Strong Arm Tactics (13 page)

Chapter 7

“Sir, can we talk?” Lin caught up with Wolfe as he limped back toward their armory. Daivid glanced back. The other Cockroaches had slowed down until none of them was within earshot. He looked at the nearest chrono. 0515. He could have sworn that exercise had taken all night and part of the next day.

“Sure, Top. Why don’t we sit down in the day room, just as soon as we get these suits into the cleaner boxes. I’m damned if I’m going to smell like everyone else’s excreta.”

Without the helmets on, the powered armor was rendered plain black. The walls were white. Daivid didn’t realize how starved for light and color his eyes had been until the exercise had come to an end. Or maybe he was just tired. The mandala on the wall of the day room attracted his gaze, and drew him in until Lin interrupted his thoughts. She slid into a chair on the opposite side of the table.

“Sir, I didn’t want to bring this up in front of the others. I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a best friend in this platoon, and I’m your top noncom.”

“So it falls to you to hand me bad news,” Wolfe translated. “What is it?”

“It’s not strictly bad news,” Lin assured him, her small face solemn. “You did an okay job for your first time out. But we’ve all been together for years now. You don’t have to tell us so much. It comes off sounding, well, pretty green.”

Wolfe winced. “Chief, I’m not half the idiot that I sound like when I’m giving orders.”

“No, sir, but neither are we. Trust us a little more. If we’re not doing something, call us on it. If you’ve got fresh orders, give them. We can change gears pretty quickly. I picked up on your idea, didn’t I?”

Wolfe nodded. “Yes, you did.”

“We’re all still alive, even after some pretty nasty missions, so we haven’t made a fatal mistake yet.”

Involuntarily, Daivid glanced toward the memorial panel that had been propped against the wall, at the names that had been laboriously punched through the melon-pink cerametal. Lin’s eyes followed his.

“They didn’t make mistakes, as you think of mistakes,” she said, shaking her head. “But there’s bad luck, bad planning, inadequate cover, misfires, malfunctions, breaks in the chain of communication … you name it, it’s happened. Not just to our unit, but to every unit who’ve ever marched together since Gilgamesh and Enkidu.” She noted Wolfe’s smile. “Yeah, I went through the officer training history of warfare course.”

“You finished OTS, but you’re a noncom? Who’d you piss off?”

Lin smiled wearily. It made her look ten years older. “You want the whole list?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I came off four hours of poker, and I’m wiped out. Just tell me what you want.”

Lin tilted her head. “Are you really listening? I want you to lay back. Just give the orders you need to, and trust us to do the rest. It’s not a one-on-one game, no matter what the recruiting posters say. You’re in charge, but you don’t do everyone’s job. You just do yours. You tell us what you need done, and we will figure out a way. You don’t have to paint a picture for us.”

Wolfe hung his head. “Sorry. I was just trying to be a good officer.”

“A good officer recognizes his or her troop’s talents, so he or she can concentrate on achieving the goal and staying alive. In a way you’re lucky this was a training exercise. You got killed because you were paying more attention to what we were doing than what was happening right in front of you. You had a good idea, but we would have come up with it eventually. After all, we work down there. We know what everyone else thinks of it. We have the exact same visceral reaction as Bruno’s squad every time, and it’s got to be eighteen, nineteen times in a row we’ve been stuck down in sewage management on transit voyages.”

Wolfe smacked his hand on the table. “There’s got to be something we can do about that.”

“Don’t worry about it. There are perks. People stay the hell out of our way, mostly. And a … couple of other things. We keep everything going, and we get a lot of free time, and some actual privacy, which you can tell is not so easy on a starship. But it’s good that you care. You’re showing promise, really. It’s been noticed, and appreciated. You’ve just got a lot to learn. God or Mother Nature or the Powers that Be are letting you have a long learning curve, but it won’t last forever.”

“I thought I was doing all right,” Wolfe frowned.

“You are. You lack experience, that’s all. Keep going the way you’re going, listen to the people who have been around, and you’ll be a good officer.”

Her words stung, but Wolfe figured he had them coming. “Uh-huh. And how do I avoid these little talks in the future?”

