A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet

by Ron Miller

  “This has nothing to do with the Patrol. It’s personal.”

  “Yeah? And just who th’ hell are you, anyway?”

  “I’m your doom, slime mold.”

  She had no sooner placed her hand on her DeLameter than he fell back, shrieking, “Git ‘er! Git ‘er! Git ‘er!”

  His gang surged toward her, eager to do their worst to this lone and very foolish Patrolwoman. Judikha, for her part, stood her ground, anxious as she was to confront her enemy, who had found a place that put his henchmen between himself and her, from which position of relative safety he now taunted her and urged his men. “Go on! Git ‘er! But don’t kill ‘er! Not yet anyway!”

  Judikha waited until the first of the men had approached to within a few paces and then waded in among them. It was utterly unfair, the street-bred techniques of Monkfish’s gang versus the scientifically-honed skills of a Patrol-trained spaceman...a disparity the first three to experience it did not fully appreciate until they regained consciousness some days later. She dislocated arms, fractured collarbones and jaws, shattered kneecaps, squashed noses, gouged eyes and scattered teeth with abandon. She recognized most of them—the gang members, that is, not the individual body parts—four or five years had changed them far less than they’d changed her. On the other hand no one seemed to show her the slightest recognition—and why should they? There was nothing to connect—at least not in their rudimentary minds—the fifteen-year-old victim of an attempted rape half a decade earlier and this towering, grey-clad ensign of the Space Patrol who was single-mindedly destroying them like a berserk Fury.

  There was Cookie, whom she had last seen kicking in her ribs in a back alley. She ruptured his spleen and dislocated three vertebrae. Poxface, who had ripped her trousers from her naked legs, received the reinforced toe of a scientifically-placed Patrolman’s boot with such force he bit off the end of his own tongue. The remainder of her old tormenters were treated in like fashion. The whole thing, which was over in considerably less than a minute, reminded more than one onlooker of a threshing machine plowing through a field of ripe grain. Not that anyone in the Transmoltus had ever seen a threshing machine, let alone an open field, grain-filled or otherwise, but they had seen pictures. Before he had even fully grasped what had happened, Monkfish suddenly found himself alone with this ghastly female, who was still coming toward him without, apparently, having even broken stride.

  “What d’you want?” he cried in a strangled voice, backing up against the wall.

  “If it’s any comfort, I have no intention of killing you. I just want to beat your liver into a pate. I might stop at that or I might go ahead and leave you maimed for life, but I promise I won’t kill you. Not intentionally, at any rate.”

  “Honest to Musrum, lady, I ain’t got th’ slightest idea what ya got against me. I ain’t ever done nothin’ t’ get th’ Patrol on me. Honest I ain’t.”

  She had been too angry...and perhaps too sure of herself. She didn’t know there was anyone behind her until she heard the crunch of a pebble beneath a heel. She twisted automatically, which is the only thing that saved her skull from being crushed by the four feet of iron pipe wielded by the only one of Monkfish’s men to regain his feet (quite possibly because he was the only one whose legs she had failed to cripple). The killing blow instead glanced from the side of her head and struck her shoulder with a sickening crack. Thrown off balance by having the main thrust of his energy continuing in an unexpected direction, her attacker stumbled forward. She whirled, grasped his head in the crook of her arm and threw him against the near wall with enough force to loosen several bricks, let alone his teeth. She immediately turned back to her primary enemy to find that he had bolted.

  With a volcanically blasphemous curse, she went through the groaning, bleeding pile of bodies that littered the alley, kicking each until she found one that seemed conscious enough for her to question. Sitting on his chest with his ears in her fists, she began with a politeness that was commendable under the circumstances. “Where’d Glom go?”

  “I didn’t know he was gone,” the thug replied, reasonably enough.

  “He ran, the yellow rat, leaving you here. Where would he go?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Good idea.” Using his ears as handles, she bounced his head against the cobblestones two or three times. It made a peculiarly hollow sound, like a melon. “Does that help?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I do seem to remember more clearly now. We got a clubhouse down near the river, behind a bar called Galinda’s. It’s on Snottle Street. You can’t miss it.”

