know Chief Sharpe’s reasons, master chief? No? You never even asked.” Carr eyed Wilmont for a long moment while the master chief visibly began sweating, then spun away. “No further questions.”

  Jen felt a heavy feeling in her gut as she watched Carr walking back to her seat after savaging Master Chief Wilmont. She never did that to me. Not like that. What if she had?

  Hue was rubbing his forehead again. “No redirect, Your Honor.”

  Captain Daladros cleared her throat. “Master chief, did you have any qualms about ordering someone on the scene to shoot at a target they were hesitant to engage?”

  “No, ma’am. I gave him a clear order.” Wilmont was breathing heavily. “I could see clearly enough.”

  “Even though you weren’t on the scene?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lieutenant Brook leaned forward. “Why did you press these charges, master chief?”

  “Because Sharpe’s actions were dangerous and negligent, ma’am. I need to know that people under my command will do what they’re told, and they need to know that obedience to orders is expected of them.”

  Brook’s expression was hard to read. “Exactly as they’re told?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Hue waited until Master Chief Wilmont had left the courtroom, then rose again. “The prosecution rests.”

  #

  The court recessed for lunch and Jen ran out to grab food while Carr kept working. “Sandwich, ma’am?”

  “Thanks.” Carr took an absent-minded bite, then gave the sandwich a surprised look. “Bulgur wheat? How’d you know?”

  “And herbal tea,” Jen said, giving her the drink. “Why didn’t you bring up the personal stuff? About that master chief not getting along with Sharpe?”

  Carr chewed and swallowed, looking thoughtful. “If that was all I had, I’d use it, but proving personality conflicts are behind charges is very hard to do. The members could decide that the master chief had every right to dislike Sharpe but still believed charging him here was the right thing to do. Or that Sharpe might have disobeyed the order because of a personality conflict, which is no defense at all. It’s a minefield I prefer to avoid, especially since it might have brought out the fight between Sharpe and Wilmont, which would have made them both look bad.”

  “You’ve got them on the run, don’t you?”

  “Probably. But I never let a wounded enemy escape, lieutenant. We need to finish them off.”

  #

  “The defense calls as its first witness Lieutenant Junior Grade Akesha Taylor.”

  Jen watched Taylor walking confidently toward the witness stand. Taylor had worked her way up from enlisted and had served with Paul on the Michaelson for a while. Despite her junior officer rank, she was probably the most experienced individual in the room.

  Carr stood in an attentive but relaxed posture in front of Taylor. “Are you Lieutenant Junior Grade Akesha Taylor, currently assigned to the staff of Commander, United States Naval Space Forces?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Taylor rubbed her brow for a moment. Under the cover of that movement, Taylor gave a surreptitious wink to Jen.

  “Were you assigned to evaluate lessons learned from an electronics stand-point after the attack of 6 July?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Taylor spoke casually but with total confidence.

  “Are you familiar with the signals environment involving the station emergency response forces on 6 July?”

  Taylor made a small snort. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How would you characterize that signals environment?”

  “In polite company, commander?” Taylor asked. “Chaos. Bedlam. Goat-rope.”

  Carr leaned forward, suddenly intent. “Why? What happened?”

  “Two things.” Taylor held up one hand with the first two fingers displayed. “First thing, the bozos who attacked us deployed broad-spectrum noise makers. Those things pumped out random messages and signals up and down the frequency range to confuse and jam our own signals.” One finger came down. “But our suits could handle some of that because of their comm suite filters. A bigger problem was that the relays and junctions were blown out or fried in a large area of the station and our masters-at-arms had to operate there.” Taylor’s other finger dropped. “Normally, our suits use very low power signals on very limited frequencies to minimize the amount of RF energy bouncing around inside the station.”

  “RF energy?”

  “Sorry, ma’am, I mean radio frequency energy. The station is shielded to keep radiation out. That means it also keeps radiation in. If everybody and everything was yakking away on high-powered wireless connections this whole station would turn into an economy-sized microwave oven. Great for popcorn, bad for people and equipment.”

  Carr nodded, her expression serious even though many other people grinned at Taylor’s description. “Normally, you said. What happened during the attack?”

  Taylor spread her hands. “The relays were gone, or the junctions were gone, or both. Our suits tried to shake hands with the nearest relays so their low-powered signals could be picked up. No joy. So the suits automatically shifted to emergency comm mode, boosting signal strength and changing frequencies. The suits keep doing both until they find a relay to shake hands with.” Now Taylor moved her hands rapidly from side to side. “We ended up with high power signals bouncing down the walls of passageways like they were giant transmission channels, leaking through everywhere they could, reflecting here, there and everywhere. And these were signals our suits were supposed to listen to. So they tried, but the signals seemed to be coming from all sides, the real locations couldn’t be identified, their strength varied like crazy, and most were distorted or fragmentary.” Taylor shrugged. “Goat-rope.”
<
br />   Carr nodded. “We earlier reviewed recordings of the scene from Chief Sharpe’s suit during the engagement. That recording was filtered to make it clearer. With the court’s permission, the defense would now like that recording run unfiltered, exactly as Chief Sharpe experienced it.”

