The young legionnaire nodded, not really listening. “Anyhow, it isn’t as easy as it looks. It all seems pretty clear when you’ve got a pro there, showing you how to spot tricks and how to figure odds, but when the chips start piling up on the table, it’s not easy to think straight. We’ve been here seven Standard months, and I’ve probably lost four months’ pay. Some guys are willing to front a few bucks, so I’m not hurting too bad. Besides, the Legion covers food and housing and all the stuff you need to get along. But I sure could use a change of luck to get my head back above water.”
“Well, that’s something to think about,” said Rev, standing up straight again. “I reckon the King would understand that kind of thing from his days as a common soldier, like any other boy called to service. I can see there’s plenty of good work I can do here, and now I’ve got an idea where it might start. Thank you, son—we’ll be talking again.”
“Thanks, uh—Rev,” said the Legionnaire. “If your King can do anything to change somebody’s luck, there’ll be a lot of fellows mighty obliged to him.”
“I’ll take it up with Him,” said Rev with a deep chuckle. “I sure will, son.”
Journal #298
One of my employer’s primary qualifications for a position of command was his ability to project absolute confidence when it was time for an important decision. He did not always possess this confidence in private. Waiting with me for a court-martial to decide on his punishment for ordering a strafing run on a peace conference, he had been as nervous as a new recruit who feared that an inspector would deny him leave because his bed-making skills were deficient.
But whatever indecision he felt in private—or in my company, which amounted to the same thing—he had learned not to show it to subordinates. And now, when there seemed to be half a dozen crises coming to a head at once, I thought the time was more than ripe for him to take the bit in his teeth.
Thus, I was not surprised when he took me aside and began to talk through appropriate responses to his current problems. What did surprise me was his perception of the relative priority to be assigned to each of them. Needless to say, it differed considerably from mine …
Phule looked around the room at the four others there—his brain trust, a politician might have called it. There were his three direct subordinates in the chain of command: Lieutenants Rembrandt and Armstrong, and Top Sergeant Brandy, as well as his butler and personal confidant, Beeker. Beeker was perhaps the captain’s most valuable asset—not only on account of his complete detachment from military matters, but because of his ability to go anywhere and speak to anyone in absolute confidence. The troops knew he wouldn’t snitch, and so they told him everything.
Phule got straight to the point. “As you all know, there’s trouble brewing in several areas at once. Let me make this clear at the outset: There’s nothing happening that we can’t handle—in fact, taken singly, none of these problems is any great threat to the company.”
“I’m glad to hear that, sir,” said Lieutenant Armstrong. “It’s been a very confusing day.”
“Confusing ain’t the word for it,” said Brandy, who’d been in the thick of the action all afternoon. “Between Sushi going AWOL, the Zenobian playing spy, and the FUBAR at the hotel desk, I’ve had my hands full. And now I have to break in these recruits—though the Gambolts shouldn’t be much trouble.”
“Those aren’t the worst problems,” said Armstrong. He somehow managed to maintain an exemplary posture even sitting in an easy chair. “Chocolate Harry’s digging in for a siege. Unless he’s gone completely off the beam, I think we’re going to see some fighting.”
“Oh, C. H. has a phobia about those bikers,” said Rembrandt, scoffing. “A few legionnaires should be enough to brush them aside.”
“Take a walk down to supply depot and you’ll change that tune,” retorted Armstrong. “From the way Harry’s fortified the place, he’s not expecting us to brush them aside, and I think he knows what he’s up against.”
“Well, he did ride with the Outlaws,” agreed Brandy. “If somebody’s put a scare into him, I won’t take ’em too lightly. But this isn’t a street fight, here. Those bikers are on course to do battle with the best damn Legion company I’ve ever seen. Unless they’ve brought a few hundred armed Renegades onto the station with them, I can’t see how they pose any real threat.”
