Fleet of the Damned

by Chris Bunch

  "You also know that the entrance to this harbor crosses what is called a bar—a shallowing of depth.

  During storm times, this bar can prevent any ship entering the harbor.

  "Good luck."

  Sten had become experienced enough with the testing to instantly look at his radar screen. Ah-hah. There ... somewhat to the right ... so I must direct this craft ... and, just as implicitly promised, the radar set hazed green.

  Sten evaluated the situation—the illusion he was experiencing through the helmet. Unlike the Shavala-experience, in these tests any action Sten took would be “real.” If, for instance, he steered the ship onto the rocks, he would experience a wreck and, probably, since Selection people were sadistic, slow drowning.

  Simple solution. Easy, Sten thought.

  All I have to do is hit the antigrav, and this boat will—

  Wrong. There were only three controls in front of Sten: a large, spoked steering wheel and two handles.

  This was a two-dimensional boat.

  There were gauges, which Sten ignored. They were probably intended to show engine performance, and Sten, having no idea what kind of power train he was using, figured they were, at least at the moment, irrelevant.

  Another wave came in, and the ship pitched sideways. Sten, looking at his choices, threw the right handle all the way forward, the left handle all the way back, and turned the wheel hard to the right.

  The pitching subsided.

  Sten equalized the two handles—I must have two engines, I guess—and held the wheel at midpoint.

  Ahead of him the storm cleared, and Sten could see high rocks with surf booming over them. There was a slight break to the left—the harbor entrance.

  Sten steered for it.

  The rocks grew closer, and crosscurrents tried to spin Sten's boat.

  Sten sawed at throttles and wheel.

  Very good. He was lined up.

  The rain stopped, and Sten saw, bare meters in front of him, the glisten of earth as a wave washed back.

  Clotting bastards—that's what a bar was!

  He reversed engines.

  A series of waves swept his boat over the stern. Sten ignored them.

  He got the idea.

  When a wave hits the bar, the water gets deep. All I need to do is wait for a big wave, checking through the rear bridge windows, and then go to full power. Use the wave's force to get into the harbor.

  It worked like a shot. The huge wave Sten chose heaved the boat clear, into the harbor mouth.

  Sten, triumphant, forgot to allow for side currents, and his boat smashed into the causeway rocks.

  Just as anticipated, not only did his boat sink, Sten had the personal experience of drowning.

  Slowly.

  GRADE: PASSING.

  * * * *

  By now, Sten had learned the names of his fellow candidates.

  The hard sergeant, who Sten had figured would be thrown out immediately, had managed to survive.

  Survive, hell—so far he and Victoria had interchanged positions as Number One and Number Two in the class standings. A specialist in ancient history would not have been surprised, knowing the man's name—William Bishop the Forty-third.

  Sten, not knowing, was astonished, as were the other candidates, who had dubbed the sergeant “Grunt,” a nickname he accepted cheerfully.

  The furry would-be beer aficionado, whose name was Lotor, was a valued asset. He was the class clown.

  Since normal military relief valves such as drunkenness, passes, and such were forbidden, the candidates tended to get very crazy in the barracks. Lotor had started the water-sack war.

  Sten had been the first victim.

  There had been an innocent knock on his door at midnight. He'd opened the door to get a plas container of water in the face.

  Sten, once he'd figured out who the culprit was, had retaliated by sealing Lotor in his shower with the drain plugged. He'd relented before the water level hit the ceiling.

  Lotor, after drying his fur, had escalated. He had decided that Sten had allies, Sh'aarl't being one. So he'd tucked the floor fire hose under Sh'aarl't's door and turned it on.

  Sh'aarl't, awakened when her room got half-full, had sensibly opened the door and gone back to sleep.

  Lotor had not considered that making a spider an enemy was a bad thing to do.

  The next night, Sh'aarl't had spun her web out from her window up a floor to Lotor's room and gently replaced his pillow with a water bag.

