THE helicopter ride out was hot and smoky, the rising sun baleful on a bloody horizon. As they slid into position over the green-and-white turbulence of the wake, Dan reached for a handhold. Ever since he’d seen one explode in midair, helos made him nervous. From the cockpit, Ray “Strafer” Wilker glanced back, and mimed pulling his seat belt tighter.
Red Hawk 202, Savo Island’s SH-60, dropped from the sky in a weave that left Dan’s semicircular canals tumbling. Some kind of evasive maneuver, but why execute it now? The violet line of land off to starboard was Egypt. Friendly territory, last he’d heard. Though in this part of the world, one year’s enemy could be the next’s ally.
A powerful argument for a navy that could shift its positions within days; off one coast one week, but thousands of miles away the next.
That was happening now. Savo was redeploying, part of an unannounced, yet undeniable, pivot of force eastward. Below the helo, the cruiser’s stern came into view. The white circle-and-cross of the landing pad grew. The nose tipped up and the turbines whined, husbanding power for an emergency waveoff. Was the crisis both Niles and Szerenci had warned him about coming to pass? Probably not. There’d always be threats, and rumors of war. Nothing to do but be ready, as best he could.
But was he? Sandy Treherne hadn’t seemed to think so.
Not for the first time, he wondered if he was really the guy for this job. His shiphandling was above average. And he was pretty sure he could fight the ship to her limits in a multithreat air-surface-subsurface scenario. But the great names they’d read about at Annapolis—Nelson, Jones, Farragut, Spruance, Nimitz—hadn’t gone in for much self-questioning, at least according to the biographies. “Don’t give up the ship.” “Damn the torpedoes.” They’d known exactly what to do, and had been utterly determined to do it. Gut fighters, bruisers, eager to close for the kill.
Survivor guilt, a civilian psychiatrist had called it. Maybe. Sometimes the faces of the dead, and their screams, startled him awake in the depths of the night. Had Farragut and Nimitz heard those screams? Did every commander have to wall off this self-doubt, and buckle the iron mask of command tight over the human features beneath?
A double thump, a lurch, and they were down. He unbuckled the stinky cranial, checked that his pisscutter was tucked in his belt, and grabbed his briefcase. Actually, Blair’s; she’d given it to him, saying she needed a new one and he might as well replace his battered antique. Sunlight cut a rectangle from the fuselage. Wilker yelled something unintelligible and pointed to the exit. Dan groped his way down the wire that lowered the access ladder to the rough gray nonskid.
Into brilliant light, equatorial heat like a stoked furnace, a dusty tan sky pureed by whirling blades; in his nose the hot blast of ship exhaust, turbine exhaust; sandy grit in his teeth. And bent forward, advancing to meet him, Cheryl Staurulakis’s chunky figure in coveralls and flight deck boots. “Welcome back, Captain,” she shouted.
“Good to be back.”
“Let’s get out of this heat. Captain Racker’s waiting for you in the wardroom.” Making a keep-’em-turning twirl of her index to Strafer, she turned away toward the hangar, her blocky little rear end beckoning him on.
* * *
THEY had iced tea and day-old upside-down cake in the wardroom. The air was so icy he shivered. Wickie Racker, Jenn Roald’s chief of staff, nodded amiably and stood. They were both O-6s; Racker was numerically senior, but Dan’s decorations seemed to even them up. Racker didn’t look reluctant to leave. As they shook hands he said, “Crew’ll be glad to see you. How’d your testimony go?”
Dan shrugged. “Well enough I’m back, I guess.”
“Let’s be grateful for that. Some tea? This isn’t bad.”
Dan took the glass the XO poured, and sucked down half before coming up for breath. Staurulakis was saying, “Bird’s on deck for a hot refuel, but the longer we wait, the farther they’ll have to fly to get back.”
“I’m packed. Dan, any questions?”
“Just, what’s changed while I’ve been gone? Cheryl, you said on the phone we completed the rearm.”
