It sounds rather hollow, I suppose, but sincere best of luck to you, Bitka. End transmission.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
5 January 2134
(the next day) (fifteenth day in K’tok orbit)
Bitka, your hygenist’s brilliant idea has presented me with an interesting situation, Bonaventure said as soon as the tighbeam commlink was open. I need your advice.
Not even a good morning? Sam thought as he sipped his first coffee of the day.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
I put out the call for volunteers to salvage the missiles and whatever else we might be able to use from the hulk of Champion Hill. Got a good response, including most of her uninjured former crew and a few of those still in sickbay. I also got a half dozen more, including someone on your boat.
“Someone from my crew?”
Not exactly. Lieutenant Commander Huhn volunteered to join the salvage party. I checked. He’s EVA-qualified, and we’re pretty shorthanded there.
Del Huhn volunteering for a salvage job? Why? Sam though about that as he sipped his coffee again. “What do you need from me, sir?”
What do I need? Jesús Cristo! He’s there on your boat. Is he loco or isn’t he?
“I’m not a psychiatrist, sir, and neither are you. We can’t answer that. The task force should have taken him with them for evaluation by the fleet surgeon. Admiral Kayumati told me he intended to but I guess it fell through the cracks. There was a lot going on right before they pulled out.
“I’ll tell you what, though, Kayumati said he planned to put Huhn to work doing ‘light duty.’ I assume he meant lower stress. Huhn’s currently certified medically unfit to serve in his previous job, but handling a vacuum torch without cutting a hole in your own pressure suit isn’t the same thing as running a destroyer.”
So you’re saying I should give him a chance. I don’t know whether you’ve gone soft, Bitka, or if you’ll just do anything to get him off your boat.
“Neither, sir. We just really need every pair of hands we can get.”
True enough. Okay, I’m going out on a limb but I’ll only approve his request provided he understands he’ll be reporting to Gloria Reynolds. She’s senior surviving officer from the Hill and I’m putting her in charge of the salvage party. He’s got two pay grades on her and almost ten years. If he can swallow his pride enough to take that deal, I’ll give him a chance.
“Sounds like a good decision to me, sir.”
Okay, Bitka. Oaxaca out.
Bonaventure broke the connection. Sam settled back with his coffee and tried to relax, but he couldn’t quite manage. Del Huhn still troubled him, probably because he’d never felt like he understood the man. He wasn’t sure Del Huhn understood himself, and when you got right down to it how many people did? But that bottle of bourbon had meant something to him. Giving it to Sam wasn’t an apology, he didn’t think. Not a peace offering or a bribe, either. He thought now that maybe it was a sort of personal change of command, passing along not just the boat but his hopes.
The bottle’s label was faded on one side and a little worn. Huhn had probably carried that bottle of bourbon with him for years, intending that some day as captain of his own boat or ship he would drink it with his department heads in celebration of a triumph. Giving it away must have been acknowledgement that that day would never come. Letting go of that must have taken something.
Sam made it to the wardroom in time for a late breakfast and found Larry Goldjune waiting for him, already drinking a bulb of coffee.
“Captain, I’ve got a couple things for you to sign if you don’t mind.”
Sam clipped his tether to the table, punched in his breakfast order, and took the data pad Goldjune offered.
“Okay, what have you got?”
“Action summary of your captain’s mast of Mariner Jorgenson, Ralph K., showing fine as pay stoppage and loss of one week of liberty, next time we actually get that.”
Captain’s mast was nonjudicial punishment for offenses not serious enough to send before a court martial. Jorgenson had gotten into an argument with a shipmate and it turned violent. There had been no serious injuries and Jorgenson had looked suitably repentant at the hearing. Sam thumbed the report and started to hand it back.
“Couple more, sir. Page forward, I put together an after-action report for the orbital bombardment on 3 January. It’s all straight from the tapes and I appended the fire damage assessment we got from the Brits last evening. If you concur, I added a request for a commendation for Oaxaca’s EVA crew for getting the saddle rig built on schedule and it holding together.”
Sam thumbed the after-action report’s signature block and paged ahead.
“Draft plan of the day for tomorrow,” Larry explained. “I figured you’d want to add some drills, but wasn’t sure which ones. I also wasn’t sure if you wanted to go to Readiness Two instead of Three.”
“Yeah, Larry, let’s go to Readiness Two, half the crew on duty at all times, at least until we get your high probe into position and can get a look at them. That should give us a little warning and we can go back to Readiness Three. Let’s do firing drills, one per watch from general quarters and then when we stand down we’ll do it again but just with watch personnel.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll write it up. That’s all I need. Enjoy your breakfast.”
Goldjune unhooked and kicked away from the table toward the hatch as the ready light glowed from the food portal. Sam drifted over and retrieved his western omelet, kicked back to the table, and enjoyed a delicious breakfast made more satisfying by the added luxury of having an executive officer who was doing his job instead of just going through the motions.
Sam floated tethered to the desk in the cabin and examined the picture on his workstation’s smart surface: Atwater-Jones’s friend Freddie. Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Matthew Barncastle, MC, Royal Marines. Sam had looked him up. “MC” stood for Military Cross, a decoration he’d earned seven years earlier, then only a major, when a peacekeeping assignment to the Spratley Islands had turned suddenly ugly and violent. As near as Sam could tell, the MC was the British equivalent of the US Silver Star.
