Passage at Arms (5 page)

The sub-Lieutenant kicked a floater. “Looks as good as any of them. Throw your stuff in and let’s go.”

We had to cross two-thirds of a continent. A quarter of the way round Canaan’s southern hemisphere. I slept twice. We stopped for fuel several times. The sub-Lieutenant kept the floater screaming all the time he was at the controls. My turns, I kept it down to a sedate 250 kph.

He wakened me once to show me a city. “They called it Mecklenburg. After some city on Old Earth. Population a hundred thousand. Biggest town for a thousand klicks.”

Mecklenburg lay in ruins. Threads of campfire smoke drifted up. “Old folks with deep roots, I guess. They wouldn’t pull out. They’re safe now. Nothing left to blast.” He kicked the floater into motion.

Later, he asked, “What’s the name of that town where you want off?”

“Kent.”

He punched up something on the floater’s little info screen. “It’s still there. Must not be much.”

“I don’t know. Never been there.”

“Well, it can’t be shit, that close to T-ville and still standing. Hell, you’d think they’d take it out just for spite.”

“The way our boys do?”

“I guess.” He sounded sour. “This war is a big pain in the ass.”

That was the one time I didn’t like my companion. He didn’t say that the way the grunts and spikes do. He was pissed because the war had disturbed his social life.

I said nothing. The attitude is common among those who see little or no combat. He viewed the brush coming in as part of a gentleman’s game, a passage of arms in a knight’s spring jousts.

We roared into Kent in mid-afternnon. Kent was a sleepy village that might have been teleported whole from Old Earth’s past. A few scruffy Guards represented the present. They looked like locals combining military responsibilities with their normal routine.

“You know the address, I could drop you off, Lieutenant.”

“That’s all right. They said ask the Guards. Somebody will pick me up. Right here is fine. Thanks for the lift.”

“Suit yourself.” He gave me a long look after I dropped into the unpaved street. “Lieutenant.... You’ve got balls. Climbers. Good luck.” He slammed the hatch and lurched away. The last I saw, he was a streak heading toward Turbeyville like a moth to flame.

Good luck, he said. Like I’d damned well need it. Well, good luck to you too, courier. May you become wealthy on the Canaan run.

That was when I started wondering if maybe I hadn’t wangled my way into a hexenkessel.

I spoke with a Guards woman. She made a call. Ten minutes later a woman eased a strange, rattling contraption up to me. It was a locally produced vehicle of venerable years, propelled by internal combustion. My nose couldn’t decide if the fuel was alcohol or of petroleum derivation. We’d used both in the floater.

“Jump in, Lieutenant. I’m Marie. He was taking a shower, so I came. Be a nice surprise.”

“Didn’t they tell him I was coming?”

“He wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”

It took ten minutes to reach the house among the trees. Pines, I think they were. Imported and gene-spliced with something local so they could slide into the ecology. Marie never shut up, and never said a word that interested me. She must have decided I was a sullen, sour old fart.

My friend wasn’t surprised. He ambushed me at the door, enveloped me in a huge bear hug. “Back in harness, eh? And looking good, too. See they bumped you to Lieutenant.” He didn’t mention my leg. He sensed that that was verboten.

I’m touchy about the injury. It destroyed my career.

“Boat get in early?”

“I don’t know. The courier always went full out. Maybe so.”

“Little private business on the side?” He grinned. He was older than I remembered him, and older than I expected. The grin took off ten years. “So let’s have a drink and confound Marie with lies about Academy.”

He meant what he said, and yet... There was a hollowness to his words, as though he had to strain to put them together in the acceptable forms. He acted like a man who’d been out of circulation so long he’d forgotten his social devices. I found that intriguing.

I grew more intrigued during the following few days. I was soon aware that an old friend had become a stranger, that this man only wore the weathered husk of the friend I’d known in Academy. And he realized that he had few points of congruency left with me. Those were a sad few days. We tried hard, and the harder we tried the more obvious it became. was his homeworld. He’d requested duty there. His request had been granted, with an assignment to Climbers. He’d been home for slightly under two years, done seven Climber missions, and now had his own ship. He’d been executive officer aboard an attack destroyer before his transfer. He’d worked his way back up.

