Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  “Cutting a hatch is an art. You can’t rush art.”

  “Catrona! On me!” Oliver drew her paint gun and took position behind Ho. The exterior hatch had been unlocked, as was customary, and Ho was inside the six-pack’s airlock, carving into the sealed inner hatch. He finished cutting and rolled aside, dropping the cutting torch.

  “Stack up,” she told Catrona, kicking her spider boots down on the nipple, feeling the thousands of setules digging in and holding her in place. Walking in spider boots took some getting used to, breaking the Van der Waals force with each step, then the setules re-adhering with each new one. It was, she imagined, what walking through glue might be like.

  “Christ,” Ho radioed her over the private channel. “I still can’t believe you did that.”

  “Guess they know who they’re dealing with now,” Oliver said.

  “Yeah,” Ho said, “a lunatic.”

  “Guns up, Wen.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am, go when ready.”

  “Ready?” she radioed the whole team.

  “Ready,” they sounded off.

  “Here we go, buttonhook right.” She grunted as she pulled up one boot, snap kicking the cut section of bulkhead hard enough to send it spinning inward and keep her spider boot from adhering.

  She leveled her paint gun and rolled into the space beyond, bridging to the six-pack’s open channel. “United States Coast Guard!” Her vision expanded just as it always did in a crisis, her peripheral zone growing, details going blurry. She could feel her heart slowing, the world slowing with her, giving her the room she needed to make decisions.

  The vessel’s interior was completely stripped save for a dummy helm and console, bare of instrumentation. There were only four occupants, all in marine white-gray camouflage hardshells, and all making an exaggerated show of being surprised.

  Oliver held her weapon at the low ready. “Identify yourselves, explain why you didn’t comply with our directions.”

  “Bork bork bork,” one of the men in the hardshells said, the pre-agreed code for passengers and crew who did not speak English.

  “Back away, move behind the helm, keep your hands where I can see them!” Oliver knew the scenario called for the role-players to not understand her words, and so she made her intentions abundantly clear with her tone and hand motions. But she was careful to keep her weapon pointed at the deck. Nothing escalated tensions faster than having a gun pointed at you.

  The role-players complied, moving behind the helm console, hands above their heads. Oliver saw no visible weapons in reach, and was satisfied the role-players were shepherded into the vessel’s small nose.

  “On your knees!” she shouted, motioning down with a single hand. Two of the four role-players knelt immediately. Two remained standing, and only one raised his hands over his head.

  Oliver opened her mouth to order him down when Gonzalez’s voice vibrated in her helmet speakers. “Motherfucker, did you not just hear her!? Get the fuck down now!”

  The kid was so amped up, he’d forgotten to pipe his voice to the six-pack’s channel and was instead yelling at his own team.

  Oliver tried to radio him on the private channel, but he overrode her again. “Asshole, do you want to get shot!? I said get the fuck down right now!”

  She knew she shouldn’t look away from the role-players, but she also had to be sure of Gonzalez’s position in case he…

  …She had just begun to turn as Gonzalez’s paint gun kicked, the paint packet rocketing across the intervening space and thunking solidly against the standing role-player’s face plate.

  It was an amazing shot. Had it been a hornet gun, the rocket munition would have blown the man’s head apart. Had it been a duster, it would have sheared off his entire upper torso.

  Either way, this unarmed man, hands above his head, would have been dead.

  Oliver opened her mouth to yell at Gonzalez, but the remaining standing role-player advanced on her. He was still outside her twenty-one foot zone, so she was not authorized to shoot, but she swept her weapon up. “Don’t! Get down right now!”

  Oliver checked to make sure Ho and Catrona had everyone covered. The role-player Gonzalez had shot angrily wiped the paint off his face plate with one gauntleted hand, and lay face down on the deck. “I’m dead.”

  The remaining role-player stopped his advance and put his hands in the air.

  “I need you to put your arms out at your sides, palms up. Do it now!” Oliver bridged directly to his radio. She could feel her arms trembling, her pulse racing. That marine just killed an unarmed man. No! It’s just a simulation.

