Gust Front lota-2

by John Ringo

  Mike rubbed the stubble on his face and decided that it was acceptable. One of the GalTech products he had fallen in love with was depilatory cream. The product not only removed hair, it inhibited growth for nearly a month thereafter. Of course it was in as short supply as everything else, so Mike eked out his cache by using razors in between. But he was still in the latter stage of inhibition and could more or less ignore shaving for a few days.

  He rubbed his face, looked around the dilapidated room crawling with ants, and shook his head. With a snort at the fruition of their plans for the trip he took the two steps necessary to enter the bathroom. The mirror was losing its silvering, giving an impression of leprosy to his face, and had a large chunk cracked out of one corner. He propped up the seat of the toilet and did his morning business, smiling at the handwritten sign the proprietress had posted at eye level.

  With the shortage of water, flushing urine was contraindicated. To point this out delicately the sign stated “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow. If it’s brown, it goes down.” There was a bottle of bleach on the back of the toilet and Mike carefully measured a capful and tossed it into the bowl to neutralize the ammonia.

  When he came out after a sketchy wash-up Sharon had come back to the room.

  “If you hurry you can probably still get some breakfast,” she said with a smile. She had a bouquet of tropical flowers that she set on the cracked linoleum table.

  Mike smiled and shook his head. “Not exactly what we planned, eh?”

  “Not the Ritz-Carlton,” she admitted.

  Although they had both visited the Keys more than once, it had always been on a shoestring. This time they had looked forward to staying in the best hotels in Key Largo. Not only were they both making as much as pre-war generals, Mike was absolutely flush with prize money from Diess.

  The Fleet fell under Federation regulations. One of those complex rules related to property captured or recovered by military forces. It had been enacted, along with a slew of other inducements, when the Posleen had first entered Federation space. The monetary inducements were designed to persuade the chronically poor Indowy to renounce their minimalist and nonviolent ways and enter the Galactic military. The various inducements had failed miserably in their intent, but they had never been taken off the books.

  Military equipment abandoned by the Posleen, as thousands of ships had been abandoned on Diess, fell under the category of “salvage.” It belonged to the forces that had either captured it or permitted its capture.

  This was not immediately apparent to the human forces on Diess. They had simply let the thousands of in-system and interstellar ships sit until a Darhel factor had pointed out that they were responsible for clearing them off the planet. The military had protested that it did not have the equipment to remove the ships, so the Darhel offered to remove them for them.

  The commander on Diess was not born yesterday. He decided to put the ships up for bid and was amazed by the response. Both in-system and interplanetary ships were at a premium due to low production rates and war losses. To date, fewer than half the ships had been sold, but the income had exceeded the Federation “payment” for all other NATO forces.

  However, the Federation regulations also required “sharing” of the income from the prizes under a complicated scheme. One aspect of it related to “actions of extraordinary nature.” Since it was unlikely that any of the ships would have fallen into human hands without the actions of O’Neal and his platoon, a percentage of every ship was detailed to them.

  Mike’s prize income the previous year had been larger than the Gross National Product of most Terran countries. Not that it did them any good in the Keys.

  “Where’s breakfast?” he asked, pulling on a pair of multipocketed safari shorts and a light cotton button-down shirt with still more pockets. He tended to get lonely without them.

  “Over at the pub,” she said, putting the flowers in water. “The locals apparently sell them eggs from free-range chickens. One of mine was… a little on the pink side.”

  Mike grimaced. He hadn’t had fertilized eggs since his dad got out of the egg business decades before. He had just opened his mouth to retort when there was a shriek from the direction of the harbor.

  Sharon was not sure where the Desert Eagle appeared from, but before she had started to move Mike was outside with the .357 caliber automatic leveled. As she ran out the door she saw him lower the weapon from its two-handed grip and grin sheepishly. Then she realized that the second shriek from their daughter was a cry of surprised delight. It took her a moment to recognize the chittering squeals that responded.

