Strong Arm Tactics (2 page)
Read Strong Arm Tactics Online
Authors: Jody Lynn Nye
“Company quarters ready for inspection, sir,” the adjutant said.
“Thank you, Ensign …”
“Thielind, sir!”
“Good. Let’s see them.”
Thielind threw himself into one of his skull-shattering salutes. “Sir! Company, about face! March!”
Shrugging, X-Ray more or less lined up and marched together toward the end of the parade ground where the barracks buildings stood. Wolfe trailed along behind them, his assistants on either side. The group veered away from the pristine buildings, heading instead toward a transportal.
“Uh, where are we going?” he asked the female lieutenant, as his soldiers popped open the last car on the three-pod train inside the transparent tube and found seats.
“Our quarters, sir,” she replied crisply. “We’re station-keeping on the launch facility. It’s about half an hour from here. We commute in for occasions like this, and to visit the canteen and PX.”
“Must suck,” Wolfe observed, frankly.
“With considerable force, sir,” she replied. The first hint of any kind of empathy appeared in her eyes for a second, but only a second. She climbed on board the transport and waited until he took his place on the blue-gray upholstered seat before she sat down herself.
He had wondered why the mapmakers had called this planet Treadmill. Once he got a look at the terrain, it wasn’t much of a stretch to guess. Barren yellow and brown hills stretched out on either side of him, punctuated by the occasional green thornbush. It looked like a low-resolution animated treadmill workout with troughs and highs, seldom settling into flat plains. He’d gotten a look at the topography from above, eager to see the site of his first posting as a first lieutenant. Treadmill had looked kind of pretty from space, like a piece of ornate parquet-work in golds, greens, and browns. Now that he could see all of it up close, the lines in between fields and hills and sorry excuses for forests were jagged fault zones. A hiker trying to make his way in the dark was in danger of falling through the crust of the planet. Treadmill, according to his friendly source, had fairly active tectonics, making it unsuitable for heavy industry or company farms or ranches, but it had a T-class atmosphere and gravity, and it was well placed to send troops out to the rest of the Confederation when needed. The base and launch station were separated because not enough flat land existed in either place to accommodate the entire facility.
In fact, it took them forty minutes to ride down the high-speed tube to the end of the line. If Wolfe needed any further reminders that his company was the brigade pariah, the fact that the supports and substations along the way got more and more seedy was one more checkmark off the list. Transport tubes were supposed to run smoothly. He noticed about three-fourths of the way through the ride that his troops gripped the armrests and lifted their butts subtly off the shock-padded seats. When the train hit the first bump it felt like a shockwave striking his spine. Wolfe grabbed for a support, just in time to save himself from getting thrown out of his seat. Small wonder the officers had chosen to take a hopper from the spaceport directly to the base! No one would do this ride if s/he didn’t have to. Every time he tried to sit down the train bucked and juddered some more. He did the rest of the trip standing. Grins passed among the members of his company. He kept his face straight. They must do this to all the greenhorns, officers included. Well, he wasn’t going to hand them an easy victory.
“Been on this station long?” he asked Borden. His voice wobbled with every fresh bounce.
The officer never changed expression. “Three years, sir.” The train swung wide to avoid a jagged fissure. Wolfe seesawed on one foot, swinging around helplessly. He grabbed for another ceiling loop with his free hand. The others bobbed gently on their seats like dressage riders. Daivid vowed to learn the topography of the route the very next time he rode this runaway whipsaw.
“When was X-Ray’s last mission?” he asked, bending his knees to keep his equilibrium as the train rode over hills he saw approaching. The lieutenant wasn’t impressed.
“It’s all in the briefing summary in your quarters, sir.”
Wolfe suppressed a sigh and concentrated on not getting flung out the curved window.
O O O
In spite of the bright sunshine X-Ray’s compound was dreary. Daivid hadn’t been in a camp that grim since he’d visited his great-uncle Robbile’s fishing hideaway in the wilds of the northern continent on Tokumine IV, but Robbile Wolfe liked his haven bleak, so as to put off casual tourists if any had ever dropped by. The Cockroaches were stuck with their décor. Military beige, military gray and, for a final insult, military pink.
Beyond a compound fence from the top of which energy crackled, sentries in bubble flitters roved around and around the spaceport in which he had just arrived. The shuttle that had brought him down from the dreadnought still stood on the landing pad, its silver body sharply backlit by brilliant blue worklights as coverall-clad engineers swarmed over it, performing maintenance and making sure the fuel rods were intact. Hangars as large as small moons lined the field, also under the watchful eye of human MPs, high-response alarm systems, and guardbots.
