Mercenary (19 page)

“The—you—” the lawyer exclaimed, for once failing in eloquence.

“Let's hope such discipline does not again become necessary,” I said somberly. “I dislike certain measures, but I learned long ago not to indulge in half-measures.” I turned to our guests. “My apologies for this delay. Now let's get on with the negotiations. I'm sure something can be worked out.”

“But that bubble!” Joshua exclaimed. “You blew it apart!”

I shrugged. “Sometimes my hand is forced.” Then I paused, as if realizing something. “This is not one of your bubbles, of course. You are cooperating. We were not able to obtain representation from either side from this one. Naturally I would not discipline a bubble involved in honest negotiation.”

The migrants looked at each other, then at the lawyers. The two parties seemed to draw closer together.

“In your resumé,” a lawyer said cautiously to me, “there is a reference to the slaying of a number of pirates, when you were a refugee—”

“They were criminals. That's ancient history.”

“You ain't changed much,” Laredo muttered.

The lawyer glanced again at the dissipating cloud, unwilling to accept the implication, but shaken. He licked his lips nervously. “Perhaps we should get on with it.”

“By all means,” I agreed heartily. “Now let me summarize the points at issue. As I understand it there are three. Working conditions—”

“Can be upgraded,” a lawyer said quickly, glancing at the others for confirmation. “The farmers are not unmindful of the practical comforts of the workers. They are willing to provide better food, and to space the working hours for greater worker convenience. Internal discipline can be ameliorated or placed directly in the hands of the migrant foremen. There really is no problem there, so long as the work is properly done.”

“Excellent,” I said. “I was sure your employers were reasonable men. Now the workers say they want a union—”

“Uh, if we get what else we want, maybe the union can wait,” John Henry said, his eyes also on the dissipating cloud, and the others nodded agreement. “One thing at a time, I always say.” It was amazing how readily peripheral elements could be dispensed with when the hint of violent destruction was made.

Civilians were not inured to such measures. I had obliquely shown them my power.

“Excellent,” I repeated. “It is generous of you to postpone such a heartfelt issue. We all remember Joe Hill.” I took a measured breath. “Now the central issue: the rate of pay for work performed. Now this does appear low compared to the prevailing Jupiter scales—”

“This is not Jupiter,” a lawyer said. “Minimum-wage scale does not apply—”

“Yet,” John Henry said meaningfully.

“Our clients have formidable problems of supply and transportation that make the standard scales inapplicable.”

“Yeah, they prefer slave labor,” Laredo said.

“The migrants work voluntarily!” the lawyer snapped.

“We ain't working now ,” John Henry said.

“We volunteer to work instead of starve,” Joshua said. “That is not much choice, my friend.”

“Pardon me for interrupting,” I said. “But would it be fair to say that the migrants would be satisfied with a higher rate of pay per bucket, nothing else? No unemployment insurance, medical coverage, retirement benefits—”

“Retirement benefits!” the lawyer exclaimed, appalled, while the eyes of the migrant leaders widened with appreciation. They had not thought to try for anything like this!

“I understand your problems of supply and shipment,” I said to the lawyers. “We have them in the Navy, too. Let's concentrate on the central thing: the pay per bucket picked. If you pay the workers more, you will have to raise your prices in Jupiter, putting you at a competitive disadvantage.”

“Exactly! We compete with pseudo-produce, and there are cut-rate imports from Uranus and Saturn—”

“But you see, the workers' rate has not changed in years, while the cost of living has,” I pointed out. “The workers are being severely squeezed. That is why they are restive. If you gave them more to work for, you could save some of the cost by reducing your supervisory personnel, that we all know are really guards. Satisfied workers reduce your overhead.”

“Well, if we could afford—”

“Suppose you key the workers' pay to the retail price of the produce?” I suggested. “That would alleviate the criticism some make that the farmers ignore the increasing cost of living of the workers while increasing their prices.”