  “He’d—better—be—there.” She emphasized each word with a bounce of the head.

  “I hope so, too. If you will please stop doing that, I promise I won’t move from this spot.”

  Snottle Street, she knew, was only a few blocks away. If Glom had gone there it would surely be to either get money for a getaway or a weapon for her murder. Either of which she was anxious to prevent him doing.

  She found Galinda’s easily enough, a cheap gin-joint that catered to the more alcoholic longshoremen and merchant mariners. When she demanded that the bartender tell her where Monkfish hid out, he didn’t equivocate by so much as a heartbeat—being no fool—and pointed to a door in the back of the room. He hadn’t even lowered his finger before she had torn the door open and charged through the opening. She found herself in what was evidently the “clubhouse” belonging to Glom’s gang. She whirled, hand on the butt of her toaster, but the room was empty. There was no place to hide in it—the only furnishings being a cheap table, covered with empty bottles, playing cards, greasy glasses and cigarette butts, half a dozen chairs and piles of dog-eared pornographic magazines. There were only two doors: the one that led from the bar and one in the back of the room. She leaped to the latter, but it was locked—from the inside, she noticed.

  Returning to the bar, she asked, “Has Monkfish been here?”

  “Not since early this morning, lady—he went out with his gang before noon and I ain’t seen him since.”

  “He comes in often?”

  “Only when he’s on leave lately.”

  “Leave?”

  “He ships as mate on whatever space freighter’ll have him. Just came in just a couple days ago, but I don’t know off what ship so don’t bother asking me. Far as I know, he’s eleven light years from here.”

  She wanted to do something violent, but there seemed to be no purpose to it. The bartender was clearly telling the truth. The Transmoltus was a major spaceport, with ships constantly launching for every point in the heavens. For all she knew, he could be on one this very minute and probably was. She toyed with the idea of going to all the ships currently in port and demanding to see their crew lists, but immediately realized not only the futility but impossibility of that idea. It was unlikely that Glom would ship under his own name and, besides, she had no authority to any such thing in the first place. She certainly didn’t want anyone to report her to the Patrol. All right, then. Let him go for the moment. He was only working on Pomfret’s orders anyway—Pomfret’s the villain I really want. Monkfish and his gang was only a warming-up exercise.

  To find Pomfret she only needed to find Rhys and to find him she was certain she only needed to find Bettina. This did not take very long; the search was more tedious than laborious and is scarcely worth detailing other than to say that not long after dark on that same day Judikha was knocking on the door of a third-floor tenement flat.

  “Who is it, please?” inquired the familiar sweet voice.

  “It’s me, Judikha.”

  “Judikha? Judikha! Oh, my goodness!”

  The door immediately swung open to reveal Judikha’s old friend, beaming with recognition and welcome. She’s scarcely changed at all, Judikha observed, other than having gained fifteen or twenty pounds.

  “Oh, my goodness! Come in! Come in! Poopsie! Look who’s here!”

  A tall, elegant-looking young man rose from the overstuffe
d couch on which he had evidently been enjoying, until Judikha’s untimely interruption, a pleasant evening with Bettina. What caused Judikha to gape, however, was not his glossy handsomeness but the uniform he was wearing. It was the greys of the Space Patrol.

  “Poopsie, I’d like you to meet an old, dear friend of mine, Judikha. Judikha, this is Lieutenant Birdwhistle.”

  Birdwhistle regarded her with cold, distant, unfriendly eyes and Judikha was all too aware of the disheveled and probably bloody condition of her own uniform. She unconsciously stood a little straighter and raised her hand to move a misplace strand of hair.

  “Judikha?” he said, in an aloof, disapproving voice. “Judikha? I see by your comet you’re a recent Academy graduate, but I don’t seem to recall ever seeing you around here before.”

  “No, sir. I’m—ah—that is, I didn’t graduate from the Blavek Academy, sir. I attended the Academy in Toth.”

  “Toth, eh? Really? I had higher expectations of their standards. What in the world have you been doing? Your uniform’s a disgrace.”

  “I—I—had an accident, sir.”

