“Of course, not, sir,” Boland replied, as if shocked. He ran his hands over the instrument panel, then punched both thumbs into the drive actuators. With a roar, the flitter jumped forward, covering the hundred and ten meters between the warehouse and the shuttle in seconds. Daivid ran after him. The crate trundled behind him at one twentieth the speed of the flitter.
When Daivid got inside the hold, Boland was polishing the traces of oil from his fingertips lovingly off the sides and control panel of the flitter.
“She’s fantastic, sir,” he said, with genuine affection. Rag still wound around his hand, he patted the vehicle. It bobbed slightly on its magnetic anti-grav lifts as if responding to the caress.
“Well …” Daivid was not immune to the charms of a fast flitter. He leaned over to take a sniff of the smooth upholstery. It smelled newer than the shuttle. It reminded him of the personal craft his uncle had given him for his sixteenth birthday, the one he and his cousins had wrecked dive-racing along updrafts in the mountains. “You leave it alone, chief. It’s the captain’s personal vehicle. I don’t want you to touch it again while we’re on that ship.”
“Agreed, sir,” Boland said. He threw a salute, then turned to help Meyers and Okumede recrate the runabout. With deep misgivings, Wolfe returned to the warehouse to oversee the next load. There was something in the chief’s assent that struck him as too ready and too smooth. He’d have to think about the exchange, and figure out where the hole in his logic had been.
O O O
Daivid always got a feeling of stepping off a cliff every time he went on a mission. A faint, undefinable feeling of going off into the unknown. Excitement made up a large part of the elixir, a touch of fear and a large dollop of curiosity. They were going to fight humanity’s enemies and make another part of the galaxy safe for civilization. Almost ready to go, now. The loaders and ground transports were all emptied, their burdens tucked into the belly of the gleaming shuttle. The wheeled vehicles and all the base’s personnel withdrew behind the ten-meter-high, transparent firescreen at the far edge of the vast polycrete surface of the launch pad. Daivid squinted into the brilliance of the afternoon sun. Supply Master Chief Sargus stood at the edge, back propped against a forklift with his big thumbs hooked into his belt. And Commander Mason hovered behind the window like a house pet watching its master departing, except instead of being sad, her shoulders were slumped with relief. She was getting rid of her problem children, possibly forever. A little of his excited energy abandoned him. He followed his troopers on board the shuttle.
The Cockroaches were directed to impact benches just to the fore of the hold.
“Hey, look at this!” Aaooorru announced, poking his forefeeler to the third joint in the padding. “Comfy!” The others threw themselves into the couches and wriggled against the cushioning. Petite Lin almost vanished into her seat’s depths. They took up a great deal more room than the usual crash-couches, but Daivid thought they’d be worth it, preserving the health of the troopers enveloped in them. And they’d be a lot more tolerable for long transits than the old style seats, which were more like riding on a bench than a safety device designed to deliver soldiers to their deployment in good working order.
Everything, bulkheads, seats, control panels, infoscreens, disposers, dispensers, signage, was perfectly clean and new or in good repair, not a chip, a tear, a stain or a scratch visible anywhere. Daivid experienced deep envy at the newness, the air of prosperity all around him. Why couldn’t his unit have ships and facilities that weren’t sixteen-times hand-me-downs? The pristine corridors rang with their footsteps as he and his two officers followed the Eastwood’s executive officer, a narrow-faced man with thin, red-brown skin and flaring nostrils, from the enlisted troopers’ cabin forward to the bridge. Harawe gave them one sour glance as they strapped in, and never looked at them again.
The shuttle, so pristine that its exterior plating shone like the glass it was, lifted off effortlessly in spite of the heavy containers in her belly. Treadmill’s mosaic landscape receded hastily in the star tank. At Harawe’s order, the navigator, a plump woman with barley-gold curls, turned the view outward. The Eastwood gleamed in the star’s light like a planet, its curved arrowhead shape shimmering white as the shuttle. The exterior was studded with laser ports and missile tubes. Since she was not designed to land dirtside, no expanse of her white belly had to be left flat for landing gear. She was defensible from every angle. Daivid counted six gun emplacements angled around the landing bay into which the shuttle flew.
