Back From the Dead

by Rolf Nelson

  “Port arms, gents, look sharp,” says Kaushik. “McKibben, wipe your chin! Disgusting habit, that.” The recruit discards a wad of chewing tobacco. “Better. Mag and chamber check. All good? Safeties? Okay. Not so close, spread out! Horkle, aren’t you supposed to be by the side door? MOVE IT! Sheesh.”

  A spaceport security vehicle pulls up, driven by a uniformed officer, with Seeless in the passenger seat. Kaushik approaches Seeless, holding up his hand to keep him in the vehicle. Seeless hands him an e-reader.

  “You have twenty-four hours to pay the bill, or we shut power off again.”

  “I’ll make sure the owner gets it,” Kaushik says. “Now get lost.”

  Seeless smiles his crooked smile and nods to the officer to drive away. They roar off.

  “One thing you’ll learn, guys,” Kaushik says, “There are shitheads like that everywhere. Usually, you can’t just shoot ’em. The next best thing is to launch about five megatons of lawyering or a platoon of accountants at them. Here, Sanchez, double time this up to Helton, and inform Lieutenant Kat.” He shakes his head. “Different port, same stupid games.”

  Helton and Kat in the Officers’ Mess.

  “117,000?!”

  “And change. That’s what it says.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “According to this, the previous bill you paid was just to get the power reconnected, not to pay off the full balance.”

  “No wonder it keeps changing hands in card games. I don’t have that much.”

  “It’s a hunk, alright. And if I’m reading this right, that’s just the first installment.”

  “WHAT!”

  “I think … I think that this will take some digging into by a specialist. I might know just the guy.”

  “But this says power gets cut tomorrow if we don’t pay up.”

  “Yes, I see that. I’ll see what I can do at the legal side.”

  “Guess it’s time to see how Stenson is coming along on getting primary power up and online.”

  “Primary? I wouldn’t think it possible with stuff this old.”

  “When it comes to machines, Stenson is the man. It might be feasible without having to cut everything out and replace it. Good a time as any to find out.”

  Helton and Stenson in Engineering. Stenson is leaning halfway into a tube, and his voice echoes out hollowly.

  “Pretty good, actually. A couple of days, if all goes well. ‘Course, I’m still trying to figure out where half the power we are drawing is actually going, which should have been done a couple of days ago, but–”

  “You can’t account for half of the power we're sucking in through the shore wire?”

  “Nope. At first I thought it was the bogus port meter trying to screw us, but that wasn’t it. Yet another mystery to solve. Doesn’t seem to be causing any problems that I can detect. But, as I keep telling the new guys: fix one problem at a time that you can fix, then worry about the ones you can’t. At least we don’t have to wear helmets to protect ourselves from exploding parts anymore. Ah, there. That’s got it.” He pops back out of the tube, sweaty and dirty. “Power moves to the top of the heap.”

  The forward window on the bridge shows the spaceport; the side screens show various readouts. Helton is at the command station, Stenson at pilot, Lag at navigation. Kaushik stands at the left side station, Allonia stands at the right, and Quinn stands in the door, watching it all, wide-eyed.

  “Power looks okay. Stable, anyway. All landing struts read green.”

  “Ramps and sides clear. No one walking around.”

  Helton picks up a mic attached to a spiral cord, pushes the button and speaks.

  “All hands hold on. Prepare to rise on landing pads in five.”

  Stenson grins like a kid with a new toy.

  “Let’s see if this Frankenstein monster can walk again.”

  Outside the ship, Seeless stands next to a large green box on the ground labeled D9 HIGH VOLTAGE, holding a small remote control. With a sly and mischievous squint, he watches the small crowd of recruits and port personnel who have gathered to watch the first trial. The crowd takes no notice of him; they’re all focused on Tajemnica.

  The ship makes a soft but growing humming sound, then a slight shuddering groan. Like a giant awaking from a long slumber, it ever-so-gradually grinds and shudders up a few centimeters at a time, lifting itself out of its shallow depression in the dirt. It rises slowly and unevenly at first, then more steadily. Dust swirls into the growing gap created by the lifting hull.

