Passage at Arms (18 page)

“See Vossbrink. He’ll give you some ointment.”

“What I want is a razor.” Mine disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In a ship without hiding places it’s managed to stay disappeared.

“Candy ass.” The Commander uses his thin, forced smile. “Want to ruin our scurrilous image? You might start a fad.”

“Wouldn’t hurt, would it?” The atmosphere system never quite catches up with the stench of a crew unbathed for weeks, and of farts, for which there are interdepartmental olympiads. Hell, I didn’t find those funny in Academy, when we were ten. Sour grapes, maybe. I was a second-rate athlete even in that obscene event.

Urine smells constantly emanate from the chamberpots we use when sealed hatches deny us access to the Admiral’s stateroom.

Each compartment has its own auxiliary air scrubber. These people won’t use them just to ease my stomach. “Feh!” I give my nose a stylish pinch.

“Wait a few months. Till we can’t stop the mold anymore.”

“Mold? What mold?”

“You’ll see, if this goes on much longer. First time they make us stay up very long.” What looked like a drift toward good humor ends as that thought hits the table. The ship will stay out as long as it takes.

“Enough piddling around. Got to write up the war log. Been letting it slide because there’s nothing to say. Shitheaded Command. Want you to write twice as much, saying why, whenever there’s nothing happening. Someday I’ll tell them.”

I’ve glimpsed that log. Its terse summations make our days prime candidates for expungement from the pages of history.

The minimum to get by. From bottom to top.

I clump after the Old Man and consequently reach Operations in time for a playback of the news received last beacon rendezvous.

Johnson’s Climber preceded ours in. The girls left love notes.

“How the hell did they know we were behind them?” I ask.

“Computers,” Yanevich says, amused. “With enough entries you can determine the patrol pattern. It’s never completely random.”

“Oh.” I’ve watched Rose and Canzoneri play the game when they have nothing else to run. They also try to identify the eido. It’s just time-killing. The eido is as anonymous as ever.

They’re making a huge project of trying to predict first contact. To hedge the pool. They. run a fresh program every beacon call, buy more pool slips, and are convinced they’re going to make a killing. The pot keeps growing as the weeks roll along. There’re several thousand Conmarks in it already.

The compartment grows deadly still. Reverently, Throdahl says, “Here it comes.”

“... convoy in zone Twelve Echo making the line for Thompson’s System. Ten and six. Am in pursuit. Eighty-four Dee.”

I estimate quickly. We aren’t that far away. We could get there if we hauled ass. Must be an important convoy, too. Six escorts for ten logistical hulls is a heavy ratio, unless they’re battle units coincidentally moving up. The other firm likes to kill two birds with one stone.

The orders don’t come. Climber Command won’t abandon patrol routine to get something going. Yanevich tries to raise my spirits by telling me, “We’ll get our shot. Maybe sooner than you really want.”

The Commander shouts down. “I’m going to give him a chance to work off his boredom, Mr. Yanevich. Gunnery exercises next observation break. We’ll see what he can do with his toy.”

Now I know why Bradley has been hoarding waste canisters. They’ll make nice targets.

Always something strange going on here. And no one explains anything till it’s my turn in the barrel.

The Old Man is no help. For no reason I can fathom, he keeps every ship’s order ultra top clam till the last second. What point security out here? The only rationale I can see is, he wants the crew ready for anything.

He is, probably, following Command directives. Logic never has much to do with security procedure.

Do those clowns think our competitors have an agent aboard?

Not bloody likely. There’s a limit to the power of disguise.

Gunnery exercises are little more than gun error trials. Everything but the final firing order is handled by computer. A dull go. No sport. But a break in an otherwise oppressively monotonous routine. The Energy Gunners spear their targets on second shot. I batter mine to shrapnel with my third short burst. The range, however, isn’t extreme.

Later, I suppose, there’ll be exercises on full manual, or with limited computer assistance, simulating various states of battle damage.

I do find a constant error in gun train or gun train order. I enter a correction constant. So much for another exciting day.

Curious that gunnery exercises weren’t scheduled till this late in the patrol. Did the Commander know there would be no action? The man nearest me is an Energy Fire Control Technician named Kuyrath. I ask him, “How come the Old Man put this off so long?”

