The Outback Stars (20 page)

“Your people started this,” he said to Jodenny.

Jodenny ignored his accusatory tone. “Commander, what happened?”

“They claim it's something about the soccer game,” Osherman said.

“I lost some money myself,” Sergeant Timrin volunteered from the corner.

Osherman gave him a withering look. “I don't believe them.”

“My men are clean.” Chiba glared at the holding cells. “They know my rules about fighting and they know what I'd do to them after a thing like this. If anyone started it, it was Underway Stores.”

Jodenny appealed to Osherman. “Fighting is a serious offense, sir, but this looks more like a scuffle—”

“Have you seen Engel's eye?” Chiba demanded.

Jodenny kept talking. “What if we agree to handle it in-house? I'm sure Commander Al-Banna would be happy to address it within the Supply Department. Less paperwork and bloodshed all around if we don't have to do captain's masts.”

“It's not up to Commander Al-Banna,” Osherman said, but she noticed that he didn't entirely disagree with the suggestion.

“I think Underway Stores should pay for starting trouble,” Chiba said.

Jodenny turned to Timrin. “Was there any property damage, Sergeant Timrin?”

“Not at all, ma'am.”

“That's not what I meant,” Chiba fumed.

“And no civilians saw what happened,” Timrin added helpfully.

“Release them and we'll make sure this doesn't happen again,” Jodenny said to Osherman.

Osherman didn't look entirely convinced. “Do you agree, Chief, or do you want to muddy up both divisions in front of the CO?”

For a minute Jodenny thought he was going to be an asshole about it, just because he could. Then Chiba blew out a noisy breath. “Looks like I'm outvoted, doesn't it?”

Osherman went off to consult by gib with Senga and Picariello. Chiba glowered at everyone and everything. Jodenny decided not to try to reason with him. When Osherman returned he said, “All right. They're yours. No complaints will be filed for the time being. But the incident's in the log, and next time this happens, they'll face double charges.”

“There won't be a next time,” Jodenny promised, and went to collect her sailors.

“Lieutenant!” Gallivan stood up with some excuse ready on his lips, but she wasn't in the mood to hear it.

“Go back to your cabins, lock the doors, clean yourselves up, and get into your best dress uniforms,” she ordered. “We're all going to be in the SUPPO's office at oh-seven-hundred.”

Gallivan asked, “Don't you want to know what happened?”

“They started it,” Chang said.

“I don't want to hear excuses,” Jodenny said. “The one thing I told you all when we first started working together was that I expected you to be professionals. This is so far from the definition of professional that I guess I was speaking some foreign language.”

“But we did it for Underway Stores,” Gallivan protested.

She retorted, “I thought it was about soccer.”

Chang swallowed hard. “It was for the honor of the division, ma'am. You can't let them push people around.”

“Who did they push around?” Jodenny asked, although she already had a good idea.

Kevwitch kept silent. Ishikawa, who had said nothing since Jodenny entered the cell, studied the tips of her boots. Chang turned immediately to Gallivan, who cleared his throat and said, “It doesn't matter, ma'am. We've all worked out an understanding.”

“Do as I told you,” she said. “And if you so much as ping someone from Maintenance I'll have you back here so fast you'll think you never left.”

“Ma'am,” Gallivan said, but she pointed toward the lift and he plodded off with a hangdog expression.

“AT Kevwitch,” she said, commanding him to stay. “Do you have a keen wish to spend the entire cruise here in the brig?”

“No, ma'am.”

“You would think a man your size could stay out of trouble.”

“It's because I'm this size that I'm always in trouble,” he said glumly. “Everyone wants backup, or to prove a point, or to make a show of force.”

“Is that what you were doing tonight? Making a show of force?”

His cheeks colored. “Shevi Dyatt never treats me like an ogre. Sergeant Myell always talks to me like I'm smart.”

“Did Dyatt or Myell ask you to do this?”

“No!” he said. “They don't know anything about it.”

“So you just decided to defend the division's honor. I can see Chang and Gallivan in such a harebrained scheme, but Ishikawa? You took an eighteen-year-old girl into a fight?”

Kevwitch blinked in surprise. “Oh, no. She was there with Spallone and such. Hangs out with them sometimes, you know.”

