Chain of Command Page 9

  “Thank you, sir, coffee sounds good. I still have some work to finish up later this afternoon. Better keep a clear head.”

  “Of course, of course,” Huhn said. He punched in the order on his desk dispenser and in seconds handed a warm drinking bulb of coffee to Sam. He gestured to the padded restraints and handholds along the gray cabin walls. “Make yourself comfortable, please. No need to stand on ceremony.”

  Sam pushed off the deck toward a wall stanchion and clipped his restraint lanyard to it. So far this was not the conversation he had anticipated.

  Huhn floated silently behind his desk for a few seconds, as if gathering his thoughts. “Sam, I want to talk to you about Lieutenant Goldjune.”

  Okay, here it comes, Sam thought and took a swallow of coffee. Maybe the bourbon would have been a smarter move.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You and I have disagreed about him, especially in our assessment of him as an officer.”

  “I think Goldjune is a talented and capable officer, sir,” Sam said, just to get it on the record.

  “Of course he is,” Huhn said, nodding, “as far as that goes. But you know, sometimes character’s more important. Maybe that’s especially true in wartime. The war’s made me take another look at some things. I’ll tell you something, Sam: I don’t trust him. He’s been acting funny for the last day or so, talking to people in the wardroom and then they stop and just look at me when I come in. What’s that all about?”

  Sam thought it might be about Del Huhn’s guilty conscience, but he didn’t say that.

  “I don’t know, sir, but I’ll try to find out.”

  “You haven’t heard anything? Any . . . disloyal mutterings?” Huhn searched Sam’s face but avoided his eyes.

  “No, sir, and if I had, they’d have stopped right there. I give you my word on that.”

  Huhn looked at him for a moment and then looked away and nodded.

  “I believe you, Sam. I think you’re a man of character, an honest man—too honest maybe. I suppose that’s why we had our little disagreement. Seems a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? Well, water under the bridge. Peace and war, different times, different lifetimes. Maybe it’s only possible to be too honest in peacetime, you know, like I was saying, war and character . . . something about them going together, I . . . I don’t know. But I trust you, Sam.”

  Huhn looked at Sam with eyes that shown with moist affection and entreaty, a combination Sam found pathetic, repellant, and vaguely alarming.

  “Thank you, sir,” he managed and looked away, his eyes fastening again on Huhn’s family pictures, slowly cycling on the one small live area on the smart wall.

  “That’s Joey, my boy,” Huhn said, and glided over to the video window. He stopped the display and enlarged it to show the family in yet another posed grouping. Did they ever vacation? Did they ever do anything together but pose for pictures? The son was in his late teens in this picture, beginning to look heavy in the face and upper body, and for a change staring directly at the camera in an apparent act of defiance with a hint of contempt.

  “He’s a few years older now. He tried the Navy—probably wanted to please the old man, follow in my footsteps, you know how sons are. It didn’t work out, Navy wasn’t for him. Joey’s had trouble finding his niche, but he’s a good boy. He’s . . . well, he’s a good boy.”

  Sam looked at the picture and nodded. The woman with her tentative smile, fleeing in quiet panic toward the safety of dowdy middle age, looking as if she needed permission to do anything, who might have been pretty when she was young if she’d let herself, if she’d just given herself permission. Married to a husband who tried to cheat on her when on deployment—probably thought it was what mariners always did, were supposed to do, made them somehow more manly and desirable. And Huhn couldn’t even manage to do that right, could he? Jules had turned him down, and how many others before her?

  When Huhn had graduated from Annapolis and, with a thousand other white-clad men and women, thrown his hat as high into the air as he could, he must have envisioned a life about to unfold before him. He had seen those plans realized, but distorted and grotesque, as if reflected by a funhouse mirror. Did he sometimes wonder where he went wrong? Did he ever stop wondering?

  “We’ll get through this, sir,” Sam said. “We’ll get through it, and we’ll get back to our families.”