“Typical crap, probably. Command probably sent us out knowing we wouldn’t run into anything. Just for the hell of it. Just to have us jacking around. And you wonder why morale stinks?”

He has a lot more to say. None of it compliments Command. He hasn’t a bad word for the Commander. But now I’m wolfing off along a new spoor.

I’ve decided that I’ve been overlooking an inexplicable undercurrent of confidence among the more experienced men.

As if they knew no action was imminent. If gunnery exercises are a signal, that should change. We shall see.

The changes comes, and sooner than any of us expect. With the possible exception of Climber Command.

The word is waiting at the next beacon, which is the contact-control for our present patrol sector.

There won’t be time for manual gunnery exercises.

6 First Contact

Pushing hell out of two months now. Same old zigzag. One step back, two forward. But...

Our baseline has twisted around. We’re headed toward Canaan now. More or less. Westhause figures about twelve years to get there at our present rate of approach. We’re not taking it in one big rush.

We’re turned around. That’s the point. Something has happened. We have hunting orders. At last.

Like everything else about this patrol, they make no sense.

Command has targeted us a vessel crippled more than a year ago. She’s been rediscovered, running in norm. Must be a crafty bunch, to have kept their heads down this long.

The Old Man doesn’t like it. He keeps mumbling, “Coup de grace,” and, “Why waste the time? The poor bastards deserve better.” I’ve never seen him so sour.

None of the others are excited, either.

I’m nervous as hell. It’s been a long time.

Yanevich says it could get complicated. The target is running for the hunter-killer base we called Rathgeber before the other firm took it away. She is pushing. 4 c. That’ll mean some fancy maneuvering when we engage her.

And some trick shooting. That’s a lot of inherent velocity. We haven’t the time or fuel to match it. “What are they doing for fuel?” I ask.

“Ramscooping, probably,” Yanevich says. ‘They may have tankers dumping hydrogen ahead of her.”

Still, she must have been fat to start. Maybe she’s a tanker herself. “Why the hell didn’t they abandon her? Or, if she’s that important, why didn’t a repair ship come fix her generators?”

Yanevich shrugs. “Maybe they got a lot of pressure from our people back then. Maybe running in norm was their only option.”

Our first chore will be to relocate the ship. Those aren’t dummies running the other team. They’ll know she’s been spotted. She’ll be running a jagged course.

First we’ll run a search pattern surrounding a baseline drawn from the target’s last known position to her suspected destination. During the search, Piniaz will decide how to tackle a vessel traveling almost too fast to track. Point-four c in norm. That’s smoking.

The obvious tactic is to drop hyper ahead and shove a missile flight down her throat. Hitting the tiny, necessary relative motion window would be a trick, though. The target is moving too fast to hit from even a slight angle. Knowing that, she’ll be running a constantly changing course.

Shooting down the throat means shooting blind. The target is moving too fast. (That’s an endless refrain, like a song with only one-line lyrics.) She’ll run over us if we take time to aim. The Fire Control system needs a quarter second, after detection, to lock and fire. In that split second our target will traverse more than thirty thousand kilometers.

“You’re right,” I say. “They aren’t dummies. I don’t see how we can stop them. I suppose Command says we can’t waste missiles.”

Yanevich smiles. “You’re thinking Climber now. Damned right. Never waste a missile on a cripple.” More seriously, “We couldn’t use one. No time to target and program in norm, not enough computation capacity to compute simultaneity close enough to plop one into their laps from hyper. Tannian should send minelayers. Seed the target path.”

“Why’re we bothering?”

“Because Fearless Fred told us to. Why do we bother with any of this shit? Don’t ask why. Why doesn’t matter in the Climbers.”

How sour he is lately. He’s saying the things the Commander is thinking. He’ll have to learn to control himself if he wants to become a Ship’s Commander.

“It doesn’t matter anywhere else, either, Steve. You’re supposed to do your job and trust your superiors.”

“What the hell? Anything beats what we’ve been doing. It’s something to mess with till a convoy shows.”