He wouldn’t talk about that side of his life, and that disturbed me. He was never a talker but had always been willing to share his experiences if you asked the right questions. Now there were no right questions. He wanted to pretend that his military life didn’t exist.

Just a few short years since we’d last met. And in the interim they’d peeled his skin and stuffed somebody else inside.

He and Marie fought like animals. I could detect no positive feelings between them. She’d screech and yell and throw things almost every time the both of them were out of sight. As if I had no ears. As if my not seeing kept it from being real. Sometimes the screeching lasted half the night. He didn’t fight back, insofar as I could tell. I never heard his voice raised. Once, in my presence, while we walked through the pines, he muttered, “She doesn’t know any better. She’s just an Old Earth whore.”

I asked no questions and he didn’t explain. I supposed she was one of the sluts they’d grabbed early and had scattered around for the morale of the men, and had found unnecessary in a mixed-sex service. All heart, our do-good leaders. They’d dropped the women where they were.

Maybe Marie had a right to be hostile.

Three days of unpleasantness. Then, well ahead of schedule, my friend told me, “Time to go. Pick the things you want to take. We’ll leave after dark. West of here it’s better to travel at night.” The quarreling had become too much for him. He wanted out.

He didn’t admit that. He simply made his announcement. When Marie got the word, the gloves came off. She no longer kept the vitriol private.

I didn’t blame him for running.

A young Guardswoman brought us a Navy floater after sundown. We boarded under Marie’s fiercest barrage yet. My friend never looked back.

After we dropped the Guardswoman at her headquarters, I asked, “Why don’t you throw her out? You don’t owe her anything.”

He didn’t respond for a long time. Instead, he lit his pipe and puffed his way through. Midway, he said, “We’ll pick up our First Watch Officer and a new kid. Going to start him off in Ship’s Services. Academy boy. Don’t get many of those anymore.”

Later still, in snatches, he told me what he thought of our ship’s officers. He didn’t say a lot. Thumbnail sketches. He didn’t want to talk about his command. He responded to my earlier question just before we collected his First Watch Officer.

“Somebody owes her. They put the hose to her. She’ll never get off this rock. Might as well use my place.”

What can you say to that? Call him a sucker for strays? I don’t think so. I’d call it a case of one man’s using otherwise unimportant resources to rectify one of this universe’s countless injustices. I think that’s the way he pictured it. I don’t think thumbscrews would have forced him to admit it.

The First Watch Officer was Stefan Yanevich. Lieutenant. Another Canaan native. A long, lanky man with ginger hair and eyes that sometimes looked gray, sometimes pale blue. Thin, sharp features and sleepy eyes. A soft drawl when he spoke, which was seldom. He was as reticent as my friend the Commander.

He was waiting outside his quarters, alone, and looked eager to go. But there was no eagerness in the way he slung his duffel aboard.

He had long, slim fingers that moved while he gave me his biography. Twenty-five. His Academy class had been two behind ours. He’d volunteered for Canaan because it was his homeworld. This would be his sixth mission.

The Commander thought well of him. He would have his own ship next mission.

He accepted me without question. I supposed the Commander had vouched for me. He didn’t seem interested in why I was here, or who I used to be. Again, I assumed the Commander had filled him in.

The Old Man said, “Next stop, the kid.”

Yanevich became interested. “Met him yet? What’s he like?”

“Came up last week. Squared away. Shows promise. We’ll like him.” There was an edge to his voice. It said it didn’t matter if anyone liked the new man, but it would be a nice bonus if he turned out okay.

Ensign Bradley was as quiet as the others, but more naturally so. He wasn’t hiding from anything. When he did speak, he successfully downplayed his own lack of experience. He drew both the Commander and First Watch Officer out more skillfully than I had. I pegged him as a very bright and personable young man, when he turned himself on. He wasn’t a Canaanite. In an aside to me, he said, “I flipped a coin when I got my bars. Heads or tails, Fleet or Climbers. Came up heads. The Fleet.” He smiled a broad, boyish smile, the kind to win a mother’s love. “So I went best two out of three and three out of five. Voila! Here I am.”

“Going to make Admiral in a year,” the Old Man said.

“Might take longer than that.” Bradley’s grin weakened.

