Rhodes sank down on the bench at the table in the barracks, cradled his head in his hand, shut his eyes, and groaned.

He was the first member of the battalion to make it back from the psych evaluations. He had the place to himself.

He’d gone through many psych evaluations in his military career, but none as moronic as this one. Then again, he’d never been evaluated by a computer program before.

He didn’t know how long he would have to wait for someone else to finish. He was just making up his mind to go back to his drawing when Oakes returned.

He took one look at Rhodes, spread his thumb and forefinger to their widest point, propped them against the side of his face, and lowered his voice to a comedic impression of the fake psychologist.

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Oakes teased and burst out laughing.

Rhodes found himself breaking into a grin. “At least we got it over with.”

Oakes threw himself down on the other side of the table. “Those cocksuckers on the damn governing body don’t even have the decency to send a real person to evaluate us. Maybe their budget is suffering.”

“It just proves that you were right. The results don’t mean anything.”

“I told the freak I really hoped the brass ended the program.”

“I told him the same thing.”

Oakes looked up and cracked a grin. “Let’s spend the rest of the week coming up with another name for him. We need a few laughs in this place.”

“What about Why-son…..or When-son?” Rhodes suggested.

Oakes started to snort with more laughter, but right then, the door swung open. Rhinehart stormed in fuming in rage.

He halted in the middle of the barracks glaring at Rhodes, Oakes, and everything else. Rhodes and Oakes held their breath waiting for Rhinehart to blow his stack.

Without warning, he buckled at the knees, burst out laughing, and fell across the floor roaring his head off. He rolled on the floor clutching his sides and howling with laughter.

Oakes laughed, too. Rhodes tried to hold it back and failed.

“Why is the name, ‘Watson’ so funny?” Fisher asked and made Oakes and Rhinehart laugh even louder.

Right then, Henshaw came back. She stopped in the doorway and blinked down at Rhinehart in horror.

Her expression made him bust up even more. “Dr. Watson, Georgie! We’re getting evaluated by Dr. Watson!”

“Yeah?” she asked. “What about him? He was nice.”

Rhinehart buckled in another fit of laughter. Rhodes found himself laughing along with the joke.

“I don’t get it,” Fisher repeated.

Henshaw cut Rhinehart a wide circle and sat down at the table next to Rhodes. “What are we doing next?”

“We’re coming up with another name for Watson,” Oakes replied and laughed.

“Why do we need another name for him?” Henshaw asked. “He already has one.”

“We’re calling him Where-son from now on,” Rhodes explained and Rhinehart roared out in another fit of laughter.

Dietz came in and started smirking when he realized what Rhinehart found so funny. “All I had to do was keep the sucker talking,” Dietz explained. “He eventually gave up and told me there was nothing wrong with me.”

Rhinehart dragged himself off the floor wiping tears out of his one eye. He staggered over to the table and collapsed next to Oakes. “Phew!” Rhinehart panted. “I needed that.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Dr. Watson said I was fit for combat duty,” Henshaw went on. “He said he wasn’t so sure about the rest of you.”

“You can go alone,” Dietz told her.

“Watch it,” Oakes snapped. “No one is going anywhere alone.”

“She won’t go alone because Dietz is clear, too,” Rhodes pointed out.

Just then, Lauer, Coulter, and Thackery came back. Lauer and Coulter sat down at the table to laugh it up about Dr. Watson.

Thackery kept curling her lip at the surrounding barracks. “That cocksucker! I hate shrinks.”

“Did he say whether you were mentally stable enough to go back into combat?” Rhodes asked.

“I didn’t ask. I told him to shove his questions up his ass because he was the last person I would ever talk to about anything.”

Rhodes nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“Now what do we do?” Henshaw asked again.

“We wait around for the brass to decide to send us back to the Emal wars,” Lauer replied.

“We wait for Fuentes to come back,” Oakes added. “Everything depends on that.”

The thought of seeing Fuentes again made everyone fall silent. Oakes and Rhodes worked on their drawings. Dietz and Thackery took turns working at the terminal.

The others occupied themselves with this or that. Henshaw had gotten into the habit of using her laser to carve shapes out of wood.

She collected scraps from the loading dock, brought them back to the barracks, fashioned them into minute statues of animals, birds, plants, and other figurines, and then gave them as gifts to any random passerby she met at the station.

