Carrier and leave it to the Navy to have this message printed out for him in the room at the other end of the ship. At the other end of a ship that was 2,845 meters long. Actually, the more Max thought about it, it could be worse. His quarters were almost amidships, so G-894 couldn’t be more than a kilometer and a half away, plus five decks down.
Fortunately, Max was good at learning ship layouts, so he was able to select the most direct route, find the tram that ran the length of the ship down the Central Corridor, and locate the proper compartment right away. He reached Compartment G-894 just under twelve minutes after receiving the text and stepped in through the open hatch.
There he found a desk running the entire width of the roughly three meter wide space, manned by a bored-looking Petty Officer Third Class sitting behind a computer-generated name plate that said “MUCH.” The man did not look up when Max walked in but continued to peck slowly at a keyboard while keeping his eyes fixed rigidly on a display that was located so that the person operating it had to sit with his back nearly to the door. Max stood at the desk for five seconds without his presence being acknowledged. Apparently, no one of any importance ever picked up their messages in Compartment G-894.
“Ahem,” Max said softly. Much didn’t so much as twitch.
“Excuse me,” Max said somewhat louder.
Much didn’t budge.
“Petty Officer Much,” Max said just a notch louder. He pronounced it like it was spelled, rhyming with “such.”
“That’s MUCH,” he replied, pronouncing the “u” as in duke” with the “ch” a Germanic guttural, as in “ach.”
That was enough for Max. “PETTY OFFICER MOOK,” Max bellowed in his best drill instructor voice. He knew that he had mispronounced the name. His Cajun mouth was perfectly capable of producing Germanic gutturals if Max so chose. At this moment, however, he was not in the mood.
Much looked up quickly and rotated his swivel chair to where it faced Max. Max glared at him, lips tightly pressed, until the man was sitting at “seated attention,” knees together, back straight, head high, making eye contact—the appropriate attitude for an enlisted man being addressed by a commissioned officer while seated at his duty station.
Max lowered his volume but kept his tone as sharp as a razor. “Petty Officer Mook, I have received a text with a PI code stating that I am to pick up written orders at this location. Are you going to place these orders in my possession immediately or, when I fail to implement my orders with sufficient celerity , should I cite your delay in transmission as the cause?”
Much’s eyes widened slightly. Everyone in the task force had read Admiral Hornmeyer’s First Standing Order issued when he took command. Rather than the standard blatherations, this Standing Order contained several pages of clear, incisive, imperative prose, one item of which said that “all operational orders are to be executed with celerity” and that the Admiral “would not tolerate and would swiftly punish any repetition of the delays in transmission that were hitherto endemic in this command.” Notwithstanding the inevitable fleet joke that half of the task force didn’t know whether “celerity” meant a famous person or a crunchy vegetable, people got the point.
Much quickly came to his feet, and touched an area set off by a circle a few millimeters in diameter on the surface of the desk that separated him from Max. A panel silently withdrew revealing square green scanner surface about eight centimeters to the side and a numeric keypad. Max put his left hand flat on the scanner and, with his right, entered his twelve digit ID code. Much then walked over to a printer at his station that had produced one sheet of paper about two seconds after Max had keyed in the last digit. He folded it in half lengthwise, slipped it into
Fortunately, Max was good at learning ship layouts, so he was able to select the most direct route, find the tram that ran the length of the ship down the Central Corridor, and locate the proper compartment right away. He reached Compartment G-894 just under twelve minutes after receiving the text and stepped in through the open hatch.
There he found a desk running the entire width of the roughly three meter wide space, manned by a bored-looking Petty Officer Third Class sitting behind a computer-generated name plate that said “MUCH.” The man did not look up when Max walked in but continued to peck slowly at a keyboard while keeping his eyes fixed rigidly on a display that was located so that the person operating it had to sit with his back nearly to the door. Max stood at the desk for five seconds without his presence being acknowledged. Apparently, no one of any importance ever picked up their messages in Compartment G-894.
“Ahem,” Max said softly. Much didn’t so much as twitch.
“Excuse me,” Max said somewhat louder.
Much didn’t budge.
“Petty Officer Much,” Max said just a notch louder. He pronounced it like it was spelled, rhyming with “such.”
“That’s MUCH,” he replied, pronouncing the “u” as in duke” with the “ch” a Germanic guttural, as in “ach.”
That was enough for Max. “PETTY OFFICER MOOK,” Max bellowed in his best drill instructor voice. He knew that he had mispronounced the name. His Cajun mouth was perfectly capable of producing Germanic gutturals if Max so chose. At this moment, however, he was not in the mood.
Much looked up quickly and rotated his swivel chair to where it faced Max. Max glared at him, lips tightly pressed, until the man was sitting at “seated attention,” knees together, back straight, head high, making eye contact—the appropriate attitude for an enlisted man being addressed by a commissioned officer while seated at his duty station.
Max lowered his volume but kept his tone as sharp as a razor. “Petty Officer Mook, I have received a text with a PI code stating that I am to pick up written orders at this location. Are you going to place these orders in my possession immediately or, when I fail to implement my orders with sufficient celerity , should I cite your delay in transmission as the cause?”
Much’s eyes widened slightly. Everyone in the task force had read Admiral Hornmeyer’s First Standing Order issued when he took command. Rather than the standard blatherations, this Standing Order contained several pages of clear, incisive, imperative prose, one item of which said that “all operational orders are to be executed with celerity” and that the Admiral “would not tolerate and would swiftly punish any repetition of the delays in transmission that were hitherto endemic in this command.” Notwithstanding the inevitable fleet joke that half of the task force didn’t know whether “celerity” meant a famous person or a crunchy vegetable, people got the point.
Much quickly came to his feet, and touched an area set off by a circle a few millimeters in diameter on the surface of the desk that separated him from Max. A panel silently withdrew revealing square green scanner surface about eight centimeters to the side and a numeric keypad. Max put his left hand flat on the scanner and, with his right, entered his twelve digit ID code. Much then walked over to a printer at his station that had produced one sheet of paper about two seconds after Max had keyed in the last digit. He folded it in half lengthwise, slipped it into
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