Strong Arm Tactics (9 page)

“That big hairball kept them for you,” Boland said, pointing at Ewanowski.

“As if, ape boy,” the semicat yawned, showing long, pointed teeth and a narrow, pink tongue twice as long as a human’s.

Aaooorru paid no more attention to the chief’s protests. The rest of the players threw in their cards as the shrimp-spider raked in the pot. Now the table turned to look at Daivid.

“Come in, sir,” Lin invited him at last.

Daivid stepped through. “I just came from the captain’s day room. Jones is confined to quarters during rest periods. You’re all …”

“… On sanitation duty,” the Cockroaches chimed together.

Daivid frowned. “Did the XO send your orders down here already?”

“Hell, no, sir,” Boland grinned. “We always get shafted down into waste management. If Jones hadn’t given them an excuse, they’d have found a way to assign us down there sooner or later.”

“But it’s slag duty,” Daivid said. “Why do you look so happy?”

“Even a slag cloud,” Mose replied, philosophically, gathering up the cards and shuffling, “has a silver lining.”

Daivid eyed them uneasily. “What kind of silver lining?”

“Oh,” Boland offered an unconvincing expression of innocence. “Nothing special.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Want to jump in, sir?” Aaooorru asked, swiveling his round eyes in the lieutenant’s direction. “I’ve cleaned out most of their money, but they’ve still got some left.”

“No, thanks,” Daivid replied, glancing at the chrono on his communication card. “I’ve got paperwork, then I’m going to check out the officers’ wardroom.”

The noncoms and the enlisted troopers exchanged grins and knowing looks. “Good luck, sir.”

O O O

“Wilbury,” said a cheerful, brown-skinned man about Daivid’s age, sticking out a hand. The wardroom was larger, better appointed, and cleaner than the enlisted mess. “Miklis Wilbury, Andromeda unit.”

“Daivid Wolfe. Pleased to meet you. Where are you bound?”

Wilbury looked mysterious. “It’s all totally hush-hush. Creeps me out, if you want the truth. We’re supposed to be preparing. All they’ll tell me is that we’re fifty days out, and to get everything, especially my troopers, in good order.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to be doing,” said a new voice. A dark-haired man with pale skin, dark hair, and deeply hooded blue eyes sauntered by to loom over them. Daivid had thought the newcomer was about his height, until he stood up to offer a hand. The dark-haired man was so perfectly in proportion, with his v-shaped torso, muscular legs and arms, and tight waist, that Daivid was surprised to see how high he loomed over him. “They don’t trust you loose cannons with the gen, obviously. You’ll be told what’s going on when the captain thinks you can handle it. Right now, he’s probably sorry he took you on board. The rest of us are bound for the Benarli cluster to take out those pipsqueaks who call themselves the Insurgency.”

“Bruno, knock it off,” a female lieutenant called from her seat near the wall. She got up to join them. “The side missions are all classified on this deployment. Don’t let Mr. Big Shot here let you get the impression he’s any more in the know than you are.”

“Thanks,” Daivid said. “Daivid Wolfe.”

“I know. Carmel Ti-ya. Personnel. I processed your orders. I’m supposed to connect with your Lieutenant Borden. Is she here?”

Daivid glanced around. “Not yet. I left her checking the manifests against the containers of our gear.”

“A little too late for that, isn’t it?” asked a female almost as tall as Bruno, who shouldered up to join him. Daivid recognized her as Varos, the disapproving lieutenant who had questioned the Cockroaches’ competence in the captain’s mast. “We’ve already left orbit.” Daivid gave her a summing look. Girlfriend? Defender? While he was trying to guess their relationship, a burly man with light brown hair and a creased brow muscled up and took his place at Bruno’s other side. A clique. Mentally, Daivid rolled his eyes. How primary-school. Bruno was the boss, and they were his posse.

“You know what they say about the military,” he said, cheerfully. “Check the checklists, then check them again, and again, and again. The paperwork never stops.”

“I didn’t know they said that,” the muscular man replied. The tape over his breast pocket read “Rindel.” The dark-haired man shot him a dirty look.

“What do you do?” Daivid asked.

“Supply. Facilities scheduling,” Bruno said, with just that hint of malice that showed that he had allowed that power to corrupt him. He knew and Daivid knew he knew and Bruno knew Daivid knew he knew that everyone else had to stay on his good side, or end up in the worst possible facility at the most inconvenient time.

