A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet

by Ron Miller

  “Then what does it want?”

  “Well, we’ve found that Mommy Pataskala—well, not her personally, but minions acting under her direction—have been for some months systematically looting the Patrol storehouses at our base just outside Spolkeen. This is, of course, intolerable. We want to arrest her, try her and put her in prison for the rest of her life.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “Physical evidence. We know she’s behind the robberies, but we have no hard proof, nothing, anyway, that would stand up in court. At least not any court in this jurisdiction.”

  “So you want me to get this evidence for you?”

  “Yes, please. Would you?”

  “Look, Patrolman Dybbuk, I may have my faults, Musrum knows, but I do have a few ethics, such as they are. Betraying someone’s trust is not one of them. Mommy Pataskala trusts me—she’s befriended and employed me. It’s through her that I’ve been able to save enough money to get home. I won’t betray that.”

  “No? I think perhaps you’re confused about who’s betraying whom. Take a look again at that accounting.”

  She looked more closely at the paper, her brow furrowing first in concentration, then in puzzlement and finally in anger.

  “What is this?”

  “Just what it looks like, Miss Judikha.”

  Judikha couldn’t believe it. Mommy Pataskala had been systematically cheating her out of hundreds of crowns. Judikha had been receiving only a fraction of the share due to her from the resale of the stolen goods. Mommy had given Judikha one figure for their value, while a separate column in the ledger had been reserved for her estimate of the true worth.

  Judikha refolded the paper, handed it back to Dybbuk and said, through teeth clenched so tightly that little flecks of enamel popped onto her lower lip, “What would you like me to do?”

  The easiest thing in the world, explained the Patrolman. All she needed to do was obtain evidence—any evidence at all—the more the better, of course—that showed a direct connection between Pataskala and the storehouse robberies. Turn this over to the Patrol and it would take things from there. When Judikha protested that if she were so much as even suspected of treachery, let alone caught, no one would see her alive again, Dybbuk dismissed her anxiety. She would be under the protection of the Patrol. Besides, by the time action was taken by the Patrol, Judikha would be safely ensconced in the Londeacan academy, where she would be perfectly safe.

  “The academy, you said?”

  “Yes. If you get this information for us, you’ll be enrolled in the Fall semester.”

  “So, how soon do you need this evidence?”

  “Would tomorrow be too soon?”

  It wasn’t. Judikha had no difficulty at all breaking into Pataskala’s private offices. The fence’s security had long ago been taken so much for granted that it effectively no longer existed. Judikha’s only serious obstacle was the steel door, which she didn’t even bother wasting time trying to open. Instead, she sidestepped it entirely and entered through the dumbwaiter from the floor below. She had noticed its little door in the wall behind Mommy’s vast desk on her first visit and assumed—albeit unconsciously—that the dwarf had her meals sent up from the ground floor rather than go to the considerable effort of navigating the stairs any more often than she absolutely had to.7

  It was only a matter of moments for Judikha to break into the general store—she hardly gave that a thought at all. Once in, she went directly to the kitchen in the rear where she knew Mommy’s meals were prepared. Catering exclusively to her special needs and tastes (Pataskala had long been on a special diet designed to alleviate the uncomfortable effects of certain peculiar and unspoken physical anomalies, while at the same time indulging her passion for deep fried blood sausage, mineral oil pastries, cow cud cheese and any sort of fermented meat), the facility had a unique aroma that nearly overpowered the girl and it was only a supreme effort of will that enabled her to remain long enough to fold her long body into the little car of the dumbwaiter and send herself shooting to the second floor.

  Once arrived in Pataskala’s office, she emerged from the dumbwaiter and began searching for anything that might be useful for the Patrol. This took some considerable time: the room was large and decorated in an elaborately Rococco style that provided a labyrinth of potential hiding places and her only light source was a small flashlight. But Judikha was systematic if she was nothing else and although it took well over two hours she finally excavated a memorandum in Pataskala’s own handwriting. It read:

  re: Looting of Space Patrol storehouses

  Remind Pissler to schedule the final robberies for next Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday as Wednesday is my regular milk rubdown and I don’t want to be interrupted like I was last time.