He was handsome, Sam supposed, in a British sort of long-faced and big-toothed way. He was grinning in the official Defense Ministry picture, laugh lines cutting deep at the corners of his eyes. Most officers chose a more serious expression for their official pictures, but Sam had an idea he knew what Freddie Barncastle was grinning about. He was married, and not to Cassandra Atwater-Jones, not that that was any of Sam’s business.
Why this interest in Freddie? Well, Sam had almost gotten him killed, and the mutual connection to Atwater-Jones made him a real person, not just a name. No, that wasn’t right. He hadn’t almost gotten him killed. His actions had had no effect one way or another on him, but Sam hadn’t known that when he chose not to act. He had the nagging feeling he owed Freddie an apology for not having tried. One of Freddie’s Marine enlisted men had been killed the same day he had been wounded. That blood was on his hands as well. No, not his hands exactly; just his conscience.
Freddie was over at the needle highstation, in the infirmary, apparently doing well. His condition had been upgraded from critical to stable, but that was all the information available other than to family and chain of command, neither of which included Sam. Right now the Highstation was probably the safest place in the whole star system, the one place both sides wanted to keep intact no matter what. Needles were just too expensive and delicate to go messing around with.
Twenty minutes later he heard the chime at his cabin door. He turned the hatch transparent and saw Moe Rice, his burly supply officer, in the corridor. Sam released the hatch lock and motioned him in. As he coasted across the intervening space to the desk, Moe’s expression was grim and had more than a trace of anger.
“Moe, what’s the problem?”
Rice anchored his feet and took a deep breath to calm himself.
“Cap’n, La
rry Goldjune didn’t come up with the idea of the high probe. Ensign Jerry Robinette did. That son of a bitch Goldjune stole the credit.”
* * *
Moe laid out the ugly details of the story and as he listened, Sam wanted to throw up. He fought back an irrational and unjust irritation with Moe and with young Robinette, as if their revelation of this gross injustice somehow had conjured it into being, as if they rather than Larry Goldjune were the guilty parties. Why? Why would he even feel such a thing?
Perhaps the answer was he had equated Goldjune’s acceptance of Sam as captain, and his enthusiastic assumption of the duties of executive officer, as a vindication. Here was a highly respected officer, a regular, an astrogator, and the son of an admiral—in short, as “Navy” an officer as you were likely to find—whose approval could be seen as a well-credentialed endorsement of Sam’s captaincy. As he examined that feeling more closely, he came slowly to the understanding that his anger was directed at himself—for attaching so much significance to the judgment of another, of a subordinate at that, and, as it now appeared, an unworthy one.
The facts were simple enough. Robinette had come up with the idea of sending the sensor probe above the plane of the ecliptic. But given his inexperience and lack of self-confidence, he could not believe an idea he came up with would not already have occurred to others, if indeed it would work at all. He took the notion to Larry Goldjune, the senior astrogator on the boat. Goldjune told him the idea wouldn’t work as stated but he’d see if he could work out the problems.
The “problems” ended up being nothing more than a recommendation that the DDR’s probe be supplemented by more capable sensors from the cruisers, and some minor details concerning the angle of launch of the sensors to get optimal coverage. Goldjune had not mentioned Robinette when he presented the idea to Sam.
When Robinette confronted Goldjune about taking credit for his idea, the executive officer had lectured the ensign about how things worked in the Navy. A junior officer gave his idea to his superior, who cleaned up, presented, and championed the idea to higher command, gained credit and influence from its adoption, and in turn looked out for the junior officer with good recommendations and, where possible, a choice assignment. He said he was disappointed Robinette did not understand an aspect of U.S. Navy culture as fundamental as this.
“He really said that?” Sam interrupted Moe to ask. “That he was disappointed in Robinette?”
“Yes, sir, he sure as hell did.”
That’s how things worked in the corporate sector. Sam knew that from years of experience. It wasn’t how they were supposed to work in the Navy. Sam gestured for Moe to continue.
The entire incident might have gone unnoticed except Robinette—disappointed and disillusioned—had gone to Moe Rice, as senior administrative officer, with his resignation, effective upon end of hostilities. Sensing that something rotten was going on, Rice refused to accept the resignation without an explanation of cause. That was beyond his actual authority but Robinette didn’t know that, and the entire vile story had tumbled out. Robinette had broken down and wept as he told Rice, and he had been more ashamed of his tears than he had been outraged at Larry Goldjune and the culture he thought he represented.
Sam floated wordlessly for a while, tethered to his desk, staring at the holographic tropical palm trees seemingly beyond his cabin walls. Then he turned the island scene off and returned his cabin walls to neutral gray. His tropical paradise had lost its curative magic for him.
“How did Robinette come up with the idea?” Sam asked.
“He said he got the idea from you. That when the uBakai left K’tok and we were looking after them at a steep angle to the plane, you told him they couldn’t hide: no background clutter, just stars and hard vacuum.”