Rhodes could just imagine the station personnel’s reaction when she tried to give them her gifts. Maybe those people went home and burned the little figures to break the hex of touching something one of the battalion members had touched.

Rhodes didn’t know why he let himself think that. He just couldn’t imagine anyone treasuring one of these little figures for the charming act of kindness it obviously was.

She spent the rest of the afternoon carving a flower and went out to walk around the station.

Rhodes got distracted by explaining something art-related to Oakes. Henshaw returned with three more pieces of wood.

She spent the rest of the evening carving them into more shapes, but she didn’t take them out to give away. She put them on the bookshelf and left them there.

Maybe someone hurt her feelings by refusing to accept one of her creations. Maybe the inevitable finally happened and one of the station personnel told her to keep away from them and never come near them again.

Rhodes kicked himself for not paying closer attention to what she was doing. He could have kept an eye on her through the interface. He just got distracted.

He made a mental note to ask her about it, but then he got distracted again by dreading Fuentes coming back.

Coulter spent nearly every evening wandering around the barracks walls. He spent an unnatural amount of time inspecting the lines of mortar between the wall blocks.

Rhodes just could not bring himself to ask why Coulter found the mortar so interesting. Rhodes didn’t want to know.

Rhinehart and Lauer liked to sit at the table and talk to Rhodes and Oakes while they drew. They talked about any old random subject that came up.

Tonight, they speculated about what Dr. Watson did in his free time when he wasn’t evaluating people’s psychological state.

“Maybe he really is a sleuth when no one is looking,” Rhinehart joked. “Maybe his notepad is covered with his case notes. He probably doesn’t even really listen to what anyone tells him about why they’re distressed or upset.”

“What cases do you think he works on?” Lauer asks.

“People probably come to him from all over the Treaty of Aemon Cluster to get his help,” Rhinehart went on. “I’m sure he’s working on unsolved murders, political mysteries, bank heists, embezzlement—you name it.”

Oakes snorted. “You got one hell of an imagination, Lieutenant. You should write a book.”

“Too bad someone has already written a book about Dr. Watson,” Rhodes pointed out.

“No one has written a book with Dr. Watson as the sleuth.” Rhinehart’s eye burst open and he pointed at Rhodes and gasped. “I got it! I could write a spin-off serious—about how Watson takes over Sherlock Holmes’s practice after Holmes disappears. Watson could become the sleuth and work all his own cases. Yeah! That would be perfect!”

“Watson isn’t smart enough to be a sleuth,” Lauer pointed out. “That’s the whole point. He’s Holmes’s sidekick. Watson doesn’t have the brains to solve anything. He always needed Holmes to explain everything to him.”

“Ah, of course!” Fisher exclaimed. “Dr. Watson—from the Sherlock Holmes mystery books. I understand now.”

Rhinehart laughed at him. “You’re even slower on the uptake than Watson.”

“But the original Dr. Watson really was a doctor—a medical doctor,” Henshaw pointed out. “He had to be smart—smart enough to figure out a few things. He could have stepped up after Holmes disappeared.”

“Did you know that some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s contemporaries said he modeled Holmes after himself?” Lauer chimed in. “Conan Doyle was a medical doctor who used his knowledge to solve medical mysteries. They say Holmes was really just a fictionalized version of Conan Doyle.”

Rhodes, Rhinehart, Oakes, and Coulter all turned around to stare at Lauer. “Holy crap! You’re scaring me, man!” Coulter murmured.

“What’s wrong?” Lauer asked. “It’s true. You can look it up on the terminal if you don’t believe me.”

“Where the holy hell did you come out with that?” Rhinehart countered. “Have you been hiding this from us all this time?”

“Hiding what?” Lauer asked. “I’m not hiding anything. I’m just telling you the facts.”

“What other facts are you keeping hidden in that brain of yours?” Oakes asked.

Lauer shrugged and shifted his weight on his bench. “I’m just saying….”

A hint of movement caught the corner of Rhodes’s eye. It came from the other side of the barracks—behind his back.

The instant he noticed it, his Grid reading of the room showed him a person standing in the barracks doorway. Rhodes stiffened when Fuentes appeared there.

End of Chapter 18.