Part 16
Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?
No tho' the soldier knew,
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do or die;
Into the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1853
After the deaths of almost half the people in his fighter wing, Dick retreated to an old coping mechanism to deal with the pain -- work out until he was absolutely exhausted. He could take his pain and frustration out on an inanimate punching bag or push himself to one more rotation on the high bar in the ship's gym. It allowed him to behave almost normally (he thought) around other people.
This behavior might have continued indefinitely (or until the Chaffee ran out of punching bags) if it hadn't been for Hogan. Hogan had walked into the gym just as Dick was performing one of his usual better-than-Olympic-caliber routines on the high bar. After a quadruple-somersault dismount, Dick was startled to hear applause coming from behind him. He turned around to see Hogan whose eyes had grown to almost saucer-like proportions.
"Wow!! That was somethin' else, Skipper! I didn't know you could do stuff like that!"
Until Ophidia, Dick had always stuck with simple, basic stuff when he used the high bar where other people could see him. Lessons about not drawing attention to himself had been drilled into him by Batman and weren't lightly discarded. It was only in his current ... perturbed state of mind that he had allowed his true abilities to be seen.
Bruce would throw a fit, Dick thought to himself. Oh, well. Walking up to Hogan, he smiled an almost-genuine smile. "Thanks, Hogan. I've always been something of a gymnast."
Hogan was still flabbergasted. "None of the guys are going to believe me when I tell them. Do you do stuff like that often?"
In for a penny; in for a pound, thought Dick. "Well, this is my usual workout time."
"I know, Skipper, but I've never seen you do that stuff before!"
"I guess I didn't want you guys to think I was showing off," Dick said, figuring it sounded plausible.
"Is it okay if me and some of the other guys come by tomorrow and watch?" Hogan asked hopefully.
The performer in Dick suddenly perked up. His smile became genuine as he said, "Sure! I certainly don't mind an audience."
Hogan showed up the next day with most of the off-duty pilots in tow. Dick was slightly startled by the size of his audience, but he decided to give them a good show. They had walked in just as he was starting his rings workout, so he added a few extra flourishes to his standard routine. The Flying Graysons never disappointed an audience! As he smoothly moved from position to position, holding each one for an impossibly long time, the gasps he heard were very gratifying. When he stuck the landing, the assembled pilots burst out into applause and whistles. Dick made a solemn, elaborate bow in their direction and then burst out laughing.
Then he moved to the high bar. Somersaults above the bar, impossible-looking release moves, changing directions at will, Dick made everything look easy, including the show-stopper, a double-somersault that ended with an absolutely motionless one-handed handstand. That move almost made the pike two-and-a-half-somersault he used to dismount seem anti-climactic.
During his routine, more people had come into the gym, drawn by the pilots' commotion. By the time Dick's feet landed on the gym floor, there were almost fifty people crowded into the small gym, and all of them were applauding and shouting and whistling.
That evening, for the first time since the battle, Dick thought about something other than Rabbit and the other dead pilots as he drifted off to sleep. After his "performance," he had talked to his pilots and some of the other people in the audience and had learned that most of them had never been to a real live circus. As someone from a long line of circus performers, and as a circus owner himself, Dick found that rather appalling. He decided something needed to be done. The next day, after receiving permission from Honor, Dick began recruiting for a ship-wide circus. Or at least a facsimile of one. Of course, he had to eliminate the animal acts, but that didn't mean he couldn't have the clowns imitate animal acts!
The "circus" had its first performance on Thanksgiving, just before the big meal. The meal had required Dick to shuffle some acts around because their participants were also involved in preparing the dinner. The ship had resumed patrolling the mine field, so Honor had set a skeleton watch because of the holiday and the circus. Thus, of the 225 members of the Chaffee's crew, 148 were on the flight deck as audience, and 57 were there as members of "Her Royal Majesty's Most Excellent Bandersnatches," as the circus had decided to call itself.
Great feats of mirth and derring-do were performed that day. Or at least adequate ones, Dick thought to himself with a smile. In addition to being the manager and featured acrobat, he had been able to teach some basic trapeze skills to a few of the pilots. Dick wasn't trusting enough to work without a net or to try the quad, but it did feel good to be "home" again. All-in-all, both the performers and the audience seemed to enjoy the show. After the performance, large tables were set up, and the mess stewards began serving the Thanksgiving dinner.
As he sat eating the Chaffee's best attempt at turkey and dressing, Dick realized that he had "gone on" -- that somewhere in all this he had accepted Rabbit's death, and the manner of his dying, and all the other deaths that had happened at Ophidia. It wasn't that he didn't still miss the men and women who had died, but he had remembered the duty and commitment he owed to the living.
~~~~~~~~~~
A few days after Thanksgiving, Dick was walking back to his quarters from his workout when he saw Alistair striding toward him.
