Fleet of the Damned (13 page)

Sten had tried to reason with the officer, starting with the logical point that the aborting of patrols when the weapons ran dry was hardly efficient and ending with the possibly illogical point that maybe, in time of war, those supply dumps might just get themselves bombed flat.

The officer didn't want to hear about patrol problems, shook his head in irritation at the mere mention of possible hostilities, and laughed aloud at the idea that Cavite couldn't destroy any attacker long before it had time to launch.

It was shaping up to be one of those days.

Sten set his sled down outside the security fence surrounding the fitting-out slips and absently returned the sentry's salute at the gate.

"Afternoon, Commander." The sentry liked Sten. He and his fellow guards had a private pool as to when van Doorman would relieve the commander and send him back to Prime for reassignment. It would be a pity, but on the other hand, the sentry's guess was only a couple of days away, and drink money was far more important than the fate of any officer.

"Afternoon."

"Sir, your weapons officer is already onboard."

Sten was in motion. "Troop, I want the guard out. Now."

"But—"

"Move, boy. I don't
have
a weapons officer!"

The guard thumbed the silent alarm, and within moments there were five sentries around Sten, nervously fingering their loaded willyguns.

Sten took out the miniwillygun he always carried in the small of his back and started for the
Claggett
, the only ship with an entry port yawning.

A saboteur? Spy? Or just a nosy Parker? It didn't matter. Sten put his six men on either side of the port and went silently up the ladder.

He stopped, listening, just at the mouth of the ship's tiny lock. There were clatters, thumps, and mutters sounding from forward. Sten was about to wave the guards up after him when the mutter became distinguishable:

"C'mon, y' wee clottin' beastie. Dinnae be tellin't me Ah cannae launch twa a' once."

Sten stuck his head out the port. "Sorry, gentlemen. I screwed up. I guess I do have a weapons officer. I'll file a correction with the OOD."

The puzzled sentries saluted, shrugged, and walked away.

Sten went forward.

"Mr. Kilgour!" he snapped at the hatch into the control room, and had the pleasure of seeing a head bang in surprise into a computer screen. "Don't you know how to report properly?"

Warrant Officer Alex Kilgour looked aggrieved, rubbing his forehead. "Lad, Ah figured y'd be off playin't polo wi y'r admiral."

Alex Kilgour was a stocky heavy-worlder from the planet of Edinburgh. He'd been Sten's team sergeant in Mantis Section, and then Sten had gotten him reassigned to the palace when Sten commanded the guard. Kilgour had made the mistake of falling in love and applying for a marriage certificate, and the Emperor had shipped him off to flight school months ahead of Sten, also commissioning him in warrant ranks.

Sten had no idea how or why Kilgour was on Cavite—but he was very clotting glad to see him, regardless.

"It wasn't much of a task't' be assigned to y'r squadron, young Sten," Kilgour explained over two mugs of caff in the closet that passed for the
Claggett's
wardroom.

"First, Ah kept tabs, knowin't y'd be runnin' into braw problems y' c'd no handle. Then a word here, a charmin't smile there, an' whiff, Kilgour's on his way. But enow a' young love. Clottin' brief me, Commander. Where's th' bonny crew?"

Sten ran through the problems. Alex heard him out, then patted Sten's shoulder in sympathy, driving the deck plates down a few centimeters.

"Noo y' can relax, wi Kilgour here. Y'r problem, son, is y' dinnae be lookin't for volunteers in the right places."

"Like hell! I've been recruiting everyplace but the cemeteries."

"It'll no get's' bad we'll hae to assign the livin't dead, Commander. You hae nae worries now. Just trust me."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"D
innae they be a fine bunch," Kilgour said proudly.

Sten looked askance at the thirty-odd beings glowering at him, then behind him at the firmly sealed portals of the prison. "How many murderers?"

"Nae one. Twa manslaughters wa' the best Ah could do. Th' rest—"

Sten cut Kilgour off. He would have time later to agonize over the fiches. Suddenly the prisoners in front of him appeared as—at least potentially—shining examples of sailorly virtue. The problem was that Sten, never adept at inspiring speeches, was trying to figure out what to say to these beings to convince them that they did not want to remain in the 23rd Fleet's safe, sane stockade.

