Libor: Katana Krieger #2 Page 8

  "Affirmative. I like the initiative, let me know if you learn anything useful, but don't stay up all night please."

  "Roger that, Skipper, I'm only planning on running a couple of quick ones."

  "Carry on, Maria."

  We grab my corporals, float down 50 floors or so, and exit into the normal gee ring one more time. Tony's waiting for us.

  I go for a chili dog with seasoned fries, Shel orders a Chicago beef, and Tony gets two Polish dogs, no fries. While we wait for them to be made, Shel rewinds the conversation.

  "Katana. Now. Details."

  I turn to Tony.

  "Tell her what happened."

  He laughs.

  "Dinner, long walk, long kiss at the door."

  The two corporals are trying to slink away, knowing they've been caught betraying me. I stop them.

  "Boys, it's okay, just don't do it again."

  "Yes, sir. We're sorry, sir, we shouldn't have said anything." It's the first time I've heard Eller say more than two words at a time.

  "And?" Shel won't give up.

  "Tomorrow night."

  It occurs to me to check my pad, which I've ignored all day. Sure enough, there's a message on it: 1900, I'll pick u up. I message a good to go back.

  "If you don't kill him, invite him to double with me and Tony on Sunday."

  "Will do. Now can we talk about something else?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like Tony fills us in on how much time he's decided he can spare for his troops to supplement our RISTA team, or how he wants to integrate the Force Recon unit into his team."

  The next hour is spent eating dogs and discussing grunts. We like most of Tony's ideas, and try to talk him into changing a couple others. Then I send him and Shelby off to their room and, shadows in tow, head back to Yorktown.

  With nothing much to do, I take an hour and go through the stores inventory, double checking on my Second. Shake my head at one point and make a quiet call to the Quartermaster. Then I go through the star charts for the Libor system, and the data collected by the stealth probe, before going to bed.

  Despite my surreptitious occasional whispers in Rains' ears, his scores fall into the 60s on the new tougher sims. Shelby stays in the upper 90s. I give new Lt. McAdams the chance to pretend to be me and command the ship for the last sim of the day. She earns a 100, the only one so far, but then she's the one who modified the sim for frigate ops.

  We're done at 1700 and I get ready to go, kicking myself for not buying any new civi clothes. Not only has he seen what I'm wearing, I didn't have time to wash them.

  I'm standing in the command post at 1850, gathering my corporals when my Marine appears. He's got a new green shirt on, but the same pants as before. Makes me feel a little less conspicuous. He stops a few feet away.

  "Do you like jazz?" Smooth. No transition at all.

  "Sure."

  "Would you like to go to a concert?"

  He's a Marine Major, built like a tank, combat vet, and he's acting like he's a teenager, all nervous and jumpy. Don't know if I should be concerned, or take it as a complement.

  "Sure."

  He turns sideways and indicates for me to move. I touch his arm as I take point, he falls in and my corporals take the rear. Our squad moves to the travel tubes, up to the floor with the concert hall and down the hall to the facility.

  I try to head toward the front, but my corporals intervene.

  "Sir," Marshall as always, "we need you to stay in the back."

  I sigh, but give in. They make us stand with our backs to the wall, one of them on either side. Fortunately, it's a velcro floor and we can lock our feet in place and hold hands. The music is good, though watching it through a sea on a couple hundred Marines and sailors isn't optimal.

  The concert ends, we stay in the zero gee area and grab tacos at a cart waiting for hungry concert goers just outside the hall. I can tell he's thinking about what to do next. I resolve the issue, look at my corporals.

  "Boys, should we introduce the Major to Amy?"

  They both laugh. "Yes, sir, I think the Major needs it." Eller speaking for the second time.

  I take his hand (Carl's not Eller's), ignore his puzzled face, and float off for the travel tubes. Five minutes later, I've got my "iced tea," the Major has an extra large Jack and Coke, and the corporals have their waters and are safely outside the bar.

  We spend an enjoyable hour talking and laughing about the concert, until I am sure. Then I slide away from the bar, grab Carl's hand, and start out. He makes me stop long enough to give Amy a nice tip, then we resume departure.

  At the travel tubes, Yorktown is down, the BOQ is up. Carl stops as if this is goodnight. I jump into the up tube. He scrambles to follow, the corporals surprised as well, it takes them a few seconds to react since they were guarding the down tube.

  Ten seconds later, there's a group of us just out of the tubes on Carl's floor. I turn to the corporals.

  "Mr. Marshall, Mr. Eller, no one lives on this floor except Marine officers. How about we say goodbye here, and you come pick me up at 0700? If I'm not safe here, I'm not safe anywhere."

  Marshall answers, Eller back to silence. "Yes, sir. And, if anyone asks, you said goodnight down below."

  "Semper Fi. See you in the morning." I give them a salute, they return, then turn and hit the down tube.

