Stark's Crusade (12 page)

Stark nodded. "And the rest of the world will cheer them on, because that's the nightmare we've all managed to avoid so far, right? So, no rocks. Sorry, Chief."

"That's okay. It's not like I wanted to do it."

"Thanks for bringing up the possibility anyway. I need to know every option. Okay, that's all I got. Looks like things may be coming to a head, military-wise."

"What do you mean?" Manley asked.

"I mean either we beat these things or they'll beat us. And robotic combatants cost big time, so the Pentagon must be putting everything it's got into paying for 'em. They won't have anything left to throw at us after this."

Gordasa smiled. "So maybe the Lunar War will finally end?"

"Maybe. Maybe just from mutual exhaustion, but I can live with that. Let's hope when it does end we're all still around." Stark sat silent as his staff members rose and headed out, some talking quietly and the others silent with their thoughts, until only Chief Wiseman was left, hesitating near the door. "You got something else, Chief?"

"Nah. I, uh . . ."

Stark measured Wiseman's uncertainty, then waved her back to a seat. "Why don't you hang around for a minute? We don't get much time to talk, and I've never gotten to know many sailors."

"Lucky you. Mind if I splice the main brace?"

"If I knew what that meant I'd tell you if I minded."

She chuckled, waving toward the drink dispenser one of the previous commanding generals had ordered installed in the conference room. "It means having a drink. Booze."

"Sure. Have a beer. Get me one, too, if you don't mind."

"No problem."

Stark stared quizzically at his beer after Wiseman brought it. "What's having a drink have to do with . . . whatever you said?"

"Splicing the main brace? Beats the hell out of me," Wiseman admitted, taking a long drink. "It's just traditional to call it that. Like, you know, announcing the smoking lamp is out at taps."

"Smoking lamp? What's that, some kind of light?"

"Beats me. But every night on every ship we announce the smoking lamp is out, and every morning we announce it's lit."

"You don't even know what the thing is and you're turning it on and off every day?" Stark shook his head, taking a drink himself. "I'll never understand sailors."

She grinned back, then turned suddenly somber. "It's tradition, Stark. Don't have to mean a damn thing, and probably doesn't anymore, but it gives us structure. It says we're a warship, says we do things our way, says some things never really change. Hopefully the good things, but you never know." Wise-man stopped talking abruptly, then took another long drink. "Man, this is lousy beer."

"You don't have to drink it."

"I didn't say it was
that
lousy." She sat silent for a moment, eyes suddenly shadowed.

"What's buggin' you, Chief?" Stark asked. "Something's got you unhappy. Anything I can help with?"

"I doubt it." Wiseman smiled crookedly, as if at an inner joke. "I've just been thinking how important tradition can be, even when it don't make sense. You ever worry about that, Stark? That maybe we're tossing out tradition and the whole shebang is going to blow up around us because of it?"

"No. I don't. Not for that reason, anyway. We didn't choose to do this, Chief. We got forced into it." He held up a hand as Wiseman started to speak. "Wait a sec. You're worried about tradition. I understand that. It is important. Damned important. But there's two kinds of tradition. That's what I think. There's traditions that hold you together, that make your unit or your service special in your mind, that keep you going when you ought to give up. Right? But there's another kind of tradition, one that doesn't care about looking out for each other or making things work well or helping you keep fighting when any fool would cut and run. No, that's the kind of tradition that's nothing but 'we did, so you have to do it.' Or 'it's always been that way.' Or 'you have to do it that way, because that's how it's always been done.' Or 'you don't get any input on this because somebody a million miles away already decided it.' You know what I mean. The traditions that bureaucrats in uniform and idiots and sadists use to justify doing stupid things to good people."

Wiseman's smile grew a little crookeder. "I know a few of those."

"You mean the traditions or the idiots?"

"Both." The smile vanished, replaced by thoughtfulness. "You're right. I never really thought about it that way, but that's how it works, don't it? Chief Gunners Mate Melendez, my second in command, he told me once about some old army, the Brits I think, who were trying to get their artillery to fire faster. So the Brits had some specialists come in to analyze how they fired the big guns, and after they'd watched a few firings the specialists said 'how come those two guys on the gun team always stand over to the side at attention before the guns can fire?' Nobody knew, they just knew you had to do that. They finally found some ancient retired gunner and asked him. Know what he said?"