  Lotor, again looking for a new target, went after Grunt. He tied an explosive charge to a huge water bag, rolled it down the corridor, knocked on Bishop's door, and then scurried.

  Grunt opened his door just as the water bag blew.

  His revenge required filling Lotor's room with a huge weather balloon filled with water. Bishop, being the combat type he was, didn't bother to figure out whether Lotor was present when he set the trap. It took most of the barracks staff to free Lotor. At that point, through mutual exhaustion and because no one could come up with a more clever escalation, the watersack war ended.

  The only good effect it produced was the linking of Lotor, Bishop, Sten, and Sh'aarl't into a vague team.

  * * * *

  The team adopted Victoria as their mascot. She wasn't sure why but was grateful for the company. The four never explained, but it was just what Sten had felt on the map exercise: One of them had to make it.

  And Victoria was the most likely candidate.

  The five had discussed their options—which all agreed were slim—and also what those IPs really would turn out to be if they were required to wear uniforms instead of the blank coveralls.

  Victoria had the best slander on Ferrari. She said the sloppy man must have been a Warrant-1, who probably blackmailed his commanding officer while stealing every piece of Imperial property that wasn't bonded in place.

  They had laughed, shared a cup of the guaranteed-no-side-effects herbal tea, and headed for their rooms and the omnipresent studying.

  At least most of them did.

  Possibly the herbal tea had no reported effects. Sten and Victoria bade Sh'aarl't good night at her door. Sten meant to walk Victoria to her room but found himself asking her into his own room.

  Victoria accepted.

  Inside, Sten gloried and dismayed. Victoria pressured the bed and plumped the pillows. She touched a finger to her flight suit zip, and the coverall dropped away from her tiny, absolutely perfect body.

  Sten had fantasized about making love to a ballerina—specifically Victoria. He hadn't suggested it because he had the rough idea that if he suggested and she accepted, his capabilities would be exactly as impotent as Mason daily suggested.

  Tension and all that.

  Sten may have been accurate about his own potential. But he had no idea how creative an ex-professional dancer could be.

  The next day both Victoria and Sten tested very, very low on the various challenges.

  They'd had less than an hour's sleep.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SELECTION MOVED ON from written or livie tests to live problems, giving Ferrari and Mason a chance for real hands-on harassment.

  Sten had the idea that the particular situation he was facing would be a real piece, since Ferrari was beaming and even Mason had allowed his slash of a mouth to creep up on one side.

  "This is what we call a Groupstacle,” Ferrari explained genially.

  Group. Obstacle.

  The group was Bishop, Victoria, Lotor, Sten, and six others.

  The obstacle was:

  "We're standing here,” Ferrari said, “in the control room of a destroyer. Flower class, in case you're curious. It looks terrible, does it not?"

  He waited for the chorus of agreement from the candidates.

  "The reason it looks so bad is because it has crash-landed on a certain planetoid. This planetoid has acceptable atmosphere and water. But there is nothing to eat and very li
ttle which can be made into shelter."

  Ferrari smiled.

  "Any of you who are eco-trained, do not bother to explain how illogical this planetoid must be. I do not set up these problems, I merely administer them.

  "At any rate, you see this control room we are standing in? Yes. Terribly ruined by the crash. You see this open hatchway, exiting onto the planetoid, which is quite colorfully provided.

  "Personally, I must say that I do not believe that trees can ever be purple. But I wander. Mr. Mason, would you care to continue?"

  "Thank you, sir.

  "I'll cut it short. You losers have crashed. The only way you're gonna live is by getting your survival kits out. The kits are down this passageway. You got two problems—the passageway is blocked."

  No kidding, Sten thought, staring down the corridor. He admired how carefully the problem had been set up. As they entered the huge chamber, it did look as if half of a ship was crashed into a jungle, crumpled and battered.

  The inside of the ship was, with some exceptions—and Sten was noting those exceptions carefully—exactly like the flight deck and nearby passageways of a destroyer.

