by Myke Cole
“All you need, as far as I’m concerned,” Ho jerked his chin toward the picture. “Really ties the room together.”
Oliver grunted and gestured at the far edge of the view of Bay of Rainbows, where the Sea of Rains stretched out like a portent under the invisible shadow of Chinese EEZ. “What do you make of that view?”
“I’m… less enthusiastic than your daughter, ma’am.”
“How so?”
“It’s… scary,” he said.
“Because of the EEZ?”
Ho shook his head, stood, came to stand beside her before the broad quartz-glass window. He tapped the thick glass, his slender finger indicating the far distance where the albedo’s glare sucked up the darkness and the horizon curved out of view. “That’s the northern edge of Oceanus Procellarum, right?”
“The Ocean of Storms,” Oliver nodded, “and at its heart the Aristarchus crater. I flew over it once while I was on area familiarization. Makes the Grand Canyon look like a dimple.”
“And that’s where the PLAN HQ is, right?” Ho asked.
Oliver nodded. “Sure is. Crater’s got a mountain at the bottom. It’s on top of it. All their frigates, destroyers, the lion’s share of their small boats. Most of their IR and EW gear. Belly of the beast.”
Ho swallowed. “And it’s right on the far side of their EEZ, like they’re just waiting for one of our boat coxs’uns or frigate skippers to get hotheaded and chase a quarantine runner in too deep.”
“And then they’ll come out shooting.”
Ho met her eyes. “You think they really will?”
“Yeah,” Oliver sighed. “I do. We got lucky with that collision, Wen. We’re not going to survive another ‘misunderstanding’ like that. We’re past saber-rattling now. The swords are drawn.”
“Well, that’s what’s scary. I mean, look at that, it’s so… samey. All that flat gray. It’s… peaceful, you know?”
“Yeah,” Oliver said again. “It is. It’s kind of nice.”
“Yeah,” Ho agreed, but she could hear the worry in his voice.
Oliver scanned the distant horizon, as if she could somehow bring the Aristarchus crater into view. She imagined the central peak in that crater’s bottom, the PLAN headquarters squatting atop it, its massive arrays ever trained on the EEZ, alert for the faintest electro-chemical signature that might suggest Chinese space was being violated, its gigantic fleet ready to spring into action.
Lacus Doloris was out of sight to the southeast, blocked by the long ridge of the Montes Appeninus. That had been first blood for Oliver, but as much as she hated to admit it, Tom had lost his life in a mere dustup, easily defused and papered over. A real war would start somewhere out in that featureless gray expanse before her, lit only by the running lights of distant PLAN patrols.
It took her at least an hour to get the promotion script pared down to something she could stand. Avitable had stuffed the script into the back of Oliver’s briefing folder, but she had known immediately what it was by the thickness of the papers, and the almost embarrassed looking miniature binder clip in the upper right-hand corner.
Ho had looked at the first three pages as Oliver stripped them out and tossed them on her rack. The lunar-g caused them to float a bit, and Ho reached out with deft fingers to snatch the drifting pages out of the air. “This,” her XO said, arching an eyebrow as he paged through them, “is the history of the United States Coast Guard.”
“Which everyone at this ceremony already has had drilled into their skulls a hundred times already in shitty ceremonies just like this one. And they still don’t care.”
“I care,” Ho folded his arms.
“You,” Oliver snatched the pages from his hand and set them back on her rack, but she misjudged the force and they drifted up again, floating out over the edge and seesawing their way down to the floor, “are a giant nerd.”
“You take that back, ma’am.”
“I will do no such thing. You are the biggest Coast Guard dork I have ever met in my life.”
“I am not.”
“In what year did Ida Lewis make her first rescue?”
“1854. She was twelve.”
“Where was DC3 Bruckenthal born?”
“Stony Brook, New York, but he grew up in Hawaii.”
Oliver turned to the mirror, straightened her tie. “You didn’t even have to look that up.”
“You know that stuff too!”