“The threat isn’t to us, but to our operation,” Phule pointed out. “Good as they may be at street fighting, it’d be suicide for them to meet us in a pitched battle. But we can’t carry on combat operations in the middle of an entertainment complex without serious consequences. An occasional fistfight or two is inevitable in any place that serves liquor. But I don’t want to try to tell a court-martial how the casino’s customers—civilians—were caught in a cross fire between my troops and an attacking biker gang.”
“No argument with that,” said Brandy. “So if we can’t outgun ’em, what do we do? I hear they’ve been nursing this grudge for years—and they wanted Harry’s hide bad enough to spring for space-liner tickets to one of the most expensive resorts in the galaxy when they found out he was here. If they’re that mad, we aren’t going to buy ’em off just by having Harry come out and say, ‘Sorry, guys, it won’t happen again.’”
“Oh, I agree,” said Phule. “But let’s put this problem aside for a minute. It’s one of several things we’re looking at here, and I think we need to go after them in the right order. Once we’ve got the first couple of pieces in place, the rest of the puzzle will sort itself out.”
“That’s as good an approach as any,” said Rembrandt, who had shown in Phule’s absence her ability to make tough decisions under pressure. “Where do we start? C. H. and the Renegades? Sushi’s disappearance? The Zenobian spy?”
“The Renegades are the big problem,” said Armstrong bluntly. “If we don’t shut them down, they’re likely to start shooting.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Rembrandt, knitting her brows.
“If Sushi is collaborating with the Yakuza, he could give them a lot of dangerous information. He could be the brightest man in the company, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he understands a lot of what goes on at the command level without having been told. If he decided to sell us out, he’d be extremely dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Hell, I’ll tell you about dangerous,” said Brandy. “That Qual may be a spy or he may not, but he’s got half the troops convinced he is. That’s no good for morale. You’d be smart to send him off somewhere where he can’t do any harm—and where the troops won’t be worried he’s going to stab them in the back.”
Beeker raised his hand and said, diffidently, “Sir, if I may be so forward, I would suggest that the difficulties with the Dilithium Express account ought to take precedence over all other problems. The person capable of manipulating that account is by a substantial margin your most dangerous adversary.”
“That’s a good point, Beeker,” said Phule. The others in the room nodded. Despite Beeker’s admitted ignorance of military matters, his grasp of broader issues had earned him their respect. He offered his opinion infrequently, but when he chose to do so, he was listened to.
“It’s a very good point,” Phule continued, “but I suspect it’ll resolve itself in due time. Meanwhile, you’re all overlooking our real mission.”
“Say again, Captain?” asked Brandy. She had long ago come to the conclusion that Phule had memorized all the military textbooks ever written, and was systematically breaking every rule contained in them. His resounding success was proof positive that all those rules were utter nonsense. But of course, every sergeant knew that already. That didn’t mean they didn’t have to be enforced, of course. When you’d gotten your people trained to do exactly what you said, even though they all knew it was completely senseless, then you could get them to fight for you. Military organizations had worked that way since the dawn of time. Sometimes Brandy suspected that by the time Phule was finished, even that central tenet of
the military might be revised …
She realized that the pause had been growing uncomfortably long, and that Phule was looking at her with expectation on his face. “Sergeant, we have new recruits,” he said. “Don’t you think you need to get busy showing them how we do things in the Legion?”
Armstrong was flabbergasted. “Sir, do you really intend to ignore these crises? Any one of them could destroy everything we’re doing here.”
“I don’t intend to ignore them, Armstrong,” Phule said quietly. “But unless everything goes wrong at once, these crises will be over in a matter of days. Our recruits will be with us a good deal longer than that—possibly for the rest of their careers. The continued success of this company depends on how well we train them. Lucky for us, we’ve gotten hold of them before they’ve been set on the wrong path by some other outfit.”
