“This is my first experience with one. I see him every twelve hours, regular as a pulsar, inquiring whether the patient has regained consciousness. He’s very polite to me, not demanding or imperious in the least.”
“That, Doctor, is because the prisoner is not yet awake. When he has someone to interrogate, I suspect that he’ll change his stripes. In any event, I’m pleased the Krag is doing well. Perhaps we can get something useful out of it. Maybe it knows about other Krag cargoes in the area.”
“That would be very useful. Perhaps it is this possibility that has so cheered the crew. Or perhaps it is their recent capture of the freighter. The whole lot of them seem astonishingly happy right now. In fact, they appear far happier than when we destroyed the Krag warships, which perplexes me, as the earlier victory seems the greater of the two.”
“Perhaps in a strategic and tactical sense, but taking this freighter is much more important to them personally.”
“How is that—because it required more skill?”
“No, Doctor. You mean… I can’t believe it. You really don’t know?”
“Know what? You must not practice upon my credulous simplicity.”
“My friend, haven’t you ever heard of prize money?” He said the words in the way a hungry carnivore might say “grilled steak.”
“Certainly, I’ve heard of it. If a crew captures a warship intact, it can be of some monetary benefit to them. I do not really know the specifics.”
Max shook his head. “There’re articles in the database, Doctor, well-written articles adapted to the most planet-bound reader, about Navy life and regulations and customs. A man of your obvious brilliance could read and assimilate them quite easily, you know.”
“But my time is so short, and I have so much to learn of more pressing application.”
“It’s been a long war and the Navy needed something to make protracted service more attractive. The Chief of Naval Operations, something of a saltwater naval historian, suggested the idea of prize money to the Admiralty; he knew about it from his studies of the British Navy in the Age of Sail. It seemed a good idea, so we borrowed loosely from the British, just as we have borrowed so many other things.
“In our system, which differs somewhat from the British one, when an enemy vessel or cargo is captured, one-fifth, or 20 percent, of the value goes to the complement of the capturing vessel as prize money. One half of that amount, 10 percent, goes to me as captain. One half of the remainder, or 5 percent, is divided equally among the other commissioned officers, and that includes the chief medical officer, while the men divide the other 5 percent among themselves, by heads.”
“I can see why the men might be experiencing unusual cheer.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Prize money includes the cargo of the captured vessel, which can come to quite a nice little sum. In this case, that smallish freighter was carrying forty-two metric tons of gold.”
“Really? That much? All I saw was two chests, and not very large ones at that.”
“You forget how dense gold is. A single cubic meter of gold weighs more than nineteen tons. Each of those chests contained just over one cubic meter of pure gold, in twenty-kilogram bricks. The value of that gold at the current market price is just over a hundred and thirty million credits. Each man aboard ship has earned more money than most of them have ever had at one time in their lives, and her captain is now quite a wealthy man.
“And that doesn’t count that sweet little freighter. I’ve sent it back to Lovell Station with a four-man prize crew. She will be sold privately or used by the Navy, which is always in need of cargo vessels of various sorts. In either event, we will share in either her appraised value if the Navy takes her or in her sale price if sold. She’s fast, has reasonably comfortable accommodations, and boasts a superb sensor suite for a civvy. She’ll fetch at least ten or eleven million if she fetches a dime.”
“With fourteen million credits or so, you could retire from the Navy.”
“Perish the thought, Doctor. The Navy is my family, my career, my life. I know no other. Besides, with this war going the way it is going, the Navy cannot spare any competent officer, particularly one with my combat experience. I’m in this until I’m killed, crippled, too old to fight, or the war ends. My hope is to see this war through to a victory for the Union, and my goal is to be instrumental in that victory. I am ambitious enough to see myself hoisting my flag and leading a Task Force in the decisive battle that wins the war for us. Absurd, I know.”
“I think not. Seriously, my friend, though you have your foibles and human weaknesses, you clearly and obviously have a gift for leadership and inspiration. Men follow you. And although I am not equipped to judge this aspect of your performance, I am told by people who are so equipped that you display a certain gift for tactics.”
“Who told you that?”
“I’d rather not say. It is, however, the general opinion of certain knowledgeable people aboard. Such consensuses of informed crew members are invariably correct, or so I have heard. They regard you highly, as a commander and as a man.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I almost got every man and boy of us killed the other day.”
“You mean the incident with that new Krag weapon?”
“Exactly. I was so intent on what I was going to do to the enemy, I forgot to consider what he could be doing to me. It is so fundamental a mistake that I think even Ulysses S. Grant warned against it.”
“You would not be the first to make that mistake, surely. General Grant must have seen it many times.”
“No, I’m not the first, but the next time I make that mistake, it might be my last. In that case, everyone aboard would die with me. It was an unforgivable error.”
“Nonsense. Ridiculous!” the doctor said with unexpected vehemence.
“No, Doctor, you weren’t there. It was a clear error in judgment.”
