Chapter 2
Raucous conversation dropped into silence as soon as they opened the door. X-Ray Company leaped off unmade bunks, aged chairs and battered star chests to attention as Wolfe came in behind the Thielind.
He did the inspection walk again. This time it felt more real than it had on the parade ground. It was just dawning on him: he had a command—all right, the crappiest one in the space service, but it was all his. He had to swallow the grin he felt pinning back the corners of his mouth. Here was the beginning of his rise to the top. He’d show those doubters that he was more than just his father’s son. Here was the beginning of the change for good that he could make in the universe. With a proprietary swagger he sauntered down the center of the long room.
Like his quarters, the barracks was bog-standard. The biggest difference between this place and the barracks he’d last occupied, as a second lieutenant, had to be the wear and tear. Everything here must be hand-me-downs dating back decades, maybe even centuries. The lavatory facilities he could see through the open door bore the patina of ages, the porcelain riddled with small cracks and the chrome worn off the metal spigots. Hovel, Sweet Hovel, he thought, but it’s mine, all mine.
At least no one felt crowded. With a unit this small there was no need for tiered bunks. Everyone had a single bed, spaced from the ones on either side by upright lockers that also gave the sleeper a measure of privacy.
And now, to get to know the spacers who inhabited this dormitory. It wasn’t going to be easy. The faces sized Wolfe up as he walked up and down the center aisle. Their expressions said they weren’t impressed by what they saw.
“At ease,” he ordered, looking around at them. He gave them a smile, hoping it didn’t look nervous or insincere. “This is a casual visit. You all probably know this is my first command. The first-lieutenant bars are fresh off the card. I haven’t got any bad habits to unlearn.”
“Too bad,” someone snickered low under his breath. A low titter of laughter ran through the room. Wolfe decided to pretend he didn’t hear it.
“I know a lot of you have been together for a long time. You’ll have to adapt to my style, but I’ve got to learn about you if we’re to work effectively together.”
Dead silence. Wolfe shrugged. The words hadn’t sounded sincere or convincing even to him. He wished he had gone ahead and written down the brilliant remarks he had conceived when he first learned he was getting a command. Those would’ve rocked ’em in the aisles. Instead, they looked at him as though he’d just piddled on the floor. Maybe he ought to—that would get their attention.
He continued walking up and down, the adjutant at his heels. The long barracks was divided into three sections, every fifteen meters, as per fire regulations, but during the day the partitions were pushed back to make one big room. The walls were the enameled panels standard in military facilities both shipside and dirtside for their durability and ease in cleaning. Most of it here was drab khaki-gray, except for one panel in drab coral. That one didn’t quite fit into its modular frame. The edges were fire-scarred, and half the surface was etched with names. Some of them were scratched into the hard surface with some sharp object. Others had been laboriously cut, dot by dot, with a laser, all the way through the wall to the insulation. Wolfe ran his fingers along the names, feeling the minute impressions. He knew from experience that the enamel was practically indestructible. Each name had to have taken hours to incise.
“What’s this?” he asked.
There was a defensive growl from the troops, but only Chief Boland stepped forward.
“Wall of honor, sir,” he said. “Memory of the dead.”
“Why not have their names decently engraved?”
“It’s our custom,” said another trooper, a tall woman with very long legs and sincere brown eyes. “We use the knife or the sidearm of the lost soldier to write his or her name. It’s … more personal that way.”
Wolfe nodded. “I see. The color … it didn’t start here, did it?”
“No, sir,” said the female lieutenant. “It came from Platoon X’s first HQ on board the Burnside.” Wolfe recognized the name of a dreadnaught that had been destroyed in a territorial conflict on the TWC borders several years before. “We’ve been moved a few times, whenever someone the brass likes better wants our location. We take it with us.”
Wolfe raised an eyebrow. A piece of bulkhead that heavy wouldn’t get shipped as part of a unit’s regular kit. In fact, the loaders would raise hell if a company showed up with something like that in tow, and word got back up the line to the brass. In fact, there should have been at least one attempt to confiscate it. On the other hand, he wouldn’t put it past the resourcefulness of X-Ray to make a way to get their memorial on board their troop transport. The more experienced units would recognize and honor the effort for what it was and let it slip by, and the young ones couldn’t outthink them long enough to stop them doing what they wanted.
“It’s a Cockroach tradition,” Boland said, staring Wolfe straight in the eye.
“You’re not going to take it down, sir?” the diminutive woman chief asked. Though it was phrased like a question, it was a statement. Wolfe knew enough to take the warning.
