"Mori, this is the skipper. Didn't want you to think you'd slipped our minds. What's your status?"

"The cutter lost some external antennae when that second Raven lit off, but other than that, no damage. I'll be at the rendezvous point in thirteen minutes."

"Excellent. See you there. Keep on piloting like that and I might just let you take the cutter out again some time. Skipper out."

The ore carrier, which was the real target all along, continued to plow toward the jump point with dogged, robotic determination. Because Krag remote navigation software is almost totally immune to tampering and because robot vessels are usually heavily b.o.o.by-trapped, there was little chance that the ore carrier could be diverted or boarded. There was only one thing to do with it, then-blow it to flaming atoms.

The vessel's destruction was anticlimactic-a straightforward approach from the starboard beam, two shots from pulse cannon number two, and the half-million-ton freighter and its bulky but strategically valuable cargo became a cloud of debris. None of that ore would ever be refined into metal to make Krag guns, Krag swords, and Krag s.h.i.+ps. A small but measurable blow to enemy war production had been struck by the USS c.u.mberland.

For the first time since its commissioning, the c.u.mberland had met the enemy in battle and had defeated him. Victory. It really did taste sweet.

CHAPTER 15.

14:38Z Hours, 26 January 2315 Max had been writing his After Action Report detailing the destruction of the Krag battlecruiser, two corvettes, and ore carrier for a little over an hour, trying to find the right balance between bland, bureaucratic description and tooting his own horn and that of his crew in vigorous prose. Such things were best done when the engagement was fresh in one's mind. After two hours doing single combat with the Standard language, Navy style, Max completed the report and hit the key that made it a part of the s.h.i.+p's log before marking it for transmission to the Task Force and to the Admiralty as soon as the s.h.i.+p came off EMCON.

Because he was at his workstation, he decided to check his messages. The screen helpfully informed him, "Your in box contains 247 new items." That's a lot. Particularly as he had cleared out the box less than eighteen hours ago. He selected the command to "Rank Items According to Priority." The computer algorithm balanced the priority a.s.signed by the sender to the message; the ident.i.ty of the sender; and its a.s.sessment, based on content, of how important the message would be to the recipient.

The result of that a.n.a.lysis was that a communication from Dr. Sahin landed at the top of the heap. It said that the doctor had found out from Goldman that one of the sources of stress on the officers and senior NCOs was that they had to prepare too many reports to comply with a thicket of inane standing orders imposed by Captain Oscar. He recommended that Max review the reports required by the s.h.i.+p's standing orders and eliminate the unnecessary ones.

Max scrolled through the list of other incoming emails and could not help but concur. A daily Sensor Contact Report from Harbaugh. Three separate reports from Chief Jinnah: one indicating that he had issued the coffee pots, one indicating he had issued the beverage chillers, and one indicating he had issued the cups and gla.s.ses. A report from the galley indicating how many kilograms of various foodstuffs and how many liters of various beverages were consumed by the men. Yesterday. Another report from the galley listing total consumption of liquor, beer, stout, and wine. Yesterday. One set of numbers for officers and one set for enlisted. And the other 242 were of the same ilk.

Dreading what he expected to find, Max pulled up the file that contained all of the s.h.i.+p's standing orders. "There are 1,232 standing orders on file." d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n. Max was kicking himself, hard. Why had he not checked the SSO file sooner? Stupid mistake. Correction: another stupid mistake. He knew he couldn't afford many more of those.

"Display in list form, summary form, or as full text in order issued?" Max chose "list" and spent about a minute scrolling down looking at the reference lines: "Organization of Cookware and Utensils in Galley According to Principles of Time and Motion Science; Eating in Quarters Prohibited Save for Personnel Confined Thereto; Use of the Phrase 'The Fact That' in Any Correspondence Addressed to the Captain or Being Sent to Higher Authority Prohibited..."

Sweet baby Jesus! He had never seen such a load of c.r.a.p. He kicked himself again. He really should have checked the standing orders. This crew didn't need to take drugs to addle its brains-they were already dizzy from chasing their own tails.

