Homefall

by Chris Bunch

  Lir responded in kind, didn't wrinkle her nose.

  Either Fenfer's suit needed decontamination, or else the woman could use a bath.

  Fenfer's ship, the Thermidor, wasn't that clean either, Garvin thought. The bulkheads and decks had been mopped and swept, but here and there he spotted patches given a lick and a promise.

  Similarly, the crew members were sloppily dressed, some wearing bits of civilian clothes with their uniforms.

  They didn't have what the military called, in a word Njangu always hated, "smartness."

  Yoshitaro never gave a damn whether a trooper had her/his nose spit-shined, but knew a well-trained grunt moved with a certain snap, had an easy familiarity with his/her duties.

  Not the women and men of the Thermidor.

  They behaved, Njangu decided, like sailors who were two weeks or less short of discharge and simply didn't give much of a tinker's damn.

  Garvin thought it a bit odd that the Thermidor's Commanding Officer didn't bother to come down from the bridge to the compartment he and Njangu were held in, close to the airlock, out of curiosity if no more.

  He chanced asking their guard, a friendly-faced Dec who'd told them he was one of the ship's quartermasters. As part of the "search" team, he'd been infinitely curious about the circus and how it operated, and said, wistfully, that he hoped he'd get ground leave before they left.

  Garvin scribbled out an Annie Oakley, said he hoped to see him there and he'd personally give him a tour of the midway, clown alley, and the tops.

  He chanced asking why the quartermaster's CO hadn't come down and introduced himself.

  The quartermaster looked up at the wall speaker, which Garvin thought interesting in itself, then said, in a low voice:

  "He doesn't know what to think about you yet."

  "Why doesn't he come down and get some input to make up his mind?" Njangu asked.

  "No, no," the man said. "He hasn't been told what he thinks yet."

  He refused to elaborate who would be the one who'd dictate opinion, and was relieved when the speaker beeped and announced they'd be closing on the Corsica in zero-seven minutes.

  The Corsica was huge, a battleship more than two kilometers long, bristling with missile stations and chainguns for secondary armament.

  It was also very smart, indeed, overheads, bulkheads, decks gleaming, uniforms spotless, their wearers moving with snap and panache, saluting officers with a greeting and a slogan that must have been changed regularly.

  This one was "train hard, fight easy," one of the oldest and most deceptively false saws in the book. More realistic, Njangu thought, would be "train hard, fight hard; train easy, fight harder."

  Njangu thought the ship and its crew were perhaps a little too nit and tiddy.

  An aide, who didn't introduce himself, ushered them through an outer office with busy yeomen into Dant Lae Romolo's cabin, which was rather sparse, with computer projections hung haphazardly here and there on the walls. The only holo was that of a rather severe woman.

  From Cumbre on, Garvin had the rather romantic dream that all this sneaking and subterfuge would end with him being able to stand at attention in front of a high-ranking Confederation officer, salute him, and report as he should:

  "Caud Garvin Jaansma, Commanding Second Infantry Regiment, First Brigade, Strike Force Angara from the Cumbre system, reporting in to the Confederation, sir."

  But now he thought better of the idea.

  Dan Romolo was a fairly small man, with a round face, thinning hair he clearly didn't have the vanity to have revitalized, and the beginnings of middle-ages spread.

  This did not mean Romolo was, in any way amiable-looking or soft. His face was prematurely lined, comfortable with command, and his cold eyes stared hard.

  Njangu was reminded of the late dictator Redruth, and didn't like the hint at all.

  "Welcome to the People's Confederation, and its capital system," Romolo said, and there was a slight, possibly sarcastic, emphasis on "People's."

  "Your homeworld is Grimaldi."

  "Yes, sir," Garvin said.

  "My star charts show that as a barely colonized world," Romolo said.

  Garvin was surprised.

  "It's been settled for at least four hundred years, sir, as a base for traveling circuses like mine."

  "Don't be surprised," Romolo said. "During the course of… shall we say, change, in the Confederation, many records were either destroyed by accident or mislaid and have yet to be recovered."