“I wouldn’t dream of taking it down,” Wolfe said. This time, the murmur that ran through the room was positive. Wolfe knew he’d scored a point, but he meant it sincerely. For all the crap they spouted about being in Platoon X, he knew they had their pride. Outsiders didn’t realize that being the outcasts made this unit band together, form their own society, establish their own rules. The Cockroaches didn’t like being questioned by anyone from a legitimate unit, one that had the backing of the regular Thousand Worlds’ navy behind him or her. Because no one cared what happened to them. Because they really didn’t seem to care themselves. Look at the way they lived! Not a single bunk had been made. The curtains at the windows were gray and cracking. The floor creaked when walked on, probably indicating cracked joists underneath. Look at their uniforms! If anyone had given a hoot about them they’d have had those worn fatigues replaced long ago. Someone had to care about these troopers, and resurrect any self-respect they had. That must be why he had been sent here.
A blooping sound interrupted his thoughts. The Cockroaches looked surprised, then shamefaced. Then defensive. The bloop erupted again. Daivid followed the noise to a distant corner of the long room and grabbed for the handle of a well-traveled upright packing case two meters on a side that served the unit as a storage closet. The box wouldn’t open. He shook the handle and looked for a locking mechanism.
“Thielind,” he ordered, “open this box.”
“Sir …”
BLOOP! A cloud spread out from the top of the box. Wolfe got a faceful of sharp fumes and started coughing.
“Open this damned box!” he gasped.
Two of the spacers jumped forward and thrust their fingers into apertures that he thought at first were projectile-weapon damage the old box had sustained in transit. The front divided into two halves and swung open.
Inside, though, the crate wasn’t derelict, as it had appeared on the outside. It had been lined with the kind of sound-insulation foam that was found in TWC starship engine compartments. Ventilation holes had been drilled into the ceiling and rear walls of the closet to allow the flow of air and the occasional escape of warm liquor fumes, which were now rising from the contraption that was propped on a tripod at waist level. The device, for that was all he could find to call it, consisted of shiny copper tubing, gleaming metal vacuum flasks, twisted gray and white flexible piping and half a dozen pieces of laboratory glass. Underneath it all lay a survival stove, its orange heat circle glowing like a sunset, and a hundred liter tank, the recipient of the still’s output.
“And the booze?” Wolfe asked as mildly as he could, considering the current ethanol content of his lungs. “I take it this is a tradition, too?”
“Uh-huh,” Boland said, his face stony. “Long time, sir. Dating all the way back, sir.”
“There’s only one bar on the launch pad, lieutenant!” Thielind protested. “You oughta see what they charge for one watered-down beer. Four credits.”
“Four credits!” Wolfe frowned at Thielind, who nodded vigorously. “Hell, I’d go into business for myself at prices like those.” Eyebrows lifted all around the room.
“So that’s what we did, sir,” Petty Officer Jones assured him in his musical voice. “I’m glad you feel the same way we do, sir. There’s a longstanding trrr-adition of self-sufficiency in our unit. You wouldn’t want us wasting our precious resources on overpriced booze, would you?”
Wolfe grinned. “That’s a big tank for twenty-odd troopers. You’re not supplying the bar, too, are you? That’s not self-sufficiency, that’d be going into business for yourself on Space Service territory with Space Service property.”
“Well …” Jones rolled the final ‘l,’ trying to find the words.
“It’s not strictly against the rules,” Borden said in her bloodless voice. By now, Wolfe had figured out that the XO was a bunkroom lawyer. She liked rules, good for a woman in her position. Normally, it wouldn’t make her popular among the rank-and-file, but this company seemed to like her. She must have other redeeming traits. Wolfe had to get to know what those were. Clearly, one of them was being able to rationalize anything that the Cockroaches wanted to do that wasn’t exactly in the books. “All of this material is salvage. Half of it we fished out of vacuum or grubbed up out of dumps, sir. As such, it is no longer Navy property, because the Navy has discarded it.”
“Not like Boland’s runabout, eh?”
“No, sir!” The XO’s voice rose to an emphatic point, though she continued to stare at a spot on the wall.
“We’re just being resourceful,” Petty Officer Mose said. “Is there anything in the Space Service regs preventing resourcefulness?”
“Not exactly,” Daivid began, then realized 1) this was an argument that would go on for weeks and 2) he was being baited. “But there’s resourcefulness, and there’s going outside the lines.”
Boland laid an innocent hand on his chest. “No one has ever caught us going outside the lines, sir.”
Daivid laughed. “I bet they haven’t.”
“Want a snort, sir?” Chief Lin asked.
“No,” Wolfe said. The others stared at him suspiciously until he smiled. “I have to finish the inspection first.”