  “Indeed. I would think that a woman—Patrolman or not—would know better than to wander around the Transmoltus alone.”

  “I was, ah, looking for an old friend, sir.”

  “Miss Henlopen, I presume?”

  “No, sir, not exactly.”

  Bettina, who had left the room immediately after performing the introductions, returned carrying a tray of snacks and drinks. “Would you care for something to eat, Judikha? I’m sure you must be hungry. You look terribly tired.”

  “Thanks very much, Bettina, that’s very kind.” Judikha welcomed the interruption in her interrogation and all three took seats around the little table upon which Bettina had placed her tray. Lieutenant Birdwhistle regained his place on the couch, his slim body bent in two perfect right angles, still glaring at Judikha, who sat in a chair opposite, with his cold, grey, suspicious eyes.

  “Whatever happened to you, Judikha?” Bettina burbled gaily. “Everyone wondered where you went. All those awful things everyone said you’d done...I never believed them for a moment.”

  Judikha noticed that Birdwhistle was taking far too much interest in these hints about her history and fervently wished Bettina would shut up. She thought it best to steer the conversation toward more fruitful lines, but Bettina, in her delightful inability to stick to a single subject, solved that problem for her.

  “Oh, Judikha! Look at you and Poopsie! You’re both in the Patrol! Isn’t that just too wonderful? And you look just splendid in your uniform, so tall and slender. Oh, Poopsie, don’t you think the uniforms are just too, too flattering to the figure? Don’t you think Judikha looks just splendid? Whatever do they make them of? I wish I had the figure to wear something like that. I remember Judikha always talked about getting into the Patrol and now look at her! Isn’t it just wonderful, Poopsie? Judikha always wanted to be in the Patrol and now here she is, in the Patrol just like you!”

  “Yes, it does seem rather remarkable.”

  “It’s so nice to see her again—we were the best of friends once, weren’t we, Judikha?”

  “Yes, I really was very fond of you, Bettina.”

  “I hardly ever see any of my old classmates any more. Goodness knows what’s happened to them all. It wasn’t a very nice school, I’m afraid.”

  “Speaking of old classmates, have you seen much of Rhys or his brother?”

  “That awful little Pomfret creature? I should say not! Rhys left years ago and took Pomfret with him. Their father had come into just piles of money from some invention or another and then dropped dead, poor man, and left it all to them.”

  “Do you have any idea where they may have gone?”

  “Nary a clue, I’m afraid. Just no idea at all. I was terribly, terribly hurt you know, the way he just up and left me, Rhys did, without hardly a word...” here she gave a little sniffle of exquisitely perfect timing and dramatic technique. Birdwhistle, Judikha was pleased to notice, endured this maudlin speech with visible discomfort.

  “I’m very anxious to find Pomfret—if you have any suggestions at all?”

  “Oh, it’s really such a terribly, terribly painful memory...I was just absolutely devoted to Rhys, you know...I can’t imagine why you would want to see his dreadful brother again. He was such a sneaky, awful little thing, always poking around in other people’s business...I don’t think he liked you very much at all, you know...Oh! My goodness, Judikha—he didn’t have anything to do with your troubles did he?”

  “Troubles?” asked Birdwhistle.

  “I—ah—had some, um, difficulties in my last year...”

  “Yes, now I know. I thought there was something familiar about your name,” said Birdwhistle, “I remember now.”

  “You’re thinking, sir, of that affair in Spolkeen-on-the-Sea?”

  “No. No, I recognized you immediately from that, of course. No—I mean something earlier, something I read about you in the newspapers, years ago. When you were a thief and a murderer.”

  “Oh, Judikha!”

  “Those were dirty lies, sir!”

  “Oh, were they? It seems to me that you ran like someone who thought they were guilty. If there were no truth to the accusations, why didn’t you stay and prove it?”

  “It doesn’t matter now, sir. I’ve been exonerated. The Patrol has wiped my record clean.”

  “They have, have they? Maybe so, maybe not. Perhaps they know nothing of your, um, background. The Patrol deals very harshly, I can assure you, with people who presume upon them.”

  “I resent that, sir. You have no call to say such things.”