"Richard! I'm glad I found you! The Skipper wants to see us in her office."
"Do I have time to shower first?" Dick asked pulling at his sweaty tank top.
"She didn't say it was urgent, and since I've got to be there too, I'd say you definitely have time to shower," Alistair said with a smile.
Dick returned a rather sardonic smile of his own and continued walking towards his quarters, pulling his shirt off as he went.
A short time later, Dick and Alistair sat on the small couch that, along with the desk, comprised most of the furniture in Honor's cramped office. They drank Steward MacGuiness' excellent coffee while Honor sat across from them in her chair sipping her preferred hot chocolate. Dick could feel a small trickle of water run down his neck from his still-damp hair.
"I called you in because we're going to have some visitors on the COD11 tomorrow," announced Honor. "Rear Admiral Samuel Mueller of Naval Intelligence, a Lt. Colonel Edmond Marchant from the Joint Chiefs, and twelve Force Recon marines."
"And a partridge in a pear tree," muttered Dick.
Alistair let out an involuntary snort and almost spilled his coffee. Dick caught Honor's eye, and then all three started laughing.
"Do we know why all these people are coming here?" Dick asked, a few minutes later when he could talk without snickering.
"And where we're supposed to put them?" chimed in Alistair.
"No and no," answered Honor, still smiling. "This sounds like some sort of covert op brewing, but no one's deigned to tell me anything about it. As for where to put them ..." She shrugged. "We've got the one VIP cabin, so Admiral Mueller can go there, I hope along with Colonel Marchant. As far as the marines, though, I have no idea."
"How much space is currently available in Marine Country?" asked Alistair, referring to the section of the ship where their 28 marines were quartered.
"Not enough for twelve more bodies, I can tell you that!" stated Honor, sounding rather annoyed. Escort carriers were small ships, more like submarines than aircraft carriers when it came to ship size and number of personnel. The ship's designers certainly hadn't considered making allowances for fourteen additional people.
"I can fit them in, Skipper," Dick volunteered quietly. He realized this was partly why Honor had called him into this private meeting. "I'm still sixteen pilots under complement. If the enlisted men don't mind sharing quarters with officers, they'll all fit."
"Thank you, Dick," replied Honor.
When their guests arrived the next morning, Dick decided they were certainly an odd lot. The Force Recon squad looked like the battle-ready elite fighting machine that it was supposed to be. Rear Admiral Mueller was obviously a staff officer, or at least Dick hoped he was a staff officer. He was almost too, uh, portly to fit through the ship's narrow passageways. Lt. Colonel Marchant was the anomaly -- he seemed fit and athletic; in fact, he cut quite a dashing figure in his tailored camouflage gear. But when Marchant stood next to the other marines, Dick had the impression it was almost as if he were playing "dress up."
Admiral Mueller had requested the use of Honor's briefing room, and furthermore, that she, her XO, and the CAG join him, Col. Marchant, and Capt. Eddie Howard of the Force Recon team in a briefing. That's when the Chaffee's officers found out what their guests were planning to do.
"You're going to kidnap the Ch'ton Queen?!?" Honor asked incredulously. "Sir," she added as an afterthought.
"Yes, Captain," replied Mueller. "Our analysts and xenopsychologists believe that capturing their queen will force the Ch'ton to sue for peace rather than lose her."
"I can believe that, sir," replied Alistair, "but what I don't understand is how the ... how you hope to pull something like that off?"
Marchant responded, "We believe that a small force can sneak in and accomplish this, and this is just the kind of operation that Force Recon marines have been trained to do."
Honor cleared her throat. "What do you need from me and my officers, Admiral?"
"Well, obviously we need to be much closer to the Ch'ton homeworld, so you will need to take your ship to the outer edge of their home star system. After that, I'll want one of your best pilots to fly an assault shuttle that will take Col. Marchant and his team down to the planet and then extract them and the queen."
The three Chaffee officers exchanged dumbfounded glances. Dick noticed that Captain Howard didn't seem quite as enthusiastic as his two senior officers.
Honor gave the only answer she was allowed to give and still keep her commission: "Of course, sir. You will have our full cooperation."
~~~~~~~~~~
The six days' journey to the outskirts of the Ch'ton system was extremely tense, both from their external circumstances (traveling unescorted through enemy territory) and internal ones. The Admiral was not accustomed to the more Spartan lifestyle of a warship and often complained about his accommodations and having to share them with Col. Marchant. Thanks to Steward MacGuiness, Mueller did not complain about the quantity or quality of the food, although rumors started to float that it was going to be a race whether the Chaffee ran out of food before the Admiral would no longer fit through his cabin door.
