Rich Man's War (32 page)

“What kind of incidents?”

“Ah, it’s like they tell you in school. Sometimes one of them snaps and punches a superior and it turns into a whole thing. Once in a while one of them turns out to be a real asshole—which I’m not saying is limited to the marines, ‘cause there are a few gems among the Navy crew here—and he’ll steal something or sneak contraband on board. We pretty much only ever have drunken brawls during port calls, since nobody can have alcohol while underway. Still, there’s always someone with a stash of booze or whatever, and there’s always someone who’s just being an idiot. Sometimes both.”

“So it sounds like we don’t often have much of
the criminal stuff to handle?”

“Not yet, no.
She’s still a young ship, though, right? She hasn’t been in service for two whole years yet. Give it time. Four thousand men and women in a tin can, lots of them trained to kill? Someone’ll do something stupid. Unless we wind up dealing with bigger problems first.”

“Like?”

“I dunno. You’re supposedly the only one on this ship who’s seen actual combat in the last ten years. I figured maybe you could tell me.”

Tanner grimaced. “Am I gonna hear a lot of that on this ship?” he asked reluctantly.

“You might. I don’t know. Like I said, there are four thousand people on board and sometimes other units pass through here for training. I can’t speak for everyone.” Lewis paused. “You see what I did just there?”

“No?” blinked Tanner.

“I shifted subjects twice and made sure to push at least one personal button.” Lewis stopped Tanner gently and leaned in. “So now that I’ve dragged you away from that first train of thought, what did you see back there?”

“Back… you mean the marines?”

“You’re supposed to have your eyes open all the time. Show me what you learned in MA school, Malone.”

Tanner considered it. “They were in combat kit. Looked like they hadn’t gotten cleaned up in a day or two. Some of the gear was scuffed up and dirty. They looked tired.”

“None of that’s unusual for marines,” shrugged Lewis, “particularly if they’d been on a training run.”

“I know two of them. Three of them,” Tanner corrected, more or less thinking out loud. “Janeka, plus two from my recruit company. They look different now. Something in the eyes.”

“What else?” Lewis waited for a response, raising one eyebrow as he saw Tanner’s hesitation. “You aren’t trying to work through a hunch. I can see that in
your
eyes. Work on that later. Right now, tell me. What else did you see? What did you just figure out?”

“They didn’t have all their grenades,” Tanner said. “Ravenell had three. Wong had only one. Janeka had two. Those don’t get doled out randomly. If they were on a training exercise, they’d probably all have performed the same skill checks, right?”

Still waiting, Lewis said nothing.

A dark frown crept over Tanner’s face. “I’m not the only guy on this ship who’s seen combat in the last ten years.”

“Need to know, Tanner,” Lewis nodded. “In this job, you need to know everything you can.”

“Okay, but what are they—?” Tanner began, and then stopped. “Yeah. You wouldn’t know that, either, would you?”

“No. But I’ve figured out what you’ve figured out. Maybe you’ll take it further. But don’t make noise about it unless you see something’s actually wrong. That’s the problem with covert ops. We’re all on the same side, right? We have to assume it’s all legit until we actually have reason to believe it isn’t.” He motioned for Tanner to resume their walk and patted him on the back. “You’ll do fine at this job.”

The beep from Lewis’s holocom cut off whatever else he might have said. He answered the call without calling up a holo screen. “This is Lewis.”

“Time to shift gears from whatever you’re doing,” said a voice. “He’s in the lower wardroom now.”

“Thanks. Lewis out.” He ended the call and then gestured down another passageway. “Let’s go. Best way is down here to the nearest lift.”

“Where are we going?” Tanner asked. They still had a third of the ship to go before his initial orientation walkthrough was finished.

“To take care of another part of your new guy checklist. The captain can be pretty busy, so we’ll get this out of the way while we can.”

“The captain? He meets with every third class that comes aboard?” Tanner hoped he wasn’t about to be told he was someone special again.

