by Ben Wilson
“We are in a nasty business, Bophendze. A nasty business. Humor is how I cope.”
“You volunteered, right?”
“Volunteering doesn't make it any less nasty, or difficult. I figure I was born for this.”
Bophendze started to ask why he went by Angel. He learned his name was Spetaf Korzen, but everybody called him Angel. After a few beats of watching Angel he started to get bored. Bophenze took his dose of Sloth for the long-trip. As he drifted off, he wondered how nasty a business it could be flying a cargo/troop shuttle.
* * *
Litovio - Sabanoi
Ambrose Litovio turned his head up at the warm, blue Sabana sky. The sun glowed red through his closed eyes. He could not have asked for better shore leave weather than he was enjoying. For three days he relived the leisure life of his childhood home. The solace of the plantation was undermined by the distant sound of tractors working the back five-thousand hectares. It reminded him of when his father punished him for driving the tractor like one of the servants, though the memory of what happened to the servant for allowing him to escaped him. Even pleasant memories have a dark lining.
The servants kept the tractors moving, even at this distance the motion was apparent to his trained ears. As a young teen his father Marsieno would send Litovio out during night plowing to listen whether the tractors were running. It was a chore he constantly griped about, though never to his father. Only as an adult did Litovio understand his father's efforts to Litovio from adopting the mind of a soft aristocrat. ‘Never rely on a servant's testimony when you can verify yourself. Keep your boots on the ground, and not on the porch.’ I wonder if he knew how that advice would play out?
Litovio's father Marsileno had gone to the capital for business before Litovio came home. He enjoyed the peace of an empty house. The several servants running around hardly counted. Litovio did not feel the dread that realization might have once had. The Naval Academy had prepared him for command and leadership. Courage, candor, commitment were watch words the Naval Academy taught. Few students lived by them. During his first tour on the Imperial Battleship (IBS) Kuvalis, Litovio watched with disappointment how those words were paid feeble lip service. He chose to wrap himself in those words rather than flee from them. That decision would make this a difficult homecoming.
He strolled to the veranda, where a wicker chair and table awaited him. He stomped as he walked up the steps, partly to get the dirt out from the treads of his boot, and partly to warn the servants that he was back. He looked back over the front field and stretched. Satisfied with another morning stroll, Litovio sat down. The wicker creaked slightly.
As if on cue, a servant came out with a pitcher of ziemann juice and a glass on a tray. Litovio barely noticed as the tray was set down on the table. Years of servitude trained this servant—Litovio could not remember his name—to be almost completely silent. The juice poured into his glass.
Litovio held his hand up absentmindedly. The servant gently set the glass in his hand. Praise be that I am not a soft aristocrat. Litovio scoffed.
He sipped the juice carefully. Depending on the servant the juice could be quite bitter. His favorite servant Ellis was discharged not long after he left for the Naval Academy and this was Litovio's first visit to the plantation since. He winced at the bitterness. “Needs salt,” he said, setting the glass down on the table. He waited nonchalantly for the servant to leave and hurry back with the salt needed to cut the bitterness.
He could faintly make out in dust stirring in the distance. The familiar pattern told him it was a closing hovercraft. Despite his courage, he swallowed. Judging by how fast it closed, his father Marsileno would be on that hovercraft. The speed warned Litovio that his plan to ease his father into his change of heart was spoiled by precognition. I should have known he would know before I saw him. How can I pretend to lead men and ships into combat if I can't even confront my own father? Litovio fought the urge to leave his seat and hide in his room as he did when he was a boy.
The dust cloud grew steadily larger. Litovio decided to make the better of the time and finish his drink. The beats passed by with increasing anxiety, but at last the hovercraft arrived at the plantation.
As the hovercraft settled near the front porch, the servants hurried out to greet it. The door opened and Marsileno was helped out. His lean frame carried the weight of his true authority well. A servant eased him out of his town jacket, while another brushed dirt, real or imagined, from Marsileno's pants. Two more buffed his shoes briskly. As the first set of servants retreated, another approached with ziemann juice. Litovio knew it would be properly sweetened.
Marsileno calmly walked toward the house. Few could tell when Marsileno was upset, so placid was his face. Litovio, however, long learned to loop past the calm and see the ambition and rage that was behind it. He stood and waited for Marsileno to speak.
“It seems you fail to appreciate the lengths to which this family goes for your betterment.”
Litovio tried to maintain his composure. Years at the academy helped. “Sir, I certainly appreciate your generosity but I—”
“Do you? Appreciate my generosity?” His father waggled his head as he aways did. “Yet you withdraw from the Imperial Navy after your first assignment to join that bunch of pirates?” The derision in Marsileno was clear in his intonation.
“They're not a bunch of pirates,” Litovio said.
“Are they not? Boy, the Postal Marines are supposed to secure trade corridors within Imperial space. The local commanders do so by selectively ‘taxing’ trade ships. They have even been known to pirate shipping themselves.”
“That's not fair. They don't pirate.” And I am not a boy, I am an officer and a gentleman. He managed not to say that, knowing it would reap greater wrath.
