For Honor We Stand (30 page)

As the cream of the Navy’s future, all 1003 millimeters of him, whizzed past, Max noticed that the young man had around his waist a web belt, the kind made for holding hand grenades, and that in the web belt were sixteen or seventeen ping pong balls painted in an altogether festive but distinctly non-naval array of pastels that looked as though they would be more at home at a bridal shower than on a Destroyer in a war zone.  Max chuckled to himself.  He hadn’t seen an Easter Egg Hunt in years.

Mr. Hewlett’s miniature legs could carry him only so fast, so Max didn’t have to exert much effort to fall in behind the diminutive hatch hanger who, according to the time-sanctified Rules of the Easter Egg Hunt, was prohibited from running.  The Midshipman rounded a corner, and opened a hatch that admitted him to a room full of equipment storage lockers.  Max peeked in the door and saw Hewlett pull a padcomp out of his web belt, consult it hurriedly, and then go straight to the fifth locker on the aft wall, deftly operate the latch, reach inside, and pull out another ping pong ball.  This ball was a color that Max recognized as being called “seafoam,” a word which he knew only by virtue of having seen, on what was still called “movie night” although the last conventional motion picture was filmed in 2023, a tridvid comedy about the mayhem, hijinks, and hilarity that ensued when identical twin brides married identical twin husbands and insisted that all the bridesmaids and groomsmen also be twins.  Max remembered not getting most of the jokes. 

Hewlett stuck the ball in his web belt with the others, closed the locker, and engaged the latches.  Max quickly ducked out of sight into an access crawlway alcove until the boy had emerged and was going down the corridor again.  If this hunt held to form, the next “egg” would be on another deck, in an entirely different part of the ship.  Max knew that the boy was nearly done with the hunt because it looked as though his web belt held close to eighteen of the ping pong balls.  Easter Egg Hunts always contained eighteen “eggs.”  Always.  Never seventeen.  Too easy.  Never nineteen.  Too hard.  Eighteen was just right.  

Max had no desire to chase after the Midshipman to whatever far corner of the
Cumberland
held the final ping pong ball or two, particularly since the path to the last “egg” usually involved crawling through an air handling shaft, worming through one of the more circuitous of the cable conduits, or traversing a narrow catwalk over a crackling, snapping, fully-charged polaron differentiation grid.  Instead, Max headed for where Easter Egg Hunts always end, the Junior Midshipmen’s Lounge.

Because Junior Midshipmen are subject to being given orders by almost everyone else on the ship, not to mention being the objects of a fair amount of good-natured teasing, mostly from the Senior Midshipmen, they were provided with a sanctuary from all that.  The Junior Midshipman’s Lounge was off limits to all personnel except the Midshipmen’s Trainer, a few of the ship’s most senior officers (who, by tradition, entered rarely and only for a specific purpose), and the Junior Midshipmen themselves.  Max keyed in his entry code, palmed the lock, and stepped through the hatch.  As always, one Middie was posted just inside the door against just this contingency.  When the boy saw that the man coming through the hatch was the Captain, his eyes went wide.  But, to his credit, he did not freeze at all but performed his function without any appreciable delay.  He sprang from a sitting position to ruler-straight attention so abruptly that Max swore he could hear joints cracking and barked out “Captain on deck” with as much authority as he could muster, doing a creditable job notwithstanding the pitch of his voice falling in the frequency range depicted by the treble rather than the bass clef.  The other five deck dodgers all snapped to attention.  Chief Petty Officer Tanaka, the Midshipmen’s Trainer who stepped into the position upon the death of the beloved “Mother Goose,” Chief Amborsky, gazed pointedly at a line formed by the joinder of two deck plates, resulting in the boys’ quickly shuffling a few centimeters forward or back until the toes of their boots exactly met the line.  He then walked down the line, directing the boys silently with his eyes, subtle gestures, and an occasional touch to nudge a shoulder a bit further back or a chin a bit higher.   

When his charges had come to attention in a manner that met his truly exacting standards, Tanaka turned with precision that could be bested only by a mechanical device, snapped out a perfect drill manual salute, and announced, “Captain, Chief Petty Officer Tanaka reporting five squeakers, cords cut but still damp, plus one in the Casualty Station and one on an Easter Egg Hunt, sir.”