“I’m not disputing that it was an error. In fact, for the sake of argument, I am willing to grant you that it was a profound error, of incalculable enormity. What I am disputing is that the error was unforgivable. There is no such thing as an unforgivable error.”
He grew grave. “I mean this most sincerely. That is one of the most important things that you, and I mean you most personally and particularly, must learn as a commander and as a man. There are almost always chances of ameliorating the consequences of the wrong, and there is always the prospect of forgiveness. Always. We are all the children of a merciful God. We are all imperfect, flawed, weak, limited, and prone to temptation and error. If we are contrite, strive to right our wrongs and to abjure that transgression in the future, and if we earnestly and humbly beg his forgiveness, Allah will bestow it upon us. And if you are forgiving of faults and errors in others, you will find that men will forgive your errors as well.”
“‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’”
“What’s that? It sounds familiar.”
“A line from the most famous prayer in my faith. I’m not sure I ever understood, really understood, what that meant. Until now.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps there is more for you to learn. In any event, the crew certainly knows all about the incident with the Krag weapon and, almost to a man, they hold you blameless. You are very well liked by all but a few on board.”
“Well, maybe I won’t be so popular after I do what I have to do with these human prisoners off the freighter.”
“You’ve decided?”
“There isn’t much to decide. Their IDs were all forged, so we ran their DNA through the system. It turns out that they are all in the database. They’re citizens of the Union, every one. So, they’re not enemy combatants, to be treated as prisoners of war. They’re not neutrals, to be sent to a labor camp for five years or so and then repatriated. They’re traitors, plain and simple. Fils de putain.”
“Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“Thirty pieces of silver. The same o
ld low treachery repeated down through the ages. A man takes his noblest loyalty and sells it to the highest bidder for a greasy bag of dirty coins. They didn’t do a very good job of covering their tracks in the ship’s computer. On delivery to a Krag cruiser just inside their space, the freighter captain was going to get 3 percent of the gold and the rest of the crew, 1 percent.”
“What were the Krag going to buy with the gold anyway? Don’t they typically use their pharmaceuticals and high-speed computer cores for foreign exchange?”
“They’re not going to buy a thing. They have plenty of purchasing power. What the Krag don’t have plenty of is gold. I mean the actual metal—it’s an accident of geology that most of their planets are poor in heavy metals: gold, mercury, and so forth. They need gold for industrial purposes, mainly for electrical contacts in precision equipment on their warships. Intelligence says they have a real shortage, even to the extent that it is becoming a bottleneck in their industrial production. And a little goes a long way. Forty-two metric tons is at least a year’s needs for their whole military industrial complex. Taking this cargo will put a real dent in their plans.”
“But if gold is so precious, why would the Krag pay the freighter crew with it rather than something else that is less valuable to them, like Romanovan Sestertii, notes from a neutral bank, or pharmaceuticals that are readily sellable on the black market?”
“My guess is that the freighter rats wouldn’t have been paid at all. Once that freighter got into Krag space under the guns of their cruiser, the Krag would just kill the crew and keep the gold. The ship too.”
“I cannot say that they would not deserve it. So, what’s to happen to the freighter crew?”
“I will be consulting with Major Kraft and completing some documents in a few moments, but it’s all just a formality.”
“You mean that you… that they…”
“Yes, Doctor. They die. Firing squad. Right before breakfast.”
“Sudden death tends to ruin my appetite.”
“It never did mine much good either.”
* * *
CHAPTER 18
* * *
05:59Z Hours, 30 January 2315
Like all but the smallest naval vessels, the Cumberland had a shooting range, so the crew could acquire and maintain proficiency with firearms in the only way possible: shooting real weapons with live ammunition. The range was not very large, and the maximum distance between shooter and target was only fifteen meters, but most shooting by naval personnel takes place in close-order combat, often at arm’s length or even less, so this limitation was not considered much of a problem. When not being used for firearms, the room doubled as a small gymnasium.
This morning, however, the armed men arrayed on the firing line were not going to be shooting at targets. They were going to be shooting at their fellow men. Men with mothers and fathers and wives and children. Men who, like them, were citizens of the Terran Union but who, for reasons that the men holding the M-88 pulse rifles could not fathom, had decided to betray the human race to an inhuman enemy bent on the annihilation of mankind.
For that, they would die. Today. Minutes from now.
The five condemned men stood in a line against the armored back wall of the range, looking mostly dead already. Pale, drawn, unshaven, bleary from lack of sleep, eyes vacant. Two appeared to be in a near stupor, perhaps from the injections they had received from the doctor because they were shaking so hard they could not stand or walk. These were not military men, hardened to danger and long accustomed to the idea that death might claim them on any given day. They were freighter rats, and not particularly successful ones at that, whose slippery sense of honor and loyalty allowed them to sell out the human race for a few credits. But this payoff was more than they’d bargained for.
Go to bed with the devil, you wake up in hell.