  Cally, in the company of Karen the proprietress, was squatting at one end of the closest dock, trading splashes with a dolphin. The small bottlenose was chattering back at her every squeal and she was obviously having the time of her life.

  Mike slid the gigantic automatic into the rear of his shorts and stepped out onto the dock. At the creak of the wood, Karen looked over her shoulder and smiled.

  “Morning sleepyhead,” she quipped and stood up.

  The dolphin protested as she stepped away but she just waved and tossed it a handful of fish bits. The bottlenose caught them expertly and went back to charming bits out of Cally.

  “Tame dolphin,” Sharon commented, squinting against the bright morning sun. “They aren’t usually like that, are they?”

  “No,” Karen said. “I was Shirlie’s trainer.”

  Sharon raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Where? Sea World?”

  “No,” said the woman, bitterly. “Not anymore anyway. I was at the Marine Mammal Research Facility in Marathon. It was really just a tourist trap for dolphin rides, but I’ve never had anything against that. I was with Sea World for years as a trainer and really believe that we did good work. Making cetaceans stars kept all sorts of ugly things from happening to them over the years. Heck, if it wasn’t for places like Sea World, nobody would care about dolphins and orcas.”

  “So how’d you end up here?” asked Sharon as Mike walked down the dock to where his daughter continued to converse with the cetacean.

  “Well, when the tourists started to fall off, we got a notice from the National Marine Fisheries Board that we were to release all of our specimens. Their reasoning was that there was no way to maintain captive marine mammals in adequate conditions and it was better to release them.”

  Mike turned and looked behind him. “That’s insane!” he stated. “You can’t just release a captive mammal and expect it to survive!”

  “No duh,” Karen said, then smiled sadly to take the sting out of the words. “That was exactly what I said, and two or three dozen other trainers that I kept in contact with. What really pissed me off was that we couldn’t even get any press time. The NMFB just shoved the damn ruling down our throats and the press paid no attention.”

  Mike nodded. “Let me guess. It wasn’t ‘newsworthy.’ ”

  “Exactly.” Karen nodded. “Anyway, I was dating Harry at the time. Instead of going back up north-I’m from Chicago originally-I moved in with him. Shirlie and four other dolphins just sort of ‘followed’ me here,” she concluded with a sly smile.

  “Trail of breadcrumbs?” asked Sharon, watching Cally pat the six-hundred-pound sea mammal. She wondered when the inevitable question would hit.

  “Something like that,” said Karen. “We used to take them out for swims with the boat.” She gestured at a well-kept Boston Whaler tied up to the office. Something about it indicated to Mike that it hadn’t moved lately. “I just told them to follow me over.”

  “What happened to all the rest?” asked Mike. “I mean there was Sea World and the Miami Oceanarium and that one in St. Augustine…”

  Karen’s face pinched up at the thought. “Sea World just went over to the coast and released theirs in the Intercoastal Waterway. I don’t know about the dolphins and porpoises, but at least one male orca was later found dead. The rest did pretty much the same thing.”

  �
�Damn,” said Mike. There didn’t seem to be much else to say. Then another thought hit him. “Hey, what about all—”

  “The zoos?” Karen interjected. “And animal parks?”

  “Yeah,” Sharon agreed. “What about them? I remember something about Zoo Atlanta only being able to keep the gorillas.”

  “There are a couple of big parks in Florida that have taken in some of the animals,” Karen said. “The herbivores are free roaming and more or less making it. Most of the carnivores have had to be put down. And anything that can’t get into one of the reserve parks is getting put down.”

  “That’s not right,” Mike said. “We’ve got an obligation to those animals! They didn’t exactly ask to be put in zoos.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” said Karen sadly. “We’ve been writing Congress, the President, everybody. But the responses we’ve gotten have a point. With shortages for humans, where are we going to get food for the animals?”