  "Change, sir?" Garvin said. "All we know… all the worlds we come from or landed on… is that the Confederation has fallen out of contact with its systems."

  "Also, none of the military units we encountered have been in contact with Centrum," Njangu chanced. "Sir… what happened?"

  He heard honest plaintiveness in his voice.

  Romolo took a careful breath.

  "The Confederation Parliament went through a sea change, very rapidly, after a long period of stress, a few years ago.

  "The new members of Parliament have been forced to spend all their time rebuilding the homeworlds, bringing order, and unfortunately haven't been able to provide the Confederation with leadership or security.

  "It's truly unfortunate, and all of us hope the situation corrects itself within the next few years."

  Garvin knew he should have kept his mouth shut, but couldn't. This was, after all, the culmination of everything.

  "Sir… what we've just gone through, getting here, which was always my dream… well, it's pretty close to pure chaos out there. We need the Confederation."

  Romolo's lips thinned, and he nodded sharply.

  "I'm not surprised. Let me ask you something… I believe you prefer the title of Gaffer… did you have any difficulties in reaching Capella?"

  "We had to evade some people who called themselves the Confederation Protectorate a few jumps back," Garvin said. "And some of the worlds we attempted to perform on weren't that friendly."

  "But nothing else?"

  "Not really, sir," Garvin said. "What, specifically, did you have in mind?"

  Romolo was silent, thinking.

  "That's interesting. Very interesting. I think it might be valuable for us to examine your logbooks."

  "With our pleasure, sir."

  "That can be done later," Romolo said. "I'm sure you'd like to make planetfall as soon as possible."

  "It's been a long series of jumps, sir," Garvin said.

  "I'll happily give you a release to land where the People's Parliament allows, with my recommendation that you be permitted to perform as desired and given the full freedom of Centrum. You'll be assigned a pilot within the ship-day to ensure you make proper landing."

  "Thank you, sir. I hope you'll find the time to be our guest."

  "Unlikely," Romolo said. "I find that my duties here, away from the comforts of Centrum, take up all of my time."

  He didn't sound like he was sorry about that.

  "A circus," he said, pretending sociability. "I remember, as a boy, my mother taking me to a circus. That was in the old days, when there were things like circuses, and entertainment that wasn't always supposed to be good for you.

  "There were monsters and animals and people doing amazing things. Amazing."

  Then he dropped the effort, came back to the present.

  "Very well. That's all."

  "Sir?" Njangu asked.

  "Would it be possible for me to inquire as to whether anything is known about one of the Frontier Worlds? I had a brother… I hope I still have him… serving with the Confederation forces…" Njangu tried to sound worried.

  "My writers in the compartment outside have access to all Confederation records," Romolo said, a bit impatiently, too big a man to worry about small things like brothers. "You're welcome to ask one of them before you transship."

  Garvin tried to keep from saluting, from doing a smart about-face, from looking like a military sort, and they went out.

  "What
was the name of this world again?" the yeoman asked.

  "Cumbre," Njangu said. "D-Cumbre. All the worlds of the Cumbre system had letter-names, my brother said." He spelled Cumbre carefully.

  The woman tapped sensors, shook her head.

  "Nothing at all on Confederation Main Records or our star charts. What about the name of the unit, al-though it's unlikely there'd be anything under that listing."

  "Uh, the last note I had from him said it was, uh, Strike Force Swift Lance. Its commander was named Williams." '

  Again, sensors were touched.

  "I'm sorry. Perhaps you've got the unit name wrong, in which case you should check with Confederation Military Records once you're on Centrum."

  "Son of a bitch," Garvin said, as Big Bertha's lock cycled, and they pulled their helmets off.

  "Son of a bitch indeed," Njangu said.

  "I think we need a drink."

  "Several. And get Froude and Ristori's asses for chasers and consultation."

  "I'm making some very interesting, very tentative theories," Froude said. "You, Jabish?"

  "I wouldn't use interesting so much as astounding, preposterous, absurd," Ristori said. "Perhaps I should pour this fine engine-room juice back in the snifter."