Sam remembered the conversation and any lingering doubt he had vanished. Imagine that . . . the Jughead.
“Is there any proof?’
Rice looked at the surface of Sam’s workstation for a moment and then shook his head.
Of course not. That would be too easy. So what was he going to do about this? What could he do? He wasn’t the only one interested. Off to his right he saw the flickering shadow of Jules, watching, waiting.
Eighth Principle of Naval Leadership: Make sound and timely decisions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
5 January 2134
(later the same day) (fifteenth day in K’tok orbit)
“Larry, come on in,” Sam said after triggering the hatch lock from his work station. Goldjune coasted over and hooked one foot through the deck stanchion in front of Sam’s desk.
“What’s up, Skipper?”
Sam leaned forward and turned off the cabin recorder. No witness except the shadow of Jules’s ghost, now stronger than before, more insistent.
“We’re off the record. Jerry Robinette is turning in his resignation from the service, effective end of hostilities, but we haven’t accepted it yet so it’s not in the database. I thought maybe you and I could put our heads together and come up with a way to save a promising officer’s career.”
Larry colored slightly and shifted his anchor from one foot to the other. “It’s too bad he decided he can’t take it, sir. But Robinette is our weakest line officer.”
“I wasn’t talking about his career, Larry. I was talking about yours.”
Goldjune jerked back slightly and his foot slipped out of the stanchion. He scrambled in midair for a moment as he drifted back and away, but then grabbed a handhold on the wall to his right. He turned to Sam, his face now red with anger or embarrassment or shame—Sam couldn’t tell which and he wondered if Goldjune could either.
“My career? Look, I don’t know what Robinette told you, but I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“What would he have told me, Larry?”
Larry fumbled with his tether, trying to clip it to the stanchion with trembling hand.
“I . . . I don’t know, but—”
“Jerry Robinette didn’t tell me anything. But an officer resigns, flags go up, people start asking questions. Somebody else came to me. What made you think Robinette didn’t tell anyone else his idea before he came to you?”
“He told me . . . ” Goldjune started, and then his voice faltered and some of the color drained from his face.
“Yeah,” Sam said and blew out a long huff of air. “Okay, Lieutenant Goldjune, here’s what I think maybe happened. I think you got hold of his idea and you couldn’t believe some ensign could come up with anything good, and right away you saw problems with it, real problems. You promised to think it over. Lots of people give you screwy ideas, most of which don’t pan out. This one did, after you worked out all the kinks, but along the way you got a little carried away, forgot where it came from. Understandable, and no harm done, provided you recognize Robinette’s idea now.”
Sam watched Goldjune’s expression, which changed from moment to moment: panic, bravado, shame, anger, confusion. Sam wasn’t sure he had him yet.
“Commodore Bonaventure is talking commendation. If we make sure that commendation goes to Jerry Robinette, all this goes away. I give you my word on it.”
Goldjune hesitated, torn between hope and despair and the instinct to fight back.
“Come on, Larry. I can’t afford to lose you as my exec. The Navy can’t afford to lose you over something this . . . trivial.”
Larry ran his hand through his hair and swallowed, and Sam could see the fight go out of his body.
“Yeah, I just forgot, that’s all. I had no idea Robinette would take it so hard. He should have . . . What should we do?”
Sam picked up a data pad clipped to his desk and sailed it lightly across the room. “I already drafted a letter of commendation for Robinette’s service jacket. We both sign it and then forward a copy to Commodore Bonaventure with a recommendation for a further citation. My ID is already on the commendation. Put yours on it and we’re done.”
Goldjune caught the data pad and stu
died the letter of commendation, read it carefully. Sam had the feeling he was doing it to use up time while he got used to the idea, maybe tried to come up with another way out. It was a good deal for him, though, and Sam knew the longer he thought about it, the closer he was to agreeing. He wasn’t a fool. Finally Goldjune nodded, pressed his thumb on the data pad, and tossed it gently back across the cabin to Sam.
Sam retrieved it, checked the signature block, entered the commendation letter, and then forwarded the text letter and attachment to Bonaventure. Then he clipped the pad to his desk and looked up at Larry.
“Who did he tell?” Larry asked.
“Nobody.”
Anger clouded Goldjune’s face as he realized he’d been tricked.
“Then you lied when you said he told someone else before me.”
“Think back. I never said that. I just asked you why you thought he hadn’t. Nobody lied to you. And Goldjune, if you try to make yourself out to be the victim in this, I swear I will push you out a fucking airlock with no helmet. If Robinette had told anyone, if we could have proved this without you, your career would be over right now. Instead, you’ve got a second chance. I gave you my word on it. Make the most of it, or piss it away—your choice. But either way, get your ass out of my cabin.”
He left and Sam floated behind his workstation, trying to sort out his feelings. Anger, sure, but also disappointment and a sense of loss. No feeling of triumph at all. For a very brief time he had thought he might not have to do this entirely by himself, and that had been a good feeling. Jules had not visited him, then, but now she was back and he looked at the capsule in his hand from MedTech Tamblinson.
How much longer was this going to go on? Forever? Or would something put her ghost to rest?
Chain of Command Page 25