The farmers, and therefore their lawyers, were quite sensitive to such criticism. “Well, we have no objection in principle—”

“Perhaps five percent,” I said.

“Five percent!” a lawyer exclaimed indignantly. “Preposterous!”

“Normally, as I understand it,” I said, “the fee for a significant service rendered, one necessary to business, is ten percent or more. Five percent seems modest enough, considering the importance of the service.”

“But it has never been done before!”

“We are all progressive people, willing to try new things when the old ones prove inadequate,” I said blithely. “This is, after all, the twenty-seventh century. Suppose the arrangement is publicly posted: Of each dollar retail price, five cents is allocated for the picker.”

“But the men will not work, if it is not tied to the bucket!”

“Tie it to the bucket, then. If a bucket contains one hundred peppers whose retail value is five cents per pepper, or five dollars to the bucket, the picker gets twenty-five cents.”

“Twenty-five cents!” the lawyer cried as if in pain. “That's two and a half times the present rate!”

I shrugged. “I suppose we could publicize the fact that the farmers are unwilling to allocate more than two percent for harvesting, while paying more than that to keep discipline among the distressed workers, and see how the Jupiter public reacts. Perhaps the public will agree this is fair.”

The lawyers blanched, knowing the outrage such statistics would incite on civilized Jupiter. “Perhaps three percent, which would represent a fifty percent improvement in—” one began.

I glanced at him. “What is the basis for your own fee for services rendered?”

The man backed off hastily. “Perhaps if the percentage was publicly posted, so the consumer would know the reason for the increase in price—”

“I think it might appear unpatriotic for the buying public to refuse to pay a few extra cents to allow the pickers a living wage,” I said. “I doubt you would lose much in sales—if that were the extent of the increase.”

The lawyers pondered. They knew the farmers would not object to a settlement that successfully passed along the added cost to the public. But I suspected that when the time came to publicize the prices, the public would demand that the five percent be taken out of the original price, and the farmers would discover that they could, after all, afford it. Regardless, the principle of a fixed percentage for the pickers was the key to a long-term settlement. My staff had hashed this out beforehand and rehearsed me on it; I was not nearly as quick or informed as I appeared. That was the beauty of a good staff; it made the commander look good, when it was important that he do so.

That, essentially, was it. We made a temporary agreement, and the foremen promised to put their workers back in the fields, and the lawyers promised to allocate five percent. If the remaining migrants or the farmers did not ratify the agreement, the five percent would still hold for the work done during the temporary period. After that, the strike would resume. But we all knew it wouldn't come to that. We had worked it out.

We returned the migrant leaders to their bubbles, and picked up our girls. Joshua was right: The migrants were ready to sell what remained of their souls, after enjoying the hospitality of our lovely personnel.

They would ratify.

Before we parted, Joshua spoke to me privately. “That bubble you blasted—rubber knives?”

“You're smarter than you look,” I said.

“Thought so. You're not really a killer.”

“Not of migrants,” I agreed.

The agreement stood. There was no further violence. We got our blanket promotion: I advanced to full Commander, O5: Repro, Spirit, Emerald, and Mondy to Lieutenant Commanders, O4; and right on down to our lowest E2's becoming PFC's. We had gambled big, and won. And my name flashed across the Jupiter news of the day. Commander Hubris was momentarily famous.

And perhaps I had repaid Joe Hill for his kindness.

There are set routines for promotion and assumption of commands, but Lieutenant Commander Mondy knew how to circumvent them. Our next step was perhaps unique for the time: my company expanded into a battalion; my three platoons became companies; and my squads grew into platoons. New personnel came into this framework mostly from below. We simply fissioned away from our former battalion and became our own.

Now my battalion staff became official. Lieutenant Commander Phist transferred in to be my S-4

Logistics officer; he had not been part of our unit before, so had not shared in the blanket promotion. I now ranked him and could include him in my command.