Treadmill was a sleepy little hamlet compared with the bustling complement of the Eastwood. Grapples captured the slowing shuttle and eased her into her landing cradle. Hoses and cranes snaked out of the walls and hooked onto the hull with assorted clanks and thumps, followed by technicians and repairbots. Harawe smacked the safety buckle on his impact harness and was up and on his way out off the bridge before Wolfe, Borden, and Thielind had undone theirs.
None of the Eastwood’s officers looked at the three of them. Wolfe shrugged. Even if he hadn’t been paying attention when they had boarded the way to the exit was clearly marked in Standard and eight other languages, and one destroyer was pretty much laid out like another. He had done his initial service on the destroyer Van Damme.
What to do when he reached the shuttle bay was another thing. Once they had debarked and passed through decontamination in the vast, shining white airlock, they paused, hoping they didn’t look as lost as they felt. Fortunately, Harawe had arranged for a welcoming committee.
Bong! A bell-like sound echoed in his head, as the ship’s communication system broadcast directly into his mastoid implant. A crisp female voice announced, “Please proceed forward twenty meters to the next set of double blast doors. Then halt. Your escort is waiting for you.”
“Did you hear that?” Daivid asked the others.
“Did I ever!” Thielind said, shaking his head. “That computer has one sexy voice.”
“You need to go on a date,” Borden smirked.
“What’s the hurry? It’s only been six months since the last one.”
A female junior officer so smartly attired Wolfe thought she must be going to a costume ball instead of on duty marched up and saluted him. It took him a moment to realize she was dressed normally. Daivid mentally shook himself. Five days among the Cockroaches was ruining his eye for appropriate military bearing. He had better watch it, or he was going to forget what standards were supposed to be like.
“I’m Ensign Coffey,” she said, shaking hands with all of them. “I’ll take you and your officers to your quarters. When they’re finished stowing your gear the flight deck master chief will show your company where they’re bunking. Come with me.”
A muted female voice overhead followed them along the corridor, the public-address computer making announcements or paging crew members to locations where they were needed.
“… Volleyball semi-finals will begin at 1600 hours in the forward gymnasium between Team Red and Team Blue. Supporters will only be admitted during their nonduty shift. Highlights can be viewed on in-ship channel 605. Today’s birthdays are Midshipman Vol Pendgarest, who turns 22, Lieutenant Finela Howes, who turns 40, and Mannalenda Vargas, age two, daughter of Lieutenant Commander Juda Sugg Vargas. The main midships ladder between decks 4 and 5 will be closed between the hours of 2300 and 0200 for maintenance due to worn treads. Please use midships lifts or other ladders fore and aft …”
Daivid experienced a feeling of isolation. A healthy, active military community was bustling all around him with purpose and common goals. It was so different from the way the Cockroaches lived, set apart from the other units on a base that was already considered punishment duty. As much as he was coming to like them, they were still pariahs among pariahs. He also had a momentary surge of guilt, then alarm, realizing that they were still back in the landing bay, not currently under his direct supervision.
“I hope they’re behaving themselves,” he murmured
to himself. Borden cocked her head. She’d caught the comment.
“Depends on your definition of behaving themselves, sir.”
O O O
“Those are fragile, damn you!” the flight deck supervisor howled, as Ambering knocked the side of the shuttle door with her frontloader. The chief, a stocky, swarthy-skinned human male with thick curly hair peeking out of the neck of his dark green coveralls, rolled up to her on legs as round as barrels and banged on the first crate with his fist. “Can’t you read it? That’s power capacitors! You want to set off a major explosion? Watch it!”
The heavyset woman gave him a glare from underneath her eyebrows. “Aye, chief,” she muttered. Lin, watching the rest of the troopers stacking boxes, pursed her lips and gave her a warning look.
“I can’t heee-aaar yeeew!” the chief barked. Ambering wiped the resentful expression off her face.
“Aye, chief!” she shouted.