O O O
“At ease,” Wolfe said, and winced as the scrawny adjutant relayed the order in a shout from under his right ear. He sat down on the nearest footlocker and took off his hat. At his signal, most of the troops resumed the seats they’d left when he entered, kicking back on their bunks with their boots up, sitting on reversed chairs, perching wherever a human buttocks or alien analog would fit. Thielind popped open the still closet and brought a beaker of liquor and a relatively clean glass to Wolfe. Gingerly, Daivid took a sip, and hastily sucked in a double lungful of air to cool his windpipe. The rotgut wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, but it still burned its way down into his belly.
“So,” he gasped, slinging a hip as casually as he could onto the nearest table while the others helped themselves to the booze. “Tell me about your last few missions. I hear this company gets the worst assignments, in the worst possible conditions. Where do we usually end up getting sent?”
The ‘we’ was accepted as a positive sign, too.
“You know how they say ‘slag happens’?” the tall woman asked. She was called Adri’Leta Sixteen, which meant she was a clone, the sixteenth generation of her combination of genes. From her record Daivid had learned she was the first one to go into military service, and wondered why.
He nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, that’s where we go. Where slag’s happening.”
“Right. Do we have to watch them make it, or do we just clean it up afterwards?” Wolfe asked reasonably. “We get to critique ’em on technique?”
Boland sputtered between his lips.
“No one cares about our opinion, sir,” Borden informed him.
Wolfe shifted to face her, giving her his full attention. “I do. Yeah, I know I got sent here, same as you, but giving me these bars means that I have access to the chain of command. I don’t want slag assignments, so I don’t want you to get slag assignments, because we’re all going there together.” They all grumbled. They’d heard the speech before, probably one time per commanding officer. How was he going to get through to them? “So, where’d you get sent last? How come I’m here, and not your last CO?”
For a moment no one said anything. Wolfe felt his heart sink, thinking he’d lost them again. He should have waited for the booze to kick in. It turned out they were all sucking in breath. They all started talking at once.
“We got pinned down on Sombel,” Lin blurted out.
“The brass screwed us,” Boland snarled, interrupting her. “No air cover …”
“We needed three platoons to cover, not two,” Adri’Leta added.
“Heavy fire from guarded positions …” Borden explained.
Wolfe sat in the middle of it, letting them talk. Terran civilization had spent its first fifteen hundred years bringing itself into existence. Humanity had spread from the single world called Earth out to every T-class planet it could find, and adapted to hundreds of others with atmosphere domes, undersea habitats, or orbiting space stations. During the Building Phase, as the historians liked to call it, spacefarers and settlers cooperated, seeing one another as fellow seekers in the drive to open up the galaxy to humanity. Explorers led the way, sending back reports to Earth Central, and later to Alpha Centauri and Delta Glius of viable systems. In their wake, industry and colonists followed, as did traders, teachers and scientists, as well as those who saw their mission in life to take advantage of those who trusted in the basic goodness of human nature. Wolfe was ashamed to admit that many of his ancestors fell into the last category. He saw it as his goal to make amends by undoing some of the harm they had done.
Settlements grew into civilizations. The first Galactic Government arose. It lasted fifty years before it was obsolete, unable to keep up with the growth of its power base. It fell, to be replaced by the First Terran Empire. Which split up into the Power Enterprise, the Vargan Trade Union, and the Star Systems Alliance. Which reconformed into the Second Terran Empire. Which, after a few more reconfigurations, including the brief but colorful reign of Mad Emperor Haviland, elections, both crooked and otherwise, plenty of bullying, conquest, persuasion and preferential treatment in trade, became the Thousand Worlds Confederation. Modeled upon the ancient Roman and American patterns of historic Terra, the TWC was a looser association than many of the past govermental structures, reestablishing a common defense, a common language, and a common currency, but allowing member systems to regulate themselves, with certain basic rights guaranteed to all citizens, such as the child protective system and the marriage rights act, which had held up for thousands of years, though it was always attacked whenever there was a change of regime. (There weren’t really a thousand worlds in the system yet, since the statute insisted only a viable planet with T-class characteristics and a breathable atmosphere qualified, but it sounded better to the founding members than the Six Hundred and Fifty-Three Worlds Confederation.)
But not everyone was happy with the status quo. Because the current government found itself loath to lean too heavily on individual worlds’ administrations, sometimes excesses grew unchecked into abuses. TWC found itself having to send in troops to defend beings’ rights or extract diplomats from a deteriorated situation. Word spread that TWC’s overgovernment was attempting to conquer member worlds and run them under a local governor from a central location, as had been done in the bad old days of the Empires. Out of this misunderstanding insurgency had flared up, a movement seeking to overturn the galactic government. TWC had been trying to quash the rebellion for years. Where diplomacy failed, armed intervention became necessary, to prevent noncombatants from becoming prey to the rebel forces, and to prevent trade routes from being cut off. The main problem was that no matter how many ships or troopers that TWC had, the space service could be and was always being stretched too thin over too many fronts. Daivid had only been in the Space Service for three years, but even he saw that the galactic government was always fighting too many battles at once. X-Ray had fallen victim to this latest round of bad planning.