The doctor had suggested that he go through the standing orders and eliminate those that imposed an undue burden on the crew-careful use of the scalpel. This problem didn't need a scalpel. It needed a bone saw. No-a battle-ax.

He pulled up the computer form for a standing order and checked the list of previous orders for the correct number (only eleven so far this year, as Captain Oscar had been relieved on January 4th). He began to type: USS c.u.mberland DPA-0004: s.h.i.+p's Standing Order #1512 Effective immediately: 1. All previous s.h.i.+p's standing orders (SSOs) are revoked. "All" means all.

2. Until further notice, this vessel will be governed by the Union s.p.a.ce Navy Model Standing Orders for vessels of this type.

He hit ENTER. There. That should put a stop to some of that insanity. He shook his head-what else had he missed? When and how would it rear up and bite him in the a.s.s?

Max gulped down the last of the cold coffee at the bottom of his mug and looked at his bunk. G.o.d, he was tired. Maybe a short nap. Just an hour or two. He had just about talked himself into it when his comm buzzed. "Skipper."

"Captain, this is the chief medical officer. I am in C-24," Sahin announced formally. "I regret to report that we have a fatality."

"On my way."

Max's quarters were on B Deck just forward of amids.h.i.+ps, whereas C-24 was one deck below, and aft. Still, Max was there in less than two minutes, making a point not to look as though he were in any particular hurry or that anything was wrong. When he emerged from the corridor alcove containing the access ladder he had used to change decks into the main corridor on C Deck, he saw that he need not have bothered. There were at least twenty people in the corridor, milling about and talking, blocking his way to Compartment C-24.

When he was about ten meters away from the crowd he stopped and, using his best parade-ground voice (one of the loudest in the fleet, truth be told), barked, "AH-TENNN-HUT!"

Instantly, the milling, babbling ma.s.s of humanity froze in rigid, silent, attention. "I want this corridor cleared. If you are on duty, get to your station. If you are off duty, get to your quarters or the mess or somewhere, just so long as it is not here. Now, MOVE." In eight seconds, the corridor was empty, save for Max and the two Marines that someone had sensibly posted outside the hatch to C-24.

The Marines, having gone back to parade rest when Max ordered everyone to leave, snapped to present arms as Max reached the door. When posted as a guard with shoulder arms, present arms was the Marine equivalent of a salute. Max saluted back; the men went back to parade rest, and one of them triggered the door.

Max entered, encountering what appeared to be a blizzard. Tiny white particles were swirling around in the air like snowflakes in the winter wind. The computer had put the air circulation system in the compartment on maximum, triggered by the presence of seven people in the compartment and that of unusually high levels of combustion products and particulates. Max scanned the room. What had happened here was clear to him in about a second and a half. He had seen it before. More than once.

Priorities. First, stop the snowstorm so people could work and think. "Computer, activate voice interface." Few people used the computer Voice Command Interface, but the workstation was definitely something he did not want to touch right now, and it would take too long to peck out the series of commands on his percom.

"Voice Command Interface active," said the purring contralto that someone back in Norfolk thought was a good way for a computer to sound. Rumor had it that the voice was patterned on that of a centuries-dead wife of a television producer. If so, that would be immortality in one of its most peculiar forms.

"Initiate voice recognition protocol."

"Voice recognition protocol activated. Please state your name and rank."

"Rob.i.+.c.haux, Maxwell T., Lieutenant Commander."

"Rob.i.+.c.haux, Maxwell T., recognition successful. Please input command."

"Input two commands. Command one: Stop air circulation in this compartment. Command two: Activate AICLSS in this compartment. End input."

AICLSS was p.r.o.nounced "ay-kliss." The computer voice confirmed the orders. Now, the air would be kept breathable by the auxiliary independent compartment life support system, which would extract the CO2 with a miniature scrubber and infuse oxygen from a reserve supply; oxygen would be replenished periodically from the s.h.i.+p's main reservoir rather than by the brute force method of circulating high volumes of air blown in from the s.h.i.+p's ventilation system. The white particles in the air immediately began to settle out, leaving Max alone in the compartment with Kraft, Sahin, a nurse, and four corpsmen. And one nearly decapitated corpse.