Lin cocked her head. “That’s easy. You can just tell me
not
to tell you when you’re screwing up, sir. Or you can admit you’ve got something to learn, and say what any recruit does when he’s getting punishment he doesn’t really want, but probably deserves?”

“What’s that?”

“‘Thank you, sir! May I have another?’”

Wolfe laughed. “Thank you, ma’am! May I have another?”

Lin laughed, too. “At least you’re teachable. That’ll help you survive in the long run.”

“I’d better,” Daivid Wolfe said wryly. “If I don’t come back in one piece my dad’s going to kill me.”

Lin snorted. “As long as he doesn’t kill
us
if something happens to you.”

“No way,” Wolfe assured her fervently. “More than any other person you will ever meet, my father knows the difference between people who were around when someone died, and people who were responsible.”

“You’re so sincere. It’s so cute!”

Wolfe grimaced. “Thanks. Not. But may I return the favor, while we’re having this private little chat?”

Lin raised a suspicious eyebrow. Wolfe felt the walls coming up again. “You’re the CO, sir.”

“This is just friendly. I know how isolated we are when we’re on base. We’re the neighborhood lepers; no one wants to associate with us. Being alone throws people together, and sometimes they get … involved. But you know regulations; someone around here won’t have the same knowledge, however limited, that I’ve got, and may even think he’s doing one of us a favor by getting him or her transferred out of a unit because he or she is fraternizing with a fellow trooper, maybe even one in the same chain of command. You and I both know that trooper is likely to get transferred back to X-Ray again one day, but in the meantime he or she and his or her partner might have to undergo some enforced … loneliness waiting for that day to come. So, be … I mean, tell the others to be more discreet, huh? I don’t want to lose anyone in my command.” He gave a toothy smile, showing all his canines. “It’s my first platoon, and I want to keep the whole set.”

Lin smiled broadly. “You’re a romantic, sir.”

Wolfe held out his hands. “No way. And I’ll fight to the death anyone who even suggests something like that. Do you have any more whips for my back? No? Then let me go and take my poor bruised body to bed. See you tomorrow morning at PT.” He pushed the chair back and limped toward the door.

“Good night, sir.”

“Oh, and by the way,” Daivid said, pausing in the doorway with one hand on the frame. “I smelled my armor when I got into it.”

Lin gulped. “Did you, sir?”

“I certainly did. I wondered how you got all that booze on board, when I didn’t find a single bottle or keg anywhere among our luggage. Let me make it clear right now that if I ever find my suit stinking like a fraternity lounge ever again, I’m going to fill the rest of yours with nitrous oxide. Just remember the Vortex.”

“I do, sir. Good night, sir.”

Daivid grinned. “Good night, Lin. Can’t fault you guys for creativity.”

O O O

The strings of space tied together all existence. Ayala could feel them around him. He felt as if he could draw them in, making planets and suns dance at his order. His puppets. His creation. At his order suns swelled to supernovae. At his command, microbes evolved into useful societies loyal to him and him alone. Some of them were unworthy, and those he destroyed with a wave of his hand. He pictured a new sense of purpose in the universe, where comfort was not as important as endless productivity. Such a situation had been tried on ancient Earth millenia before, in the Uncertain Century, when workers served unwillingly the exponentially growing demands of their employers. It was followed by the Great Overthrow, resulting in an implosion of the world economy, since it had been based upon too few doing too much work, and lacking a unified goal. That would not be the case in Ayala’s Universe.
Everyone
would work. And they’d like it. Or else. Impassionately he wiped out another system that was not complying and created in its place one that would do its work without complaining. Certainly there was little else to do while they awaited the rest of the fleet to check in.

“Captain Roest calling Colonel Ayala,” a chittering voice announced over the main speakers. The communications officer, a human, nodded. Via non-linear space he was able to hear the itterim in real time, and verify his identity as though he was standing and looking at the green-shelled being. Though Ayala experienced the miracle of Tachytalk nearly every day, it still made him marvel at the cleverness and persistence of the human being. If they could conquer transgalactic information-sharing, how long would it be before they owned every parsec?

“Captain Ziil calling.”

“Lieutenant Maaren calling, Colonel. The captain cannot come to the communicator. She was eaten.”

