To Honor You Call Us Read Online Free

for a gathering of officers convened to commemorate some worthy event, at which food, wine, and liquor are served, but at which no gaiety of any kind is experienced by anyone present.  The refreshments were Standard Naval Issue for events of this kind:  finger sandwiches containing various formerly frozen meats from ship’s stores, a reasonable variety of only moderately stale cheeses to be eaten with a reasonable variety of only moderately stale crackers, some kind of grilled something on skewers that might have once been meat or might be some sort of textured vegetable protein, exotic garnishes that undoubtedly came out of equally exotic-looking jars, chips freshly uncrated from long vacuum storage, and a naval favorite because they were easy to store and lasted virtually forever, nuts.  Lots and lots of nuts.  Nuts from different planets.  Salted nuts.  Spiced nuts.  Candied nuts.  Roasted nuts.  Fried nuts.  Baked nuts.  Raw nuts.  And, of course, no fresh vegetables of any kind.  Not more than a thousand light years from the Core Systems.  Not when the Task Force has been in almost continuous action against the enemy for nearly a year. 
    This particular party was to celebrate the arrival of Vice Admiral Louis G. “Hit-em Hard” Hornmeyer replacing Vice Admiral Vladimir I. “By the Book” Bushinko as commander of Task Force Tango Delta.  Maybe it would be more proper to say, “fill the vacancy of” instead of “replace” because Admiral Bushinko was dead.  Spectacularly dead.  He was vaporized along with his flagship and her 10,237 man crew in battle eight days ago.  The loss of the Admiral and all those men, not to mention a priceless Command Carrier and the more than two hundred Banshee fighters she carried, sucked the wind out of the gathering and weighed on Max’s spirits.
    An even bigger damper on Max’s mood was that, as far as he could tell, he was the lowest ranking officer present:  a lowly Lieutenant, though at least not a Junior Grade one.  On the ladder of Commissioned Officers, he stood only on the third rung, so far down that the top was almost invisible to him.  He wouldn’t have received an invitation at all, except that he was still in temporary, pro forma, command of the Emeka Moro, now that his Skipper, Executive Officer, and the three other ship’s officers senior to him were casualties.  Unfortunately, the ship which he “commanded” was a ship in name only, an unpowered hulk in a holding area waiting for time in dry dock for a list of repairs longer than the Code of Naval Regulations.  She would not go anywhere under her own power for months, if ever.  His “command” was so meaningless, in fact, that he had been assigned temporary duty in Signals Intelligence, sitting at a computer console, sorting through and attempting to interpret enemy communications intercepts. 
    Everyone else at this shindig, held on the Recreation deck of the Halsey , Admiral Hornmeyer’s flagship, seemed to be at least a Lieutenant Commander and most were Commanders or Captains.  To highlight his feelings of inferiority, Max could see that virtually every uniform in the room bore the “Command in Space Badge,” a medallion in the shape of a stylized warship radiating a salvo of lightning bolts.  The CSB, Max’s most cherished desire since he was eight years old, was worn over the left breast and symbolized that the wearer commanded a Rated Warship, that is, a ship of sufficient power, speed, and range to be sent to meet the enemy without close support from the fleet.  And, as a mere Lieutenant, there was little chance he would be wearing one any time soon.  
    But, maybe things weren’t so bad.  With all the casualties throughout the fleet, he might not remain stuck much longer pushing electrons down in SIGINT.  After all, by luck, good planning, or natural ability (or, maybe, a combination of all three), Max’s service record was unusually rich in actual combat duty.