As the man was clearly dead, the nurse was not necessary to a.s.sist Dr. Sahin, and the corpsmen would not be needed to carry the patient to the Casualty Station, so Max dismissed them. He then walked over to the workstation, careful not to disturb anything. In front of it sat a man, in his service-issued "long-john" single-piece undergarment; he was missing most of the top of his head. An M-62 pistol was on the floor near his limp right hand, and the remains of a pillow were messily comingled with his skull contents. Apparently, the man had used the pillow to m.u.f.fle the sound of the pistol, exploding it and filling the room with disintegrated bits of the foam with which it had been stuffed. After dying, the man had fallen over onto his workstation, bleeding profusely onto the keyboard and touch interface pad. Bits of blood, bone, and brain decorated every surface in a murderer's parody of abstract painting.

"Who was he?"

Kraft answered, "Ranatunga. First name, Dayani. Positive ID from his Q-chip. These are his quarters. Age twenty-eight."

Max's age. No doubt about the identification as Kraft had scanned the ID chip embedded deep in the left thigh muscle of every man in the Navy. It was called a "Q-chip" because it was embedded in the quadriceps muscle.

"Chief petty officer second cla.s.s. a.s.signed to the Tactical section; he did Intentions and Capabilities in the Tactical SSR. Good record. Three battle cl.u.s.ters before being a.s.signed to this s.h.i.+p. Outstanding FitReps. He was in line to be some s.h.i.+p's COB in five to ten years or to do a rotation at one of the NCO tactical schools. One of our best. I'll do the forensics, but a greenie could put this one together. The man sat down at this terminal, typed a suicide note, took his service weapon, m.u.f.fled the report with the pillow, and blew his brains out. No sign of forced entry or an intruder of any kind. Computer records indicate no one else in the room. Environmental monitoring shows a sharp increase in particulates and carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and the other gases you expect from a weapons discharge. This took place at 15:26 and twelve seconds. And yes, there is generally an alarm for such things. But I think you can guess how this sentence ends...."

"Captain Oscar ordered that it be deactivated."

"Genau. Apparently, there were a few false alarms that interrupted him during his interminable senior officer meetings. Finally, at 15:42 and six seconds, the computer determined that no oxygen was being consumed in here, even though it logged one person as being present, so it sent an automatic alert to the Security Station. I tried to reach Chief Ranatunga on the comm and on his percom. When he didn't answer, at 15:42 and thirty-nine seconds, I used my override to turn on the visual input on the workstation.

"I saw a slumped man and blood on the lens, so at 15:42 and fifty seconds I summoned the doctor and came directly here with two Marines. Computer records show the doctor using his CMO override to enter the compartment at 15:44 and eleven seconds. The computer logged that he entered along with five other people-the nurse and the four corpsmen.

"I entered at 15:44 and twenty-eight seconds and posted the Marines at the door. When I came in, the first thing I did was secure the compartment, and it has been secure at all times since that moment. Nothing has been removed or touched yet. You, me, the doctor, and his people have been the only personnel in this room. I would regard this as a near-pristine crime scene."

Max turned to Dr. Sahin, who looked absolutely shattered. "Doctor, was he..."

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes. He was. Absolutely." He shook his head slowly, mournfully. "I killed him."

"No, Doctor, you're wrong. This man had been dead for more than seventeen minutes when you arrived," blurted Kraft.

"Oh, yes, Major, you may be certain that I was sitting in my comfortable chair in the Casualty Station, feeling very satisfied and capable, wallowing in the delusion that I was in control of the situation, watching some of my patients on a monitor, when this good man picked up a pistol and violently ended his life," said Sahin, his voice dripping with sarcasm and trembling with anger, "but I killed him just as surely as if I had held the weapon to his head and pulled the trigger. His blood is on my hands, to be sure, and the smell of it will never fade. 'All the perfumes of Arabia shall not sweeten this little hand.'"