They’d been sent into a location that had not been adequately scouted or even scoped, with insufficient firepower to protect them while they tried to accomplish their task.
“It ought to have been pretty straightforward,” Lin said, her small face concentrated. “We were sent in to do a surgical shutdown of a major power plant. Not to destroy it, but to close it down. The Insurgency had taken over a factory in this city and was regearing it to use as a munitions plant.”
D-45 made a disgusted gesture. “They weren’t making weapons there, they were making flitters. The trick is it was in a city sympathetic to the rebels, and they had plenty of notice that we were coming. They were ready for us. We started taking fire almost as soon as we were inserted.”
“It turns out we were only a diversion,” Thielind added bitterly. The normally cheerful adjutant wore a grim expression on his thin face. “Halfway around the globe, the big ships were pulling prisoners out of a bunker. They’d sent us in to draw the fire from the insurgents. It worked. We had half the local army on our asses. If they’d only told us we were the stalking horse we could have dug in and given a good show, potshotting at the power plant without exposing ourselves. As it is, we lost Captain Scoley, who was a damned good officer.”
“They wanted us all to die.” Round-faced Jones clamped his lips shut after delivering his single opinion. All of them crossed their arms and looked at Wolfe. He looked back, uncertain what to say.
They obviously didn’t care if he reported the gossip up the line. Apart from being sent to the brig or a prison ship, what worse thing could happen to them? They were already being sent on death missions. Mustering out would be a favor, compared to what he was hearing.
“Tell me more,” Wolfe said. They hardly needed further encouragement. The cork was out of the bottle. They were dying to tell him more. The Cockroaches got all the bad duties: garbage detail, prisoner escort, munitions guard, hazardous waste cleanup.… Name the task; if it was dangerous or disgusting the Cockroaches had had to deal with it. And, Wolfe thought as he listened, they dealt pretty admirably. They didn’t complain about the task itself, just about the lack of respect and support from the brass. And they were absolutely right. No one cared if they lived or died. By the reckoning of the powers that be, they had already been discarded. They caught hell if they failed or wasted navy resources, and got precious little praise if they succeeded. They had to be their own cheering section. And now he was in the dumper with them. He was determined to raise their stock somehow. Let someone else be Brand X for a change. These were good people. He’d certainly met worse in his lifetime.
“… And that’s how we got started with the bulkhead,” Borden explained, at the end of a long narrative, interrupted along the way by half her fellows. “It’s our way of coping.”
“So’s the still,” Jones added, in his lilting baritone. Wolfe hated to admit it, but he was almost one hundred percent sure he could place the heavyset trooper’s planet of origin. Cymrai had been settled thousands of years ago by people named Jones. Most of them were of Terran-Welsh descent, but the rest had assumed the name somewhere along the way or had it imposed on their ancestors by others. In the long run Cymrai’s culture had taken a Celtic turn, preserving ancient arts and music. The communications directory was strictly arranged by given names.
“And our interest in advanced education,” put in D-45. He was a very tall man with sallow skin and shining black hair, with a prominent, pointed chin. Wolfe recognized the style of naming. It came from a world named Egalos on TWC’s fringe where the liberal government, in an effort to put behind its people any of the disadvantages or bad memories of the past associated with their names, abolished all family cognomens, instead giving each regional cluster a designation based upon the location of their city, town or neighborhood. One of Daivid’s teachers had been Sarah N’Diya Q-333. He’d had a mad crush on her when he was eight years old.
“And our weekly smokers,” said Thielind.
“And the ritual scarification …”
“And the limerick competitions …”
“All right,” Wolfe laughed. “Now I know you’re making these up to impress me. Come on! Limericks? Ritual scarification?”
“Yeah,” Ambering said, rolling up her sleeve. She was a meaty woman with warm brown skin and gray eyes. She pointed to an irregular mass on the inside of her forearm, an oval with three or four little lines sticking out of one side. “There. You lift the skin with a knife. When it heals you lift it again. The color’s office ink—very permanent. It’s supposed to be a cockroach, but I was never very good at art.”
“All right,” Daivid said, shaken. “Now I am impressed.”