“Personal meet-and-greets don’t usually
happen for third classes, no,” said Lewis as they entered the lift, “but we have that whole ‘power of arrest’ thing in our rating.” Lewis hit the button for the upper decks. “Can’t blame a captain for wanting to personally meet everyone on his ship who has that kind of authority.”

Their path led up
through nine decks and a good quarter of the ship’s length. Enlisted ratings and no few officers moved this way and that as Tanner and Lewis strode through the grey passageways. They stepped through an open hatch at least every thirty meters, an interval set by the ship’s designers to minimize the dangers of decompression or explosion. In combat or any other sort of emergency, each hatch would close to compartmentalize the cruiser.

Eventually, Lewis brought Tanner toward the combat information center, but he didn’t actually head inside past the two armed marine sentries. Instead, he made a right turn at the entrance, leaving the CIC behind for another destination. “Y’know, on some ships, the wardrooms are exclusively for officer dining only, and using it for anything else is like a cardinal sin.”

“But not here?” asked Tanner.

Lewis stopped to turn around with a wry grin. “We don’t have that kind of captain. Besides, I think ‘multipurpose’ might be his middle name. I guess you look okay,” he said after a quick head-to-toe glance. Then he turned back to the door, knocked twice, and entered as soon as he heard a response.

Tanner followed him in, hearing Lewis’s perfunctory greetings while he came to attention. The wardroom held a few small creature comforts that the enlisted galleys did not, such as actual glassware, a finely-polished oak dining table and a few paintings. Rather than place settings, though, Tanner saw half a dozen holo screens and a few hard copy paper records spread out on the table.

There were
two men inside. One of them, standing up from the opposite side of the table, was Captain Bernard. The tall, dark-skinned man’s insignia marked him as a captain in rank as well as by virtue of command of the vessel. Blood stripes down the seams of his trousers attested to service in combat.

Beside him stood another officer, similarly tall
but more muscular than the captain. Tanner winced. He should have remembered the name when he saw it on a few status boards upon arrival.

“Captain Bernard,” said Lewis, “this is Master at Arms Third Class Tanner Malone, reported aboard yesterday.”

“At ease, gentlemen,” Bernard smiled, reaching out to shake hands. “Tanner, welcome aboard. This is the XO, Commander Sutton.”

“We’ve met,” smirked Sutton, who offered a handshake as soon as Bernard’s was done.

“Oh?” The captain’s eyebrows rose.

“Ah, very briefly, sir,” Tanner stammered, noting the firmness of Sutton’s grip.

“Malone here was on one of the recruit work details in the run-up for the commissioning ceremony. It was brief, but he made an impression.”

“Fair enough,” the captain
said. “How do you like the ship?”

“We’re not through with the tour, sir, but I like what I’ve seen so far. It’s a far cry from corvette duty.”

“I would imagine. She’s a big ship with big responsibilities. Your department plays an important role in that.”

“Yes, sir,” Tanner nodded.

“Ironically, the less I hear from the masters at arms, the better I can feel about how things are going with the crew. I have a lot of faith in Lieutenant Commander Jacobson and the rest of your department, so I won’t lecture you. But I like to meet all the MAs personally. Especially the ones just out of school. You have a lot of responsibility and professional authority contending with a relatively low rank. I know that can be a challenge.”

Again, Tanner nodded. “It looks like I have some good mentors, sir.”

“You do. Lean on them. A lot of situations may not be what they seem on the surface, and like I said, it’s a big ship and a big crew. Things can get complicated quickly. Follow the lead of the senior MAs, but if you’re stuck on your own, trust your instincts and your training. I’d rather have to settle down an over-exuberant MA than have someone just filling out the suit because he’s too shy to do the job.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Okay, then. That’s the speech,” Bernard said with a faint, wry grin. “Not much more to it. I should let you get back to business. Except for one other thing.” He turned to one side, looking down to a small stack of printed files and reports on his desk. “This got passed to me by my yeoman today. I realize you just got here, but the rest of Archangel doesn’t exactly run on a naval schedule.”