The prisoners stared at the line of armed men in unconcealed horror. The Navy did not believe in blindfolds or hoods; more than thirty years of brutal war had taken away whatever squeamishness the service may once have had about death. The shooters looked into the faces of the men they were killing, and the condemned men saw death coming to meet them.
The only sounds were the faint hum of the air handlers, weaving an almost subliminal, bass-clef harmony with the distant thrum of the engines. All present stood in grim silence: five condemned, fifteen shooters, the commanding officer, the executive officer, the chief medical officer, the Marine detachment commander, the nonentity assigned to the ship as chaplain, and—for their education and instruction—the three chiefs who had tried to sabotage the atmosphere manifold.
The shooters had been selected at random by computer from the 116 men on board who had qualified as “Marksman” or higher with the M-88 pulse rifle. Eleven spacers and four Marines. The rifles were not loaded with the standard expanding/tumbling rounds used for Krag, but with old-fashioned full metal jacket ammunition. The wounds would be neat. No unnecessary blood would be spilled.
At precisely the stroke of 06:00, Kraft hit a comm switch already configured to pipe sound to every comm unit in the ship and video to whoever wanted it. Max produced two pages from his tunic and began to read.
On 28 January 2315, as evidenced by the affidavits of a commissioned officer of the Union Space Navy and a commissioned officer of the Union Space Marine Corps, which affidavits are attached hereto and made a part hereof for all purposes, the five men present here today: George M. Tremonte, Hikaru Akazaki, Alexander Wong, Mohammed Bahir, and Seamus O’Leary did give aid and comfort to the enemy by knowingly transporting cargo useful as matériel of war for the purpose of selling, bartering, or otherwise transferring said matériel to the enemy, the accused being citizens of the Terran Union and the Union being in a state of war at the time.
Under the Fourth Revised and Supplemental Articles of War of 9 September 2312, by the authority vested in me as an officer of command rank in actual command of a Rated Warship on Detached Service in a war zone, I hereby sentence the five men named above to death by firing squad, said sentence to be carried out immediately on this day, the 30th day of January in the year two thousand three hundred and fifteen. May God have mercy on their souls. Signed, Maxime Tindall Robichaux, Lieutenant Commander, Union Space Navy, commanding the USS Cumberland.
“Chaplain, have the prisoners been given opportunity for the religious observances associated with impending death in accordance with their respective faiths?”
“They have,” responded the chaplain. None had wanted so much as a prayer.
“Chief Medical Officer, are the prisoners of sound mind and competent to stand for execution?”
“They are,” responded the doctor. Not much competence was required. So long as a man understood that he was about to be shot and why, he was fit to die.
“Advocate Officer, have these men been given the protections and legal process that they are due under the circumstances?”
“They have,” responded Major Kraft, the vessel’s legal expert. For traitors caught in the act these days, under the rules of “due process,” very little process was due.
“Executive Officer, have all procedures required for the execution of these men under the Articles of War and Naval Regulations been fully and completely carried out to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief formed after reasonable investigation?”
“They have,” responded the XO, whose job it was to ensure that if men were to be shot, they would be shot according to the book.
“Does any officer present know of any reason why these men may not be executed by firing squad here, on this day, at this time?” Everyone stood silent for the prescribed count of five.
“Hearing none, we now proceed.” Max took a deep breath. He had never done this before. He had seen this done before only once: when he was twelve and a midshipman on the old Agincourt. He had thrown up on the deck.
“Detail, ready your weapons.” The shooters raised their rifles to their shoulders and worked
the charging handles, each mechanism stripping a 7.62 × 51 mm round from the rifle’s box magazine and pushing it into the chamber.
“Aim.”
Fifteen index fingers moved from ready positions alongside the trigger guards, pushed the safety mechanisms forward into the fire position, and came to rest lightly on the triggers. Fifteen men aimed, three shooters for each condemned man, each framing the tiny bead at the top of his weapon’s front sight in the round aperture of the rear and then aligning both with the center of a condemned man’s chest.
Unbidden, a line from a centuries-old film—he could not remember the name—came to Max’s mind—a line shouted by a condemned man to his own firing squad: “Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!” Don’t make a mess of it, indeed. He took a shuddering breath.
“Fire.”
Max clearly heard fifteen separate weapons discharges, despite his hearing protection filters. The echo seemed to hang in the air for an eternal instant, after which all five men, with five separate thumps, fell to the deck like puppets with their strings cut.
“Safe your arms and shoulder.” The men returned their weapons to safe and shouldered them, making the range “cold” once more and allowing Dr. Sahin to step into the target area and check the prisoners.
It took less than a minute for him to examine all five men. He stood and formally addressed Max, his voice sounding hollow and distant to ears still stunned by the firing of fifteen rifles at the same time in a confined space. “Captain, I have examined the prisoners and certify to you that they are all dead.”
“Very well. Let the record reflect and let all those assembled witness that sentence was carried out and that the condemned were pronounced dead at”—he looked at the time display on his percom—“06:04 hours, on 30 January 2315. Ten HUT.”
To Honor You Call Us (Man of War Book 1) Page 27