Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  The next morning Harvey gunned his forklift to life while producing a cacophony of mechanical sounds, including the squeal of rubber on concrete at he pulled away from the loading dock. Soon he was easing the forklift between the rows of containers to approach Forsythe’s club. He glanced around casually as he stopped it and hopped off, bending down to examine the edge of the container he had placed on the floor the night before. Oozing out from under the edge of the dark green container was a wad of pink bubble gum.

  Quietly, and without any sound effects, Harvey drove back to the loading docks. He didn’t know what was going on in the club, but one thing was certain. The container he had dropped off the night before hadn’t been moved. On the way back to his quarters he tried to decide what he should do.

  In the shower he toyed with the idea of going to Internal Security, but decided against it. If Forsythe’s operation was legitimate, his visit to Internal Security would cost him his job—a job, he reflected as he toweled himself dry, that had paid him nearly a year’s salary in less than two months.

  Harvey finished dressing and tossed a few things in an overnight bag. No, he decided, he wouldn’t go to Security. Not until he’d had a chance to talk to Frosty about what really went on in Forsythe’s club. Switching off the lights, he left his quarters and took the express elevator to Green Two.

  The lobby of the Hilton Hotel exuded an aura of expensive elegance that made Harvey feel slightly ill at ease as he waited for the desk clerk to confirm his reservation.

  “Ah, here it is,” the balding man said as Harvey’s name came up on the screen. “Suite 1121 . . . Mr. Kimmelman and Ms. Hooters.” He looked up from the CRT and gave Harvey a smile that looked as if it had been pickled in alum. “Just follow the guide to your room, sir.”

  A small robot glided to a stop next to the desk. Harvey set his bag on it and then followed it across the lobby and down a series of well-carpeted corridors until at last they came to suite 1121. The robot opened the door, allowing Harvey to enter first before it followed along with his bag.

  By the standards of accommodation on the Stephen Hawking, the hotel suite was big. Harvey figured it to be at least four or five times the size of his quarters down in the south pole. There was a small video room with several comfortable-looking chairs opposite the three-dimensional video wall, and next to that was a bedroom with a huge bed. Beyond the bedroom was a bathroom, and through the open door Harvey could see Frosty reclining in a deep bath filled with the most wonderful-looking suds.

  “Hi, Harvey,” she called the moment she saw him. “Come on in, the water’s fine!”

  Harvey didn’t bother to undress, but simply stepped into the tub and slid down next to Frosty.

  The next thirty-six hours blurred into a nonstop orgy of indulgence. For the first time in his life Harvey was rich, and he was enjoying it. He and Frosty went shopping, took in a concert, ate in the best restaurants, and made love. It was after a particularly satisfying bout of lovemaking in zero-gravity mode that he had almost decided to forgive Frosty for having scammed two years’ worth of pay credits, and was seriously thinking about marrying her, when she managed to break the spell.

  “Gee,” Frosty said, “it’s a shame about the Club, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Harvey replied, trying not to think about her long fingernails as they slowly dragged their way across his belly.

  “Well, just that Forsythe may have to close it down,” Frosty said.

  “Close it down? Why?” In his mind’s eye Harvey could see little pay credits with wings flying out the windows of his dreams.

  “Well,” Frosty said coyly, “it’s because business hasn’t been all that good.”

  “Well, I sure seem to bring a lot of people there every night.” Harvey reached down and took Frosty’s hand in his own. “What do you mean that business hasn’t been good?”

  “Just that we don’t get very many customers. Sometimes only one or two show up, and most of those leave early.” Frosty’s other hand was teasing the inside of Harvey’s thigh.

  “What do you mean they leave early?” Harvey moved closer to Frosty, forcing himself to concentrate. “How could they?”

  “Well, I don’t know how they leave, but they do. I’ve even asked Forsythe about it, and he just shrugs and says, ‘They’ve gone.’ ” Frosty laid her head on Harvey’s chest. “I thought maybe you took them back.”

