Chapter 5
Captain Harawe of the TWC destroyer Eastwood obviously knew X-Ray Company’s reputation, and didn’t like it. He surveyed the unit as they reported to him at the shuttle landing zone with the distaste one might have upon discovering a freshly coughed-up hairball.
Harawe, a tall man with very dark skin and epicanthic folds over hazel-green eyes, let his gaze travel from one trooper to another. “I just want to get some things clear before you set foot or whatever,” he amended, peering at the corlist, “on my ship. I don’t take slag, but I give out plenty. There are no easy berths aboard the Eastwood. You’ll work for your passage. Is that understood?”
“Aye, sir!” X-Ray chorused obediently. Daivid distrusted them when they sounded that angelic. He snapped off a salute.
“Lieutenant Daivid Wolfe, Captain!” he barked out. “These are my officers, Lieutenant jg Donna Borden, and Ensign Ioan Thielind.”
“I saw your names on the manifest,” Harawe growled, spinning to face them. “We’re not going to get chummy. I’m your ride, and that’s all. Your company will work, eat, excrete, recreate, and sleep, and stay the hell out of my way. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” Daivid held himself erect. A regular Navy type. Someone like Harawe sounded like he hated you, but if you dug down deep enough into his inner psyche and really probed his heart you would find out that he didn’t care enough about you to bother with hate. If your plans didn’t coincide with his plans, then you were the one who had to change, and pronto. Whatever made Mason treat Daivid and the others with such leniency didn’t impact upon Harawe at all. All the captain wanted was for them to follow orders, avoid conflict, and make it through the journey so they would get the hell off his ship. Daivid was comfortable with an arm’s-length attitude like that. He had given X-Ray a lengthy speech on just getting there and back again without attracting notice. With straight faces, every one of them had assured him that peace and quiet was all they wanted.
Daivid was already feeling nervous. He had given strict orders not to bring with them the still or the piece of hull plate, but he had noticed a flash of melon-pink behind a rack of weapons before Nuu Myi had slammed the cargo container shut. When Daivid had demanded she reopen it for his inspection she pretended to have forgotten the code sequence. So the memorial was traveling with them. When he realized they were not going to listen to him he had made sure he was the last man out of the enlisted barracks, and checked the battered closet at the end of the room. The still was still there, its heating element turned off and sealed. Daivid had felt a surge of relief, but when he kicked the tank, it rang hollow. Groaning, Daivid had made tracks for the depot to do a quick check of the rest of their cargo.
The array of packing containers piled up ready for shipment was daunting, but no one ever told a Wolfe there was a job too big for him. He had taken the manifest out of Thielind’s hands and scanned it for potential hiding places. Somewhere, they had managed to pack a hundred liters of white lightning. How the hell could anyone conceal that much liquid? He doubted they had sold it all to the spaceport bar. Daivid started opening big carriers, poking through the padding around artillery pieces and lifting up the spacer bars in between weapons. Not a single thing sloshed or burbled that wasn’t supposed to. By the time Harawe had landed he still hadn’t found the liquor. He hoped the captain wouldn’t happen upon it by accident.
Harawe eyed the enlisted troopers with distaste. “There’s sixty skids of goods coming on board. You people are loading my cargo as well as your own. I’m not bringing anyone down here to help. No one gets a free ride on my ship. Do you hear me?”
“No, sir!” Boland led the rest in a hearty salute. Daivid shot the noncoms a wary glance. They grinned at him. Harawe nodded curtly.
“Then let’s get this load of crap moving!”
“Hey, lieutenant,” Supply Chief Sargus had called, pointing a thick thumb at an army of frontloaders rolling along behind him. “Here’s the rest of your ammo. And your suits. I don’t believe it! Everything checked out. You must be the luckiest dumb fragger ever to board ship, or the toughest. Good luck!”
“I’m going to need it,” Daivid thought.
O O O
The Eastwood must have been well-favored by Central Command, or it had been recently commissioned. Everything smelled new, like a flitter straight out of the display room. Daivid oversaw the loading, with Harawe towering over him disapprovingly. They stowed the containers of battle armor, weaponry, and personal goods. Daivid hovered around them nervously, listening for that telltale gurgle. The last of X-Ray’s equipment was loaded, and he was none the wiser, but Harawe hadn’t noticed anything unusual, either. He’d have to check once they got on board. In the meantime, the rest of the loading job remained to be finished.
“Watch that, there!” the stern captain shouted, as Ewanowski guided the first of Supply’s frontloaders out of the warehouse, a box over six meters long by two broad. “That’s my new flitter. One scratch, and you will all be remelting and mending ceramic bulkhead all the way to your drop site!”
“Aye, sir,” Daivid acknowledged. “Er, wouldn’t it be easier to take it out of its crate, secure the crate, and drive the flitter inside the hold? That would lessen the possibility of it getting any bumps on the way in.”
“Good idea. See to it!” Harawe stalked away to talk with Commander Mason, arriving in the wake of the supplies.
At Borden’s direction, Meyers and Boland undid the locks at one end of the long container. Boland stuck his head inside and let out a long whistle.
“What a beauty!” he crowed. Before anyone else could move, he swung inside and dropped into the pilot’s seat. “Hot slag! Antigrav displacement emitters, Parkinson positronic drive, Van Clef-Menow MR3 stabilizers, multi-source renewable fuel—this baby will never run out of power, no matter how long you run it!”