“Ahem.” Jones cleared his throat and raised a hand theatrically. “‘A surveyor in space, grade E-4 / went out with an antigrav whore. / Ten klicks over the ground, / he spun her round and round, / and centrifugally plumb-bobbed her core.’” The others broke into applause and raucous cheers. Wolfe joined in. Jones rose and bowed, a thick hand across his round belly. “That’s one made up by Toco Bradon. She left us about four years ago. What a mind on that girl! She had a flair for the rhyming word. I can still recall a few more of her ditties.…”
BLEE-ble. BLEE-ble. BLEE-ble.
Everyone immediately fell silent. Wolfe glanced around for the communications unit. Thielind clapped down his glass and looked at his wrist screen.
“Ancom!” he chirped, the signal to answer an incoming transmission on his personal communications unit. The noise ceased at once. Thielind listened for a moment then tapped at the bright yellow stud in his ear lobe. “Gotcha. I mean, aye aye, ma’am!” He looked up at Wolfe. “Inspection tomorrow morning at eleven hundred, sir. The commander wants to make sure you’re checked in and ready, and everything’s under control.”
“Of course. Thanks, ensign,” Wolfe said. He glanced at the rest of his command. “Okay, company, you heard it. I want this place ship-shape by eleven. That’s an order.”
Thielind’s large eyes went around the room. He picked up the laboratory flask and filled Wolfe’s glass with it. “Have another drink, Lieutenant.”
O O O
“Here’s to fallen comrades,” Borden said, as the chronometer clicked over to 00:00. By now the booze had been joined on the battered table by mixers, cards, and pows. Wolfe selected a caffeine pow two millimeters across and tucked it into the space between his cheek and gum. The heat and saliva melted the coating instantly, releasing a jolt of bitterness into his mouth. It’d be good to keep his wits alert. He held two pairs, jacks and sevens, in a game so ancient that he never even questioned why the guard card was called a jack, and fervently hoped no one else had anything useful in his or her hand. His luck was usually pretty good, but it was being sorely tested. He signalled for one card.
“Why do you have so many customs?” he asked, watching Jones deal. The Cymraeg’s thick fingers were surprisingly deft. “I’ve been with a few units since I joined up. No one else seems to do it. Apart from the usual ones, breaking in new swabs by making them drink burning cocktails or ramming their new insigne into bare skin, that kind of thing.”
They all looked at one another. “What, you writing a book?” Mose asked, a sour expression on his creased, pale face.
“No, officer-sir,” Injaru called, his eyebrows high on his chocolate-dark forehead. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Shut up,” Mose growled. “Huh, lieutenant?”
A little puzzled, Wolfe watched the byplay. “No. Just curious. Where’d these all come from?”
“Boredom,” Boland announced. “Boredom, maybe. Some of ’em we do for the hell of it, but a few do come from remembering old colleagues-in-arms. We’ve got nothing to do in between missions or on long space hauls except drink. In case you haven’t noticed, they keep us pretty isolated out here. No one wants to associate with us. Afraid they’ll get the stink, I don’t doubt. We come up with things to keep our brains from dying in the isolation. We can’t think ahead. We don’t know where we’re going, where they’re sending us next. We don’t want to think about the past. You wouldn’t, if you had been through what we have. So we have our own ways. Keeps people guessing when they overhear us.”
“Keeps us out of trouble,” Meyers said. The curvaceous woman gathered up three cards with careful fingers. She looked up at him with a provocative eye. “In case you were wondering, we don’t try to get into trouble.”
“Maybe we have a little more imagination than most of those bobble-heads,” Lin said fiercely.
“Hah!” Thielind barked. “That’s how you ended up here! Well,” he turned to Wolfe, “that’s how I ended up here, anyway. Imagination.” He poured another tot into Wolfe’s glass. “Have a drink, lieutenant.”
Wolfe eyed the glass, wishing there was a potted plant within reach. He didn’t know how many more applications of that flensing acid his system could take before it shut down. “Maybe a little more,” he agreed. “Thanks, ensign.”
A few eyebrows were raised. “Don’t you say ‘enswine,’ like the rest of them?” Thielind asked, curiously. “I’m used to it.”
“Yeah. We even let him drink with us,” Boland joked, bringing a huge hand around to impact jovially between the slight junior officer’s shoulder blades. Thielind bounced into the table and fell back, but his eyes never left Wolfe’s.
Daivid squirmed a little. “I know it’s not corps practice, but I got so sick of it when I was an ensign that I promised myself I wouldn’t use it. Er, it’s just respect. You’re on the line, same as the rest of us.”
“Respect, huh?” D-45 asked, with a sound of the same in his voice. To cover up what for the moment sounded like marshmallow-gooey sentimentality, Daivid took a huge swig of the company’s rotgut, and let out an audible gasp as it hit the back of his throat.