  Sten wondered why, before the IPs had led the group into the chamber, Mason had taken Bishop aside and told him something—something very important from the way that Grunt had reacted.

  Mason continued. “Second problem is that the power plant is in a self-destruct mode. You've got twenty minutes until this ship blows higher'n Haman.

  "If you don't get to your supplies, you fail the problem. All of you.

  "If you're still working on the problem when the twenty minutes run out, you fail the problem. All of you."

  "Thank you, Mr. Mason."

  "Yessir."

  "The problem begins ... now!"

  There was a stammer of ideas.

  Victoria had cut in—clot everything. What did they have to take out?

  Grunt had said that was stupid—first they needed some kind of plan.

  Lotor said that if they didn't know how deep the drakh was, how could any plan be possible?

  The situation was simple. The corridor to the survival kits was blocked by assorted ship rubble that could be easily cleared. But x-ed across the corridor were two enormous steel beams, impossible to move without assistance.

  Two candidates proved that, straining their backs trying to wedge the beams free.

  Lotor was standing beside a much smaller beam in the corridor ahead of the blockage.

  "This,” he said, “might make a lever. If we had a fulcrum."

  "Come on, Lotor,” Grunt put in. “We don't have any clottin’ fulcrum."

  "Hell we don't,” Victoria said. “Couple of you clowns grab that big chart chest up on the flight deck."

  "Never work,” Bishop said.

  Sten eyed him. What the hell was the matter with Grunt? Normally he was the first to go for new ideas.

  While two men shoved the map chest down toward the block, Sten did his own recon around the “ship."

  By the time he came back to the corridor, the map chest sat close to the blocking beams. The small beam went under one, and everybody leaned.

  The first beam lifted, swiveled, and crashed sideways. The team gave a minor cheer and moved their lever forward.

  "This is not going to work,” Bishop said.

  Another candidate stepped back. “You're probably right."

  He spotted a red-painted panel in the metal corridor, clearly marked environment control inspection point. Do not enter without Class 11 Clearance. Do not enter unless ship is deactivated. The candidate shoved the panel open. A ductway led along the corridor's path."Okay. This is it,” the candidate announced."Didn't you read the panel?” Sten asked.

  "So? This ship's about as deactivated as possible."

  "You're right,” Bishop agreed.

  Again, Sten wondered.

  The candidate forced himself into the ductway. The panel clicked closed behind him. After five seconds, they heard a howl of pain.

  The demons who set up the Selection tests had provided for that. In that ductway should have been superheated steam. But this was a dummy, so all the candidate got was a mild blast of hot water—enough for first-degree burns—and then the ductway opened and dumped him out on the other side of the set, where Ferrari told him he was dead and disqualified from the test.

  After the “death” of the candidate, the team redoubled efforts to lever the second beam free.

  Sten did his basic physics, said “no way,” and looked for another solution. He went through the ship and then outside, looking for anything that could become a tool.

  He found it.

  By the time he'd dragged the forty meters of control cable that must have exploded from the ship's skin into the jungle back into the corridor, the others were panting in defeat.

  There was seven minutes remaining.

  Sten did not bother explaining. He ran the 2-cm cable down to the beam, looped it, and wrapped a series of half hitches around it. Then he dragged the cable back up to a solid port frame that had pulled away from the ship's walls, and back toward the beam.

  Bishop stopped him. “What the clot are you doing?"

  "I'm sending kisses to the clotting Emperor,” Sten grunted. “Gimme a hand."

  "Come on, Sten! You're wasting time."

  "One time. Listen up, Grunt. We're gonna block and tackle this cable and yank that beam out."

  "Sten, I'm not sure that is going to work. Why don't we talk about it?"

  "Because we got five minutes."

  "Right! We don't want to do anything wrong, do we?"

  And Sten got it.

  "Nope."

  His hand knifed out, palm up. Sten's hands could kill, maim, or coldcock any being known to the Imperial martial arts.

