Trying to sound more confident than I felt, I said, “Tell your men to lay down their arms.”
“And then what? You’ve already committed treason, how about murder? How many of my men have you already killed?”
“Admiral, I am running out of patience.”
The admiral told his men to drop their weapons with no more than a nod. Then he said, “You do know they will come for you? You can’t possibly get away with this.”
“They were always going to come for us,” I said. “We were sent here for combat exercises.”
When the admiral heard this, his raised his eyes to my face and took a half step backward. That was the only sign of fear I ever saw from the man. “You’re damn right you were, and you will get everything you have coming to you.”
The admiral surrendered the bridge, and we captured three battleships without taking a single casualty. In the back of my mind, though, I asked myself, What have I done?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Senior Chief Petty Officer Perry Fahey, now wearing full face makeup that included lipstick, rouge, and false eyelashes along with mascara, opened the next staff meeting with, “Captain Harris, I hear congratulations are in order. You managed to hijack three ships filled with unarmed sailors on a peaceful mission without losing a single man. That’s quite an accomplishment. What’s next on your agenda, blowing up a school for girls?”
I wanted to kick the bastard’s chair out from under him, but that was what he wanted as well. He wanted to provoke me into a fight, then claim I was not ready to command. Instead, I smiled, and said, “You said that entire line without stuttering or wetting your pants, Senior Chief. Well done.”
“I, I don’t stutter,” Fahey said.
“Really? You stuttered up a storm at our last meeting,” I said.
It was a childish display on both our parts, but I got what I wanted. I stopped myself from lashing out with my fists.
Warshaw and Franks sat impassive, watching to see what Fahey would do next. I remained silent, waiting for the same.
What Fahey said next let me know that I was not the only person worrying about whether it had been a mistake to start this war. “You got us in a specking war.” He looked at Warshaw and Franks for support, then added, “What are you going to do next, bomb Terraneau?”
Franks laughed.
Maybe they had rehearsed the whole thing. Fahey’s outburst gave Warshaw the opportunity to position himself as an officer-statesmen. Neither laughing nor smiling, he said, “You did assure me that those ships had come to fight.”
“No, Master Chief, I never said any such thing. I said that the Unified Authority plans to use our fleet to practice maneuvers.”
“There weren’t even any Marines on board those ships. It seems clear to me that they did not come to fight,” Warshaw said. He spoke slowly, showing restraint.
Fahey didn’t bother with things like restraint. “They won’t make that mistake again, now, will they?”
I turned to Fahey, and said, “The Earth Fleet has thirty-two battle …excuse me, as of two days ago the fleet has twenty-nine self-broadcasting battleships. It has twenty-five self-broadcasting destroyers, and a few self-broadcasting cruisers. How many battleships do we have?”
Warshaw and his crew sat mute.
Hollingsworth leaned forward, and said, “I believe we have ninety battleships, sir.”
“Ninety, you say?” I asked. “Ninety?” I pretended to fumble with a complex mathematical equation. “Why, ninety, that’s more than thirty!”
Thomer chipped in. “I believe it is three times more, sir.”
“Three times, you say?” Then, dropping my momentary befuddlement, I turned to Warshaw, and said, “I don’t expect they’ll make too much of a fuss over those ships.”
“So which is it, Harris? You don’t get it both ways. Are we so much stronger than them that they’re afraid to come after us, or are they planning to use us for target practice?” Franks asked that question. If the son of a bitch analyzed and responded this effectively in battle, he’d make a hell of a captain.
“They’re not ready to attack us just yet,” I said.
“This is why the Navy always commands.” Warshaw pronounced his edict with a regal attitude. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed a hand across his chin. “I suppose we’re both guilty on this one. I should have known better than to listen to you.”
With the Broadcast Network down, the Navy would not be able to verify the fate of those battleships without sending ships out to investigate. In a few hours, the brass would realize that their three battleships were not coming back. They would suspend any flights pending an investigation. Once Intelligence determined that we had commandeered their ships, they would abort the transfer entirely.
For all intents and purposes, I had received my field promotion to general. Warshaw was now an acting admiral, and though our ranks were similar, our authority was not. He commanded the ships. I commanded the Marines, a body of fighting men that he and his sailors considered just another form of cargo.
Warshaw would do whatever he thought he needed to preserve his command. The next time I left the ship, for instance, I might not be allowed back.
I left the conference room and headed for the Marine compound, Thomer and Hollingsworth in tow.
“Okay, Sergeant Hollingsworth, why in hell was Fahey in full drag? The bitch was wearing everything but a dress and wig,” I said.
“Why are you asking me?” Hollingsworth protested.
“You said you knew him. You said he’s a good man.”
“That doesn’t specking make me his fashion consultant.”
“Okay, fine. Why do you think he came to the meeting like that?” I asked.
“It seems pretty obvious.”
“It does?” I asked.
“You confiscated makeup from the bitches on this ship. He came in kabuki face to show that he isn’t scared of you. It seems pretty obvious.”
“Yeah, I should have known it was something like that,” I admitted. Now that he pointed it out, it did seem obvious.
“Do you want to go get drunk?” Thomer asked.
“Not today,” I said. I needed to stay sober and think about my next move.
“How about you?” Thomer asked Hollingsworth.
“Sounds good,” Hollingsworth said.
“You don’t mind if we get drunk?” Hollingsworth asked me.
I laughed and told them to enjoy their last minutes as enlisted men. By the time they returned from the bar, they would be a brigadier general and a full-bird colonel.
So I returned to my billet to relax. I took off my shoes and stripped out of my uniform. An hour-long nap sounded good, then maybe a meal. First things first, though; I needed rest. After turning off the lights, I climbed into my rack, then groped along the table beside my bed until I found the pair of mediaLink shades that I had checked out from the commis sary. The shades let me tap into the ship’s media center. Since returning from Terraneau, I had been reading the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche.
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not.
Poison-mixers? “That shows what you know,” I muttered to the Nietzsche in my head.
The soft ring of my communications console broke into my thoughts. When I answered, Warshaw asked me to come to the bridge.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re either a prophet, Harris, or you’ve gotten us all killed,” he said.
“More U.A. ships?” I asked as I climbed out of bed.
“A lot of them.”
“How many is a lot?” I asked.
“Twenty battleships.”
I had my blouse buttoned and my pants up. Stepping into my shoes, I said, “That’s half their fleet.”