The Jovian Sweep (Asteroid Scrabble Book 1)

by Martin Bourne

  “Look, I tell you what. We’ll compromise. I’ll wear my beret at a slouch.” She reached up, pushed down with one hand and up with the other. “How’s that?”

  “That’s even LESS stylish!”

  Josie slipped on the rest of her uniform with practiced ease. “You worry too much Celene.”

  “I don’t want you to make a fool of yourself, that’s all.”

  “You mean more of a fool, after this morning’s performance?”

  Celene bit her lip. “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

  Josie smiled. “I know. Come on. Let’s hurry. We don’t want to be really late, do we?”

  Celene went first, her gait stiff and unnatural, all the time casting alarmed glances left and right as they walked through the corridors. “This is ridiculous,” she grumbled. “Come back to the dorm Jose! There’s still time! We’ll fix you up with something. Anything!”

  “No way! I’m enjoying this. Usually it’s you telling me I’m fussing around like your mother.”

  “Even my mother would balk at this!”

  “My, Celene - I never knew you were so conventional.”

  “Conventional! Me?”

  Josie took pity. "Celene, why do you get dressed up for parties?”

  “To look and feel good of course!” Celene leaned a little closer “And to get noticed by the boys.”

  “Uh, huh,” said Josie as they walked into the rec room, now transformed into a garish nightclub. “Check it out Celene. Who is everyone looking at?”

  Celene frowned and scanned the room. Everyone was trying hard to look as if they were not casting furtive glances at Josie.

  Celene gave an exasperated sigh. “Slag it Jose, how do you manage to be so right about something you know nothing at all about?”

  “It’s very simple Celene. You may be all nicely dressed up, but so too is everyone else. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to be different. Who would know that better than me?”

  She hadn’t meant for that last phrase to pop out. Celene, of course, spotted it immediately.

  “I’m sorry Jose.”

  Josie gave her best friend a quick hug. “It’s not your fault! You’ve been wonderful! Seriously Celene, I don’t think I would have managed the last few months without you. And I know being friends with me damages your ‘cred’.”

  “Nonsense! I like hanging out with you.”

  Over Celene’s shoulder Josie caught sight of a crowd of newcomers walking in. One stood out immediately. He was only a little over average height and on the wiry side of well built, but he moved with a natural, easy air. He had the finest complexion Josie had ever seen, with a rakish cut to his jet-black hair. He was well worth looking at.

  “On the other hand, I don’t want to spoil your chances girlfriend. Why don’t you go and circulate? I don’t mind.”

  “Oh I couldn’t be so horrid as to leave you on your own Jose!”

  “You know, strange as it may seem, there might be other people here who might actually want to talk to me. I mean it has been known to happen, you know.”

  “Alright, alright, I’ll go get some drinks, shall I?”

  Without waiting for a reply Celene plunged into the maelstrom of revellers, whereupon she was immediately swamped by a flurry of ‘hello’s’ and ‘how are you’s’. Josie looked around, but the handsome link warrior had disappeared. Slag it. Nothing was going right today!

  Trying not to look obvious, Josie searched for the party that had just come in. She caught sight of them just as she rounded a pillar and almost bumped into Instructor Mohan.

  “Good evening Instructor,” she babbled.

  Mohan was alone, as would be usual for an instructor at a party full of the people he instructed. He was rocking back and forth very slightly on his heels, and gazing straight ahead. He was cradling a large glass of something exotic, from which he took a great gulp.

  “Ah, Cadet Tallion, our Callistoan recruit - fresh from the tribulations of the Sensors examination! Come to stand on the sidelines have you?”

  The intimacy of the question took her by surprise. She scrambled for an answer. “I thought I should relax after the examination, Instructor.”

  “Hah! Did you indeed? I noticed you didn’t answer my question.” He forestalled her with a raised hand. “No need, no need. We’re kindred spirits you and I, drawn together by our shared isolation.” He took another swig. “My, that was poetic.”

