by Peter Grant
“I owe you a beer or three! I’ve been waiting for a platoon command to fall vacant in my battalion, but nothing’s been available for a long time. Now, out of the blue, not only does one fall into my lap, but it’s an independent platoon on detached service aboard a destroyer! I couldn’t have asked for a better assignment.”
“I’m glad to have a buddy on board. We’ve got just over a year left in our assignment to this Sector, so you’ll have enough time with us to learn the job thoroughly. You didn’t mind extending your tour away from Lancaster for a few months to take this job?”
“Heck, no! I’ll go back with command time in an independent platoon on my record, rather than a platoon under the direct supervision of a company commander. Independent command’s considered a notch higher in terms of operational experience, which is good for the old career path. Lieutenant Garcia’s already got it on his record, so he won’t lose out on that, of course. He’ll probably take my place in MRF when he gets back.” Brooks’ eyes fell on the twin silver bars on the collar of Steve’s shirt. “I see you got your second bar too.”
“Yes. Being a Junior Lieutenant is a lot more fun than being an Ensign. I’m an independent Officer of the Deck now, instead of always having to assist someone more senior.”
“And two bars made me eligible for this slot when it opened up. They’d never have given me an independent platoon if I was still a Second Lieutenant.” He fished in his pocket for a data chip, and turned to the Petty Officer behind the reception desk. “Sorry about the delay, PO. Lieutenant Maxwell and I are old friends. I’m First Lieutenant Brooks Shelby, come aboard to join. Here are my orders.” He handed over the data chip.
“Glad to have you aboard, Sir.” The NCO inserted the chip into his reader and swiftly scanned the official document that appeared on his display. “All in order, Sir. I’ve copied them to the relevant departments.” He extracted the chip and returned it.
“Thanks, PO.” Tucking the chip into his pocket, Brooks turned back to Steve. “I guess I ought to report to the XO at once.”
“I’ll take you to his office. PO Hyun, will you have a couple of your working party take Lieutenant Shelby’s dunnage to his cabin, please?”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
“Thank you. Let’s go, Brooks.”
Steve led him out of the docking bay into the main fore–and–aft passageway, running the length of the ship. They stepped onto the high–speed conveyor in the center of the passageway and stood, swaying gently to the motion, as it carried them forward from the stern of the ship.
“What does the ship’s motto mean, Steve — ‘Fortiter in Re’ ?”
“It means ‘Unyielding In Action’. It goes all the way back to a famous water warship with the same name as ours during the Second Global War on Old Home Earth, just before the space age. I’m glad you noticed it. Commander Mars asked me that same question soon after I reported aboard, but I hadn’t thought to look it up. She wasn’t terribly pleased with me about that. She’s a very good Commanding Officer. Her standards are very high, but she lives up to them herself and leads by example. She keeps reminding us that as the Division flagship, we have to set the standard for the other three ships.”
“You bet! So what’s going on that you needed me in such an all–fired hurry?”
“Achilles goes into dock tomorrow for a ten–day maintenance period before our next patrol, and to refurbish some missiles whose guidance systems are close to expiration of their shelf life. You and I will take our shuttles and search parties to work with Midrash’s System Patrol Service until the ship’s back in service. All your Marines will be involved, so you’ll have a chance to get to know them without other shipboard duties getting in the way.”
“Excellent! What’s my Platoon Sergeant like?”
“Gunnery Sergeant Kowalski’s a good man. I’ve enjoyed working with him. He keeps his Marines on the hop, and they seem to like and respect him.” Steve motioned to an exit point. “We get off here.”
They hopped off the conveyor, taking a couple of quick steps to balance themselves as they slowed down. Steve led Brooks into a side passage and knocked at the first door.
“Enter!” Lieutenant–Commander Kilian’s voice called from inside.
Steve opened the door. “First Lieutenant Shelby is here, Sir.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Maxwell. Come in, Lieutenant Shelby.”