She handed him a clipboard and a Hydra, the intraship radio they used when the J-phones weren’t convenient, and sometimes when they were. “Yes sir. Here are the eight o’clock reports, combat systems weapons inventory, and this morning’s DSOTs and engineering reports. Three hundred and thirty-eight bodies including the air det. Chief engineer reports indications of water in the CRP; otherwise engineering’s green. Inertial navigation was down yesterday, but repaired this morning. Captain’s mast is scheduled this afternoon, unless you’d rather postpone.”
“Might as well hold it now, while we’re in transit. Current orders? Remember, I’ve been out of the loop.”
“Proceed east, refuel in Djibouti, join up with TF 151 near Hormuz. Past that, participate in Malabar exercises and Hash Highway patrol ops in the western Indian Ocean. Then possibly Deep Saber.”
He nodded. Djibouti was a routine refuel. Malabar was a multinational exercise he’d refereed before as a rider. Deep Saber would be new, an antiproliferation exercise out of Singapore. But nothing in this part of the world could be counted on to proceed as scheduled. Which Racker confirmed when he added, “You should know, if you haven’t already heard, the Iranians are threatening to close the strait again, over Yemen. I know, what else is new, but there it is.”
“Okay. Thanks. Cheryl, when’s our next self-defense drill? Damage-control-team training? We’ve got a couple of slow days before the Arabian Sea. Let’s be sure we’re up to speed.” Racker cleared his throat and Dan swung to him. “Sorry, Wickie—you’re still officially in charge.”
“Not much to add. Ready to relieve?”
“I relieve you, sir.”
“I stand relieved, sir.”
With that handshake, those ritual words, proffered on U.S. Navy quarterdecks for over two hundred years, command had officially passed. He felt, almost physically, the weight of his ship descend once more. Whatever she accomplished or failed at was now his responsibility, and his alone. It was sobering, but at the same time, exhilarating. No, that wasn’t the word either. There actually wasn’t a word for how command felt. He coughed into a fist, the dust irritating his esophagus. “XO, I really should go back and see him off, but can you accompany Captain Racker aft, make sure he gets off okay? I want to get my bearings in CIC. While we have a breathing space.”
* * *
THE Combat Information Center smelled like an ice cave in some far northern glacier during the season of darkness. He shivered; his khakis were still soaked with sweat from the helo ride. But the electronics liked it cold.
In the dim light four rows of consoles, about half of them manned at the moment, channeled data to the four full-color large-screen displays, LSDs, that glowed to port. Dan strolled to the padded leather reclining chair stenciled CO and nodded to the lieutenant and the chief at the command desk. They murmured “Captain” but didn’t rise. As was proper, since they were on watch.
His priorities were to operate, navigate, and communicate, in that order. He had to maintain both the ability and the situational awareness to fight and defend his ship at all times. If weapons, engines, or generators were degrading, he needed to regain those capabilities, to restore his warfighting capability.
He also couldn’t do that if he collided with one of the scores of other ships that transited this international waterway each day. Along with safe seakeeping, he had to reach his next objective in a timely fashion. Getting where he was supposed to be, when he was tasked to be there, dovetailed with “operate.” This was mainly a function of the engineering systems, though positionkeeping and bridge watchstanding also factored in.
Finally, he had to communicate. Keep the crew, ships in company, and his bosses informed as to his location, status, and intentions, while not screwing the pooch in one of the many ways ships’ captains had come up with in four thousand years of sailing the high seas, from being swallowed by Charybdis to inadvertently crossing some new UN redline.
He leaned against his chair, examining the screens as printer paper fluttered from the air vents. The subfreezing air always blew down the back of his neck, and after several hours in here, his headaches would be excruciating. The sailors had taped the paper to the vents to deflect the cold breeze away from their consoles.
The air display, with so many winking green lines pointing in every direction it looked like a surface of cracked ice, was superimposed on an outline map of the Red Sea. It was slaved to the satellite-downlinked Global Command and Control System. GCCS—usually pronounced “Geeks”—coordinated U.S. land, sea, and air forces, all the way from national command authority, to component commands, right down to every division, air wing, and ship. Updated and overlaid by data from Savo’s Aegis, the screen displayed air and surface activity from the south Med to the tip of the Horn of Africa. A second screen had the local surface picture up, fed from the radar and nav system. Readouts showed each contact’s course and speed, and predicted its closest point of approach to Savo. A glance reassured him they were clear. He checked the fathometer readout, and at last gave the helo “green deck”—the clearance to launch.
