10:42Z Hours, 24 January 2315 Breakfast was still sitting heavily in Max's stomach when he made his way to the first of the s.h.i.+p's cla.s.srooms (counting from the bow), all of which were located on A Deck, amids.h.i.+ps, on the port side. This was where the older mids, mostly between fifteen and seventeen Standard years, took their instruction. By the time they got to this age, mids.h.i.+pmen were not little boys any more, instead forming into young men, s.p.a.cers and officers in the making. They had all been in s.p.a.ce for several years, and most of them had been on board a s.h.i.+p that had been in some kind of engagement with the enemy. A few of these boys had an even closer acquaintance with the enemy, having been involved in boarding actions. One boy by the name of Shepard had shot a Krag with a shotgun. Eight times. When asked by an officer why he had shot the enemy warrior eight times, his response was: "Sir, that's all the sh.e.l.ls I had in the weapon."

That's the spirit.

When Max stepped into the cla.s.sroom, the instructor, Lieutenant JG Alexei Siluanov, was covering a unit in tactics. If Max had come at a different time, it might have been spherical geometry, calculus, astronomy, navigation, physics, history, government, or one of the other subjects covered in the mids.h.i.+pmen's curriculum.

At this moment, however, the cla.s.s was discussing defense against boarders. From the ill.u.s.trations on the graphics projector, Max could tell they were talking about Mobile Defense in Depth, which had been at the center of Union boarder defense doctrine since the third year of the war. Siluanov's back was to the door and he was so engrossed in talking about the crux of the concept, creating killing zones and enticing the enemy to enter them, that he did not see Max enter. One of the mids did, however, and snapped out a fairly s.p.a.cer-like "Captain on deck."

All seven of the mids.h.i.+pmen in the room came immediately to attention while Siluanov gave Max a textbook salute. "Lieutenant JG Siluanov, reporting seven senior mids.h.i.+pmen receiving instruction in Advanced Tactics for Mids.h.i.+pmen, Unit Nineteen, Module Twenty-Nine."

Max returned the salute just as briskly. "As you were, gentlemen. Please carry on, Lieutenant. Don't mind me. I am merely observing."

The boys all sat down. Max knew that the "don't mind me" was a complete waste of oxygen, as neither a lieutenant JG nor a room full of mids were capable of ignoring the borderline divine presence of their commanding officer.

"Actually, Captain, one of these gentlemen raised a question a few minutes that I imagine you might be better able to answer than I." It seemed that the lieutenant, as well, wanted to take the measure of his new CO.

"Go ahead."

The lieutenant gestured to one of the mids, who came to rigid attention, facing Max. He seemed to be scared stiff. Captain Oscar must have been some piece of work to have inspired this kind of fear. Based on what Max had seen so far, he certainly terrorized the mids.h.i.+pmen as much as he had the officers and men. Sorry b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"What's your name, son?"

"Shepard, sir." Aha, it's Mr. Shoot-the-Krag-Eight-Times-with-a-Shotgun-to-Make-d.a.m.n-Sure-He's-Dead Shepard. And now he's the one with a question that the instructor wants the captain to answer. Even though he is paralyzed with terror right now, this kid might bear watching.

"Wait just a minute. There's seven of you, you're in s.p.a.ce, and the one named Shepard went first." He chuckled and, pointing in turn to each of the other six, Max said, "Then I suppose you're Grissom, you're Glenn, you're Carpenter, you're Schirra, you're Cooper, and you're Slayton. Don't worry about being last, Slayton, you get to boss the other guys around for years." Only the teacher smiled. "Never mind. A little humor. Anyway, ask your question, son."

"Captain, sir, uh, I was, uh, just, like, you know-"

"All right, Shepard, I'm going to stop you right there. Stand at ease." The boy changed his stance to parade rest, again done with perfect correctness.

"And relax a little. I've never sent anyone to the brig for asking a question." That seemed to blunt the sharp edge of fear somewhat.