Jodenny hadn't heard that, but she wasn't surprised that Ishikawa was less than sensible about who she hung out with. “You're dismissed, AT Kevwitch.”

She pinged Nitta, informed him of what had happened, and told him to conduct morning quarters. At oh-seven-hundred she had her four sailors standing at attention outside Al-Banna's door, much to Bartis's amusement. When Al-Banna came in fifteen minutes later he snapped, “Just you, Lieutenant. Inside. Now.”

Jodenny took a deep breath and followed him. Al-Banna had turned off his decor since her last visit, leaving in place only the gray parasteel and a few framed commendations.

“Do I look like some kind of goddamned babysitter?” he asked once the hatch was closed. “You should have let them rot in the brig!”

“I figured the department doesn't need any more bad publicity—”

“I'll decide what this department does and does not need.
Not you.
Understood? If our sailors are dumb enough to get caught fighting, they deserve to be hauled in front of the captain! And what's this bullshit about it being about a soccer game?”

Jodenny said, “Dunredding vs. Notting Bay, sir. I had a hundred yuros on it myself.”

Al-Banna scowled. “Get out of here and send your people in.”

A half hour after they went in, her four sailors emerged looking thoroughly shaken. Ishikawa had tear tracks on her face, Kevwitch's armpits were soaked with sweat, and Chang was so pale she almost had him sit down. Even the normally insouciant Gallivan had to roll his shoulders a few times.

“Commander's got quite a temper,” he said.

“Yes, he does,” Jodenny said.

“Get me Zarkesh, Quenger, and Chiba!” Al-Banna bellowed, and Jodenny ushered her errant sailors out the door as Bartis scrambled to obey.

*   *   *

Myell noticed that Gallivan, Chang, Ishikawa, and Kevwitch were all absent from morning quarters. Speculation ran rampant: Al-Banna, most agreed, had probably thrown them in the brig. Nitta, acting hungover, had nothing to say about it. He read off a few announcements before letting everyone go off to work. By oh-eight-hundred, just as Myell was heading off for shore leave, Ishikawa showed up in T6. Her visit to Mary River had been canceled and Al-Banna had ordered her to do fifty hours of extra duty.

“I only went to help!” Ishikawa broke into tears. “I didn't mean to hit anyone.”

Myell left Hosaka to console her. Though time was short, he trammed over to IR2 to ask Gallivan, “Why?”

“Why what?” Gallivan asked, fingering his cut lip. “Why did we teach those dongers a lesson? Easy enough to figure out.”

“Explain it in little words,” Myell suggested.

Gallivan started stacking boots onto a shelf. “I told you, Terry. You have mates here. So does Dyatt. Chiba and his dogs know now that we've got our eyes on them, and that we're not going to stand for any messing around with our people.”

“It's just going to make things worse,” Myell said.

“Sergeant Gloom, that's you. Always looking at the worse angle of things.”

Myell wanted to argue more, but he didn't dare miss his flight. “We're going to talk about this later,” he promised Gallivan.

“Whatever you say, Gloom. Give my love to Mary River, won't you?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Myell stayed firmly buckled in his seat for the journey to New Christchurch and tried not to dwell on trifling details such as gravity and acceleration. He didn't mind death so much as the prospect of the minutes that would lead up to it, the shuttle full of screams and burning metal.
You've watched too many disaster vids,
he told himself. Adding to his general uneasiness was the presence of two ATs from Maintenance, both of them sitting a few rows behind him. Not Engel, Olsson, or Spallone, thank goodness. They had all had their leaves canceled. But the two ATs had a mean look about them that he didn't trust. If Chiba meant to start trouble with Myell's family, the bastard would regret it for the rest of his short life.

“You all right, Sarge?” asked the apprentice mate sitting beside him.

Myell forced his hand to unclench the seat rest. “Fine.”

The AM peered at the vid. “Were those our towers?”

Myell glanced over at the cargo being towed off by local freighters. “Ten, twelve, and fourteen.”

“Do we get 'em back?”

