The Fleet-Book Four Sworn Allies

by David Drake (ed)

  Without realizing her intention, she laid her hand against his forehead, moist and cool. Her fingers, of their own accord, strayed to the crisp, but soft, curls.

  “Okay, mate, what’s this all about? You were in good shape when Naffie wheeled you in.” Did she detect the faintest wrinkle of a frown? She stroked his forehead again. “If you’re not careful, you’ll still end up in Brandeis’s files, pulling this sleeping beauty act.”

  “There’s only one way to wake a sleeping beauty, you know;” he said, his eyes still closed. “I liked it the first time. But I wasn’t sure if you were real or not until I saw you ahead of me on the gangplank. Brandeis had me believing you didn’t exist at all except as a wish-fulfillment dream.” Suddenly he opened his eyes and they were a startling shade of clear green. He turned his head slowly to look at her. “But you did kiss me then, didn’t you? And I had to wake up because that’s how the charm works, isn’t it?”

  She couldn’t believe his ingenuousness. He couldn’t have lived through three years service and still believe in fairy tales, could he?

  “You’re no sleeping beauty, O’Hara. More humpty dumpty!”

  “That’s why I had to see you, Bardie Makem,” he said so earnestly that his rather rich baritone struck answering chords all down her, spine. “I knew how bad I was hurt before I finally passed out and I was terrified that . . .” His voice broke and he swallowed convulsively. No, Roger O’Hara hadn’t believed in any fairy tales but he had feared to end up in a personal horror story. “I needed to know that you were real, Bardie Makem. And not a fairy tale.”

  “Alice in Wonderland . . .”

  His smile had an almost breathtaking charisma to it. “Naffie told me it was wonders you did for me all right enough and no mistaking it, and not a king’s horse in sight.”

  “So, you played sleeping beauty again to entice me into your clutches?”

  “I sure as hell can’t come to you awhile yet.” He twisted his shoulders restlessly, then his smile became mischievous. “Would you take as a given that I’m sweeping you off your feet, to plonk you on my white charger and carry you off into the sunset to live happily ever after together . . .” His face was merry with his smile but the intense look in his vivid green eyes affected Bardie far more than she had the right to anticipate. “At least for the duration of this voyage . . . that’d give me a good reason to wake up again.” He closed his eyes, schooled his handsome face into repose, but a hopeful smile pulled at the comers of his mouth.

  Laughing at his whimsy and more than willing to enjoy some happily ever after as anodyne to the past two years, Bardie bent to bestow on O’Hara the favor he had requested.

  The kiss became considerably more magical than Bardie Makem could ever have expected.

  The test was in less than a week. Little enough time with Meier off on an inspection tour leaving him responsible for the fifteen merchants still orbiting Bull’s-Eye. Without conscious thought, Auro drew up Allison’s writings on the maintenance and inspection of depots.

  Rules of Command

  16.456.7L.1

  Logistics/Forward Depots/Maintenance

  A ship that is lacking supplies is crippled in combat. Our hundreds of years of experience has shown that the lack of even the most innocuous or seemingly useless item can mean disaster during a confrontation. It is therefore of vital concern that all units of the Fleet have a readily accessible source of supply available within as close of a proximity to any potential war zones as is practicable.

  The stores of these bases should be maintained in as great a variety as possible. It is impossible and dangerous for those who are not actually on the scene to determine which items might be needed. The vital part played by cotton cloth in the negotiations with the Ferelunxi or the need to cover Marines in fish oils before combat on Tessar both demonstrate the immense variety of needs that can prove vital when days or weeks away from a trade center. This unpredictability also precludes any success by those not in the relevant combat situation from determining which stores may be considered vital.

  The only conclusion that can be drawn from the impossibility of determining in advance which stores are going to be necessary is that each depot must contain the widest range of material possible.