He drew from the stack of files a single embossed envelope, which he handed to Tanner. The young man immediately recognized the seal. “I’m fairly certain you don’t get personal letters from President Aguirre,” said Bernard, “but I don’t
even get paper letters from my own children, so I imagine this must be something special.”

“No, sir,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen this before. This is for the Annual Address. They told me I’d get invited every year. Part of getting the Archangel Star for, um… well.” Tanner shrugged. He hadn’t actually given the Address any thought since the last time.

“That makes sense. It’s that time of year. I presume you have at least a couple days’ worth of leave you could use for it? We don’t have orders to leave the system in the foreseeable future, so I don’t think it will be too tough to get you to Raphael and back.”

“Oh, no, sir, this isn’t an obligation or anything,” Tanner replied. “I don’t actually have to go. They’re going to send these every year…”

His voice trailed off. He couldn’t think of much else to say to the serious looks of the captain and the XO in front of him. “It won’t be any trouble at all, Malone,” said Sutton. “We’d be happy to have you there to represent the ship.”

Aw, you had to make it about the ship.
Tanner swallowed. “Yes, sir. I’ll be there, sir.”

“Good. That’ll be all, gentlemen,” said Bernard. “Dismissed.”

Exiting the compartment, Tanner held his posture and stride steady until he heard the hatch close behind them. Then he let out a tense sigh.

“What’s wrong?” Lewis asked. “You don’t want to go? I’d figure you’d jump at the chance. You were on the honor guard and all, don’t you have friends there you’d like to see, at least?”

“Sure, I just… I wasn’t thinking about going, and I just came on board, and… ugh!” Tanner groaned as the implications caught up with him. “Where the hell am I gonna find a date?”

* * *

“Listen, I’m in Salvation on Raphael right now ‘cause I have to go to the stupid Annual Address, and I never found a date. You got plans tonight?”

“
Oh, fuck, did Ordoñez put you up to this?” asked Sanjay. The holocom screen showed him laying on a couch in his barracks room in casual civilian clothes. “She’s still pissed off that I saw that guy first? Man, I told her, I’m not usually into men, but
anyone
would have taken
him
home—!”

“What? No!” Tanner’s palm smacked against his forehead.
He stood alone in his dress uniform while crowds of people filled up the other side of the wide street. Senators, celebrities and other VIP guests—as if any guest at the Address was not, by definition, a VIP—made their way through a red-carpet gauntlet of journalists, lobbyists and security in both uniform and plain clothes. The extra lighting and buzzing camera drones only added to the glitzy aura of the scene.

True to Tanner’s expectations, he had yet to see anyone approach the steps alone.

Sanjay continued. “I mean, that’s nothing against you, I just wouldn’t have expected—”

“I’m not into men
, Sanjay,” Tanner sighed.
Way to put your foot in your mouth, Malone.

“Then why are you
calling me up asking me if I want to go to a fancy date thing with you?” Sanjay frowned. “You’re weird, man.”

“It’s not a date, okay? I already ran through all my ‘date’ options and came up dry. I’d be happy to just have someone to hang out with at this point. Last year I had Andrea
Bennet showing me around when I was a news story. This year I’m back to being nobody, which is fine, but I’m still stuck here. This place is crawling with celebrities and powerful people, but that also means it’s basically a party full of strangers. Who wants to go to those alone?”

“Seriously? You couldn’t find a date for that?” Sanjay
snickered. “I know girls who’d murder their mothers for that ticket.”

“Look, I reported aboard
Los Angeles
five days ago and the captain told me I had to come for the pride of the ship or some such. You wouldn’t believe what a pain it is to find a date for this thing. Every woman I know from the honor guard is actually
working
here tonight and every civilian I’d ask is either at a university on another planet or tied up with something else. The girl I took to my senior prom is on some geological survey for school, for Christ’s sake.”