The 1MC crackled on, and four bells sounded. “Captain, United States Navy, departing.”
The third screen toggled to video, a camera pointing down from the 04 level at the helo deck, from which Red Hawk was lifting off. Racker was on his way. Above the displays, text readouts presented the status of the various combat systems, a weapons inventory, daily radio 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.
Dan leaned on the back of the reclining chair that would be his during general quarters. The days of eyeballing the horizon for an enemy sail, of hours spent maneuvering for advantage before carronades or turreted guns roared, were long gone. Savo had a little armor—hardened steel, lined with a Kevlar layer against spalling—but antiship warheads would punch through it. If an enemy ever got within sight, Dan would most likely already be dead, his crew blasted apart, drowned, roasted alive, or sliced into bloody bulgogi by flying metal.
A twenty-first-century cruiser’s main mission was to knock down all the incoming weapons possible, until her magazines were empty. Then, position herself between the carrier and the threat, and soak up the final weapons with her own steel. Take the hit, protect the higher-value target …
“Hey, Dan. Good to see you back.”
He turned to Donnie Wenck’s blond cowlick and slightly mad blue eyes. The chief held up a green wool sub-style sweater. “Wanna borrow? Cold as the ass end of Pluto in here.”
“It’s ‘Captain,’ Donnie, or ‘Skipper.’ Not ‘Dan.’”
“Sorry, sir, keep forgetting. Wait a minute, I heard something on the 1MC. Racker’s gone, yeah? I didn’t like that guy. Too fucking friendly.”
“I don’t need your opinions on the outgoing CO, Chief. How’s the system?” Wenck, who’d come to the ship from the Tactical Analysis Group along with Dan, was the “SPY chief,” in charge of maintenance and operation of the massive radars that guided her weapons.
Wenck turned back to the Aegis console, and a chubby-faced girl blinked vaguely up at Dan. “Hey, Petty Officer Terranova,” he said.
His lead radar systems controller turned a dial, and the familiar five-pops-a-second audio of the outgoing beam echoed like a query from some extragalactic civilization. She tapped her keyboard, and the raw video came up on the rightmost screen. An orange, slowly fading beam, clicking, not sweeping, in a clockwise march across the face of East Africa. There was the Rift Valley, where the first human had made the first weapon.… She muttered, “Hinky CFA, and I’m gonna have ta replace one of the switch tubes.”
Wenck said, “ALIS is being a hooker, as usual. Otherwise, you got about 98 percent. You know that Aegis math—one plus one equals four.”
“Chill water system still tight?” The chief nodded, and Dan lowered his voice. “And has Lieutenant Singhe throttled back on pissing off the goat locker?”
Wenck shrugged, as if talking about human beings bored him. Dan lingered for a while, then undogged the door and climbed two flights of metal ladders up to the bridge level.
Brightness and heat. Scarlet dust fine as mercury oxide coated the chart table, the top of the steering console, the objectives of the binoculars. Outside the windows, the green sea, flat and calm today, and the purple land far off. Not a single cloud. Two ships in sight, a tanker, low in the water, and a high-piled containership farther off, both blurred by the invisible dust hanging in the air, the shimmer of heat boiling off the water. Both stern to, which agreed with the radar picture.
Matt Mills and Noah Pardees turned to salute. Mills, the tall lieutenant, had joined them from Jenn Roald’s staff. Pardees, languid and almost too thin to be seen sideways, was the first lieutenant, in charge of the deck division. A golf fanatic, he’d practiced his putting on the pier every evening in Crete. “Welcome back, Captain. Glad to see you again,” Mills said.