Alex leaned closer to him to whisper. "Ah could warm 'em up, if ya like, lad. Tell 'em a joke or three."

"No jokes," Sten said firmly.

Alex's response was immediate gloom.

"No even the one about the spotted snakes? Tha's perfect for a braw crew such as this."

"You will
especially
avoid the one about the spotted snakes. Kilgour, there are laws about cruel and unusual punishment. And if you even dream spotted snakes, I'll have you keelhauled."

Still glaring, Sten turned his attention to the task at hand. The glare must have had a great deal of heat behind it, because the men instantly stopped their shuffling and shifting.

Oh, well. At least he had their attention. Now all he had to do was some fancy convincing. Basic speechmaking—always talk to a crowd as if it were one person and choose one being in that crowd to address directly.

Sten picked out one man who looked a little less dirty, battered, and shifty than the others and walked up to him.

"My name's Sten. I'm commissioning four tacships. And I need a crew."

"Y' comin' here, you're scrapin' the bottom," another prisoner said.

"Sir."

The prisoner spat on the ground. Sten stared at him. The man's eyes turned away. "Sir," he grunted reluctantly.

"No offense, sir." That was the prisoner whom Sten had picked as the centerpiece. "But what's in it for us?"

"You're out. Your records'll get reviewed. I can wipe your charge sheets if I want. If you work out."

"What 'bout rank?" yet another prisoner asked.

"You qualify for a stripe, you'll get it."

"What'll we be doing?"

"Running patrols. Out there."

"Toward the Tahn?"

"As close as we can get."

"Sounds like a clottin' great way to get dead."

"It is that," Sten agreed. "Plus the quarters'll make your cells here look like mansions, the food would gag a garbage worm, and my officers'll be all over you like a dirty ship-suit. Oh, yeah. You'll be lucky to get liberty once a cycle. And if you do, it'll probably be on some planetoid where the biggest thing going is watching metal oxidize."

"Doesn't sound like there's much in it."

"Sure doesn't, sir." This was a fourth prisoner. "Can I ask you something? Personal?"

"GA."

"Why are
you
doin' it? Tacship people are all volunteers. You lookin' for some kind of medal?"

"Clot medals," Sten said honestly. Then he thought about what he was going to say. "You could probably get my ass in a sling if you told anybody this—but I think that we're getting real close to a clottin' war."

"With the Tahn." Sten's target nodded.

"Uh huh. And I'd a lot rather be out there moving around when it happens than sitting on my butt here on Cavite. Or, come to think about it, sitting here in this pen."

"I still think any of us'd be clottin' fools to volunteer."

"Just what I'm looking for. Clotting fool volunteers. I'll be in the head screw's—sorry, warden's—office until 1600 if any of you feel foolish."

To his astonishment, Sten got seventeen volunteers. He never realized that the final convincement was his slip of the tongue—only somebody who had been a jailbird or on the wrong side of the law would call the warden a screw.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"H
ow many generations has your family been warriors, Lieutenant Sekka?" Sten asked with some incredulity.

"For at least two hundred," the man across from him said. "But that was after the Sonko clan emigrated from Earth. Before that, we Mandingos, at least according to legend, had been fighting men for another hundred generations. That's not to say that all of us have been just warriors. We have been military scholars, diplomats, politicians… there was even one of us who was an actor. We do not often discuss him, even though he was reputedly excellent." Sekka laughed. His baritone chortle was just as pleasing to the ear as the man's perfect voice.

Sten looked again at Sekka's fiche. It looked very good—there were just enough reprimands and cautions from superior officers to match the letters of merit and decorations.

"You like taking chances, don't you?"

"Not at all," Sekka said. "Any course of action should be calculated, and if the potential for disaster is less than that for success, the choice is obvious."

Sten put the fiche back in its envelope and shoved a hand across the tiny folding desk. "Lieutenant, welcome the hell aboard. You'll skipper the
Kelly
. Second ship on the left."