Security measures around a spaceport were cursory in comparison with the watch kept on the surrounding spaceways: serious attacks upon a military base would almost certainly come from orbit, not ground level. Anyone who was already on planet could either fly the craft in the spaceport and were authorized to do so, or wouldn’t know what to do to launch one if s/he managed to get into the cockpit in the first place. The most the ground-level military police usually did was prevent anyone from hurting him- or herself or damaging valuable systems. As a military base, Treadmill’s administration had the authority to oust any civilian who caused trouble, no matter how much investment that civilian had put into profit-making infrastructure. Just that knowledge kept down the active protests. Grubstakes on T-class planets were hard to come by.
“This way, sir,” said the eager ensign in the knitted vest. Daivid followed him to a small building to the left of the barracks hall.
O O O
No trace remained of Daivid’s predecessor’s belongings in the officer’s personal quarters. Wolfe looked around the drab beige chamber trying to get a sense of the man or woman who had occupied it before he had. He couldn’t find a clue. The rooms, a bedroom, a bath, a walk-in closet and a small office, had all been cleaned—hosed out, he guessed by the streaks on the blue-gray floor. Well, he couldn’t smell anything unsavory. Chances were the former CO hadn’t died there.
Wolfe unpacked his regulation trunk into the chest of drawers and closet provided. As usual, the closet contained five hangers, as per standard supply orders, sufficient for all his uniforms. Officers were expected to provide their own hangers for any civilian clothing they retained. Water glass, soap, towels, shaver, and hair dryer in the lavatory, water saver-purifier, small storage cabinet behind the sink mirror. Impersonal. That was one of the things he liked about the military. He didn’t have to make choices about what he wore or what his quarters looked like. It didn’t offend anyone when he chose one kind of suit, or put a company out of business when he stopped buying their shoes. Those selections were made for him.
The briefing clipboard lay on the desk in the small office. He scrolled up the company rolls and had the information sent as an oral reading to his personal communications unit. The receiver screen every trooper in the TWC forces wore rode the back of the left sleeve ten centimeters above the wrist. When a company suited up in battle armor the unit was inserted into a purpose-built protective slot to activate communications between troopers and command. They were all voice-activated, and had to be personally tuned so they couldn’t be captured and used by the enemy to listen in on transmissions. For privacy, one could wear an ear-bud, though some officers had their audio receivers implanted in the mastoid bone behind the ear or in a piercing in the upper pinna. Daivid had decided to have a mastoid receiver. It didn’t bang against the side of his head the way ear-implants did, he’d still be in touch with his command even if his ear got shot off, and the sound quality he got when he was listening to music through the unit was awesome.
“Aaooorru, Dompeter,” the flat voice intoned directly into his aural nerves. “Corlist. Born Mishagui, Vom, Beta Antares system …”
He took off the uniform he had traveled in and put it in the cleaning trunk. Working just fine, he observed, listening to the hum that started up as soon as the lid dropped. His dress whites would come out spotless with perfect seams, perfect creases. Efficient. He brought out fatigues and laid them on the bed. Impersonal. Regulation. No hurt feelings involved. He wrapped himself in his white, service-issued bathrobe and turned on the shower. No sonic cleanser here, he was pleased to see. He hated having the outer layer of dead cells shivered off him by vibrations they told him he couldn’t hear. They were wrong: he could hear the high-pitched whine just fine, and he hated it. Sonic cleansers were standard on all interplanetary transports except luxury liners. Space service personnel didn’t travel on those.
He almost missed the sonic cleanser when he observed the thin stream of water dribbling out of the showerhead, like the output of an incontinent dog. He felt the water; at least it wasn’t cold. The heating elements still functioned correctly. He’d have to see about getting a plumber out here to check the pipes and the pressure feed. He stepped into the stall and pulled the curtain closed.
The only non-regulation thing he had in his possession was a card the size of a credit chit attached with a glue-square to the skin over his sternum. Before he turned into the weak spray of water, he examined the card. It was the only thing he owned that he didn’t dare let out of his possession at any time.
O O O
Wolfe dried himself off and shouldered into the singlet that went under his uniform, making sure the card was still firmly attached to his skin. He started when the adjutant came into the room behind him and cleared his throat. Wolfe hastily lowered his undershirt and shrugged into his blue-gray fatigue jacket.
“They’re ready for inspection, sir,” the adjutant said, saluting smartly, and swung around again, heading out the door.