“Good to be here, guys.” Dan looked past them, inspecting the horizon. “Keep your lookouts alert. Some of these little dhows are just about transparent to radar, and a lot of containerships go through here. We don’t want to hit anything that fell overboard.”
Pardees murmured an aye aye, and Dan wandered the bridge, greeting the helmsman, the quartermaster, the boatswain, the junior officer of the deck, and the gunner’s mates on the remote operating consoles for the chain guns. “Good to have you back, sir,” they murmured, though none seemed terrifically enthusiastic about it.
He understood why. He went out on the bridge wing and checked aft. Then gazed down into green water churned to white froth, listening to the steady roar of the bow wave as Savo’s stem ripped through it at twenty knots. Only then did he hoist himself into the leather command chair, grinning. With the drill schedule he’d directed, hardly anyone would get enough sleep in the next few days. They all knew by now; the word flew around a ship like telepathy. But a busy crew, even if they bitched, were happier than one with time on their hands. And far better a trained and tired crew on the screens and damage-control parties, than a rested, sloppy one.
A message he’d gotten loud and clear watching his own COs in the past, both those who’d driven hard and those who’d let the reins dangle.
“Coffee, Captain?” The gangling, pimply-faced Longley, holding a tray as if tempted to throw it overboard. Skippers no longer had stewards, per se, but they did usually have a culinary specialist to look after them if operations drove hard. He’d seen some men abuse the relationship, using the seaman as a personal servant. The essential thing was that he never show Longley any favoritism. So far it seemed to be working, but not because of any excessive effort on the kid’s part. The steward looked as rumpled and sloppy as usual in a stained white mess coat. “Chili dogs today. You gonna want lunch up here?”
“Let’s say yes for now. Especially if traffic picks up.”
“I set your shit, I mean your stuff, up in the at-sea cabin. And your computer.”
“That’s good. How you been, Longley? Pull any liberty in Crete?”
“Went to the zoo. That be all, sir?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. Is the shower still—”
“It’s unfucked, sir. Just let the hot run for a minute or so.”
Bart Danenhower stepped up next. The chief engineer was big and bulky, with shaggy Hagrid eyebrows. Fittingly, he was a fan of the Potter books, leaving them in the engine spaces and offices. The CHENG wasn’t brilliant, but he worked hard and told the truth. They had a long conversation about the controllable reversible pitch propellers, which had some kind of leak or condensation no one had ever been able to locate the source of. “We change the filters, though, it goes away,” Danenhower finished. Dan glanced behind him to see who was next. The ship’s medic, HMC Grissett. “Oh yeah,” Danenhower added. “We still got that bug going around. I’ll let Doc Grissy bring you up to speed on that.”
The chief corpsman said that the sickness among the crew, which had gone away during their time in Crete, had surfaced again. “Got three at sick call just this morning, same symptoms. Dry cough. Chills and fever, spikes to a hundred and four. Muscle pain, lethargy, malaise; diarrhea. Even the people who recover, they feel like shit. Mopey. Slow. There’s some kind of ongoing syndrome here.”
“What the hell? We replaced the filters. Scrubbed down all the ductwork. Bart?”
Danenhower spread his hands. “We did it thorough, Cap’n. If it was in there, it’s dead.”
“But it’s not just up forward anymore,” Grissett added.
Dan rubbed his face. “The anthrax inoculations?”
“Bethesda says they’re safe. Anyway, a reaction to that wouldn’t surface weeks, months later like this.”
Was his ship itself somehow infected? Case after case, fever, chills, lassitude … one man had even died, in forward berthing, without a mark on him. “Okay, we’re not sitting still any longer. Draft another message for Bethesda. Info our chain of command. Outline the problem and the corrective action we took, and ask for immediate assistance on scene. Hand-carry that up through the XO. Clear?”
“Yessir.”
* * *
MAST was scheduled for 1330. Longley brought chili dogs and cold fries up on a tray and Dan ate looking out over the sea, observing a white sail far off. Savo, the tanker, and the containership were maintaining nearly identical speeds, churning along down the coast. Sudan was coming up to starboard, and he checked on the security teams, 25mms, and port and starboard machine guns. No boarder threat had been predicted, but it was wise to be ready. Saudi Arabia slid past to port, tan and violet as the sun glared down and the very sea glowed and shimmered with heat.
