Of Treasons Born (4 page)

“Just over two minutes,” Straight said in his headset. “Not real good. We're going to have to improve on that. Come on back out.”

Back on the Pod Deck, Marko said, “Here's the drill. You get in your coffin, and when we wake you, you get to your pod and get it online as fast as you can. And as soon as it's online, you shut it down and get back into your coffin as fast as you can. Then we're going to repeat the whole thing, and see how many times you can do that in one hour.”

York got into his coffin and the stim-sleep took over. Then he awoke to the sound of the alert klaxon, jumped out of his coffin when it opened, scrambled across the deck to his pod, and brought it online. “A minute and a half,” Straight said as he shut the pod down. He climbed down the zero-G tube, across the deck, and back into his coffin.

He got his time down to a little more than a minute on the fourth scramble, but on the fifth he was feeling winded and his time went back to a minute and a half. By the tenth, he staggered like a drunk across the deck, gulping for air, and then, at some point, he lost count. By that time, he was stumbling over his own feet, his coveralls soaked in sweat, and he had trouble with the straps on the acceleration couch in the pod. When he climbed out of the zero-G tube, he fell out of the hatch on the inner hull into a heap on the deck. He struggled to his feet and heard Marko shout, “Time.”

He stumbled across the deck toward the bunk room.

“Hold on there, Ballin,” Straight said. “That's enough.”

York stopped in the middle of the deck, bent over, and put his hands on his knees. He gulped for air, couldn't get enough into his lungs.

Marko pushed him into a seat at the command console, and as he took deep, heaving breaths, he realized the deck was crowded with gunners, all watching him. Marko handed him a glass of water and slapped him on the back. “Twenty-six scrambles, kid. Twenty-six in one hour. You broke the ship record by two. We'll make a gunner out of you yet.”

Zamekis let out a cheer. Several others joined her. Some gunners shook York's hand, while others patted him on the back, and a strange feeling washed over him. He'd never felt this way before, and realized that for the first time in his life he'd done something he could take pride in.

^*
See Appendix: Some Notes on Time, Gravity, and the Imperial Naval Academy

Chapter 4:

Illicit Favors

York was in the mess hall with Zamekis and Marko when the alert klaxon blared and allship called them to battle stations. The three of them sprinted out of the mess together, but when they hit one of the steep ladders between decks, the two more experienced spacers just grabbed the rails, threw their feet out, and slid down to the next deck. York had seen others do that, had tried it a couple of times himself, but he was still a bit awkward and fell behind as they raced deeper into the bowels of the ship. When he got to the Lower Pod Deck, Marko and Straight were already seated at their command console, and as he shot past them, Straight gave him a nasty look. He dropped into the empty console seat—his battle station—and strapped in.

In York's only previous experience at battle stations, as he'd waited for something to happen, he'd thought the ship had been silent. But he realized now it was only the silence of anxiety and fear, beneath which he heard a faint, low-pitched rumble, possibly the ship's engines. If he listened closely, he could just make out Marko and Straight subvocalizing commands into their implants. He closed his eyes and heard the whine of some sort of mechanism. The bass drums—the main batteries—started up, and the rumble of the ship's engines changed pitch. Then Straight said something about
incoming
, said it loudly and excitedly, and the hull echoed with a cacophony of sharp pops.

He'd been warned about that, knew that he was hearing the sound of the pod gunners firing at incoming ordnance. When he'd asked Zamekis what it would sound like if the ship took damage, she'd said, “Can't really describe it, Ballin, but you'll know it when you hear it.” She'd also warned him that acoustic baffling in the ship's hull meant he'd only hear damage if it was close by, or catastrophically major. “In that case,” she'd said, “just bend over and kiss your ass good-bye.”

The main batteries went quiet for a while, then started up again; the whine of the ship's engines changed pitch; and the pops of the pod guns ebbed and flowed. The main batteries never fired more than three or four rounds before going silent for a bit. About an hour after York had strapped down at the console, while waiting for them to start up again, he realized they'd been silent for some time. And the number of rounds fired by the pod gunners had dwindled to just a pop here and there. Then they stopped completely, and the pitch of the ship's engines dropped an octave or two. As he'd noticed earlier, the ship didn't go completely silent, but the noise level had dropped to that low-level background that required him to concentrate if he wanted to hear it.

“All hands, Watch Condition Yellow. Stand down, but remain on-station until further notice.”

York fired up one of the screens on his console and pulled up a copy of the regs to practice his reading. He was struggling over a difficult word when something smacked him in the back of the head. He looked up to find Straight standing over him.

She snapped, “Next time, get here faster.”

Standing behind her, Marko frowned. “The kid tried like hell.”