Sekka came to attention, almost cracking his skull on the overhead. "Thank you, sir. Two questions. Who are my other officers?"

"None, yet. You're the first one I've signed up."

"Mmm. Crew?"

"You have four yardbirds and one eager innocent. Assign them as you wish."

"Yessir."

"Lieutenant Sekka? I have a question. How'd you hear about this posting?"

Sekka lifted an eyebrow. "Why from the admiral's note in the current fleet proceedings, sir."

Sten covered. "Right. Not thinking. Thank you, Lieutenant. That's all. On your way out, would you ask Mr. Kilgour if he would report to me at his convenience?"

"Kilgour. You didn't."

"Ah did."

"How?"

"The typsettin' plant th' shitepokes who run tha' lyin't publication hae na in th' way ae security."

"So you blueboxed into it, and phonied the admiral's own column?"

"Is tha' nae aye harsh way't' put it?"

Alex, ever since his scam back on Hawkthorne and later with the prisoners, fancied himself quite the recruiter.

Sten changed the subject. "Is there any way he could trace who did it?"

"Trace me, lad? Th' man wha' solved a conspiracy again' our own Emperor?"

Sten put his head in his hands. "Mr. Kilgour. I know the navy is dry. But would there, by some odd chance…"

"By an odd chance, there is. Ah'll fetch the flask."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A
lex liked some rain, like the nearly constant gray drizzle of his home world. But the tropical buckets that came down on Cavite tried his patience sorely. He counted unmarked alcoves down the narrow alleyway, found the correct one, and tapped on the barred door. From the inside his tapping probably sounded like a sledgehammer warming up.

"What is the word?" a synth-voice whispered.

"It's aye wet oot here, an Ah am lackit th' patience," Alex complained. Not particularly angry, he stepped back and rammed a metal-shod bootheel into the door.

The door split in half, and Alex pulled the two halves out of his way and entered.

He had time to notice that the inside of the brothel was quite nice, if one fancied red velvet and dark paintings, before the first guard came down the corridor at him. Alex batted him into the wall with one of the door halves. His mate came dashing toward Alex, was picked up, and went back up the corridor, in the air, somewhat faster than he had come down.

"Ah'm looki't for a Mister Willie Sutton," he announced.

"Do you have a warrant?" the synth-voice asked.

"No."

"Are you armed?"

"What kind of ae clot y' thinkit Ah am? A course."

"Please keep your hands in plain sight. There are sensors covering you. Any electronic emission which is detected will be responded to. You will be constantly in the field of fire from automatically triggered weapons. Any hostile act will be responded to before you could complete such an action."

Alex sort of wanted to test his reflexes against the robot guns, but he was trying to be peaceful.

"You will continue down to the end of the corridor, past the entrance to the establishment proper. At the end of the corridor, you will find stairs. Continue up them, and then down the hall to the second door. Enter that room and wait, while we determine whether a Willie Sutton is known to anyone on the premises."

Alex followed instructions. As he walked past, he looked into the whorehouse's reception area, fell in love twice, smiled politely at those two women, but continued on.

Kilgour was on duty.

The room was more red velvet and more elderly paintings, dimly lit by glass-beaded lamps. The furniture was unusual, consisting of three or four wide, heavily braced hassocks. Kilgour stood with his back close to one wall and waited.

The door on the other side of the room opened.

"Would my thoughts be correct in assuming you are interested in applying for work as my bodyguard?"

"Willie Sutton" waddled into the room. It was a spindar, a large—two meters, choose any direction—scaled creature that looked like an oversize scaly pangolin with extra arms. Since spindars' own names were not pronounceable by the
Homo sapien
tongue, they generally took on a human name, a name prominent in whatever field the spindar chose to excel in.

Kilgour had no idea who Willie Sutton had been, but he was fairly sure that the human had not been a philanthropist.

"Warrant Officer Alex Kilgour," he identified himself, not answering the question.

"You, then, are a deserter, as I am?"

"Na, Chief Sutton. But Ah hae consider't it."

"You are not from the military police. Certainly not, from your grimace. How might my establishment and myself be of service to you? I am assuming, for the sake of argument, that you mean me no harm."