Part 12 (1/2)

”A small town in Korea. On Earth, sir.”

”All right, Mr. Park. Just do what I show you and you'll do fine.”

He then proceeded to have one member of each pair pick up the practice dirk and hold it as if to stab a Krag in the belly. Max went around the room, correcting their grips. Once the grips were right, he showed them the stance that would deliver the most power, weak-side foot slightly forward, strong-side foot slightly back, leaning forward just a few degrees, and then thrusting with the strong-side arm while bracing the body by pus.h.i.+ng forward with the legs. Finally he came back to his partner. He made sure that the boy had the correct grip and the correct stance.

Once everyone had the stance and the grip right, Max made sure each boy knew how to put them into motion, practicing stabbing and withdrawing over and over again, with Max and the chief correcting the boys' form. Those who were initially handed the dirks then traded with their partners, Max and the chief again going around the room, gently correcting grip, foot placement, and body posture.

”Now,” Max announced when that was accomplished, ”some of you may have noticed that Mr. Park had some difficulty reaching the right point on my belly. You will not always be able to get to the Krag's abdomen. You may be out of position. The Krag may be standing on a higher level than you are. You may be too short. But that doesn't mean your dirk is useless. In a fight, stab or cut whatever you can reach. Even if you don't kill the Krag, you may help your s.h.i.+pmates by wounding it enough to put it out of the fight, or even by hampering and distracting it enough so that other naval personnel can attack it successfully. When I was sticking that Krag in the gut with my dirk at age fourteen, I had his undivided attention, and that allowed Marine Lance Corporal Halvorsen to come up behind it and take its head off with a battle ax.”

Max stood on a six-inch-tall wooden box, about half a meter square, apparently constructed for precisely that purpose. ”Now, Mr. Park, suppose that I am a Krag warrior and I am drawing my sidearm to shoot you right in the head. There is nowhere to hide, so if you run away, all that will accomplish is getting you shot in the back of the head rather than the front.” Max pointed his finger at the boy with his thumb stuck in the air, the universal pantomime for a handgun. ”I'm drawing this pistol and I'm about to shoot you. What do you do?”

”Well, sir, I guess...”

”No, son. Don't tell me. Show me. Use your weapon. Do it. Now.” The boy didn't move, but just stood there, looking at him timidly, as though afraid to attack the bulky, not to mention high-ranking, fully grown man in front of him. He seemed frozen in place.

”Son, listen to me. I'm a Krag, just like the one who killed most of the women in your family. I'm the reason you never got to meet your grandmother and your great-grandmother. I'm the reason all the old men in your hometown live out their lives in loneliness and sadness. Me and my rat-faced kinfolk have killed or enslaved billions of human beings. What's more, I'm going to shoot you right between the eyes in about two seconds. And after that, I'm going to go over there and I'm going to shoot Chief Amborsky too. And once I'm done with him, I'm going to shoot all your bunkmates here, one by one, in the belly and watch them die. Slowly. You and your dirk are the only thing between your friends and certain death. Are you just going to stand there?”

Max's harangue finally jarred the boy from immobility. He gritted his teeth and letting go an inarticulate shriek of rage, ran at Max full tilt and stabbed him in the groin with the mock blade, the thick SCU preventing any injury. After that blow, the boy kept on stabbing: first at the inside of Max's thigh right over the femoral artery, then at the back of Max's knee, then the other thigh, then the other knee, and finally he made repeated hacking motions at Max's hamstrings. Abruptly, the boy stopped, stood up straight, and smiled. ”Like that?”

”Poo yai, son,” Max said. ”I think you've got the makings of an admiral.”

After having most of his lower body perforated in simulated fas.h.i.+on by the diminutive Mids.h.i.+pman Park, Max turned the combat training back over to Chief Amborsky and started to make his way forward. He was tired. Brutally tired. He had barely slept since taking command, but there was still so much to do in order to get this poor, warped, and misused excuse for a s.h.i.+p ready to do battle with the Krag. And that was leaving aside everything that would have to be done when Lieutenant Brown managed to find the miniature drug factory on board. Dr. Sahin was already making surrept.i.tious preparations to detoxify up to fifty crew members, but Max doubted that it was possible to be truly ready for something of that magnitude.