“Captain, does that include the Gambolts?” asked Brandy. She’d seen Garbo capture the fleeing Zenobian, almost without effort. The Gambolt had been uncannily agile—and faster than any human she’d ever seen. “Everybody knows they’re the best hand-to-hand fighters in the galaxy …”
“They may be Gambolts, but they’re untrained Gambolts, Brandy,” said Phule patiently. “You should know that training is the difference between a military force and a mob. We’ve made our reputation by making great legionnaires out of other outfits’ rejects. Now we’ve finally got a chance to train our people from the ground up. Why don’t we all get to work turning them into legionnaires?”
“Yes, sir!” exclaimed Armstrong. His expression suggested that he disagreed with Phule’s priorities, but he was too good an officer to say so out loud. Besides, Phule’s decisions had a way of turning out right, despite the odds. He hoped the odds hadn’t finally caught up with them.…
* * *
“Great Gazma, it is a pleasure your acquaintance to make again, Captain Clown!”
Flight Leftenant Qual looked elegant in his custom-made black dress uniform. Except for his height—a bit under one-meter-tall—he might well have been a regular Legion officer. Of course, the Fat Chance Casino’s four-star dining room had not had any trouble seating the diminutive alien. Their stock in trade was their ability to seat and feed a member of any known civilized race. Given that this was their first visit by a Zenobian, they had done remarkably well—a hammocklike device adapted one of their regular armchairs to fit him very comfortably.
“I have to admit it was a pleasant surprise when I learned that it was you who was being assigned to my unit as a military observer,” said Phule. He did not normally eat at the casino’s elite restaurant, although of course as majority owner it was his right—and would have cost him nothing. But Mess Sergeant Escrima was every bit as good a cook as the Fat Chance’s master chef, and Phule could settle down to a meal of Escrima’s cooking with far less fuss and expenditure of working time—he could sit there reading a report, or carry his plate over to another table to talk with his people without causing a disturbance. Nor was there any problem getting seconds …
But tonight was a special occasion: Phule and his officers were formally welcoming the Zenobian visitor, and it seemed appropriate to put on a bit of extra formality. The gleaming silverware, snowy-white linen, bone china and twenty-page wine list might not impress Qual in the same way they would a human visitor, but the little alien could easily recognize that he was being given a first-class reception by his hosts.
And, in fact, Qual was evidently enjoying himself. He sloshed a generous dollop of wasabi on a bit of tuna rolled in seaweed and popped it in his mouth. It had been agreed after a hasty conference that seeing the Zenobian bolting down live food—his race’s normal fare—might disconcert the other customers (not to mention his tablemates). But the chef was resourceful, and Qual had been perfectly willing to compromise on raw fish for the occasion—“After all, a soldier must accustom himself to hardship,” he had said, with what the translator chose to render as a chuckle. Noting Armstrong’s struggles to get the food past his nose, Phule decided it was a chuckle. Lieutenant Armstrong was not an adventurous man, especially when it came to eating.
“I hope you and your troops have pardoned my little prank this afternoon,” said Qual, his translated voice coming through with a remarkably polished accent for all its occasional bizarre word-choices. “One of the first things one would like to grasp about unfamiliar troops is their reaction to the unexpected, and immediately upon arrival, before anyone knows what is occurring, is a splendid opening to observe this.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Lieutenant Armstrong, staring at his plate with the expression of a man who was wishing for a medium-rare deluxe plasmaburger with a side of veg-e-chips. “However, it would have been considerate to alert the commander as to your intentions, if no one else.”
“Captain Clown was notified that I was to be assigned to his company, is that not exact?” said Qual, looking at Phule.
“Yes, of course I was notified,” said Phule. “General Blitzkrieg informed me some time back.”
“And he made my mission transparent?”
Phule had to think for a beat before answering, “Yes, it was quite clear. You were coming to study our tactics … and ethics, I believe the general said. Now that I think about it, I’m not certain I entirely understood that last part.”
“Ah, but is it not self-evident, Captain Clown? Our races seek to conclude a treaty, and of course this would be a good thing. But we Zenobians want to know with whom we are about to treat, and what they are likely to do, and even more serious, whether they are likely to do what they say they will do. So, I have come to study your company to learn all these things.”