Steve winked at Brooks, ushered him inside and closed the door behind him, then headed back down the passage. He had a lot to do before tomorrow.
~ ~ ~
Midrash’s System Patrol Service occupied a section of the planet’s enormous Cargo Terminal in Lagrange–Two orbit. Steve and Brooks sat beside their pilots as they brought their assault shuttles smoothly into its cavernous docking bay, the destroyer’s cutter sliding in alongside them bearing additional equipment. Forty Marines and twenty Spacers disembarked, complete with everything they needed for a week on detached duty. The cutter pilot waved them a cheerful farewell before heading back to Achilles.
Gunnery Sergeant Kowalski chivvied the Marines into three ranks, called them to attention, dressed the formation, then reported to Brooks. Petty Officer Hyun did the same for the Spacers, reporting to Steve. They waited at Parade Rest until they saw a group of officers approaching.
“They’re all Spacers, Steve,” Brooks observed sotto voce. “You take it.”
“OK, thanks.” Steve turned to face the unit. “Detachment, at–ten–HUT!” Sixty pairs of heels cracked together as one. He turned to face the official welcoming party and saluted the leading officer, who wore the single ringed planet of Lieutenant–Commander’s rank on his epaulettes. Steve noted that whilst the Midrash party’s uniforms were of the same cut and style as those of Fleet Spacers, they were deep blue instead of black.
“Junior Lieutenant Maxwell reports for detached duty, accompanied by First Lieutenant Shelby and sixty Marines and Spacers from LCS Achilles, Sir.”
The Midrash officer returned his salute, then held out his hand. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant. I’m Lieutenant–Commander Maram. This,” indicating an attractive female officer beside him, “is Junior Lieutenant Miriam Sabran. She’ll be your liaison officer during your stay with us.”
“Ma’am,” Steve acknowledged, shaking her hand in turn, followed by Brooks.
“Lieutenant Sabran will show you to your quarters in our visitors wing, then escort you to the mess hall for lunch. We’ll hold a cross–training session this afternoon, and divide you into teams to accompany our boarding and search parties tomorrow morning.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
After lunch, Miriam, as she insisted Steve and Brooks call her, told them more about what they’d be doing. “This afternoon we’ll have some of our experienced search team leaders talk with you about the tricks our local smugglers use to get things onto and off the planet. We’ll also do a few practical exercises, to show you the kinds of hiding places they contrive. We’re looking forward to your people showing us how smugglers on other planets in this Sector are doing it, in case there’s something we haven’t encountered locally. After that we’ll divide you into six groups. Tomorrow we’ll send out one group aboard each of our orbital patrol craft, to work alongside our own search teams. It’ll be nice to have the extra bodies — the searches will go much faster with more people to do them.”
She looked at Brooks. “I understand you’ve just joined your ship. Have you done much of this sort of thing before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Brooks confessed. “I’ve got a lot to learn, but Steve’s helped to train my Marines. He has a lot more experience.”
“I spent six months aboard a heavy patrol craft at Radetski as part of a United Planets peacekeeping mission,” Steve explained. “Boarding and search was one of our duties. We found a big smuggled arms shipment while we were there. We’ve also learned a lot from working with some of the other planets in this sector over the past eight months, but this is the first time we’ve
worked with Midrash forces.”
Miriam nodded enthusiastically. “That’s great! I’m sure we’ll learn as much from you as you learn from us. We’ve got two problems here. There’s a lot of smuggling of exotic, controlled goods for our luxury market, particularly from ecologically sensitive planets. There’s also some laundering of stolen goods and hard assets, transshipped from other planets. They often pass through here on their way to other destinations before news of their theft can reach us, so we don’t know to be on the lookout for them.”
“What about piracy?” Steve asked.