  “How many came last night?” Harvey asked.

  “Silly,” Frosty replied. “It was just you and me. . . .”

  “Not last night then,” Harvey said with some exasperation, “but the last night you worked at the Club. Before we came up here?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Frosty cooed. “Four. Two regulars and two new guys. But the new guys didn’t stay long; they left after about an hour.”

  “How did they leave?” Harvey asked, afraid of what the answer might be.

  “Well, Forsythe said you took them back to the elevator.” Frosty lifted the covers on the bed and looked down toward their feet. “You’re not paying attention,” she said.

  But all Harvey could think of was the wad of bubble gum oozing out from under the container. It hadn’t moved all night, and if the two new customers had left, then someone else had taken them.

  “Frosty,” Harvey asked, “is there a back entrance to the Club?”

  “I don’t think so, Harvey,” she said. “There’s the bar and the casino, then the playrooms, a kitchen, and the dorms.” Frosty pulled her face into a cherubic pout. “I’ve been everywhere in the Club, but I’ve never seen any other entrance except the one you came through when Forsythe hired you.” Her face brightened suddenly. “Unless there’s another entrance in the hen house!”

  “The ‘hen house’?” Harvey asked.

  “I think that’s what it’s called. At least that’s what one of the regulars called it. I remember that Forsythe actually got upset and told the man he’d have to leave.” She smiled at Harvey. “Can we . . .”

  “What do they do in the hen house?” Harvey asked, interrupting Frosty’s playful request.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ll show you what we do in the playrooms.” She pressed against Harvey as she reached across to turn off the lights. “Oooo,” she cooed in the darkness. “Now you’re really paying attention!”

  The next morning Harvey went down to the desk to check out of the hotel.

  “How much do I owe you?” he asked when he finally managed to attract the desk clerk’s attention.

  “Name, please?” The overhead lighting gleamed on his bald head.

  “Kimmelman. Harvey Kimmelman.” Harvey tossed his pay card on the polished desk, secretly hoping he still had enough credits to pay the bill.

  The bald head bent over the CRT and tapped away furiously at the keys. “Ah, here you are,” he said without bothering to look up. “Three nights with Ms. Hooters . . .”

  The desk clerk stopped in midsentence. “Yes, Mr. Kimmelman, everything is in order.” His tone of voice had become very deferential, and Harvey wondered if the man was about to transform into a toad right before his eyes.

  “So, what do I owe?” Harvey asked, a slight edge to his voice.

  “Why, nothing, Mr. Kimmelman. Your stay has been with the compliments of Hilton Hotels.” Slight beads of perspiration glistened on the desk clerk’s sandy-colored forehead. “I hope that everything was to your satisfaction?”

  “Sure. Just fine,” Harvey said, picking up his pay card. “See you again in a couple of weeks.”

  Picking up his overnight bag, he headed out the doors of the hotel and across the bustling mall on Green Two. As he stood waiting for the express elevator to take him back to the south pole, he mulled over what he knew of the Club and what he had learned from Frosty. By the time he was strapped in to a deceleration seat, he had reached a simple conclusion: Things didn’t add up.

  It didn’t take a tech level one propulsion engineer to know that the Club wasn’t
raking in enough to pay him the sort of cash Forsythe was splashing around. That meant that the money had to come from some other source.

  Forsythe’s Club on Green One? Maybe, but Harvey doubted it. Blackmail? Frosty had said something about regulars, but it was doubtful that they would be able to come up with enough credits to cover his salary week after week, let alone take care of Forsythe’s operating expenses.

  The express elevator hit four g’s on stopping at the south pole, and despite the gaseous suspension of the seat, Harvey still felt like he’d left his stomach up around Seventeen deck. Untangling himself from the harness, he left the elevator and went straight to his quarters.