  The man, and it was a man, Oliver could tell by the size and shape of his suit, complied with her order. “Now,” she said, “turn around until I tell you to stop. Go!”

  The man complied, giving her a full view of his entire suit. No visible weapons, no breaches in the suit’s integrity. He’d kept his faceplate smoked, and she couldn’t see who was under the helmet. “Stop!” she said when his back was to her, “Take a wider stance! Bend over at the waist! Do not move! Do not resist me!”

  “XO,” she radioed Ho on the private channel, “you got the other three?”

  “One of them is out of the fight thanks to the Punisher over here, ma’am,” he radioed back. “I think the three of us can cover the other two.”

  “OK,” Oliver said, reached back and removed the restraints from her waist. They looked like normal handcuffs, with supersized bails designed to cinch tight around a hardshell’s thick wrists.

  “Cross your wrists!” she radioed, heard the tension in her own voice. Gonzalez’s lapse had rattled her.

  Oliver waited a few seconds both to center herself and to throw him off, half expecting him to run, but he only crossed his wrists and waited for her next order. Oliver stepped in, pushing one bail down over his wrist. Once she had it locked on, she would effectively have a metal handle attached to him, one she could use to fling him around in the micro-g, or even break his suit’s integrity if she had to.

  As if he’d known she were coming, the man turned his wrist.

  Suddenly, the narrow portion of the hardshell’s articulated wrist was replaced with the wide. Oliver saw what was coming and tried to pull back her hand, but she was already committed to the movement, the restraints coming down, the metal bail colliding with the man’s hardshell, the clasp swinging around and rebounding, hanging open.

  The man ripped the restraints from Oliver’s hands and turned, spinning the metal circles on the short chain between them. The metal ring crashed into Oliver’s faceplate hard enough to crack it. Oliver felt the puffing cold of the emergency oxygen billowing around her face, the suit’s failsafe coating shrinkwrapping her, trapping the precious oxygen. It made her eyes water, and she lost her view of her adversary for a brief moment.

  A brief moment was more than enough.

  Oliver felt something strike her back hard enough to knock the wind out of her even through the hardshell. The deck. I’m on the deck. She tried to rise, found she was pinned in place. She blinked the tears from her eyes and saw the man kneeling on her chest. He had her pinned on her back, his hand spread across the seal between the hardshell’s helmet and body. She could feel the edge of his gauntlet on the seal, and knew that with enough pressure, he could rupture it. His other hand was outstretched, and Oliver just knew that even though she couldn’t see it, he held a gun.

  “Ho!” she radioed her XO, “did they get you?”

  “Right in the dick,” Ho confirmed. “Christ this is embarrassing.”

  “ENDEX ENDEX ENDEX. End exercise,” Fullweiler’s voice on their radios sounded almost cheerful. “Evolution complete. Secure from exercise and RTB. I say again, return to base.”

  Red lights strobed through the cabin interior and the man stood, extending his hand to help Oliver to her feet. She took it grudgingly, the hot flush of humiliation making her cheeks burn against the cold touch of the emergency oxygen. “You could have killed me.”
>
  “Sure could have,” the man replied in a deep, singer’s bass, “but really, it would have been because of that royal fuck-up you called a ‘cuff.’ So, if we’re being fair, you’d have killed yourself.”

  He unsmoked his faceplate and Oliver found herself face to face with the gorgeous, hard-edges of Demetrius Fraser. “Besides,” he added, “I have a lot of faith in these suits. You’ll have to rely on that when you go on boardings yourself.”

  Oliver knew he was being gracious, that she should answer in kind, but the ease with which he had beaten her was still too fresh. “I’ve been on thousands of boardings.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Fraser said. “I’m guessing maybe those were blue-water boardings? Out here on the 16th Watch, we do things different. You run by the numbers like that, try to play nice, this kind of thing can happen.” He jerked a thumb at Gonzalez, knocked on his back where one of the other role-players had charged him. Catrona was wiping paint off his faceplate. “I know you’re not a fan of this sort of thing, but my marine there had the right idea.”