“It’s not yours,” Daivid said firmly, foreseeing a potential incident like the one to which Boland had alluded on Daivid’s first day.
“Of course, not, sir,” Boland replied, as if shocked. He ran his hands over the instrument panel, then punched both thumbs into the drive actuators. With a roar, the flitter jumped forward, covering the hundred and ten meters between the warehouse and the shuttle in seconds. Daivid ran after him. The crate trundled behind him at one twentieth the speed of the flitter.
When Daivid got inside the hold, Boland was polishing the traces of oil from his fingertips lovingly off the sides and control panel of the flitter.
“She’s fantastic, sir,” he said, with genuine affection. Rag still wound around his hand, he patted the vehicle. It bobbed slightly on its magnetic anti-grav lifts as if responding to the caress.
“Well …” Daivid was not immune to the charms of a fast flitter. He leaned over to take a sniff of the smooth upholstery. It smelled newer than the shuttle. It reminded him of the personal craft his uncle had given him for his sixteenth birthday, the one he and his cousins had wrecked dive-racing along updrafts in the mountains. “You leave it alone, chief. It’s the captain’s personal vehicle. I don’t want you to touch it again while we’re on that ship.”
“Agreed, sir,” Boland said. He threw a salute, then turned to help Meyers and Okumede recrate the runabout. With deep misgivings, Wolfe returned to the warehouse to oversee the next load. There was something in the chief’s assent that struck him as too ready and too smooth. He’d have to think about the exchange, and figure out where the hole in his logic had been.
O O O
Daivid always got a feeling of stepping off a cliff every time he went on a mission. A faint, undefinable feeling of going off into the unknown. Excitement made up a large part of the elixir, a touch of fear and a large dollop of curiosity. They were going to fight humanity’s enemies and make another part of the galaxy safe for civilization. Almost ready to go, now. The loaders and ground transports were all emptied, their burdens tucked into the belly of the gleaming shuttle. The wheeled vehicles and all the base’s personnel withdrew behind the ten-meter-high, transparent firescreen at the far edge of the vast polycrete surface of the launch pad. Daivid squinted into the brilliance of the afternoon sun. Supply Master Chief Sargus stood at the edge, back propped against a forklift with his big thumbs hooked into his belt. And Commander Mason hovered behind the window like a house pet watching its master departing, except instead of being sad, her shoulders were slumped with relief. She was getting rid of her problem children, possibly forever. A little of his excited energy abandoned him. He followed his troopers on board the shuttle.
The Cockroaches were directed to impact benches just to the fore of the hold.
“Hey, look at this!” Aaooorru announced, poking his forefeeler to the third joint in the padding. “Comfy!” The others threw themselves into the couches and wriggled against the cushioning. Petite Lin almost vanished into her seat’s depths. They took up a great deal more room than the usual crash-couches, but Daivid thought they’d be worth it, preserving the health of the troopers enveloped in them. And they’d be a lot more tolerable for long transits than the old style seats, which were more like riding on a bench than a safety device designed to deliver soldiers to their deployment in good working order.
Everything, bulkheads, seats, control panels, infoscreens, disposers, dispensers, signage, was perfectly clean and new or in good repair, not a chip, a tear, a stain or a scratch visible anywhere. Daivid experienced deep envy at the newness, the air of prosperity all around him. Why couldn’t his unit have ships and facilities that weren’t sixteen-times hand-me-downs? The pristine corridors rang with their footsteps as he and his two officers followed the Eastwood’s executive officer, a narrow-faced man with thin, red-brown skin and flaring nostrils, from the enlisted troopers’ cabin forward to the bridge. Harawe gave them one sour glance as they strapped in, and never looked at them again.
The shuttle, so pristine that its exterior plating shone like the glass it was, lifted off effortlessly in spite of the heavy containers in her belly. Treadmill’s mosaic landscape receded hastily in the star tank. At Harawe’s order, the navigator, a plump woman with barley-gold curls, turned the view outward. The Eastwood gleamed in the star’s light like a planet, its curved arrowhead shape shimmering white as the shuttle. The exterior was studded with laser ports and missile tubes. Since she was not designed to land dirtside, no expanse of her white belly had to be left flat for landing gear. She was defensible from every angle. Daivid counted six gun emplacements angled around the landing bay into which the shuttle flew.
Treadmill was a sleepy little hamlet compared with the bustling complement of the Eastwood. Grapples captured the slowing shuttle and eased her into her landing cradle. Hoses and cranes snaked out of the walls and hooked onto the hull with assorted clanks and thumps, followed by technicians and repairbots. Harawe smacked the safety buckle on his impact harness and was up and on his way out off the bridge before Wolfe, Borden, and Thielind had undone theirs.
None of the Eastwood’s officers looked at the three of them. Wolfe shrugged. Even if he hadn’t been paying attention when they had boarded the way to the exit was clearly marked in Standard and eight other languages, and one destroyer was pretty much laid out like another. He had done his initial service on the destroyer Van Damme.
What to do when he reached the shuttle bay was another thing. Once they had debarked and passed through decontamination in the vast, shining white airlock, they paused, hoping they didn’t look as lost as they felt. Fortunately, Harawe had arranged for a welcoming committee.
Bong! A bell-like sound echoed in his head, as the ship’s communication system broadcast directly into his mastoid implant. A crisp female voice announced, “Please proceed forward twenty meters to the next set of double blast doors. Then halt. Your escort is waiting for you.”
