THE next day, as tugs chuffed and strained alongside in brilliant winter sunlight, Dan climbed the boat ladder to the main deck. A boatswain’s whistle trilled from the gray ramparts. A bell gonged, and the 1MC intoned hollowly, as if from the belly of a brazen idol, “Captain, United States Navy, arriving.”
Savo Island rolled beneath his feet. A smoky haze above the city linked fingers with a mist over the water. The hills marched along with them as the tugs churned her stern-first toward an outer anchorage. As he reached the quarterdeck a blast of diesel exhaust blew across, rasping in his throat. A double line of chiefs and officers in blues snapped to attention, swaying in a buffeting wind. Dan right-faced aft, saluted a streamed-out flag, and nodded to the officer of the deck. “I have permission to come aboard.”
“Very well, sir.”
The OOD’s arm snapped down. He looked apprehensive. No one in the double line of sailors Dan paced between was smiling either. Another gust, and a white hat flew off, hit the deck, and rolled into the scuppers. The now-bareheaded sailor, whose name tag read Benyamin, winced but held his salute, lips paling, as dirty water darkened the bleached cotton. Dan ran his gaze along one rank, then the other, noting not so much the details of uniform as the faces.
He dropped his salute, and a ragged line of arms snapped down. He wheeled out of the wind, into the quarterdeck passageway that led from one side of the ship to the other.
A slight, balding, painfully thin commander in khakis hovered beside the watertight door that, if the layout here was the same as it had been aboard Horn, led to Officers’ Country and the wardroom. Moisture sparkled on his forehead. He murmured, “Captain, welcome aboard, sir. I’m Fahad Almarshadi. Your exec.”
Dan eyed the tentatively extended palm, but didn’t take it. “I understand there’s a temporary OIC. From the DesRon staff.”
“Yessir. He sent his respects, but said he had to stay on the bridge.” Almarshadi retracted his palm, smoothed slicked-back hair with it, and swallowed. “Shall I—shall I take you up there now?”
“That’d be best.” Dan took the lead to show he knew his way. Outside the wardroom the decks were torn up; their footsteps crunched on rusting metal. “What’s all this?”
“Sir, Captain Imerson didn’t like this old blue terrazzo. He wanted it chipped up and replaced. I’ve got the—”
“How many man-hours have you wasted on that?”
Almarshadi sucked air but didn’t answer, falling in behind Dan as they reached a ladder up. The climb seemed longer than on Horn, and he remembered the two additional decks an Aegis cruiser had. Decks crammed with radar equipment, transmitter rooms, and a much larger combat information center. Sailors gaped as they hove into view, then faded into side passages.
A watertight door thunked open, and they emerged onto a wide-windowed bridge filled with sunlight and thronged with uniforms. Conversations stopped. The faces turned to him were appallingly young, unlined, apprehensive. He pushed through a nearly tangible web of quickly dropped glances to the centerline of the pilothouse. Shading his gaze against the glare, he swept the harbor. Peered down at the anchoring detail, who were standing about in yellow hard hats down on the forecastle. Then paced out onto the wing to check aft. He didn’t much like leaving port stern-first, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it at the moment, since the tugs had her in hand.
The officer in charge introduced himself and offered a few terse sentences. Savo Island was in a lightened condition. The barges alongside held her fuel. All potable water had been pumped into the harbor. The six hundred five-inch rounds forward had been walked aft to raise the bow. Dan asked about damage. The OIC said the ship’s damage-control teams had found no leaks or sagging bulkheads. A port engineer from Norfolk and a combat systems engineer from Surflant were aboard. Savo was proceeding to anchorage Bravo 4, where divers would inspect the shafts, screws, and hull. “You might actually get off without a dry-docking,” he finished.
Dan said, “That’d be nice. How do you want to handle the turnover?”
“Ready when you are. Here and now, if you want.”
“Got the keys?”
“Firing keys? Right here.” He lifted them off over his head, on a glinting steel-bead neckchain, and handed them over.
When Dan settled them around his own neck they still felt warm. He searched around the harbor again, glanced astern. “Thanks, I’ve got it.—Who has the conn?”
“I do, sir.” A woman’s voice. A lieutenant. Raven hair, black arched eyebrows, the profile of a Hindu goddess. “The pilot’s on the starboard wing.”
He went out and introduced himself. The pilot, a cigarette stuck to his lip, looked him up and down, grimaced, then went back to instructing the tugs in rapid Italian on his handheld. Dan studied the distant double hump of Vesuvius, a powdery purple against the glorious gold morning light.