“The
Alaska
will pick them up in a couple months. We'll be picking up any left by the
Chernobyl.
”

The AM settled back in his seat and drummed his fingers restlessly. “Are there any nice girls down on Mary River?”

An RT across the aisle said, “Hell, most of the girls on Mary River are frigid. You'd have a warmer time sticking it into a bucket of ice.”

Rowdy laughter. The AM blushed and didn't ask any more questions. The Rocks offered more lively entertainment than Mary River did. The planet's lures were fresh air, true blue skies, and the chance to escape the ship, though you might have to put up with a sermon or a separatist lecture in the meantime.

Myell closed his eyes until final approach, during which time he squeezed them shut even harder and hoped to just die quickly. After the birdie was safely docked he was first in line to get off. The port had a spare, utilitarian look to it, with low ceilings and plain furniture and crucifixes emblazoning every sign. It took until another hour to clear Customs and Quarantine. Myell followed the ramps outside to blazing summertime heat and a curb crowded with minicabs, flits, and public buses. Beyond the glinting roofs of prefab warehouses, jagged green and white mountains soared back into the sky he had fallen from.

“Boring but beautiful,” was how Colby described it.

Myell took a bus to a discount lot and rented a cheap flit. It levitated well enough, but the fins were scratched and the engine was a little loud. Within minutes he was following a wide boulevard past New Christchurch's handful of skyscrapers. Traffic flowed evenly and without snarls. Bright, well-tended flower gardens lined the roads. The announcer on the city's official radio station reminded Myell twice to thank the Lord for His Blessings, and billboards of happy, devout families beamed proselytizing commercials into his flit.

“Not today,” he said, and snapped the radio off.

He drove to the Bethlehem Parkway North and started toward Colby's farm. A mag-lev train, silver and bright in the sunshine, kept him company much of the way before veering east. If he'd spent more money on an upgrade, he could have turned on the flit's autopilot and napped for the rest of the trip. Instead he rolled down his window, stuck his elbow out, and tried to keep his thoughts from circling around and around to the
Aral Sea,
orbiting so high overhead. He hadn't asked anyone to intervene on his behalf, and was still mad at Gallivan and the others for doing so.

Ninety minutes after leaving New Christchurch he turned off the parkway into a rich forest of pine and oak tress. When he stopped the car the pervasive quiet of nature wrapped around him like a blanket. He could hear insects in the bushes, the flap of birds' wings, and the wind in the leaves, but no comm announcements. No Snipe vids. He heaved his rucksack over his shoulder and started up the lane toward the barn. Colby had built a long, low addition to the farmhouse and planted another vegetable garden. The old clunky housebot—Erma? Rema?—was hanging clothes on the line. Two broken speeders were parked by the horse stable and a few chickens pecked at the dirt.

A burst of mazer fire sent his heart racing.

“Space Patrol! You're under arrest!” a voice yelled.

Myell obediently raised his hands. “I surrender.”

Giggles, and the sound of bodies jumping from the tree branches to the ground behind him. Something jabbed him in the back. “State your name!”

“Myell, Teren A. Sergeant,
T.S.S. Aral Sea
.”

“State your business!”

“I've come to kidnap small children,” he admitted, and swung around to grab Jake and Adryn and hoist them into the sky. The toy mazers shot more bursts of light into the sun-dappled trees. They fell into the bushes, the children squirming with laughter. They ganged up together to start tickling him.

“I surrender!” Myell shouted, twisting away from their devilish fingers. “Get your presents!”

Eight-year-old Jake groped for the bag. “What did you bring us?”

“Anything expensive?” Adryn pushed her long bangs from her forehead and joined her brother.

“Exquisitely expensive. And rare and unique.”

Jake unwrapped a square white package. “Wow,” he said, his eyes widening. “A basebot! Dad said I couldn't have one until Christmas.” He grinned wildly. “Thanks, Uncle Terry!”

Adryn unwrapped her gift and asked, “What is it?”

“The Best of the Universe, honey.” Myell sat up and turned it on. An image of Fortune's most famous Spheres sprang up in the center of the glass triangle. “You can visit hundreds of the most beautiful places in the Seven Sisters without ever leaving your room.”

“Oh.” With a distinct lack of enthusiasm she added, “Thanks.”