Riding the Red Horse (33 page)

Shape pops up again inside Tom's “Within This Horizon”. Shape? Yes; why do you suppose the action takes place where it does? Go dig out a map and look.

It’s about more than shape, though. When you read the story, think about the impact of leadership, or the lack thereof, of surprise, of complacency. And it won't be surprising if you get a little shiver of satisfaction at revenge well wrought.

My first official task as an officer in the terrestrial navy was to drag my captain out of a brothel. I had no sooner stepped aboard the rusty and ramshackle quarterdeck of USS
Forrest Griggs
than I was being turned around by a stocky woman wearing the khakis and gold oak leaves of a lieutenant commander. “You’re the new guy?” she asked, as she looked me over in my freshly pressed white uniform. Her eyes did an involuntary flare as she noticed my scars, but she had the grace to say nothing about them.

“Yes, ma’am.” I limped a bit as I struggled to keep up with her rapid pace across the brow and back ashore. “Lieutenant Josh Morrow. I’ve been assigned as your new Autonomous Systems Officer. Are you the XO, ma’am?”

She noticed my gait—a product of both the injuries I had sustained and too many years in microgravity—and she slowed down. “I have that dubious honor, yes. LCDR Tamicka Jones.” My new executive officer shook my hand, then stopped next to a robo-tuk and slid an authorization card through its lock. “How long have you been on Terra, firma or not, Morrow?”

The automated tuk-tuk cab’s doors opened and she climbed in through one. Seemingly impatient, she motioned for me to cross to the other side and climb in as well. I answered her, still confused as to where we were going or what we were doing, “I’ve been planet-side for about three days, ma’am. I de-orbited into Bethesda, had a day of medical checks, another day for outfitting, and then caught the first sub-orbital lift I could to Singapore. My plane from there to Penang just landed.” One might wonder why I—a spacer with no terrestrial Navy experience—would receive a posting as an Autonomous Systems Officer aboard a Navy surface vessel. The answer was that I needed a job, and they needed a warm body with rank. Leadership is not necessarily system or service specific.

She frowned at me. “Well, Mr. ASO, welcome to the wet arm of the US Navy. You rushed for nothing. Unlike your former brethren in the Aerospace Navy, we run at a lower RPM ‘round here. We don’t get the prestige, attention, or respect you astro-nuts get, but we also don’t have to deal with lasers or ship-to-ship nukes. The war doesn’t exist planet-side.” Jones reached down and tapped in a destination. “Fortunately or unfortunately, you’re about to do the most exciting thing you’ll ever get to do on this ship.”

“And what is that?”

“Meet the skipper.”

We passed the journey in silence as the robo-tuk navigated the narrow, insanely busy streets of Penang, Malaysia. It was so crowded here, and life was so varied and free and messy. The closest you could come in the black was along the promenade of a major station, and this level of chaos beat that by several orders of magnitude – especially since the resource war with China had gone from cold to hot and all such places of congregation had cleared out.

The robo-tuk pulled to a stop in front of a Thai “health club.” Judging by the barely clad, semi-androgynous “personal trainers” out front, they were only interested in working out certain specific parts of one’s anatomy. We clambered out of the small cab, the stocky XO managing it with more grace than I could in the persistent gravity. She brushed past the come-hither beckoning of the ladies and lady-boys arrayed along the sidewalk without a glance. Jones led the way inside and up the stairs to a particular room apparently known to her. I limped along in her wake.

The XO knocked once and barged into the room without waiting for a reply. Inside stood a girl in a floral silk robe, with her hair pinned up in disarray. She smoked a black cigarette, but ground it out upon seeing us enter. The girl lit into Jones with a loud, rapid stream of what sounded like angry Mandarin.

The XO waved her diatribe away and held up the shiny, dark rectangle of her phone. “Okay, all right. What does he owe you this time?” The brick translated:
Hao ba, hao ba. Shenme shi ta qian ni de zhe yici?

“
Liang bai ouyuan!
” the girl answered emphatically, which the phone duly repeated: 200 euros.

“Less than last week,” Jones muttered. She tapped the amount into her phone and executed a transfer to the young prostitute. The girl’s phone chimed and all her anger and frustration bled away. She smiled, dimpling, and slipped out of the room, perhaps brushing against me in a more lingering fashion than was necessary.