“Did you hear that?” Daivid asked the others.
“Did I ever!” Thielind said, shaking his head. “That computer has one sexy voice.”
“You need to go on a date,” Borden smirked.
“What’s the hurry? It’s only been six months since the last one.”
A female junior officer so smartly attired Wolfe thought she must be going to a costume ball instead of on duty marched up and saluted him. It took him a moment to realize she was dressed normally. Daivid mentally shook himself. Five days among the Cockroaches was ruining his eye for appropriate military bearing. He had better watch it, or he was going to forget what standards were supposed to be like.
“I’m Ensign Coffey,” she said, shaking hands with all of them. “I’ll take you and your officers to your quarters. When they’re finished stowing your gear the flight deck master chief will show your company where they’re bunking. Come with me.”
A muted female voice overhead followed them along the corridor, the public-address computer making announcements or paging crew members to locations where they were needed.
“… Volleyball semi-finals will begin at 1600 hours in the forward gymnasium between Team Red and Team Blue. Supporters will only be admitted during their nonduty shift. Highlights can be viewed on in-ship channel 605. Today’s birthdays are Midshipman Vol Pendgarest, who turns 22, Lieutenant Finela Howes, who turns 40, and Mannalenda Vargas, age two, daughter of Lieutenant Commander Juda Sugg Vargas. The main midships ladder between decks 4 and 5 will be closed between the hours of 2300 and 0200 for maintenance due to worn treads. Please use midships lifts or other ladders fore and aft …”
Daivid experienced a feeling of isolation. A healthy, active military community was bustling all around him with purpose and common goals. It was so different from the way the Cockroaches lived, set apart from the other units on a base that was already considered punishment duty. As much as he was coming to like them, they were still pariahs among pariahs. He also had a momentary surge of guilt, then alarm, realizing that they were still back in the landing bay, not currently under his direct supervision.
“I hope they’re behaving themselves,” he murmured to himself. Borden cocked her head. She’d caught the comment.
“Depends on your definition of behaving themselves, sir.”
O O O
“Those are fragile, damn you!” the flight deck supervisor howled, as Ambering knocked the side of the shuttle door with her frontloader. The chief, a stocky, swarthy-skinned human male with thick curly hair peeking out of the neck of his dark green coveralls, rolled up to her on legs as round as barrels and banged on the first crate with his fist. “Can’t you read it? That’s power capacitors! You want to set off a major explosion? Watch it!”
The heavyset woman gave him a glare from underneath her eyebrows. “Aye, chief,” she muttered. Lin, watching the rest of the troopers stacking boxes, pursed her lips and gave her a warning look.
“I can’t heee-aaar yeeew!” the chief barked. Ambering wiped the resentful expression off her face.
“Aye, chief!” she shouted.
“That’s better! When I talk to you, I want you to reply like you mean it! All of you scum get that?”
“Aye, chief!” the Cockroaches bellowed in unison. Lin nodded. No sense in starting trouble right away. It was inevitable that there would be trouble, of course. No one could exist around these constipated fancy-suited power-trippers without being tempted to burst the balloon of their self-importance, and the Cockroaches were experts at spotting a balloon that was overdue for bursting. She marked the flight deck supervisor on her mental list as someone she wanted to take down a notch or two over the course of the next thirty-five days. She outranked him, which was an advantage, and she bet he didn’t know very much about theology. You could never start too early on a preemptive strike. She signaled to the others to hurry up and finish so they could get up and explore the rest of the ship. They winked or nodded back, sharing the same thought. Ewanowski, the semicat, bared his teeth eagerly. He and Boland eased the captain’s new vehicle out of the hold and locked it into a climate-controlled compartment along with a few other smaller containers.
“First blood, first blood!” Jones crowed, emerging from the hold of the shuttle alongside the roboloader.
“No!” Meyers scoffed. “You couldn’t have come up with one that quickly.”
“I certainly did,” Jones stated, polishing his fingernails on his coverall. “Ready?”
“No. You had to have thought it up in advance.”
“I certainly did not! I swear by my honor.…”
“What honor?” Ewanowski growled, playfully, as he shouldered by. Jones punched him in the arm.
“Chief!” Meyers protested.
Lin interceded. “You know the rules. The first Roach to come up with a limerick on site gets extra points, more if it’s good. We’ll be able to tell if it’s appropriate, or if he’s recycling something from another mission.”
“I’ve got one, too,” Mose grinned, lifting his eyes from the inventory screen.
“Me, too,” Okumede called from across the hold.
“Jones called it first,” Lin decided. “Come on, out with it.”
“Get on with the job!” the deck chief shouted. “You’re wasting our time!”
“Wait a moment, wait a moment,” Jones said, gesturing at him to be patient. “Five lines start to finish. ‘A grumpy ship captain named Harawe / Said to Wolfe, as we stowed his new carawe, “You may come on my ship / But you give me the pip / And I wish you and your troop were all farawe!’” Jones hooked his hands in his belt and turned with pride to the deck master chief. “So, what do you think of that, eh?”
O O O
It took Daivid only a few moments to get his gear stowed. Every compartment opened silently to a finger’s touch. The sound insulation shut out the sound of footsteps from the corridor beyond. For the duration of the mission, no geese waking him up at daybreak. Maybe he’d get to sleep until 0500. Luxury.
