Claws That Catch votsb-4 Read online

  “You know her, sir,” Bill said. It was not a question.

  “Oh, yes,” Prael replied. “I can see you’re already developing the twitch. Captain, you may be a fine astrogator and experienced in space combat. But you have much to learn about how the Navy really operates. I will admit, though, that it is part of my duty to teach you. Very well, XO, as part of your professional development, I will instruct you in the proper method for wheedling Clerk Click. First, you compliment her on her hair — ”

  “But her hair is thinning and that style is — ”

  “God awful,” the skipper said, nodding. “Revolting, Disgusting. Compliment it. Then you ask how her dogs are getting on.”

  “Dogs?”

  “Pomeranians. Fat, hairy piranha with teeth. She had eight last time I dealt with her,” the CO replied. “Then you ask her if she’s lost weight. She will then fill you in on the details of her newest diet. You have to agree to try it since it’s amazing its effect.”

  “She’s lost weight?”

  “Never in my experience. Then and only then do you compliment her outfit. Since she appears to only have three such outfits, all equally revolting, in eye-searing colors that even the Adar would never wear, you have to lie through your teeth on that one. When you are done with complimenting her, listening to the latest medical horror story about her dogs or herself or both, when she is finished telling you to drink your own urine — ”

  “Surely not!”

  “Then and only then do you bring up the particular item that you need her to authorize,” the CO said.

  “But… the…”

  “Click. That God awful, revolting, disgusting… annoying doesn’t begin to cover it, click?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Captain,” Prael said sternly. “You are a United States Naval Officer. Did John Paul Jones flinch in the face of English gunnery? Did Spruance back off at Midway? Did Dewey flee from the Spanish? No. Nor shall you flee that God-awful click, Captain! If it makes you feel any better, we’re reasonably sure that the admirals, may their souls rot in hell, keep her in her position as a test of all XOs. To make CO, you have to be able to stand… The Click! If you can stand the Click, no lesser torture will do. But that is for tomorrow. Have you noticed the time?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Bill replied, accessing his plant. “I must have muted the alarm!”

  “Or never noticed it in the face of The Click,” Prael said, nodding. “It can do that. It’s a most amazing sound. But we have other places to be. Right. Now. Dress fast.”

  “How’s it going, son?” Steve Bergstresser asked.

  “I’m ready to go,” Eric replied, still fiddling with his collar button. It was that or stand around twitching.

  “Come ’ere,” his dad said, turning him around. He touched his son’s cummerbund into place and pulled a probably imaginary bit of lint off the spotless uniform. “It’s going to be fine. Admittedly, the chapel is packed…”

  “Oh God,” Eric groaned. “Dr. Pierson is going to have a heart attack! He can’t afford a wedding this big.”

  “Dr. Pierson is a former submariner,” Mr. Bergstresser said. “He’s practically bubbling over. He’s got three admirals and the Ccommandant attending. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a father of the bride happy about paying for a wedding.”

  “I just wish it was over,” Eric replied.

  “A common problem,” Steve said. “Weddings are for brides.”

  “And honeymoons are for grooms,” Josh added with a grin.

  “Watch your tongue, young man,” Mr. Bergstresser snapped. “All that the groom is required to do is show up on time.”

  “And reasonably sober,” Josh added, apparently unrepentant. “That’s your problem, Eric. You’re sober. I’ve got some moonshine…”

  “Quit playing the West Virginia hick, Josh,” Eric said. “It doesn’t go with the earring and the Goth look.”

  “It’s time,” Second Lieutenant Burt Tomlinson said, sticking his head in the room. The newly minted lieutenant was one of Eric’s fellow candidates, a group of whom were attending the wedding and acting as ushers.

  “Don’t lock your knees,” Eric’s dad said as they headed for the door. “You’ll pass out.”

  “They teach us that in Basic, Dad,” Eric replied. “And again in OCS.”

  “Yeah, and this is one time you’ll forget. And try not to stand rigidly at attention. It makes you look nervous.”