The XO waved me over and we began to collect an odd assortment of clothes: wrinkled uniform khaki pants, a stained combination cover, rope sandals, and a bright floral batik shirt. Of his uniform shirt, belt, or shoes, there was no sign. The commanding officer himself laid face-up across the width of the narrow bed, drooling, snoring, stinking of old beer and sweat… and without even a sheet for modesty.

Jones tossed me his underwear. As we wrestled him into his clothes, he roused to consciousness and looked at me in evident confusion. “Damn. You fall into a wood chipper, boy?”

I ignored him and flipped him onto his stomach to finish pulling his pants up. That’s when I saw a large tattoo on his shoulder blade: the eagle, rocket, and orbits of the USAN. I looked at the XO sharply.

She wore a wry smile. “Oh yes, Morrow. The Aerospace Navy is already very well represented aboard the USS
Forrest Griggs
.”

The second time I met Commander Brett Larkin was many hours later. I had been acclimating myself to the
Griggs
, meeting my chief and my sailors, enduring their stares and assumptions, learning about my spaces and systems aboard ship, and dealing with the culture shock of the wet Navy versus the Aerospace Navy.

Free for the moment, I stood alone in the wardroom, slurping a mug of coffee and inexplicably missing the nipple I would have had on a coffee bulb in microgravity. Larkin—my ultimate superior on this dilapidated tub—stumbled in and stopped when he saw me.

We had both changed, me into coveralls similar enough to a shipsuit while still being inferior in every way, and he into official Navy workout gear. Larkin had showered and appeared more or less lucid now, but he still looked confused as he stared at me until something clicked in his muddled brain. Then he grinned. “Sorry we had to meet that way, kid. You’re our new orbital debris, right?”

I winced. That was indelicate, if perhaps slightly better than “meteor,” or “crash case”—someone who had made the irreversible transition from naval service among the planets to one stuck on our single livable world. I had heard them all today, though my subordinates had the decency to say them under their breath. “Yes, sir. I just made the shift.”

He nodded and poured his own mug of coffee. “What were you on?”

I gestured to my face. “Most recently the USS
Jonas Salk
and 90 days in a treatment tank as we made the fast burn in from the Belt. Before that I was stationed on
Pensacola
.”

Realization dawned on his face. “Damn. I’m sorry about that. As
San Diego
-class astro frigates go,
Pensacola
was one of the best. I knew your CO, Jim Goldsmith. He was a year behind me at Annapolis; it was a bad day when we heard how things went out there.” He took a sip of his coffee, black, and searched my face. “Backscatter or explosive decompression?”

My heartbeat stuttered a bit and panic bloomed, but I fought the emotions down. “A bit of both, Captain. I was one compartment over from where the first laser-head missile holed us. I don’t remember much, but I was lucky. It was early in the battle with Zhengzhou, so there was still time for others to button me up and get me to a med cell. The Chinese found my beacon and ten others after the reactor went. They forwarded us to
Jonas Salk
as part of a humanitarian exchange.” Forty-five others had been lost outright.

Larkin grinned. “Ya gotta love civilized warfare, as if you can just compartmentalize atrocity. They blow the ship out from under you, and then pick you up from among the dead. They blast you with impunity off-planet, then declare the Earth off-limits to hostility.” He took another sip of coffee. “Why are you here, Lieutenant? Surely they gave you the option to exit.”

I ignored sudden flashes of memory, of my parents urging me to do just that. “I still had time remaining on my initial commission.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Morrow. You could med-board your way out of any contract! You’ve got a better case than most with just the injuries I can see.”

I stared into the brown dregs of my cup. My stomach churned bitterly. “They wouldn’t let me stay in space. I can’t take the level of rads I might encounter, and my pressure resiliency is shot to hell.” I looked up at my CO. “But there’s still a war on. There’s still payback to be made and honor to be satisfied.”