Now our training commenced in earnest. Some of it made little sense to the troops, but they worked at it, anyway, because the penalty for unsupport was to be transferred out again. You see, it wasn't just physical training, it was social.

I required each man to learn a song, and that he always be ready to sing it in public. I had been reminded of the power of song by my experience with the migrants. The migrant laborers had a special kind of camaraderie, and I wanted it for my battalion. This was my first major step. The men grumbled, but they picked out their songs in the migrant manner and rehearsed them. We had regular singing sessions where enthusiasm counted more than skill. There were a good many duplications of songs, and those who shared songs were supposed to look out for each other's interests, even if they had no other bond.

I had Sergeant Smith, now E7, instruct a program of special training in judo, fencing, and pugil sticks.

Why? Because I wanted my men to be expert in hull-fighting. You see, there are several ways to take out an enemy ship in space. You can blast it to pieces, which I deem to be wasteful; or you can disable it and force surrender, which is risky when dealing with dishonorable folk such as pirates; or you can board it and take it over from inside by using a pacifier or gas grenade. To board it you have to land suited men on the hull, who then operate the airlocks and get inside to do their work. A stun-bomb flung through as the inner lock opens is very effective. But a smart ship's captain will post guards on his hull to prevent exactly such intrusion, and those guards have to be dealt with quickly and silently.

Picture the problem: There you are, just arrived on the hull, your magnetic boots clinging to the metal surface, the centrifugal force of the ship's rotation pulling you outward. (Technically, there is no such force, but it is more convenient to deal with that imagined force than with the more complex input of the vectors of deviation from rest.) You are, in essence, hanging upside down, with little leeway for error; the moment your feet lose contact with the hull, you fall out into space. The boot magnetism is not great, because you need to be able to move individual feet readily; falling is all too easy. And here is this enemy soldier coming at you—

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is to describe an episode of the training in which I was personally involved. We did not have many discipline problems, because of the spirit of unity we cultivated, but any organization has some. This one involved Corporal Heller, a huge, tough, canny brute of a Saxon who went in for all the violent activities. He wasn't popular, because he had a sarcastic mouth and was apt to hurt people by too-vigorous physical competition, and he had a bad attitude. But he insisted on remaining in our unit, and he was competent and worked hard, so we tolerated him.

When an opening came for a squad leader, there were two prime candidates: Corporal Heller and Corporal Valencia, a qualified Hispanic. I interviewed both men, for even small decisions of personnel were important to me and the lower officers had not wanted to touch this particular case. I made my decision in favor of Valencia. He was designated squad leader and was promoted to sergeant.

Heller was furious. He claimed I had discriminated against him as a Saxon. Actually, I had seen that however well qualified Heller was otherwise, he was unsuitable as a leader of men, because he had little sensitivity to the needs of others. This was a largely Hispanic squad that would be more responsive to one of its own, and Valencia spoke Spanish. He could not compete with Heller physically, but leadership is more than physical. He would do a better job, and his squad would have higher morale and fewer gripes and superior performance.

However, a sizable segment of my unit did not see it that way, including many Hispanics. Sergeant Smith explained it to me succinctly: “We're training to go out and fight pirates, right, sir? Pirates are tough, so we need tough leaders to match them, not just good organizers or nice guys. Heller is tough.”

“Would you have given him the job?”

Smith laughed. “No way, sir! You can't train men by breaking heads! But that's the way some of the men see it. There'll be discord, sir.”

I called in Lieutenant Commander Repro. He had a spaced-out attitude, but he was functional. That addiction bothered me increasingly, and I knew I could not forever postpone taking action. “Are you familiar with the Heller/Valencia case?”

“Certainly, sir.” Personalities were in his bailiwick.

“What's your advice?”

“You'll never satisfy Heller without giving him promotion and responsibility, and he's not fit for it. You need to find a slot for him that has rank and responsibility without direct command of men. Is there such a spot?”