At 1300 Cheryl and “Sid” Tausengelt, the command master chief, came up to discuss the mast case. Tausengelt was older than Dan, small and lean, with receding hair and a deep-harrowed, leathery face. Staurulakis handed Dan the defendant’s performance record, then briefed. Arthur Peeples was an MMSN, a machinist’s mate seaman. He was accused under Article 134.
“Remind me.”
“Basically, indecent language, Captain.”
Dan suppressed his first response, which was that dinging a sailor for indecent language was like … anyway, that was Oldthink. “Uh, okay. Elements of the charge?”
Staurulakis read, “‘One: That the accused orally or in writing communicated to another person certain language. Two: That such language was indecent. Three: That, under the circumstances, the conduct of the accused was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.’”
“All right, three elements: that he said it, it was indecent, and it impaired discipline. Got it.” Dan leaned back, considering. Each week the command master chief, Tausengelt, convened a disciplinary review board in the chief’s mess. The DRB’s recommendations went to the XO, who conducted an inquiry and decided either to dismiss the case or to forward it for the CO’s nonjudicial punishment, or as the Navy had always called it, captain’s mast. “Did he admit saying it, Master Chief? What was his defense?”
“Sir, he admitted saying it, but he told us at the DRB it was a joke. Also, that the words didn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah, I’m not exactly sure why this case had to come up to me,” Dan told Staurulakis. “The way I read his records here, Peeples is a solid worker. A little rowdy ashore, but not enough to not rate a good-conduct stripe. Don’t we have some bilges somewhere that need scrubbing?” When she didn’t answer he added, “What exactly did he say?”
She looked off to starboard, squinting against the glare. “He called his supervising petty officer a ‘hucking skunt.’”
“Um … a what?”
She repeated the phrase, deadpan. Dan stared at her, then at Tausengelt. The master chief shrugged microscopically and averted his eyes.
“So, I assume his petty officer is female.”
“Correct. MM3 Scharner.”
“And this is symptomatic of something ongoing?”
“Peeples has a rep for blowing off authority,” the exec said. “Especially if that authority has a double X chromosome.”
“Okay, I guess … But what worries me is element two. They could reverse us on the grounds ‘hucking skunt’ is not actually indecent language.”
“Basically, he made that point, yessir,” Tausengelt murmured.
“It was intended as indecent,” Staurulakis said, but as if she was advancing it as an argument, not an assertion. “Therefore it’s indecent. If he calls the master chief here a rucking fetard, is that indecent?”
“It’s certainly offensive,” Dan granted.
“And prejudicial to discipline, if we let him get away with it,” the officer of the deck put in. Noah Pardees had come on at eight bells, noon. Tall, laid-back, dark as any inhabitant of the land to starboard, he honchoed First Division, usually the roughest gang aboard ship. By all accounts, the boatswain’s mates worshipped him. Dan and the XO stared at him. After a moment Pardees cleared his throat and strolled back to the far side, where he buried his face in the radar hood.
Dan’s next question was, “If it’s a sexual harassment thing, why aren’t we charging him under Article 93?”
The exec said, “We considered that. But according to the UCMJ, you can’t sexually harass someone senior to you. ‘Any person subject to this chapter who is guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression or maltreatment of, any person subject to his orders shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.’ I know, that doesn’t really make sense, but the specifications and elements haven’t caught up yet.”
Dan checked his watch against the clock over the nav table. “Look, we convene in five minutes. I need a shower. This guy’s a decent machinist. Possible career material. Bart’s gonna be there to vouch for him, right? But they call masts ‘delayed admin discharges’ now. With nonjudicial punishment in his record, he’s going to find it hard to get advanced. Or even to stay in, if his rate’s overmanned.”
“He should have thought of that before he called her names.”
He looked away from the exec’s flat gaze, sighing inwardly. Solomon would have shaken his head at some of the cases that came to mast. “Okay, let’s go on down.”