She turned on Marko angrily, gave him an unhappy look, then walked away.

York was about to cycle into his coffin for the night when Zamekis interrupted him. “Hold on, York. We're not done yet. We still got important duty.”

“What's that?” he asked.

She gave him a furtive grin and said, “You'll see. Follow me.”

They met up with Marko, Durlling, and Stark, all of whom were wearing khaki coveralls with no rank insignia. The sleeves of their coveralls ended just above the elbows in ragged, frayed cloth, as if they'd been torn away, rather than cut cleanly. York figured he'd learn what was up by keeping his mouth shut and following orders.

Marko slapped Zamekis on the back and said, “Tonight's your night, girl.”

Durlling and Stark shook her hand and congratulated her for something. At the look on York's face, Marko said, “She got her first confirmed kill today.”

York followed them as they went aft. They climbed up three decks, went farther aft, then back down two. York was thoroughly lost by the time they stopped at a closed hatch. It was a large hatch, door-size, and York had learned enough to know it should be open when not under an elevated watch condition.

Marko knocked on it, which was odd. A few seconds later, the valve wheel spun and the hatch popped open just a sliver. York saw the glint of someone's eyes as they looked out at them, then the hatch swung fully open. York followed his companions through the hatch. The lights were dim, and there were quite a number of spacers present.

Just inside the hatch, Marko, Durlling, and Stark paused and rolled up the chopped-off sleeves of their coveralls. Marko had a dozen scars on his upper arm just below the shoulder, odd chevrons of scar tissue that ran in a line down his arm. Durlling and Stark had similar scars, though Durlling had fewer than Marko, but more than Stark.

The chief who'd admitted them announced loudly, “Gunner Thaddeus Marko. Thirteen and a half chevrons.”

That number matched the number of scars on Marko's arms. The chief made similar announcements for Durlling and Stark, but when he announced Zamekis, he finished with “No chevrons, but she's drawing blood tonight.”

That brought a raucous round of cheers. He introduced York simply as “Gunner Apprentice York Ballin.” He finished by shouting, “Someone get 'em some beer.”

Someone handed York a cup of dark-brown liquid with tan foam on top of it. He took a sip, tasted strong beer. He hadn't had any alcohol since his arrest on Dumark, and thought he might enjoy himself.

Marko, Durlling, and Stark were greeted warmly as they moved among the spacers, while Zamekis was jostled about in a friendly way, with lots of crude jokes and swearing. Everyone about him spoke with excessive profanity, and he realized it was some sort of tradition. York was halfway through his beer when the ranking chief shouted, “Listen up. I want the following front 'n' center.” He read off a list of names, no rank, and each young spacer called shot forward accompanied by loud jeers and crude epithets, along with a steady stream of accusations concerning their ancestry and their sexual preferences—usually something to do with certain exotic animals. Each had full-length sleeves on their coveralls.

Zamekis was one of the names. Marko sat down on the deck next to York as she jumped up and ran forward.

Marko said, “This is called gunner's blood, York. Every gunner gets a half-chevron for each confirmed kill. It's the only rank that counts among us gunners. Straight's got no chevrons, and since she's not riding a pod no more, she'll probably never get one.”

One by one, each candidate was escorted to the center of the room, their station chief recounted the particular kill that had earned the scar, usually with some flair and a certain amount of embellishment, and of course accompanied by a lot of crude cheers and shouts. Then they cut away the candidate's sleeves with an old, steel knife—York now understood why the sleeves ended in ragged cloth. The chief then used the knife to make a half-chevron cut in the skin high up on the arm. They let the wound bleed nicely, let blood stream down the arm all the way to the fingertips and drip onto the deck. Then they washed the blood into the deck with a splash of the black beer, and the next candidate stepped forward.

“We always do the new bloods first,” Marko said. “It's a tradition. We add chevrons to the old bloods after them.”

The chief ordered additional ratings, spacers already wearing cutaway sleeves, front 'n' center. York got a second beer while they added chevrons to the old bloods. He watched the ceremony closely, and at some point, though he couldn't say when, he found himself hoping that someday he'd get to stand up there and get a chevron or two.

As the pod cycled through its boot sequence, York listened to Straight's voice in his headset. “Okay, Ballin, you've done pretty good on the comp stuff. Seems you've got some talent there. So let's see if you can hit what you aim at.”

York would never admit it to his new friends, but he found the inside of a pod rather cozy, like being wrapped in a cocoon of instruments. The acceleration couch conformed comfortably to his backside, and he had control of local gravity, temperature, humidity, and lighting. It felt strange to have such control over his environment.