Usually there was a ceremony. The crew was mustered with traditional pomp to witness the turnover of command. But he didn’t have an outgoing skipper present; there would be no briefings by the man he was relieving, and by now every man and woman aboard knew he was here. Probably his official bio was being circulated on the LAN, and anyone who knew anyone who’d served with him was regaling his shipmates with embroidered Dan Lenson sea stories.
So … forget the ceremonials. As, he vaguely recalled, Ernie King had done without, when he’d left Lexington back in the thirties. Maybe what they needed most was just to know someone was in charge. “Shipwide circuit. All hands,” he told the boatswain’s mate, who flicked switches and bent to the mike, fitting his pipe to his lips. An earsplitting shriek echoed from every speaker on deck and rebounded from the slowly receding castle walls. The forecastle team flinched and looked up.
Dan gave it a second, then took the mike.
“This is Captain Daniel V. Lenson, United States Navy, speaking. In the next day or so I hope I’ll have the opportunity to meet each of you. I will now read my orders.
“‘Proceed to the port in which USS Savo Island may be and upon arrival, report to your immediate superior in command, if present, otherwise by message, for duty as commanding officer. By order of the Chief of Naval Operations.’”
He lowered the paper to find everyone on the bridge looking away. When their gazes swung back, something had altered in them. Infusing them with a new wariness. With … foreboding? Suspicion? Respect? It was difficult to say exactly, but it was plain; some invisible barrier now stood between him and every other person on the bridge.
The dark-haired woman cleared her throat. “Captain, this is Lieutenant Singhe. I have the conn. We’re under way cold iron, en route to anchorage B4.”
“Very well.”
“Do you have any orders for the conn?”
“The standing orders will remain in effect until further notice.” He stood waiting, but no one said anything. After a moment more, he went out on the wing, to consult again with the grimacing pilot.
* * *
HE told the XO he’d meet with the wardroom that afternoon. When the anchor was down and holding and the divers’ barge was alongside, Almarshadi called the bridge to say they were ready. Dan glanced down a ladderway on his way aft to see a steady stream of sweaty sailors hustling along the main deck passageway. Curious, he called down. They were coming back from up forward, where each had dropped a five-inch shell off at the forward magazine, then headed aft for another.
Standing in the torn-up passageway, he examined the maze of pipes and ductwork in the overhead. Noting dust, flaking paint, the evidence of too-casual maintenance, but not really thinking of that yet. Mulling, instead, how he was going to roll in, and fighting a gut-worm of nerves. Shit, you’d think he’d have gotten over this by now. But apparently not.
He’d taken on troubled ships before. Gaddis. Horn. But Savo Island was a major command, the kind of unit the Navy expected to be forged of hardcore blackshoe haze-gray steel through and through. Instead something had infected and dispirited her crew. He hoped they could avoid a dry-docking. That’d get them under way faster, and a ship under way was happier and tighter.
But fixing a damaged crew could be harder than repairing a damaged hull.
He remembered Imerson’s tortured glance, and his muttered, “They needed a scapegoat.” Had Savo’s last skipper been the victim of a deeper problem? Or had he been the problem?
He wouldn’t have long to make that determination, and figure out what to do about it.
“Attention on deck,” Almarshadi shouted. Twenty men and women around the long blue-leatherette-covered table and in the lounge area started to their feet. A few he’d already met, the major department heads, as they’d come up to the bridge that morning. Cheryl Staurulakis, from an old Navy family, was his operations officer. Hermelinda Garfinkle-Henriques was the supply officer. Ollie Uskavitch was Weapons. It turned out he already knew his chief engineer. Bart Danenhower, a black-mustached Baylor grad, wore a blue-striped locomotive driver’s cap along with his ragged coveralls. He’d gained weight, and Dan recognized him only with difficulty; he’d been the repair officer on Horn. Almarshadi—his exec—was standing off to the side, wringing his hands.
They all looked so very damn young. Even the lieutenant commanders. How savvy and grizzled his own department heads had seemed, back when he’d first joined the aging and foredoomed Reynolds Ryan. Which lay now deep in the Irish Sea, some of those same men sleeping with her.
He shook his head, dismissing those memories. The glances of these young officers were all pinned to his chest. To the racks of ribbons that signified that, like the Cowardly Lion, he’d once or twice been brave.