  Was the man drunk? Josie had never seen Mohan be anything other than clipped and duty-obsessed. Here and now he was positively mellow. It made him far more unsettling.

  She followed his eyes and realised he was focussed very intently on the crowd of link warriors that she had scouted out. She saw now that they were members of the regular unit hitching a lift on Belofte to a combat assignment somewhere.

  “They’re CM-1045 squadron, aren’t they?” she asked, trying to break into Mohan’s reverie.

  “Yah. Our active combat squadron. Quite a good one too from all accounts.”

  Josie looked over them again. That link warrior she had noticed before was amongst them.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  He was not the senior of the 1045 crowd, and certainly far from the most demonstrative, and yet somehow he was at its centre. As he moved from chair to chair, greeting others, the rest of the crowd seemed to flow around him. She noticed that a high proportion of the female members of the group were closest to him.

  “Him? That’s Lieutenant-Commander Donal Courage, Squadron flight ops.”

  “Courage? Any relation to the Admiral?”

  “Second cousin or something I think.”

  “That can’t be easy.”

  “Being related to Admiral Jack ‘No-Courage’? No I don’t suppose it is. Wouldn’t surprise me it’s why he’s not been promoted, ‘cause he’s a natural from what I’ve heard.” Mohan began striking off points on his fingers. “Good qualifications; plenty of experience; lots of combat kills and commendations; highly regarded by senior officers, and popular with the troops to boot. Well, you can see that.”

  Josie saw a trio of link warriors join the group. Every one of them went out of their way to acknowledge Lieutenant-Commander Courage.

  “Yep,” said Mohan, taking another hefty swig. “A fine link warrior alright, but he’s Jack ‘No-Courage’s’ second cousin or whatever, so no promotion for him.”

  “That doesn’t seem very fair,” said Josie quietly.

  “No. Shouldn’t make any difference at all of course, but it does.” Mohan shifted his gaze. His eyes bored into her. “You should know that. You’ve had plenty of experience of being judged by what you are, rather than what you can do.”

  Josie couldn’t think of anything to say. Mohan gave a snort.

  “Alright Cadet, run along and be by yourself. Come back and talk to me when you’ve grown up and figured things out.”

  He turned his back abruptly. Josie bit her lip.

  She wandered around, nodding to people she knew now and again, acutely conscious of being noticed. She nursed a single drink. She was a creature of her environment. The first Belt settlers had been unable to afford the risks of intoxication. The harsh life of the early colonies, where even the least slip could be fatal, gave little room for luxuries of any kind, particularly brain fuddling beverages. The heritage of thrift and moderation and making do was inevitably wearing down in the richer colonies, but infant Callisto was closer to the straightened past.

  The cultural aversion to excess was so familiar that up until quite recently Josie hadn’t even particularly resented her circumstances. Moderation really did have the advantages of a fuller purse and a clearer head in the morning. But amongst Couragers she had to pay a different price, a social one, and after an hour, Josie judged that it was time to pay it.

  From experience she knew that people who drank together would at some point enter into a kind of collective group identity. From her vantage point she could see Celene laughin
g uproariously with a circle of about a dozen other revellers; many of them link warriors from the station garrison. Constance was chatting open-eyed with a male warrior Josie did not recognise. If their body-language signals had been audible they would have deafened the room. Over by the bar Packer, for some bizarre reason, was standing on his head while several shrieking girls were trying to catch at his shoes. All in all, it was time to go.

  She checked each ongoing situation in sequence to make sure everyone was too preoccupied to be looking in her direction. When Packer fell to the floor, Celene spilled a drink, and Constance pulled her amour into a darkened corner, Josie moved. A quick slip behind a column, a duck and a weave and she was at the door unnoticed. A quick palm to the release and she was into the corridor.

  And face to face with one Lieutenant-Commander Donal Courage.

  It was cooler in the corridor, but Josie felt her face flush.