Wolfe brushed imaginary dust off his insignia. Just before he stepped outside he felt the middle of his chest to make sure the card was secure.
***
Chapter 2
Raucous conversation dropped into silence as soon as they opened the door. X-Ray Company leaped off unmade bunks, aged chairs and battered star chests to attention as Wolfe came in behind the Thielind.
He did the inspection walk again. This time it felt more real than it had on the parade ground. It was just dawning on him: he had a command—all right, the crappiest one in the space service, but it was all his. He had to swallow the grin he felt pinning back the corners of his mouth. Here was the beginning of his rise to the top. He’d show those doubters that he was more than just his father’s son. Here was the beginning of the change for good that he could make in the universe. With a proprietary swagger he sauntered down the center of the long room.
Like his quarters, the barracks was bog-standard. The biggest difference between this place and the barracks he’d last occupied, as a second lieutenant, had to be the wear and tear. Everything here must be hand-me-downs dating back decades, maybe even centuries. The lavatory facilities he could see through the open door bore the patina of ages, the porcelain riddled with small cracks and the chrome worn off the metal spigots.
Hovel, Sweet Hovel
, he thought,
but it’s mine, all mine.
At least no one felt crowded. With a unit this small there was no need for tiered bunks. Everyone had a single bed, spaced from the ones on either side by upright lockers that also gave the sleeper a measure of privacy.
And now, to get to know the spacers who inhabited this dormitory. It wasn’t going to be easy. The faces sized Wolfe up as he walked up and down the center aisle. Their expressions said they weren’t impressed by what they saw.
“At ease,” he ordered, looking around at them. He gave them a smile, hoping it didn’t look nervous or insincere. “This is a casual visit. You all probably know this is my first command. The first-lieutenant bars are fresh off the card. I haven’t got any bad habits to unlearn.”
“Too bad,” someone snickered low under his breath. A low titter of laughter ran through the room. Wolfe decided to pretend he didn’t hear it.
“I know a lot of you have been together for a long time. You’ll have to adapt to my style, but I’ve got to learn about you if we’re to work effectively together.”
Dead silence. Wolfe shrugged. The words hadn’t sounded sincere or convincing even to him. He wished he had gone ahead and written down the brilliant remarks he had conceived when he first learned he was getting a command. Those would’ve rocked ’em in the aisles. Instead, they looked at him as though he’d just piddled on the floor. Maybe he ought to—that would get their attention.
He continued walking up and down, the adjutant at his heels. The long barracks was divided into three sections, every fifteen meters, as per fire regulations, but during the day the partitions were pushed back to make one big room. The walls were the enameled panels standard in military facilities both shipside and dirtside for their durability and ease in cleaning. Most of it here was drab khaki-gray, except for one panel in drab coral. That one didn’t quite fit into its modular frame. The edges were fire-scarred, and half the surface was etched with names. Some of them were scratched into the hard surface with some sharp object. Others had been laboriously cut, dot by dot, with a laser, all the way through the wall to the insulation. Wolfe ran his fingers along the names, feeling the minute impressions. He knew from experience that the enamel was practically indestructible. Each name had to have taken hours to incise.
“What’s this?” he asked.
There was a defensive growl from the troops, but only Chief Boland stepped forward.
“Wall of honor, sir,” he said. “Memory of the dead.”
“Why not have their names decently engraved?”
“It’s our custom,” said another trooper, a tall woman with very long legs and sincere brown eyes. “We use the knife or the sidearm of the lost soldier to write his or her name. It’s … more personal that way.”
Wolfe nodded. “I see. The color … it didn’t start here, did it?”
“No, sir,” said the female lieutenant. “It came from Platoon X’s first HQ on board the
Burnside
.” Wolfe recognized the name of a dreadnaught that had been destroyed in a territorial conflict on the TWC borders several years before. “We’ve been moved a few times, whenever someone the brass likes better wants our location. We take it with us.”
Wolfe raised an eyebrow. A piece of bulkhead that heavy wouldn’t get shipped as part of a unit’s regular kit. In fact, the loaders would raise hell if a company showed up with something like that in tow, and word got back up the line to the brass. In fact, there should have been at least one attempt to confiscate it. On the other hand, he wouldn’t put it past the resourcefulness of X-Ray to make a way to get their memorial on board their troop transport. The more experienced units would recognize and honor the effort for what it was and let it slip by, and the young ones couldn’t outthink them long enough to stop them doing what they wanted.
“It’s a Cockroach tradition,” Boland said, staring Wolfe straight in the eye.