Max needed data, not self-recrimination, and certainly not Shakespeare quotes. "Lieutenant Sahin, I require a cogent report from my chief medical officer, and I need it now. Are you capable of delivering that to me?" He would have added, "If not, I will summon your relief," but there was no relief for Ibrahim Sahin. He was the only physician on the s.h.i.+p. After him, there were a few nurses, a pharmacist's mate, and some corpsmen. If Max needed a physician, he would have to figure out a way to get useful information from this man or do without.

Dr. Sahin nodded slowly and sat on the man's bunk. The blood trajectory had not made it that far. "Captain," he said, "this man was one of the crewmen I was treating for drug addiction and withdrawal. He was a very heavy Chill user, and his withdrawal symptoms were initially very severe. I prescribed Exemitrol to control the nausea, Anodynamil for the rebound anxiety, Niltremulin for the shakes, and Synaptoflex to speed his nervous system's recovery.

"I kept him under close observation for eighteen hours and returned him to duty with instructions to check in with the Casualty Station every eight hours, to make sure he was not having any additional symptoms. He seemed to be doing well, and I had every hope that he would make a full recovery without any additional discomfort. My plan was to start weaning him from the medication in about thirty-six hours."

"If he was doing so well, why..."-Max made a clumsy gesture encompa.s.sing the room-"why this?" he asked.

"Because, my good Captain, a small number of people who take Anodynamil and Synaptoflex and who have residual amounts of Chill in their central nervous systems can suddenly and inexplicably experience sudden depression and kill themselves. It has happened before. It is right there in the literature for all the galaxy to see, and I took no special precautions to prevent it. I should have kept him under strict observation until he was weaned from the medication. I should have had him in the Casualty Station right under my thumb where I could have kept him safe from harm. I was trying to help him reclaim his life, and instead I killed him. I have never seen so much blood. 'Who would have thought the young man to have had so much blood in him?'"

Great. Another Macbeth quote. An unlucky play. This is not going well. "How often? I mean, in what percentage of the people in this situation does this occur? Ten percent, 20 percent?"

"One."

"Only 1 percent?"

"No. One other case."

"Out of how many?

"With this combination of drugs?"

"Yes. That's the only way it is known to happen, isn't it?"

"Yes. One out of two or three million, I suppose."

"Doctor, Doctor, one case? Out of two or three million? My G.o.d, man, one out of two or three million could have been caused by anything! Maybe he was exposed to cosmic rays that scrambled his brain proteins. Maybe his lover jilted him. Maybe his goldfish died. Maybe the drugs triggered a genetic predisposition to suicide.

"You're the scientist, Doctor-not me. You know better than I do that when you're dealing with an event this rare, it is statistically impossible to identify causation. Even if you could, you don't take precautions against a one-in-a-million event. When I make plans, I don't prepare contingencies for outcomes that are that remote. If you did that, you wouldn't have the time or the energy to do anything else."

"But I knew it could happen and did nothing."

"No, Doctor, you evaluated the risk and determined that it was not sufficiently likely to justify precautions against it. Big difference. Every drug you administer has side effects that can affect a small number of patients, right?"

"Of course. That is a given."

"How many patients do you have, right now, receiving some kind of medication on this s.h.i.+p?"

"With all of this business going on, slightly more than half. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, just under a third would be taking some kind of meds, generally for minor concerns such as allergies, blood pressure, and sleep disturbance."

"Now, think of all the remotest side effects of all those different medications reported in all the medical literature ever published. Is there any way you could watch for and take precautions against all of them, or would doing so take up such an enormous amount of time and effort that you could not properly care for the patients who are right in front of you, with immediate medical needs that you can see and verify? You don't need to answer that. Even a scientifically illiterate destroyer skipper knows the answer. No. Of course not. Trust me on this. Doctor-Bram-you did not do this."

Dr. Sahin pondered that. After a few moments, some, but by no means all, of the weight he seemed to be carrying appeared to lift from his shoulders. "I will consider what you have said, Captain, and I will go on with my work."

"Good. Very good. In the final a.n.a.lysis, you didn't kill this man. The Krag did. If they hadn't invaded, this man would be sitting at home going about his civilian life, eating dinner with his wife and children. Now, I think there's no need for you to stay here. You should go back to the Casualty Station. We'll let you know if we need you."

