John Ringo: Vorpal Blade

“I’m looking for Mr. Miller,” Mimi said politely.

“He’s over there,” the man said, gesturing with his chin since his hands were full. “Go on in.”

The room was unadorned and looked more like a half-finished basement than a florist’s. White wooden tables were heaped with flowers while several workers in eclectic attire assembled arrangements. About half were females but there was as much long hair amongst the men working on the flowers as there was with the women. Most of the men working in the shop were in shorts, as were a couple of the women; it was hot and the only breath of cold air came as a man exited a huge walk-in refrigeration room, his arms filled with colorful orchids.

Miller had his back to the entrance and was peacefully snipping the bottom of some iris stems when Mimi cleared her throat.

“Hello, Mr. Miller,” Mimi said, wondering if the former SEAL would recognize her.

Miller clearly was puzzled by the young lady who had spoken to him, but after a moment he placed the thing on her shoulder.

“Mimi,” the SEAL said, grinning. “What a pleasant surprise. It’s been, what? Seven years? You’ve grown. And Tuffy’s…”

“Changed,” Mimi said, grinning. “All the ET people got really excited when that happened. Only one of them got it right, though. I was talking to him one day in school and just sort of thought that I’d gotten over the whole stuffed animal thing. And he looked really… dumb that way. The next day… whole new Tuffy.”

“You’re here on a trip?” Miller asked, puzzled. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, open most of the way down a chest covered in graying hair, and a pair of cut-off desert camo BDU shorts. “In town for school or something? Why San Diego of all places?”

“I’m not here on a school trip,” Mimi replied. “I came looking for you. We have to go to Newport News and see Dr. Weaver.”

“What’s Bill want?” Miller asked gruffly, turning back to his irises.

“He didn’t want anything, but there’s something he needs,” Mimi said. “You, me and Tuffy. Tuffy told me. And we’re going.”

“Oh, we are, are we?” Miller asked, turning back around. “I’m out of that game. You get older, you get slower. There’s a time to reap and a time to sow, all that stuff. In my case, there’s a time to kill and a time to heal. So if you and Tuffy have to do something, you go, girl. I’m going to keep making floral arrangements.”

“If you don’t go…” Mimi paused and looked around the crowded room. “Can you take a break or something, we have to talk.”

“Okay, okay,” Miller sighed. “Bob! Going on break. I don’t know how long I’ll be. That okay?”

“Sure, Chief,” the younger man called back. “Try to get those arrangements done by four, though.”

The coffee shop was considerably cooler than the floral factory. It was still early morning and the tall buildings on either side provided shade from the sun. For that matter, San Diego rarely got hot during the early fall. Only when the Santa Annas blew down from the mountains did the temperature get much above seventy-five.

Miller set his mocha down and leaned back in the chair, considering the young lady who had dragged him away from work.

“You came all the way out here on your own?” Miller asked, surprised.

“It’s not hard,” Mimi said. “There’s gates all the way to San Diego; then I took a taxi.”

“Most of our customers can’t find the shop,” Miller mused. “The boss prefers it that way.”

“Tuffy knew where to find you,” Mimi said, shrugging. “He told me he’d been keeping track of you.”

“That’s nice to know,” Miller said dryly. “So, what’s so important that you want me to go to Newport News.”

“They’ve finished the ship,” Mimi said, carefully. “It’s still covert and I’m not going to blow that for them. But Tuffy says that I have to be on it, with him, when it leaves. They’ve completed the… shakedown cruises. The next launch is going to be out… Tuffy says that we, you, me, him, have to be on the ship. I don’t know why and I don’t know if he’s being cagey or he can’t really explain why. I know that part of the reason has to do with… causality. That’s about as much as I understood. Basically, he’s saying that the ship is probably going to fail, and fail big, if we , we three, don’t go along.”

“Look, you can’t just walk up to something like that and say ‘we’re coming along, okay?’ ” Miller said, blowing out his cheeks. “The security’s going to be… a mile deep. And the entire crew, and that includes the civilians, are already going to be chosen. That’s even assuming that I’m willing to go.”

“You’ll go,” Mimi said. “You’ll go because if you don’t the mission’s going to fail. And if the mission fails, it will probably mean the Dreen back. And this time we’ll lose. Plus Dr. Weaver will die on the mission and he’s your friend.”

“Friends die,” Miller said, his jaw working. “One of the reason that I peacefully make flower arrangements these days is because I’ve seen lots of friends die. I don’t particularly want to meet more people who are probably going to die. Which is what going on something like that would mean. Even if we could convince somebody that we had to go along, at which we have a chance in hell.”

“You need to call Admiral Townsend and get a meeting, today,” Mimi said. “He’s somebody you can just call, and he’s briefed on the mission. He can get ahold of Dr. Weaver. And Dr. Weaver can get us on the mission.”

“You seem to know a hell of a lot for a fourteen-year-old,” Miller said, blowing out again, this time angrily. “Greg Townsend… yeah, he’d take my call. But getting us on the mission… ?”

“He can get us in touch with Dr. Weaver,” Mimi said. “That’s all we need.”

“Okay, okay,” the former chief said, shaking his head. “I guess it’s time to call in some favors. And Greg Townsend does owe me. Big time.”

Bill parked the Electra in his designated slot and walked quickly towards the massive concrete building that guarded the upgraded subpens.

Newport News had gotten out of the active sub business almost two decades before, when the full weight of the post-Cold War conditions had hit the Navy. Subsequent to that event, the base had mostly been used for “decomming” subs, turning them into razor blades in other words.

Most of the subs that were going to be turned into razor blades had been turned when the Navy finally won the battle for the first warp ship. The battle had long-term consequences that were clear to the admirals. Weaver was pretty sure that with the data they’d gather from use it was possible to make another warp drive, albeit perhaps not as neat as the “little black box.” Eventually, the Earth would need a star fleet, especially if the Dreen ever used warp space to attack. The service that got in on the ground floor was pretty certain to be the eventual “space service.” Navy was navy, wet or in space. And that was one of the many arguments that the admirals, often disbelieving the words that came out of their mouths, made.

However, the Navy was the right service for a space fleet. The Air Force, which had argued that it had much more experience with three dimensional combat than the Navy, was based around small systems with short mission times. There was a degree of complexity in creating, and especially running, a ship that was orders of magnitude away from being, say, a squadron or wing commander. There were human complexities that simply didn’t occur in the Air Force when you packed a huge number of humans into a small space and then told them they had to get along or else.