Max returned the salute.  “Very well.  Chief, I saw Mr. Hewlett retrieving one of your eggs from the Firefighting Equipment Lockers.  I believe you will be seeing him very shortly.  With your permission, I would like to stay for the Basket Lesson.”  By custom, this was the Chief’s turf and the training of the Mids his responsibility.  Even as august a person as the Captain entered, watched, or participated only at the Midshipmen’s Trainer’s invitation.  Tanaka nodded his acceptance.  “Thank you.  Carry on, Chief.”

“Thank you, sir.”  He turned to his charges.  “Midshipmen, as you were.”  The boys returned to the seats they had occupied before Max came in.  The compartment was small, but comfortable, with a few couches, tables that could serve equally well as dining, studying, or game tables surrounded by chairs, plus a few lounge-type chairs, a tridvid unit, and—glaring down at the proceedings as they did in every Junior Midshipmen’s Lounge in every ship in the fleet—two icons of military virtue, presented to the boys as models worthy of emulation:  Patton and Litvinoff. 

As he always did when entering the Lounge, Max took a moment to examine the images.  General George Smith Patton, Jr., old “Blood and Guts,” was shown in a photograph taken circa 1943 when he was a Lieutenant General commanding the United States Army’s Second Corps fighting Rommel’s forces in North Africa.  Patton was in a field uniform, wearing a three-starred helmet with binoculars hanging from his neck, standing outside what looked to be a North African village, using his riding crop to indicate something in the distance to the men standing around him, his eyes and his mind clearly focused on that far-away objective and how to take or destroy it.  From the set of his mouth, he was clearly saying something, perhaps giving an order, his words now lost to history.  Here was Patton in his element—in the field with his troops, radiating confidence and authority, caught in the act of leading his men.  It occurred to Max that, if Old Blood and Guts had been given an opportunity to select which of the thousands of photographs taken of him in World War II would be hanging on this wall in this time in this place, he might well have picked that very picture. 

Admiral Vladimir Nickolai Litvinoff, “the Fighting Czar,” was shown in a two dimensional capture from the famous tridvid documentary shot in the CIC of the Battleship
Actium
at the Battle of Rackham III on November 2, 2305.  Litvinoff, then a Rear Admiral, was in the Working Uniform with Arms, the simple blue jumpsuit worn day to day on most warships, carrying his M-1911 sidearm and boarding cutlass, the latter looking more like a broadsword on his diminutive frame.  The image was taken at the pivotal moment of that crucial battle.  Thanks to the documentary, those few minutes were engraved indelibly in the collective memory of virtually the entire human race:  the task force under Litvinoff’s command seemed on the verge of being wiped out by a numerically superior Krag force.  The Fleet Carrier
James A. Lovell
had just jumped in and could not launch its fighters until its systems were restored from the jump, a process which would require five critical minutes.  The four officers seen in the image staring grimly into the 3D tactical plot with Litvinoff had just unanimously advised the Admiral that his task force faced almost certain destruction unless he withdrew it immediately, abandoning the
Lovell
and its four squadrons of
Valkyrie
fighters to certain annihilation. The senior of them, Captain Fouché, had just said “Admiral, we must preserve this fleet.  We must withdraw.”

Of all the men in that CIC, only Litvinoff believed that he could hold off the Krag until the fighters launched, and that he could then concentrate them and his reserve against the two Battleships anchoring the Krag line, break the enemy formation, and turn defeat into victory.  The image froze history at that moment: the Admiral’s chin jutting out defiantly, his right hand pointing to where his force was plotted, as he said, “Withdraw?  Not today.  Not one meter.  We
will
hold this line.”  And, as everyone knows, it went just as the Admiral envisioned:  line held, fighters deployed, forces concentrated, and Krag formation broken.  A famous victory won.  Litvinoff, whose reputation as a great fighting commander was secured on that day, was now a Grand Admiral, in overall command of all the Navy’s forces fielded against the Krag.   

Max saluted first the Admiral, and then the General.  It was the custom.  Navy men saluted heroes even if, as in Patton’s case, they had been dead for centuries and were part of a totally different service.  