He left. Max walked over to Kraft. "You mentioned something about a suicide note."

"Yes. I have located it but have not yet read it." He opened up his percom to reveal the larger inside touch screen and entered some commands. Some text appeared on one wall of the compartment, a roughly one-by-two-meter area of which doubled as a secondary computer display or entertainment viewing screen. Both men stood together and read it.

"Same old," said Max. "Who would have imagined that with all the varieties of human experience, with men in the Navy coming from every kind of economic circ.u.mstance and religion and culture on hundreds of worlds, almost every suicide note would say almost exactly the same thing. Are civilian suicide notes like this?"

"No, they are not," Kraft answered. "This is the eighth suicide I've investigated. I got curious about them one time and did some research. The civilians all seem to talk about how much pain they're in, how no one understands them or cares about them, and how they can't bear to live any longer. The military ones seem to be about how they have failed their s.h.i.+pmates and the Union and the Navy, how they're consumed with guilt for their failures, and how they do not deserve to live any longer. This one clearly follows the military pattern."

Max looked at the remains of Dayani Ranatunga. "d.a.m.n it, man, you were not a failure. We could have used a man like you. I could have used a man like you."

Then, to Kraft, "I suppose that wraps it up, then. Man blows his brains out in a locked room and leaves a suicide note. Mark it a suicide and go on."

"I just have a few things to finish in here for my report. I need to find the slug, if anything is left of it; locate the sh.e.l.l casing-it must have rolled under some furniture or be sitting in a flower pot or a coffee cup somewhere because it has not turned up yet; take a few measurements-that sort of thing. I will be in here another hour or two. Then I'll notify the Casualty Station to remove the body, and we can get maintenance in here to clean things up. I'll send you my report when complete."

They stood together in silence for a few seconds, their eyes running over Chief Ranatunga's last words still displayed on the wall. Kraft blanked the wall with a touch to his percom. "The doctor is taking it pretty hard."

"Yes, he is," answered Max. "But I don't think a man like him could take this sort of thing any other way. He just hasn't seen the things we've seen."

"Right. I've investigated about one of these a year since I became an officer."

"And there have been dozens on the s.h.i.+ps I've served on over the years," said Max. "I hate it. I hate it more than anything."

Max walked over to the viewport. It was just smaller than a meter square, but it still gave a good view of the stars. He fixed his gaze on one star that drew his attention because of its distinct reddish hue. It reminded him of Antares, once pointed out to him by a lovely young woman on an Earth beach years ago.

"Rival of Ares," is what the star's name meant, because its red hue reminded the Greeks of the red planet named for their G.o.d of War, whom the Romans called Mars. Antares too was supposed to be a.s.sociated with war, perhaps because it was always high overhead in the night sky during the late spring and summer, the season of war, when ancient armies took to the field to spill each other's blood with bronze, iron, and steel. Bronze-clad Spartan Hoplites and Persian Immortals alike must have gazed at it, a red beacon in the darkness, as they sat around their campfires, antic.i.p.ating the killing that would come at dawn.

When humans attached their myths to the planets and the stars in the night sky so long ago, they had no idea that their distant grandchildren would venture among those stars, only to find there a deadly enemy who would force them to fight for mankind's very survival. In 2315, the descendants of the Spartans and the Persians and the Romans and the Chinese and all the rest no longer ventured into this region of s.p.a.ce for peaceful exploration, scientific inquiry, or to open up new avenues of commerce. Instead, they came only for one reason. To wage war. Rival of Ares? Max thought bitterly. Out here, Ares has no rival. Men serve no G.o.d but him.

"It's this G.o.dd.a.m.n war, Kraft," he said. "These men kill themselves because they have lost hope." A long, silent minute pa.s.sed, the two men together, yet alone with their thoughts. "Sometimes I think that there will never be an end. Do you ever feel that way?" Max asked.

"Natrlich. On the days when the clouds hang low over my head. But most days, when the clouds are elsewhere, I believe and hope that there is an end, and I even pray and hold out hope that I may live to see it. Hope keeps me going-keeps us going."

"That, and one more thing."

"Ja?"

"The will to survive."

"Sieg ber alles, then."