He came to an airtight hatch in the corridor, one of dozens throughout the s.h.i.+p present to provide airtight compartmentalization in the event of a hull breach or toxic gas leak. It was an oval steel door just wide enough for a large man to pa.s.s through, set in a metal frame that ran around it and filled the roughly square shape of the corridor. Max did what tired men often do when stepping over the raised edge of the hatch, known as the hatch coaming-he didn't raise his foot high enough and he tripped, falling on his face right onto the deck. Thankfully, no one was there to see it. Lying face down on the deck, Max discovered that his eyes were scant centimeters from a deck gun socket-a deck gun socket that had been worn into brilliant but useless smoothness by pathologically a.s.siduous polis.h.i.+ng.

Deck gun sockets allow the crew to deploy and securely mount various heavy antipersonnel weapons directly to the deck without having to lug around a large, c.u.mbersome tripod in the confined quarters of a stars.h.i.+p. These weapons, including various machine guns, high-capacity fully automatic shotguns, and light cannon for penetrating Krag armored fighting suits, were fitted to swivel mounts, each set on top of a roughly one-meter-tall pole with a base consisting of a probe-and-latch mechanism that fit into sockets set flush into the deck.

These sockets were found every few meters along every corridor and in every large interior s.p.a.ce on board, such as the cargo holds and the hangar bay. The probe slipped into the socket and was rigidly locked into place by the latch, with the socket, in turn, firmly secured under the deck to the supporting members of the s.h.i.+p's frame, forming a rock-solid mount to support a heavy weapon, a mount that could stand up to the recoil of even a heavy machine gun. There were more than a hundred deck gun sockets all over the s.h.i.+p, each a prospective site for a heavy defensive weapons position to stiffen the s.h.i.+p's defense against boarders.

And this one had been s.h.i.+ned within a millimeter of its life. Or maybe past that. It had been polished so much, in fact, with so abrasive a polis.h.i.+ng agent, that the array of metal lips and ridges engaged by the latch mechanism to hold the weapons mount in place was worn nearly smooth. Max would bet his last credit that the latch would not engage or that, if it did, the socket would not hold the base securely enough to withstand the weapon's recoil.

He got up from the deck, no bones broken, but sore in several places. At least he still bounced well. A few steps brought him to the next socket. Same thing. And the next. And the next. After eight sockets he stopped looking and went straight to his day cabin d.a.m.ning Commander Allen Kent Oscar, USN, every step of the way.

He dropped into the chair of the day cabin workstation and logged in. He was about to ask the computer to tell him exactly how many deck gun sockets were on the s.h.i.+p, so he could start writing a memo to order that they be swapped out, when he saw a text message received from the XO about fifteen minutes earlier and marked ”URGENT.” Anything from the XO with an ”urgent” stamp took precedence. It was in the format used for written naval communications of this type at least since the time of Admiral Chester Nimitz, if not the time of Admiral Horatio Nelson. None of those men, however, wrote memos the way Roger Garcia did.

To: Rob.i.+.c.haux, M.T., LCDR USN, Commanding USS c.u.mberland From: Garcia, R.T., LT USN, XO USS c.u.mberland cc: MAJ G. A. Kraft, Marine Detachment Commander LT V. J. Brown, Chief Engineer Date: 23 January 2315 Priority: URGENT.

Re: Heavy Weapons Proficiency and Deck Mounts Pursuant to your order of 21 January 2315, I have reviewed this crew's training history in detail and identified several areas of deficiency. Of the three million and two areas requiring immediate and intensive training, the worst, by far, is repelling boarders with heavy weapons. Review of the training logs reveals that this skill had not been drilled for so much as a minute since the s.h.i.+p was put into service. When I attempted to conduct a training exercise involving the mounting of an M-22 HASG, we discovered that the mount would not secure to the deck socket. The latch lever goes down and appears to engage and lock, but when you let go of the weapon, its weight just pulls the mechanism out of the socket, and the whole a.s.sembly falls over and hits the deck. Examination of the deck socket showed that it had been polished repeatedly to the point where it was too worn for the locking mechanism to engage it.