  Halstead glanced at Hue, but the trial counsel apparently realized the request was too reasonable to be denied. “The court so orders.”

  The display winked to life, the now-familiar scene appeared, but this time a constant stream of noise rattled from it and symbology flashed and faded in seemingly random patterns on the heads-up display. Words and phrases could be picked out, as well as occasional sentences, but Jen found herself developing a headache as the cacophony went on. She could still make out Wilmont’s orders and Sharpe’s reply, but not easily. Finally, Carr turned off the recording. “That was only thirty seconds of the replay,” she reminded the members. “Thank you, LTJG Taylor.”

  As Carr returned to her seat, Major Hue approached Taylor warily. “Lieutenant, don’t survival suits contain the means to filter out signals such as we just experienced?”

  Taylor nodded. “Sure.”

  “Then Chief Sharpe could have reduced that noise, could have rendered his operating environment clearer.”

  “Yeah, major, but –“

  “Thank you, lieutenant. Did the system records reveal Chief Sharpe complaining about the comm environment during the engagement?”

  Taylor smiled unpleasantly at Hue. “A lot of the words I heard from Sharpe and the other masters-at-arms had something to do with that. I’d be happy to recite some of them if you want, major.”

  Hue gave Taylor a sour look and shook his head. “That’s quite all right. How do you know those words concerned the communications environment?”

  “Well, when I hear people saying the ‘f-ing circuits are f-ing f-ed up’ and ‘what the f-ing hell is the f-ing chief trying to f-ing tell us,’ then I figure it has something to do with the comm environment.”

  Chuckles in the courtroom were hastily stifled as Judge Halstead glared around. Hue twisted his mouth, gave Taylor a long look, then started back to his table. “No further questions.”

  “Defense wishes to redirect,” Carr said, standing again. “LTJG Taylor, what were you saying regarding Chief Sharpe’s ability to filter out the signals he and the other masters-at-arms were encountering on 6 July?”

  Taylor grinned. “I was saying, it has to be done manually, calling up the right subroutines and reassigning functions and priorities. The software can walk you through the process, but it takes a while and it takes your full attention.”

  “Manually? It requires a lot of time and your full attention?”

  “That’s correct, ma’am. One of my strongest recommendations was for that system to be totally reworked.”

  “No further questions.”

  Lieutenant Commander Nasser nodded to Taylor. “How long would it take you to do such a manual filtering?”

  “Me?” Taylor thought for a moment. “In that complex an environment? Five minutes, I guess. I don’t do it every day.”

  “How long would you estimate it would have required one of the masters-at-arms to do it on 6 July in that environment?”

  Taylor squinted toward the overhead. “Fifteen minutes? Maybe half an hour. If they didn’t get shot while they were figuring out the next step.”

  Master Chief Kobo spoke next. “Why didn’t Colonel Lamont talk about this problem, LTJG Taylor?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t here when he talked to you. But I do know the Marines didn’t have the same problem. Their combat armor is designed to operate in places where there aren’t relays, so their own suits function as relays and junctions for everybody’s comms. They also don’t use the same frequencies or protocols as Navy suits, so they weren’t bothered much by the junk our suits were putting out. To the Marine comm suites it was just so much sailor noise to be ignored.”

  Kobo looked thoughtful. “Is the rest of fleet staff going to get input to the comm fixes you’ve proposed?”

  “Look me up after this is over, master chief. You’ll get a say in it.”

  Master Chief Kobo settled back, looking contented.

  Carr stood up as Taylor left. “Your Honor, the defendant wishes to testify as a sworn witness on his own behalf.”

  Halstead gave Sharpe a questioning look. “Chief Sharpe, you have the right to make a statement. Included in your right to present evidence are the rights you have to testify under oath, to make an unsworn statement, or to remain silent. If you testify, you may be cross-examined by the trial counsel or questioned by me and the members. If you decide to make an unsworn statement you may not be cross-examined by trial counsel or questioned by me or the members. Are you certain you want to testify under oath?”

  Sharpe had risen, too, and nodded firmly. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Then take the stand, please.”

  Sharpe sat in the witness chair and waited as Commander Carr approached. “Chief Petty Officer Sharpe,” Carr began, “tell us your thoughts when you received the order from Master Chief Wilmont to fire at the individual in the hatch.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sharpe’s expression was as serious as Jen had ever seen it. “The situation was really muddled. Lots of noise, lots of things happening, and no one knew enough about what was going on. I saw the hatch open and I aimed my weapon at the person who appeared in it. I couldn’t make out any identification. I hesitated, because I knew we didn’t know exactly where all of our own people were. Master chief ordered me to fire and I started to, but I stopped, trying to see if I could make out anything on the target which would ID it as friend or foe. Master chief ordered me to fire again. I said, “aye, aye” and prepared to fire, but stopped again because I couldn’t see any weapon, couldn’t see any ID, couldn’t see anything to tell me who that target was. Master chief came on again and I started to ask how we knew that person wasn’t a friendly, and then whoever it was jerked back inside.”