She turned, brushed a speck of imagined lint off his whites. “Not without Google.”
She checked the hang of her saber one last time, drew a deep breath and walked out.
“I use Google!” Ho hurried after her.
“You are Google.” Oliver turned down the passageway and headed toward the facility’s expansive Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Center.
“Your face is Google!” Ho panted as he hurried to catch up.
Avitable had done his level best to turn the MWR into some dignified semblance of an auditorium, but Oliver was pleased to see that he wasn’t entirely successful. The couches had been stacked at the big room’s far end, covered with a SPACETACLET banner. He’d disconnected all of the video game consoles, but he’d left the flat screen monitors in place, now displaying looping videos of Coast Guard operations on terrestrial water and the Moon alike.
The room wasn’t big enough for all the assigned personnel. The windowed passageways that ran to either side of the MWR were crammed with bodies, and Oliver knew there were even more in the overflow spaces, watching on monitors. It gave the impression of a concert spilling out into the street, a must-see event, which was exactly what she wanted. She’d arranged to have senior enlisted get the front row seats, with officers on the edges and in the back. She hoped it sent the message she intended – that the non-commissioned officers would be the real drivers of this unit under her command.
She glanced up at the door she’d entered through, and caught her breath. Hanging over the door were two portraits, each framed in black ribbons. She recognized the faces instantly – Linda Flecha’s coiled black braid, and Andraste Kariawasm’s broad forehead and dimpled chin. She nodded toward the pictures, drawing Ho’s attention. “Bet you anything Chief Elgin had those put up when they folded SAR-1 into the command.”
“Sounds like Chief,” Ho nodded. “Man, that’s a bucket of cold water.”
“It’s good,” Oliver swallowed. “Reminds us why we’re here.”
Somewhere in the crowd Oliver knew were the two survivors of her boat on Lacus Doloris – Elgin and McGrath. She had directed they be included in those seated up front, but when she scanned the audience, all the faces bobbing above the starched sky blue collars ran together, and she could hardly distinguish one person from another.
It was her second time seeing Admiral Allen. He’d aged visibly over the last few years, but his eyes were every bit as hard as they had been the last time she’d met him, taking command of the Aries before Tom’s death had sent everything to hell. Her shook her hand, reaching out with his free one to grip her elbow. “Jane, it’s good to see you again. Thank you for inviting me.”
I had to invite you. You’re the only one with rank out here to make an admiral, Oliver thought, but she said, “It’s an honor to have you, sir.”
“I know it was a tough decision to come out here, but I’m glad you made it. You’re doing a great service not only to me, but to the whole guard. I know the Commandant feels the same way.”
“I don’t think it was my decision to make, sir. My XO here would have had my head if I’d said no, and that doesn’t even count my daughter.”
Allen shook hands with Alice, standing beside her folding chair in the front row. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, thanks for your help in convincing your mom to come out.”
“Well, it’s good for me too,” Alice shook his hand and grinned. “Mom’s going to give me a hand with some things when she’s wrapped this up.”
Allen cocked an eyebrow, “You’re planning on becoming
a miner?”
Oliver shrugged, “Let’s see if I survive this first.”
“If anyone can,” Allen said, “it’s you.”
Avitable approached, smoothing wrinkles out of a uniform clearly much too small for him. “Sorry,” he said, “we just don’t wear these very often. I’m afraid the last time was… some time ago.”
He handed Allen the ceremony script and shook his hand. Allen leafed through it, a frown deepening with each page. “This appears… shortened.”
“It is, sir,” Oliver said, “I’m allowed some latitude for my own promotion, and I thought it best to keep things brief.”
“You’ve removed the section on our history and traditions.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“May I ask why?”
“Because nobody cares, sir.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Let me rephrase that, sir. They do care, but they don’t need to be reminded of it at length while they’re standing at attention in uniforms,” she gestured at Avitable, “that they only wear once a year if that. What people want out of a promotion is to get the measure of the new boss, and then get back to whatever it is they were doing before they were voluntold to attend a non-mandatory all-hands event.”