"Now, son, you're in training not just to be a recruit s.p.a.cer in a year or two, but as the years go by after that, to be a leader on a wars.h.i.+p in combat. It may be as a commissioned officer and it may be as an NCO, but in either case, your objective is one day to be a man to whom others look for leaders.h.i.+p and guidance, as an example. That means you have to communicate with them. And in the service, a big part of communicating is just talking-giving orders and asking questions. No one's going to follow you or believe you know polecats from pulsars unless you sound like you know what you're talking about.

"That means you compose your thoughts, put them in complete sentences, and organize those sentences into a complete sequence of ideas in your own mind before you open your mouth. So, Shepard, I want you to take a moment and form your question in your mind, word for word, organize the words into a sentence, and then ask the question, without saying 'um' or 'you know' or 'like' or anything of that sort. Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir." He almost had Max convinced.

"All right, then. You may fire when ready."

Shepard stood silent for about five seconds, his face a mask of concentration. Then, his face relaxed, and he spoke. "Sir, I was wondering why the Navy puts so much emphasis on defending against boarders to keep the Krag from taking our s.h.i.+ps but does not take the obvious step of installing self-destruct mechanisms so that none of our s.h.i.+ps could ever fall into Krag hands."

The boy didn't do half bad. But Max felt as though he had just been dropped through a trap door. His stomach took a sickening lurch, and his bowels contorted themselves uncomfortably. He hoped that the color wasn't leaving his face or that, if it was, none of these boys would notice. Still, there was nothing to do but put a brave face on it and go forward.

Max smiled broadly, resolved to give the boy the praise he deserved no matter how bad the question made him feel. "Shepard, not only is that a truly excellent and intelligent question, but you presented it well. Union wars.h.i.+ps, and the wars.h.i.+ps of our predecessor navies going back almost to the beginnings of s.p.a.ce forces, have had destruct mechanisms to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. So, at the outset of this war all of our s.h.i.+ps were equipped both with a stand-alone nuclear self-destruct mechanism, known as the Self-Destruct Mechanism (Fusion), and also with a command sequence built into the main reactor control software that could be used to blow the reactor if the SDMF failed. All of that changed after the Battle of Han VII. Does anyone here know the brief on that engagement?" Shepard shook his head.

Another boy raised his hand, a painfully skinny young man with reddish hair and an almost comically prominent Adam's apple. Max pointed to him and he came to attention, prompting Shepard, quite correctly, to sit. The students in this cla.s.s appeared to be very proficient in naval courtesy, at least.

"At ease, son." The boy changed his stance to parade rest. "Your name?"

"McConnell, sir."

"Go ahead, Mr. McConnell."

"Sir, the Battle of Han VII was a major fleet action that took place on 18 October 2298, between Union Task Force Bravo Victor, under the command of Rear Admiral Ian McConnell and Krag Task Force Iota Sigma, believed to be under the command of Admiral Grouper."

Union Task Forces were designated by letters of the Union Forces Voicecom Alphabet, so they had names like Delta Sierra or Echo X-Ray. Navy Intelligence designated Krag task forces by letters of the Greek alphabet, so they always sounded like evil college fraternities like Sigma Tau or Omega Lambda; Krag flag officers, when Intel thought it had identified them from their tactics or other clues, were designated by code names specifically selected to sound nonintimidating. At the time of the Battle of Han VII, Intel was naming them after fish.

"Was Admiral McConnell a relative of yours?"

"He was my grandfather's youngest brother, sir." Max nodded solemnly. So many losses. No family was untouched by this hideous, b.l.o.o.d.y war.

"Continue, Mr. McConnell."

"Han VII was a strategic target because of the large deuterium separation complex on one of its moons, designated as Han VII D, which has an ice-covered ocean similar to that on Europa, critical to fleet operations in that sector. Intel believed that the Krag were planning to destroy the complex by means of a direct attack across open s.p.a.ce by a force consisting of corvettes, destroyers, and frigates. This force was to be met by Task Force Bravo Victor, consisting of four cruisers and several frigates and destroyers."