* * *
TICOS didn’t have a space well suited to holding a legal proceeding. In port, he used the bridge, but that was impossible under way. The wardroom had been cleared, and a fresh tablecloth laid. Staurulakis had set up the varnished lectern at which Dan presided so that he would be backed by the large canvas of the Battle of Savo Island that Tom Freeman, the artist, had donated to the ship. Dan ran down the laminated pages in the binder, making sure he had the names right. Checked the alignment of his ribbons on the fresh short-sleeved tropical white uniform. Glanced at the exec. She ran her eye up and down him, shoes to cap, and nodded. He cleared his throat. “Bring in the accused.”
The master-at-arms, Chief Hoang Quoc “Hal” Toan, thrust the door open. “Accused: forward, harch. Right turn, harch. Accused … halt. Come to attention. Uncover … two.”
They halted facing Dan, swaying with the very faint roll of the ship. Behind Dan stood Tausengelt and the exec. Behind the accused, others filed in: the injured party; the accused’s division officer and department head; and, an unexpected addition, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman so curvaceous it was hard to look away.
Lieutenant Amarpeet “Amy” Singhe. His strike officer, in charge of Savo’s offensive power. To his surprise, Singhe stepped up beside Scharner. Maybe he was imagining it, but he was pretty sure he could smell sandalwood even across the space between them.
There hadn’t always been that much of it. Space, that is. After dark, in his at-sea stateroom, she’d leaned forward, explaining her plans to flatten the ship’s hierarchy, modernize its management. He’d only just managed not to tumble her, he was fairly certain not unwillingly, onto his bunk.
He tore his attention off her breasts and focused on the tall, thin young man in front of him. He was white, as was his accuser, which removed one possible complication. At attention, but his eyelids drooped. His pale chin showed dark stubble. Haircut, within current regs. Shoes, polished. Whites, neat and clean. The fingers holding his cap next to his thigh were white too. With tension?
Dan said, “Seaman Arthur Peeples, you are suspected of committing the following violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: Article 134, in that you did use indecent language to a senior in your chain of command, to the prejudice of good order and discipline. You do not have to make any statement regarding the offense of which you are accused, and any statement may be used as evidence against you. Has the accused been notified of his rights?”
“Here, sir. Signed and witnessed.” Staurulakis placed pages on the lectern.
“You are advised that a captain’s mast is not a trial and that a determination here is not a conviction by a court of law. Further, you are advised that the formal rules that apply in courts-martial do not apply at mast.” When Peeples nodded Dan held up the paper. “Is this your signature?”
“Yes sir.”
“Do you understand this statement? And were your rights personally explained to you by the exec?”
A hesitation; then a firm “Yessir. I understand.”
“All right, good.” Dan gave it a beat; looked around the wardroom. Holding mast was the least favorite part of his job. Being judge, jury, and executioner. But he had a pretty good idea what punishment was in order here, or at least what the typical “award” was and thus what the crew would expect.
The purpose of mast wasn’t justice. As Melville had made perfectly clear in Billy Budd. Discipline first, consistency second—no one liked a capricious captain, or one who played favorites.
Dan focused on the now-perspiring young face in front of him. “Peeples, it’s essential we know exactly what happened, both from your point of view as well as that of your senior, Petty Officer Scharner.
“Now, both the chiefs and the XO felt her accusation warranted bringing you up before me. I will advise you personally that what is best for you right now is to come clean. Equivocate or lie, and life can get unpleasant very fast. Understand?”
A hesitation, then a nod. “All right,” Dan said, trying for a friendlier tone. “Now what’s your side of the story?”
“Well, sir … the petty officer, she always gives me the dirtiest jobs. I’m not sure why. I just came off watch, and I was tired, and I had the Savo crud—”
“The what?”
