Strong Arm Tactics (16 page)

“Trans-space achieved,” the calm voice said.

O O O

A meeting of the Engineering Department’s officers left Wolfe none the wiser as to their eventual mission. It seemed to him that Harawe and Cleitis were holding back on something. Certainly he was no closer to receiving his orders, and that was beginning to make him and the other troop officers nervous.

“They’re waiting for something,” Corrundum said definitely, as they came out of the meeting. “I can sense it.”

“Maybe the location we’re coming out of fourth-space is classified,” Ti-Ya suggested.

“If the cargo needed to go to a secure location they’d load it on board the
Eastwood
,” Al-Hadi pointed out.

“Okay, so the cargo’s commercial,” Barikson said. “That means it’s got nothing to do with us. That still begs the question of what we’re going to do when we get where we’re going. How am I supposed to draw up supply requests and order of battle without mission gen?”

“I dunno,” Ti-Ya said gloomily. “They must let you know before we arrive. I just cannot guess when.”

“Speculation’s useless,” Daivid said. “See you all later. I’m going to check in on my people, then it’s back to reports.”

“You and all of us,” Wilbury grumbled.

One of the lifts opened at the end of the corridor, and a crew member got out pushing a hover-cart. Daivid increased the length of his stride to catch it.

“Lieutenant!” a voice hailed him.

“Yes?” He turned, and noticed the lift doors shutting. “Dammit.” He turned back to the owner of the voice, a lanky man with straw-dry red-blond hair and a long, pointed chin. He recognized Lt. Cmdr. Arvie Kerlow, a space officer about fifteen years older than he was who was attached to the Eastwood in the Fire Control department.

“Lieutenant, may I have a word?” Kerlow asked, grasping his upper arm firmly with long, spatulate-tip fingers. Daivid noticed the strength in the skinny hands as the other pushed him urgently into a nearby niche and blocked his escape with his body. “Got to talk to you,” he whispered. He glanced around at the others approaching, then put his arms around Daivid.

Daivid wondered if he’d given the man some signal that he desired intimacy, and decided he had not. He tried to figure out how to extract himself politely. “What about?”

“Booze,” the man murmured, standing close so the word barely reached Daivid’s ear. “You’ve got some of that good old fashioned white lightning. The sample your people sent me was
more
than adequate. I loved it. How much?”

So the Cockroaches were selling their liquor on board! Damn them! “I … leave that to my noncoms. I’ll have to find out what they’re charging.” He hoped this wasn’t a sting operation, set up by the XO, or, worse yet, Bruno. “How much do you want?”

The officer’s tongue flicked out of the side of his mouth and drew a slow, sensual line to the other side of his lips. A passing ensign snickered, then covered the expression as both men turned to glare at him. “Can I get two liters? I was brought up on good moonshine. It’s been a long time since I was on my granny’s farm. You know what that’s like?”

Wolfe thought longingly of the cellar full of vintage wines underneath the main house on the family estate, and for a moment forgot that he was in the arms of a fellow officer on a ship hundreds of light years from home. “I sure do.”

“You, er, won’t mention it to Harawe, will you? He’s a stickler for rules. If he heard I’d been buying it, well, we’d all be in trouble. Contraband has a corporal-punishment penalty on the
Eastwood
.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wolfe said, carefully detaching the other’s hands from around his waist and putting him at arm’s reach. “But, please, don’t touch me again. I might have to break your neck.” Kerlow had the grace to look abashed.

“My apologies.” He tipped Daivid a wink, and retreated hastily down the corridor in the opposite direction. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

Carmen caught him as he stalked furiously toward the lift. “I hope you’ve had your shots. Kerlow will screw anything that moves.”

“He’s not my type,” Daivid said, in a black humor. “He wanted to talk about my … unit.”

“Uh-huh,” Carmen leered. “I wouldn’t mind asking about your unit, but you just didn’t seem interested in any of us. You’re just too all business. Al-Hadi was devastated. She’s never been so thoroughly ignored before.”

Daivid felt his cheeks catch fire with embarrassment. “No, I mean my platoon! Besides, you know the regs on fraternization.…”

“Ah,” Carmen nodded knowingly, her brown eyes sympathetic. “Got in trouble over those before? I know, when you get read out over something, it makes you sensitive to repeat issues. Sorry I brought it up. See you later?”