  HP

  This seemed sufficiently incriminating. Judikha was just shoving the paper into her shirt pocket when she heard a scrabbling sound at the steel door. Damn! she just had time to swear before the door began to swing open. Where to go? Where to go? The dumbwaiter was out of the question: it was on the other side of the desk on the far side of the room. She immediately switched off her flashlight. The windowless room was instantly plunged into a profound darkness. In a single bound Judikha positioned herself alongside the door, praying to Musrum that no one heard the thud of her landing, which had fortunately been muffled by the layers of heavy ornamental carpeting.

  The door swung open and a black shape filled it, dimly silhouetted by a faint glow from the bottom of the stairs. It was the big thug, Pissler. Judikha knew she would never escape from his grip once he’d gotten his hands on her: he would break her in half as easily as he would a pencil. There was only one thing for it and the timing had to be meticulous.

  The moment Pissler stepped into the room, but before he had a chance to turn on the lights, Judikha ducked between his legs and dived down the stairs. She didn’t hit a tread until she was halfway down the flight. Tucking herself into a ball, she shot into the store below like a cannonball, not stopping until she collided with a display of preserved fruit—dried and in cartons, fortunately, and not canned. She leaped to her feet, mindful less of her bruises than of the thundering sound of Pissler descending the stairs in her pursuit.

  The kitchen—through the coal chute of which she had made her entrance—was fortunately in the opposite direction of the stairs and she bolted for it. There was an angry shout from behind her the gist of which she understood perfectly even if the words were indistinguishable. There was a sharp explosion, like the cracking of a whip, and the glass door of a cupboard disintegrated only two feet from her head. Then she was well into the kitchen and, momentarily at least, out of Pissler’s line of sight. The coal chute was in the pantry, a narrow alcove at the end of the room. She made it just as Pissler came around the corner and snapped off another shot at her. “Stop you!” he shouted, which Judikha thought ridiculously over-hopeful.

  The chute was a bin-like door near the floor. She pulled it open, threw herself in and rolled out into the alley beyond. There was no chance that the hulking man could do the same and it would be at least a full half-minute before he could get out through the rear door. He did this, of course, and in considerably less than thirty seconds, but all he found waiting was an empty street and the last remaining echoes of a taunting laugh.

  -III-

  The Patrol was as good as its word. A warrant was sworn out against Herumia Pataskala and she was arrested the day after Judikha’s raid. She was placed in jail from which her attorneys obtained her release on bail only a few hours later. There was no use in fleeing the city, however: her every movement was closely watched and it was made certain that she knew this. Meanwhile, the Patrol made such a good case against her that conviction seemed guaranteed. The Patrol was not terribly surprised when, in spite of their vigilance, Pataskala managed to escape. No special effort was made to either stop her or pursue her. It was only necessary to alert the Patrol bases in the country of her desti
nation, who promptly arrested her the moment she set foot over the border.

  The trial was a sensation. While Brabblebott and Woost were no match for the legal resources of the Patrol, and certainly not a Patrol whose pride had been wounded, neither were they fools and managed to obtain a relatively light sentence for their client. It mattered not in the end: Mommy Pataskala was ruined. Her fortune had been reduced to an insignificant fraction of its original size and, while she certainly could afford every necessary amenity, it was nothing like the luxury she had been accustomed to. But with the loss of her fortune had come the loss of her power, which she regretted even more...and with good reason. Within a year, she had been almost entirely forgotten and, ultimately, no one knew what eventually became of her.