Marko said, “In a real firefight, you stay away from any target you're not allocated. If Fire Control doesn't give it to you, you ignore it. And if they do give you one, more often than not you'll just let your onboard computer handle it without intervention. But making that kind of decision is still way over your head.”

York kept the lighting low and liked the temperature a little cool. He kept his right hand near, but not on, the targeting yoke, wouldn't touch it until they told him to. He rested his left hand on the console near the controls for rate of fire and primary muzzle energy. His computer tracked the motion of his eyes and superimposed a targeting reticle wherever he looked on his primary screen. If he'd been fitted with implants, the computer would have had a direct feed from his cerebral cortex, allowing faster response that included algorithms to anticipate his moves.

Straight took up the dialogue. “Today, we're going to give you one target at a time. They're all yours, and you're to use the pod's manual fire controls on each. No decision making. Just aim and shoot. We've walked you through this enough that you should be able to handle that much.”

A stationary yellow blip appeared on one of York's screens.

“That's an enemy warship at four hundred megaklicks. And here comes your first target.”

A yellow blip split off the enemy warship coming their way.

“Don't fire on it until it's been allocated.”

The target came in at over three hundred lights and the distance dwindled quickly. York knew it was all simulation, but it felt so real his heart began to pound. At ninety megaklicks, the blip flashed an angry red, and following his eyes, the targeting reticle locked onto it. He gripped the targeting yoke, touched it delicately, and the pod spun wildly, the target slicing completely off his screen. He tried to bring it back, but he only caught a glimpse of the red blip as it zipped across the screen and off the other side.

Straight said, “That was sloppy, Ballin. Let's try again.”

York didn't do any better on the second target. Every time he touched the targeting yoke, he overshot, completely missing it.

After he'd missed the third target with the same wild, out-of-control aiming, Marko said, “Hold on a minute. What's the gain on your gravity servos?”

York looked up at the panel over his head, still wasn't used to all the readings available there. He found the reading he needed and said, “The gain is set at a hundred percent.”

Straight didn't laugh openly, but he heard her chuckle. She said, “Your crewmates are having a little fun with you. They've got your gain maxed out, which destabilizes all your controls.”

Marko said, “Don't worry, kid. We all took our turn.”

Straight and Marko helped him set the gain properly, and he did much better after that.

York sat at one of the tables in the lower-deck bunk room studying the operations manual for a defensive Perimeter Ordnance Delivery system, or pod. Three spacers sat at a nearby table playing cards.

There were no real bunks in the lower-deck bunk room, just the access feeds to coffin storage. Beyond that, the bunk room appeared to be a place where gunners relaxed when not in their coffins or on duty. It had a couple of plast tables with bench seats bolted to the deck; an access feed for the gunners' lockers, which were auto-stored much like the coffins; a caff dispenser; and a number of readers shared among the gunners. York was officially on duty, but Straight had ordered him to study the pod manual, and the bunk room was a good place to stay out of her way.

Under Zamekis's tutelage, his reading had improved and he only had a little difficulty understanding the pod's functions, found it far more interesting than the regs. He now understood there was a certain status among pod gunners, a rank that he could control by learning this stuff and getting confirmed kills. It didn't require approval or authorization by some officer he'd never met, and it couldn't be taken away. He was so immersed in the manual that he barely noticed the three spacers fold up their card game and leave. Now alone in the bunk room, he could concentrate even more on the manual.

A hand slapped something down on the table in front of him with a sharp smack, startling him. He looked up as Sturpik and Tomlin sat down opposite him, the small plast vial of the tarry stuff resting on the table in front of him. Sturpik glanced over his shoulder at the open entrance to the bunk room and slid to one side a bit, placing himself between the vial and anyone who might come through the open hatch.

Sturpik smiled, though York saw nothing friendly in the man's face. “Well, kid, you ready to be a team player?”

Predator or prey, there was no question where Sturpik and Tomlin fit into the feeding chain. York said, “I really don't think—”

Tomlin interrupted him by closing his eyes and quietly shaking his head from side to side.

“Favors,” Sturpik said. “You're at the bottom of the shit list on this ship, and you need friends. You won't make friends if you don't do favors.”

Tomlin opened his eyes and said, “And holding that for us for a while will be a nice start.”

Cracky and Ten-Ten hadn't given him much choice, either—predator or prey; be lookout for them, or victim to them.

“If you ain't gonna help us,” Cracky had said, “then we gotta figure you're going to rat us out.”

York had pleaded with them, told them, “I ain't no snitch.”

Cracky had ignored him. “And if yer gonna snitch, then we gotta protect ourselves, gotta make sure the snitch ain't around to do any snitching. Yer either with us, or against us, Ballin.”