Daivid let his temper cool off. “Yes. Sorry. Thanks.” And
that
wasn’t what he’d meant to say, either. Al-Hadi had been interested in him? Dammit!
No
, he chided himself furiously.
Don’t get involved. Not again. Don’t get involved.

Covered in confusion, he stormed down to Deck 6, forward, in search of a neck to wring. If the guilty parties were in their hot tub, he was going to puncture it with his bare hands and shrink-wrap them all.

O O O

“Uh, lieutenant, what can I do for you?” Chief Boland asked, as Daivid stormed into the Sanitation Department. The hot gold light in Wolfe’s eyes suggested that clever banter at the moment would backfire like the sidewash from a plasma cannon. He switched off the ceramic melter, set it down on the floor at his side, and waited. Wolfe stopped, folded his arms, and reclined with deliberate casualness against the doorframe, incidentally blocking the noncom’s escape.

“Lieutenant Commander Kerlow sends his regards,” he said, raising one eyebrow. “He would very much like to know how much for two liters of your hootch, bearing in mind that it’s a crime to sell unregistered liquor, especially to officers on board a ship where we are considered cargo, and cargo non grata at that?”

“We were going to cut you in, sir, I swear,” Boland protested, guiltily. The old-timers really hadn’t taken their new officer into account, and now he was calculating how much that would cost them. Boland would start the bidding at 30% of profit, ready to go up to 60% if necessary. He was used to paying for miscalculations, and wasn’t going to begrudge the extra this time. You couldn’t blame fate when you had left an element out of the formula. “We figured you’d run interference for us.” He offered an ingratiating grin, but it washed up against the breakwater of Wolfe’s stony visage.

“That just makes me an accessory,” Daivid said, matter-of-factly. “I’d
rather
be able to testify against you.”

“Testify!” Boland got flustered. A few of the Cockroaches turned around at the outburst, then hastily went back to work when they saw the annoyed look on their commanding officer’s face. “Aw, come on, lieutenant! I mean, someone with your family background …” His eyes widened as Daivid advanced on him, burning with fury.

“Don’t bring up my family. I am not my family. I love them, but I will never be like my family.”

“Sorry, sir, sorry!” Boland exclaimed, backing away. “Wow, I didn’t mean to set off nuclear weapons, sir! I just meant, you know, they find a commercial need to fill, and they fill it. Just a little initiative. It worked out for us the other night, sir, didn’t it?”

“That’s not the only ‘initiative’ you’ve taken on this vessel that I’ve discovered. I’m sure there’s more. Isn’t there?”

“Well …” he didn’t want to lie, but to say that the Cockroaches had taken a flyer on a couple more income-producing enterprises that were not strictly allowed by the rules might set off another explosion. “Depends on your point of view, I guess.”

“Are you trying to get us in trouble? I pay for it as much as you, and I’m guessing here, you know the regs. Borden can recite them chapter and verse, and I bet Jones can sing them!”

“No need to get so excited, sir!” Boland exclaimed. Chief Winston bore down upon them.

“Anything wrong here, lieutenant?” he asked. Any invasion into his province Winston saw as a personal attack.

“Just an internal platoon matter, chief,” Boland hurried to explain. “The lieutenant here was reminding me of something he wanted me to do.”

By the time the chief had been mollified and gone on to the next job on his roster, Wolfe had calmed down. “I apologize for going off on you, Boland. Just … be more discreet, will you? We’re going to get our asses reamed on a regular basis as it is. Don’t add any screw threads to the reamer, all right?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Boland replied, inwardly jubilant but with a fresh respect for the new CO. He really was trying to understand them, which was a bright change from most of the officers they’d had over the last few years. “I don’t need any more rifling either.”

O O O

The escort run through trans-space was expected to last three more days. The Space Service could always find work for idle hands, but the minds of the officers were free to speculate.

“The lead ship gets in touch with us daily,” Al-Hadi told her poker buddies, as they took the lift from the wardroom to deck 3 forward, where most of the entertainment areas were situated, “but the others never communicate with us directly. They talk
a lot
among themselves, though,” she reported. “The transmissions are coded with about 256-bit security, so they show up as gibberish in my readings, but there’s lots of them.”