  Seeless points his remote and pushes a button. There is a solid THUNK as a circuit breaker drops open. The ship falls half the short distance to the ground, then catches itself. The humming turns briefly into a whining screech, then stabilizes into a much healthier tone. The crowd cheers.

  Readouts on the bridge are fluctuating wildly, with a lot of red margins. Stenson rapidly checks and adjusts the controls. Allonia and Quinn hang on as the ship lurches.

  “What’s happening?!” Helton shouts over the noise of the alarms.

  “Shore power was cut!” Stenson answers.

  “Why are we moving, then?”

  “Dimitriov got the auxiliary backup power cells juiced up and online this morning!”

  “So we do have power?”

  “Some. Several hours of basic systems. Kicked in automatically.”

  “Fuel cells?” Lag asks, surprised.

  “Yup. Redundant tertiary backups,” Stenson says. “Let’s stabilize things, then see where we really are.” His hands dance across the controls. The ship stops vibrating, and the hum drops off. The alarms cut out, the background noise drops to an almost inaudible hum, and the motion ceases. The ship sits at a slight angle.

  Harbin sticks his head in the hatch to the bridge. He looks at Helton and Stenson. Helton holds up his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me!” Harbin nods and pops back out. “So, how long until main power is up?” Helton asks.

  “Working on it,” Stenson says distractedly.

  “Where do we hire a pilot around here?”

  “Depends,” Allonia answers. “What kind of pilot do you want?”

  “I don’t care if it’s a left-handed color-blind vegan lesbian midget druid of undetermined polyethnic ancestry who learned to fly on a roflcopter. If you can trust them to do the job well, hire ’em.”

  TRAINING

  Recruits

  Harbin watches as two dozen recruits run a simple obstacle course through the ship. They jog forward in the mid-level passageway on one side, down the stairs, across the cargo bay, up the stairs on the other side, then aft through the mid-level passageway. They are evenly spaced and movingly easily.

  Harbin shouts encouragement to them as they go by. “Lookin’ GOOD! Let’s see what we can do about that.” One of the passing recruits grimaces at those words. “Corporal Kaminski, next time you get to that cargo bay window in the end, go THROUGH it, drop to the deck, cross, and go up the other side the same way. Everyone else follow.”

  Kaminski hops through the open window more or less smoothly, carefully drops to the cargo deck, trots across it, then stares up at the opposite window, not sure how to climb up. There are no obvious ladders, though there are some wall-mounted pipes and equipment. “Uh, Sarge? This window?” Harbin nods.

  The next couple of guys show up next to him. They quickly but clumsily organize a simple human pyramid with Kaminski on top. He is barely able to get his hands on the window and scramble up and through. He leans back out and calls, “Okay, Horkle, you’re next. Snipe, take his place, keep rotating through.” The climbing is slow going, and a growing number of recruits pile up behind the pyramid.

  Kaminski moves on, and the pile of confused men, each with their own ideas, grows and becomes more chaotic. One recruit is leaning out the middeck window trying to direct. Stenson walks up and stands next to Harbin. “Like herdin’ a flock a’ tuna up a rainbow some days, isn’t it?”

  Harbin grunts. “Some are as useless as
hired relatives. The first phase is always the frustrating part. Depressing to see how low ‘average’ is. But we see which ones are teachable, which ones are able and willing to think things through on their own. They’ll get better fast after we cut most of them for attitude. The good ones learn to learn and figure things out. Or they get dead. COME ON, TOSS THE SHORT ONES UP THERE IF YOU HAVE TO!”

  The pyramid of men on the cargo deck is uneven. As one recruit boosts the top man up, another adjusts his position, causing the guy on top to lose his balance and fall down the heap, landing awkwardly on one foot. He collapses, grabbing at his ankle.

  “Maybe tell them to catch, too?” says Stenson.

  “WAIT UNTIL THEY ARE READY!” Harbin yells. “They’ll figure that out … eventually.” He steps closer to the pile. “Oh, stop your sniveling!” he says to the fallen recruit. “It can’t be more than a sprain! You two hustle him up to sick bay and get back here!” Stenson walks away shaking his head as Harbin starts to sort out the pile.

  The firing range is a simple three-meter berm of pushed-up dirt in a large, level-bottomed, three-sided box, about thirty meters on a side at the foot of the berm. There is a line of silhouette targets two meters apart at the foot of the berm.

