Strong Arm Tactics (23 page)

The ensign, walking at his side, kept turning his head to stare at each new detail, overwhelmed with awe as each new wonder revealed itself.

“Look at that,” he said over the private channel, as they passed through a set of blast doors that opened without a single sound. “They didn’t have anything that good on the
Eastwood
! Triple-shielded, hardened deuteronium layered with semiliquid dampening resin. They could stop a plasma missile.”

“But it makes a hell of a mess of the floor,” Wingle agreed. “Smart kid, aren’t you?”

Thielind fell silent. “I forgot he could hear me.”

“Tight-band transmissions,” Wingle said. “I didn’t invent it, but I perfected it. It’s my technology you’re carrying around in your head, and in your helmets, so of course I can pick it up, just about anywhere. You think I wouldn’t keep the master codes?”

Wolfe frowned. “Are you sure you ought to be telling us this, sir? If you’re in possession of top secret technology, you’re vulnerable to the enemy.”

“They’re not gonna hurt me,” Wingle assured him, turning to look at him with the bushy brows on high. “Both sides want me to keep on doing what I’m doing, inventing things for them to use against one another. Me, I’m just having fun. Sit down, shut up, and don’t touch anything.”

This last was delivered as they crowded behind him into the room at the end of the long corridor. Crowded was the operative word, Wolfe observed, because though the space was over twenty meters on a side, it was jammed with tables, boxes, racks, scientific apparatuses, glass cases, cabinets, partial figures of some of the park’s most famous characters and some Wolfe didn’t recognize on stands, on tables and on the floor, and so much more that he was gawking just trying to take it all in. Wingle plopped himself down in a rolling armchair of ancient design in front of an old wooden desk covered with the most modern of communications equipment.

“Sit!” Wingle ordered. Concealed within the fascinating jumble were several dozen chairs. Most of the platoon followed Daivid’s gesture to sit down, but Thielind began to wander, looking at some of the cases. Wolfe could hear him crooning to himself in the soft voice he used to talk to machines. This had to be his idea of heaven. The slender ensign came to a wooden cabinet with hundreds of small drawers in it and pulled one out at random. A hand came around the side of the cabinet and slapped him on the wrist.

“Hey!” Thielind exclaimed. Naturally such a blow couldn’t hurt him through his armor, but the sudden movement surprised all of them. A pink-cheeked youth appeared from an alcove beside the cabinet and leered at the ensign.

“Good boy, Sparky,” Wingle said over his shoulder. “Don’t any of you fools touch anything! And take off those goddam helmets. I like to see who I’m yelling at. Why, look there. A bug. And a spider!” he exclaimed as Haalten and Aaooorru removed their masks. “I wondered about you, shorty,” he said to the corlist. “Didn’t know whether those were prosthetics or limbs. Don’t see too many of your people lately. We get all kinds here. Gives the humans and non-humans a weird sense of belonging together when they interact with my critters. Big load of nonsense, if you ask me. Hello, kitty,” he said to Ewanowski. “I always liked cats, but I’d hate to have your vet bills.”

Daivid was flatly astonished. “This is the beloved Oscar Wingle, who makes all those appearances for charity, who loves children? Who’s known to have the patience of the saints?”

Wingle let out a bark of laughter. “Me? Hell, no. I had my fill of appearances when I was in my twenties. Marching in parades six times a day in the hot sun. People shaking your hand when all they want is to shake your wallet. Kids puking on your leg, and having their moms shout at you that it’s your fault. Getting hammered from the moral majority minority every damned generation that you’re corrupting the minds of the innocents when it’s them that ought to be legislated out of existence.
There’s
the Oscar Wingle everyone knows. Dudley!”

A light went on across the room, illuminating yet another niche. Inside it, an exact duplicate of Oscar Wingle, to the last hair and wrinkle, smiled and raised a hand to wave at the troop. He lowered his hand and the light went out.

Wingle grunted. “He can put up with any amount of bull. I made him that way. He’s more advanced than any synthetic creature that humankind or anyotherkind has come up with in over three thousand years.”

“He’s an android?” Borden asked.

“A puppet, miss lieutenant. The jolly marionette that dances to my whim. Didn’t you ever visit my overblown establishment up there? Hell’s bells. Maria!”