“A pity,” Ayala replied, signing to his aide to change the file. “She was a good officer. You are promoted, Maaren.”

“Of course, sir,” the voice replied crisply.

The other ships checked in, fifteen of them in all. Two of them were destroyers, like the
Dilestro
, but the others were smaller frigates. All carried on board single-pilot fighters, though fewer and in poorer condition than he would have liked. Well, if they could secure the merchandise they sought, the proceeds ought to buy a few hundred more, all new, or a thousand ‘previously owned,’ though he hated bargaining with used starship salespeople. They were all crooks, and it took a thief to know a thief.

“Good. Our siblings in the cause report that the shipment approaches.”

“Unguarded?” the voices asked greedily.

“Yes, unguarded, or so our spy swears,” Ayala said. The itterim, Kaarl Veendam, had been almost slavering in vicarious anticipation of conquering such an easy target. He also confirmed the cargo itself. Tachytalks were almost a thousand credits on the open market, and these, which had not yet been assigned to one of the long-distance communication systems, would be nearly priceless to the kind of people who shouldn’t get their hands on them … such as Ayala and his cohorts. For the rest, portable power supplies would enable them to make better use of their captured weapons. Plasma guns required new cartridges, or constant recharging of the old ones. With those in hand, and carefully reworked for the kind of amperage needed for the task, they could conquer whole cities, using their own power grids against them. On board also were letters of credit worth nearly a billion credits. They had to be especially careful to take those intact. One scratch on the confirmation seal, which had to be completely undamaged upon presentation, and even the corrupt bankers who did business with the Insurgency would laugh in their faces.

He sent them the coordinates for the junction of the strings where the cargo ships were expected to emerge. There, and only there, were the ships vulnerable. It was impossible as long as a traveller was in transit along a singularity route to catch up with him. The speed of each was constant. All they could hope to do was find a string capable of propelling them greater distance in a shorter time, intercepting them as they emerged, and taking the captured cargo and vessels back into the transdimensional stream, leaving no evidence but a few spent ions representing the vaporized crew that anyone had ever been there.

“Alas, I will not be able to accompany you on this enterprise,” he added. “For I am on the way to a remote location for another mission that is of great importance to the cause, and then on to our final destination. Once you have succeeded, you will join me with the goods, to be used in the furtherance of our great work of liberating the galaxy! Success, or destruction!”

“Success or destruction!” the captains echoed.

O O O

Daily reports from the noncommissioned officers were held in Daivid’s quarters, clustered around the small desk.

“… And I’ve been trying to see when we can get into the antigrav chamber,” Lin was explaining. “We all need to be recertified in zero-gee combat. The ship’s complement is so bloated with units on the way to Benarli, they’re rotating us in there in shifts. We really need to get in there more than once every five days, sir. Otherwise we stand no chance of getting into the action if the
Eastwood
boards another vessel. No one will sign off on us.”

The antigrav chamber lay at the rear of the ship as null-displacement for the circular gravity generator that hung like a gong between the horns of the backward-facing crescent that was the main body of the ship. Along with the rest of the newly arrived visiting officers Daivid had been taken on a tour of every section by Ensign Gruen, Commander Iry’s clerk. He longed to get in there and try out the facility, which was newer and more complex than any he had ever seen, including obstacle courses and a padded sphere for practicing close-quarters nongrav combat. He knew the others were itching to try it out, too.

“I went to the officer of the day,” Lin continued, “but he said to change our whole schedule you have to go to Supply.”

“I’ll see what I can do about getting us in there more often, Top,” he agreed. “When’s our first evolution, Borden?”

Borden consulted her infopad. “1300 hours four days from now,” she said. “The next is five days after that.”

“Not enough,” Wolfe agreed, making a note of his own. “I’ll see what I can do.”

O O O

“Enter!”

Wolfe waited until the hissing door receded into its niche and strode into Lt. Bruno’s office. The supply officer stood waiting with his back turned to the doorway, hands clasped behind him, pretending to study a framed document on the wall. Even from there Wolfe could see that it was a certificate of merit, the kind he had a dozen of stored in his infopad. It took some kind of insecurity to print one out and stick it on the wall. He could also see the other’s eyes reflected in the perspex.