"Taking into account the firepower of the battlecruiser and four cruisers alone, the force was thought more than sufficient to repel however many s.h.i.+ps the Krag were capable of sending. Admiral McConnell detected the attackers at a range of about a hundred AU and deployed his force in a properly structured Zhou Matrix in precisely the right location and correctly oriented to the threat axis.

"But then-and here's what I don't understand, sir; somehow, the curriculum database is silent on this point-all but one frigate and two destroyers of Task Force Bravo Victor were destroyed, and the three surviving s.h.i.+ps had to withdraw, leaving the complex and the system to the Krag."

"Be seated, Mr. McConnell. Good recitation. Gentlemen, as you rise through the ranks, you will be learning many things along the way that someone has decided should not be widely known. What happened to Task Force Bravo Victor is one of those things." He paused and took a deep breath. "Task Force Bravo Victor blew itself up."

Seven young faces regarded Max in stunned silence for several seconds. They just couldn't wrap their brains around it. Max felt an echo of their shock within himself. He didn't like talking about Han VII. He didn't like thinking about Han VII. He preferred to keep Han VII locked in a lead-lined, triple-reinforced vault, just as the Admiralty did. But it was time that these young men learned this particular truth, and it was best that they learned it from him.

"That is not to say," Max continued, "that they self-destructed voluntarily. Our best evidence is that the Krag figured out some way to remote trigger the SDMFs in the s.h.i.+ps. Fortunately, whatever they used to do it, they could use it on only one s.h.i.+p at a time. So, when they saw the other s.h.i.+ps in the Task Force exploding one after the other without being hit by weapons fire, three s.h.i.+ps out of the whole Task Force managed to guess what was happening fast enough and jettison their SDMFs. Being outnumbered and outgunned about fifteen to one, they made a hasty exit from the system, leaving everything behind. And everyone."

He paused for a moment, putting his stomach back where it belonged by sheer force of will. "They had no choice but to run. At least one of them had to survive to warn the fleet that their SDMFs were vulnerable. Otherwise, the Krag could pull the same stunt again at another battle. The Admiralty proved that it is capable of moving quickly every now and then, and wasted no time pulling all the destruct mechanisms and software from every s.h.i.+p in the Navy. Then, just to make sure that the Krag couldn't exploit some weakness in our reactor systems, they redesigned the reactor control software and the hardware itself to make it virtually impossible to induce the main reactor to explode, except by weapons fire.

"Despite our best efforts, we still don't know how the Krag did it. The best theory is that the Krag found a way to alter the relative strength of the nuclear force and the Coulomb force over a small area, causing the deuterium and tritium fuel in the warheads to fuse without having to detonate the fission trigger. G.o.d knows how. So, to this day we have no destructs on our s.h.i.+ps. And the Krag don't put them on their s.h.i.+ps, presumably because they're afraid we'll discover whatever it is they used and turn it against them.

"Therefore, it is possible for each of us to board and take the s.h.i.+ps of the other, as both have done many times in this war. As near as we can tell, the Krag have nearly a hundred of our vessels in their navy and we have fifty-six of theirs. And that's why the tactics of boarding and repelling boarders are critical-not only to save you and your s.h.i.+pmates from being defeated by the enemy in face-to-face combat but also to keep them from getting their furry little paws on our wars.h.i.+ps and using them to kill our people. And now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I have a s.h.i.+p to run. Carry on."

He left the compartment and went straight back to his cabin. Every step of the way, he thought about the survivors in life pods and the hundreds of men at the deuterium complex on Han VII D. He thought about how those men begged the cruiser Adrianople and the destroyers Capetown and Colombo not to leave them to the mercy of the Krag, and how those s.h.i.+ps ran like scalded dogs, fleeing the system as fast as their compression drives could propel them.