Once again he took inventory of the chamber that was to be his new home for the next thirty-five days. It was all so splendidly ordinary: five hangers, water glass, chair, desk, bed, bedclothes. Yet the difference between this setting and X-Ray Company’s barracks was extreme. He felt as though he might be home again in his father’s mansion. Genuine wooden moldings framed the door. Polished brass knobs indicated the location of controls and communication outlets. Just out of curiosity he poked his head into the small lavatory he shared with the junior officers’ quarters next door. Sonic shower. Too bad, he thought, thinking of the delicious deluge he had enjoyed that morning. Even the captain of a star destroyer didn’t have it as good as they did dirtside when it came to hygiene. So there were advantages to living in the back end of nowhere after all. And, yet … was that a personal surround entertainment hookup over desk above the docking station for his infopad? Yes! He flicked it on. Wow—all the newest threedeeos, including the pictures that were still in full crystal amphitheater release.
He jumped guiltily at the sound of his door signal. “Enter,” he called. The door slid open to reveal Coffey, back stiff.
She shot him a very formal salute. “You are summoned to the captain’s day room, sir.”
“What’s going on, Ensign?” he asked, smiling at her. “A briefing, already?”
No friendly banter or even a return smile. Coffey’s small face twisted into a mask of disapproval.
“No, sir. Would you follow me, please?”
O O O
“What do you mean, they’re already guilty of dereliction of duty?” Wolfe asked, hopelessly. He stood alone on one side of the captain’s enormous white marble-topped desk. On the other side the captain sat glowering. At his left elbow, in front of a wall filled with screens and readouts, hovered a clutch of lieutenants and ensigns. A tall itterim in the rear clicked his mandibles at Wolfe, the bug equivalent of sticking out his tongue. At its elbow, a hardfaced woman with short, wavy black hair and commander’s flashings on her collar stood with her arms folded. At Harawe’s right elbow stood Commander Cleitis, the narrow-faced XO, and a burly man with a chief’s insignia on his coverall sleeves. His square face looked as though someone had tried to pound the corners off of it. Dark red bruises decorated the left temple and jaw, the lower orbit of the right eye and the bridge of his nose. He glared at Wolfe.
“And brawling,” interjected the XO, unnecessarily.
“And scurrilous verse, too, derogatory to the captain,” the flight deck chief said, moving his jaw very gingerly.
Wolfe groaned. “A limerick?”
“What do you know about it?” Harawe growled.
“It’s a unit tradition, sir.”
The green eyes pinned him in place. “Have you been a party to this?”
“Not yet, sir—I mean, no.” He shook his head. “I’m not much of a poet.…”
“Neither is your crewman, by the sound of it,” Harawe said. He waved a hand over a sensor on his desk. A miniature threedeeo image appeared on the white desk, showing one side of the shuttle, half a dozen of troopers, and as many coverall-clad members of the Eastwood’s crew. Jones’s fruity voice rose out of a concealed speaker. Daivid listened, wishing he could drop straight down through the deck.
“… what do you think of that, eh?” the little round figure said, planting its hands on its hips.
What the listener thought of it was more or less confirmed by the brawl that followed. To Wolfe’s dismay, Jones had indeed thrown the first punch, though not until after a conversation of steadily rising acrimony between him and the chief had occurred.
“Naturally, everything in the secured areas is recorded,” the XO put in.
“Naturally,” Daivid said faintly.
“Of course the rest of the file will have to be freeze-framed and expanded to see who was responsible for each of the infractions that followed.”
“Of course, sir.”
“This does not give me a great deal of confidence in your ability to lead these hyenas,” Harawe said. “You do realize that you’ve joined this ship’s complement to undertake a mission of great importance?”
“I do, sir, though we have not yet been briefed on just what that mission is,” Daivid pointed out.
That seemed to excite one of the female lieutenants present enough to raise a faint twitch in her stiff face. “Commander, in light of the present proceedings, I must ask again if this is indeed the unit to undertake such a vital task. It is, as you know, a sensitive matter …”
Cleitis waved a hand. “That is the entire point of their assignment, Varos.”
“Sir,” Daivid began, “what is our as—?”
The captain interrupted him. “I know you are new to the unit. So I will allow you a trifle of leniency, but that is all. I cannot allow your company to damage the workings of my ship. The man who threw the first punch is confined to quarters during off-hours, with no entertainment systems permitted except for the Space Service’s book of rules and regulations. I will review his case in ten days.”
“Yes, sir,” Daivid sighed. Jones wouldn’t consider either part of the penalty punishment. If the confinement lasted long enough he would probably set the entire book to verse, maybe even to music.
“All of the crew who were involved in the altercation will be assigned to Chief Winston down in Sanitation,” Executive Officer Cleitis intoned. “Further infractions will be accorded corporal punishment. You keep them out of trouble at all other times. You will report to Commander Iry.” The hardfaced woman nodded. “She’ll expect to see you daily, and at any time she wants your sorry ass in her office. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, sir,” Daivid said. The hardfaced woman gave him one sharp nod. The XO echoed it.
“Good. Dismiss.”
O O O
“I was declaiming, sir,” Jones argued, sitting on his lower bunk in the cramped six-bed quarters. “He could have waited a moment. It was the last load.”
“But you ignored his orders,” Daivid explained painstakingly for the eighth time, then decided Jones was just keeping the discussion going to see how long he could string the new commander. “Enough is enough. He had instructions for you.”
The burly man settled back against the wall with his hands behind his head. “Ah, well, he threw them around a bit too readily.”