Forget that, too. He started to gesture them to sit, then left them standing. “Good afternoon. I’ll make this brief. I’ll be putting my guidance out in detail in the form of a printed command philosophy and changes to the operations and regulations manual. But I wanted you to hear a few things from me personally.
“First of all, and above all: I believe in you. I’ve looked over your records, and this is a solid wardroom. As far as I’m concerned, those who fouled up have already paid. I’ll trust you, and I expect you to trust me.”
He paced, then stopped himself. A bad habit picked up from too many hours on the bridge. “Our destination is the East Med, a combat deployment on a national strategic mission executing a presidential directive. I can’t share what that directive is yet. But my philosophy is, the more you know, and the more our crew knows, the better. At the same time, I trust you to keep classified information within the skin of the ship. I’ll be discussing ways and means of doing that with the Comm-O.
“We’ll have to be combat ready again in as short a time as possible. I depend on you to do your jobs and do them well. If you feel that for any reason you can’t manage that, come and see me and I’ll arrange your transfer before we leave Naples.”
He looked from face to face. “I’m dead serious about that. If you don’t want to be aboard, or feel you’re being tasked beyond your capabilities, you don’t belong on Savo Island.
“I expect you and the chiefs’ mess to set high standards. Listen to your people; keep them focused; emphasize safety. Let me worry about the big picture. I want you obsessed with the details.
“Above all, I believe in meeting our operational taskings. Mission accomplishment has to come first. That’s what we’re sworn to do, and that is what we will do.
“But balanced against that is the welfare of the crew. All too often, we in the Surface Navy are tempted to meet our commitments at the expense of our people. And we can, for short periods of time. They understand. But if we keep shortchanging them, eventually our readiness bleeds away.
“So if you have a problem that affects combat readiness, bring it to your department head’s, or the XO’s, attention. But also if it’s an issue of crew safety, or crew health, or even elementary fairness, and you don’t think it’s being addressed adequately, or we’re not cutting someone the slack he or she deserves, come and see me personally. Night or day.”
He paused. What else? There was so much. Jimmy John Packer’s remarks about command. Old Captain Ross’s story of the three envelopes, when Dan had taken over Horn from him. No, he wasn’t interested in blaming anything on Imerson. That was in the past. Yeah, he’d beaten that to death.
But maybe those were the important things. Get her afloat—check. Get her inspected and under way—that was next. He coughed into his fist and glanced at the door. A curious face lurked outside the porthole, squinting in. “So, get ready to get under way. And once again, if you want off, see me today. After that, I’ll expect everybody to be on the team.”
He nodded once, curtly, and the exec darted like an alert starling to open the door.
* * *
HE climbed to the bridge again and ate lunch in his chair, looking out over the bay. His steward was named Longley, a pimply young mess crank who seemed tongue-tied in his presence. The anchor watch spoke in whispers. Around 1400 Danenhower, the chief engineer, came up to hand Dan his combination cap, which he’d left in the wardroom, and to report that the forward pump room was flooding. Either the grounding or the retraction had torn off the pit sword, a tube that sensed flow past the hull and thus speed through the water. His guys were pouring a patch, and they expected to have it under control in a couple of hours. Dan asked if he saw any problem getting under way without a pit sword; they could get speed off the GPS. Danenhower said he agreed, they could replace it later. Dan told him he wanted a full-power run if they were cleared to get under way and to start setting up for it. Danenhower nodded as if he’d expected it. He seemed to be the kind of chief engineer a skipper appreciated: not too creative, despite the locomotive engineer’s hat, but detail oriented and, above all, candid. You didn’t want any surprises from the engine room.
No one came up to ask to leave. He hadn’t expected anyone to, but the offer was on the table until midnight.
At last he climbed down and strolled aft along the weather decks, looking out at the harbor, then examining the horizon. The seas marched in from the open Med, and the wind was bracing but not so cold he wanted a jacket. He paused at the vertical launcher, rows of hatches set flush just aft of the helicopter hangar, and discussed VLS readiness with the groom team. No problem there, at any rate; both launchers were fully loaded out and ready to go.
Fahad Almarshadi was on the fantail, shivering as he discussed the inspection with a dripping wet-suited diver amid tanks and suits and regulators laid out on a sheet of green canvas. He fell silent as Dan came up. Dan looked over the side, down into turbid green water. Should he borrow a set of fins? Mask? No, they knew what to look for. “How’s it going?”
The dive supervisor nodded respectfully. “Captain. So far, you’ve got some little cracks on the leading edge of your blades on number two.”
“How serious?”