I looked at Sergeant Smith. “Is there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you must also satisfy his pride,” Repro continued. “He's so angry, and so are a number of others in the unit. They think you have been unfair, and they're taking flak from their peers in other units about reverse discrimination. You've got to give them some satisfaction.”

Leadership has its limitations. “How?”

“A challenge match, sir.” Repro's brow furrowed. “Odd, though, that Heller even made an issue, when he could simply have transferred out. Something's not rebounding.”

A steel ball not favoring the pattern; I knew what he meant. But his advice seemed good. That was why I arranged a challenge match with Corporal Heller.

We took off our marks of rank and set it up as a public training exercise, with the rest of the unit watching. We started at the center of the ship, back to back in the fashion of a duel. We each carried a foil, a pugil stick, and a bomb in addition to our standard gear, attached by snap-free fasteners. They looked clumsy but added only about fifteen pounds to the thirty-five-pound suit assemblies. We could handle the weight, especially in free-fall and with suit-jets to propel us.

This match was well refereed; just about every enlisted man wanted to see the old man defend his turf, so to speak. (Age has nothing to do with the designation; it is the slang for any unit commander.) It was not necessary for me to win to retain their respect; it was necessary for me to show the same qualities I required of them: skill, courage, stamina, and fighting spirit. But if I lost, I would have to appoint Heller squad leader, and that would be a minor disaster. There was also the matter of pride.

Sergeant Smith gave the command: “Move out!”

We bounced away from each other and floated toward opposite airlocks. I was the Raider, and Heller was the Defender; these roles had been chosen by lot. It was my job to disable the enemy ship, and his to protect it.

I spun the wheels and worked the handles of the inner panel of the lock. Everything was manual, of course; airlocks are too important to trust to powered machines. There was an art to navigating an airlock swiftly, and it was important now; the first man out had a definite advantage.

The portal opened; I jumped down in, for there was gee here at the rim of the ship. Gee, of course, is more than an abbreviation for gravity; it means weight in space, in whatever manner it occurs. I closed and secured the inner panel, then struck the pressure-release valve. The air of the lock bled out rapidly into space. This might be considered wasteful, but it was fast, and a powered air pump would be suspect during battle conditions, as well as slower. What use to save a little air and lose a ship? Simplicity and speed were of the essence.

My suit became rigid as the pressure dropped, but the hinges in the limbs kept it flexible where it needed to be. Civilian suits are flexible all over, and the really good ones fit like a second skin; in fact, a healthy young woman can be spectacular in space, the more so because she's untouchable. But the military suits were old-fashioned, bulbous-limbed, and heavy and rigid between the hinges. But they were cheap and reliable, and they provided a convenient cushion of air around the body that enabled a person to remain in space as long as his oxygen held out, and sometimes that was critically important.

I dropped out as the outer panel opened, caught one of the external handholds, and flipped over to plant my magnetic boots against the hull. These boots certainly would have been useful when I was working on the hull of the refugee bubble, so long ago! Then I had had to depend on a tether to keep me from drifting free in space, and it had been nervous business.

The panel slid back into place automatically, spring-loaded. I stepped on the fiber panel, where the force of magnetism was muted, and squatted. I waited for the buoy to come into sight; the spin of the ship brought me around to it in a few seconds. Then I leaped as hard as I could toward that buoy. I seemed to depart the ship at an angle, but this was mostly illusion, because the ship was spinning under me. Over me; I was falling away from it. I had compensated for the tangent of my centrifugal departure when I jumped; I was right on course for the buoy, which was two miles away. I was traveling at close to forty miles an hour, so would reach it in about three minutes. The buoy represented the halfway point in the course; in an actual mission I would make a jump correction here and home in on the enemy ship. This time it was trickier; I had to loop around the buoy and return to the Copperhead , now redesignated as the Enemy Craft. That meant using my suit-jets to kill my inertia and get me moving back. That could be awkward, but my officer training had prepared me well for this. I could make the loop with fuel to spare.