  “Leaving early too, Ensign?” he said with a smile.

  “Err…well, umm…I was feeling rather tired…” she stammered.

  He gave a gentle laugh. “It's alright. I can only take so much of these affairs too. Errm...I've not been on board long. Could you show me how to get to Dorm Cluster 107?”

  "Oh, err...sure.”

  Feeling very self-conscious she led him down the relevant corridors.

  “Been on Belofte long?” he offered.

  “Only since she left Courage last month. I don’t know the ship very well myself.”

  “I’m afraid I have a very bad sense of direction,” he replied. “It takes me forever to get used to new ships.” She saw him give a quick glance at her arm, where the bronze cloak was displayed. “Which specialisation are you going for?”

  It was an obvious question but it still caught her by surprise. “I just did my Sensors finals,” she hedged, "but the results aren't out yet."

  He smiled. “Well, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

  She found herself grinning back like an idiot. Thank goodness they had reached the dorm. “Umm, here you go.”

  “Thank you very much.” He extended his hand. "Donal Courage."

  She took it, felt an odd tingle. "Josephine Tallion."

  "Nice to meet you."

  “Umm…likewise.”

  Chapter 13.

  Light Depot Ship Belofte, Outreach proving grounds.

  Josie Tallion lay on her bunk, twirled a lock of her hair, and considered for the one hundredth time just how her life could possibly have taken such a turn for the worse.

  She had now effectively flunked two of her majors, including her best subjects and the ones she had the best chance of getting a billet with. She had left her dam behind on Courage Asteroid. She could send vids of course, but it could never be the same as direct physical contact, and it was very expensive.

  Money generally was a problem. An unexpected statement had popped onto her perscomp the previous day, announcing she was entitled to flight pay now she was on a Depot Ship. That was nice, but the extra funds still did not cover her outgoings, and she had not been able to avoid looking at the bottom line, which was horrendous.

  Too add further to the catalogue of disaster, she found herself billeted with Constance and Lilybeth. The pair had never made any effort to disguise their contempt for her origins, looks, politics, accent, - in fact just about anything. Now she was forced into a cramped dorm cluster with them. To make matters worse the shortage of facilities on Belofte meant there was much more free time, and therefore fewer reasons not to be in the dorm cluster. It wasn't too bad in the first week, as everyone was still excited about being onboard, but from the second week on, as enthusiasm waned and boredom grew in proportion.

  It did not take long for the pair to learn to amuse themselves at her expense. They commenced a virtual siege on her ego. Quick incisive questions probed and picked, seeking out weaknesses and uncertainties. Once a chink was found, they would punch into it hard and regularly, leaving their victim squirming and red-faced. By any measure there was little in Josie’s past life to be ashamed of, but teenage girls were funny creatures and for all her attempts to evade or deflect the questions, eventually some simple admission would induce peals of laughter. It was excruciatingly embarrassing.

  Constance was very much the leader and almost always took the lead. She was tall and rather willowy, with immaculately styled hair and eyes that seemed to pierce into a person’s very soul. She was an expert at the elegantly timed snide comment and the quick, dismissive side glance. Constance was smart, although her intelligence was more social than academic. And she could talk. A lot. She could talk for Courage Asteroid. Josie had heard her spray out a dozen controversial sentences, without repeating herself, and without an "umm" or an "ah" in the whole broadside. It was an impressive skill to witness, unless you happened to be on the receiving end of it.

  Constance was a product of a privileged upbringing. She was accustomed to power and control. She exuded self-confidence, a comfort with herself and her situation. She regarded promotion as an inevitable consequence of her service, and eventual senior rank almost as a right. But on a deeper level Josie detected a dark side. There was nothing wrong with ambition, not as such. Indeed she often wished she had a better plan for her own life. The trouble came when that ambition was not tempered with any consideration for others, or even for the job in hand. That was dangerous.