“Facilities?” A head perked up at the table beside them. A narrow-faced junior lieutenant with a regulation buzz-cut atop a soft face and a body Daivid couldn’t guess was female or male stood up. “I wanted to talk to you. This is one hell of a big ship. Why are five units jammed into one mess? I thought all we took on board at Treadmill was the one platoon, right?”

Bruno frowned. “I didn’t change anyone’s mess assignment.”

“The hell you didn’t, sir. I’m with Ophiuchus platoon. My troopers were in Gehenna, back near the cinema, along with Quicksilver Company, from Centauri base. The chief that came in today told my chief we were both shifted to Buzzard. Something about having to have space for her religious practices. Buzzard was at capacity already, commander.”

Lin. Daivid suppressed a groan. Bruno whipped out his infopad and scrolled to a particular screen. His eyebrows went down. “Nothing’s changed. You send your troopers back where they came from. There must have been a glitch in the data given to that unit. What was their designation?”

“X-Ray,” replied the aggrieved jg.

The dark blue eyes swiveled, homing in on Daivid. “Well, you’re reassigned as of now. Any questions on that, Lieutenant Wolfe?”

“I don’t give a heap of slag, as long as they treat my troopers with respect,” Daivid answered, in a low, very calm voice. “Maybe you don’t know X-Ray’s reputation.” There was a murmur through the wardroom. Evidently
Bruno’s
reputation was such that no one answered back to him, but Daivid wasn’t intimidated. What the hell could he do to them?

Bruno gave him a mirthless grin, nodding. “Oh, I know it, all right. I’ll give them all the respect they
deserve
. Any questions?”

“No,” murmured the lieutenant from Ophiuchus.

“No,” Daivid added, diffidently.

“Fine.” Bruno snapped out, then stalked away like a tiger, smug at having gotten the last word. His two cronies—jackals, Daivid thought—followed behind him. The lieutenant retired to his table, shaking his head.

“Ignore Bruno,” advised Ti-ya, tilting her hand to invite Daivid to sit down with her and the others at her table. “He once got a good annual report, and it went to his head. Meet Sameia Al-Hadi and Rokke Barikson.” The dark woman with large, liquid, brown eyes and the solid young man with unruly light brown hair and pale, coarse skin both nodded to him. Wilbury squeezed in on the other side. Each bench in the booth had room for three, though Daivid noticed some tables with five or six officers squeezed in on a side, talking with animation. He supposed that once you’d spent any amount of time in a shuttle waiting to drop into an arena you’d have very little left in the way of personal space requirements. An autoserver popped up in the center of the table. Daivid ordered strong coffee.

“I’ve heard of Treadmill,” Barikson said. His collar flashing showed he was a lieutenant jg. “What’s it like with the prison looming over you?”

“I was only assigned there five days before we were deployed,” Daivid admitted, slugging back a solid jolt of caffeine. The
Eastwood
got really good coffee. He intended to drink his share while on board.

“Really?” replied Al-Hadi, with friendly curiosity. “So, do you suppose it’s your unit or you they want so badly on this mission? The rumor mill is burning up, it’s running so fast.”

Daivid hesitated. Did they have any idea who he was? “No clue,” he said. “They haven’t even told us what our task is.”

Barikson’s eyebrows went up. “Having to fix a plan of battle blind? They must have a lot of faith in you.”

Daivid shrugged. Al-Hadi grinned. “We’re all part of the big push. I’m the tactical officer for Lancer platoon. We came from Alpha Antares station. Half our base is on board with us. This ship can hold ten thousand crew, though you couldn’t tell it from walking through the halls. It’s the size of a luxury liner.”

“You can if you stick your head into the enlisted messes,” Barikson said. “Those are jammed pretty tightly. Some of my people are spending their down time in the bunk rooms or the exercise centers just to get a little space to themselves. We’ll have companionship enough when we have to spend thirty hours a day in our armor.”

“No lie. Lancer just had its first anti-grav training in three months, and we were bumping into each other like popcorn in a popper. The sides of my helmet felt like they were closing in even closer against my skull. I wanted to tear off my suit right there.”

“Don’t let us stop you now,” Barikson said, with his ready grin. Daivid grinned, too. Al-Hadi was an attractive woman. She gave them a mock glare.

