***
Unit One and Unit Two, as Newton had taken to calling them, arrived in Oak River nigh on midnight. It was a Friday in July according to the local calendar. Ship’s time was just a string of numbers, but they had adapted once, and could do it again. While they had been reassured in Capital City that there was a hotel and they would be welcomed, the place looked supremely deserted. It was bedraggled by yet more rain, practically unlit except for a few faint yellow windowpanes down the road, and a light behind the front door of Peltham’s General Store, which was otherwise dark. He picked out a few more dim lights in the distance up the street.
The main street was a rutted, muddy hell with scattered puddles shining in the reflected glare of head and tail lights as the roof of the cab drummed under the downpour.
Buildings stretched before them, lined up right and left. The town had a lumber mill, and a grist mill, and served as a commercial and agricultural hub for the surrounding area, with handicrafts and services. The local industry was listed as subsistence farming, hunting and trapping. It was all right there in the field notes, along with a map he expected wouldn’t be completely accurate, not after all this time. The map and notes had been made twenty-four years previously and had never been updated since.
Not a horse or person or vehicle of any description moved. Rain pelted down and the troops were huddled under a tarp they were holding over their heads in a collective effort that was good as far as it went. There were some gripes as well, but he’d ignored the on-air remarks so far. He’d better get them indoors or there would be mutiny.
“All right, according to the display, the hotel is about the middle of the block on the right side.” He made this location, their GPS accurate to the half-metre, to be the place they were looking for.
He peered through the gloom. The Ensign was with Unit One and their floodlights illuminated crudely painted signs on the plain boards on the sides of buildings. The bulk of the other vehicle loomed in front of their vehicle lights, blocking out some of the view. Newton was seated on the right, up front now.
“Peltham’s General Store.” Faber looked and pointed.
“This pretty much has to be it.” Opposite Pelthams, which was on their left, was another two-storey building, one which indeed had a light on in the front windows and some light spilling out from the back of the alley beside it.
It was maddeningly anonymous.
The alley was quite wide, three metres or so, and probably out back was where the horses would be parked. “I don’t see a sign. That doesn’t surprise me, for some reason.”
“What in the hell is that thing hanging off the post?”
Faber pointed their spotlight at it, deftly fingering the joystick that moved it.
“Holy, fffah…” He trailed off. “I don’t know.”
There was a silence as they peered at the cracked, peeling and oddly-formed old thing as it shivered under the rain and a gust of wind.
“I know!” Newton turned to stare at Trooper Barnes.
It was oddly uncomfortable having her in here because she just plain made her commanding officer think all the wrong thoughts. He couldn’t help but turn and stare whenever she made the slightest comment. Perhaps it was all the fresh air and clean living but he didn’t think so. She was just beautiful, no denying it.
“You’re kidding.”
She blushed and gulped a little, but went on.
“I think that’s chicken wings and a bottle of beer, with foam rushing out of the top.”
Newton turned to peer up at it in the gloom. His face was something to behold when he realized that she had nailed it, and the shapes were at least sort of correct.
“It sure is quiet around here.” Barnes had a strong personality, and she was pushing back, but just a little. “Too quiet.”
She looked over and snorted at Newton.
“I don’t like it.”
There were a few chuckles but he could live with it as he grinned in unfeigned relief. They had gotten this far.
“Very good.” He hadn’t been complimenting the other troopers, and he was aware of that fact, still, he couldn’t help it. “Keep that up, and you’ll soon make corporal.”
She blushed beet red and stared off over his shoulder, and it suddenly occurred to Newton Shapiro that a commander really shouldn’t joke around with the troops for any number of reasons. Even when they were poking and prodding at him.
“Sorry, just kidding.”
She gave him a quick look but said nothing.
Faber grumbled, perhaps it was just life in general.
“Shut up.”
They’d stopped fifteen times in the last ten kilometres to cut low-hanging branches, clearing brush from the sides and logs that lay right across the line of travel. To call it a road was to mistake its intentions and even its nature. It was a series of tracks gouged out the earth, a braided stream of foot, hoof and wheel marks, and God alone knew how they even followed it. Wielding buzz-saws and axes, slipping and sliding in the darkness, everybody was wet, cold, hungry, and tired as hell.
But they were here now, it was his responsibility, and in some ineffable way, his victory and his reward. The difficulty of travel on the surface was definitely one of the lessons learned and would figure prominently in his report. He never would have believed it until he had experienced it—and that would go in the report as well. Imagine doing that under fire and surveillance by enemy spotters. Imagine trying to do it in a hurry with all-green fighting troops. It was a sobering thought.
“All right. I’ll go.” Newton reached up, almost grabbed the helmet, but then thought better of it and settled for wearing his forage cap.
With a gesture to the Trooper, she opened up the door, still barely able to look at him. He vaguely wondered if she had a crush on him. The thing slammed shut with alacrity as he climbed the short ladder and stepped out into a good seventy-five millimetres of slop which might have been water on the top ninety percent but was surely good old horse manure underneath, judging by the squirmy feel of it under his boots.