“You’re not going to take it down, sir?” the diminutive woman chief asked. Though it was phrased like a question, it was a statement. Wolfe knew enough to take the warning.
“I wouldn’t dream of taking it down,” Wolfe said. This time, the murmur that ran through the room was positive. Wolfe knew he’d scored a point, but he meant it sincerely. For all the crap they spouted about being in Platoon X, he knew they had their pride. Outsiders didn’t realize that being the outcasts made this unit band together, form their own society, establish their own rules. The Cockroaches didn’t like being questioned by anyone from a legitimate unit, one that had the backing of the regular Thousand Worlds’ navy behind him or her. Because no one cared what happened to them. Because they really didn’t seem to care themselves. Look at the way they lived! Not a single bunk had been made. The curtains at the windows were gray and cracking. The floor creaked when walked on, probably indicating cracked joists underneath. Look at their uniforms! If anyone had given a hoot about them they’d have had those worn fatigues replaced long ago.
Someone
had to care about these troopers, and resurrect any self-respect they had. That must be why he had been sent here.
A blooping sound interrupted his thoughts. The Cockroaches looked surprised, then shamefaced. Then defensive. The bloop erupted again. Daivid followed the noise to a distant corner of the long room and grabbed for the handle of a well-traveled upright packing case two meters on a side that served the unit as a storage closet. The box wouldn’t open. He shook the handle and looked for a locking mechanism.
“Thielind,” he ordered, “open this box.”
“Sir …”
BLOOP! A cloud spread out from the top of the box. Wolfe got a faceful of sharp fumes and started coughing.
“Open this damned box!” he gasped.
Two of the spacers jumped forward and thrust their fingers into apertures that he thought at first were projectile-weapon damage the old box had sustained in transit. The front divided into two halves and swung open.
Inside, though, the crate wasn’t derelict, as it had appeared on the outside. It had been lined with the kind of sound-insulation foam that was found in TWC starship engine compartments. Ventilation holes had been drilled into the ceiling and rear walls of the closet to allow the flow of air and the occasional escape of warm liquor fumes, which were now rising from the contraption that was propped on a tripod at waist level. The device, for that was all he could find to call it, consisted of shiny copper tubing, gleaming metal vacuum flasks, twisted gray and white flexible piping and half a dozen pieces of laboratory glass. Underneath it all lay a survival stove, its orange heat circle glowing like a sunset, and a hundred liter tank, the recipient of the still’s output.
“And the booze?” Wolfe asked as mildly as he could, considering the current ethanol content of his lungs. “I take it this is a tradition, too?”
“Uh-huh,” Boland said, his face stony. “Long time, sir. Dating all the way back, sir.”
“There’s only one bar on the launch pad, lieutenant!” Thielind protested. “You oughta see what they charge for one watered-down beer. Four credits.”
“Four credits!” Wolfe frowned at Thielind, who nodded vigorously. “Hell, I’d go into business for myself at prices like those.” Eyebrows lifted all around the room.
“So that’s what we did, sir,” Petty Officer Jones assured him in his musical voice. “I’m glad you feel the same way we do, sir. There’s a longstanding trrr-adition of self-sufficiency in our unit. You wouldn’t want us wasting our precious resources on overpriced booze, would you?”
Wolfe grinned. “That’s a big tank for twenty-odd troopers. You’re not supplying the bar, too, are you? That’s not self-sufficiency, that’d be going into business for yourself on Space Service territory with Space Service property.”
“Well …” Jones rolled the final ‘l,’ trying to find the words.
“It’s not strictly against the rules,” Borden said in her bloodless voice. By now, Wolfe had figured out that the XO was a bunkroom lawyer. She liked rules, good for a woman in her position. Normally, it wouldn’t make her popular among the rank-and-file, but this company seemed to like her. She must have other redeeming traits. Wolfe had to get to know what those were. Clearly, one of them was being able to rationalize anything that the Cockroaches wanted to do that wasn’t exactly in the books. “All of this material is salvage. Half of it we fished out of vacuum or grubbed up out of dumps, sir. As such, it is no longer Navy property, because the Navy has discarded it.”
“Not like Boland’s runabout, eh?”
“No, sir!” The XO’s voice rose to an emphatic point, though she continued to stare at a spot on the wall.
“We’re just being resourceful,” Petty Officer Mose said. “Is there anything in the Space Service regs preventing resourcefulness?”
“Not exactly,” Daivid began, then realized 1) this was an argument that would go on for weeks and 2) he was being baited. “But there’s resourcefulness, and there’s going outside the lines.”