  While at first this may seem wasteful and not cost effective, it is in fact both. Stores, properly cared for and packaged can be retained for long periods of time. Further, these materials then remain available for redeployment, it being easier and less costly to transport as opposed to create and transport supplies to a new theater of operations. Finally, when the cost of the replacement of warships and their highly trained personnel is included, the loss of even a few of these vessels far outweighs the expense of maintaining field depots.

  14.456.7In

  Logistics/Forward Depots/Inspection

  For reasons similar to those stated above, it serves no purpose to have the readiness of any depot facility judged by other than an officer who has seen recent combat . . .

  HE WAS the best.

  But now that meant nothing. Captain Abe Meier knew he was indisputably the best quartermaster in the Fleet. No one else among the Alliance’s hundreds of planets could expedite needed supplies as efficiently. A tenth-generation Fleet officer, few men understood better the myriad of operations that let the star-spanning defense force operate. When at his console on Port, controlling the flow of material to thousands of ships and bases, Abe knew he was an effective and vital part of the service.

  Unfortunately, at the moment Abe was crouching under a Mannerhein Transceiver module. It was serial number C-124673J8, the quartermaster remembered, though the information wasn’t of any use. It certainly wasn’t going to deter the three heavily armed Khalians who were tracking him through the stacks and rows of the supply depot.

  The sound of explosions and torn metal reverberated for the third time inside the kilometer-long, ferro-concrete structure. The floor shook as a bin of com modules (ordnance number C-4624523U4 to be exact) near the entrance noisily collapsed as its supports were cut away by the actinic glare of a Khalian laser rifle. Even cowering a hundred yards away, the portly captain recognized the sound. Nothing made quite the same noise as Amberson coils imploding. Abe gritted his teeth. The Perdidan-made coils had been in short supply for months, requiring special solicitations and emergency manufacture. With an effort Captain Meier stopped himself from mentally categorizing the loss and concentrated on staying alive.

  Less than an hour earlier Captain Abraham Meier, newly appointed. Field Inspector, Fleet Quartermaster Corps, and the sole cargo of the corvette Johnny Greene, had landed on Arcole. Abe’s computer briefing had warned him that the planet’s air was barely breathable, a sulfurous mixture of acids and smoke. As the corvette had descended toward the forward supply depot he could see the numerous belching volcanoes that dotted the rugged surface of this barely habitable Fleet outpost. After his short leave among the gentle breezes and verdant valleys of Bethesda, Abe found Arcole’s acrid atmosphere an unpleasant contrast.

  Abe had been tired when he landed, not quite recovered from the strain of Bull’s-Eye. On this inspection tour he’d already visited over a dozen frontier depots in less than a week. He suspected that his grandfather viewed this as a vacation after the strain of trying to stretch the available supplies during the invasion of Bull’s-Eye.

  Not that the inspections were unnecessary, or the trip some sort of bizarre vacation. With twenty-three more stops scheduled in the next thirty days, it had promised to be an exhausting grind. Not that Abe felt tired anymore. Scared, panicky maybe—no, definitely—but hardly tired.

  Fifteen minutes earlier Captain Agberea and Abe had been halfway through the inspection, Agberea looking bored and insulted as usual. The commander; a youthful quartermaster named Spellman, was just stuttering out some excuse for an oversight Abe hadn’t even noticed when the Khalian raider screamed
over the horizon, her plasma cannons and lasers ripping deep gouges into the roof of the depot behind them. After their defeat at Bull’s-Eye, there were hundreds of now baseless Khalian ships in desperate need of supplies and ammunition. These Khalians must have seen this new and still unprotected facility as an easy source of the supplies they needed to continue terrorizing Alliance planets.

  The Johnny Greene had raised under emergency power, with three message torpedoes flashing out of her sides past her as she rose. Agberea had screamed, either from anger or frustration. The small ship was hit at least once as she dragged herself up from the planet, trying to gain fighting room. Since the Khalians later risked landing, Abe guessed that the Johnny Greene had either escaped into FTL space or had been destroyed.