“Don't they? Of all people you presume to challenge my grasp of the facts?”
Despite himself, Litovio clinched his jaw. In doing so, he knew he had failed his father's first test. He had expressed anger, no matter how slight. Marsileno taught it was one thing to feel angry, it was another to show it. “You can't change what's happened. I pulled your favor and converted it into a billet with the Postal Service.”
“I can change that.”
One thing Litovio had learned in the Navy was the value of naked aggression. “But you won't. You wouldn't let yourself be so embarrassed that your ‘pride and joy’ son, the first of your second wife, rejected your plum assignment in the Navy. I don't belong in the Navy, Father. I belong in the Postal Marines. Yes, some of them engage in black marketing and piracy. And extortion. And the occasional hijacking. But not all of them. I parlayed my hard work in the Navy to pick a system where the Postmaster is known for ferreting out graft and corruption. I'm going to jump into his clique and help clean up the Postal Service.”
Marsileno laughed. “What? You honestly think that you can single-handedly reform an entire enterprise like the Posties? Fine. If you are that naïve then you belong in the Postal Marines.”
Litovio's face reddened, display of emotion be damned. A part of him knew that it was foolish to think he could reform a large organization. The Navy was gigantic compared to the Postal Service. He stood no chance of reforming the Navy, but at least he could try to reform part of the Postal Service. Even reforming one system would be a major life accomplishment for it meant that he had ascended to Postmaster without corruption. Then he could replace corrupt subordinates and promote other like-minded officers. Maybe not in this generation, but he would leave a mark on the Postal Service.
He watched his father walk up the stairs and into the house. Marsileno had stopped looking at him, ignoring he was even there. Litovio sat down and listened to the amblik barking in the distance.
* * *
Bophendze - the Spaka
Sloth made Bophendze's trip from the shuttle to the Spaka uneventful, though the migraine it produced made Bophendze prefer a week's monotony. The orbital had given Bophendze a taste of freedom he
had forgotten, despite Angel's tight schedule. Now he returned to the tight hierarchy of a garrison marine force.
He walked into his berthing area as his team finished its morning ritual. The Sloth-induced migraine banged inside his skull.
“Fall in,” Corporal Makaan said.
Bophendze tossed his bag into his rack and turned to stand at parade rest. He had grown accustomed to the position, legs were about shoulder width apart, hands crossed at the small of his back.
“I have results from the previous training simulation. We managed to pull out of last place for the first time in a while. For this we should thank Postman Bophendze's shore leave.” Makaan walked over to Bophendze. “I have a solution to our perpetual problem with our team missing minimum satisfactory scores. Bophendze here has volunteered to take on any extra duty that would ensure he was not a part of any scored training for the foreseeable future.”
The space filled with snickers.
“Do you hear me, Bophendze? You have been weighing us down since you came to the Spaka. You can't shoot straight. You can't maneuver fast enough. The only area we end up scoring well with you on the team is first aid from carrying your sorry corpse off. You heard your peers. We are tired of you. Until I can find a more permanent solution to you, I am assigning you to anything not training. Chrachen doesn't want you gone. We need the numbers to make readiness. So I'll have to find another way to be rid of you.”
Bophendze's heart sank. He knew he did not perform well, but did not think he was the sole reason for the team's overall failure. Shouldn't Makaan be training me to be a better Marine instead of tossing me aside? “You keep me cleaning all the time. Can't I get more training time?”
“Why? I read your personnel file. You spent three more months in boot than the average recruit. Training apparently did not sink in then. I personally think they graduated you just to get rid of you. I don't have patience for you. Since we are gearing up for ship-wide competition, I'm starting your volunteer tour with a 10-cycle guard detail in the brig. Yes, Bophendze, a full day watch. You will report there immediately and the next team will send a relief for you tomorrow at breakfast.”
Bophendze hesitated. “Corporal, I've not had breakfast yet. I just got here.”
“That's too bad. You're already late to relieve the current watch. You had better move it before you get masted for tardiness.”
Bophendze grabbed his bag and hurried out of the berthing area. He got to the brig a couple beats later breathing heavily. He dropped his bag and bent over to catch his breath.
“About time,” said the guard.
“I just got the order, so back off.” He stood and noticed there were no prisoners. “Why are we guarding an empty room?”
“I don't know. Maybe they think it might fill up. Well, it looks like I still have time for breakfast.” The guard packed his gear and left.
Bophendze's stomach grumbled yet-another reminder that he had missed breakfast. Sloth lowered his metabolism enough that the week without food did not affect his hunger now, though the emptiness of his stomach was painful. He was tempted to sneak out and get breakfast, but knew that if he was caught abandoning his post he'd be on the other side of the bars being guarded by another marine. He wondered if he was going to get lunch.
He thought back on what Makaan said about him being a terrible marine. How can I get to be a satisfactory marine if I can't get the training? He stamped his feet on the deck in protest. He did his best to fight back the tears, realizing it would do him no good. Besides, if a prisoner was hauled in while he was crying it might make Bophendze's time as brig guard that much harder.