  Huhn put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

  “I know I can count on you, Sam. Now, Goldjune?” Huhn looked aside, eyes focused farther away than the barren gray wall he faced. “After all I’ve done for him? Stood up for him? Covered up his mistakes and indiscretions? He’s just a disloyal little shit. Sometimes I wish he was dead.”

  In the corridor outside Huhn’s room Sam stopped and closed his eyes, but the flickering shadow he knew to be Jules persisted, dancing at the periphery of his right field of vision, always just out of reach. Her being there, watching, waiting for something, made his nervous, almost sick to his stomach. Who was crazier? he wondered. Huhn or him?

  He squinted up the medtech’s comm address.

  Medtech Tamblinson. What can I do for you, Mister Bitka?

  “Tamblinson, I’ve . . . I’ve got a headache,” he lied. “Yeah, a real skull-buster, and I need to get some shuteye. Can you give me something that will knock me out for a couple of hours but not leave me punchy when I wake up?”

  They don’t call me Doc Feelgood for nothing, sir.

  CHAPTER NINE

  7 December 2133

  (two days later) (fourteen days from K’tok orbit)

  PLAN OF THE DAY

  USS Puebla, DDR-11

  7 December 2133

  LCDR Delmar P. Huhn, USN

  COMMANDING OFFICER

  LT Samuel M. Bitka, USNR

  EXECUTIVE OFFICER

  NOTES

  1. MORNING COLORS: All hands not on watch will assemble for morning colors. Colors will be presented at half-mast in honor of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

  2. DRILLS: Departments will drill on-duty watch personnel as follows

  3. TRAINING: Department heads will insure personnel coming off watch immediately spend at least one hour on review training on their MOS and one hour mastering their next grade or a parallel MOS in their department. Review. Train up. Train across.

  4. TASK FORCE RENDEZVOUS: All drills and training suspended during the Evening Watch due to rendezvous with Combined Task Force One. All hands will go to General Quarters following inspection.

  5. CREW APPEARANCE: Crew to remove all facial hair and non-permanent ornamentation by inspection at 1800, haircuts high and tight. We will be holo-conferencing with other craft of the task force from this evening forward, including a large number of WestEuro craft, and every member of the crew must present a professional and squared-away appearance at all times. Don’t make us look bad in front of the Europeans.

  D. P. Huhn

  LCDR, USN

  Sam read the Plan of the Day again and shook his head. Two years ago he never would have imagined he’d be where he was, in the middle of an interstellar war, writing a Plan of the Day about haircuts.

  He had never imagined that he would be in the first combatant action of the war, nor in the first craft damaged by such action, nor in the forward screen of the first offensive space task force assembled in Earth history, nor that he would suffer loss so early, nor that it would affect him so deeply that he would not be able to just put it from his mind and carry on. He did carry on, but it was as if Jules’s ghost silently accompanied him, watching everything he did. He had seen her three times, fleetingly, out of the corner of his eye, after that first time when her presence had unnerved him.

  Most of all, he never imagined that almost a week into the war it would remain so ordinary, so routine, as if that first burst of terror and violence, which had lasted less than half an hour, had been simply a dream. He never imagined that when the vagaries of war catapulted him into a position of responsibility for which he felt entirely u
nprepared, and while hurtling toward what could be the climactic battle of the first campaign in the war, he would spend his time filling out forms, posting plans of the day, and overseeing the minutiae of crew training and discipline. Was this what war was really like?

  “Haircuts, Bitka? What the—?”

  Sam looked up from his workstation to see Marina Filipenko, the new Tac Boss, floating in the open doorway.

  “Yeah, haircuts. You want the Euros to laugh at us for looking like a pirate crew?”

  She gave a soft tug on the doorframe and coasted into the XO’s office. “So instead they’ll laugh at us for looking like a bunch of circus geeks. Jesus, what’ll he come up with next?”

  Sam sighed and stretched. He’d argued with Huhn for fifteen minutes about this stupid order but hadn’t been able to talk him out of it, not that Filipenko needed to know that.