  That had been less than ten minutes ago. The Khalian ship had next landed on the ferro-concrete roof of the ammunition bunker a few hundred meters from where they stood at the entrance to the stores center. The alien pirates had swarmed off their ship and immediately begun blasting holes in the ammo bunker’s roof. At this point Spellman and Agberea had begun organizing a defense using the enlisted men who had rushed out of the warehouse’s open blast door. The plasma blasts blocked any radio transmission and Abe had hurried inside, using the intercoms to raise the command post on the far side of the ammo bunker.

  Either by accident, or as the result of a fatal decision by some suicidally brave Marine, a large part of the contents of the weapons bunker had exploded directly under the Khalian ship while Abe tried to establish contact. The blast had thrown Abe to the floor of the office he was in. The sound echoed painfully inside the walls of the two-kilometer-long storage area. Secondary explosions and shrapnel screaming through the open blast door had trapped him inside the Spartan office for long minutes. When the rumbling had stopped the quartermaster noticed that the base’s power was off. Only emergency lighting remained, filling the warehouse with a deep red glow. Abe had rushed between the still-open, thick steel doors, now torn from their hinges and useless.

  The air was filled with dust and smoke. As it cleared all Abe could see was a crater where the bunker and the Khalian ship had been. A rolling cloud of sparkling debris still surged upward over the valley and was lost high above in the low clouds of volcanic grit overhead.

  Twisted shapes, dark against the gray sand, dotted the ground. The men, who must have just formed a perimeter immediately outside the entrance, appeared to be dead, probably killed by the initial blast. A sickening realization came to Abe and he began to search the area frantically. Ten meters to his left, the hero of Bull’s-Eye froze, his face twisted with emotion. Agberea’s body was sprawled behind a robot picker. Blood stained the ground where it had poured from his nostrils and ears. His hand was missing. The laser pistol he had held must have exploded, probably destabilized by the blast. Abe made a mental note to report the defect; it helped him to fight a growing sense of loss and bitterness. He and Agberea had spoken to and of each other as enemies, but now Abe knew he had lost a friend. He checked a few more bodies, but everyone else seemed to have been killed when the fuel dump exploded. There was no chance of there being any survivors closer to the blast.

  Abe had been standing in the entrance, half-formed tears blurring his vision as he contemplated burying those of whom enough remained to merit the effort. Then he saw the dark shapes stumbling over the debris left by the blast. Too shocked to move arid silhouetted in the doorway, they saw him as well. With a yip, the three Khalians rushed toward the lone human. Abe had spun and run for cover among the depot’s twisting maze of shelves and racks.

  Before Abe had a chance to catch his breath, a shot splattered overhead, spraying chips of concrete against nearby plastic and steel bins. The larger shards made a ringing sound that he would remember for a very long time. Had he been seen? Abe Meier’s heart raced, and the thudding of his pulse made it harder to hear the scratching steps of the Khalians who hunted him.

  Cautiously the short, heavy human risked a glimpse down the aisle that ran alongside the bin full of steel bearings under which he was hiding. The residual traces of the carbon tet used to soak the bearings was making his eyes water. A yipping snarl startled him, knotting the muscles of his back, but it came from several aisles away.

  Abe began to relax. The depot was over two kilometers long and one wide. It contained over a hundred kilometers of aisles and several thousand bins and racks. There was no way the Khalians could find him. All he had to do was wait. His rescuers would have Marines, and they would revenge Agberea and the rest. Abe forced himself to relax and tried to get comfortable, leaning against a dun-colored plastic shipping crate and watching the end of the aisle in the direction he had heard the Khalian.

  Then the quartermaster caught a glimpse of dark fur and leather. The alien pirate was just rounding the corner, moving as if it knew where it was going, moving directly toward where Abe hid.