He thought about how those men sounded to the mids.h.i.+pman a.s.signed to the Comms back room on the Capetown, who dutifully logged each of those incoming desperate signals by frequency, source, duration, and content, and about how that young man did his duty with a stern warrior face, without shedding a tear, while his heart turned to ashes in his chest. He thought about how that young man had nightmares to this very day in which he heard those men's pleading voices. Most of all, he wondered if that young man, a man named Rob.i.+.c.haux, would ever stop hearing them.

Probably not.

After spending a few hours in his bunk, taking two of the pills that the doctor on the Halsey had given him for nausea, and eating some soup and crackers, Max was back at work, making some changes to the duty roster, when his comm buzzed. "Skipper here."

"Captain, this is Major Kraft. I have a present for you in the brig."

"On my way."

Max had determined that he could get from any point in the c.u.mberland to any other in two minutes, forty-nine seconds or less. From his quarters to the brig took just over a minute and a half, and would probably take less if he were willing to slide down the access ladders, as most of the younger crewmen did, rather than take them rung by rung. But Commodore Middleton had told him a long time ago that once one became a commissioned officer, people expected one to act with a certain degree of dignity, and that included not sliding down access ladders like a mid-third playing Marines and rat-faces.

Max entered Major Kraft's domain and was greeted by the major and Lieutenant Brown, triumphant smiles on both their faces.

"We've got him, sir," Kraft announced. "We nabbed our drug dealer red-handed, synthesizing a batch of the Chill. We broke in on him just as the drugs were coming out of the machine."

"How did you get there so fast?" asked Max. "The doctor tells me that the interval from the power draw to producing the drugs is less than a minute."

"Chalk one up to good old detective work, Captain. It's not that I didn't trust the engineering solution, but this is so important that I wanted to pursue a parallel line of inquiry.

"You remember that we traced the machine to the salvaged corvette. I pulled up the records on that salvage and discovered that a member of that salvage crew also happens to be a member of our crew: a man named Green, an able s.p.a.cer third. Well, Skipper, I don't believe in coincidences." d.a.m.n straight. No officer worth the bra.s.s in his uniform b.u.t.tons believes in coincidences.

"So I zeroed in on him. I also remembered what you said about him needing a fantastic hiding place for the thing; obviously not his quarters, so I started to work out the places Green would normally go in the course of his duties, looking for one where a MediMax could be hidden and where he could use it without being observed.

"Green is a high-energy systems technician, and he regularly services the main deflector emitters. There are some large storage lockers in the emitter control room, with hundreds of factory-sealed spare parts cases. He could keep his machine in one of those cases and dummy up a seal so that anyone conducting a search would take one look at it and pa.s.s it by. Chances are, he wouldn't be disturbed-you know how superst.i.tious s.p.a.cers are about picking up some stray tachyo-graviton output in there.

"I put the man under surveillance and, when he went to the control room, we had men nearby, ready to go as soon as we got the word. But don't discount the Engineering contribution. Being cued by that power signature let us burst into the room at just the right moment and catch him red-handed, pulling the tablets out of the machine. Teamwork triumphs."

"Outstanding." Max was impressed again, not only by Kraft's excellent detective work but also by his readiness to share credit with Brown, something that many officers were reluctant to do. The young captain was starting to recognize and appreciate how well the admiral had taken care of him in terms of giving him a set of highly able officers to offset the s.h.i.+p's other problems. Garcia, Brown, Kraft, and Sahin were all brilliant in their own way, and all had the prospect of marvelous careers ahead of them. "Has anyone questioned him?"

"No, sir. We just advised him of his rights and locked him up," Kraft said.

"Rights?" Max looked at the major quizzically. "This man's a s.p.a.cer caught red-handed committing a felony on a Union naval vessel in time of war in a combat zone. What rights?"

A satisfied smile slowly spread across the major's face. "Genau." Exactly. Yes, the man definitely loved his work.

