This is Diekereide's third patrol, but his first with this Climber. They shuffle hell out of Engineers before they give them their own ship. Then they become part of the power plant. The subLieutenant strikes me as the type eager to be friends with everybody—at least till he settles in. He comes on a little too strong. I presume he's a solid Engineer. He wouldn't be here otherwise. The propaganda is right in one respect. Climber people are the best of the best, the Fleet elite.
However competent he may be, I can't picture Diekereide's becoming a good officer in the leadership sense. Maybe that goes with his territory.
It took no genius to discover that Lieutenant Varese isn't popular. I didn't have to observe his men behind his back to guess it. He's the perpetual fussbudget, never satisfied with anyone's work. He can't keep his mouth shut when that's the wisest course. And if he has a choice of a positive and a negative comment, he'll choose the latter every time.
I've only had glimpses of Lieutenant Piniaz. He's somewhat like Varese, though quieter, yet more belligerent and bitter. There's a huge chip on his shoulder. I understand he came up through the ranks.
Bradley appears to be standard Academy product. He's self-sufficient, competent, and confident.
He's efficient and soft-spoken. He seems to have won his men already. He'll get ahead if he survives his ten missions.
He's a child today. In two years he'll be a clone of the Commander. There'll be lines in his face.
He'll have hollow eyes. He'll look ten years older than he is. And his men will have complete confidence in him, and none at all in Command. They'll follow him in a strike on the gates of hell, confident the Old Man can pull it off. And they'll curse the idiots who formulated the mission all the while.
I've had little real opportunity to gauge the enlisted men. Here in Operations the outstanding characters seem to be Jung-haus (the tachyon man, commonly called Fisherman), Carmon (occasionally called the Patriot), Rose, Throdahl, and Chief Nicastro. They're all old hands, and they've all spaced with the Commander before.
Rose and Throdahl are prototypical noncoms. Struck from the original mold, designed by Sargon I.
They have one-track minds. They seem to know nothing but sex. Their banter, though probably old at the time of the fall of Nineveh, has its entertaining moments.
Carmon is a silent patriot, thank heaven. He doesn't irritate us with speeches. He reminds me of a lizard quietly awaiting the approach of prey. He has that patient, "the day is going to come" air.
His intensity makes the others nervous.
As advertised, Fisherman is the resident evangelist. Every ship has one. It seems to be an unofficial billet, generated by some need in the group subconscious. I was surprised to find one on a vessel this small. Ours is a Christian, with a definite charismatic bent.
Since we have a Preacher, it seems likely we'll also have a Loan Shark, a Moonshiner, a Peddler
(the man who always has something to sell, and who can get you anything you want), a Bookmaker, a Thief, and a Gritch. The latter is the man everyone loves to hate, and the most important character in any small, closed social system. A closed group always seems to create one. He becomes a walking catharsis, a small-time Jesus who involuntarily takes our sins upon himself.
He's always that one man who's a little more different, a little more strange. The body politic alienates and hates him, and as a consequence everyone else gets along a little better.
Chief Nicastro may be our coward, simply by circumstance. He's scared to death of this mission. I suspect it would be that way for any man making his final patrol. I have a touch of it myself.
When there's nothing but another mission ahead, a man can look forward to nothing but another mission. He knows better than to plan the rest of his life. The short-time shakes set in during the magical final run. There's a chance there might be a tomorrow. You don't want to jinx it by thinking about it. And you can't help thinking.
There are seven more men in Ops: Laramie, Berberian, Brown, Scarlatella, Canzoneri, Picraux, and Zia. They're less obvious, less flamboyant, less loud, either by nature or because this is their first patrol aboard the Climber.
"Got to piss, better do it now," Yanevich says. "Compartment hatches seal at GQ."
The hatches are massive, one on each side of the double intercompartmental bulkhead. They'll keep a breach from claiming the entire ship. Each compartment is its own lifeboat. The Can is held together by explosive bolts. We can blow the four sections out of the hole in the donut if we have to.
I want to ask about that. Has anyone ever actually tried it? Is there any point? I can't see it.
Again the First Watch Officer has disappeared before I can formulate my questions.
How do they cut the keel? The keel is a single piece of steel running the height of the Can. Some way has to exist to sever it between compartments. And how do we drift apart? There has to be a thruster to drive the compartments away from the doomed donut.
I can see that, I think. There's a big, wide lump around the keel in the bulkhead facing Weapons.
A lot of tubing runs into it from small tanks slung around the compartment. Conduit too. Must be a small chemical thruster, just enough to kick the compartment away. Five or ten seconds of burn time, just a pittance of delta-v...
The Tachyon-Detection Technician volunteers, "I was in Sixty-seven Dee." His attitude says that means something. Maybe it does to veteran Climber people. It rings no bells with me. Maybe if he told me her Commander's name-----A few successful patrols can make a Commander famous. The Old Man is one of the current crop. No one knows from hull numbers. A ship has to be big and have a name before it becomes famous. I'd barely heard of the Eight Ball before reaching TerVeen. But I know Carolingian and Marseilles and Honan well, and all they ever did was get skragged. Dramatically, of course. Very damned dramatically, with the holonets beating the drums all the while.
Fisherman wants priming. He's like a brand-new acquaintance who hands you a holo of the kids, then, embarrassed by his own temerity, bites his lips and awaits your comment. "What happened?"
"Not that great a story, I guess." He manages to look both sorry he's spoken and mildly disappointed in me. Sixty-seven Dee must be one of the legends of the Fleet.
"I don't know. I haven't heard it."
Junghaus doesn't look old enough to be a veteran. He can't be more than nineteen. Just a pimplyfaced, confused kid who looks two sizes too small for his uniform. Yet he has four little red mission stars tattooed on the back of his left hand, over the knuckles at the roots of each finger. "Catch a fistful of stars..." They'll creep along the next rank of knuckles now. A
barbarous custom that's scrupulously observed. One of the superstitions.
Half the crew is under twenty. They're the influx from Canaan. The older men are Regulars from the Fleet.
The Old Man calls this the Children's War. He seems to have forgotten his history. Most of them are.
Fisherman thinks it over and shrugs. "We lost hull integrity in Engineering. We weren't even in action. Just running a routine drill. Lost everybody in the compartment. Couldn't get through to seal the breach. All the suits were stored there. Regulations. The rest of us had to gut out twenty-two days before we were picked up. The first two weeks weren't that bad. Then the stored power started to go..."
A shadow crosses his almost cherubic face. He doesn't want to remember, and can't help it. His effort to stay here with me produces a visible strain.
"Engineering supposedly has better protection. Guess that's where you can get killed the quickest."