  Fifty meters distant, the raider hesitated, standing with its back to the young officer. This was the first live Khalian Abe had ever seen close enough to discern any details. Feeling a combination of fear and curiosity, he studied his friend’s killer. The alien’s body was completely covered by thick fur. The back was brown though the color paled to a creamy tan near its legs. The fur was matted and covered by gray volcanic dust. A sharp muzzle and large ears reinforced the alien’s resemblance to the Earth animal known as a weasel, their nickname among those who had been fighting the fierce aliens.

  The Khalian’s head turned slightly back and forth, as if searching for him in the racks in front of it. It wore no clothes, only a leather harness from which hung an outdated laser power-pack, a jagged knife, and curling strips of leather that might once have been human ears. Abe knew that there were claws at the tips of the alien’s fingers. Canine teeth, over five centimeters long, pressed out beneath thin lips. The creature stood unmoving, sniffed loudly, sneezed, sniffed again, and then growled. It was a long, menacing guttural sound that brought sweat to the small of Abe’s back. After next emitting a few short yips, the Khalian leveled its laser rifle and began moving purposefully directly toward Abe’s hiding place. Abe noticed that the Khalian’s eyes were small and nearly black.

  Almost too frightened to move, the quartermaster carefully drew his laser pistol. It was a well-polished weapon, but undercharged, only good for at most two or three quick bursts. Somehow, back on the Johnny Greene, there had seemed little chance he would need to use the weapon. After Bull’s-Eye, it was easy to feel that the Khalia were no longer a threat, at least not inside Alliance space. No reason to let some space-hand get his neatly polished sidearm greasy while charging it off the ship’s batteries. In his twenty years as an officer Abe had never even been near a hostile alien. He quite appropriately didn’t consider possible personal combat as a part of his world. It was nowhere on his duty bill. Setting an example with well-polished sidearm had seemed more of a concern.

  The Khalian hesitated only a dozen meters away and yipped loudly. The high-pitched yelps made the young captain even more tense. He aimed his pistol, but didn’t fire. Another Khalian’s yips suddenly answered those of the one he was watching. The others were also close. And it was obvious that they knew he was nearby.

  After a few steps, the Khalian froze again, this time silently. The wide nostrils on its long snout expanded and contracted anxiously. Abe could almost reach out and touch the creature’s dusty fur. Judging an unfamiliar alien’s body language was always risky, but the Weasel seemed less sure of itself, almost confused. The cries of the other Khalians were getting louder. The pirate squatted near the far side of the aisle. Abe guessed it was unsure of his exact position. Then he wondered if instead it actually knew where its prey hid and was politely waiting for its companions to join it in the kill.

  Raising his laser pistol, Abe realized he didn’t know where any of a Khalian’s vital organs were. He tried to aim at the creature’s throat, but found that his hand was shak
ing so badly he couldn’t fire. He considered bracing the barrel on the side of the tub, but was afraid it would rattle against the metal, fatally attracting his foe’s attention.

  For long seconds the captain was frozen with indecision. His mind seemed to freeze and the Khalian continued to squat, occasionally yipping to its approaching comrades. As he waited, unable to aim, the image of Agberea, broken and bleeding, flashed through Abe’s mind. At the same time the Khalian he was watching rose and began to move slowly across the aisle. Finally, almost too late, Abe laid his free hand against the tub and braced the pistol silently against it.

  Lasers have the advantage of being nearly silent. One can hardly hear a laser being fired a meter away. There was a chance he could nail this murderer without the others knowing what happened. Abe fired just as the Khalian spun to face him. This spoiled his aim, the shot nearly missing entirely. The captain quickly learned that Khalians, when wounded, in the ear, are amazingly loud. Its shriek rose in pitch until the scream was barely audible, then as the creature recovered from its surprise, the wail was transposed into a vicious growl as it fired blindly into the shelves behind which Abe hid.

  Without thinking, Abe emptied his few remaining charges into the enraged alien. He ignored the pain where the now-hot barrel pressed against the back of his hand. When he stopped firing the air was filled with the stench of burnt meat. Abe glanced at the welt on his hand; it was too small to be the source of the odor. In the distance the yipping of the other two Khalians became more frantic.