  "Uh-uh," Njangu said. "I want you to keep up with us, and what you're coming up with can't be any weirder than what Garvin and I are probably thinking."

  "Then talk to us, Gaffer Jaansma," Froude said. "You're the CO, so we'll let you be the first to dangle it out there."

  " 'Kay," Garvin said. "This stress Romolo talked about. I'd guess that must've been the riots we heard about when we passed through Centrum as recruits."

  "Maybe," Njangu allowed. "Or maybe the stress was worse. Like uprising, maybe. Or riots that never stopped."

  Froude looked at Ristori, and both nodded tentative agreement.

  "So when things fell apart, they really fell apart. I don't have any idea what this frigging People's Con-federation is, or this People's Parliament," Njangu went on. "But this thing about records being lost lets me get very, very weird on what might've happened.

  "Maybe," he went on, carefully not looking at the other three, "in this period of stress somebody blew up the Military Records Division."

  "That's reaching," Ristori said.

  "Besides," Garvin said, "there's always backups."

  "Yeh," Njangu agreed. "And lemme stretch some more. Not only were the central records blown all to hooey, which I can see a mob doing who's been shot up a few times by folks in uniform, but maybe the backups are either on other worlds or some of those sets of records nobody seems to have located.

  "Shitfire, if they could lose any reference to Cum-bre—"

  "And have Grimaldi's records a few hundred years out-of-date," Garvin interrupted.

  "Why the hell couldn't they forget about a few thousand grunts called Strike Force Swift Lance?" Njangu finished.

  "Not enough," Froude said, although Ristori, stroking his chin, was shaking his head in disagreement. "Why haven't they sent anybody out to start touching bases?"

  "I'll give you the easy answer," Njangu said. "And the hard possibility.

  "The easy one is that if everything turned to shit on Centrum, everybody with any kind of authority was busy trying to keep his own ass behind the firing squad instead of in front.

  "Think about it, Danfin. Everybody we know who comes from one of the Confederation worlds who got interested in politics has said they'd been sort of ignored for a long time before the bottom fell out. For some worlds it was five years, for some twenty, some even longer."

  "True," Froude said. "I can remember trying to communicate with colleagues in other systems who'd done interesting papers, and never being able to make contact."

  "As can I," Ristori said. "Even before I went on the road. It was a constant complaint at the conventions I used to attend, before terminal boredom struck, that whole segments of the Confederation were being lost, and valuable, long-term sociological studies would never be available."

  Njangu nodded smugly.

  "Let me tell you a little story. As soon as I finish what's in my glass, take the decanter away from Jaan-sma, then get some more of that chilled tea for a chaser."

  Njangu did as he'd promised, drank deeply, then returned to his chair, slouched back in it.

  "When I was very, very small," he said, "there was this group of tearaways a street or so over. I was far too young to join them, which was a good thing because they ended up getting nailed by the cops, given condit, and that was the end of that.

  "Anyway, they were real dumb-birds, 'cause they were stealing from people around them, which of course guaranteed somebody would eventually snitch them off, which is what happened.

  "Now, I lived in a shit-poor part of the world, and nobody could afford proper security devices, but they sure as hell didn't want to come home from work or a hard day's thieving and find their flats stripped barebones.

  "So they started putting in iron bars. Over the windows, over the doors.

  " 'Course, you can cut through iron fairly easy, but that takes time and work, and thieves don't fancy either.

  "The point of the story is there was this one man, wife had left him with two kids, down two buildings. A fire started one night in his apartment, and he had all his ironwork neatly bolted in and locked.

  "I guess he couldn't find the keys to the locks in time."

  "The man burned?"

  "To a crisp," Njangu said. "And the kids."

  Garvin got it first.

  "All those damned security devices we had to beep and burp and code our way through are like the iron bars?"

  "Just that," Njangu said. "The goddamned Confederation went and built itself a fortress, and then forgot how to get out of it.

  "That's why Romolo… and the boarding officer from that destroyer… were so curious about any difficulties we might have had coming into the Capella system, and why he wants to look at the logbooks, which I'll be falsifying as soon as tomorrow's hangover goes away."

