By now, I have roughly a million Commonwealth dollars in my government account, but I can’t access any of it, and I don’t have a single dollar of hard currency on me. I scan the line of payment symbols on the door, but “FED ID” is not among them.
The man in the chef’s uniform notices us and gets up from his crouch. When he turns to face us, I can tell that he’s doing just a little bit of a double-take at the sight of my dark-blue fleet uniform. From the way his gaze shifts to the beret on my head and then the ribbon salad above my breast pocket, I suspect that he knows what he’s looking at. I nod at him in greeting, and he returns the nod with narrowed eyes.
“Combat controller,” he says, a statement rather than a question. He’s a tall, lean guy, and he looks like he’s in very good shape. His hair is a closely cropped buzz cut that is streaked with gray.
“Correct,” I say.
He looks at my shoulder boards and raises an eyebrow. “I’m not too good with the new ranks they came up with. You a sergeant?”
“Staff Sergeant,” I correct. “E-6.”
“Doesn’t seem right, fleet NCOs going by those army ranks now,” he says. “When I left, you would have been a petty officer first class.”
“You a navy vet?”
“Damn straight. Twenty years in the fleet. Took my retirement just before the Lanky business started. Back when they still called it the navy.”
“That was about the time I joined up,” I say. “Got into the fleet a year before they unified the services and gave everyone army ranks. I was a petty officer third class for about two months, before they took away the chevron and called me a corporal.”
“Well, how about that,” he smiles. Then he wipes his right hand on the apron he’s wearing and holds it out to me. “Steve Kopka, Master Chief Petty Officer. Retired,” he adds, with a hint of regret in his voice.
“Andrew Grayson,” I reply, and take the offered hand. His handshake is firm and businesslike. “This is my mom.”
“Ma’am,” he says to her with a nod.
“Pleased to meet you,” Mom replies.
“So,” he says, eyeing Mom’s clean, but obviously welfare-sourced clothes. “Out for a stroll this morning? You on leave?”
“Yeah, my tub’s in for a refit, and I took some time off between assignments.”
“I worked with you combat controllers a bunch when I was in. Only my beret was maroon back then, not scarlet.”
“You were Spaceborne Rescue?” I ask, and he nods.
“God knows what color their beanies are these days.”
“Still maroon,” I say. “They took away all the fleet ranks and gave everyone new shoulder boards, but they didn’t mess with the podheads’ beret colors. Guess they were afraid of the riot that would have followed.”
“Damn straight,” Master Chief Kopka says. “You of all people know how much fucking sweat goes into earning one of those. Pardon my language, ma’am,” he adds in Mom’s direction.
“Not at all,” Mom says. I can tell that she has no idea what we’re talking about, but I also know she’s pleased to witness our exchange.
“Master Chief Kopka here is a former Spaceborne Rescue man,” I explain to Mom. “They have the only job in the fleet that’s more dangerous than calling nukes down on your own head. They’re the guys who launch in ballistic drop pods to rescue crashed pilots.”
“Oh, my,” Mom says with a smile. “And you made it all the way through your service doing that? You must have been good at it.”
“That was before the Lankies,” Chief Kopka tells her. “We just tussled with the Russians and the Chinese every once in a while. Your son here has a tougher job than I ever had.”
“So what are you doing now, Master Chief?” I ask him. “You trade in your beanie for a chef’s hat?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Took my retirement money and went in with a friend to open this place. He died last year, so it’s all mine now.” He looks at the old but clean brick building with obvious pride of ownership.
“Good for you, Master Chief. Pleasure to run into you.”
“Are you two in a hurry? I’d like to make you some breakfast, if you’ll let me. Don’t run into a fellow podhead too often, and I have a ‘free meal’ policy for the old brotherhood.”
“Oh, no, we couldn’t—” Mom says.
“Absolutely,” I say at the same time.
“What’s a podhead?” Mom asks in a low voice as Master Chief Kopka leads us into his little restaurant.
“Fleet special ops,” I tell her. “Spaceborne Rescue, combat controllers, Space-Air-Land teams. The rest of the fleet calls us that because we use the ballistic drop pods a lot.”
“That’s what you do?” Mom asks, disturbed. “I thought you were sitting at a network console somewhere in a starship. You never told me about drop pods and nuclear weapons.”
“That’s ‘need to know,’ Mom. And you didn’t need to know.”