“That’s his job,” Daivid said, with finality, punching the door control. “I’ll check on you later.”
The other Cockroaches were waiting in Gehenna, the day room assigned to them. The Eastwood was carrying a full complement of space service troopers and special forces personnel, but somehow X-Ray Company had managed to get one small room to itself. Maybe, Daivid thought, it had something to do with its upcoming mission. He intended to ask about a briefing at the XO’s earliest convenience.
The room, like all other enlisted messes, was meant to act as a chilling-out area for up to three companies. It was called a ‘day room’ because of the lighting, the harsh, brilliant glare that was the equivalent of sunlight under atmosphere. Science now millennia old had proved that human beings had to be exposed to a minimum of six hours a day, or they would begin to suffer depression and some deficiencies associated with lack of sunlight. In certain cases they could even be ordered to spend time in this or any other chamber fitted with the correct lamps.
The company would eat at regular times in the commissary, but food synthesizers and a couple of big storage units had been installed in each of the day rooms for their use in between meals. They also did their laundry here, in the big cleaning trunks and presser boxes against one wall, plus a real wash tub for personal, non-issue items. If troopers wished to socialize with others outside their command, a Hero-class destroyer like this one had bars and common rooms, the sports areas and multi-use cultural venues as points of interaction. Traditionally, and this habit Daivid knew went back thousands of years, units assigned to messes were allowed to furnish and/or decorate their messes as they saw fit. Seeing the way they kept their barracks back on Treadmill, he guessed that the room would very quickly turn into a mess in truth. The Cockroach banner had already been mounted on the wall, and the battered memorial was propped up in one corner. Debris, in the form of personal readers, discarded clothing and food containers, lay in clusters on countertops and the row of seats that lined three of the walls.
Equally traditional was an officer having to ask permission to enter. The Service, like all military operations from the beginning of time, was a top-down organization, but to give the noncoms a territory they could control themselves went a long way towards keeping morale steady on long missions. If Daivid had had orders to convey, they were transmitted to the receiver in the chamber, or to the communication units of individual troopers involved. (In the case of an emergency or immediate call to duty, the custom naturally was suspended.) Though the ten-centimeter-thick door stood ajar Daivid did not enter. He leaned on the door signal and waited. Twelve of the Cockroaches were clustered around the central pedestal table, cards in hand. The rest of X-Ray Company sprawled, sat, or lay on the floor or the built-in seats, drinking bug juice, eating hand-snacks and sucking on pows. Meyers glanced up from her cards at the chime, then hastily looked away, not making eye contact with him. Mose shifted a nicotine pow from one side of his mouth to the other, grinning broadly.
“Call,” he said.
Groans rose from the others. “I’m out,” said Boland.
“Me, too,” added Streb.
“I’ll see you,” Lin said, leaning forward, her eyes slitted dangerously.
“Me, too,” added Ewanowski.
“I’m out,” Thielind announced, tossing his cards on the table. He tossed a wave at the lieutenant, and held up a finger. Wait. Daivid fumed. They were playing him. He put a bland expression on his face, and watched the game with polite interest.
“All right, all right,” said Aaooorru, fanning his antennae. He spread out his hand. A mischievous light was in his bulging eyes. “Full house. Emperors over nines.”
“Poop,” Boland exploded. “You had a pair of nines last hand, too. You must have palmed them.”
The shrimp-spider held out his multiple pairs of arms. His gray-pink ridged body was covered with nothing but a diaper-like garment over his excretory and generative organs and the water-collar over his gills. “And I hid them where?”
“That big hairball kept them for you,” Boland said, pointing at Ewanowski.
“As if, ape boy,” the semicat yawned, showing long, pointed teeth and a narrow, pink tongue twice as long as a human’s.
Aaooorru paid no more attention to the chief’s protests. The rest of the players threw in their cards as the shrimp-spider raked in the pot. Now the table turned to look at Daivid.
“Come in, sir,” Lin invited him at last.
Daivid stepped through. “I just came from the captain’s day room. Jones is confined to quarters during rest periods. You’re all …”
“… On sanitation duty,” the Cockroaches chimed together.
Daivid frowned. “Did the XO send your orders down here already?”
“Hell, no, sir,” Boland grinned. “We always get shafted down into waste management. If Jones hadn’t given them an excuse, they’d have found a way to assign us down there sooner or later.”
“But it’s slag duty,” Daivid said. “Why do you look so happy?”
“Even a slag cloud,” Mose replied, philosophically, gathering up the cards and shuffling, “has a silver lining.”
Daivid eyed them uneasily. “What kind of silver lining?”
“Oh,” Boland offered an unconvincing expression of innocence. “Nothing special.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Want to jump in, sir?” Aaooorru asked, swiveling his round eyes in the lieutenant’s direction. “I’ve cleaned out most of their money, but they’ve still got some left.”
“No, thanks,” Daivid replied, glancing at the chrono on his communication card. “I’ve got paperwork, then I’m going to check out the officers’ wardroom.”
The noncoms and the enlisted troopers exchanged grins and knowing looks. “Good luck, sir.”
O O O
“Wilbury,” said a cheerful, brown-skinned man about Daivid’s age, sticking out a hand. The wardroom was larger, better appointed, and cleaner than the enlisted mess. “Miklis Wilbury, Andromeda unit.”
“Daivid Wolfe. Pleased to meet you. Where are you bound?”