“That’s better! When I talk to you, I want you to reply like you mean it! All of you scum get that?”
“Aye, chief!” the Cockroaches bellowed in unison. Lin nodded. No sense in starting trouble right away. It was inevitable that there would be trouble, of course. No one could exist around these constipated fancy-suited power-trippers without being tempted to burst the balloon of their self-importance, and the Cockroaches were experts at spotting a balloon that was overdue for bursting. She marked the flight deck supervisor on her mental list as someone she wanted to take down a notch or two over the course of the next thirty-five days. She outranked him, which was an advantage, and she bet he didn’t know very much about theology. You could never start too early on a preemptive strike. She signaled to the others to hurry up and finish so they could get up and explore the rest of the ship. They winked or nodded back, sharing the same thought. Ewanowski, the semicat, bared his teeth eagerly. He and Boland eased the captain’s new vehicle out of the hold and locked it into a climate-controlled compartment along with a few other smaller containers.
“First blood, first blood!” Jones crowed, emerging from the hold of the shuttle alongside the roboloader.
“No!” Meyers scoffed. “You couldn’t have come up with one that quickly.”
“I certainly did,” Jones stated, polishing his fingernails on his coverall. “Ready?”
“No. You had to have thought it up in advance.”
“I certainly did not! I swear by my honor.…”
“What honor?” Ewanowski growled, playfully, as he shouldered by. Jones punched him in the arm.
“Chief!” Meyers protested.
Lin interceded. “You know the rules. The first Roach to come up with a limerick on site gets extra points, more if it’s good. We’ll be able to tell if it’s appropriate, or if he’s recycling something from another mission.”
“I’ve got one, too,” Mose grinned, lifting his eyes from the inventory screen.
“Me, too,” Okumede called from across the hold.
“Jones called it first,” Lin decided. “Come on, out with it.”
“Get on with the job!” the deck chief shouted. “You’re wasting our time!”
“Wait a moment, wait a moment,” Jones said, gesturing at him to be patient. “Five lines start to finish. ‘A grumpy ship captain named Harawe / Said to Wolfe, as we stowed his new carawe, “You may come on my ship / But you give me the pip / And I wish you and your troop were all farawe!’” Jones hooked his hands in his belt and turned with pride to the deck master chief. “So, what do you think of that, eh?”
O O O
It took Daivid only a few moments to get his gear stowed. Every compartment opened silently to a finger’s touch. The sound insulation shut out the sound of footsteps from the corridor beyond. For the duration of the mission, no geese waking him up at daybreak. Maybe he’d get to sleep until 0500. Luxury.
Once again he took inventory of the chamber that was to be his new home for the next thirty-five days. It was all so splendidly ordinary: five hangers, water glass, chair, desk, bed, bedclothes. Yet the difference between this setting and X-Ray Company’s barracks was extreme. He felt as though he might be home again in his father’s mansion. Genuine wooden moldings framed the door. Polished brass knobs indicated the location of controls and communication outlets. Just out of curiosity he poked his head into the small lavatory he shared with the junior officers’ quarters next door. Sonic shower. Too bad, he thought, thinking of the delicious deluge he had enjoyed that morning. Even the captain of a star destroyer didn’t have it as good as they did dirtside when it came to hygiene. So there were advantages to living in the back end of nowhere after all. And, yet … was that a personal surround entertainment hookup over desk above the docking station for his infopad? Yes! He flicked it on. Wow—all the newest threedeeos, including the pictures that were still in full crystal amphitheater release.
He jumped guiltily at the sound of his door signal. “Enter,” he called. The door slid open to reveal Coffey, back stiff.
She shot him a very formal salute. “You are summoned to the captain’s day room, sir.”
“What’s going on, Ensign?” he asked, smiling at her. “A briefing, already?”
No friendly banter or even a return smile. Coffey’s small face twisted into a mask of disapproval.
“No, sir. Would you follow me, please?”