The smell of the road was unmistakable. It was strange how quiet the rain made everything. Even the idling engines seemed oddly muted.
While the boots were indeed waterproof, rain coming in from higher up the body trickled down and settled in the bottoms, and his feet felt definitely squishy. Like walking around in your own blood, it was strangely warm and there must have been some sand in there as well. Between his toes felt distinctly gritty, a feeling he’d always hated. He was a million times better off than the troops, which was why he took a turn at the work when the appropriate chance arose.
His luck was in. The dim shape of someone inside moved around and they were headed towards the front door if he wasn’t mistaken. His pace quickened. There were seven or eight steps up onto a covered veranda and then he was at last out of the driving rain. If only he had a dry rag to mop his forehead.
Shapiro knocked on the door, and it opened as soon as he did so. The trucks rumbling at idle right outside the front door might have had something to do with it.
“Welcome, passing strangers!”
“Hello. I’m Lieutenant Newton Shapiro of Her Majesty’s Ship Hermes, and I’ve got sixteen, seventeen people that need rooms.”
“Ha—how many did you say?”
“Seventeen. Sorry.”
The fellow, tall and balding, perhaps in his late forties but the folks seemed to age more quickly on this planet, gulped a little on hearing that, but he was in no more of a bind than Newton was.
“Why, uh, well…of course. I’m Jim Gregory, sir. I’m the owner. Come right in please.”
They would come to some kind of arrangement.
Lieutenant Newton Shapiro, always on call, always on duty, it never seemed to end, keyed his microphone.
“All right, people, dismount. No essential gear is to be left aboard, and make sure you lock the vehicles. Don’t lose the keys, incidentally.” He thought about that. “Who has the
keys?”
Faber and Trooper Hernandez indicated they did.
“Roger that, look after them. It’s your responsibility. Thank you.”
The publican was already back inside, lighting a half a dozen lamps in the front room, which was clearly for eating and drinking, and the first thuds of heavy feet were already tramping inside as the noise level picked up considerably, possibly for the first time in some years. There were cheers and whistles as the first soldier spotted a couple of billiards tables in a big room stretching off from the left end and then going straight back along the southern side of the building to bring in as much natural light as possible. That gallery was lined with genuine windows, and with the lamps in there it was brighter, much brighter than the dining room. Newton thought the place seventy feet wide or so, but it went back from the street a more considerable distance as he stuck his head around the corner and checked it out.
Long, low ceilings, dark, smoke-blackened beams, and stucco panels with a thick impasto all firmly overlaid with the smell of tobacco and fried meat gave the place an instant appeal after three days in the trucks.
All that fresh air wasn’t good for a man, and they’d been sleeping out in tents for three nights in a row. His guts were tight and he’d been having trouble eating the last day or so. His feet squished in the boots.
Mister Gregory came out of a back room, with armloads of sheets and pillowcases. The muffled, sleepy voice of a woman came from the back end of the building.
“How many rooms do you have here, exactly?”
“Ah, ah…some will have to double up.” The man’s concern was evident, but where else were they going to go? “I can send word around and maybe find a couple more rooms around town. My boy will go. There is another place, but they only got two rooms and I think one’s occupied.”
“So, how many rooms do you have?” Newton appreciated the man’s designs, they had nowhere else to go and he knew it.
“Well, six.” The man nodded vigorously. “They are pretty big, and the guest rooms have two beds each. We have a couple of spare mattresses out back.”
Ah. A little light went off in Newton’s head. He wondered if there was some way to hot-bunk it, with people sleeping in turns.
“Okay, so how do you propose to do this? I will instruct my troops accordingly.” Newton was firmly courteous.
This kind of problem was right out of the book. If the man gave trouble, he could always up the ante—they were all on the Queen’s account, and field allowances, while not lavish, carried at least some weight as they were paid in coin of the realm. This was always of concern on a planet without a currency or standard rate of exchange of its own.
“Me and the missus have one room, and my girl can sleep with her. My son has a room, but he can go sleep at his aunt’s.”
“And where will you sleep, sir?”
“I have a couch in a room right beside the kitchen. I can sleep there.”
Newton smiled and patted the man on the arm.
“Thank you, and don’t think I don’t appreciate this.” Newton had more thoughts. “Ah. I’ll instruct my troops that everything in the room is someone’s personal possessions, and we are guests here. Nothing will be touched, I assure you, kind sir.”
Flatter the man a little, that might help.
“Oh, ah. Well.”
Newton patted the man on the shoulder, which didn’t seem to reassure him much.
“I want to put some young female troopers all in the same room. A couple of the male officers can bunk up or just sleep on the floor. It will be good for them to set an example. Ha! If we have to, we can put a couple on top of the pool tables. At least it’s warm and dry in here.”
The troops all had sleeping bags.
The sound of pots and pans and crockery rang out from a small cubby window behind the bar, and a cheerful face, a lady with a youthful visage but prematurely grey hair, looked out and gave him a wave.