From yet another dark recess that Wolfe now noticed were cut into the heavy stone or plascrete walls came a silver-skinned being. She was beautiful and terrible at the same time, a creature that made Wolfe think of a higher chord of humankind, something they would evolve into in another hundred thousand generations. Her longlegged figure stalked past him, drawing his eyes to the gentle sway of her hips. The slender lines of back and arms undulated like silk sheets hanging in a light breeze, her breasts softly rounded, just waiting to be cupped by eager hands. And yet above the delicate features of her face she had huge blank eyes, plain silver with no whites, irises or pupils, like the ancient statues of gods ten thousand years old that were still preserved in the museums on Terra, and there were coin-shaped protuberances at the sides of her knees and elbows, as if to remind the viewer that what he was looking at was not human, but was she something more or something less?

“Mmm-
mm
!” Injaru hummed.

“No lie,” Parviz agreed, his round brown eyes fixed on the swaying figure.

Wingle glanced over at her as though she was no more beautiful than the battered and timeworn desk his elbows rested upon.

“Get these youngsters something to drink, Maria. Tea, or whatever the hell they want. Liquor closet has about anything you’ve ever heard of, and probably hundreds you have never heard of but are good at giving you a hangover. I like a little brandy, but it’s too early for me. Help yourselves.”

The silver goddess undulated over to the big wooden cabinet at the side of the room opposite the desk. Wolfe couldn’t keep his eyes off the grace of her movements. Neither, he noticed, could most of his crew, but Thielind had the most avid gaze.

“She’s amazing,” he breathed.

“Prototype,” Wingle said shortly, his long, gnarled fingers punching buttons on a communications console that looked old-fashioned, with its ornamented wooden case, but responded with the blinding speed of the newest units. He leaned close to the screen, peering at the logos that flashed by almost too quickly for the brain to acknowledge having seen them. “I invent all kinds of things the military wants to have. No one here knows about it, which is just fine. When I come up with something, I run the stats through my database to see if it has any military implications or uses, then I get in touch with the central government. If they want it, they buy it. If not, I sell it to someone else. I don’t care. I’ve got plenty of money. Much too much money. Takes all the sport out of life.”

“Do you play poker?” Boland asked hopefully.

“Shut up,” Daivid and Wingle said at the same time. The inventor leaned into the screen.

“Hello? Is this the commander of that dreadnought up there? What’s your name?”

In the three-dimensional display, the head and shoulders of a very young female lieutenant with her black hair in a complicated braid stammered. “Lt. Parr, sir. How may I help you? Er, how did you get on this frequency?”

“I damned well dialed it up,” Wingle said, raising his bushy eyebrows. “Now, who’s in charge up there? I want to talk to him, her or it,
mach schnell.”

A plain blue and gray image of the Space Service emblem appeared in place of Lt. Parr’s worried face, the graphic Daivid referred to as the “One moment, please” image. Bland music floated out of the speakers for approximately three seconds.

“Silence! Voice only.”

The troopers’ shoulders relaxed slightly. They all disliked the computer-generated music. A bureaucrat’s favorite use was to keep an unwanted caller listening to it endlessly until he felt like getting around to responding.

Wingle must have had exactly the favored status he claimed, because Captain Harawe’s face replaced the Space Service logo in under a minute.

“Yes, Mr. Wingle?”

“Now, you look like an intelligent being,” Wingle began, settling back in his chair and fixing the captain’s face with a gimlet eye, “so maybe you can tell me what part of ‘it’s not ready yet’ your high-ups cannot understand? I’ve got this house party full of armored soldiers here to take it away, and I just told your superior officers not two days ago that I would let them know when they could come. And here you are, circling around this planet like a vulture ready for one of us to drop dead and scaring hell out of the locals, and sending in a whole fighting force when all it would take is one single solitary messenger on an unpowered bicycle to pick this up?”

Harawe’s dark complexion deepened further. If Daivid and X-Ray platoon could see him, he could see Daivid and X-Ray. The goofy expressions on the faces of most of the Cockroaches except for Borden indicated that they were listening with deep and abiding pleasure to their stern captain getting a dressing-down, the likes of which none of them would ever in their careers be in a position to deliver or even to listen to under most circumstances. After a brief moment in which Daivid knew their eyes met, Harawe focused on Wingle, absorbing the diatribe without changing expression at all. They were going to catch hell for the liberty, Wolfe didn’t know where or when, but Harawe was going to inflict some kind of punishment on them for getting to overhear.