  The knife hand sliced against Bishop's neck, just below his ear. Bishop dropped like a sack of sand. “Shaddup,” Sten commanded against the shout of surprise. “Get this clottin’ cable back around and then we have to pull like hell. Bishop was a sabotage factor. I saw Mason give him orders. Come on, people. We got to get out of this place!"

  The block-and-tackled pulley yanked the beam free, and the team had its supplies out of the storage room and were clear of the “ship” a good minute before time ran out.

  Bishop, after recovering consciousness, told Sten he was right—Mason had told him to be a saboteur.

  Ferrari grudged that they were one of the few teams to successfully complete the test in five years.

  GRADE: OUTSTANDING.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER NINE

  STEN WAS HAVING problems. It wasn't that he was quite a mathematical idiot—no one in the Imperial Forces above spear-carrier second class was—but he did not have the instinctive understanding of numbers that he did, for example, of objects. Nor could he, in the navigational basic courses Phase One shoved at them, translate numbers into the reality of ships or planets.

  And so he got coaching.

  From Victoria, there was no problem, since everyone knew that she was the only guaranteed graduate.

  But Bishop?

  Math geniuses are supposed to be short and skinny, talk in high voices, and have surgically corrected optics.

  So much for stereotypes, Sten thought glumly as Bishop's thick fingers tabbed at computer keys, touched numbers on the screen, and, with the precision and patience of a pedant, tried to help Sten realize that pure numbers more exactly described a universe than even a picture or words, no matter how poetically or oddly chosen.

  Sten looked at the screen again and found no translation."Clottin’ hell,” Bishop grunted to Victoria. “Get the fire ax. Something's got to get through to him."Victoria found the solution. It took less than one evening to crosspatch Sten's mini-holoprocessor into the computer. When he input numbers, the holoprocessor produced a tiny three-dimensional star-map.

  Eventually, after many many problems, Sten glimmered toward an understanding.

 
; His grade:

  MATHEMATICAL PERCEPTIONS: NEED IMPROVEMENT.

  * * * *

  For some unknown reason, almost every school Sten had been punted into tested for gravitation sensitivity. Sten could understand why it would be necessary to know how many gees someone could withstand or how many times one could alter the direction of a field before the subject threw up—but once that was found out, why was retesting necessary?

  Sten knew that he personally could function as a soldier, without benefit of a gravsuit, at up to 3.6 E-gravs. He could work, seated, under a continuous 11.6 E-gravs. He would black out under a brief force of 76.1 E-gravs or a nearly instantaneous shock of 103 E-gravs.

  All this was in his medfiche.

  So why retest?

  Sten decided that it was just part of the applied sadism that every school he had attended, back to the factory world of Vulcan, had put him through.

  But of all the test methods he hated, a centrifuge was the worst. His brain knew that there was no way his body could tell it was being spun in a circle to produce gravitic acceleration. But his body said “bet me” and heaved.

  Of course Phase One used a centrifuge.

  Sten curled a lip at the stainless steel machinery craning above him in the huge room.

  "You look worried, Candidate Sten.” It was Mason.

  Sten hit the exaggerated position that the IPs called attention. “Nossir. Not worried, sir."

  "Are you scared, Candidate?"

  Great roaring clichés. Sten wished that Alex was with him. He knew the chubby heavy-worlder would have found a response—probably smacking Mason.

  Sten remembered, however, that Kilgour had already gone through flight school. Since Sten hadn't heard anything, he assumed that Alex had graduated—without killing Mason.

  Sten decided that Kilgour must have been sent to another Phase One than this one, made a noncommittal reply to Mason, and clambered up the steps into one of the centrifuge's capsules.

  * * * *

  Later that night, Sten's stomach had reseated itself enough to feel mild hunger.

  He left his room, still feeling most tottery, and went for the rec room. One of the food machines would, no doubt, have something resembling thin gruel.