Part 9 (1/2)

Dr. Sahin remained seated as the rest of the men filed out of the compartment. ”Captain, may I have a word with you?”

”Sure, Doctor, what's on your mind?”

”You issued a set of separate written orders to each senior officer, including me.”

”Yes. I wrote them before I a.s.sumed command. Is there a problem with any of those orders?”

”Not at all. I find them very sensible indeed. They were things that I would have done in any case, but your order makes it easier to get them done-they are now captain's orders. It makes them a priority.”

”What of my orders, Doctor?”

”As you recall, one of the things I was ordered to do was to review the medical records of the s.h.i.+p's complement to determine whether anyone had any special medical needs that were not being adequately addressed. I am constrained to point out to you that there is one such person on board who has a severe and unmet medical need that may adversely affect his ability to carry out his duties. I believe that he requires treatment immediately or his performance is likely to begin to deteriorate rapidly to such a degree that within a very short time he may become unfit for duty.”

”Can the treatment he needs be provided on the c.u.mberland?”

”Yes. He can receive all the treatment he needs on board.”

”Then he must begin to receive the proper treatment at once.”

”I suspect that he may be resistant to this course of action.”

”Then he must be ordered to submit to treatment. As I said just a minute ago, the needs of the s.h.i.+p come first. Who is this person?”

”His name is Rob.i.+.c.haux. Maxime Tindall Rob.i.+.c.haux.”

”Doctor,” Max sputtered. ”There must be some kind of error. I was slightly-very slightly-wounded during my last deployment and received treatment from one of your colleagues on board the Halsey. I was thoroughly examined and found to be in perfect health back in mid-November and again just a few days ago. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me.”

”Really? Are you sure about that? Captain, as you may recall, I saw your reaction when a comm panel alert signal interrupted you. I recognized that response immediately and did some extensive research into your medical records, service records, and other pieces of the digital puzzle we all leave behind as we live our lives in the service. I have also watched you very carefully since then. The pattern is undeniable. If you are to sit there and tell me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, then you must be telling me that you are not experiencing nightmares, disturbed sleep, exaggerated startle responses, emotional volatility, pain in the extremities, an irrational need to avoid sitting with your back to any room with people in it, difficulty trusting others, and profound feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. Do I understand that to be your contention?”

Max felt an internal lurch, followed by a sense of vertigo, as though he were riding in an elevator that suddenly dropped three stories. He could literally feel the blood draining from his face. He said softly, ”I've never reported any of those symptoms, Doctor.”

”But you are experiencing them nonetheless, aren't you?” Realizing that he had sounded as though he were cross-examining the captain, he adopted a more sympathetic tone. ”Please, sir, I am not asking for the benefit of any report, but because as a physician I have sworn an oath to alleviate human suffering, and I have every reason to believe that you are suffering. Further, as you said yourself, the needs of the s.h.i.+p come first. In the coming days, this s.h.i.+p and this crew are going to need a commanding officer who is not coping with the additional burdens imposed by serious emotional impairment. Captain... Max, you have done me more than one kindness in these past few days. Let me do you a kindness. I know what you are experiencing. I am an extremely acute observer. I miss very little.”

Max sat silently, of two minds. He had survived and functioned all these years by keeping these problems sealed off behind a heavy pressure bulkhead. But as a perceptive leader, Max knew enough about how the human mind worked to know that under the added stresses of command, that bulkhead might be starting to crack. Perhaps this brilliant physician was already starting to see the signs. This wasn't just about him any more. Max realized that his mind, his intellect, his judgment, were the most critical systems on board.

”Doctor, I will not lie to you. The things you describe are a part of my life. But I've lived with them ever since I can remember. They're a part of me. I don't know what they are or how they might be connected, and I don't know what you or anyone else can do about them.”

”Captain, these things are not disconnected from one another. Together, they are all symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. I believe they stem from two events in your childhood that I know of, and perhaps other events of which I do not know.”

”Absurd. You can't mean to tell me that I'm today, at age twenty-eight, having trouble sleeping and jump at sudden noises because of something that happened when I was thirteen or fourteen.”

”No, I do not mean to tell you that. I do mean to tell you that you are today having trouble sleeping and are jumping at sudden noises because of events that transpired when you were eight, and when you were ten.”

The emotional elevator dropped another three floors. ”Oh, you mean...”

”Exactly, Captain. I have pieced it together from hints in your jacket, peculiar turns of phrase you have used in your After Action Statements, reports, orders, and memoranda, from things I have seen you do or heard you say, and from news items. It is all very subtle, but the conclusions are plain for anyone with eyes to see them.

”At age eight, you were not merely orphaned by the Gynophage. You were horrifically, searingly scarred by it.” Sahin did not relish what he was about to say, but he knew that this man's defenses would shrug off anything less than a brutally vivid explanation. ”If I am not mistaken, on the first day of the attack, you were at home with your mother and your sisters when the weapon struck. You, an eight-year-old boy who had never seen physical disease or severe pain in your life, helpless, unable to summon a.s.sistance over the jammed communication systems, watched as your mother died in screaming, writhing agony before your very eyes. Unless I miss my guess, she pleaded with you to help her, and all you were able to do was to stand by and watch her die. Am I right?”

