there. Or maybe that whore had told the truth to one of his shipmates.
Last night, though, his secret had been blown for good, and now he was
just waiting for the ax to fall.
Damn it all! He’d been so careful not to give himself away by making a
pass at someone or being too friendly, but he’d not thought that being
careful meant he had to stay celibate! Jefferson’s small gay community
had a pretty closely knit organization aboard, what was still sometimes
called a “daisy chain” by the straights. Its members met whenever
possible and used an elaborate ritual of code phrases and passwords to
screen possible new members when they came aboard. The relief, the
sheer joy just of knowing that there were others like him in this
floating city was indescribable. Harold was one of his favorites. He’d
had good sex with him on a number of occasions.
Last night, though, they’d met at their usual place, in a linen storage
locker down on First Deck. Pellet had taken his pants off, but the two
of them hadn’t been doing anything, not really, when there’d been a
rattling at the compartment door … and then the door had flown open
and a first class boatswain’s mate named Arbogast had walked in on them.
It had been awful. Turning sharply, Harold had slammed Pellet across
the compartment with a sudden, backhanded smash. “You faggot!” he’d
bellowed, and then he’d advanced on Pellet like an avenging fury, fists
clenched, face screwed up in hideous, black-cloud rage.
Arbogast had restrained him, telling him to settle down. Harold had
claimed that Pellet had made a pass at him, which seemed pretty silly
afterward. Pellet, after all, stood five-seven and weighed 148, while
Harold was over six feet tall and as powerful as a body builder.
Screaming and red in the face, Harold had threatened to put him on
report … for sexual harassment, no less. Arbogast had threatened to
put them both on report for fighting. Stunned, Pellet had made his way
back to his quarters, tried to sleep, and failed. If gays were no
longer banned in the military, gay behavior was, just as it was against
regs for Navy men and women to have sex with each other. He could get
captain’s mast … or a court-martial and a BCD. Damn it all, he liked
the Navy! He didn’t want to get thrown out!
But worst of all was the terrible, sick-in-the-stomach knowledge that
Harold Reidel, his lover, had betrayed him.
“Pellet! Wake up, goddamn it!” Chief Carangelo was standing several
feet behind him, bellowing in his ear.
“Uh … yeah, Chief.”
“I said CIWS to standby, damn it! Move your ass!”
“Yes, Chief!” His hand snapped out, grabbing the knob marked CIWS #1,
twisting it hard from STBY to AUTO.
He didn’t catch his mistake for another two tragic seconds.
0746 hours
Off North Cape
The Phalanx CIWS is controlled by an extraordinarily sophisticated
computer, one able to read the radar returns from a target that may be
approaching at better than three times the speed of sound and the radar
returns from the weapon’s own bullets departing at one thousand feet per
second, computing gun angle, direction, and trajectory to bring the two
together. A completely self-contained system, the Phalanx can operate
independently of any outside control, a necessity in modern warfare
since computers and high-speed weapons can appear, close, and strike
before a human could react. Phalanx is capable of opening fire within
two seconds of acquiring a target.
But it is also vital for humans to maintain control of their high-tech
war toys–the so-called “man in the loop” so often discussed in any
debate over computer-controlled weapons.
Phalanx has two operational settings. On standby, it cannot fire
without a direct command from a human operator in the ship’s CIC; on
automatic, it is controlled entirely by its computer, tracking and
firing on any radar contact in range that it perceives as a threat.
The U.S.S. Dickinson was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG, a
guided-missile frigate. Four hundred forty-five feet long, with a
full-load displacement of 3,650 tons, Perry-class frigates had
originally been designed as merchant escorts charged with defending