  Oliver felt a sudden heat rising in the back of her throat. “Like hell he did. Shooting an unarmed suspect with their hands up is never the right thing.”

  Fraser patted her on the shoulder. “Look, it’s been a real pleasure to meet you, and I know you’re going to do a great job leading SPACETACLET. But I think now’s a good time to remind you about the MARSOC marines I told you about in the chow hall. I’m an old man, Jane, and look at what I just did to you. The marines I’ll be sending to Boarding Action are all trained harder and meaner’n me, and they’re in the prime of their lives.”

  Oliver thought of Chief Elgin. He was already on the SAR-1 crew selected for this year’s Boarding Action. How old was he? Fifty? Fifty-five?

  “I don’t doubt you’re ready to lead,” Fraser said, “but you better remember that you’re not ready to fight.”

  Oliver gave a shrug exaggerated enough to be visible through her hardshell, felt the shrinkwrapping of the internal failsafe hugging the chilly oxygen to her body. She struggled to keep her voice nonchalant, but she felt the humiliation heat her cheeks. “Botched a cuff. Could have happened to anyone.”

  Fraser grinned, shook his head. “Well, I guess it could have.” His faster pace carried him a few steps away from her before he stopped, turned back. “But it didn’t happen to anyone, Admiral Oliver. It happened to you.”

  As they moved back through the cut in the six-pack’s hull. Oliver radioed Ho on the private channel. “That kid,” she seethed, “is never to pick up a weapon again in his life.”

  “Roger that,” was Ho’s only reply. She had no idea how she would make good on that threat. Rank aside, Gonzalez wasn’t in her chain of command, and she hadn’t exactly made a great showing herself on this boarding.

  The enormity of it dawned on her. It wasn’t just what Gonzalez had done, it was that they had failed the training evolution. What would this mean for her course status? She couldn’t afford to roll back and take it again, and she certainly couldn’t afford to wash out now that she had so publicly committed to going the distance. Christ. Her mind whirled with potential consequences.

  They were silent the whole way to their staterooms, where Ho finally got the nerve up to ask her. “You going to be OK?”

  Oliver spun on him, realized the rage must have been visible on her face. It was bad military bearing and she swallowed it at once. “Fraser said what Gonzalez did was the right move. Said that was the way things are out here.”

  Ho didn’t hesitate. “I actually like General Fraser, but that’s some high-test bullshit right there.”

  “Good,” Oliver nodded. “That’s my thinking too. I need to think about this. Figure out a way forward.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am,” Ho said.

  He was still showering in his room when the email arrived with the class scores.

  Oliver had to read it twice before she could believe the grade they’d received.

  PASS.

  “What the hell is this?” Oliver attempted to slam the printout on Fullweiler’s desk, failed to account for the fact that his office wasn’t currently spinning, and succeeded only in making it drift erratically between them. Well done, she thought, he’s surely intimidated now.

  “That’s your notice of passing,” Fullweiler answered calmly. “I’m sorry, did you want to fail?”

  “How can you pass us after what happened?”

  “What happened? Are you referring to your fancy flying?”

  Oliver felt herself getting hotter. “Your fancy pursuit evasion maneuvers required fancy flying,” she answered more quickly than she’d intended. “I wonder what would have happened if we’d hit that garbage in a rickety launch.”

  Fullweiler shrugged. “We pride ourselves on preparing our students for real-life conditions.”

  Oliver mimicked his tone. “And I pride myself on training the same way. Nothing I did exceeded safe speed or thruster application per the manual.”

  “Uh-huh,” Fullweiler said. “Just a friendly warning not to try that in a rhino.”

  “I wasn’t in a rhino.”

  “I’m trying to give you advice. I have some experience with this stuff.”

  “It’s appreciated. You’ll forgive me if I think it lacks conviction coming from a guy who was fine with a marine whose balls had barely dropped shooting an unarmed civilian in the face.”

  Fullweiler’s smug expression finally dropped. “Look, if you want to have a professional conversation in respectful tones, then I’m more than willing, but I’m not going to sit here while you unload on me. Gonzalez shot a role-player and instructor in the face, and then only after that role-player failed to comply with his order to get down.”