Larkin chuffed a single, humorless laugh. “God damn, you’re a dumb son of a bitch! Almost as dumb as me when I screwed up and asked for the good ol’ real Navy too. I wasn’t turned to hamburger like you, but I was riding that same line between ‘they can’t get rid of me’ and ‘they won’t let me stay.’ What I didn't know, however, and what you're about to find out, is this: there is no more real Navy. Resource extraction and transport has moved on to space. The petroleum economy is over. Most goods are made on site with 3D printing and materials recycled locally. The ocean traffic and waterways don't need defending with just a fraction of their former activity. Even power projection has moved into orbit. You’ve chosen to continue the good fight against an enemy you can’t touch in the equivalent of a global coast guard.”

He slammed down his mug and gave me a bleak look as he continued. “My ships used to have a range of influence as close to infinity as one could get, in every possible direction. My weapons unleashed the power of stars. There was no horizon. Everything was within my sight and within my grasp.

“Now? Now we are pond scum, stuck at the interface of sea and sky, bound by a horizon barely a stone’s throw away. Our sight above is clouded and our sight below is almost totally obscured. Right or left, forward or backward, it doesn’t matter where we go, because we’re never going anywhere. You think you got lucky, that the Chinese spared you? Son, they gave you the cruelest death of all. They doomed you to mediocrity after you’d already touched eternity.”

The captain shook his head bitterly and left the wardroom, abandoning me to my thoughts and the consideration of the possibility that perhaps I might have made a huge mistake.

USS
Forrest Griggs
got underway the next day, along with our sister ship, USS
Jefferson Edwards
. It had been our intention to pull the two trimaran hybrid destroyers away from the pier together at first light.
Edwards
succeeded. However, we did not, as we were plagued by a cascading series of system casualties and engineering errors. I spent the morning on the bridge uselessly, watching the clean, rust-free lines of the other ship get underway smartly. I had the conn, a learn-to-drive-the-ship position usually reserved for Ensigns, but since most Ensigns had more experience on the water than I did, it fit. As the Conning Officer, it was my job to parrot the Navigator and the Officer of the Deck’s orders to the helmsman who actually steered the ship, under the theory that at some point I would learn enough to do it myself and qualify to become the OOD.

Instead, I was stuck, listening as the captain yelled at engineers and technicians over both the phone and the ship’s general announcing circuit. LCDR Jones ran from one brushfire to the next, until finally we could take in all lines and start making way under our own power. The skipper sat in his bridge-wing chair, glowering as we pulled away from Penang Island harbor and entered the mouth of the Strait of Malacca. He left the bridge as soon as Malaysia was just a line upon the horizon astern of us, and I focused on my watch duties until I could be relieved. My fellow watchstanders only spoke to me when it was necessary, and they all gave me significant looks whenever the subject of the captain was mentioned.

After watch, I toured the weatherdecks, watching as sailors went about their duties, chipping rust until the orange was gone and slathering on paint until the damage was smooth again, or greasing up anything that moved until the grease sprayed out the other side of the fitting. It was disgusting, wasteful, imprecise and—had we been in space—deadly. Or perhaps that was just my prejudice showing, buyer’s remorse and the skipper’s dim views settling in and making my eye overly critical. Was I seeing normal as abnormal and untidy as careless just because it wasn’t the neat order of USAN maintenance?

Around us, heavy shipping traffic with unknown cargos flowed up and down the Strait of Malacca, forced by economics and geography down this particular strategic waterway. It might well be a tithe of what flowed through here a century before, but the funnel of Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia still forced hundreds of vessels of a dozen different nations’ flags through this lane every day. It looked vital enough to my untrained eye.

Later, near sunset, I watched as my petty officers and those from their partner divisions prepared the
Griggs
’ AI drones for coordinated operations. I watched closely, to see how managing drones as an Autonomous Systems Officer in a wet Navy differed from being a Remote Operator in the Aerospace Navy. I had always loved the god-like sensation of seeing through the multiple viewpoints of widely separated AI drones, wired directly into my brain. How strange would it be to experience the air and the sea through them instead of the vacuum of space?

The sailors deftly managed the launch, releasing undersea, surface, and aerial drones until we led a small phalanx of artificially intelligent servitors through the water and sky. As my chief and petty officers finished up, they caught me watching them. They all smiled nervously, then scattered back to the interior of the ship. I shook my head at my continuing failure to connect to anyone and turned to follow them – whereupon I saw the XO watching me intently.