  "That's… well, not impossible," Froude said. "And I'll accept the codes were destroyed. But wouldn't they push their way through, very carefully?"

  "Why? They had troubles here at home. And as for people from the outside… how many ships do you think it takes to vanish… blown all to hell by those frigging robots… before people quit trying?"

  Garvin followed Njangu's lead, and poured himself a drink.

  "I suspect," he said slowly, "if that's the explanation, or even just part of it, Centrum is going to be very goddamned interesting."

  "Not to mention borderline lethal," Yoshitaro said.

  Chapter 28

  The guide pilot was a wizened woman named Chokio with very wise eyes. Liskeard told her that Big Bertha wasn't the strongest ship for gravitational stress, a complete lie, so he'd appreciate it if she'd approve a nice, quiet lowering approach that'd take them a while to reach ground.

  "Cert'nly, Cap'n," she said. "Besides, gives you a good chance to have a look at Centrum. Y' been here before?"

  "No," Liskeard said truthfully. Garvin came on the bridge, heard her question, shook his head untruthfully, figuring a flash visit as a bare-ass recruit in the rear rank wouldn't count for much.

  "Give you a chance at th' glory what were Rome. See how things can get totally screwed…" and she caught herself. "Sorry. Meant how things can change in not ver' long."

  As they closed on the planet, she grinned, and told Liskeard to open up a screen and gave an aim point.

  It showed long ranks of starships, drifting aimlessly in orbit, loosely linked together with kilometer-long cables.

  " 'At's th' Confederation Fleet… that which didn't get caught on the ground and tore up when things… changed, or was out Beyond, and never come back. Or left a'terward and never come back."

  "What was it like when… well, the way you put it, things changed?" Garvin asked.

  "It was shit-ugly for anyone wearin' a uniform, didn't
seem to matter if you were a soldier or a postman," Chokio said. "I was very damned glad to be on th' moon as a girl operatin' a pushmepullme yard tug. Friends of mine on groundside said it got definitely nasty out.

  "Not that it wasn't warranted," she said hastily. "Damned Confederation bureaucrats and their thugs'd been pushin' folks around for too long. The people had enough, and so they started lashin' out in all directions.

  "Sometimes they got the right direction, sometimes…" She shrugged and pretended to consult a screen as Big Bertha entered atmosphere.

  "Almost wish this ship of yours was like some of the oldies," Chokio said. "Thin-skinned enough so you could hear air whip, and have lousy enough heat exchangers so it'd redden up. That was back when there was romance in space travel.

  "Brought one of those back to Centrum not long ago," she said. "It was some kind of old survey ship, and I guess they thought it'd have Confederation records or something.

  "Never heard anything more about it."

  Big Bertha made a first orbit, shallowly descending as it went. Every viewscreen, every port was crowded, and as they got lower, it was easy to see the "changes."

  Centrum was… had been… a carefully planned world, with huge islands of apartments near buildings that had to be governmental for their gray ugliness. In between stretched lakes and green belts.

  In a closed compartment, Njangu and his Intel people were correlating what they saw with the map of Centrum they'd bought from Kuprin Freron, back on Tiborg Alpha Delta.

  "See th' parks?" Chokio said. "Kinda shabbied up, aren't they? They were built not just for runnin' and playin', of course. Intended to cycle off CO2, so folks could keep breathin'.

  "When people got done rippin' and tearin', and re-alized th' heat wasn't on, some of th' fools decided to get in th' parks with saws, and really get back to th' land.

  "The Cits… citizens… wouldn't listen to anybody telling 'em about oxygen regeneration, thought anybody who did were bigbrains, prob'ly part of the Old Order, and thought they'd make good targets.

  "Finally, had to give orders to the People's Militia, made it a capital offense to cut down a tree.

  "Not that anybody ever considered telling any Cit she didn't have the right to breed 'til we all have to breathe in alternate beats. Nawp, anything scientific was part of the old way of thinkin'."