  “Just do it, okay? And get some perspective: nobody’s life is going to be shattered by a haircut. While you’re here, what’s the progress on getting Ensign Robinette certified to stand watch as Officer of the Deck?” Sam had to make a conscious effort not to call the young ensign The Jughead.

  “Slow. He’s trying but he’s got a long way to go.” Filipenko looked away and her attention seemed to wander.

  “Something bothering you, Filipenko?”

  “Bothering me? We’re up to our ears in a war, taking on the largest military power of the most technologically advanced race in known space, and we’ve got a weak spot in the crew roster.” She paused and looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You know who I mean.”

  She meant the captain. Sam’s first instinct was to bark her down, but he’d done a lot of barking in the last couple days. He took a deep breath instead.

  “You want a coffee? Fresh brewed, right here in my dispenser.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s been a lot to absorb in just a few days,” Sam said after a moment, “a lot to get used to. You don’t need to tell me that. But the person you’re talking about is going to be fine—maybe not the easiest guy in the fleet to work with but so what? Best thing you can do about him is concentrate on doing your own job, okay? Stand one watch at a time.”

  “I’m not talking about being easy to work with, or this haircut silliness,” she said. “I’m talking about freezing on the bridge in the first attack. I’m talking about who made the call to realign the boat.”

  Sam felt his face flush. He’d thought that was only between Captain Huhn and himself. If the crew were talking about it, that was trouble.

  “Since the cloud missed us anyway it wouldn’t have made a difference, but I think you have things mixed up, Filipenko. I recommended realigning the boat—which was my responsibility as TAC Boss—and asked the Captain for permission. He gave it and we realigned. End of story.”

  “That’s not what Barb Lee told me. She said he froze and you gave the order. It’ll be on the bridge hololog.”

  Sam shook his head. “I gave the order but only after the captain gave me permission.”

  “And the audio track will confirm that?” she said.

  “No, the captain nodded to me. He didn’t speak.”

  “And the permanent holovid track will confirm that?”

  Sam shrugged. “At one frame a second, who knows if you can tell he nodded. But I’m saying he did. You calling me a liar, Filipenko?”

  She looked away. “This really stinks. I’m trying to do the right thing, the responsible thing, but it feels ugly and small and . . . and dirty, like I should go take a sponge bath. I have this feeling no matter what I do, I’ll end up dirty.” She turned and looked at Sam. “The kind of dirt I’ll never scrub off. You know what I mean?”

  “I do. You want to not feel dirty? Stop trying to make judgments about things that are above your pay grade. When you leave here, go find Ensign Lee and kick her ass from here to Monday. Tell her what I told you about the captain nodding. Tell her to stop spreading rumors about things she doesn’t know the whole story on, rumors that undermine the authority of the captain and endanger everyone on the boat. Those are breaches of Navy regulations and in wartime constitute a serious offense, punishable by loss of rank, separation from the service, and imprisonment. Explain that you’re telling her that as a favor, because if I have to—as exec—it’ll get ugly.”

  Filipenko again looked away. “There wasn’t supposed to be a war, ever again,” she muttered. “And if there was, it wasn’t supposed to feel this way. I hate it, hate all of it. We didn’t sign on for this.”

  “Amen,” Sam said, but only to make her feel better. He didn’t really believe it.

  In fact all of them had signed on for exactly this. Filipenko had graduated from Annapolis in 2130, with a commission as a regular officer in the United States Navy, with all that entailed. Twelve years earlier, in the fall of ‘18, Sam had joined the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at U-Cal San Diego, and if it was mostly for access to the excellent NROTC gliders and sailboats, what difference did that make now? What difference did it make that when they had all agreed to serve, none of them had imagined that it would come to this? Did their lack of imagination relieve them of their obligation?

  It occurred to Sam that lack of imagination might actually be an asset in the coming weeks.

  His commlink vibrated and he squinted to see the ID of the duty communications petty officer.

  “XO,” Sam answered.