  Constance provoked these reactions so often that Josie had come to the conclusion that her activities amounted to more than simple vindictiveness. It seemed she almost needed the negative attention, like she was some kind of emotional vampire. Josie recalled that time at the academy when she explained to Celene about Constance and Lilybeth believing in zero-sum. If only she had realised then just how true it was!

  Curiously, being alone with Constance wasn't all that bad. Usually the willowy blonde would just ignore her. Pointedly ignore her, in a way that made it clear she was ignoring her, but ignore her nonetheless. Constance worked much better when she had an audience to bounce her disdain off.

  Her cohort Lilybeth was quieter, more introspective, and she certainly wasn't as skilled a link warrior. She had an equally well-to-do background, but had obviously been kept on a tighter leash. She inevitably would back Constance up, but almost never initiated the attacks. Josie suspected it was a lack of self-confidence that made Lilybeth dutifully follow Constance's lead, rather than an innate malice of her own.

  The two had known each other for years. They both came from families with long military traditions. Of course anyone with the right aptitudes could become a link warrior. Such people were too valuable to be rejected by anything as trivial as social prejudice, but many of the characteristics of a good link warrior were at least partly hereditary, and inevitably a kind of warrior elite had arisen. Such clans were the backbone of the military in many nations.

  In the case of Constance and Lilybeth their parents had all been link warriors on the same squadron at the back end of the last war. A particularly prestigious squadron too, a fact Constance managed to work into most every conversation. The four had served together, had their adventures together, married each other, and had children that had grown up together. Children that had been tragically pampered and overindulged. Children that had been at the top so long they had become accustomed to looking down on those below, and to learn to enjoy stamping on them.

  Of course Celene was in the dorm cluster too. The bubbly blonde was a lot tougher than she looked. She didn’t take any nonsense and she had sufficient social status of her own to deflect a lot of Constance's snobbery. Unfortunately Celene couldn’t be there all the time. She and Josie did not share all of the same classes. There were plenty of times when Josie would be left alone with either one or both of the other two.

  Constance had an uncanny ability to squirrel out secrets. She would pounce on the tiniest morsel of an insecurity or an indiscretion and embellish it to titanic proportions. One of her favourite tactics was to dance in and out of arguments by f
irst saying something outrageous to elicit a shocked reaction, and then deflect it with a completely different statement followed by a carefully timed turn away. The hapless victim would be left floundering, trying to decide which of the two to refute, which inevitably made it seem that at least one of the statements was true. Meanwhile Constance would be stood to one side, grinning, vastly enjoying her target’s discomfiture.

  And at night Constance would sleep soundly while Josie seethed, trying to figure out what had happened, what would happen tomorrow, and what she could do about it.

  What she could do didn't amount to very much. She had tried arguing back but she always seemed to come off worse. Constance was just too good at running people down and rubbing them up the wrong way. She had, after all been doing it as a hobby all of her life. And to give her credit the willowy blonde was unquestionably quick-witted. She was careful to give all of her comments a veneer of logic and reason. Superficially, her arguments really did make sense. It was only when you delved a little deeper, and gave the matter some thought, that it became clear just how shaky her logic was. By then, of course, it was too late. It took too much concentration and time to pierce the surface commonplaces and prove just how wrong she was, and this was time that was rarely given. Josie mentally snorted. Lies were always stronger when a little truth was mixed in with them.

  What else could she do? Complaining to higher authority was theoretically possible, but practically impossible. In the first place how would she prove any wrongdoing? So Constance had said that Link Warriors should specialise rather than be generalists like Josie. So what? Josie personally felt that such over specialisation made for less well-rounded warriors, but she had to concede that Constance's argument was a defendable position. Plenty of other people, including really senior officers, thought the same. No one would take into account the sneers, the put-downs, the shouting down of opposition. She would look childish. Anyway, bringing in the authorities would be social suicide. No one liked whiners or informers, and Josie needed all the friends she could get.