  I grab his hand, push hard against the nearest wall, and put us both into motion down the corridor. Neither one of us says anything for a couple hours.

  At 0700 I meet my corporals at the travel tubes, feeling better than I have in a long time. We get to Yorktown a few minutes later, and I head for my quarters to change into a uniform, then float to the bridge. Shelby is there, otherwise it's empty.

  "How was it?" She has a sly smile on the normally serious face, the brown eyes full of mischief.

  "He started the evening like he was a Cub Scout, but once we got to his place, he was all Marine. He agreed to meet you and Tony for dinner at 1800 tonight."

  She starts to ask a second question, but McAdams pops onto the bridge and Shel's expression changes from sly to disappointed.

  "Good morning, McAdams." Shelby pretending to welcome her aboard.

  "Good morning, sir. Any changes in plan of the day?"

  Shel and I haven't discussed it, but the training plan is generally her business as Exec.

  "No. Proceed with the sims as scheduled."

  "Aye, sir."

  I spend the morning stationed next to Rains, who finally manages to score a passable 82 out of 100 on his third try of the day with me whispering in his ear. You have to understand the enemy's weapons and know what range is safe and what counterattacks you can mount. I can't fault his effort, but so far his elevator does not go to the top floor.

  Shelby takes the first sim after a lunch break and scores a 99. We didn't eat, hit the gym instead, maybe it's a sign. I give Powell command of the next sim, and she gets 95, then Garcia commands the ship to a 94 to end the afternoon. I make Rains stay at my side the entire afternoon and watch as his junior officers show insight, command presence, and creativity while he listens to my running commentary.

  I clear the bridge at 1700, then ask Rains the last question of every day.

  "Lt. Commander, how are we on stores?"

  I get the first smile of the day from him, obviously pleased by his progress.

  "Almost done, sir. We're missing a few electronic spares that had to be hardened against electromagnetic pulse. The ship's systems are upgraded, but our spares were not. They should be here tomorrow first thing. Otherwise, just odds and ends of the food replacement, apparently some items were out of stock. This ship carries some unusual meals. Everything else on board, inventoried, and stocked."

  "Affirmative, double check the entire Minimum Equipment List tomorrow afternoon, and the consumables after that. I want a full report before you hit your rack."

  "Roger that, Captain." He's not as smiley as he was. I know something he ap
parently doesn't, and he better find it before we go. I dismiss him, and Shel and I head to our respective quarters to wash up, then truck out to the command post to pick up my corporals.

  There are two Marines waiting for us at the upscale hamburger joint on the normal gee plaza. We're all still in uniform, me in dark blue, Shel in officers light blue, and the Marines in standard green, since it's been a long duty day for all of us.

  I'm looking forward to a nice evening, the four of us in a dimly lit booth near the back of the restaurant, but instead Shel and I are treated to a testosterone filled evening of the two jarheads trying to out muscle the other with combat stories. I thought that the arrival of food would put an end to it, but all it did was alter the stories to a debate over who had gone without eating the longest on a mission. I've had enough.

  "So, you are both planning on going home alone tonight?"

  They look at me, confused.

  "That's what's going to happen if you keep ignoring your dates."

  Polite laughter from the Marines, followed by two hands sliding out, one each from the appropriate male, that settle on a hand of the appropriate female. The rest of the evening is spent in much more pleasant conversation about our likes, dislikes, dreams, and realities.

  At 0500 I am awakened by a Major attempting to extricate himself from his sleeping bag without disturbing me. So far, our only incompatibility is that he's an 0500 and I'm an 0600. I reach out and pull him back against me.

  "Last night was nice. You could stay a while longer." I know he can't, but I can harass him just the same.

  "I'm on duty in 60 minutes." Then his body laughs from head to toe. "I don't think I should smell like you when I report. I've got a meeting with Colonel Orr first thing."

  I kiss his neck, hit him on the butt, remind him that tonight's my last free night, and send him on his way.

  By 0700 I'm floating with Shelby on the bridge going over training protocols for the day. We need more success out of our Second, who is currently in sixth place among the officers who've commanded the ship during a training simulation. Our problem is we can't figure out how to make it happen.

  His problem isn't that he doesn't know the ship or its capabilities or the enemy, it's that he lacks the natural instinct to integrate the three dimensional space and recognize where to be, when to attack, and when to be somewhere else.

  We come up with a couple much simpler sims instead of the multilayer ones we've been giving him, and decide to let him go first. At 0800, I cross my fingers and give him the ship.

  He nails the first one, almost nails the second, and escapes uninjured, but not victorious, from the third. Average score in the low-90s. My pad beeps in the middle of the last one, orders to get to ChiNO's office by 1100. It's 1045.

  I tell Shelby to give Powell and Garcia more complex sims, and end the day with Rains back in the Captain's couch with the same sim he will have just watched Powell handle, then I head off the bridge.