  As Patrolman Dybbuk had promised, Judikha was duly sworn into the Patrol Academy in Toth. She couldn’t possibly have been happier about this. Toth was the birthplace of spaceflight; it was where the first spaceship had been constructed and launched more than 150 years ago—the epochal flight to the late second moon made by Professor Wittenoom and Judikha’s special hero, Princess Bronwyn.8 To be attending the Patrol Academy in this place was more than she could have ever hoped for. They day she took her Cadet Oath she could recall later only as a kind of colorful whirl. She was given her uniform and shown her place in the barracks. She spent an hour in front of a mirror, admiring herself in the sleek Cadet greys. Musrum! she’d thought for the first time in her life, I look gorgeous! And she did, too.

  The Academy officials made no issue of Judikha’s past, of which they were fully aware, of course. They paid their debt to her honorably. So far as her instructors and fellow cadets were concerned she was just another Cadet, neither particularly outstanding nor particularly obscure. Once she had settled into the routine of classes and exercises, she did well enough. Immersed in an atmosphere of intensely directed and controlled mental and physical development, she came to life in a way even she had never expected, like an encysted insect egg that lay buried in the bottom of a dried river bed, just waiting for the first flood to awaken it.

  And that was, more or less, her life for the next four years.

  She saw Patrolman Dybbuk often and they became great friends. She eventually confided her history to him—those details of her history unknown even to the omniscient Patrol—in particular the dastardly series of events that had precipitated her arrival in Londeac. Although he pointed out, reasonably enough, that had this not occurred, she would never have found herself in the flagship Academy, which was certainly more than she could ever have hoped for back in Blavek, so perhaps her betrayal had not been such a bad thing after all, Judikha was adamant: she had been wronged and she resented it. Eventually, all Dybbuk could do was agree with her. Yes, he capitulated, perhaps you ought to return home someday—after you graduate, of course—and square things with the gang. “Although I don’t see how you could manage it. As soon as you’re out of the Academy the Patrol will assign you to a ship. You could be umpty light years from Monkfish and his gang before you know it. Chances are good you’ll never see them again.”

  “I get two weeks’ leave after graduation, everyone does. That’d be plenty of time for me to settle Monkfish’s score.”

  “I really don’t get the point of this, Judikha. You’re a great student, in the top twenty percent of your class, with a fine chance at becoming an officer. Why jeopardize that just to get revenge for something that happened years ago?”

  Judikha had no real good answer for this—or at least nothing she could easily verbalize—and took out the frustration this caused by picking a petty quarrel with her friend, after which she stalked off to wait for the poor man to apologize for an offense he scarcely understood. She disliked explaining herself and disliked it even more when she herself didn’t fully understand her motives. Self confession was not one of her virtues.

  After numerous discussions of this sort, Dybbuk finally came to realize that there was nothing for it but to agree with Judikha—it was either that or abandon her company altogether, which he was loath to do, having grown to enjoy it very much in spite of her headstrong opinions about some subjects. Judikha, on the other hand, took Dybbuk’s support at face value and was more encouraged than ever to carry out her planned revenge.

  At the end of her four-year term, Judikha graduated, and if not with honors at least high enough in her class to make her commanding officers feel justified in the decision they’d made about her. The day after the ceremony she found her future assignment posted outside the barracks. She was to join the crew of the great battleship Wonklefish, one of the most-decorated spacecraft in the Patrol.

  But now she had two weeks on her own.

  The intervening four years made all the difference in traveling between Soccotara and Guesclin. As a graduate Cadet, the Silver Comet of a new ensign newly sown onto the breast of her uniform, she could travel openly wherever she pleased...and for free, too, she was delighted to discover; every steamship company was glad to provide its services for a member of the esteemed Patrol. It was a heady experience, her first time among civilians since joining the Academy. She was unaccustomed to being shown such deference, respect and even awe.