It was impossible to read Qual’s expression, and the translator was shaky at rendering the nuances of his tone. Phule wondered suddenly what would happen if Qual reported that the humans were untrustworthy. That was a sobering thought. Any number of very unpleasant results might follow a very simple misunderstanding with this alien envoy … He began to wonder if General Blitzkrieg had somehow manipulated him into this situation.
Rembrandt had picked up the same train of thought. She paused with her wineglass in midair and asked, “Flight Leftenant, does this mean that your report on our company is going to determine whether or not your people will sign a treaty with us?”
The Zenobian gulped down another chunk of raw seafood—his teeth were undeniably formidable-looking—and said, equably, “To be sure, Lieutenant, we place great gravity on trust and ethics. Of course, I am but one observer; there are others visiting your leaders in trade, in political realms—it is of importance that we know enough to decide wisely. Of course, it was felicitous that Captain Clown was the first of your species to meet us—his generosity opened the dining coop for what we hope will continue to be a very beneficial relationship.” He popped a handful of shrimp into his mouth and grinned—at least Phule hoped it was a grin. Except for his impeccably fitted Legion uniform, the alien resembled nothing quite so much as a miniature allosaur. The display of all those teeth might mean anything at all.
But Qual’s stated intentions were benign, and he was an official envoy of his species. Until there was evidence to the contrary, Phule and his officers would have to take him at his word. Even if Qual’s table manners were not exactly comfortable to observe at close range …
* * *
The dinner had left Phule very satisfactorily fed—along with a couple of glasses of excellent wine (Boordy Grand Cru Blanc, of an excellent vintage). It would have been tempting, after his event-filled day, for the captain to make an early night of it. But he had promised his officers he was not going to neglect the looming crises. He’d stop off in Comm Central, find out if there had been any new developments, and then see if he had any bright ideas for dealing with them.
He had turned down the corridor to his destination and gone half a dozen strides when a voice from a shadowed alcove whispered to him: “Captain!”
Phule turned and peered into the shadows, where a
slim figure in civilian clothes lurked. “Sushi!” he said, anger in his voice. “What’s going on? Do you know what’s been happening around here?”
“Some of it, sure, Captain,” said Sushi, putting a finger to his lips. “Keep it down, though—we haven’t got time to get anyplace more private, and if the wrong people overhear me, I’m in deep kimchee.”
“Some of us are beginning to think you’re the wrong people,” growled Phule, but he stepped into the alcove and lowered his voice. “Tell me everything—and it better be good.”
“It is good, Captain, very good,” said Sushi, but there was a worried look on his face. “You’ve heard about the couple that came to the casino this afternoon?”
“Yes. We still have the woman in custody, last I heard.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sushi. “That reminds me, you can let her go now.”
“I suppose you’ve got a good reason for that,” Phule said, looking skeptical.
“Sure, Captain. But let me start at the beginning. You remember how when I got these Yakuza tattoos you were all worried about what would happen if a real Yakuza member showed up?”
Phule nodded. “I gather that’s what happened today.”
“Right. But there’s more to it than a family member just showing up,” said Sushi. “Somebody here tipped them off about me. In fact, the guy came looking for me, ready to rearrange my internal organs into some nonfunctional pattern if he found out I was bogus.”
“Which of course you were,” Phule pointed out. “Your internal organs appear still to be functioning—although I can rearrange them myself, if it seems necessary. For now, I’m still neutral on the subject. What did you say to him?”
Sushi gulped, then managed a sheepish grin. “Well, Captain, you remember how I told you that my family maintains certain business connections—strictly for informational purposes? After you convinced me that what I was doing might be more dangerous than I had anticipated, I called home and got one of my uncles to dig up some information for me. Specifically, he gave me a few names and passwords that only somebody very high in a family would know.”
The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set Page 58