“In your dreams, guys. Not that the training or the maintenance jobs we’re doing aboard ship is putting much of a dent in my troopers’ time, of course,” she went on. “They’re treating the transport phase like one long R&R. I mean, it’s not the best vacation—no sightseeing, no nightlife, but at least the toilets flush, so to speak. We had one assignment, border patrol on the Draco Major frontier, on a leaky old tub. Everything started breaking down. The only thing that really worked were the drives and the weapons. Life systems, eh. Hygiene facilities, double eh. Everything stopped working at least twice over the course of the four months we were stopping lizards from crossing into TWC space. We got to know one another by our smells. It’s too bad that stink can’t cross vacuum. It would have deterred anything with nostrils from coming anywhere near us.”

“That’s one of the good things about Treadmill,” Daivid laughed. “Real showers. Our quarters are next to the launch facility, way the hell away from the rest of the base, and the base is way the hell distant from the nearest town, but we’ve got plenty of water.”

“Working showers,” sighed a female commander at the next table. “I can’t tell you the last time I had a water bath—yes, I can. It was during my leave on a T-class planet about two years ago. What a luxury. Poteet Corrundum, Xerxes Company” she added, holding out a hand to Daivid.

“Hey, two X’s. Daivid Wolfe. X-Ray platoon, Neutron Company.”

“Uh-huh,” Corrundum said, a little more cautiously. “I … uh, I know Commander Mason.”

“Oh?” Daivid asked, coldly.

“Uh-huh. We were in OTC together. She’s good people. We’re in touch as much as we can be, tach mail, the occasional live call. She … mentioned you were being transferred to her command. She thinks you’re doing a good job, you know.”

“How can she tell in five days?” Barikson asked, curiously.

Corrundum picked up on Daivid’s disapproval. She shot Barikson a quick smile. “You can always tell. I once had an enswine that was so stupid, he started thinking ‘slag’ was his real name. ‘Cause that’s what I said every time I had to clean up the mistakes he made. There wasn’t a position I could leave him in without supervision. The chiefs kept saying, indirectly but where I could hear them, that maybe they should frag him so he could finally do some good, like feeding a carrion-scavenger. But I bet he’d find a way to make them sick. I got him transferred to another unit. He’s somebody else’s problem.”

“My ensign’s an amazing fix-it man,” Daivid said, and raised his eyebrows back at his fellow officers who gave him surprised looks. Sooner or later someone was going to make him explain his philosophy. “You know how cleanerbots are always flaming out. The barracks bugs we have are still running, and they must be sixteen or eighteen years old. Well past replacement.”

Al-Hadi snorted. “Sounds like you have the same procurement prerogative we do: until it crumbles into its component molecules, you don’t
need
a new one, do you?”

“No kidding. I’ve never been on a ship that had all new equipment … until this one,” Daivid put in, looking around enviously.

Wilbury snorted. “Political pork-barrel. When it looks like the Space Service is going to get its budget slashed, they buy something big to suck up the surplus. This probably ate up the total tax money from three or four systems.”

“Harawe earned this,” Ti-ya corrected him, with a frown. “He’s an incredible officer. When I had a chance to come on board the
Eastwood
I jumped at it. The Old Man’s going to be an admiral before long. The Benarli war will probably get him his promotion.”

“And make a bunch of Senators very happy,” Wilbury said.

“You’re a cynic,” Daivid said. “I like that.”

O O O

The food in the wardroom was as superior as the setting. Daivid scrolled down the six choices available on the table menu screen, and down into the a la carte menu provided for those who just wanted a snack. Like most ships that ran on full shifts, meals had to be served on a constant rotation. He was sure that the robochefs had thousands of recipes, but sharply limited the daily menu for sound psychological reasons. His father, aunts and uncles said much the same when they got together to discuss offerings for the Family’s various restaurant chains. If you gave customers too few choices they got bored. If you gave them too many they would never make their minds up, and the whole idea was to get the bottoms into the chairs and out again in a reasonable amount of time. The download of the ship’s manual into his infopad said meals were served for one hour every five hours, to provide two per shift. If a crew member missed one service, for whatever reason, there were hard rations, balanced-nutrition bars or colloid cups in several locations on every level, and sweet juice drinks, or ‘bug juice,’ in every mess, wardroom and day room. He hoped the noncommissioned crew got as wide a selection. He only saw one raw-food choice, and that was all the corlist, Aaooorru, could eat. He was still curious as to why one of the shrimp-spider beings had chosen to enlist in the Space Service. According to the corlist’s file, he was high-born and well-educated. He shouldn’t have been in the Navy any more than, well, Daivid himself.