O O O
“What do you mean, they’re already guilty of dereliction of duty?” Wolfe asked, hopelessly. He stood alone on one side of the captain’s enormous white marble-topped desk. On the other side the captain sat glowering. At his left elbow, in front of a wall filled with screens and readouts, hovered a clutch of lieutenants and ensigns. A tall itterim in the rear clicked his mandibles at Wolfe, the bug equivalent of sticking out his tongue. At its elbow, a hardfaced woman with short, wavy black hair and commander’s flashings on her collar stood with her arms folded. At Harawe’s right elbow stood Commander Cleitis, the narrow-faced XO, and a burly man with a chief’s insignia on his coverall sleeves. His square face looked as though someone had tried to pound the corners off of it. Dark red bruises decorated the left temple and jaw, the lower orbit of the right eye and the bridge of his nose. He glared at Wolfe.
“And brawling,” interjected the XO, unnecessarily.
“And scurrilous verse, too, derogatory to the captain,” the flight deck chief said, moving his jaw very gingerly.
Wolfe groaned. “A limerick?”
“What do you know about it?” Harawe growled.
“It’s a unit tradition, sir.”
The green eyes pinned him in place. “Have you been a party to this?”
“Not yet, sir—I mean, no.” He shook his head. “I’m not much of a poet.…”
“Neither is your crewman, by the sound of it,” Harawe said. He waved a hand over a sensor on his desk. A miniature threedeeo image appeared on the white desk, showing one side of the shuttle, half a dozen of troopers, and as many coverall-clad members of the Eastwood’s crew. Jones’s fruity voice rose out of a concealed speaker. Daivid listened, wishing he could drop straight down through the deck.
“… what do you think of that, eh?” the little round figure said, planting its hands on its hips.
What the listener thought of it was more or less confirmed by the brawl that followed. To Wolfe’s dismay, Jones had indeed thrown the first punch, though not until after a conversation of steadily rising acrimony between him and the chief had occurred.
“Naturally, everything in the secured areas is recorded,” the XO put in.
“Naturally,” Daivid said faintly.
“Of course the rest of the file will have to be freeze-framed and expanded to see who was responsible for each of the infractions that followed.”
“Of course, sir.”
“This does not give me a great deal of confidence in your ability to lead these hyenas,” Harawe said. “You do realize that you’ve joined this ship’s complement to undertake a mission of great importance?”
&nb
sp; “I do, sir, though we have not yet been briefed on just what that mission is,” Daivid pointed out.
That seemed to excite one of the female lieutenants present enough to raise a faint twitch in her stiff face. “Commander, in light of the present proceedings, I must ask again if this is indeed the unit to undertake such a vital task. It is, as you know, a sensitive matter …”
Cleitis waved a hand. “That is the entire point of their assignment, Varos.”
“Sir,” Daivid began, “what is our as—?”
The captain interrupted him. “I know you are new to the unit. So I will allow you a trifle of leniency, but that is all. I cannot allow your company to damage the workings of my ship. The man who threw the first punch is confined to quarters during off-hours, with no entertainment systems permitted except for the Space Service’s book of rules and regulations. I will review his case in ten days.”
“Yes, sir,” Daivid sighed. Jones wouldn’t consider either part of the penalty punishment. If the confinement lasted long enough he would probably set the entire book to verse, maybe even to music.
“All of the crew who were involved in the altercation will be assigned to Chief Winston down in Sanitation,” Executive Officer Cleitis intoned. “Further infractions will be accorded corporal punishment. You keep them out of trouble at all other times. You will report to Commander Iry.” The hardfaced woman nodded. “She’ll expect to see you daily, and at any time she wants your sorry ass in her office. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, sir,” Daivid said. The hardfaced woman gave him one sharp nod. The XO echoed it.
“Good. Dismiss.”
O O O
“I was declaiming, sir,” Jones argued, sitting on his lower bunk in the cramped six-bed quarters. “He could have waited a moment. It was the last load.”
“But you ignored his orders,” Daivid explained painstakingly for the eighth time, then decided Jones was just keeping the discussion going to see how long he could string the new commander. “Enough is enough. He had instructions for you.”
Strong Arm Tactics Page 9