“They’re talking more strategy than we are,” Corrundum said glumly. “I have heard that the Benarli campaign has been in the planning for a year. And they’re going to wait until we’re almost there to give us the data we need to fight the battle on the front lines? That stinks.”

“And my platoon was picked for a special mission,” Daivid added. “I still don’t know what it is. I bet we’re on recon, and they’re saving the word until it’s too late for me to plan.”

“We’re supposed to intuit what they want,” Wilbury said sourly. “And we’re supposed to read their minds right, or we catch slag. That’s the navy for you. Wow, look at the crowd!”

The
Eastwood
had one large auditorium that was used for official briefings and crystal threedeeos. Around it smaller function spaces had taken on their own identities. One of the larger rooms had been set up as a lounge cum pub with pool tables, electronic games and other games of skill. Still another, the object of that evening’s interest, had the air of an ancient coffee house, dark inside except for small lamps on the little round tables surrounded by low chairs or big puffy cushions. At one end was a dais, for acoustic music, comedy routines or, in this case, a poetry slam. A notice announcing the event flashed in the screen framed alongside the doorway, scrolling up to show a list of names, probably participants in the slam, and ending with an admonition in all capital letters: NO LIMERICKS. Daivid surveyed the sea of shadowy heads, and pointed to a corner halfway back from the stage which seemed more empty than the rest. The six officers eeled their way in between bodies until they squeezed into the small space.

Except for rare exemptions to allow for religious or cultural needs, facial hair was eschewed in the service, to lessen the chances of jamming equipment in space or combat helmets, so Daivid guessed that the tiny goatee that adorned the chin of the master of ceremonies had probably been applied for the occasion. His longish, black hair might have been a wig or his own, though a CO would have been all over him for the greasy stringiness of its appearance. No one had worn spectacles like that since the invention of genetic vision correction: black wire oval frames 4mm thick clasping lenses that distorted the man’s eyes. The costume was also retro in nature: a loose shirt of nondescript color with a tear at one side of the neck, tight black trousers that exposed part of the ankle and wide-strapped sandals.

“Hey, dude, do thou dig the nuclear alert emblem on the chain,” Al-Hadi whispered, nudging her companions.

“I don’t think you’ve got the period dialect right,” Ti-Ya whispered back. “And it’s a ‘peace symbol.’ I asked last time.”

“It’s old,” Al-Hadi scoffed. “I’ll bet you none of them could tell you what century any of those phrases came from.”

“I believe,” Borden began, “that the first dates from approximately 5200 years ago …”

“Shhh!” Wilbury hushed them. It had been his urging that got them to attend. “It’s starting!”

“Brothers and sisters in art,” the emcee intoned, in a smooth voice, lifting his hands with thumbs and forefingers joined in a big circle, “like, be.”

“Be,” the audience intoned. Wilbury breathed out the syllable, his expression rapt.

“Be what?” Daivid whispered.

“Whatever you want,” Wilbury whispered back, keeping his eyes on the stage. “There’s no pressure to live up to anyone else’s expectations. That’s what the poetry is about: freedom.”

Daivid wondered why he hadn’t noticed before that Wilbury was a born follower. He sounded independent, intelligent and creative, then sucked up to bullies, or bought in to pseudopsychological babble from the Stone Age. That guff about freedom was not likely to impact him directly.

“The first artist to light your fire will be Miyeki Hanssen.”

“… ‘So I said to him, bury me, then, because I’m dead to you. Dead already. Lost and gone. Bury me!’ And he turned away. And cried.”

The slim woman with long black lashes and a tangle of mixed red, white and black hair stood up from her crosslegged crouch on the stage, inclined her head, and departed, plasheet in hand. The audience remained silent.

“She was right about ‘dead,’” Daivid commented to Carmen.

“Yawn,” Carmen agreed. “But they often open up with losers and keep the good acts for last. You should be here on vaudeville night.”

“Hey, you!” the following poet, a cheerful red-faced man with close-cropped blond hair, saluted them deafeningly. He needed no amplification to fill the room with sound. Daivid suspected that his day job was drill instructor. “Whatcha? What do you know? How do you go? Good day! Great day. Have a nice day. Top of the morning to you! Bright blessings. Good to see you! Well, if it isn’t old what’s his name! How’s your father…?”