At that moment, the lock on the hatch cycled and Midshipman Hewlett burst into the compartment, flew across the room (running
was
allowed in the Lounge), and emphatically slapped the STOP button on the large timer mounted on the far bulkhead, halting the clock at 1:32:17.  The boy then turned around and, for the first time, noticed that both Chief Tanaka and Max were in the room.  Hewlett knew he was supposed to salute and report, but he didn’t know the rule to apply in this situation.  Salute and report to the senior officer present?  Salute and report to the person whose orders he was executing?  Salute them both and then give his report?  He froze. 

Tanaka instantly deduced what the problem was.  “Mr. Hewlett,” he said, his pronunciation exceptionally precise, his tone patient, “while the Captain is the senior officer present, you have just executed my order.  In that case, military courtesy dictates that you salute and report to me, then salute the senior officer.”

“Aye, aye, Chief.”  The boy turned to face straight at Tanaka, pulled himself up to his full barely over a meter height, raised his hand to a salute, and rattled out, “Midshipman Hewlett, reporting all eighteen eggs retrieved.  No problems to report.” 

Tanaka returned the salute.  “Very well, Midshipman.”  Hewlett snapped his hand back down, pivoted to face Max, and raised his hand to another salute, just as smart as the first.

“Captain,” he said simply.

Max returned the salute.  “Midshipman.  Carry on.”

The boy turned back to Tanaka who said, “At ease, Midshipman.  Let’s see what you’ve got.”  Hewlett then emptied the contents of his web belt into a plastic bin sitting on one of the tables and then stood beside the table at Parade Rest.  Tanaka quickly sorted the ping pong balls, each of which bore a tiny numeral, written with a marker in Tanaka’s own handwriting.  After verifying that all eighteen “eggs” were present and genuine, Tanaka turned to Hewlett.  “That’s all eighteen.  As for the time, Mr. Hewlett, I’ve seen better.  I’ve seen a lot better.”  And then, just as bitter disappointment started to write itself across the boy’s miniature features, the Chief let just a hint of a smile show as he added, “But, on a first hunt, I have also seen much, much worse.  The official ship’s record is four hours, twenty-three minutes, and two seconds.  But that’s not all.  Every now and then I run into some poor, bedraggled boy who got sent out last year.  He’s still crawling through the ship somewhere looking for that last egg.  He hasn’t a clue where the Port EM Sensor Array Signal Accumulation and Initial Processing Unit is located.”  Hewlett’s face brightened.

“I know where.  It’s on B Deck, amidships,
starboard
side, in that little equipment bay just aft of CIC.  It has ‘port’ in the name, not because it’s on the port side of the ship but because it takes in sensor inputs from the port side arrays.”

Damn.  Max bet that the XO hadn’t learned the location of that unit yet.

“Correct.  Now I know not to put any eggs there until the next batch of squeakers arrives.  Now, Mr. Hewlett,” Tanaka continued, “as you are the first of this group to complete a hunt, and as each of your classmates will embark on one either today or tomorrow, please review for us the Rules of the Easter Egg Hunt, as they have been handed down from time immemorial without change to the present day.”

“Yes sir.  Rules of the Easter Egg Hunt.  One.  Each midshipman will be issued a padcomp with the precise locations of the eighteen eggs located throughout the ship.  All eggs are placed in locations to which Midshipmen have authorized access, are not hidden in any way, and are painted in colors chosen to stand out on a warship.  If the Midshipman can find the location, he will have found the egg.  Locations are stated by their Unique Ship Location Designator only.  Two.  The Midshipman is to retrieve the eggs in the precise order listed on the padcomp.  He may not skip an egg.  Three.  The Midshipman may not run in any corridor or any crew working area.  He may not ask for any assistance of any kind from any person, unless he is in genuine distress, in which case he may summon aid by any means necessary and the Hunt will be aborted.  Four.  The Midshipman may access the ship’s computer or other data source to assist him in finding the stated location of, but not the route to, any egg.  All such access will be automatically logged and a thirty second penalty assessed for each access.  Any Midshipman accessing route information will spend twenty-four hours in the brig.  Those are the rules, sir, as they have been handed down from time immemorial without change to the present day.  Let no one change them so long as the Navy values honor and while we shall still wear the Blue.”