”Yes.” A whisper.

”Then, before you could find another adult to help you and before your father got home-was it only an hour or two later?-you watched the same thing happen to your twin sisters, infants less than a year old. You were just as helpless, equally alone. Your father came home six hours later and found you with only corpses for company. From what I can tell, he was shattered emotionally. So he sent you into s.p.a.ce a scant two weeks later. The chief medical officer of the San Jacinto noted in his log that you were dehydrated and malnourished from having hardly eaten or drunk for what he guessed to be about two weeks. Captain Lo noted that you hardly spoke a word to anyone for nearly a month after you came on board.

”Then, sixteen months later, your world came apart around you again when your new home, the cruiser San Jacinto, was boarded and your new family, its crew, killed by the Krag. All but a few of its crew of more than four hundred perished. According to the citation that Commodore Middleton wrote when he awarded you the Navy and Marine Achievement Medal, you hid in the air ducts and access crawlways and eluded them for twenty-six days, stealing food from the cargo holds and drinking from the water reclamation units.

”I suspect very strongly that you watched with your own eyes-through the vent gratings perhaps?-as the Krag tortured your s.h.i.+pmates for information or merely tortured and killed them because we all know that is what the Krag do. And they hunted you, day and night, did they not? Relentlessly. Day after day; exhausting, sleepless night after night. Is it any wonder that you continually wake in the middle of the night, screaming, drenched in sweat, dreaming of being pursued?

”Finally, by a miracle, the s.h.i.+p was retaken by Union forces, and you were found. According to what you said during your lengthy debriefing, when you heard human voices in the corridor, you sprang out of an air duct and hacked off the arms of two Krag from behind with a boarding cutla.s.s you grabbed from an arms locker when the Krag boarded the s.h.i.+p. You carry that same boarding cutla.s.s to this day. My guess is that you sleep with it near your bed, and you like to have it within reach whenever you are under stress. I ask you, sir, with every kindness, am I incorrect as to any material fact?”

Long pause. ”No. You're not.” He shook his head, stunned by the accuracy of the doctor's deductions. ”Even if you're right, though, what can be done? I have a s.h.i.+p to command. I've no time to engage in extensive self-examination and navel gazing. I don't have endless hours to spend lying on a couch in your office, talking about my dreams and telling you what I see in ink blots.”

”There is no couch in my office. Perhaps I should requisition one. But no, I do not propose any of those things you see in those overdone trid vids. After all, as you can see, I have no beard, no Viennese accent, and no cigar. We would start by just talking. We would work around your schedule-perhaps we would talk over dinner now and then, much as friends would. Let me be your confidante. I can listen to you. You have not even admitted much of what you are experiencing to yourself, much less expressed it to another human being. By speaking to me about it, you will be teaching yourself about your feelings as well. Unburden yourself to me from time to time. My guess is that you have never had a true, confidential friend. You need one. Let me fill that role.”

The two men sat together in silence for several seconds.

The comm buzzed.

Max stabbed the b.u.t.ton. ”Skipper.”

”Captain, this is Rochefort in Crypto. You were right. The data is a cartographic file, not text. And you've got to see this.”

”On my way.” Max smiled. ”Later, Doctor.” Pause. ”Ibrahim.”

”It's Bram. My friends call me Bram.'”

CHAPTER 8.

23:07Z Hours, 22 January 2315 ”Hey, Starry, it just happened again.” Recruit s.p.a.cer First Cla.s.s Siersma made that announcement in the standard naval issue area broadcast voice-a voice seemingly possessed by all military personnel of all services going back at least to the time of Pharaoh Thutmose III, not much louder than ordinary speech and not nearly as loud as a shout, but one that is clearly audible across even the largest room even though filled with humming, buzzing, whirring equipment.

”What happened again, Peapod?” Petty Officer Third Cla.s.s Starcevik responded in the same kind of voice. ”Peapod” was a reference to the hue of the SCUs and working uniforms issued to recruit s.p.a.cers, a thoroughly repulsive shade between that of bread mold and the algae that grows on the surface of cesspools. ”You managed to find the enlisted head without wandering into the galley?”

”Now, Starry, you know that happened only that one time the day I was transferred on board. Anyway, most exalted petty officer, sir, this is important. I just picked up another decoherence event in one of the compression phase regulator feedback streams. It's the number four again.”

All business now, Starcevik stepped quickly across the ten meters that separated his station from Siersma's. ”Play it back.”

Siersma instructed the console to locate and replay the performance visualization for regulator stream coherence during the time period in question. ”What speed?”

”Let's have it at one one-thousandth,” he responded after a judicious pause.

”You got it.” Siersma entered a few commands. Within a few seconds, one of the displays on his console showed an animated graphic representing the phase, frequency, and polarization coherence of the feedback stream. Initially, it showed a tightly packed bunch of sine waves of precisely the same bland yellow color, stacked neatly one atop the other, with their peaks and valleys lining up with near perfection. Then the pattern suddenly broke down into a jumble of waveforms of different sizes, their sinuous curves out of step with one another, and the lines representing them on the display s.h.i.+ning out in an array of different colors. This chaos lasted for a few seconds of playback time, after which the wave forms settled back into their orderly march across the screen.