  After the opulence of the Hilton, Harvey’s quarters seemed almost claustrophobic. With his bed folded into the wall the room measured not quite three meters by four. It contained the regulation folding chairs, a small video screen, a bookshelf, a closet, and a mini-galley where Harvey could reheat a meal purchased from the vending machine in the corridor if he didn’t feel like dining in the chow hall.

  The soft plastic walls were teal blue with stainless-steel trim, and the self-cleaning carpet a ubiquitous gray. A door next to the bookshelves led to a small bathroom that contained the one luxury that made the small apartment worth every credit it cost: a genuine liquid shower complete with hot and cold taps.

  Harvey surveyed his domain, wondering if it would still be his when he finished poking around the Club. The thought surprised him. Without realizing it, he had devised a plan and now he was putting it into action. He tossed his bag onto one of the chairs and headed out to the cargo decks.

  On board his forklift, Harvey snapped down the safety visor on his helmet.

  “Rig for silent running.” His voice had the harsh metallic crackle of an old P.A. system.

  Easing the machine out of the loading docks. Harvey made a series of sonar pings until he was sailing down the wide aisles of Violet Two. Navigating his way through the islands of stacked containers, Harvey finally sighted his first port of call.

  He eased his forklift into the docking bay accompanied by the sound of tugboat engines thrashing the briny sea into foam. The central cargo computer had less memory than all the inhabitants of the Stephen Hawking combined, but it did serve one very useful purpose: it kept track of every piece of freight, every bit of cargo, and every single container on Violet One and Two.

  Leaning over, Harvey took one of the mainframe cables and plugged it into the bayonet socket on the side of his machine. Keying in the coordinates of Forsythe’s Club, he asked for a profile of freight distribution on the deck. Within a matter of seconds, his on-board display lit with a schematic of the containers, a virtual floor plan of the Club. Harvey entered the information into the memory of the forklift’s computer and then disconnected from the central cargo terminal. Without a sound he glided down the freight corridor, headed for Forsythe’s Club.

  Taking a printout of the area as a map, Harvey parked his forklift twenty meters from the Club and proceeded on foot to Forsythe’s container complex. Easing himself between the tightly packed rows of containers, he slowly made his way toward the front. Finally, at the end of one of the narrow corridors, he dropped down onto his stomach and carefully peered around the corner.

  The dark green container that Harvey had placed in front of the Club four days earlier was still anchored to the floor by a wad of pink bubble gum. Harvey pulled back and stood up, hesitating for only a moment before he began backtracking to a point where he could circle around to the back of the Club.

  The rear approach was going to be more difficult. Here the containers were stacked three deep, and it was obvious to Harvey that he wasn’t going to be able to climb on top of them without some sort of assistance. Trotting back to the forklift, he hopped on board and, accompanied by the sound of squealing tires, drove the machine around to the back of the Club.

  Harvey pointed his scanner at the bar code on the top container.

  ALLIANCE MORTUARY STORAGE

  HUMAN REMAINS

  The next two containers were the same.

  So that’s how he avoided having his containers moved, Harvey thought. He’s running his Club in the middle of a graveyard.

  A shudder ran up his spine. Alliance regulations were crystal clear about the remains of the dead. Once placed in storage they were not to be moved or tampered with. Some species had unusual notions about proper respect for their dead. Harvey couldn’t remember what the penalty was for “mortuary disturbance,” as the regulations called it, but he was sure of one thing: It ranked with murder, arson, and treason in Category A crimes.

  Taking a deep breath, Harvey locked his tractor beam onto the topmost container and lowered it gently to the ground, followed by the next one. Then, locking on the bottommost container, he moved it slightly to the left, opening a gap of about forty-five centimeters. He replaced the top two containers, then drove back around to the front of the Club.

  Climbing down from his forklift, Harvey made his way past the dead of the Stephen Hawking and squeezed his way into the complex of containers that housed the Club. Inside the walls of cargo that surrounded the Club, Harvey was surprised to discover that Forsythe’s containers were packed in a tight cluster that left a clear three-meter path around most of its perimeter. At one corner of the cluster one of the containers was moved forward to where it butted up against the wall. This, Harvey surmised, was the entrance to the Club.