“That’ll be the wife.” The man stuck out a hand. “Call me Jim. Her name’s Magg.”
They shook hands, the grip tightening when Newton spoke again.
“What’s the going rate?”
The fellow answered straight away with no hesitation.
“Two dollars a night per person.”
“I’ll pay ten dollars per head, plus whatever they buy in meals and beer.”
Jim blinked and then quickly nodded.
Shapiro had the impression they had made friends for life. Maybe they had—maybe they had.
Chapter Twelve
Newton Explained the Situation
While most of them were still in the front rooms, Newton quietly went through explaining the situation, which with the level of maturity exhibited by some of the troops, could get out of hand fairly quickly. Out in the brush, there was little they could do except wander off or fall down a ravine, neither of which they had shown much propensity to do. It was why he had tacitly tolerated a certain amount of grousing, even an innocent kind of back-talk from the more innocuous ones. Here there was property that could be damaged and people who could be offended, injured, or other liabilities that could be incurred, all of which entailed time, effort, paperwork, higher authority and of course money to resolve.
The trouble was, they were entitled to some time off duty, and there was the rub.
It wasn’t exactly a war-zone and he was asking a lot in some ways. Some of them were just kids far from home for the first time and he understood the psychology very well. They signed up for adventure as much as anything. Patriotism and an eagerness to get at the enemy were all very well in basic training, it disappeared quickly once a recruit had a permanent assignment, and Fleet duty was better than some. For some folks, it was a chance to get away from home for the very first time in their lives. They didn’t have a strong basis of life experience to keep them on an even keel.
A wave of exhaustion swept over him. He still had to call up to the ship and give the daily report.
If only he could sleep in—just once. Aboard ship, when he was only on duty one-third of each day, he could at least go to bed early. He got a day off every five days. Then, if he wanted to lie in bed an extra hour, he could do it. He could take naps at odd hours or even at lunch. He didn’t have a bunch of people traipsing all over the place and looking to him for inspiration.
Napping simply wasn’t possible with this sort of field duty, and it was wearing on him.
With the click of pool balls and the soft rumble of talk from a few metres away, he sat at the end of the bar where Jim habitually lurked. He exchanged the smallest of talk with Ensign Spaulding, and Jackson had shown up too. Where the others were was of little consequence to Newton, probably still upstairs getting the sleeping arrangements sorted out. He could hear them walking around up there. He was fortunate to be able to delegate some of the workload, if not outright responsibility.
It was good to delegate once in a while.
“So, no response from the ship?” Beth’s eyebrows rose.
This was the first time that had happened in her experience, but then she’d never done any sort of ground-side duty before.
“None.” Newton took a long pull from a beer that was wet, but unfortunately not very cold as they had no ice this time of year and the electricity didn’t come out this far.
“Shit.” She took a pull from her beer.
Raising her eyebrows, she held it up to the light and took a look at the label, then shrugged.
He already knew that, but accepted the beer and the explanation with thanks. The news was that they would be firing up the generator first thing in the morning as there were guests and things would get better as the day wore on. Jim said he’d been having trouble with it, so the prospects were fifty-fifty in his words.
“Ta da!”
They looked up as Magg, co-owner and chief cook and bottle-washer as she said, bustled out of the back room. The daughter was named Victoria and the boy Samuel. They came and went and seemed to be hard wor
kers, more willing and able than some of his troops, that was for sure. They were mature for their age and used to the sort of labour where you saw the results straight away in terms of comfort or sustenance. Magg visited several tables in turn.
Without a whole hell of a lot of education, Newton wondered how the boy in particular would turn out, what sort of a man he would grow into. It was an odd thought. Would he pine for places distant and glamorous? Would he long for the bright lights and night life, the concerts, the entertainment and culture of Earth? Kids of a certain age loved their music. It was a perennial problem with the troops, as virtually everyone had their own music pod. In combat conditions, as CO, he would have asked them not to use them, especially not while on patrol or sentry duty, and confiscated them from anybody who couldn’t get with the program.
“Knew it!” She placed a bowl of salted peanuts on the bar in front of Newton, balancing a flat, round tray with several more bowls with her other arm. “I looked all over the place for these.”
She looked around appraisingly.
“The people in the back would love some of these.” Magg was a cheerful sort.
She went down the bar and around the corner.
“I wondered where she got off to.” Jackson reached casually over and hooked a few nuts out of the bowl. “Mmn. Not bad. With a product like this, it usually keeps pretty good.”
He munched with a beatific look on his face. Grabbing the peanuts, under the astonished glance of Beth Spaulding, he picked up the bowl and held it under his nose. He drank in the smell with a bizarre look of ecstasy.
Jackson looked at Newton.
“I haven’t had peanuts in about seventeen years. For some reason the ship never has them.”
An expensive import, the sort of thing that could only come from one place.
“So, what’s our plan?” Beth brought Newton’s attention back to matters at hand.
Reaching over, she took the peanuts away from Jackson. Newton smiled for the first time in what seemed like hours.
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