Allen was quiet for a moment, and Oliver wondered if he would burst out laughing or yell at her, but in the end he only shook his head slightly. “Well, I guess it’s your call.”
He gave a speech anyway, extemporizing with what Oliver thought was troubling accuracy most of the material that Oliver had stripped out. She caught Ho out of the corner of her eye, his smug smile staying with her even when she looked away. At last Allen called her up to the podium, read her promotion scroll, and slipped on one of her shoulder boards while Alice slipped on the other. The four gold stripes of a coast guard captain were stripped away, replaced by the admiral’s solid gold. Oliver knew this was a singular moment. Almost no one in any service ever made flag rank. It was a career high point that should have made her tingle.
But as she looked out over the audience, she only felt the enormity of the task before her, her mind repeating her defeat at Fraser’s hands over and over again. She felt like an old woman in a costume, who had somehow hoodwinked all these otherwise smart people into believing that she could be the answer to their prayers. Knock it off. This is toxic thinking.
And then she glanced to her left and saw her daughter there, slipping the gold shoulder board in place, buttoning it down. Her daughter’s mouth was open in a tiny O of concentration, tears beginning to well at the corners of her eyes. She looked like nothing so much as a little girl, and the fear and doubt vanished, and for a moment Oliver felt the same awe Alice did. Pride swelled up her spine, did cartwheels in her head, making her shoulders lift. This is how my daughter sees me, she thought as Alice finished buttoning the board down, and stepped back, her eyes shining as she looked at her mother.
It mattered to Alice that her mother was an admiral. Well, Oliver thought, then I suppose it matters to me too.
She felt the pride then, as she turned, rendering her salute to Allen, her first as an admiral. Allen returned it, shook her hand firmly. “Congratulations, Jane. This is well-deserved. You’ve got your work cut out for you, but I want you to know there is no one else in any branch of service I trust more to get it done.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, “let’s see if you feel the same way after you hear this bit.”
She left Allen, still smiling, the surprise only registering in his eyes, and stepped up to the podium. As the applause died and the audience quieted, Jane scanned the faces again for Elgin and McGrath, and again was defeated by the uniforms and the closely packed crowd. Just a sea of faces, each blending into the next. They’re in the crowd. Have a little faith.
“Thank you.” Avitable had set out a small monitor on the floor, angled up at her, and Oliver could hear the tinny echo of her voice through the speakers in the overflow rooms outside. “I appreciate you all taking time out of your busy days, completely without any coercion whatsoever, to greet your new commander on an entirely voluntary basis.”
Smiles, and scattering of chuckles. Sarcasm and honesty worked with this crowd.
“Since you’ve been kind enough to give me your time, I’ll be kind enough to respect it. I’ll keep this as brief as I can. If I were sitting out in that audience, I’d want to know what I could expect from my new skipper, and how she was going to impact my life. Am I right?”
Nods, a few faces frozen in surprise. Here and there, an NCO leaned forward, forearms on their knees in the universal you have my attention posture that Oliver had come to associate with enlisted sailors in operational roles. “You’ve probably heard the term ‘servant leadership’ before, and I want you to know that a) I believe in it, and b) what it means to me is that you work for the people you lead. They have to render courtesy and obedience. You have to put their interests before your own. Last in line for chow, last off the shop floor, first into the thick of things, first to accept responsibility for failure. This is the standard I hold for myself, and it is the standard I will hold for every single officer and NCO in this command. The fastest way to make me into an intractable enemy is to let me catch you throwing your own people under the bus. The fastest way to make me your staunchest ally is to show me you are putting your people before yourself. That scan for all of you?”
More nods. More grunts of approval. Here and there, clapping hands. “If you’ve read anything from my bio, you know that I come out of the SAR community. I’m a career lifesaver, always in the small boat world. That means I’ve done some law enforcement, but not the kind of heavy-hitting law-dogging you do at SPACETACLET. I imagine that might make some of the pipe-hitters in the audience nervous that I’m going to come in here with peace signs and bouquets of flowers, making everybody talk about their feelings.”