  “Daddy, get real,” said Cally, rolling onto her back, then flipping to her feet in the most limber move Mike had ever seen in his life. “It’s an obligation, not a suicide pact. Once you kick the Posties’ ass, we can gather them back up and recover whatever we find. Until then, we gotta concentrate.” She rubbed the small of her back. “Shit. I forgot about the Walther.”

  “Showoff,” Mike laughed. He shook his head. “I suppose you’re right, kitten. It still pisses me off.”

  “Softy,” said Sharon with a smile and gave him a thump on the shoulder.

  Karen smiled at the byplay then turned to Cally. “You want to swim with Shirlie?” she asked.

  “Sure!” said Cally with a grin. “That’d be spar!”

  “Go get a suit,” Karen said, and smiled as the girl scampered off. “Harry and I don’t really think children are a good idea,” she commented without looking at them as Cally went around the corner.

  Mike grimaced. “I can understand that.”

  “She carries a pistol with her?” Karen asked, carefully.

  “You don’t?” Mike snorted. “Yeah. And she knows how to use it. She also knows all about firearm safety. Don’t worry about Cally; Dad’s turning her into a survivor.”

  “Our other daughter is off-planet,” Sharon said, quietly. She was looking at the dolphin racing around the small harbor. “Could I join you?” she asked.

  “Sure!” said Karen. “The more the merrier. The boys’ll probably show up around ten, after they’re done foraging. Shirlie’s just so lazy she’d rather be fed.” Karen turned to Mike. “What about you? Want to join us?”

  “Maybe later,” Mike said. “I think I’m gonna go try to butter Harry up. You guys have got a couple of cases of hooks coming.”

  Karen exhaled in relief at that the thought. “That would be great. You don’t have any idea how bad it’s been lately.”

  “Yeah,” growled Mike. “We’ve got a few things to thank the Posleen for.”

  * * *

  Mike set the case of fishhooks on the counter and smiled. “There’s another case in the Tahoe, and the other stuff. I’ve also got a Number-Ten can of coffee, but you can’t have all of it.”

  Harry shook his head and smiled faintly. “You sure know how to make friends,” he said. He opened the case and pulled out a box of hooks. “We’ve been making them out of nails and tearing up lures. But, believe it or not, we’ve got coffee.”

  Mike reached behind his back and extracted a hip flask. “I’ve got some of this out in the Tahoe, too.” He took a hit and passed it to Harry. “I’ll even give some of it up for some goddamn explanations.”

  Harry regarded the clear liquid carefully. “Well, it’s a little early,” he said, then took a swig. He grimaced and coughed. “Oh! Smooth!” he gasped. “Jesus, what is that?”

  “Georgia Mountain Dew,” Mike answered with a laugh. “Only the finest. Now what the hell is going on around here?”

  * * *

  Mike had never had a conch omelet before. He had to admit it wasn’t bad, but the thought would take a little getting used to. He scraped up the last of the grits and wiped his mouth with the provided hand towel. The Key did indeed have coffee, and Mike had to admit that wherever it came from it was better than the issue can he had with him. He took another sip of the excellent brew and cleared his throat.

  “So let me get this straight. All fuel is rationed. Okay, got that; it’s that way all over. Fuel for the boats is rationed on the basis of their production. High-producing boats get more fuel.”

  “Right-on so far,” said Harry, taking a sip of the java as well.

  “And power to the islands has been out for months. So you have to have a generator to distill the water and make the ice. And the fuel for the icehouse has to come out of the pool of fuel for the boats?”

  “Right.”

  “And every month the price of the fish has gone down along with the fuel ration.”

  “Yep,” said Harry. “Next month there won’t possibly be enough fuel for all the boats and to make ice. If we can’t store the fish until the trucks arrive, we might as well give up.”

  “What about the stuff you’ve been holding back?” asked Mike, carefully.

  Harry was cool. “What stuff?” he said, blandly.

  Mike laughed and held up his wrist to reveal the AID. “My AID analyzed satellite imagery of this place for the last year. It says you’re holding back about twenty percent of your production.”