“Too strong for you?” Jones asked. He emptied his own beaker, smacking his lips.
“It’s fine,” Wolfe assured him, trying not to gasp as the next sip found a portion of his esophagus that hadn’t yet been cauterized. “Nice, but a little too rough to go to sleep on.”
“Dilute it,” Borden said, tossing him a beaker of mild mixer. To his own surprise Wolfe caught it one-handed. Coordination was not yet completely gone. “It’s about 150 proof. What do you normally drink? Wine?”
“Yeah,” the lieutenant admitted sheepishly, hoping he wouldn’t sound like a wimp, but it was better to admit the truth than to pickle himself just to try and fit in.
“That’s okay,” she said with more friendliness than before. “We like wine, too.”
“Yeah,” Boland said, raising steadily reddening eyes from his current hand. “Do we ever! How come we can’t get assignments escorting vintage booze, like the guy they caught with an unlicensed shipload of Earth wine the other day?”
“Yeah, that guy! His name was Wolfe,” Injaru said thoughtfully. “Nicol Sambor some-other-middle-names Wolfe. One of that big-time Family with all them connections. You know what kind I mean.” The others nodded knowingly. “I bet that stuff they confiscated was pretty fine. Too bad we couldn’t get a hold of some of that. He wouldn’t be any relation to you, looey?” he joked.
Daivid cleared his throat, and shifted uncomfortably. “As a matter of fact, he’s my cousin.”
“Yeah, right,” Boland said, scornfully. He caught a yellow-eyed glance from his new commanding officer. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Uh, yeah. I am. Nicol’s a second cousin.”
“You’re one of that Wolfe Family?” the long-legged lieutenant asked, staring at him.
“Well, hell!” Lin said, as if everyone ought to know that. “They have connections all over!”
And indeed they did, as Daivid was all too aware, in shipping, gambling, smuggling, commodities trading, every moneymaking venture known to civilization. ‘Whenever there’s big money inside, there’s a Wolfe at the door,’ as the tired old joke went. Daivid tried to console himself with the thought that his family didn’t commit murder for hire, or slaughter innocent people in pursuit of credits. They specialized in what were known as ‘bloodless crimes’: games of chance, control of shipping rights, exclusives on certain goods, influence with government officials, transport of desirable items or people who wished to go from point A to point B without drawing attention. Since the bad old days, when space had been totally lawless and a crackdown had ensued that left few members standing from any Family, the Wolfes had sworn off involvement with drugs, prostitution, animal smuggling, or anything that would trigger a quarantine or give the Thousand Worlds Confederation galactic government an excuse to toss one of their warehouses. Occasionally, some law-and-order candidate would shake things up upon coming into office, impounding ships whose ownership could be traced back to a family. But while the Wolfe family played rough to survive, its business practices were clean. They had a policy of charitable contributions, no strings attached, and ran a fine string of soup kitchens as well as their fabulous chain of restaurants. Wolfe took a perverse measure of pride in that; few of the other families could say the same. But rumor tarred all of them with the same brush.
It was the last thing he wanted to come out, but he might as well have handed a curriculum vitae out to everyone in camp. There was no way to get away from his Family.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Thielind asked Lin accusingly.
Boland growled protectively—Wolfe suspected a personal interest—but the small woman tossed her head nonchalantly. “Sure I did, but why would I tell? There is no bad blood between our families. We enjoy a centuries-old alliance. I am not in the inner circle anyhow.” She gave her new CO a sloe-eyed glance. “I’m a bastard. My mother won’t tell who my father is, so the Ancestors won’t acknowledge me. I don’t inherit anything from the Lin Family, and no one looks out for me. But if you didn’t say who you were I figured you didn’t want to. It’s your secret.”
“Thanks,” Wolfe mumbled, feeling more uncomfortable than ever in the frankly admiring glances some of his company was now giving him. “It’d have come out sooner or later.”
“So, what the hell are you doing here,” the broad-faced woman pressed, “if your family has all that money?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it, Meyers, is it? How long have you been in the corps?”
Meyers gave him a funny look, but let him distract her. “Five years. I was bonking my former CO. He happened to be in a strict marriage contract with an admiral he only saw about once every two months. When someone caught us and threatened to report him, he made up some offense to get me off the base. Wish I’d had some loathsome disease I could have left him with, as a parting gift. I like it here better, sir. No one cares who I sleep with, so long as I live through my assignments.”
“Well, you can’t sleep your way through missions with me. I expect everyone to be awake during missions.” The room had fallen silent. He looked around, feeling eyes peeling strips off him, though when he met anyone’s gaze, it dropped. “What’s the matter?”