Dick had arranged things so that Capt. Howard bunked with Andy LaFollett, knowing that his personable XO would soon find out all the gossip worth knowing. The third day into the trip, Andy brought him some disturbing information.
"Sir, Eddie told me that Col. Marchant isn't their regular CO."
"He's not?"
"No, sir. They met him for the first time when they were picked for this assignment. That's when Marchant told them he was going to be leading the mission. But that's not the worst part," Andy said, frowning. "Eddie managed to do some digging before they shipped out and discovered that Marchant has no combat experience -- had never even been assigned to a combat unit of any kind before this."
"You've got to be kidding me!" Dick exclaimed.
"Nope. Last night, Eddie told me Marchant thinks of himself as some kind of John Wayne, and this is his shot at being a war hero."
"Well, that's just great," muttered Dick in disgust. "I'm taking one of my birds out there filled with a bunch of 'My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment'-types led by an idiot with delusions of grandeur."
"You're taking them out? Sir?"
"Yes, Andy. I'm flying this mission."
"But, boss ..."
"No buts, Lt. LaFollett. I had already decided this thing had enough potential for disaster even before I learned about the 'Duke.' This one's mine."
~~~~~~~~~~
Assault shuttles normally carried both a pilot and a co-pilot, but Dick had refused to take a co-pilot along unless Honor wanted to make it a direct order.
"Skipper, I've got a bad feeling about this mission, and I'd rather just risk my own neck. I can handle the bird without a co-pilot."
"I'm nervous about it too, Dick, but don't you want someone along to watch your back?"
"Nah, I'd just end up worrying about him in addition to everyone else. I'll be okay."
He suited up with unusual care. In addition to his service-issue Beretta, he carried extra ammunition, and two knives, as well as some goodies completely unknown to the U.S. Navy. After his plane captain went over the shuttle, Dick made his own inspection. On his orders, none of the marines had been allowed near the craft until it was time to board. Without being obvious, Dick watched each marine as he boarded, making sure no one did anything suspicious.
When everyone was aboard, Dick boarded as well and commenced pre-flight. Finally, he informed the bridge that he was ready and requested permission to launch.
"We read you, CAG. Godspeed and good hunting!" said Alistair.
Dick saluted the airlock officer, the launch airlock doors opened, and the heavy assault shuttle took off for the Ch'ton's home planet.
~~~~~~~~~~
When the doorbell rang, Dinah was making a mess in Barbara's kitchen, "experimenting" with one of Alfred's recipes for Christmas cookies. "You expecting anyone, Barb?" she called out.
"Nope," came a distracted-sounding reply from the other room. "See who it is, and unless it's my dad, I'm not at home."
"No prob!" Dinah replied cheerfully. On her way to the door, she glanced out the window and saw a large, dark blue car parked somewhat haphazardly on the street. As she checked the doorway monitor, her breath caught in her throat when she saw two men dressed in dark blue naval uniforms.
"Uh, Barbara?" she tried calling out. Clearing her throat, she tried again. "Barbara! You need to get in here!"
Barbara came rolling into the room as Dinah opened the door. Dinah heard Barbara's gasp as she saw the men.
"Ms. Barbara Grayson?" one of the officers, a captain, asked Barbara solemnly.
Barbara nodded her head, unable to say anything.
"Ma'am, I'm Captain Lester Tourville. This is Chaplain Jeremiah Sullivan," he said, indicating the other officer. "It is my sad duty to inform you that your husband, Lt. Commander Richard Grayson, has been reported missing and presumed killed in action." The captain sighed and looked at the blank faces of the two women with compassion. "I wish I had more information for you, but because of the nature of the mission, that's all I know. His personal effects should be returned to you in a few days. Is there anything I or Chaplain Sullivan can do for you, ma'am?"
Barbara shook her head jerkily, still trying to come to grips with what she had heard.
The captain handed his and Chaplain Sullivan's cards to Dinah. "I know this has been a shock for you, ma'am. If you think of any questions later or have any problems, please feel free to call me."
He turned, and the two men walked back toward the open door. Just before leaving, the chaplain murmured to Dinah. "Perhaps, ma'am, you should call your friend's doctor. This kind of a shock can't be good for a woman so far along in her pregnancy."
Concern for Barbara shook Dinah out of her stupor. "Yes, I suppose you're right."
After the men had left, Dinah looked at the phone as if it were a poisonous snake. Yes, Dr. Leslie should be called, but that would entail having to explain why Dinah was calling, which would lead to other calls, ...
Dinah shifted her gaze to her friend. Barbara still hadn't made a sound, but tears were spilling from her eyes and running down her cheeks. Dinah knelt next to Barbara, held her in a fierce hug, and shed her own tears of grief for a life cut cruelly short.
** End Part 16 **
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11 Carrier Onboard Delivery -- a supply ship