She shook her head. “We’ve seen very little of it locally, although some other planets in this Sector have had a rough time. In the last decade, only three pirate vessels tried anything in our system. Two got blown out of space, and the third fled empty–handed. That’s helped to keep things peaceful. On the other hand, from time to time we’ve detected goods being smuggled through our system to other destinations that were known to have been aboard ships taken by pirates elsewhere. There’s clearly some sort of tie–in between pirates and smugglers in this part of the settled galaxy, but precisely what it is we haven’t been able to figure out yet.”
“We’ll see if we can break something open for you,” Brooks promised.
The orientation and cross–training session proved useful for both sides. Lieutenant–Commander Maram put his finger on one important point.
“You divide your teams in half,” he observed. “While some of you — usually Spacers — are investigating nooks and crannies, others — usually Marines — are covering them. Why is that?”
Steve explained his experience aboard Leona in the Radetski system. “I learned from that, Sir. I don’t want my teams to be mousetrapped in the same way. By having armed members of the party provide overwatch while others search, smugglers will have a hard time catching my team off–guard. We let people swap roles now and then to keep things interesting, but I usually task Marines with overwatch because they’re better trained in close quarters combat. Spacers, on the other hand, know more about ships, their structure, and where contraband might be hidden. This way we play to everyone’s strengths.”
“We don’t normally arm our search parties, except for pistols for the officers,” Maram noted. “We’ve always relied on the presence of an armed orbital patrol craft to deter resistance.”
“I’m sure it does that, Sir, but if you should come up against desperate people, fanatics like those we encountered at Radetski, that probably won’t be enough.”
“I take your point, Lieutenant. We’ve never had to deal with such people in this system. Let’s hope we never do! In order to avoid any controversy, I suggest only your Marines carry weapons while you’re working with us. We can explain that by pointing out that Marines are more frequently armed when on duty than Spacers, who’re issued personal weapons less often. I’d also prefer them to carry bead carbines rather than their usual beam rifles, because beams will burn right through a spaceship’s hull or bulkheads. I want to minimize the danger to anyone beyond visual range.”
“Very well, Sir. I’ll brief my people accordingly. I assume it’s in order for me to retain my sidearm?” He patted the holster at his waist.
“If you wish, Lieutenant. I imagine you’d feel naked without it after your experience at Radetski.”
“Something like that, Sir. Thank you.”
Miriam joined Steve and Brooks for supper that night. As they ate, she gave them more background information about the challenges faced by the orbital patrols.
“We simply can’t check every ship as we should. It’d take weeks to examine all their cargoes, even with robotic inspection to speed things up. The best we can do is check their cargo manifests, pick out a couple of shipments that might possibly conceal contraband, and go through them with a fine–tooth comb. All the rest has to be checked by Customs as it’s offloaded at the Cargo Terminal. Trouble is, they have the same problems we do — too much to inspect in too little time. Even automated inspections using scanning technology can’t cover everything in sufficient depth.”
Brooks nodded soberly. “Even though I’m new to this business, I can see that a multi–million–ton cargo ship is a pretty big haystack in which to look for a needle.”
Miriam made a moué of frustration. “You said it! If we tried to inspect all cargoes in detail, every shipper on the planet would complain to their political representatives, who’d come down on us like a ton of bricks for obstructing commerce. Of course, those same representatives will crucify the System Patrol Service if we don’t solve the smuggling problem! It seems like we can’t win for losing sometimes!”
“I hope we can help you for a few days at least,” Steve said.
“I’m sure you will. I’ll accompany each of your groups in turn, a different one each day. I want to make sure your people are working well with ours. If there’s any friction or uncertainty, I’d like to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand.”
“Fair enough,” Brooks agreed. “We’ll instruct our NCO’s to co–operate with you, to make sure things are kept in hand.”
~ ~ ~
On the fifth morning of their assignment, Steve met with the skipper of the patrol craft aboard which his team had been operating. Junior Lieutenant Vikram was a short, wiry man with an engaging smile, while his Inspection Officer, Ensign Melchin, didn’t seem deterred in the least deterred by his junior status. Miriam also attended, as she’d be accompanying Steve’s team that day.