  Working back from the entrance, Harvey mentally ticked off each of the containers. The bar and casino in one; the playrooms in another; the dorms for the girls and the kitchen. And behind the kitchen, the hen house.

  Harvey leaned against one of the containers, trying to get his bearings. Behind him, coming from inside the container, he thought he could hear a high-pitched whine. Pressing his ear against the smooth green container, he strained to catch the sound again. Faintly, over the pounding of his own pulse, he finally heard it.

  Instinctively he tried to mimic it, the way he reproduced the sounds of everything from a crash-diving submarine to an FTL engine with warp failure. The whining sound grew louder, as if whatever was making the noise were drawn nearer the wall of the container by Harvey’s mimicking sound. Stepping back from the container, Harvey was convinced that he’d located the hen house. Whatever Forsythe was up to, the answer was in that container.

  Two sides of the container were flush against the others, while the third side left a gap of slightly more than half a meter between it and its neighbor. Harvey slid into the gap and pressed his back against the container, wedging himself in place. Slowly, hand over hand, he crawled up the side of the container like a mountaineer moving up the crevasse of a stone face. When he reached the top, he spread his arms across the opening and pushed himself onto the top of the container.

  From this vantage point he could see the layout of the containers and the small courtyard that separated the hen house from the rest. Crouching low, Harvey trotted along the top of the container until he reached a point above the courtyard. Lying flat on the roof, he lowered himself over the edge until he was hanging down the side with his arms fully extended. Pushing away from the container with his feet, he let go and dropped the last three meters to the deck.

  The courtyard wasn’t more than five meters on a side and, to Harvey’s immeasurable relief, there were two doors that opened onto it. One led into the hen house and the other, if Frosty’s description was to be relied on, led into the kitchen.

  Harvey pulled back the kitchen door just wide enough to look inside. The stainless-steel galley seemed deserted, and he quietly closed the door.

  Harvey pushed the hen house door open and slowly eased his way into the container. He found himself in a small, empty room lit only by a pale green work light. Closing the outside door behind him, he stepped across the room to another door. Before he could reach the door latch, the light began to change color and Harvey felt a prickling sensation all over his body as the by-now ultraviolet light com
pleted its process of decontamination.

  As the light level slowly faded back to a pale lime-green Harvey opened the inner container door. A thick, musty smell rolled out and filled the small room, reminding, him of the odor he had noticed when Forsythe had brought him into the Club nearly two months before. Stepping through the door he found himself in a room racked with shelves from floor to ceiling, each shelf holding something about the size of a man contained in a black plastic bag closed with a heavy zipper.

  At first Harvey thought that he was in one of the mortuary containers, and for a moment a wave of pure panic crashed over him, threatening to drag him under in a sea of terror. He took several deep breaths with his eyes screwed shut against what he had seen. Then, as he felt himself calming down, he opened his eyes once again.

  The body bags were still there, but even in the dim light of the container Harvey could tell from their shapes that they didn’t contain bodies. Carefully he unzipped one of them. Inside he found a set of Fleet battle armor, complete with helmet and plasma gun. He opened two more bags and found more armor and weapons. In the semidarkness of the container he managed a quick count. Enough equipment to outfit a hundred men.

  It didn’t make sense. What would Forsythe want with all this gear? A hundred men in battle armor could take over a ship. . . .

  The realization of what he was looking at hit Harvey between the eyes with the force of a hard ball coming off a Major League bat. Forsythe was planning a mutiny.

  For just a moment Harvey’s knees seemed about to buckle under him, and the room seemed to sway around him. He reached out to steady himself against the shelves when he heard the noise. It was a high-pitched whine that warbled up and down, much clearer than when he had first heard it outside on the cargo deck. With a deep breath, Harvey walked past the body bags filled with weapons and stopped in front of the steel door at the far end of the container.