  She took a train from the coast that followed the Moltus River to Blavek. The three passengers who shared the compartment with her—two men and a woman—never spoke a word to her, but she could feel their admiring eyes on her as they peered over the tops of their newspaper, magazine and book. She did look good, she thought, and had made some special effort to do so. Four years of Academy food and exercise and discipline had done wonders. She was inches taller and as sleek as an otter. Her new uniform fit her as seamlessly and perfectly as her own skin. Its trapezoidal breast panel with its two slanting rows of silver buttons emphasized her broad straight shoulders and tapering waist. The tight-fitting trousers and knee-high, glossy grey boots added both virtually and literally to their already considerable length. A chrome-plated DeLameter toaster hung at her hip. Her sleek brunette hair had been recently cut and brushed (100 times) and hung to her shoulders like a chocolate helmet. She thought she looked pretty damned impressive and she was right. Her fellow passengers, if she had only known it, thought she was the most dangerous-looking woman they’d ever seen.

  As the city approached, she saw first the grim blocks of the Transmoltus squatting shapelessly on the burned-out landscape. She felt a pang of disgust at the sight and leaned away from the window, as though somehow the grime would ooze through the glass and stain her spotless greys.

  She took a room at a good hotel not far from the station—the manager insisting on the best in the house, no charge, of course, for a member of the illustrious Space Patrol. He was disappointed to learn that she would not be dining at the hotel restaurant that evening (he’d looked forward to the luster her presence would have added). There was business she needed to attend to and she saw no good reason to put it off any longer than absolutely necessary. It was getting far into the afternoon, but if all went well she could be back in time for a late dinner (which would please the hotelier), a good night’s rest and up at dawn in time to catch the first train south. She could then spend the remainder of her holiday seeing the sights of Londeac.

  She caught a cab in front of the hotel, but when the driver learned that she wanted to be taken into the Transmoltus he refused to take her any further than the near end of Palace Bridge, Space Patrolman or no Space Patrolman. When they arrived, the driver declined payment, although he did allow her to tip him generously. Crossing the turbulent Slideen, Judikha had her first close look in five years at the place she’d once called home. It disgusted her.

  She had no real idea where to look for her quarry—Musrum only knew what had happened to the thugs in the intervening four years. Still, she had some idea of Monkfish’s habits and tastes, which, being rudimentary and base, suited him so well that she couldn’t imagine them changing—and wherever he was she was surely going to find his toadies as well.

&
nbsp; As she strode through the streets, the crowds parted around her in much the same way that a floating scum of oil will avoid a cake of soap. She was almost entirely oblivious of this deference, so focused was she on her goal. The first three or four places she tried were Monkfishless. In answer to her repeated queries, no one was certain where he was, though she was assured that he was, indeed, still a fixture of the Transmoltus, more’s the pity. It appeared as though Glom had fulfilled his full potential of thug, bully and all-around wastrel. After the tall Patrolwoman with the eyes like glass splinters left each pool hall and tavern, their denizens began debating the fate of Monkfish Glom, the odds by the end of the day being 250 to 1 in favor of the dark-haired woman packing the chrome-plated 1000-watt toaster.

  It’s possible that word had finally reached Monkfish that a Patrolman was looking for him, but the point is moot since Judikha saw him first. She had just rounded a corner when she spotted him in the midst of his gang, too busy harassing an elderly blind beggar to notice much of anything else.

  “Monkfish!” she shouted. “Monkfish Glom!” The words reverberated from the walls of the narrow alley and the addressee turned to look at her, frowning at the rudeness of the interruption. She could see him squinting, trying to get a good look at her but, backlit by the streetlights, she was only a daunting silhouette.

  “Hey!” he said, “I know you. You’re th’ Patrolwoman’s been askin’ ‘round ‘bout me. What th’ hell d’you want ‘round here? Whatta want wit’ me?”

  “I’ve come for you, Glom.”

  “Oh yeah? I dint know th’ Patrol had any jurisdiction here. Oopsies! My mistake, I guess!” He tittered, which was a disturbing sound for a man to make who looked like he did. If it bothered his sycophants, they didn’t show it as they tittered in grotesque impersonation of their hero.