“What I don’t understand is why they sent me out here instead of to Fleet Two. Admiral Tannian is self-sufficient.”

“Maybe too self-sufficient,” I suggested. “Some people in Luna Command think he’s too independent. He’s got his own little empire out here.”

The Commander glanced back. “That something you know, or just speculation?”

“Half and half.”

Yanevich grunted. My friend lapsed into indifference. Later, he said, “T-ville coming up. First Watch Officer, I’ll drop you and Bradley at the north gate. I’ll take my friend sight-seeing.”

Earlier, there had been a big raid. The sky over Turbeyville had been filled with ships and missiles. I’d expressed an interest in seeing the aftermath. Once I did, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

Njvy has two headquarters in-system. One is beneath Turbeyville. The other is buried deep inside Canaan’s major moon. Canaan has two satellites, tiny TerVeen and the big moon, which has no other name. Just the moon. I was glad of a chance to poke around one headquarters before the mission.

I roamed alone. The Commander, First Watch Officer, and Ship’s Services Officer were busy with what looked like make-work, preparing for the mission. I found myself more welcome among the PR-sensitive staff at Climber Command. They arranged interviews with people whose names were household words on the Inner Worlds. Real heroes of the Fleet. Men and women who’d survived their ten missions. They were a depressing bunch. I began to develop a sour outlook myself, and to wonder just how bright I’d been, asking to join a Climber patrol.

Then the Commander turned up at my room in Transient Officers’ Quarters. “Our last night here. Heading for the Pits tomorrow. The rest of us are going slumming. Want to come along?”

“I don’t know.” I’d tried the O clubs. They were filled with dreary staff types. Their atmosphere was both boring and stultifying. There’s nothing deadlier than a congregation of conscientious bureaucrats.

“We’re going a different place. Private club. Climber people and guests only. The real front-line warriors.” His smile was sarcastic. “Give you a chance to meet our astrogator, Westhause. Just turned up. Good man, but he talks too much.”

“Why not?” I had yet to meet any Climber people but those with whom I was traveling. The others might be less taciturn.

“Called the Pregnant Dragon, for reasons lost in the trackless deserts of time.” He grinned at my raised eyebrow. “Don’t wear your best. Sometimes it gets rowdy.”

Something came up which demanded the Commander’s attention, so we arrived late. But not late enough. I should’ve stayed behind.

That night witnessed the destruction of a hundred cherished cities in my land of illusions.

The Dragon was up near the surface, in an old subbasement. I heard it long before I saw it, and when I saw it, I asked, “This’s an Officers’ Club?”,

“Climber people only,” Westhause said, grinning. “Down people couldn’t handle it.”

Four hundred people had packed themselves into a space that had served two hundred before the war. Odors hit me like a surprise fist in the face. Alcohol. Vomit. Tobacco. Urine. Drugs. All backed by mind-shattering noise. The customers had to shout to make themselves heard over the efforts of an abominable local band. Civilian waiters and waitresses cursed their ways through the press, getting groped by both sexes. I guess the tips made up for the indignities. Climber people had nothing else to do with their pay.

Athwart the doorway, lying like some fallen angel seduced by the sins of Gomorrah, was a full Commander wearing Muslim Chaplain’s insignia. Smiling, he snored in a pool of vomit. Nobody seemed inclined to move or clean him. Conforming to custom, we stepped over his inert form. Not a meter beyond, two male officers were playing kissy-face huggy-bear. I’m afraid I gasped.

I mean, it does go on, but right inside the front door of the 0 club?

The Commander grunted, “Hang on to your nuts. There’s more fun to come.” He halted two steps inside, ignoring the lovers. Fists on hips, he stared about as though springing a surprise inspection. Having glimpsed what was going on, I expected an explosion.

He threw back his head and cut loose with a great jackass bray of laughter.

And Yanevich bellowed, “Make a hole for the best goddamned Climber in the Fleet, you yellow-assed scum.”

The cacophony declined maybe one decibel. People looked us over. Some waved. Some shouted. Some moved toward us. Friends, I supposed.

A tiny china doll, ethereally beautiful in makeup which exaggerated her aristocratic Manchu features, slid beneath our elbows as lithely as a weasel. A meter away she paused and, eyes sparkling, mimicked the Commander’s stance.