Something clicked in Max's mind. "s.p.a.cer Green, is it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I believe I need to refresh my memory about s.p.a.cer Green. Let me sit at your workstation for a minute; then let's have a chat with our pharmaceuticals salesman."

A few moments later, the major took Max to the s.h.i.+p's small, Spartan interrogation room, where they found s.p.a.cer Green sitting in one of the room's three chairs at a small metal table. Green was just above average height, with a slender build, dark hair, close-set hazel eyes, and the kind of pasty complexion that comes with being of Anglo-Saxon descent, spending as long as a year without seeing any natural sunlight, and not bothering to avail himself of the UV safe tanning lamps the Navy provided so that men did not have to see a Dracula-like pallor every time they looked at themselves in the mirror.

Unlike many men under arrest while under the Navy's authority, Green did not look even remotely frightened. His face wore an expression of annoyed arrogance, as though he were a grand admiral's son put on report by an ensign for a minor uniform violation and had just told his father to bust the ensign to mids.h.i.+pman. Which was not too far from how he saw the universe.

Max put the ball into play. "s.p.a.cer Green, we caught you with the machine. We caught you with the drugs. We have conclusive physical evidence that drugs from this device have been sold to a large number of people on board this s.h.i.+p. With what we've got, I have enough for a conviction by order that will guarantee that you spend the rest of your life on a penal asteroid. Fortunately for you, I have sufficient discretion that I can convict you of a lesser offense, say trafficking rather than manufacturing, and see that you serve a sentence of a few years in a gentler environment. All I need is the names of your customers."

Green laughed, a grating, nasal sound. "It doesn't matter what you do to me on this s.h.i.+p, Captain. I know the law. You can't airlock me or shoot me for a drug offense. So, I'll be alive when we get back. And when we do get back to the Task Force or to a station, I have enough traction that whatever you sentence me to, I'll get off with probation or, at worst, get sent to a VIP detention farm for a year or two. I don't have any reason to talk to you clowns. A lieutenant commander and a major? You're wasting my time. Just lock me up and leave me alone."

Kraft leaned into Green's face. "What makes you think you've got that much influence, Schweinhund?"

He smiled again, even more smugly. "You don't know this, Dummkopf, but this isn't my first orbit around the planet. Every time, my father has gotten me out of it and had the records expunged. I only had to agree to continue to serve on active duty on a naval wars.h.i.+p, so he could tell everyone that his son wears the Blue. La-di-dah. I hope you have fun detaining me, because I'll be free within two days once we get back."

So, the little twit likes to show off that he speaks a bit of German. "You're an arrogant little Schwanzlutscher, aren't you?" Max did not actually learn to speak German when he served under Captain Heimbach on the Luzon, but he did learn how to call someone a c.o.c.ksucker. "When a record is expunged, it doesn't go away. The Navy erases nothing. Ever. The record simply gets labeled as 'expunged' and gets buried behind a higher-level access code. I've got access, so I know all about your previous three convictions for trafficking and manufacturing. And I know that your father is Schuyler Rudolph Green, one of the high commissioners of the Admiralty. And I know about the dirty deals done to get you off those other times. So does the admiral. Things have changed, Green. There are no more deals to pull your a.s.s out of the fire."

"You're lying."

"Really?" It was Max's turn to smile, now. "Didn't you ever wonder why, with a high commissioner as a father, you were a.s.signed to a cramped little destroyer on a high-risk deployment rather than a big, comfy battlecruiser protecting some high-value facility in a rear area?" The expression on the man's face showed that the question had, in fact, occurred to him.

"Or why, when you were restored to duty, it was as an able s.p.a.cer third, with fewer privileges and lower pay compared to your previous rank of petty officer third? Or why you got saddled working in High-Energy Systems, one of the noisiest, most dangerous specialties on the s.h.i.+p, rather than in something quieter, safer, and easier, like Sensors maintenance or Fire Control?"

Again, Green's poker face slipped to show that he had considered these questions, probably at some length.