Stark shrugged. "Can't imagine."

"He said those two guys were supposed to hold the horses," Wiseman laughed. Stark stared back, obviously confused. "The guns used to be pulled into action by horses, and when the guns fired somebody had to hold the horses to keep the bang from scaring them off." She smothered another laugh in a quick drink. "The horses were long gone, but every gun still had two guys ready to hold them."

"Man, that
is
dumb," Stark laughed along this time. "You ever hear Stacey Yurivan's story about some old Russian ruler? Catherine or Kate or something."

"What about her?"

"Seems one spring day she was walking on the lawn of her castle or whatever and she saw some pretty flower that'd just bloomed. So she told her people to put a sentry on that spot to make sure nobody stepped on the flower. Well, maybe a hundred years later some other Russian ruler looks out at the same lawn and wonders for the first time why there's a sentry standing out in the middle of it. Turns out nobody ever told anyone to stop posting a sentry once the flower died, so there'd been a soldier posted there ever since, rain or shine, summer and winter, guarding the spot where a flower'd once been."

"Hah! Sounds like something our own bosses would've done." Chief Wiseman sobered again, sipping her beer slowly, eyes distant. "Yeah. There's dumb stuff. But the good traditions are important."

"The good traditions
are
important. And no matter what else happens, we're going to keep 'em. What got you thinking about 'em? Anything in particular?"

"My birthday." She quirked a small smile at Stark's reaction. "Don't bother singing me 'Happy Birthday.' The only thing I celebrate about birthdays now is the fact that I've survived long enough for another one. No, it just got me thinking about my family. My two brothers joined the Navy, too. Of course. What else you gonna do when your parents are Navy?" She still smiled, but her eyes were looking somewhere into the past. "We'd have some kinda bar crawls when we were in port together. People used to call us the Three Wisemen."

"Used to?"

"Yeah. Joe died when his ship got nailed during a heavy action up here. The USS
John Hancock.
Whole thing blew to hell while she was covering some transports. They shoulda run, but they had to save those other ships, right? We didn't have to worry about burials for any of the crew 'cause there weren't any bodies left to speak of." She took another drink, her face shading into sadness. "They awarded the ship and crew a Presidential Unit Commendation. Posthumously. Fighting their ship to the end in the finest tradition of the Naval Service. All that crap. But they did their duty, didn't they? Good ship. Good tradition. My brother did us proud." She sat silent a moment longer. "Now it's the Two Wisemen. So far."

"Sorry."

"I heard you're the only mil in your family, Stark, that all the rest are civs. That right?"

"That's right."

"Does that make it any easier?"

Stark shook his head, frowning. "Does it make
what
any easier?"

"Ordering people into combat. Knowing some of 'em will die. I mean, since they ain't relatives, and since you didn't grow up with 'em."

"They're still friends. No, it's not easier at all. Maybe harder."

Wiseman smiled again. "Reminds me of another joke, one my grandfather told me. Back when the Russians controlled Poland, in the twentieth century, I guess, some Russian went to Poland and asks a native whether he thinks of the Russians as his friends or his family. The Pole says family, of course, because you get to choose your friends."

Stark laughed. "There's a lot of truth in that, ain't there? But family's still important. Where's your other brother?"

"Wet Navy, now. One small blessing. I won't run into him up here. He always told me I was crazy for staying a space surfer. Said ships ought to float on water, not on nothing."

"I guess he's got a point. The Air Force always said the same thing, right?"

"Yeah, sure," Chief Wiseman snorted. "When they were trying to claim they should control all ops in space. But they couldn't figure out how to build luxury accommodations for their pilots up here, so they left the job to sailors. We're used to livin' miserable." She drained her beer, then stood. "Thanks for listening, boss."

"That's part of the job."

"Yeah. But some people are better at it than others. You ain't a bad boss for a mud crawler."

"Thanks, Chief. You ain't bad for a squid."

"Says you," Wiseman snorted again, then saluted. "By your leave, sir."