  Harry grimaced and nodded. “Yeah. But that goes to a lot of places. It’s not really… available.”

  “Maybe you’d better make it available,” said Mike, quietly. Hoarding was becoming a real problem as more and more people reacted to the coming invasion with a panic mentality.

  Harry sighed. “If we did that it would take away the only things that make working here worth living.” He paused and thought about it for a moment. “The spare isn’t just in fish. It’s in stuff that’s more transportable. It’s in dried conch and lobster tails. Shells. Stuff like that.”

  “What the hell do you use that for?” asked Mike.

  “Trade goods, partly,” Harry answered, holding up the cup of coffee. “There are small traders who move stuff around the islands and up to the mainland. Conch keeps for a long time. There’s a market for it in Florida. The traders get stuff in Miami you can’t get in places like Cuba and bring back rum and coffee.”

  “Oh,” said Mike, nodding his head. He was aware that the shortages had created a thriving black market, but this was almost like pioneer days. It sounded like a triangle trade.

  “Some of it goes to the dolphins,” Harry pointed out. “They do a lot of their own foraging, but we still eke out their feed. And we do a little dealing on the side with the general goods trader that comes through.” He grimaced again. “The damn thief.”

  “That bad?” asked Mike.

  “Half the stuff he carries he’ll only sell at black market prices. He’ll have two cases of corn flour, but officially it’s only one case. Once the first case is sold the rest sells at whatever the market will bear.”

  “Damn,” said Mike with a stronger than habitual frown. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

  “There’s not enough fuel for us to go up to Miami every week or even every month. So we have to depend on the one ‘official’ trader or the free traders. But the free traders are totally black market and there’s no way to be sure what they’re going to be carrying.”

  “And every month the price of the stuff is going up and the price of the fish is going down,” said Mike sourly.

  “Right,” Harry said with the same tone. He looked like he’d bitten a Key lime.

  Mike nodded in thought. He had had a thought the night before but it was firming up now. “Let me ask you this, Harry. What happens if you take the icehouse out of the equation?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Harry. “We have to run the generator to keep the fish iced. Besides that, the distiller is our only consistent source of fres
h water. We can’t take it out of the equation.”

  “But what if you could not use the fuel for the generator?” Mike asked. “What then?”

  “Well, that puts off a reckoning,” Harry admitted. “We’ve thought about a windmill or something. We’d be pretty okay then. Hell, I’ve got an electric car stashed. We could load up on spare batteries and make it to Miami and back with at least some of the stuff we need.” He shook his head in despair. “But we don’t have a windmill and they’re impossible to buy these days. Even if we had the cash. And it wouldn’t produce enough electricity to matter. And the first good storm would tear it up.”

  “Ay-aaaah-ah,” Mike whispered and whistled a scrap of melody.

  Harry smiled. “It’s not quite that bad. We haven’t had a Viking raid. Yet.”

  Mike smiled. “It’s an old memory. Who’s your electrician?”

  Harry wrinkled his brow in question. “Why the twenty questions?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Mike said. “Is it you?”

  “No,” admitted Harry. “It’s one of the guys on Bob French’s long-line boat.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “Well we’ll have to wait for Bob to get back in to get it installed, but let me show you something I just happened to have brought along.”

  * * *

  Good day, thought Bob French as he navigated the cut up to No-Name-Key. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but the lack of tourists, fuel and markets had reduced fishing pressure to the point of recovery. Since the types of fishing that prevailed put more pressure on the upper end of the food chain, the stocks of feeder fish recovered in the first year of the emergency. Since then the increases in catch size across the board had been phenomenal. On ledges where he used to be lucky to get one legal-sized snapper he now was taking dozens a day. Lobster pots were coming in brimming with “keeper” langostino and occasionally had a real monster, the sort of lobster that hadn’t been seen in the Keys since the ’60s. And he had always thought that the tales the old-timers told of multi-square-mile shoals of herring and sardines were sea-stories until he saw one just this year.