Wilbury looked mysterious. “It’s all totally hush-hush. Creeps me out, if you want the truth. We’re supposed to be preparing. All they’ll tell me is that we’re fifty days out, and to get everything, especially my troopers, in good order.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to be doing,” said a new voice. A dark-haired man with pale skin, dark hair, and deeply hooded blue eyes sauntered by to loom over them. Daivid had thought the newcomer was about his height, until he stood up to offer a hand. The dark-haired man was so perfectly in proportion, with his v-shaped torso, muscular legs and arms, and tight waist, that Daivid was surprised to see how high he loomed over him. “They don’t trust you loose cannons with the gen, obviously. You’ll be told what’s going on when the captain thinks you can handle it. Right now, he’s probably sorry he took you on board. The rest of us are bound for the Benarli cluster to take out those pipsqueaks who call themselves the Insurgency.”
“Bruno, knock it off,” a female lieutenant called from her seat near the wall. She got up to join them. “The side missions are all classified on this deployment. Don’t let Mr. Big Shot here let you get the impression he’s any more in the know than you are.”
“Thanks,” Daivid said. “Daivid Wolfe.”
“I know. Carmel Ti-ya. Personnel. I processed your orders. I’m supposed to connect with your Lieutenant Borden. Is she here?”
Daivid glanced around. “Not yet. I left her checking the manifests against the containers of our gear.”
“A little too late for that, isn’t it?” asked a female almost as tall as Bruno, who shouldered up to join him. Daivid recognized her as Varos, the disapproving lieutenant who had questioned the Cockroaches’ competence in the captain’s mast. “We’ve already left orbit.” Daivid gave her a summing look. Girlfriend? Defender? While he was trying to guess their relationship, a burly man with light brown hair and a creased brow muscled up and took his place at Bruno’s other side. A clique. Mentally, Daivid rolled his eyes. How primary-school. Bruno was the boss, and they were his posse.
“You know what they say about the military,” he said, cheerfully. “Check the checklists, then check them again, and again, and again. The paperwork never stops.”
“I didn’t know they said that,” the muscular man replied. The tape over his breast pocket read “Rindel.” The dark-haired man shot him a dirty look.
“What do you do?” Daivid asked.
“Supply. Facilities scheduling,” Bruno said, with just that hint of malice that showed that he had allowed that power to corrupt him. He knew and Daivid knew he knew and Bruno knew Daivid knew he knew that everyone else had to stay on his good side, or end up in the worst possible facility at the most inconvenient time.
“Facilities?” A head perked up at the table beside them. A narrow-faced junior lieutenant with a regulation buzz-cut atop a soft face and a body Daivid couldn’t guess was female or male stood up. “I wanted to talk to you. This is one hell of a big ship. Why are five units jammed into one mess? I thought all we took on board at Treadmill was the one platoon, right?”
Bruno frowned. “I didn’t change anyone’s mess assignment.”
“The hell you didn’t, sir. I’m with Ophiuchus platoon. My troopers were in Gehenna, back near the cinema, along with Quicksilver Company, from Centauri base. The chief that came in today told my chief we were both shifted to Buzzard. Something about having to have space for her religious practices. Buzzard was at capacity already, commander.”
Lin. Daivid suppressed a groan. Bruno whipped out his infopad and scrolled to a particular screen. His eyebrows went down. “Nothing’s changed. You send your troopers back where they came from. There must have been a glitch in the data given to that unit. What was their designation?”
“X-Ray,” replied the aggrieved jg.
The dark blue eyes swiveled, homing in on Daivid. “Well, you’re reassigned as of now. Any questions on that, Lieutenant Wolfe?”
“I don’t give a heap of slag, as long as they treat my troopers with respect,” Daivid answered, in a low, very calm voice. “Maybe you don’t know X-Ray’s reputation.” There was a murmur through the wardroom. Evidently Bruno’s reputation was such that no one answered back to him, but Daivid wasn’t intimidated. What the hell could he do to them?
Bruno gave him a mirthless grin, nodding. “Oh, I know it, all right. I’ll give them all the respect they deserve. Any questions?”
“No,” murmured the lieutenant from Ophiuchus.
“No,” Daivid added, diffidently.
“Fine.” Bruno snapped out, then stalked away like a tiger, smug at having gotten the last word. His two cronies—jackals, Daivid thought—followed behind him. The lieutenant retired to his table, shaking his head.
“Ignore Bruno,” advised Ti-ya, tilting her hand to invite Daivid to sit down with her and the others at her table. “He once got a good annual report, and it went to his head. Meet Sameia Al-Hadi and Rokke Barikson.” The dark woman with large, liquid, brown eyes and the solid young man with unruly light brown hair and pale, coarse skin both nodded to him. Wilbury squeezed in on the other side. Each bench in the booth had room for three, though Daivid noticed some tables with five or six officers squeezed in on a side, talking with animation. He supposed that once you’d spent any amount of time in a shuttle waiting to drop into an arena you’d have very little left in the way of personal space requirements. An autoserver popped up in the center of the table. Daivid ordered strong coffee.
“I’ve heard of Treadmill,” Barikson said. His collar flashing showed he was a lieutenant jg. “What’s it like with the prison looming over you?”
“I was only assigned there five days before we were deployed,” Daivid admitted, slugging back a solid jolt of caffeine. The Eastwood got really good coffee. He intended to drink his share while on board.
“Really?” replied Al-Hadi, with friendly curiosity. “So, do you suppose it’s your unit or you they want so badly on this mission? The rumor mill is burning up, it’s running so fast.”