Stark stood as well, returning the salute. "Take care of yourself, Chief. Sure you don't wanna talk anymore?"

"No, thanks. Besides, I gotta get going if I'm gonna be back with our little fleet in time for eight o'clock reports."

"Eight o'clock? You mean twenty-hundred?" Stark asked, converting the civilian time measurement into military time. "You got plenty of time 'til then."

"No, I don't. The Navy always holds eight o'clock reports at seven-thirty."

"Then why are they called eight—? This is like that crazy lamp thing, ain't it?"

"Sort of. It's a Navy thing. You wouldn't understand." She saluted again, almost cheerfully, then left, practically running into Vic Reynolds on her way out.

Vic glanced curiously after Wiseman. "You guys planning some special op?"

"Nah. Just doing some personnel counseling."

Reynolds sat, looking concerned now. "Does the Chief have some problems?"

"Nah. Just the usual. Worried about things. She needed a little hand-holding and a sympathetic ear. You know the drill."

"The same one I give you every time you get depressed? Yeah, I'm familiar with it."

"That's because you're a decent leader," Stark stated. "I hope I am, too. Thank God we can talk to each other when things get rough."

"I guess. And, speaking of leadership responsibilities . . ."

"Oh, man. Now what?"

Vic pursed her lips in thought for a moment. "How do I say this? We're winning and morale is great, but the troops are edgy."

"Yeah. I've felt it, too. Can't quite put my finger on it, but something's wrong. You got any ideas?"

"A couple." Reynolds leaned back, staring upward where rough metal shielded and armored the ceiling. "Part of it is the old end game question. You've given us a reason to fight, now, besides just surviving, but the problem with holding yourself up as a symbol is there's no way to know if it's working."

"A lot of people are trying to find out, Vic. The demonstrations back home are getting bigger. The government's been tossing mercs at us, and now they're cooking up those Jabberwocks, so you know they're worried. Stacey and the civ security people keep spotting attempts to intrude on our systems or plant worms. Oh, yeah, and the government's propaganda mills keep churning out stories about how horrible we are. If you go by how hard our enemies are trying to beat us and discredit us, we must look like a real threat to them."

"I know. But even if it works, we don't know how long it'll take. We've been fighting up here for what seems like forever already. No one wants to keep fighting a day longer than we have to."

Stark nodded. "I wish I knew the answer to that. Hell, I wish I could end the war right now. All I can say is the civs in the Colony are working like crazy to stir up hate and discontent back home with the government. Sarafina's been keeping you briefed on their efforts, right?"

"Uh-huh. There's no way the government can totally block the civs' ability to download info into systems back on the World, so they can't stop our own propaganda from getting through. But she doesn't know for sure how well any of it's working or if or when it'll succeed, either. But then she's not being asked to be shot at while she waits for the answer." Vic held up a hand to forestall Stark's words. "I know. Cheryl Sarafina's a decent human being, and I respect her judgment, which I never thought I'd say about a civ, but it's a fact. There's a different level of stress. Still, I don't think that issue is entirely the problem."

"Huh. What else, Vic? What're your guts telling you?"

"They're telling me our friends back home are up to something we haven't spotted. Spreading their own brand of hate and discontent up here. Or trying to, anyway."

"Wouldn't surprise me in the least."

"Stacey got anything?"

Stark shook his head. "Nah. She's worried, though, for the same reason you are. Stace figures the spooks back home have got to be trying to cause trouble up here, and she hasn't been able to spot it, not with the tools we've got."

"We could try some loyalty screens . . ."

"No. That won't happen. I start loyalty screens, and it'll hurt us more than anything the spooks are trying to do. I've got to trust my people, Vic."

She nodded, her face unhappy. "I guess you're right about loyalty screens. But some people don't deserve trust, Ethan. This isn't like before, when you could know every person who worked for you in your squad. There's people in this little army of ours that you and I never heard of, let alone know personally. And you know soldiers aren't angels." Vic reached to activate the nearest display panel, punching in some codes. "Like here. We've had almost a hundred grunts hauled up on charges for using that new synth drug, Rapture. Somebody's making it, and somebody's selling it, but we haven't nailed them, yet."