Laughter erupted from the entire audience at that. She could see shoulders relaxing. You’re killing it, Jane, she thought, let’s hope you just bought enough good will for this next part.
“Well, you’re not wrong. I am a firm believer that the Coast Guard is a unique institution, empowered by Title Fourteen of the US Code to act with a flexibility that no other branch of the military can, and I intend to use that flexibility to accomplish our mission here.”
OK, Admiral Allen, she thought. Here’s the part you’re not going to like. “And there’s something else we’ve got to tackle before we can accomplish anything. There’s a pink elephant sitting in the middle of this room.” She pointed to the middle of the audience and a few heads swiveled to look as if they expected to see the creature sitting there.
“How many of you call me ‘Widow Jane’? It’s OK. I won’t hold it against you.” A scattering of hands went up. Then, a few more. “Come on,” Oliver said, “I’m playing it straight with you. Play it straight with me.” More hands went up at that, until nearly every one in the audience was raised.
“OK, that’s what I thought,” Oliver said, “and that’s fine. Just don’t call me it to my face, OK? The reason I asked if you called me this is because it confirms what I already knew, that what happened at Lacus Doloris is fresh in all of your minds. And that’s the thing we’re going to have to tackle.
“I’m not going to mince words. I know we took some licks at Lacus Doloris, and I know that’s left scars. There are commanders who would try to put that behind us, as if silence could somehow erase the pain. That’s not how I operate and it’s not how this unit will operate under my command. We will tackle problems head on, and that means morale. I believe the surest way to do that is to remember why we signed up to be here. Every other branch of the military has a primary mission – to kill people and destroy property. Nothing wrong with that, necessary evil. But not us, not the Guard. We are here to save lives. We are here to protect property. That is why we are the smallest, the most elite and yes, the best of all five branches of the armed service. Because of our mission, and starti
ng today, we’re going to recommit to that mission.”
She looked up at the portraits of Flecha and Kariawasm, and pointed at them. “I want everybody to look up at our two shipmates there. The ones we lost. The ones we must never forget.”
Heads swiveled, and chairs creaked as the audience turned to take the pictures in. Oliver could feel the mood in the room dropping precipitously. Her stomach clenched at the risk she was taking. If you lose your audience now, you’ll have sunk this unit’s morale and your own authority for nothing. She swallowed the fear and pressed ahead. “Confronting things head on means we confront them head on, and that means we don’t pretend that I didn’t lose someone at Doloris, too. We don’t pretend that you don’t know why they call me ‘Widow Jane.’ Tom went down doing the job he loved, surrounded and protected by people he honored. He didn’t blame you, and I don’t either. Those we’ve lost are gone, and it’s not for us to waste time looking in the rear-view mirror, rehashing what we might have done differently. Everyone here knows what all sailors say, ‘the sea doesn’t care about you.’ Yelling at the ocean won’t make it bring our loved ones back to us. Now, I was lucky enough to get to run that fateful mission in the company of Petty Officers Kariawasm and Flecha, but that’s not the same as knowing them. I can’t tell you how they honored their dead. But I can tell you what Tom would have told you. He’d have…”
She could see Alice out of the corner of her eye, could tell her daughter was crying openly. The sight almost set Oliver off herself, and she paused for a moment to maintain her composure. She wanted her command to see her vulnerable and open to them, but not that vulnerable. “Tom would have told you that the best way to honor the dead is to honor the living, to share the example of our loved ones with others, through our actions. My husband was brave, and kind, and patient, and he lived for others. And that’s what SPACETACLET is going to do. What is our motto?”
“Honor! Respect! Devotion to Duty!” the audience roared.
“Oh, horseshit,” Oliver said. “You think I just got out of academy? What is our real motto? The one we’re not allowed to put on T-shirts?”