  “We’ll see about that. It seems to me, however, that the state of your uniform belies your protestations of reform. You’ve been brawling, haven’t you? There’s no point in denying it: I can see from here that’s blood on your uniform and your hands.”

  “I was—I was attacked, sir. A gang of toughs tried to rob me.”

  “Nonsense! No hooligan would dare attack a member of the Space Patrol. Its uniform commands respect, nay, awe, among the criminal classes. No—if there has been any violence I am certain you started it—as flagrant a disregard for the Code as can be imagined. The authority trusted to even the lowliest Patrolman cannot be exercised on personal vendettas.”

  Lieutenant Birdwhistle rose from the couch, as mechanically as a carpenter’s rule unfolding. He spoke to Bettina while never taking his eyes, glaring with the light of righteousness, from Judikha. “Bettina, my dear, I’m afraid I’m going to have to interrupt our evening. I think it’s going to be necessary to escort Ensign Judikha to the nearest Patrol barracks.

  Whether there is any truth in what she says I have no idea, though I certainly have my private doubts. But there is absolutely no question that she has violated the sacred Code of the Patrol. It is my bounden duty to place her under arrest.”

  Judikha leaped to her feet, but immediately realized how that flash of temper looked to the lieutenant.

  “All right, sir, I’ll go with you. You’ll find out soon enough how wrong you are about me.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Expressing formal apologies to the tearful Bettina, with promises of an early return, Birdwhistle led the fuming Judikha from the apartment. As they descended the stairs, Bettina called after them: “Oh, Judikha, dear! Please! Call on me again, any time! I so much enjoyed seeing you!”

  The street was dark. Although Bettina’s apartment was close enough to the Palace Bridge to be in as protected a neighborhood as the Transmoltus offered, the Patrol barracks lay on the other side of a mass of ancient and decaying tenements. Only a matter of a mile, but through perhaps the most harrowing and lawless of the Transmoltus’ districts, an area police were reluctant to enter even in broad daylight. Judikha knew this full well, of course, but Birdwhistle, in his smugly blind confidence in the symbolic power of his uniform, was entirely oblivious to the danger...an ignorance t
hat lasted scarcely five minutes.

  Judikha, being much more alert to where she was, and expecting the worst to happen at any moment, heard the soft pad of approaching footsteps long before the lieutenant, if he heard anything at all. She started to withdraw into the shadow of a nearby doorway but Birdwhistle, entirely misunderstanding this action, interpreted it as an attempt on her part to escape. Instead of joining her, he shouted, “Ensign Judikha! You are under arrest! Return to my side immediately! That’s an order!”, and lunged for her arm. He was pulling her back into the moonlit street when the press gang, all dressed in black, attacked. The lieutenant went down like a poleaxed ox, but Judikha fought until she was finally overwhelmed, which, as you will imagine, took some considerable time and not a little toll among the gang. The last thing she remembered was the heavy, wet canvas being dropped over her head. There was something that seemed to jar her head painlessly at the same time producing a brilliant flash of light—then everything went black.

  She had been shanghaied again.

  -IV-

  By the time that a rasping “Turn to, there! Oilers and greasers! Break out them grease-gogglers forward there!” came from outside the door, Judikha began to feel a lively interest in the speaker—the man who had dragged her from her sleep and struck her. She watched the giant figure lumbering forward. The vague familiarity became discomforting. Disbelieving her eyes, she stepped into his path for a better view of the face. She had seen it before. It belonged to Monkfish Glom.

  Monkfish Glom, five years older, big as an ox, sagging, misshapen, arms like piston-rods, the old sour visage, chicken-skin face and beer-colored hair all developed into as unpleasant a combination as may go toward the makeup of the human countenance. It was a brutal, sensual, stupid face—a face bearing a standing invitation to an honest fist, an invitation most men would feel pleasure in accepting, even if the results, however satisfying, would scarcely have been improving. His officer’s whites were soiled, and he within them, as sour as his face, and his curses were as rotten and filthy as the lips over which they poured. And as Judikha backed toward the shadows of the valve-array, the face followed her with a leering expression strongly disfigured with embryonic curiosity, wonder and doubt.