  “I’ve got two ways to stand when I’m wearing a uniform, Dad,” Eric said. “Attention or parade rest. Take your pick.”

  “You know,” SEAL Chief Warrant Officer Third Miller whispered as Weaver slid in next to him, “arriving after the bride could have permanently killed your career.”

  Miller had first met Dr. Weaver when the latter was sent to examine the then-new Chen Anomaly and figure out what was going on. He’d been caught in most of the resulting mess and suffered most of the resulting experiences. Along the way he’d developed a degree of admiration for the academic who was caught up in normal SEAL derring-do. Weaver hadn’t quit, hadn’t laid down, and just kept coming, no matter what the universe, gates and the Dreen threw at him. It also helped to have someone as smart as Dr. Weaver around when the problem wasn’t something you could shoot or blow up.

  More or less shanghaied for the first mission of the Vorpal Blade, Miller had been less thrilled about Commander Weaver. Weaver’s commission and advancement didn’t just smell of special privilege, it absolutely reeked of it. But, again, Weaver had been a good choice for the position of astrogator. The Blade ran into a lot of strange stuff between the stars and Weaver, with some assistance, had managed to figure out a way through over and over again.

  Captain Weaver was getting to be a bit much, though. Captains were supposed hoary old salts with eyes wrinkled from decades spent squinting into the sun. Admittedly, neither he nor Weaver was a spring-chicken, but Weaver had somehow managed to keep a boyish look, and boyishness, despite all the stuff they’d both seen and done. Looking at him in uniform, people sometimes wondered if he’d stolen his dad’s for dress-up.

  “What did Two-Gun do to deserve all this brass?” Weaver replied.

  From what Weaver had gathered, both Berg and his bride-to-be were popular in their hometown but since the wedding was relatively far from home, neither had the sort of universal showing you would expect. Despite that, the small chapel was packed out.

  On the bride’s side were her family and the parents of her three maids of honor. They fit in the two front rows. On the groom’s side, his family and a couple of friends from home also filled the two front rows.

  But immediately behind them was the sort of brass you’d expect at a major military wedding. Three admirals, ranging from the Chief of Astronautic Operations, Admiral Greg Townsend, to a newly minted two-star named Blankemeier, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the brigadier in charge of Force Recon. Each was accompanied by his wife. Behind them was a row of aides, including the Navy captain who was the aide to the CAO. Behind them was a row of ladies, presumably the wives of the newly minted lieutenants doing usher duty. Then more Marines, with a sprinkling of sailors, spilling over to the bride’s side.

  “The way I got it, Spectre asked for the day off to attend a wedding. He’s working for Greg Townsend now so Greg asked who was getting married. When the CAO said he was going to the wedding, the rest figured it was mandatory. Well, except Spectre. And the commandant.”

  Since the end of the Dreen War — and the more or less simultaneous end of the War on Terror as the mujahideen fed themselves to the Dreen in profligate numbers — there hadn’t been many opportunities for the military to excel. At least known opportunities. The still Top Secret Vorpal Blade project was the exception. The Marines and sailors of the Vorpal Blade had faced more threats than any five divisions of regular troops over the last two years. And the casualty rates had been on the same order.

  In other times and other wars it might have bee
n unusual to see the space version of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps turn up for the wedding of a Marine second lieutenant, no matter how decorated. But Two-Gun Berg was, by far and away, the best known of the Marine security contingent of the Blade. As such he was something of a celebrity within a very small and very black community. It didn’t hurt that he was a damned nice kid.

  “I mean, let’s just do the list, shall we?” Miller whispered. “Stopped the crabpus attack on Runner’s World while it was eating up the rest of the Marines like so much popcorn. Saved the conn of the Blade, more or less single-handed. Did the drop on Cheerick. Point man into the Dragon Room. Just about the last man standing in same. The guy who found the sole survivor of the HD 36951 colony. Point man in multiple EVAs on same mission. The guy who figured out how to survive the entry of the Dreen dreadnought. Killed a rhino-tank at short range, more or less single-handed. Last but not least, the guy who captured the aforementioned dreadnought, again single-handed.”