Boland laid an innocent hand on his chest. “No one has ever caught us going outside the lines, sir.”
Daivid laughed. “I bet they haven’t.”
“Want a snort, sir?” Chief Lin asked.
“No,” Wolfe said. The others stared at him suspiciously until he smiled. “I have to finish the inspection first.”
O O O
“At ease,” Wolfe said, and winced as the scrawny adjutant relayed the order in a shout from under his right ear. He sat down on the nearest footlocker and took off his hat. At his signal, most of the troops resumed the seats they’d left when he entered, kicking back on their bunks with their boots up, sitting on reversed chairs, perching wherever a human buttocks or alien analog would fit. Thielind popped open the still closet and brought a beaker of liquor and a relatively clean glass to Wolfe. Gingerly, Daivid took a sip, and hastily sucked in a double lungful of air to cool his windpipe. The rotgut wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, but it still burned its way down into his belly.
“So,” he gasped, slinging a hip as casually as he could onto the nearest table while the others helped themselves to the booze. “Tell me about your last few missions. I hear this company gets the worst assignments, in the worst possible conditions. Where do we usually end up getting sent?”
The ‘we’ was accepted as a positive sign, too.
“You know how they say ‘slag happens’?” the tall woman asked. She was called Adri’Leta Sixteen, which meant she was a clone, the sixteenth generation of her combination of genes. From her record Daivid had learned she was the first one to go into military service, and wondered why.
He nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, that’s where we go. Where slag’s happening.”
“Right. Do we have to watch them make it, or do we just clean it up afterwards?” Wolfe asked reasonably. “We get to critique ’em on technique?”
Boland sputtered between his lips.
“No one cares about our opinion, sir,” Borden informed him.
Wolfe shifted to face her, giving her his full attention. “I do. Yeah, I know I got sent here, same as you, but giving me these bars means that I have access to the chain of command. I don’t want slag assignments, so I don’t want you to get slag assignments, because we’re all going there together.” They all grumbled. They’d heard the speech before, probably one time per commanding officer. How was he going to get through to them? “So, where’d you get sent last? How come I’m here, and not your last CO?”
For a moment no one said anything. Wolfe felt his heart sink, thinking he’d lost them again. He should have waited for the booze to kick in. It turned out they were all sucking in breath. They all started talking at once.
“We got pinned down on Sombel,” Lin blurted out.
“The brass screwed us,” Boland snarled, interrupting her. “No air cover …”
“We needed three platoons to cover, not two,” Adri’Leta added.
“Heavy fire from guarded positions …” Borden explained.
Wolfe sat in the middle of it, letting them talk. Terran civilization had spent its first fifteen hundred years bringing itself into existence. Humanity had spread from the single world called Earth out to every T-class planet it could find, and adapted to hundreds of others with atmosphere domes, undersea habitats, or orbiting space stations. During the Building Phase, as the historians liked to call it, spacefarers and settlers cooperated, seeing one another as fellow seekers in the drive to open up the galaxy to humanity. Explorers led the way, sending back reports to Earth Central, and later to Alpha Centauri and Delta Glius of viable systems. In their wake, industry and colonists followed, as did traders, teachers and scientists, as well as those who saw their mission in life to take advantage of those who trusted in the basic goodness of human nature. Wolfe was ashamed to admit that many of his ancestors fell into the last category. He saw it as his goal to make amends by undoing some of the harm they had done.
Settlements grew into civilizations. The first Galactic Government arose. It lasted fifty years before it was obsolete, unable to keep up with the growth of its power base. It fell, to be replaced by the First Terran Empire. Which split up into the Power Enterprise, the Vargan Trade Union, and the Star Systems Alliance. Which reconformed into the Second Terran Empire. Which, after a few more reconfigurations, including the brief but colorful reign of Mad Emperor Haviland, elections, both crooked and otherwise, plenty of bullying, conquest, persuasion and preferential treatment in trade, became the Thousand Worlds Confederation. Modeled upon the ancient Roman and American patterns of historic Terra, the TWC was a looser association than many of the past govermental structures, reestablishing a common defense, a common language, and a common currency, but allowing member systems to regulate themselves, with certain basic rights guaranteed to all citizens, such as the child protective system and the marriage rights act, which had held up for thousands of years, though it was always attacked whenever there was a change of regime. (There weren’t really a thousand worlds in the system yet, since the statute insisted only a viable planet with T-class characteristics and a breathable atmosphere qualified, but it sounded better to the founding members than the Six Hundred and Fifty-Three Worlds Confederation.)