  Sergeant Kaushik stands behind a line of a dozen recruits standing at attention, each with a slung rifle at his shoulder. He walks to one end and looks down the line. “Secure your magazines!” There is a general shuffling in the line as soldiers unsling their rifles and remove the magazines, placing them in a side magazine pouch. “Present, ARMS!”

  The troops snap to present arms, though not very smoothly or well. Kaushik steps just behind and to the side of the first soldier, so he can get a clear look at the rifle without being in front of the soldier. “Port arms and show clear.”

  The soldier moves his rifle to port arms, works the action, and looks in the chamber. “All Clear SERGEANT!”

  Kaushik steps to the next soldier, Horkle. “Port arms and show clear.” Horkle goes to port arms and works the action. A round flies out of the chamber, landing in the dirt in front of the line. “WHAT’N’HELL IS THAT!?”

  Horkle stands at mortified attention, and starts to tremble. “I– I– I don’t know Sir!”

  “I’m NOT AN OFFICER, AND THAT WAS AMMUNITION IN YOUR CHAMBER!” Darch, the next soldier in line, stifles a giggle. “Any idea HOW it got in there?” Kaushik asks Horkle.

  “N-n-no Sir, I mean Sergeant. It wasn’t there earlier, I’m sure!”

  “It sure as HELL was in there just NOW!” Kaushik glances at Darch. “Who is your battle buddy?”

  “Darch, Sir. I mean, Sergeant, Sir. I mean, Sergeant.”

  “Did you, at ANY TIME, leave your rifle unattended?”

  “No. NO.”

  “At any time?”

  Horkle trembles nervously, then stiffens. “Only when I was in the head, Sergeant.”

  “And did you leave your rifle with your battle buddy at that time?”

  A look of angry realization spreads across Horkle’s face. “YES, SERGEANT!”

  “Ground your weapons,” Kaushik orders. He speaks coldly and quietly. “Now, the two of you are going to double-time back to First Sergeant Reel and explain to him precisely what happened. If you are still alive when we get back, you’ll be pulling extra duty for a week, as well as doing fifty extra deck laps before every meal. If you are not back before we are, you’ll be holding targets for us here on the range. Clear?”

  “Clear, sergeant,” they answer simultaneously. Darch is no longer smiling.

  “CLEAR?”

  “CLEAR SERGEANT!”

  “MOVE MOVE MOVE!” They turn and run at full speed back toward the ship. Kaushik shakes his head in disgust. “That screw-off could fail at playing with himself.”

  In the cargo bay, by the dim reddish lights of the night shift, Harbin leads the recruits in bayonet drills. They’re much like the drills practiced by the monks of St. Possenti, but these are done at full speed. Parry, feint, riposte, thrust, buttstroke, slash, thrust. Harbin is sweating, but he is crisp and precise, calling in strong and clear cadence. Lag is there as well, performing the exercises with the smooth grace of long practice and hard muscles. The recruits are exhausted and ragged. Darch is the only one wearing armor.

  At the firing range, the recruits lie prone in a line, firing rifles, a pile of spent brass beside each. They shoot one after another, with three to four seconds between each shot. Fifty meters down-range stands Darch, an agonized expression on his face, holding out two targets at arm’s length. Each shot kicks up dust on the berm behind him. His arms are drooping, and there are a lot of holes in the targets.

  In the cargo bay, recruits in fatigues do the laps again, watched by Harbin and Lag. They exit the mid-level window at one end, cross the bay, rotate through and up a human pyramid on the other side. They clearly have the pattern down now, with two guys holding, one running and scrambling up, and one at the top ready to grab hold if the guy coming up misses the window sill. They’re steady and well spaced-out, though not perfectly smooth. Lag compliments Harbin on their progress. “Good. Lookin’ GOOD!”

  “Not bad. But it doesn’t get any easier than this.” He yells to the recruits. “Okay, take a break!” Everyone stops and drops, exhausted and breathing hard. “Now let’s see how well you manage properly dressed. Back where you are in ten, wearing class-three armor!” A collective pained groan echoes across the cargo bay.