“That’s what they call it, Captain. Anyway, we’re shorthanded in the gang, and I’m headed for my rack when she tells me I’ve got to tear down the fucking … tear down the damn coolant pump. That’s a twelve-, fourteen-hour job, tear down and rebuild. And she wants it by tomorrow morning. I said, how about Petty Officer Alonso, and she said, she’s busy. And that she doesn’t want any back talk, she just wants that pump back on the line. I admit, I lost my temper. But I didn’t call her what she said I called her.”
“What did she say you called her?” Dan asked him.
“A fucking cunt,” Peeples murmured.
Dan cleared his throat, trying hard not to laugh out loud. “The charge sheet doesn’t say that. It quotes you as calling her a, um, hucking skunt. Is that accurate, Seaman?”
“Uh, yessir, that’s pretty much accurate.”
“Is it, or not?”
“Uh, yessir, that’s pretty much it. That’s what I said, sir.”
A beam of sun leaned in the window and explored the carpet. Dust motes milled through it. Sand, from the deserts of Arabia, the wastes of the Sudan. Was what he was doing here any more important than the milling of those motes? “What exactly is a ‘skunt,’ Seaman Peeples?”
“Sir?”
“You called her that. What is it? I am unfamiliar with the terminology.” God, he sounded so stuffy.
“A skunt’s like a low-class, um, bitch, sir. Sort of like a skank.”
“So there is such a word?”
“I don’t know if it’s in the dictionary.…” Peeples glanced at Tausengelt, as if for corroboration, but the senior enlisted’s visage was iron.
“Let’s set that aside for the moment, and focus on the fact that you intended it as an insult. Is that correct?”
This was the come-to-Jesus moment Dan had calculated on, and to his relief Peeples rose to it. How does a fish get caught? He opens his mouth. The seaman said, shamefacedly, “Yessir.”
“And it referred to her, specifically, as a female?”
Again the seaman said, “Yes sir,” looking at the deck.
Dan said briskly, “If you intended it that way, the specific wording, seems to me, is beside the point. Petty Officer Scharner, anything to add? Specifically, on the assertion you habitually award him the dirtiest jobs?”
The petty officer said, “He’s junior guy in the work center, Captain.”
“Chief McMottie. Any substance to the accused’s statement that Petty Office Scharner habitually awards the scuzziest jobs to male crew members?”
The senior engineering chief said, “Not to my knowledge, Captain. But we all had to work long hours, there in Crete.”
Dan polled the division officer, then Danenhower. Neither supported Peeples, though Danenhower added he was a conscientious watchstander and equipment operator. “He does have a smart mouth on him, but when he signs off on a maintenance job, it’s done right.”
Dan asked the exec, for form’s sake, if this was Peeples’s first appearance at mast. She said it was.
He looked at his notes, letting silence fall, to give the appearance of deliberation. A chipping hammer clattered somewhere far aft. To dismiss the case wouldn’t help discipline. He could assign extra military instruction, which would make the kid work extra hours. But that didn’t mean much when you were pulling eighteen-hour days anyway. Plus, usually the chiefs or the exec awarded EMI; it was below the CO’s pay grade. And restriction to the ship didn’t mean squat when they were under way.
The harshest punishment he could impose was thirty days’ restriction and extra duty, reduction in rank to seaman recruit, and dock half Peeples’s pay for three months. Any of that could be suspended, and he’d normally suspend the bust and pay. This way he could give the guy a second chance, and if he screwed up again, he knew he’d get hammered.
The key was consistency, and Dan cleared his throat. “In previous cases, my predecessor as CO awarded hefty punishments for violating this article. And rightly so. This being my first time holding mast aboard Savo, I don’t see any reason to veer … I mean, vary from that precedent. However, as this is Seaman Peeples’s first time at mast, there may be grounds to—”
“Excuse me, Captain. If I may?”
He glanced up, taken aback. “Lieutenant Singhe?”
Singhe took a step forward, leading Scharner with her. “With all due respect, sir, the typical punishment will not suffice in this case.”
Dan frowned. “Explain why not.”
“This isn’t just a case of a seaman mouthing off to his petty officer. However phrased, the fact remains he called her, let’s speak plainly here, a ‘fucking cunt.’ It typifies a widespread and growing problem on this ship: a lack of respect for authority, when that authority happens to be female. We need to make it crystal clear the command supports its female members.”