Now I spotted Heller. He was way behind me and proceeding slowly, no more than twenty-five miles per hour. Good enough.

I approached the buoy, oriented, and used my jet to decelerate. I may have mentioned that technically there is no such thing as deceleration, only acceleration, but the old concepts remain useful even when erroneous. Why say negative acceleration when deceleration makes it so much clearer? At any rate, I was braking, reducing my velocity relative to the buoy.

I came to a “halt” in space just beyond the buoy where three enlisted men, referees, perched in their suits. They saluted cheerfully, and I returned it, though no salutes were required in this circumstance. I nudged to the side, then accelerated again, having looped it. The enlistees waved. Heller was only now coming close.

Then I remembered: He was the Defender. He didn't have to loop the buoy; he just had to defend the ship he started from. He had come out slowly not to race me but to stop me, and he had saved all his fuel. Now he was meeting me, and my challenge had just begun. All he had to do was grab me and haul me out to space; if I used my jet to oppose his, my fuel would run out before his, and I would not be able to reach the target craft.

My best bet was to outmaneuver him: to get past and accelerate so that he could not catch up. But now he used his jet, angling to intercept me. I could not stay on a straight-line course.

I tilted my body and jetted to the side. Heller tilted and jetted, again on an interception course.

Maneuvering in space in a suit takes skill; I had it, but so did he. In fact, he was better at it than most enlisted men were; he must have had more aptitude for this than our supervisory personnel had judged.

Why hadn't he transferred to a unit specializing in this sort of thing? Inexorably he closed on me.

He had equivalent skill and more fuel remaining than I did; I could not avoid him. I would have to fight.

I reached over my shoulder and drew my foil. This was a long, thin, round-bladed sword with a button on the end. On a real mission a rapier would be used, the sharp point being used to puncture the enemy's suit. This was the manner that swords came to space, anachronistic as it might seem: There was hardly a more efficient method to dispatch a person in space than simply poking a hole in his suit. Small hand-lasers could be devastating on bare flesh, but the material of military space suits resisted this, spreading the heat rapidly and dissipating it harmlessly. A ship-mounted laser could readily take out a suited man, of course, but a hand-laser was a mere toy in comparison. It was not true that a mirrored surface could stop a laser, as many folk believed; the ray ignored the polish and melted the backing, as it was not strictly a visual phenomenon. A mirror might help deflect a glancing shot, and some suits were polished with this in mind. But only hand-lasers made glancing shots; a ship-laser could send a beam several feet in diameter, bathing the whole suit, and there was no defense. The heat had nowhere to dissipate to. Of course, it was uneconomic to take out a single man with a ship-laser; such power is by no means cheap. So the net effect was to eliminate lasers from this action. Small projectile weapons were notoriously unreliable in a vacuum, even those supposedly designed for it. They tended to misfire or explode in the hand, and the recoil could set a man spinning wildly. Thrown knives or bombs depended on the accuracy of the throwers and could be dodged if any distance was involved. So it came down to the recoverable sword point, which had no permanent recoil and could be used as often as needed. Not the slashing type of sword; that was too easy to parry or blunt, and was too unbalancing to swing unless the user had good anchorage. But the direct thrust of a rapier was difficult to avoid or counter.

So we did indeed have old-fashioned swordplay in modern space, and swordsmanship was a viable Navy skill.

The foil, of course, had a blunted point. The button of the tip would, when depressed with sufficient force, complete an electrical circuit that registered as a score. A score anywhere on a space suit suggested a puncture, and that, in a real combat situation with sharp points, would be lethal. It did not have to be a vital area of the body, and no blood had to flow; a sleeve puncture was just about as fatal as a heart puncture. A pinhole leak could be patched before significant deflation occurred, but a sword puncture would blow out the suit too rapidly for remedy, and if it didn't, surely the victim would be too busy trying to stop the leak to continue the fight and would be easy prey for the next strike.