“Well, hard to say. We’ll finish the inspection, then get out of the water while you turn your screws at low speed. If there’s no vibration, there might not be major damage.”
“How about the sonar dome? I know we snapped off the pit sword.”
“Well, mostly what you got on your dome is scraped paint. She must have come in right between two bumps in the bottom. There might be damage we can’t see, though.”
“What’s your recommendation, Chief?”
“Well, sir, the safe thing would be to dry-dock, check everything out.”
Both men fell silent, watching him. Almarshadi fidgeted, almost dancing in place. Dan looked up past them at Savo’s towering superstructure. High on it the shieldlike SPY-1 arrays stared aft. They didn’t rotate, like conventional radars; their powerful beams were steered electronically, one array to each ninety-degree quadrant. “I need to get under way. Not spend two weeks in the yard.”
The diver looked away. “Well, sir, you’re the skipper. Way it works, I make my report, you decide what it means.”
“Okay, that’s fair. But if you don’t find anything worse than what you just briefed … Fahad, I want to get under way tomorrow at 0800.”
Almarshadi blinked. “Yes sir, but we’re still fueling. And we’re going to need to load food. They’re holding that for us. And a couple of days’ liberty for the crew would be—”
“We don’t have time for liberty. And we can get our loggies replenished from the strike group. I want a full-power run tomorrow. If no problems surface, we’ll press on toward our patrol area.” Dan looked at the radars again. “Which reminds me, do we have any superstructure cracks?”
“Cracks? No sir. Not that I’m aware of.”
He pointed up. “That’s an aluminum-magnesium alloy. Over time, salt water leaches the magnesium out. Once we’re under way, I want a structural-integrity inspection on everything from the main deck up. I also want some kind of steel plates fabricated—armor—around all our deck machine-gun mounts. There are four or five other safety and readiness items I want taken care of right away. I’ll do messing and berthing inspection with you tomorrow.”
Almarshadi nodded, hand trembling as he jotted rapidly in a green wheelbook. Dan thanked the diver, took a last look over the side, and headed forward again.
* * *
THE Combat Information Center smelled like the inside of a brand-new refrigerator. It looked strange with all the lights on and a seaman in blue coveralls rearranging dust with a push broom. Savo Island’s CIC was much larger than Horn’s had been. Four long lines of seats and consoles funneled toward four large-screen full-color flat-panel displays to port.
The overheads dimmed as Dan strolled toward the displays, flicking off one by one. He stood before them for some time, examining the presentations as a steady rush of icy ventilation stirred the hairs on his nape.
One showed hundreds of green lines pointing in seemingly random directions, superimposed on an outline map of central Italy. Air activity from Florence, to the north, to the Strait of Messina, to the south. A second displayed video from a camera installed, as far as he could judge, on one of the Phalanx mounts. The other screens were blank.
Above the large screens a dozen smaller text readouts presented the status of the various combat systems, a weapons inventory, unit daily call signs, and computer status summaries. The older displays were flickering green on black or orange on black. The newer ones had larger screens in full color and didn’t shimmer.
He leaned his weight on the back of the padded leather reclining chair that would be his during general quarters. The days of watching the horizon for an enemy ship, of hours spent maneuvering for tactical advantage before the guns roared, were long gone. Ticos had more armor than the Spruances they were based on—spaced, hardened steel, sandwiched with Kevlar spall liners—but antiship warheads, like armor-piercing shells, were designed to penetrate before exploding. If an enemy ever got in sight, he would most likely already be dead, along with most of his crew, blasted apart, drowned, burned alive, or sliced into ribbons by flying metal.
A twenty-first-century cruiser’s main mission was to shield higher-value units. To knock down all the incoming weapons she could, until her magazines were empty. And then, to position herself between the carrier and the threat, and look as much like that carrier as she could. To absorb the last missiles, and go down, if necessary, protecting the centerpiece of the task group.
There’d be a hell of a lot of information to take in, and he’d have to react fast. Imerson had probably gone through Aegis training as part of his command pipeline. He himself would have to learn on the job, and very quickly indeed. He’d told Roald he had no doubt of his ability to maneuver a Tico-class cruiser. And he didn’t. But as far as fighting her …
He took a deep breath. He couldn’t show his misgivings. No one else felt confident if the CO showed self-doubt.