Daivid hesitated. Did they have any idea who he was? “No clue,” he said. “They haven’t even told us what our task is.”
Barikson’s eyebrows went up. “Having to fix a plan of battle blind? They must have a lot of faith in you.”
Daivid shrugged. Al-Hadi grinned. “We’re all part of the big push. I’m the tactical officer for Lancer platoon. We came from Alpha Antares station. Half our base is on board with us. This ship can hold ten thousand crew, though you couldn’t tell it from walking through the halls. It’s the size of a luxury liner.”
“You can if you stick your head into the enlisted messes,” Barikson said. “Those are jammed pretty tightly. Some of my people are spending their down time in the bunk rooms or the exercise centers just to get a little space to themselves. We’ll have companionship enough when we have to spend thirty hours a day in our armor.”
“No lie. Lancer just had its first anti-grav training in three months, and we were bumping into each other like popcorn in a popper. The sides of my helmet felt like they were closing in even closer against my skull. I wanted to tear off my suit right there.”
“Don’t let us stop you now,” Barikson said, with his ready grin. Daivid grinned, too. Al-Hadi was an attractive woman. She gave them a mock glare.
“In your dreams, guys. Not that the training or the maintenance jobs we’re doing aboard ship is putting much of a dent in my troopers’ time, of course,” she went on. “They’re treating the transport phase like one long R&R. I mean, it’s not the best vacation—no sightseeing, no nightlife, but at least the toilets flush, so to speak. We had one assignment, border patrol on the Draco Major frontier, on a leaky old tub. Everything started breaking down. The only thing that really worked were the drives and the weapons. Life systems, eh. Hygiene facilities, double eh. Everything stopped working at least twice over the course of the four months we were stopping lizards from crossing into TWC space. We got to know one another by our smells. It’s too bad that stink can’t cross vacuum. It would have deterred anything with nostrils from coming anywhere near us.”
“That’s one of the good things about Treadmill,” Daivid laughed. “Real showers. Our quarters are next to the launch facility, way the hell away from the rest of the base, and the base is way the hell distant from the nearest town, but we’ve got plenty of water.”
“Working showers,” sighed a female commander at the next table. “I can’t tell you the last time I had a water bath—yes, I can. It was during my leave on a T-class planet about two years ago. What a luxury. Poteet Corrundum, Xerxes Company” she added, holding out a hand to Daivid.
“Hey, two X’s. Daivid Wolfe. X-Ray platoon, Neutron Company.”
“Uh-huh,” Corrundum said, a little more cautiously. “I … uh, I know Commander Mason.”
“Oh?” Daivid asked, coldly.
“Uh-huh. We were in OTC together. She’s good people. We’re in touch as much as we can be, tach mail, the occasional live call. She … mentioned you were being transferred to her command. She thinks you’re doing a good job, you know.”
“How can she tell in five days?” Barikson asked, curiously.
Corrundum picked up on Daivid’s disapproval. She shot Barikson a quick smile. “You can always tell. I once had an enswine that was so stupid, he started thinking ‘slag’ was his real name. ‘Cause that’s what I said every time I had to clean up the mistakes he made. There wasn’t a position I could leave him in without supervision. The chiefs kept saying, indirectly but where I could hear them, that maybe they should frag him so he could finally do some good, like feeding a carrion-scavenger. But I bet he’d find a way to make them sick. I got him transferred to another unit. He’s somebody else’s problem.”
“My ensign’s an amazing fix-it man,” Daivid said, and raised his eyebrows back at his fellow officers who gave him surprised looks. Sooner or later someone was going to make him explain his philosophy. “You know how cleanerbots are always flaming out. The barracks bugs we have are still running, and they must be sixteen or eighteen years old. Well past replacement.”
Al-Hadi snorted. “Sounds like you have the same procurement prerogative we do: until it crumbles into its component molecules, you don’t need a new one, do you?”
“No kidding. I’ve never been on a ship that had all new equipment … until this one,” Daivid put in, looking around enviously.
Wilbury snorted. “Political pork-barrel. When it looks like the Space Service is going to get its budget slashed, they buy something big to suck up the surplus. This probably ate up the total tax money from three or four systems.”
“Harawe earned this,” Ti-ya corrected him, with a frown. “He’s an incredible officer. When I had a chance to come on board the Eastwood I jumped at it. The Old Man’s going to be an admiral before long. The Benarli war will probably get him his promotion.”
“And make a bunch of Senators very happy,” Wilbury said.
“You’re a cynic,” Daivid said. “I like that.”
O O O
The food in the wardroom was as superior as the setting. Daivid scrolled down the six choices available on the table menu screen, and down into the a la carte menu provided for those who just wanted a snack. Like most ships that ran on full shifts, meals had to be served on a constant rotation. He was sure that the robochefs had thousands of recipes, but sharply limited the daily menu for sound psychological reasons. His father, aunts and uncles said much the same when they got together to discuss offerings for the Family’s various restaurant chains. If you gave customers too few choices they got bored. If you gave them too many they would never make their minds up, and the whole idea was to get the bottoms into the chairs and out again in a reasonable amount of time. The download of the ship’s manual into his infopad said meals were served for one hour every five hours, to provide two per shift. If a crew member missed one service, for whatever reason, there were hard rations, balanced-nutrition bars or colloid cups in several locations on every level, and sweet juice drinks, or ‘bug juice,’ in every mess, wardroom and day room. He hoped the noncommissioned crew got as wide a selection. He only saw one raw-food choice, and that was all the corlist, Aaooorru, could eat. He was still curious as to why one of the shrimp-spider beings had chosen to enlist in the Space Service. According to the corlist’s file, he was high-born and well-educated. He shouldn’t have been in the Navy any more than, well, Daivid himself.