“I know our searches haven’t produced any results over the past few days, but that may change this morning — at least, I hope it does,” Vikram informed them, frowning. “SS Vargash will be entering orbit within the hour, inbound from Sigma and points between. She’s owned by the Fargin conglomerate. We suspect they’re trafficking in smuggled goods, both for their own account and transshipping them through our system to other destinations. The problem is, their overall trading activities are on such a large scale that they can easily conceal shipments of contraband beneath that cover. We’ve been trying to catch them in the act for over a year, but without success so far.”
“What sort of commodities d’you think they’re smuggling?” Steve asked.
“Precious stones and metals, transuranics and other high–value, low–bulk items. They deal in them legitimately, but their known transactions don’t seem to add up to the volume of those commodities their ships have been known to carry. However, they always manage to find ways to explain the discrepancies. We’re sure they’re up to something — the difficulty is proving it.”
Ensign Melchin nodded. “A very high value in those items can fit into a very small space. Since they’re high–weight and low–bulk, how about weighing some of the containers or crates? That’ll pick up any discrepancy that might be missed by a purely visual inspection.”
Vikram frowned. “I’m not sure. It’s a lot of hard work.” He glanced at Steve and Brooks. “You see, the cargo–handling tractor beams’ weight measurement readout can’t be trusted — it’s too easy to adjust it to give a false reading, which will conceal anything a smuggler doesn’t want displayed. We have industrial–grade tractor–beam scales on board our patrol craft, but we don’t normally use them for inspections because of the time and hassle factor. We have to set them up in a hold, move a crate or container to them, read its weight, compare it to the factory–certified weight — making allowance for any difference between the gravity where that was measured and the ship’s artificial gravity settings — then move it back to its place and bring the next one to the scales. It’ll be very time–consuming to do that for more than a few crates or containers.”
“Sure, Sir,” his assistant agreed cheerfully, “but since we’re suspicious about these guys anyway, what have we got to lose?”
Vikram shrugged. “You have a point. All right, send the cutter back to me after it drops you at the ship. Find a hold where you want to weigh something, open its freight doors and call me. I’ll
have the cutter deliver the scales to your location.”
They boarded Vargash as soon as she settled into her powered orbit near the Cargo Terminal, to be met by her supercilious First Mate. “Of course, you’re welcome to take as long as you wish,” he assured them airily. “We have nothing to hide. There’s just one thing. We have a new inertial compensator aboard, a replacement for a defective unit on another of our ships, the Trudish. She’s been immobilized here for six weeks in a parking orbit, waiting for it. We really need to get her back into service — she’s costing us a fortune sitting idle like that! Would you mind checking and clearing that shipment first, so we can send it over? A cargo shuttle’s already on the way to collect it.”
“I see no reason why not,” Melchin agreed. “We’ll start in that hold.”
The team took the conveyor down the long internal passageway until they came to the airlock for Hold 9. Sealing the helmets of their spacesuits and the Marines’ powered armor, the team went through the airlock, accompanied by a Bosun’s Mate to act as ship’s representative and deal with any questions or problems. The hold’s cargo doors were already open to the airless vacuum of space, stars glittering brightly in the background. The internal gravity field was on, so they didn’t need the magnetic inserts in their boots to hold them to the deck.
The Bosun’s Mate led them to a pile of crates strapped down near the cargo doors. “This is the inertial compensator,” he informed them over their spacesuit radios. “It’s a standard unit, straight from the factory, with the customs seals from Sigma still on it. I’ll bring up the manifest, along with the invoice, serial numbers and bill of lading.”
Steve looked around approvingly. His Marines, weapons clipped to their chest harness, and his Spacers split up to accompany members of the Midrash search party as they checked the markings on the crates. They moved smoothly and efficiently. He walked over to the cargo station, where Ensign Melchin was going through the documentation on the display. As he called off each crate’s number and details, a member of the search team checked its markings.