Survivor guilt, the civilian shrink had called it. Part of what he felt, maybe. But the trouble was, Daniel V. Lenson had always wondered if he was good enough. Sometimes he’d done all right. Sometimes he hadn’t, and the faces of the dead and the accusations of being a modern-day Jonah had corroded like acid. Did every commander have to wall off this doubt and fear? Maybe he was some kind of imposter. Just faking the role of Naval Academy grad, surface line officer, Medal of Honor winner, commanding officer …
“Hey, Dan.”
He turned to confront Donnie Wenck’s bland smile and slightly insane-looking bright blue eyes. The first class’s blond cowlick was sticking up, as usual, and as usual his hair pushed the boundaries of the regs and his blues looked as if he’d slept in them. Dan had worked with him on classified missions to Korea, the Philippines, and the Gulf. Sometimes it was difficult to get through to him. But his aw-shucks demeanor and occasional spaciness disguised a mastery of arcane software fixes, and in a tight spot—such as being trapped by the whole Iranian navy beneath the calm blue Gulf in a stolen submarine—no one remained more coolly riveted to the task at hand.
Behind Wenck, in winter blues, stood a clean-shaven white-haired civilian in suit and tie, and Lieutenant Mills, in khakis. They were reef-knotted around a female second class in the blue one-piece ship’s coveralls, who hunched at a console behind and to the right of Dan’s own battle station. On her screen, four evenly spaced flame-orange spokes clicked around the compass. They didn’t sweep smoothly, like the radar repeaters he was used to, but snapped ahead in minuscule increments, refreshing several times a second. The display was deeply hypnotic and somehow unsettling. He had to tear his gaze away from it back to Donnie. “You’re out of uniform, Chief,” Dan told him. “And you’ll need to call me ‘Captain’ again.”
Wenck frowned, and the hollows beneath his eyes deepened. “Not a chief … sir. You know, the board turned me down.”
“And you’re on my ship now. Which means I can jump you a rate. A command promotion.”
The blue eyes blinked. “Ooh! Goat locker’s not gonna like that.”
“The other chiefs? They’ll live. So don’t give me any grief about it.” Dan leaned in to mutter into his ear, “You’re just gonna have to leave the fucking Game Boy in your duffel, all right? I don’t want to see it in CIC.”
“Well, I brought you something too.” Wenck nodded toward a large gray trunk with the kind of snap locks that meant electronic equipment. “Power-supply cards, signal-processing cards, crossfield amplifiers, IFF cards. The high-failure items.”
Dan traded glances with Mills. “I won’t ask where you got those, Donnie.”
“Good, ’cause I already forgot.” He bent to unspool bubble wrap from porcelain and metal. “And two of these. This is what actually turns your panels on and off. Don’t let ’em clink together, they’ll break.”
“Switch tubes,” breathed the second class. Even Mills looked impressed.
Dan turned to the civilian. At last, someone older than he was. He stuck out his hand. “Sorry, we didn’t get introduced. I’m Dan Lenson. You’d be our VLS groom guy?”
“No. Dr. William Noblos, from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.”
Uh-oh. “Sorry, my mistake. Doctor. That’s right, the commodore told me you were aboard. The Aegis expert.” He gave Noblos’s hand an extra pump, added a pat to the shoulder. He didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with this guy. “I’m very glad you’re with us. You have a stateroom, right?” Noblos nodded. “Wenck and Mills and I can use some high-level help. Have you and Donnie met?”
“Just getting acquainted.”
He looked down at the woman at the console. “And this is—”
“Fire Controlman Second Terranova, sir.” A soft voice, nearly inaudible under the whir of ventilation and cooling. When she glanced up lank brown hair framed a chubby face and chipmunk cheeks. “I’m ya senior SPY tech. They call me ‘the Terror.’”
Dan looked her over doubtfully. The work-center leader for the most vital piece of equipment aboard looked like she should be playing the trombone in a high school band. He started to ask how old she was, then decided he’d rather not know. And no way was he going to call her “Terror.” “Uh, good to meet you, Petty Officer Terranova. Is that New Jersey I hear?”
“Yessir. Just outside ’a Newark.”
Dan cleared his throat. “Don, did you see Rit yet? And Monty?”
“Rit’s still out in town. Monty didn’t make the plane.”
This wasn’t good, about either Henrickson not coming, or Carpenter being loose in Naples. The old sonarman had caused an international incident in Seoul, caught banging a fourteen-year-old Korean girl on the grave of a British soldier in the UN cemetery. “We need to get him aboard. Now. He got a cell?” Wenck nodded. “Call him. I want his ass aboard in two hours, or he can buy his own ticket back to Norfolk. —Doctor, can I quiz you for a couple minutes? I hear you’ve been riding us for a while—?”