  Eight minutes later I am being ushered into ChiNO's office by his assistant. The Senator is there, along with an Admiral I have never met, but my guess is I am about to be introduced to Admiral Jennifer Hilgenberg, former commander of USS North Carolina, a battleship that was decommissioned in the first round of reduction in force five years ago. There's a Captain in the corner who is likely her aide.

  She's my height, but bald, having come up through engineering, at least 30 pounds lighter than I am, and about 20 years older. Infamous as a fire first, ask forgiveness later officer, hard on her subordinates, but fair, though the reports of what it's like to be on the receiving end of a dressing down from her are spectacular, and, hopefully, highly exaggerated. She's also reputed to be a down the line by the book kind of commander when it comes to her officers.

  I snap to attention and salute as the three of them turn toward me.

  "At ease, Captain." Hilgenberg's voice is strong, as expected. "I'm Admiral Hilgenberg, I've just assumed command of the frigate force, you'll be reporting to me from now on."

  "Aye, sir. I'm looking forward to it."

  "I doubt that that's true, I understand you were close to Admiral Benson, despite the fact he almost got you killed. Either way, it does not matter, you'll do your duty as expected."

  "Aye, sir." Admiral Benson did not almost get me killed, but I choose to exercise the better part of valor and not say anything.

  "I've been through the operational plan devised by Benson and Quintana. What do you think of it, Captain?"

  She's setting me a trap, and I just met her 90 seconds ago. Not nice.

  "I had questions about a couple of the parameters, sir, such as jump locations, but the plan is functional as laid out."

  "Functional. No operation leader should ever be happy with functional, Captain, especially with all the unknowns facing this op."

  She moves over to the big touchscreen on ChiNO's wall, with a chart of the three systems we're using glowing blue, white, yellow, and black. Black for space, white for the locations of borders, bases and planets, yellow for the stars, and blue for the ships.

  "We're moving Admiral Sutherland's task force here, away from the planetoid that the aliens were using as a base, closer to a jump point." She holds her finger on the blue destroyer icon until it blinks, then slides it across Gamma Upsilon.

  "Your corvette group will use that point as its jump point in Gamma Upsilon, and this point", her finger moves again, "in the Libor system. We'll use the star you already identified as the intermediate jump point between the systems, no change needed there."

  She moves the corvette icons in both systems, then reaches out and stabs Yorktown.

  "Your ship, Captain, is better located here," she slides as she talks, "More than functional, Captain, remember that."

  "Aye, sir." She moved each ship exactly where Everingham, Quintana, and I agreed they should be when we laid out the plan, before the two Admirals moved the ships to less than optimal points so that whoever became FRIGCOM would feel useful. I'm a happy Captain, though a little bothered by feeling happy. If we'd have shown her the true plan, she might have just accepted it.

  "I have problems with your missile allocation as well, but there's no time to change it. Single warhead missiles are old school tactics, Captain, you should have multiple warhead air to air missiles in all your tubes but one or two, with multiple warhead air to ground in those."

  "Aye, sir, understood for future reference." Good thing we were sneaky on this one. I love my hammers and I want the Libor to know I can turn their planet's entire surface into molten radioactive glass. Yes, I come in peace.

  "I have a number of other changes to your mission orders, which are on your pad now."

  My pants pocket beeps as her aide punches a finger into his pad. My new pad is working properly.

  "The Senator made it clear there were to be no weapons shown to the Libor except by his Marine guards. We accepted the Marines only because it's a direct order from the President. Your mission orders should have laid that out, and now they do. You and your crew are not to bring weapons with you if you board a Libor ship or travel to their home world, and you will not carry sidearms if the Libor come aboard Yorktown."

  "Aye, sir." The Libor will come aboard Yorktown only if I'm dead, and I am not going to dinner with them.

  "The other changes you can read at your leisure. Finally, Captain, I spent the trip in bound reading and re-reading all the after action reports from your missions on Yorktown, plus your log and your First Officer's log."

  She moves closer to me, eye to eye at two feet. There's fire in her voice as she continues speaking.

  "This is not the Barbary Wars, Krieger, ship captains do not lead boarding parties. If you have a cutlass on your ship, put it away forever, no captain ever saves their crew with a blade. You have a Marine officer and his team on your ship, they should have boarded the Defino, not you. You had no business going out into the debris fields to conduct your own investigations. You had no business endange
ring yourself on the surface of Gamma Omicron 1."

  She pauses for effect.

  "Do I make myself clear? Stay on board your ship or face the consequences."

  "Aye, sir."

  "Repeat. You. Will. Stay. On. Board. Your. Ship." She says each word with an extra long space between it.

  "Aye, sir, I understand."

  "I hope so. You are dismissed, Captain, the Senator and I have issues about this mission to discuss with the ChiNO."