Round-faced Jones cleared his throat. “With all due respect to your rank, sir, you don’t have the right to make a crack like that. We’ve served together for years now. She has earned her right to be here. With respect,” and the word was spat out, “you haven’t. Yet.”
It smarted, but Wolfe could take it. At least they hadn’t fragged him and left him in the disintegration bin for a first offense. “Point taken, trooper,” he said, pleasantly. “I apologize, Meyers. Perhaps I should take some lessons in humor. OTS was a little deficient in it.”
“Accepted, sir.” Meyers lifted her glass.
There seemed to be nothing left to say after that. He put down his cards, rose, and made towards the door, hoping that it didn’t look like a retreat. “Er. Well, then, good night.”
“Night, sir,” Boland called to him.
Just before the door shut behind him, he heard someone, probably Corporal Meyers, making a crack about his old man taking her out on a trip halfway to the moon and letting her walk the rest of the way back for making his little boy feel bad.
O O O
Meyers wasn’t completely wrong, Daivid mused as he hiked hastily toward his quarters. Benjamin Wolfe was very protective of his only son. Except for one thing, the don of the Wolfe Family had paid Daivid the compliment of assuming that he could stand on his own feet. However, that one thing was as dangerous as carrying a planetkiller bomb around with him.
Daivid took a drink of water, hoping he could dilute the alcohol he had consumed somewhat before he went to sleep. After he undressed he peeled the card off his chest and turned it over in his fingers. A tap on the touch-screen, which analyzed his DNA, scanned his retina and read his pulse, turned the display on. Here was what the others were joking about. This was the Wolfe Family power they meant.
Once Old Wolfe had come to terms with Daivid’s decision, he kept a calm expression on his face, but his eyes were worried. “I am not sending you out there unprotected.”
“It’s the space service, not a wildlife safari!” Daivid had flung himself up out of the armchair opposite his father’s desk and stormed for the door.
“Don’t do it.” Benjamin held up a warning hand. “It may not be the wilderness, but you’re still going to be out there with people. Strangers. You can’t give me an absolute no. I still know people. You walk out of here without protection, and I will make some calls. They won’t process you. You’ll be back here in an hour.” Daivid put out a hand to open the privacy lock. “And if you don’t come back here, out of pique or I don’t know what, pride, I will send Randy and Sven after you.”
Daivid gave himself a moment to cool down. He knew that he’d been beaten. Randy and Sven were the most trusted of what in more respectable families would have been known as ‘loyal retainers.’ Where the Wolfes were concerned, they were more likely to be called henchmen. In fact, Randy, all 2.2 meters of him, had been Daivid’s nurse and protector when he was little and had never let him forget it. It was hard to engender respect in someone who had taught him to wear ‘big boy’ underpants. Fealty and undying devotion, yes. Respect, no. If Randy decided to call him Bucktooth Boy or any of his many other embarrassing childhood nicknames in front of the recruiting officers, Daivid would shoot himself right there. Sulkily, Daivid sank into the chair that his father indicated. “I don’t know why I bothered to tell you I was going.”
“I’d have found out anyhow,” Benjamin assured him. “You wouldn’t have gotten your clothes off for the physical before I’d be down there signing you out. So, are you going to take what I’m offering you, or not?”
“What protection do you want me to take? I can’t bring bodyguards with me into the space service!”
Benjamin reached into an invisible pocket in the breast of his ten-thousand-credit tunic and withdrew a small card, which he tucked into his son’s hand. “This. It’s a database of every single person in the galaxy who owes me a favor. There are more listings than any one man can use up in a hundred lifetimes. If you need it, use it. I don’t want you out in the middle of the void with your bare tuchas hanging out when all you had to do was ask somebody for help. Someone who has to say yes. You take it, you promise me you’ll use it if you need it, you can go. Otherwise, you might as well study viniculture, because I’m shipping you to your Aunt Hilda on Crekis. You can help her run the wine business out there.”
It was the compulsory nature of that yes that grated on Daivid’s psyche. But Benjamin Wolfe didn’t hold onto control of the Wolfe Family purely through the charm of his personality. He knew how to get what he wanted, and how to get people to give him what he wanted. Daivid took the card, and promised to guard it with his life and check in periodically, but he had also promised himself that he would never use the database under any circumstances whatsoever.
O O O
So far, Daivid mused, lying in the dark of his quarters with only the tiny screen of the card for illumination, he’d been able to do without its help. For three years he had slogged his ass off. He had earned his promotions honestly—he hoped—and been able to call on others for assistance by doing favors for them. Simple ones. No blood oaths involved, no horrendous penalties if they failed to comply. He took pride in that. He was making his way in the universe. There, dad, he thought, take that.