Some experienced chief must have told Captain Oscar that he was going to wear out the sockets. It won't be hard to figure out who it was because I am sure he was still in the brig when you took command.

A spot check of the sockets around the s.h.i.+p indicates that all or virtually all are in the same condition-brilliantly polished but absolutely useless. Immediate fabrication and replacement of every bracket on the s.h.i.+p is recommended. It is further recommended that we begin by replacing every fifth socket so that there are working sockets in every part of the s.h.i.+p ASAP. In that way, if we are boarded six hours after we start work, we won't have all of the sockets replaced on A Deck Frames 14, but no sockets anywhere else. That would be very bad.

Smart man, that XO, thought Max. It was a relief to Max to see that the problem would have been spotted and addressed even if he had not tripped going through that hatch. Max hit the comm switch.

”Engineering, Brown here.”

”Wernher, this is the skipper.”

”Ah, yes, Captain. I've been awaiting your call with bated breath ever since I received this sparkling prose missive from the XO scant moments ago.”

”I need this done ASAP.”

”Of course you do. If you were to request a task that did not have to be completed for a fortnight, I am quite certain that I should expire on the spot. In any event, I antic.i.p.ated your order and have already started fabricating the parts. I loaded the specifications into a FabriFax as soon as I got the memo, and the first socket came out of the machine three or four minutes ago. We are testing it right now to be sure it actually works-sometimes 'built to spec' doesn't mean 'built to work,' you know. If it is satisfactory, we'll start turning them out and installing them.

”We should have all 117 of them replaced in about twenty hours, depending on how long it takes to cut the old ones out. No one in living memory has ever had to replace one of these things without having to replace the deck plate as well, so we don't really know how long it takes.”

”Wernher, you're the best.”

”Perhaps not, but I am the best you'll ever get.”

”You do know, Wernher, that sometimes you border on insubordination.”

”Only border, sir? That calls for greater effort.”

”I look forward to it. Speaking of borders, what if we are boarded between now and then?”

”Doing my best to ignore the leaden rapier of your purported witticism, I respectfully suggest, sir, that you endeavor to avoid that eventuality.”

”Wernher, one of your great virtues as an officer is that you're always ready with an idea I could never have come up with myself.”

”We do so aim to please, sir. And by the by, we've not had a peep on that other matter.”

”Thanks, Wernher. Please keep me apprised regarding both these items. Skipper out.” Between Garcia and Brown, Max didn't know who was the best officer on the s.h.i.+p. But they were both d.a.m.n good.

At 16:00 hours, the Afternoon Watch gave way to the First Dog Watch, one of the two short (two-rather than four-hour) watches slipped into the rotation, to throw the schedule ”out of step” so that it repeated only every third day rather than being the same one day to the next. Long ago, some wit remarked that these were called ”dog” watches because they are ”cur tailed.” The joke remained fresh for each new generation of mids.h.i.+pmen and would likely continue to be repeated so long as there were s.h.i.+ps to be manned and watches to be stood.

As this was the third day of the cycle, the Blue Watch came off duty and would not be going back on for four hours, at 20:00. This four-hour gap was both too short and at the wrong time of day for most men to be able to sleep, so the majority of this watch was in the enlisted mess, taking their evening meal, which many of them washed down with a fair amount of beer, wine, or stout.

The Navy allowed enlisted men to drink alcoholic beverages on a daily basis, so long as all drinking took place in the mess, with careful records of each man's consumption so that it could be regulated if necessary, and so long as an excessive amount was not consumed too close to going on watch. Men risking their lives and spending months or even years in s.p.a.ce, away from not only their families and sweethearts but also from sunlight and fresh air and the feel of sky over their heads and gra.s.s under their feet, were owed the opportunity to seek a little liquid comfort in reasonable quant.i.ties from time to time.