  Sir, this is Signaler First Class Kramer, communications. I have an incoming request for a holoconference from USS Pensacola, Task Force flagship.

  “They’re about ten hours early. Have you notified the captain?”

  Sir, the request is from a Commander Atwater Jones, Royal Navy, and it’s for a one-on-one conference with you, by name, as soon as you’re available.

  “That’s funny. I don’t recall knowing anyone in the Royal Navy.”

  The second member state of the coalition was the West European Union, but the member states still maintained many of their pre-union national institutions, including their own armed forces. They operated under a unified command, but Sam still wasn’t sure exactly how that all worked. He looked up at Filipenko.

  “Lieutenant, can you excuse me? Royal Navy needs a face-to-face.”

  “What for?” she said.

  Sam shrugged.

  “I’m due on watch anyway,” she said and pushed off toward the doorway. “I’ll talk to Ensign Lee.” She closed the hatch behind her.

  Sam wondered if she’d bought his story about Huhn nodding. He thought she had, and in any case she seemed to understand the necessity to act as if it were true. He hoped Ensign Lee would as well. If it came to an official board of inquiry, he wasn’t prepared to perjure himself, or torpedo Lee’s career, just to cover for Delmar Huhn’s lapse.

  Sam put on his suit helmet, whose optics were necessary for the holoconference, and triggered his commlink again.

  “Okay, Kramer, let’s see what this Jones guy wants.”

  Sam waited for a few seconds while Kramer patched the tight beam communicator channel through to his commlink and then the ghostly image of a tall, attractive, red-haired woman in her late thirties or early forties appeared, wearing a dark blue Royal Navy officer’s shipsuit and transparent viewer glasses.

  “Um . . . I’m on the beam for a Commander Jones?” Sam said.

  “Atwater-Jones,” she said. “Right, that’s me. You look surprised.”

  “I was expecting a man,” he said, and her expression immediately darkened. “No, I just . . . it was the name. Atwater sounds like a guy is all.”

  She squinted at him for a moment and then shook her head. “It’s my family name: Atwater-Jones, hyphenated. My first name is Cassandra.”

  Aware he might have gotten off to a bad start, and also aware she outranked him by two grades, Sam tried to think of a way to make amends. “Cassandra’s, um . . . a nice name.”

  “Really? I think it’s a perfectly dreadful name for a naval intelligence
officer. Fraught with all sorts of unwanted significance. Wouldn’t have chosen it myself.”

  “Well . . . what can I do for you, Commander?”

  “Let me start by presenting my bona fides. I am N2, intelligence chief, to your Admiral Kayumati, part of the allied staff, Combined Task Force One. I believe both our services call the position Smart Boss. The commander of your destroyer division, Captain Bonaventure, forwarded your threat assessment but without any explanation as to how you came to your conclusions. I spoke with him and he had simply passed on the message sent by your captain. Huhn? Isn’t that his name?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Right. As Captain Bonaventure didn’t know any more than I did, he recommended I ring you up. The only information in the burst transmission was as follows: ‘Advise, Stinger Squadron attacked by pellet clouds on high velocity exact reciprocal course. Tac Boss Red Stinger Two believes identical profile attack likely main force. (Signed) Red Stinger Six Actual.’

  “You are the TAC Boss?”

  “Was. I’m XO now.”

  “Congratulations on your promotion. Well-deserved, I’m sure. Now, I’m afraid I’m all in bits over this second attack against the main task force. The only way I can see these attacks launched is as a result of an intelligence leak—two leaks, actually, as the departure times and flight profiles of both forces would have to have been independently discovered and communicated. My question is this: how would the tactical officer on a destroyer, deployed in advance of us, know about those two leaks?”

  “Commander, I don’t know anything about any intelligence leaks.”

  “Then how could you be so sure the same attack launched against your force could have been duplicated against ours? Our senior operations staff assures me the potential volume of space where we could emerge from interstellar jump renders chance detection of an arriving force almost impossible. Coincidental detection of two such forces?” She frowned and shook her head.