  Dismay crosses Horkle’s face as he lies panting. “ARMOR? Oh, God! Is he trying to KILL US?”

  Kaminski shakes his head. “Save us. It just feels like dying now. Endurance is life. Run to attack. Run to retreat. Run to reposition. The side that stops being able to run and swing a sword or shoot first usually loses. Supposed to be good for the brain, too.”

  The cargo deck at night. Two dozen exhausted recruits in light armor lay sprawled out, breathing heavily, around the center of the cargo bay. Kaushik and Helton stand to the side, watching the recruits recover.

  “My sister was right,” Horkle announces. “I must be nuts to join up!”

  “So why did you?” Darch asks.

  “Magistrate’s choice. Nine months in lockup or volunteer and make it past the first cut, into unit placement with a contract.”

  “What’d a pansy-ass like you do to get nine months?”

  “Judge frowned on my taking private spaceships for joyrides, even if I did return them when I was done. Especially his.”

  “You’re smart enough to steal a space yacht, and dumb enough to return it?”

  “Stealing would be wrong! I just sorta borrowed ’em.”

  “Yeah, you’re just stupid, volunteer or not.”

  “Hey, you’re here, too!”

  Kaushik interrupts. “Save it for tomorrow. You get to do hand-to-hand sparring and field-expedient weapons. And it’s not considered proper to ask why someone joined; we care about what you do here, not so much what you did to get here.”

  Darch gets excited. “Yeah, weapons training!”

  “Yes. Fancy things like rocks. A real hoot.”

  “ROCKS?! That’s little boy stuff! I’ll just shoot the bastards!”

  “You may not always have a gun.”

  “I will!”

  Helton squats to be eye-level with him and speaks quietly. “Darch, if you had to play Rock-Rifle-Scissors against someone like First Sergeant Reel, you’d lose. Whatever you pick. So learn now, before you do have to fight someone for real. You may not get a chance to learn from your mistakes.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I saw him use a rock in a fight once. That’s all we had. Six punks died inside six seconds.”

  Darch eyes Helton to see if he’s kidding and realizes he is deadly serious. He looks down.

  Kaushik says, “The First Sergeant pushes you hard because he wants you to live through a real fight. Pay attention and learn. Or not … and don’t.”

  A clanking noise comes from sternward, and
they turn to see a man in armor, about level four: mail hauberk, greaves, various extra plates, helm, shield, sword in a scabbard, and a two-meter spear. The helm and the reddish light obscure the man’s identity. He stretches and flexes, moving smoothly.

  Another man appears at the bow, similarly clad, but with subtle brass-work gleaming around the eyes on his helmet. He, too, stretches and flexes. Both soldiers stop moving and face one another across the length of the cargo deck.

  “Watch and learn,” Kaushik says.

  Suddenly the man at the bow runs to the port side, slings his shield and, midstride, tosses his spear up through a middeck window, then scampers unassisted up the wall like a giant squirrel up a tree using hand and foot holds the recruits didn’t see or trust to use. He rolls up and through the window with a grace and speed none of the recruits came even close to, even when not in armor.

  The man at the stern starts a lap at the same moment, going starboard and up the stairs. They race down the middeck passageways at full speed. When the man on the port side reaches the end of the passageway, he takes the stairs down. The man on the starboard side tosses his spear and shield out the far end window. They’re running counterclockwise, a race to try to catch up to each other. In a window, down a passageway, down a stair, across the deck, around and around. Simple. Fast. Graceful. Brutal. A combination of speed, endurance, precision, and decisions on speed versus safety. Each man does not always take the same exact route. Stairs or middeck window: one path is a little easier, one path a bit faster, unless they hurt themselves landing or get hung up going through a window.

  The shocked and amazed recruits start cheering them on, still unsure of the soldiers’ identities. The sound of their breathing is loud, but not gasping. Gradually they pull closer together, the man with the brass-detailed helm gaining ground. Five laps gained five meters. Ten laps, ten meters. Closing in. Getting close. Brass-work leaps out the window to the cargo deck with spear and shield and drops down next to the stern stairway hatch and lunges toward it, bracing as the other comes out. Shield-to-shield they crash together, one with more momentum, the other well braced. It’s not clear who came out ahead.