  Sharpe grimaced. “I had an order. I admit that, but that could have been a friendly, ma’am.”

  Carr nodded with just a trace of sympathy. “As a member of the armed forces, are you required to obey any and all orders, Chief Sharpe?”

  “All orders? No, ma’am. Only lawful orders.”

  “Lawful orders?” Carr prodded.

  “Orders which don’t conflict with existing law or regulation,” Sharpe recited. “You can’t be ordered to rob a bank or mutiny or desert your place of duty, just to cite a few examples.”

  “Can you be ordered to shoot someone you believe might be friendly?” Carr asked.

  “Objection, Your Honor.” Before Major Hue could say more, Halstead stopped him with a gesture.

  “Defense counsel has every right to question her witness as to his own state of mind, Trial Counsel. Overruled.”

  Sharpe looked from Halstead to Carr. “No, ma’am. You can’t be ordered to shoot one of your own people.”

  “Did you honestly believe there was a real chance that individual was a friendly, Chief Sharpe?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

  “No further questions.”

  Major Hue walked up to Sharpe, his face hard. “Chief Sharpe, how strong was this belief that the target might be a friendly?”

  “Strong enough, sir.”

  “What evidence did you have that the target was friendly? Was there any evidence?”

  Sharpe nodded, not intimidated by Hue’s pointed questions or attitude. “Yes, sir. A suit which appeared the same as ours and no obvious indicators of hostile action or intent while I was observing that individual.”

  “Do the sailors under your command routinely decide whether or not to obey your orders, Chief Sharpe?”

  “No, sir.” Sharpe’s lips drew back slightly. “I don’t do it routinely either, but there was nothing routine about that situation.”

  Major Hue watched Sharpe, then shook his head and walked back to his tab
le.

  LCDR Nasser gave Sharpe a challenging look. “Chief Sharpe, how often have you disobeyed orders? Lawful or unlawful?”

  Sharpe rubbed his lower face, obviously thinking. “Disobeyed, sir? Once, sir. On 6 July.”

  Nasser glanced at the judge. “He’s still under oath, right?”

  “That’s correct,” Halstead replied.

  “Just once, Chief Sharpe? In how many years?”

  “Twelve years in the Navy, sir.”

  Master Chief Kobo leaned his chin on one hand. “I got the impression from your boss’s testimony that he doesn’t like you. Are you a smart-ass, Chief Sharpe?”

  “I can be, master chief,” Sharpe admitted.

  “Do you get the job done?”

  “Yes, master chief. I get it done and I get it done right. I’ve never had a bust thrown out in court and I’ve never let down the people I work for. Ask anybody.”

  Kobo’s gaze went to Jen for a moment. “I don’t think I have to, Chief Sharpe.”

  Captain Daladros spoke next. “Chief Sharpe, knowing everything that you know now, would you have fired when ordered to fire?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If the situation somehow repeated exactly, if you knew then only what you knew then, would you fire or not?”

  Sharpe considered the question, his face troubled. “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “You’ve thought about it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I wasn’t certain I was right, it turned out I was wrong, but I don’t know if I’d do different if the exact same thing happened again.”

  Captain Daladros sat back, clearly thinking.

  “The defense rests,” Commander Carr announced.

  Halstead faced Major Hue as Sharpe returned to his seat at the defense table. “Is Trial Counsel prepared for closing arguments?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Major Hue walked steadily to a point facing the members’ table. “Your Honor, members of the court, a lot of excuses have been offered in this court today. Excuses like ‘it wouldn’t have mattered.’ ‘It didn’t make any difference.’ ‘The situation was confusing.’ ‘There was noise.’ ‘The target couldn’t be precisely identified.’ Every one of those excuses fail the tests to which they must be set. The test of duty. The test of responsibility. The test of discipline. Even the test of team work which Colonel Lamont invoked, because how can a team function if one member takes it upon himself to disregard the instructions of the team leader? Chief Sharpe received a clear, unequivocal order. He acknowledged receiving that order. He didn’t carry it out. He didn’t even offer an explanation at the time for not obeying the order. The very existence of this station, the lives of everyone on it, were on the line, and Chief Sharpe hesitated in the face of the enemy. That’s the bottom line, that’s the one thing no excuse can minimize. When his duty made its sternest demands on him, when his fellow personnel needed him the most, Chief Sharpe hesitated. I ask you to find him guilty as to all charges and specifications.”