Still, curiosity drove him to browse through the database from time to time, as now. The favors were graded from 1 to 6. In reverse order, class 6 favors were big favors the person owed the Don personally, the ‘please will you blow up a planet for me’ kind of favors. Next were big Family favors, generally incurred among members of the bloodline or owed to one of them. Then big friend-of-the-Family favors. Next came small personal favors, small Family favors and, lastly, small friend favors. (No one else got favors. If you asked for help, you became a friend. For life.) Daivid could hear the voice of his father ringing in his ears, reminding him, “Ask! If you need something, it’s stupid if you don’t ask.”
Ask! He didn’t ask to be the Don’s eldest and favorite child. For all his aspirations to make it honorably in life there would always be the doubters, the ones whom he made nervous because he was who he was. X-Ray must have heard all the rumors, and probably suspected that if he didn’t like one of them he could arrange for a little ‘accident,’ as Meyers had implied when she thought he couldn’t hear her.
He wished he could explain to them that he couldn’t arrange anything. He had taken himself out of the line of succession. His middle sister Sherez, younger than he by two years, was now being groomed to take the top spot, but even she was certain that one day the old man would talk her brother into coming back. Daivid knew just as certainly that the old man couldn’t. Sherez was one of the people he had been unable to convince.
In the card’s memory there was also a complete address file of the family and its connections across all inhabited worlds, including the people who were on the Family payroll who were deep in planetary governments. That he had also had reason to peruse, but largely for self-protection. The database also included those government workers who were on other Families’ payrolls, who were not necessarily kindly inclined toward members of the Wolfe clan. A year ago he had almost gotten sent to an ice station outpost, until he realized that the clerk posting him there was an offshoot of the Franconi Family. Daivid had stretched out his neck and gone just a little over the clerk’s head to have himself re-reassigned to the base he was supposed to have gone to in the first place. The one, he thought with a sigh, where he had been stationed before they had sent him to Treadmill.
Finally, the last section in the card’s memory was a list. Daivid didn’t like to read through it, didn’t even like to think about it. It contained the names, images and last known addresses of people the Don would like to know the locations of, if his devoted son came across them, dead or alive. They were people who had skipped out on payments, committed some crime or outrage against the Family, or betrayed a trust that was not a prosecutable criminal offense. (Benjamin liked to let the courts do his work for him whenever possible.) His father had made it clear he didn’t want Daivid to take any action on his own. He just wanted to know where those people were. Daivid read all his own sinister implications into the old man’s breezy assurance. This section was really what made Daivid the most reluctant to use the cardbase. Nothing was free, he reflected. Even energy use led to entropy.
He flipped the card in the air, letting it land face down on his stomach. This list of favors cost a lot of lives, dating back from before human beings broke through the atmosphere on the mother planet. He had solemnly promised his father to stick the card in a communications box once a month (“Call collect,” Benjamin had admonished him.) to update the files, and to let the family know where and how he was.
He didn’t mind checking in with his folks. In spite of their chosen, er, professions he loved his family. He had always gotten along with his three sisters. His mother, who did not work in any of the Family businesses because she had had her own career before she had married Benjamin Wolfe, was Daivid’s favorite person in the galaxy. She was proud of his attainments, praising him when he finished OCS at the top of his class (his father had been proud, too, but he had only confided this to Daivid’s mother, never telling him so directly), sending a polished new infopad when he got his first promotion from ensign—enswine—to lieutenant jg. He loved his family, but he was making his own way along now. He had a purpose in life, probably one too big for a single lifetime, but it gave him meaning.
And he hadn’t thought about Sesi in over a year.
He knew he was tough enough to make it in this assignment. He was young and inexperienced, but he had inherited enough of the family willpower to lead. The Cockroaches needed a good leader, but was he the one? What if behind the polished exterior he showed the world was a block of plaster instead of chunk of ebony?
He tapped the card, wondering if there was any spot in his quarters where he could conceal it during those times it would be awkward to have it on him, such as if he had to shower with the troopers. Although the card’s system was heavily encoded, with a heat-sensitive fingerprint switch and DNA scan as the primary triggers, he wasn’t going to try and fool himself into believing the safeguards were foolproof. The databases’ content was worth a large fortune on any black market inside the Thousand Worlds or outside. The Cockroaches had already proved they were willing to bend the rules and regard other people’s property as their own.
He decided that for the time being he was going to have to wear the card on his chest, and keep watch for where their eyes didn’t go. Give them a few weeks to search his luggage for anything interesting or worth stealing—make that ‘trading’—and perhaps he could figure out a safe hiding place.
***