  “Hey, I was there for most of that!” Weaver whispered back. “So were you, and closer. And it wasn’t exactly single-handed.”

  “Quit mucking with my narrative,” Miller said. “Alvin York wasn’t exactly by himself. The point is the story that’s become Two-Gun Berg, the guy who keeps going into the fire and emerging unscathed. That is why the CAO, the commandant and ComLinSpac are here. Partially, it’s in homage to a fine Marine, partially, I think, that they’re hoping some of his luck, and a lot of what he did came down to luck, wears off on them. The brass that have seen the intel estimates must be shitting a brick.”

  “Which just makes the next mission that much more important,” Weaver said. “Speaking of which, you haven’t been in the meetings.”

  “Meetings of my own,” Miller said disgustedly. “There’s much black discussion of what to do about SEALs these days. I’m not on the next mission. I’m going to have to attend a four-day Conceptualizing Event called ‘Whither SEALs.’ The upside is, it’s in Maui. So you’re on your own this time.”

  “Shhhh,” Weaver whispered as the organist, who had been doodling along with various light music, suddenly shifted to the “Wedding March.”

  “Let’s hope this goes off without a hitch,” Miller nonetheless whispered back as a tall, blond girl entered the room holding the arm of her father. “I know people are going to take it as an omen, one way or the other.”

  Eric, frankly, didn’t remember much of the ceremony. He remembered seeing Brooke and thinking that she was just about the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life and then he was kissing her. All the bits in the middle were missing. He’d experienced the condition in combat before. One of the dozens of psychologists everyone on the missions had to talk to in after-action reviews had used the term “lack of ego awareness.” Things happened and then it was over. He apparently got his bits right.

  Normally, the bride was the first person out of the chapel. In this case, after the twosome paraded down the altar at the direction of the chaplain who ran the small facility, everyone else filed out first. When the chapel was clear, he and Brooke were directed to leave.

  He took Brooke’s arm and they walked down the aisle. He tried like hell to ignore the fact that the commandant was watching them. He also realized that he was walking so stiffly his legs were barely moving.

  When they exited the chapel the reason for the change became obvious. His fellow OCS cadets had formed a sword-arch outside the doors. He and Brooke walked through the aisle to cheers and a bit of boozy breath; the cadets had clearly started partying early.

  He helped Brooke into the limousine, then more or less tumbled in behind her.

  “Was this shiny?” he asked quietly. Brooke was looking a little frozen.

  “It was great,” she replied, her face breaking into a smile. Then she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, hard. “Perfect. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Eric said, finally able to breathe.

  “I was just surprised at some of the people,” Brooke said. “I didn’t want to get anything wrong in front of your bosses.”

  “Those people are my bosses the way that Bill Gates is the boss of a lowly Micro-Vac programmer,” Eric said. “I’m not even going to try to figure out why they asked to attend. All we have to do is survive the reception and we’re out of here.”

  “You just want to do more than what my mother refers to as ‘spooning,’ ” Brooke said, grinning.

  “I just want to get out from under the gaze of the commandant,” Eric said, smiling back. “Not to say that I’m not looking forward to tonight.”

  “And no alcohol for you at the reception,” Brooke said, crawling onto his lap. “At least that’s what Mom suggested.”

  “ ‘Wine giveth the desire but taketh the ability,’ ” Eric quoted.

  “Is that from the Bible?” Brooke asked.

  “Close,” Eric replied with a grin. “Shakespeare.”

  “Captain,” Admiral Townsend said, nodding at Weaver.

  “Admiral,” Weaver replied.