At considerable length, Wingle ran down. “Maria!” he barked. The silver automaton was at his elbow in a moment with a cut crystal glass containing an inch of amber liquid. He took a sip. “Well, Captain, what are you going to do about this band of unwelcome visitors, eh?”

Harawe’s face softened into an ingratiating but not obsequious smile. “Sir, I extend the apologies of the Thousand Worlds Confederation Space Service for inconveniencing you. I trust that you know how much we value your input …”

“Hah! Costs you enough,” Wingle agreed.

“… Monetary compensation is only a small part of the appreciation and esteem which we owe you,” Harawe purred. “The galaxy is that much safer because you choose to put your considerable talents to work in its service. I know I never forget that. I am equally certain that my superiors also know it. If you would put down the premature arrival of my troopers as overconfidence on the part of CenCom I would be in your debt.” Wingle’s face started to soften visibly under the rain of endless praise. Daivid listened with growing admiration to the captain’s smooth patter. He had only seen the hardassed side of the
Eastwood’s
captain. No wonder Carmen Ti-Ya worshiped him. He was
good
.

“Well, there’s no harm in thinking that might be the case,” Wingle began, in a calmer voice.

“There is also the matter that my ship is on its way to another mission. Space is vast, and our route brought us here to Dudley at this moment in our journey. I am sorry that it was inconvenient to you to appear now, before you were ready. Do you think that you could give us a better estimate on when the device might be available?”

Now Wingle was almost purring. “Well … the tests are beginning to show some promise. I’d have to think about it.” In the tridimensional screen, Harawe looked patient but hopeful, not pushing the inventor a micron. “Hmm.… Get a few more of the tests finished, run the stats up, knock out another prototype … three weeks. No sooner. But I’ll put my reputation on an outside limit of three weeks.”

“My ship is expected at our final destination within nine days,” Harawe said. “This is a tricky time, sir. We know that other parties are interested in this technology.”

“Darned right they are,” Wingle said with pride.

“With that in mind, I would like to leave my troopers on site, to receive the item from you when you are satisfied as to its completion.”

“Do what you want. No one is going to bother me while I’m working.”

“Very well, sir. I appreciate your forbearance and your consideration. May I speak to my officer?”

“Suit yourself, captain.” Wingle slid away from the console. “You heard the man.”

Uneasily, Daivid sat down in the chair, facing the captain. “You heard all of that, didn’t you? Enjoyed hearing The Old Man handed a rocket?”

“No, sir!” Daivid exclaimed.

“Don’t lie to me. I never trust a liar. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” The olive green eyes bored into his. Daivid hesitated. The captain thundered out, “I asked you a question, trooper! Answer me.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Harawe’s eyes narrowed, but one corner of his mouth went up. “Let’s hear it from the rest of your platoon.”

Daivid threw a wide-eyed look of exasperation over his shoulder at the others. “You heard the captain!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Harawe widened his field of view, staring at each of the Cockroaches in turn. “And you laughed, didn’t you? Let’s hear you laugh at The Old Man.”

“Heh heh heh,” was all Daivid could muster.

“
Do you call yourself a Space Service trooper?
” Harawe bellowed. “Let’s hear some real laughter. Now!”

“Hah! Hah! Hah!” Daivid exclaimed, pushing every syllable up from his gut. The others joined in, every bit as insincerely, but the captain had them where he wanted them. He was all too keenly aware of Wingle’s sharp eyes on him. Harawe’s mouth quirked again, and he nodded, his eyes hooded with amusement.

“
That’s
better. I’d have laughed myself if I’d heard my captain chewed out like a schoolboy who blew up the chem lab. But as of now the conversation I had with Mr. Wingle is classified at the highest level. You are not to discuss it with anyone outside of the platoon except for me. Understood?”

“Aye, sir!” Daivid said, snapping his hand up in a salute.

“Good. You are to wait for Mr. Wingle to complete his work, then secure the item and hold it for our return. Your objective is to prevent it from falling into anyone else’s hands.”