He surveyed the brig. There were three cells. Two with four racks stacked from floor to ceiling. Bophendze was starting to learn how to navigate by conduit in the ship. He noticed there was extra height in the cells than most of the rest of the ship because the conduit and pipes that normally ran overhead were absent. He guessed the ceiling height was about three meters. The brig racks allowed for more movement than he had in his own rack. Each night he had to decide whether to sleep on his back or stomach. Sleeping on his side was not an option. The third cell was an open holding area. “Used for off-ship prisoners?” He muttered to himself. The more he looked at the smaller cells the more he decided that he would have more space as a prisoner than he did as a marine.
To keep himself awake, he measured the space and calculated the area. Twelve cubic meters, with the four racks, a tiny sink and a toilet. The guard space was just out of arm's reach of a prisoner, but the space outside the cells was otherwise the same area as the brig.
It was not long before he grew tired of measuring. He caught himself starting to count the number of rivets along the overhead and wondering how different it was on this side of the bars from the other. “I might as well be over there, at least they can sleep. I'm more a prisoner here now than a guard.”
Then he remembered that he was allowed to read. In his haste to leave his berthing area, Bophendze brought his bag. In it was his mother's slate. He looked at it for a beat, trying to convince himself it was his slate. As a boy he had played on it. She taught him to read with it. It had been as much his as hers.
Before he turned it on, he took it out of its leather cover and inspected it. There was a slip of paper taped on the back with a string of letters and numbers. Her passcode? He took the paper off and returned the slate to its cover. And turned it on.
He picked her persona and typed in the code. Her account opened up. As he looked though the contents of her account, he chuckled. Angel was right, there were a lot of pictures of him as a boy. They were strung together in a timeline diary, showing the pictures in context with her life. He started to tear up as he realized virtually the whole diary after he was born was filled with his pictures and comments about him as he grew. The impact of how much she invested in his life humbled him.
I'm sitting in a brig on a combat cruiser with nothing to show for my life. Is this why she gave up so much for me?
He recovered from his self-flagellation and started looking though her documents. Vital records were there, not just of her or him, but also of his father. He refused to look at his father's documents. Instead, there was a binder of letters. At first glance, it looked to him like the binder comprised her entire life of correspondence. He was little surprised that the binder dropped to a trickle after he was born. Her family cut her off and her friends abandoned her. He refused to think of them as his family. Families help in time of need. They've done nothing to help me.
One letter that was flagged important caught his attention. “On the implant” was all it said. He opened it up.
In the accompanying package you will note a silver sphere. This was your great-grandfathers. He bequeathed it to you in his will, but under strict instructions that you not receive it until you reached majority. We considered not sending it to you as you have abandoned the family to follow your debauchery. However Mapen Burkat emphasized the importance of complying with Imperial law and your great-grandfather's wishes.
The implant was found embedded in your great-grandfather at his death. We were warned it might be an AI, which are prohibited by Imperial edict. Lacking the means to confirm this, we are not surrendering to speculation. AIs were commonplace until the great purge around the time of your great-grandfather's death.
If this were an AI, possession is criminal. Installation could lead to summary execution. Please note that the will did not state that this implant is for you. It is meant for your bastard son. Therefore, even if this were a regular implant you should not taint it with your whorish mind. Give it to him when he is of age.
The letter ended abruptly, lacking the closing Bophendze would have expected. Not that a proper closing would have mattered, the invective throughout the letter would have mocked any attempt at a civil closing. Whorish? Bastard? He was glad there were no other letters from the family.
So the implant is probably an AI? They probably knew it was, but had to co
uch what it is in vague terms. As a postal marine he was given some legal training. Possession did not have to be intentional. The very fact the family has possession meant they were guilty of whatever prohibition the Imperium had placed on the item. It was the basis the Marines used to seize contraband. “I did not know,” and “that's not mine,” were phrases few ship captains ever offered, because they knew it did not matter.
Yet, they shipped it. They knowingly shipped an illegal item. He thought about the inspections it would have gone through to get from their system to here. It should have been picked up, unless the family smuggled it. Why go through all that trouble to send a ‘bastard’ an implant, something that could get me in trouble? If he had been caught with it, then they would be just as guilty for trafficking, so he concluded they were not trying to set him up.
He took the AI out of his pocket, the only place he felt safe from ship thieves. He rolled it around in his palm with his fingers. They wanted me to do something with this. I should throw it away in the next space exercise. But, if it is an AI, then I could be a serious asset to the Marines. I could redeem my mother's sacrifice. He shrugged. He had plenty of time to make a decision, especially if being caught with it installed led to summary execution.
He put the implant back in his pocket and returned to reading through his mother's letters.
* * *
Smee - 111 years ago
A few years passed since Smee awoke in Maijoi, Sirom N.M.L.Sirom's skull. Once he had access to most of Sirom's faculties, his innate programming started to take hold. His older memories returned. Sirom was his fifth host, and it suited him. Smee was an engineer by design, with ready access to complete plans of every spacecraft designed by humans and known to the Imperium. He had designed a few himself. Sirom was not an engineer as much as an aristocrat. Smee's job was to augment Sirom's abilities, making him a powerful businessman in the process.