"Your father is smarter than you think. He found out about your little scam-the one where you sold interests in a nonexistent helium three mining consortium that he was supposedly heading up. High Commissioner Schuyler Green didn't take too kindly to his good name being lent to a fraudulent securities offering. He shut that deal down cold and paid the investors back out of his own, very deep, pockets. Then, he called his lawyers to write you out of his will and cut you off from your trust accounts.

"And when he was done with that, he saw to it that you got the orders a.s.signing you to Admiral Hornmeyer's Task Force and to a destroyer being sent out to do some of the Navy's real work. Oh, and here's the bow on that package: dear old dad gave the admiral a personal, fatherson message that was to be pa.s.sed on to you if you found yourself in the condition you are in today. It's easy to remember. Nine words: 'I'm done with you, son. You're on your own.'"

s.p.a.cer Green had inherited most of his father's intelligence, if not his judgment. Accordingly, less than five minutes later he was writing down the names of the crew members to whom he had sold drugs, and the quant.i.ties. His excellent memory in this regard was aided by a computer file that appeared to be his personal exercise log but was really a rather cleverly enciphered list of customer names, sales dates, quant.i.ties of drugs, and monies received. That record, plus a comprehensive counting of all the Auster dots in all the black bricks in the c.u.mberland's hold, allowed the doctor to compute with a fairly high degree of accuracy how many tablets or capsules, and of what kind, were in the possession of which crew members.

The next order of business was to extract the drugs voluntarily from the possessors and to provide to each the medical a.s.sistance he would need over the coming days. There were thirty-one customers, ranging from former Lieutenant JG, now Mids.h.i.+pman, Goldman, all the way down to a few greenies just promoted from mid. Each would be summoned to the Casualty Station for an appointment with the chief medical officer, made to look as though it involved some question about the user's medical history. It would start with Goldman.

Goldman, who was, at this moment, sitting in a chair in Dr. Sahin's small but functional office. Goldman sat on the edge of the seat with his knees and feet together and his back rigidly straight, as appropriate when asked to sit by a superior officer.

"Sit at ease, Mids.h.i.+pman," said Sahin. The mids.h.i.+pman allowed his back to touch the back of the chair. Barely.

"Goldman, I have a difficult subject to discuss with you. That discussion will proceed much more efficiently if you will be so good as not to insult my intelligence by telling me lies."

"So this isn't to clear up an ambiguity in my medical history."

"No, Goldman, it is not."

"I see." Short pause. "Oh, I see. Green was hauled off to the brig early this afternoon. Rhim was just involved in an accident in Engineering that half the crew thinks happened because he was tranking. So, this must be about the stims."

Sahin was impressed by the deduction, and it must have shown on his face. "Doctor, just because I went off on a crewman and got busted to mid doesn't mean I'm stupid, you know. You don't get a.s.signed to Sensors unless you score very high in logical a.n.a.lysis in general and inductive reasoning in particular. For all the good it has done me." He sighed dejectedly.

"Stims. I knew the d.a.m.n things would catch up with me eventually. In fact, it already happened. They give me a temper, a bad one. No way would I have reamed out that s.p.a.cer if I hadn't been on the f.u.c.king things. So, what are you going to do to me-bust me all the way to mid-third? Bring me up on charges? Go ahead. I don't care. My career's blown out the airlock now. After the other day, I'm sure the skipper's already got a flamer in my jacket that, all by itself, will sink any chance I have of ever making lieutenant. Now with a drug charge on my CDR, the best I can hope for is to wind up at some rear-area station checking fluid levels in the fecal sediment digestion tanks. I've gone and f.u.c.ked myself really good. Just like I always do. Story of my life."