The wardroom suddenly seemed a lot quieter. Dan looked from her, to Peeples, to Staurulakis. The exec’s eyes were narrowed, but she wasn’t disagreeing. Then back to Singhe. “Are you acting as some sort of prosecutor here, Lieutenant? Because there’s no such position at a captain’s mast.”
Singhe said, “I’m acting as a spokesperson for Petty Officer Scharner and the other women in the crew. Since no one else seems to be standing up for them.”
“There’s no position for female spokesperson, or ombudswoman, or whatever you want to call it.” Dan curbed his angry tone too late, but the comment about “no one else” had stung. He said more evenly, “I’ll take your comments under advisement for the command policy board.”
“Aye aye, sir,” she said, stepping back. Lifting that goddesslike profile, widening her eyes and lifting her gaze, as if calling on some higher authority as witness.
He looked down again, seething. Singhe had wrecked his plan. He’d been going to award Peeples restriction and dock him three months’ pay, and not suspend any of it, making clear that the reason was the slur he’d used wasn’t just a general insult, but a specifically sexual slur. But if he did that now, he’d look as if he’d given in to Singhe, caved to feminist pressure. While if he went easy, it would look as if he were supporting any male crewman who felt resentful about having a female boss.
Damn it.… He cleared his throat again and rasped, “I just came from commissioning a destroyer named after a woman who died under my command. USS Cobie Kasson. Any idea we’re not supporting our female members is flat wrong.” He gave it a beat, then went back to the formula. “Are there any more witnesses you’d like to call, or additional statements or evidence you would like to present?”
Peeples shook his head, looking enervated, but beside Dan, Tausengelt stirred. The senior enlisted adviser growled, “Captain, a comment.”
“Speak your piece, Master Chief.”
“Basically, I agree with what you said and all, the command policy about supporting female members. But on the other side, it’s not really fair to try this kid on how politically correct he is when he loses his temper. Or give him some kind of extra punishment because of it.”
Dan sighed again, inwardly. Now he had Tausengelt, McMottie, and the chief master-at-arms, the three most influential chiefs on the ship, glaring at Singhe and Scharner, while beside Dan, Staurulakis was staring at him expectantly. He harrumphed and they all looked at him. “I appreciate everyone’s input. After due consideration, I am imposing the following punishment: sixty days’ restriction to the ship and half pay for three months, the half pay to be suspended for a period of six months. To clarify this, Peeples, you’ll serve the EMI and restriction. If you succeed in not repeating your offense for six months, your pay will not be docked. But if you screw up like this again, I’ll revoke the suspension and your pay reduction will start then.
“I strongly advise you to take this opportunity to revise how you interact with your seniors. Petty Officer Scharner, you are reminded to exercise fairness and restraint in dealing with your juniors, just as you expect fairness from those above you in the chain of command.” He paused, but got only weak “Yessirs” from them both. He snapped, “Dismissed.”
“Accused: Cover. Ready … two. About face,” said Toan. “Forward … harch.”
When the door closed on them Dan snapped the binder shut and handed it to the exec. She looked remote. Singhe, angry. Danenhower, puzzled. The chiefs left quickly, speaking to none of the officers.
The chief engineer, still frowning, went to the sideboard and valved coffee into a heavy mug. “Uh, what just happened?” he muttered.
“You think that was a fair sentence, Bart?”
“For Peepsie? Oh, sure. Pretty much what they usually get, right? For a first-time fuckup. But what was all that from Amy?” He lowered his voice, glancing toward the exec. “And the XO nodding, agreeing with her?”
Dan didn’t answer. He’d hoped this whole Singhe versus the Chief’s Mess fight was over, but it looked like it was on again. He raised his voice. “Cheryl, we need to talk. About the exercises. We’re heading into dangerous waters. I want us to be ready.”
“Yes sir. Certainly, sir,” his exec said, expressionless, gaze eluding his. She flipped her PDA open. “Let’s see what we have planned.”