Whereas the newcomers were fairly friendly to one another, a number of the assigned crew of the Eastwood were, in a word, jerks. Like on many other ships the officers who were supposed to coordinate interaction, such as intramural activity on board, saw themselves as petty dictators with a realm to protect. If you didn’t think their way, or admire the things they did, then you were relegated to secondary status. Daivid didn’t like to play those games. The best way to win was to stay out of the way of the regulars, and hang out with friendlies. His new acquaintances seemed like good people to spend a month getting to know.
“What do you think?” Carmen asked. “I like the sushi rolls myself. Six different fillings.”
“The computer never, never puts enough wasabi on them,” Wilbury complained. “I’ve talked to the cooks, and they just stare at me. “‘It’s what’s in the book,’ they say.”
“You don’t think they can really cook!” Al-Hadi laughed. “You know what the service is like. If you were trained as a cleric, you get put into fire control. If you’re rated in navigation they put you in engineering, and if you know how to cook they make you a drill instructor.”
Daivid heard a familiar voice at his back. He turned around to see Borden talking with more animation than he had ever seen before.
“… AI systems the likes of which no one has been able to make for a thousand years,” she was saying. Her audience, a handful of serious-faced officers, were nodding in agreement. “Independent decision-making capabilities but still using the Asimov strictures. It has applications for practically anything. Information retrieval could be revolutionized—with an intuitive structure one of these devices could think like a human brain.”
“The first thing they’ll use it for is mind-control,” a very thin man as tall as an itterim, just loud enough for Daivid to hear. “They’ll install it in brains.”
“That’s illegal!” protested Borden. “They must be contemplating a use in industry.”
His mahogany-skinned, chunky companion folded his arms. “Wrong. The first application will be military. Ever and always. They’ll find a way to kill people with it. You wait.”
“But, Asimov …” the round, dark-faced woman next to Borden protested.
“The most important thing is to use any new technology to preserve life,” Borden said, fervently.
Hear, hear, Daivid thought. That was his philosophy to a T. He ought to have a good talk with Borden one of these days.
“Besides, the difficulty of the mind-brain interface would make it difficult to produce a true mind analog. It has been known for millenia that though the brain creates the mind, that is by no means a simple explanation of the phenomenon.…”
Borden had found like-minded computer-heads. Daivid quickly got lost in the half-heard unfamiliar scientific jargon, and dragged himself back to the conversation going on at his table.
“… Escort duty. The Space Service is really getting their money’s worth out of this ship,” Ti-ya was saying.
“Where are we going next?” Daivid asked.
“Your clerk got full briefings to add to your infopad, but now that we’ve got you we’re heading out toward the Benarli cluster. You’ve probably heard about the Insurgency raids. Our first jump is due in two days, just outside Praetoria.” Daivid nodded. He recognized the name of another stop on the major trade routes. His family had a chain of good restaurants in the space station, a huge rotating spool hanging halfway between the heliopause and the primary. “Beyond that, they’re holding all other information back from us. So we don’t need to worry about it. Piece of cake. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Do you play poker?”
“A little,” Daivid admitted, allowing a glint to show in his eyes.
O O O
Lin, Boland, and D-45 reported to his cabin the next morning before PT for the daily status report.
“We missed your money last night, sir,” Boland said.
“Sorry. It was getting to know some other credits in the wardroom,” Daivid said, stretching his arms out with every evidence of satisfaction.
“Successful night?” Boland asked, with a grin.
“Oh, yes, my money made a lot of friends,” Daivid replied blithely. His winnings were locked up in the safe-drawer underneath his bunk, accessible only by a thumbprint scan. “Progress report?”
“All go and on green,” said Lin. “No problems, except it was hard getting to sleep without any noises except the troopers snoring. This is the quietest ship I’ve ever been on.”
“Jones all right?”
“Aye, sir,” D-45 replied. “I think he’s enjoying himself. He’s got Thielind running back and forth to bring him goodies from the day room.… Well, you didn’t say he couldn’t have provisions, did you, sir?”
Privately, Daivid admired the Cockroaches’ ability to read loopholes into any order, no matter what. “May I remind you he’s supposed to be on punishment? That doesn’t include room service. Thielind is supposed to be fetching and carrying for me. Never mind, I’ll tell him myself. Anything else?”
“Three of us tried to get into the anti-grav gym to work out during off-hours on the late shift,” Lin said. “The chief in charge told us we’ve got to stick to the rota. Sir, I know the ship is crowded, but some of us are rusty on zero-gee skills. It’s been three months since we were last in space. We need more than one shift every four days.” She pushed her infopad toward him. He read through the schedule: long-range weapons drill twice a week, and short-range drill three times a week, both using virtual-reality technology so as not to risk damaging the ship. Daivid could attest that the devices attached to the units’ weapons and handguns simulated exactly the sensation of firing and kickback. Hand-to-hand twice a week. Refresher lectures on the weapons systems were available over the ship’s net, and were required
“I’ll see what I can do,” Daivid said. That meant dealing with Bruno, but if he brought the matter to Iry, she ought to intercede for him.
***