  “He never gave an audible order! Kid was so amped up he forgot to bridge into the vessel’s radio! He was screaming at us.”

  Fullweiler shrugged. “Video shows a hand motion, first from you, and then from him. Plus, there were two other men on their knees, which is direction-by-context per the manual. This isn’t Earth, captain. You know how unreliable audio is in space-ops.” He knew she did, and it was why he was reinforcing the point. He might as well have said, you don’t know what it takes to command out here.

  “I do know. I also know that shooting an unarmed civilian in the face because they don’t comply with an order that they didn’t even hear in the split-second you wanted them to will not fly when it goes to trial. And it will go to trial.”

  “No, captain, it won’t,” Fullweiler said. “Because when Gonzalez graduates here, he will not be going out on SAR runs with us. He will be going on boardings with marine crews who are breaching and clearing. They won’t be police actions. They’ll be meat grinders.”

  “Not if the guard takes the lead. Then that kid will be part of a joint operation led by someone coming out of my command, and you’ll have taught him it’s OK to go in there and mow down anybody who doesn’t heave-to quickly enough.”

  “No,” Fullweiler growled, “far better to have a botched-cuff scenario like what just played out on that boat, with the bad guys all fine, and your boarding team dead.”

  “Far better a botched cuff than a murder. This is the Navy. They’ve packed this place with marines. They’ve poisoned the whole process. If you’re such a bleeds-blue coastie, then why are you letting their belligerent shit infect our training pipeline? We don’t want a war with China? This has to be a SAR mission, not a military one. Gonzalez has to fail out. Shit, captain, I have to fail out for letting him do that.”

  “The Navy hasn’t…”

  “Oh, horseshit. I saw you drooling over that collision. You couldn’t wait to get in the fight, Fullweiler. You want to get out there and show China who’s boss. Maybe you should transfer services, because in this one we save lives first.”

  For the first time since she’d met him, Fullweiler utterly lost his cool, punching his desktop and leaning over it, as the rebound caused him to float slowly up. �
��Don’t presume to tell me what we do or do not do in this service, captain. I may not be pinning a star on in a week, but I have given my life to the guard and I bleed blue same as you. Now, I am doing you a favor here. If you want me to fail you, I’m sure I can arrange it, but if you’re just going to come in here and question my commitment to my life’s calling, then I’ll thank you to see yourself out.”

  Oliver swallowed at least half-a-dozen biting responses, turned on her heel, and nearly sent herself rocketing toward the ceiling before she remembered the micro-g environment and slowed her roll. “There’s still a week left for you to screw something else up!” Fullweiler shouted at the back of her head.

  Their final exam took place on the last three days of class. The practical was far less challenging than their run with Gonzalez, a mere formality focused on safety. Oliver realized that her run-in with Fraser had been the real test, to see if she would drop when they threw everything at her.

  The practical was followed by a comprehensive oral board, followed by the graduation ceremony. Once she’d reached the realization that Fullweiler wouldn’t fail her, she could suddenly see it in his smile, read it in the faces of every instructor in the school. They think I’m going out to pasture. They think the Navy already has this in the bag.

  She shook the thoughts from her mind as she entered the boardroom. The oral examination was a joint board, with a member of each of the five branches seated behind the horseshoe shaped table. Fullweiler represented the Coast Guard, and her eyes swept the other Air Force, Army and Navy representatives without recognition. She froze when she came to the representative of the Marine Corps and took in Fraser’s shaved head and strong jaw.

  The questions were easy, mostly confined to points of salvage law, the Outer Space Treaty that existed now only in name, the useless specifics of the rhino – length nose to stern, length trailered on Earth, weight in Earth-gravity, loaded and unloaded, weight in micro-gravity, loaded and unloaded. The questioning came rapid-fire and in the style of all military boards, her examiners stone-faced and making notes while nodding. All to give the appearance of paying close attention. Oliver had sat on enough of these boards herself to know that they were probably doodling with their pens, scratching reminders of tasks they’d have to do when this formality was over.