  The reception had turned into an odd affair. Held at the Quantico Officers’ Club, it was buffet style with tables and chairs but no defined places. It had started off rather aggressively split between the civilian attendees and the military. That slowly changed as it became evident that many of the civilians, the male ones at least, were former military. The town Eric and Brooke derived from had more than its share of veterans and while they tended to avoid the “brass,” they had been more than willing to seek out the more junior officers, and the few enlisted permitted for this occasion on hallowed ground, for conversation.

  The ladies, on the other hand, had completely ignored the civilian/military divide. Which had Brooke’s grandmother, who, with only few exceptions had never left the confines of a small West Virginia town, in deep conversation with Mrs. Admiral Townsend, both of whose children had been born outside the contiguous United States, one in Hawaii and one in Japan.

  “I’m waiting for someone to ask why we’re all here,” the CAO said.

  “You’re looking at the wrong captain, sir,” Weaver replied. “I’ve spent more than half my total career in black operations. I don’t ask questions unless they’re germane.”

  “Touché,” Townsend said, chuckling. “I’d forgotten you were in the black community before you got shanghaied.”

  “I wouldn’t call it shanghaied, sir,” Weaver replied, shrugging. “I volunteered.”

  “I talked to Jim Bennett, who in case you didn’t know it was the guy who greased your skids,” the admiral said, referring to a former Chief of Naval Operations. “He said he knew from the beginning that there wasn’t a Naval officer who was going to be right for the Blade, one who really understood space. One choice was pulling back one of the Navy officers with NASA. But most of them were more expert at near-space, which wasn’t going to get us anywhere. Then there were some officers associated with the Observatory, but they were a bit…”

  “Geekish?” Weaver asked.

  “Probably the best way to put it,” Townsend admitted. “But the SEAL after-action reports from the Dreen War indicated that you were anything but geekish. Bennett quietly arranged, without either you or Columbia realizing it, to pull you off the project over and over again, figuring you’d get fed up and try another tack. When you volunteered, it fit his plans exactly.”

  “So I was manipulated into becoming an officer?” Weaver asked, aghast. “He could have just asked.”

  “Probably what I would have done,” Townsend admitted. “But Jim was a bit more Machiavellian than I. Anyway, just thought you should know.”

  “Shiny,” Bill said. “Somehow that gives me the courage to ask. Are you all here because Berg is a really nice kid or for some other reason?”

  “Oh, Berg is a nice kid,” Townsend admitted. “But the President wanted to come and couldn’t. So he ordered me and the commandant to attend. Spectre was coming, anyway. Everybody else?
I think they just assumed if we were attending…”

  “It must be mandatory,” Weaver added with a chuckle. “More or less what Chief Miller said, except for the first bit.”

  “What the President doesn’t realize is that this could have been a disaster,” the CAO continued. “On many levels. One of them being curiosity. So far the press hasn’t asked why we’re all here. They still may. They’re getting closer and closer to the truth.”

  “I saw the article in the Washington Times, sir,” Bill said. The “Inside the Ring” column speculated, based on a number of data items, that the U.S. either had a space drive or was approaching having one. An earlier article had reported from “an anonymous source” that the Dreen had been located in real space and were somewhere near the Orion stars. That had probably come from the destruction of the HD 36951 colony. But with all the money that was going towards planning the Space Navy, the appointment of the CAO, the changes in training for every branch of the Navy… The reality was bound to break sooner or later. “I think the President’s playing a very dangerous game in not releasing the information.”

  “He’s the Commander-In-Chief,” the CAO responded. “It’s up to him, not us.”

  “Understood, sir,” Bill replied. “Just my opinion as a citizen, not an officer.”

  “And one thing to learn as an officer is that that is a very fine line,” the CAO said. “That was not a reaming, just pointing it out. You skipped a bunch of steps in your professional development and that might not have gotten through to you. We may have private political opinions, especially those based on our proprietary knowledge. We may voice them with close friends and peers. But we don’t act on them except in the privacy of the ballot box. Among other things, even when we think we have the knowledge necessary to make a decision, often we’re not privy to everything.”