“Since Rota.”
He’d read as much as he could find about the TBMD upgrade before leaving Washington. Years before, the Navy had started a program called LEAP Intercept, for low exoatmospheric antimissile projectile. It was designed to uprate Aegis and the Standard missile to the point they could shoot down Scud-type ballistic missiles in the midcourse phase, prior to atmospheric reentry. If it proved out, the Navy would have a new mission: protecting allies from the new missiles North Korea, Iran, and China were deploying. They’d also have a sturdy shield for U.S. operations overseas.
“Uh-huh. Well, can you background me on where we stand? Or—first, I guess, how about weapon loadout?” he asked the rider.
But Mills answered him. The lieutenant—originally on Roald’s staff, now seconded to Savo—nodded toward one of the overhead readouts. “Captain. That screen shows four SM-2 Block 4A theater missile defense missiles in your vertical launchers, along with Tomahawk, Harpoon, and Asroc.” It was carefully phrased, as if this were a diplomatic reminder; that Dan really knew all this.
“Okay, I see the callouts for those. But … there are only four Block 4As? The antimissile rounds?”
“The first four off the production line,” Noblos put in.
“I see.… So, what’s our system status?”
The white-haired scientist said, “Well, to background you, Captain … that would take some hours to do properly.”
“We can sit down later. And I want to. But give me the broad-brush now.”
“Well, you have a long-range surveillance and track function added to your AN/SPY-1. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the earlier baselines? The downside is, your install is a preproduction model. Not even really a beta version. So far the program’s had only two successful intercepts in five attempts. Also, several of your radar parameters are degraded and the rest are nominal.”
Dan glanced at Terranova. There was no greater insult to any sailor than to say his equipment was poorly maintained, and the stereotype of a typical shipboard fire controlman was one of a fairly temperamental person, both extremely intelligent and something of a prima donna. Essentially, a grossly underpaid Silicon Valley software geek. Surely there was no way she’d let such a direct insult go unchallenged.
But to his surprise the girl did not object, respond, or even look up. She just made a slight adjustment to a knob that did not seem to alter the display as far as he could see. Noblos too had paused, as if for a rebuttal, but now went on. “Mr. Mills and I can get into that, your transmitter power out versus your phase/frequency band. Along with Petty Officer … with Chief Wenck. But to summarize, your maintenance has not been kept up and your operator proficiency does not seem to be where it will have to be for a successful intercept.”
Dan looked at Terranova again; they were criticizing her; but still she didn’t respond. “Can we get up to those spec and proficiency benchmarks fairly soon? Or is this the kind of problem where I need to send a CASREP?” A CASREP meant that the ship’s capabilities were degraded; that it might not meet its assigned commitments.
Noblos cocked his head. “Well, it’s inherently a tough problem, hitting an incoming missile at a combined closing rate of over twenty thousand miles an hour. In my opinion—and this is not Johns Hopkins’s, just mine—this capability is being fielded too soon. It needs additional testing, and additional development. Which I gather is ongoing, aboard USS Monocacy at the Pacific test range.
“So the most accurate answer may be, I don’t really feel able to answer your question. At least, as specifically as you may want.”
Dan rubbed his face, getting a bad feeling. Just as he’d feared, the system was new and buggy. Maintenance was lagging, and his lead fire controlman seemed unwilling even to defend herself, let alone the ship.
Wenck said, out of nowhere, “Is it possible there’s a virus in the system?”
Noblos frowned. “A virus? No. That’s not possible.”
“That would degrade the parameters.”
“No. It’s just poor tuning, shoddy maintenance.”
Dan looked back at the readouts, remembering a ship that’d once had a virus. USS Barrett. Everyone had said that was impossible too. “Donnie, why do you bring that up? Do you think there’s a virus?”
“Hey, I ain’t even got my seabag unpacked, sir. But I’d like to make sure.”
“Wasted effort,” Noblos said.
Terranova just stared at her screen.
“Three hours.” Wenck held up a thumb drive. “Just to start with a clean slate.”
“I’d go with it,” Dan said, his tone making it not an order but a suggestion. Noblos shrugged and turned away, and just like that, he knew he’d gotten on the rider’s bad side.
He looked around the dim, chill, nearly empty space. Its ranks of vacant seats in front of unlit consoles were like the rows of seats in a theater before a play. He tried to relax, to rub the doubt off his face.
If this ship was really going to war, they all had a lot of work to do.