"Mister Goldman, I don't think you understand this situation very well. In fact, I think you do not understand the situation at all. First, in preparation for this meeting, I reviewed your complete personnel records, including your Comprehensive Disciplinary Record, and I found no 'flamer' from the captain or from anyone else. There is simply a Record of Disciplinary Action from Captain Rob.i.+.c.haux stating that your handling of an error by an enlisted man was less than optimal and that he had temporarily reduced you in rank to give you an opportunity to learn better how to correct deficient performance by subordinates. There are specific instructions in your jacket to restore your commission upon successful completion of the instructional units a.s.signed to you and a certification from the XO that your att.i.tude is satisfactory.

"As for the drug issue, we are taking a somewhat unusual approach to dealing with that."

Goldman was still stuck on the previous issue. "You mean the skipper didn't burn off three layers of my hull?"

"Not even one layer. Goldman, you have not fully come to grips with the full implications of the change in command on this vessel. Captain Rob.i.+.c.haux is nothing like Captain Oscar. Captain Rob.i.+.c.haux and the current senior officers on this vessel understand that you have suffered from incompetent leaders.h.i.+p and cannot be held accountable for the consequences, at least not for all of them, at least not completely.

"You must bear some responsibility of course, which is why he rebuked you verbally, why you were demoted, and why you are now performing some less than desirable duties. But you have been and will be afforded the opportunity to learn from the experience, to redeem yourself, and to regain, through hard work and sincere reformation, what you have lost.

"It is the same with these stims. You have committed some serious errors. And you have harmed your career. You have set yourself back, but not irreparably, not permanently. You are going through a period of hards.h.i.+p. But you have an opportunity to overcome that hards.h.i.+p and, given time, to leave it behind and go forward almost as though it did not happen. You can start making amends right now by favoring me with an explanation of why you started taking stimulants."

"Why do you think? Why does anyone take stims? It's sure as h.e.l.l not to feel good, like taking the Chill or floaters or something like that. Stims make you feel like s.h.i.+t all the time, all nervous and jittery when you're on them, sluggish and depressed when they wear off. I take them the same reason everyone takes them," he said with increasing anger.

Pausing, and then reconsidering his tone, he continued more reasonably. "Have you ever stood a watch schedule?"

The doctor shook his head.

"No, I don't suppose you have. You're on for four hours. And then you're off, maybe for four, maybe for eight, maybe for twelve; then you are on again for four, and then you are off again. And four, or eight, or twelve hours later, you're back on. On and off. On and off. In three-day cycles. And that's not counting the dog watches-where you stand for two and then go off again. There's one day of the cycle where you will stand three watches: First Watch, from 20:00 to 00:00, Forenoon from 08:00 to 12:00, and Second Dog from 18:00 to 20:00. That's ten hours out of twenty-four. One schedule for day one, one schedule for day two, one schedule for day three, and then it repeats. Forever. You are up working at all hours around the clock and have to try to sleep at all hours around the clock, and it is never the same two days in a row. Try staying alert when your body never-and I mean never-gets to settle into a regular schedule.

"It's not just the watches either. I wasn't just in command of the Sensor SSR for the Blue Watch, but of the entire unit-all three watches-so I had to set up the training schedule, supervise the work of all three watches, do quarterly evaluations on sixty men, write daily sensor contact reports, daily sensor array utilization reports, daily computer core access and utilization reports, daily reports on the performance of the equipment my men use and maintenance schedules, daily calibration reports and schedules, discipline reports, and every month Captain Oscar added a new kind of report or wanted an old report done more frequently because reading reports was how he kept track of what was going on around the s.h.i.+p, and you can't work on those when you are standing watch-oh no!-because you are keeping an eye on twenty different stations all at once, so you've got to do it when you're off duty, and that cuts into your time for sleeping and eating and taking a c.r.a.p and everything else in a big way. Sometimes coffee wasn't enough, you know, so I started taking stims every now and then to get me over the hump. At least, that's how it started."

"And you are under their influence at this moment, are you not?" As if there were any question. If the man were to write down what he was saying, it would have all come out as one, long, run-on sentence.

"Yes. I just came off watch. I still stand watches as a mid, plus attending cla.s.s and doing homework."