Later, while the First Watch Officer confers with Mr. West-hause, Fisherman says, “I hope they make it, sir.”

“Hmm? Why’s that?”

“Just seems right. That their efforts be rewarded. Like it says in the Bible... but the Lord’s will, will be done.”

Curious. Compassion for the enemy...

I find it a widespread attitude, though the men all say they’ll do their jobs. Even Carmon shows no hatred or hysteria, just respect and a hint of an anachronistic chivalry.

The gentlemen of the other firm aren’t wholly real, of course. Making them real, believable, and sinister, has been a problem for our captains and propaganda kings. The men can’t get worked up about someone they have never seen. It’s hard to interact emotionally with an electronic shadow in a display tank.

It’s like fighting specters who take on flesh only for those inescapably in their clutches. Only on our lost worlds do our people actually see their conquerers.

It’s hard to hate them, too, because they practice none of the common excesses of war. We never hear atrocity stories. There have been no pointless massacres. They avoid civilian casualties. They don’t use nuclears inside atmosphere. They simply operate as a vast, efficient, and effective disarmament machine. From the beginning their sole purpose has been to neutralize, not to subjugate or destroy.

We’re baffled, naturally.

Confederation won’t be as charitable, if ever the tide turns. We play tougher, though we’ve stuck to the tacit rules so far.

The Commander and Mr. Westhause comp a program that will drop us on the target’s last known position. Nicastro keeps nagging the computermen for a search program. Mr. Yanevich flutters hither and yon, mothering everyone.

The First Watch Officer’s role is constricted this patrol. Under normal circumstances he plays a prick of the first water, a rigid disciplinarian, a book-thumper, and becomes the focus for the crew’s antipathy toward authority. The Commander remains aloof, and when needed goes round with a warm word or unexpectedly friendly gesture. His role is that of father figure without the usual disciplinary unpleasantness. Most Commanders cultivate quirks which make them appear more human than their First Watch Officers. Our Old Man lugs that huge black revolver and chews his pipe. Occasionally he hauls the weapon out to sight in on targets only he can see.

In private he admits that success as a Ship’s Commander reflects success as a character actor.

The men know that, too. This shit has been going on since the Phoenicians. It works anyway. It’s a big conspiracy. The Commander tries to make them believe and they work hard at believing. They want to be fooled and comforted.

There are no supporting fictions for the commander. He stands alone. He can’t take Admiral Tannian seriously.

Mr. Yanevich is heir apparent to the loneliness, which is why he has a softened image this patrol. This is his chrysalis mission. He came aboard remembered as a martinet. He’ll emerge remembered as a wacky, lovable butterfly.

“How many ships are going with us, Steve?”

Yanevich shrugs. “Maybe we’ll find out next beacon.”

“What I figured. Any reason I can’t go see what they’re doing below?” I want to see how the prospect of action has affected other departments.

Weapons should be the most altered. It’s been the most bored. The triggermen have nothing to do but sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

Everyone else is here simply to give them their moments at their firing keys.

They’re excited. Piniaz has undergone a renewal of spirit.

He actually welcomes my visit. “I was going to look you up,” he says, wearing a smile he can’t control. “We’ve been running cost-effectiveness programs.”

I glance at Chief Holtsnider. The Chief nods pleasantly. Piniaz says, “We may try your cannon.” He babbles on about accuracy probabilities, cumulative ion stress in the lasers, and so forth.

There’s no tension in Weapons. Every mug brandishes a smile. How simple we’ve become. Just the prospect of change has us behaving as if we’ll be home tomorrow night.

One of the gunnery trainees, Tuchol Manolakos, asks me, “Can you imagine what one of those bearings would do, sir?”

“Ricochet off their meteor shunt. The velocity they’re making, with their ramscoop funneling, they’re running with screens up and shunts on all the time. Detection-activation circuitry would be too slow.”

“Yeah. Didn’t think of that.”

“Have to screen against hard radiation, too.”

“Yeah.”

I wonder if they’re moving fast enough to see a starbow. Certainly there’ll be gorgeous violet and red shifts fore and aft. Rectification of Doppler will consume most of their enhancement capacity.

The faces round me go grim. “What is it? What did I say?”