The admiral explained the new spyware to me during the latter part of my fateful meeting with her. She had run her finger along my naked leg, her bristly head resting on my chest, and said “It takes about six days for the spyware to finish linking in with your existing headware and establish the necessary immuno balance. The material has been keyed for your body, so tissue rejection shouldn’t be an issue.”
I’d said, “Well that’s almost comforting. What if it does my brain in?”
She pinched me, hard. “If there is a problem, execute a normal hard system eject and the spyware should revert to phage food as per usual. Any questions?”
Sorcha was furious about the captain’s medal. “He slaughtered those creatures! Slaughtered them in some addle-brained psychotic spasm of madness! He killed them in cold blood!” She whispered all this, her hands bunched into fists, the skin over her knuckles looking tight enough to break.
“Steady, Sorcha,” I said, not wanting her words overheard even in the empty Mess hall. It was late in the night after the ceremony, and we were sipping fabbed coffee, feeling bitter. Eclipse was braking as we approached Ganymede, our adventures in the dark over for now. Queen Helen’s engineers had finished the power plant work our people started, and installed an emergency hypertube grapple-driver. As of right now, the alien vessel was approaching a classified Service installation for detailed examination and the stifling seal of official secrets regulations had been placed over the details of our entire encounter with it.
Back in known space, the mood of the crew was more upbeat — except for Sorcha and me, and each of us for different reasons. I let her rant. She didn’t know what the admiral had planned for Rudyard, and I wasn’t about to tell her. It was hard to think about because there were so many complex feelings involved, many of them negative. Suddenly I was a spy, and potentially a traitor if I got caught. Caroline — she had invited me to call her Caroline — said I was not to panic. I was to keep calm and await instructions should anything untoward happen. In time I would be properly rewarded for my noble service, she said.
I hadn’t been paying attention to Sorcha. She was saying, “What’s the bloody Service coming to when it gives butchers medals? What the hell are we doing in this outfit, James? What’s the point? First real aliens we ever encounter, and we kill them stone dead and call it heroism! It isn’t what I signed up for, it isn’t what I put up with four years of torment and agony and crap for. What am I supposed to tell my family? Huh? What do I tell them?”
I got a paper towel for her tears. She snatched it and seemed to bash it against her eyes and cheeks, and blew her nose so hard I thought she’d burst a blood vessel. I could think of nothing to say. Staring into my half-empty coffee cup, I sat there, feeling useless and remote. What could I say? I felt the same way as Sorcha. In some ways, I felt worse because I had been directly involved in rescuing those creatures. I had a kind of stake in their lives. Few things infuriated me the way the news of Rudyard’s acquittal and commendation did, even though I knew it was coming. Which only made me think more about the admiral, who had opened the door a little into the world of Service realpolitik.
“James, are you even listening?”
Looking at her, seeing the vivid, electrifying anger in her face, I thought she looked like an avenging angel, ready to smite heathens. It made me catch my breath, and I couldn’t help but wonder what a girl with her brains and talent might do.
I said, bringing myself back into focus, “Oh, yes, I was listening. I quite agree. I feel sick about it, completely disgusted.” But even I could feel the lie in my words. My mind was already thinking ahead to my part in the admiral’s plan, of taking action rather than simply sitting around venting about the unfairness of it all.
She gave me a sour look. “Well thanks for listening. I gotta go.”
“Sorcha?” She was up and walking off, a woman with a mission. I went after her, tried to talk to her.
“James,” she stopped and turned to face me, “you’ve been acting funny since the day you saw the admiral. What’s wrong?”
I really wanted to tell her, to confess to things I had done and had yet to do. But how could I admit that one of the most senior officers in the Service had seduced me, a ploy as old as history, and recruited me to spy for her? And that as disgusted as I was at myself for getting into such a situation, I had to admit to a certain puerile excitement, too. It was the excitement of access, of being inside the loop. I couldn’t even explain it to myself, let alone to a friend … or someone like Sorcha. It occurred to me suddenly that I was terrified of disappointing her.
I knew the admiral was using me. That part was obvious, as was the realization that I could get seriously burned by the whole thing.
And yet I also knew that, at some level, in a filthy sort of way, I liked being used.
I felt the words begging to escape my lips, but said nothing. The shame was too great. I did not think I could stand Sorcha’s disappointment in me if I told her the truth, even if it had been safe to tell her. So I shrugged and did my best to look helpless and hopeless, my usual face. “What can we do, just a couple of Level 1 nobodies?”
She flashed a lethal glare at me. “Nobodies? You just watch!”
We docked at Ganymede Stalk geosynch three days later. Rudyard announced five days shore leave for the whole complement while Eclipse underwent some minor refitting and resupply.
Ferguson had other ideas for me. He found me in my quarters while I was packing a bag. I had planned to head down to Winter City, get up to some mischief, and start following Captain Rudyard. The spyware announced the day before that its installation was complete. So far I had only had time only to tinker with the preferences and familiarize myself with the online help files. I knew Rudyard was planning to celebrate his good fortune at a few of the big casinos in Winter City, which would be an ideal setting in which to monitor him.
But it wasn’t quite that simple. Ferguson stood in the doorway, legs apart, hands behind his back, a living textbook demonstration of parade rest. He scowled at me as though I were an annoying speck of grime on the inside of a toilet that needed scrubbing off.
I felt a visceral twist of alarm, seeing him there, puffed up like that. Had he somehow detected my new spyware? It shouldn’t be possible. It was designed to look like a simple upgrade to my mediafilters, perfectly legit. “Mr. Ferguson,” I said, feigning pleasant surprise as I picked among various colors of underwear, “I would have thought you’d be downStalk by now, sir.”
Ferguson said, “You saw the admiral the other day.”
I dumped all the underwear I could find in my bag. “Yes, sir,” I said, meeting his gaze, and trying to get headware biostatic control to suppress any blushes that might be imminent.
“You never told me how the meeting went, Mr. Dunne. I felt most offended when you didn’t report to me on it.”
That sounded odd, but I didn’t remark on it. “Very sorry, sir. I wasn’t aware I was required to report the proceedings of the meeting.”
“You forget, son. I’m the executive officer, I need to know what’s going on aboard ship. It’s my job.”
I would have thought that particular job would be Riordan’s since she was in charge of security, but I didn’t say this. “I see, sir.” I checked through my available shirts, thinking about fabbing some new ones; did I have enough fab-credit?
“Well, then, Mr. Dunne?” he asked, rocking on his feet now, his voice pitched low and quiet. “Must I lever it out of you with a crowbar?”
“It was a very pleasant meeting, sir,” I said, dumping all my shirts in my bag, not meeting his steel stare at all now, and beginning to feel a flush coming on, as well as wretched flutters in my gut. “We talked about old ships.”
“You talked about old ships, did you?”
“Yes, sir. Old ships.”
“That
must have been very … stimulating.”
I almost dared look at him then, just to show him I wasn’t afraid of him. But I was afraid of him, and tried to maintain my cool by checking my bag again. “The admiral saw in my file that I’m a bit of a space geek. Shipspotter, that kind of thing.”
“So you spent the afternoon there chatting about power plant specifications, avionics components, controller subsystems, interface guidelines, construction numbers, and all that, yes?”
“Pretty much, Mr. Ferguson, sir.” And I could have talked about those things, too, if given a chance. Not like my brother Colin, of course, but I could have.
“I see.”
I didn’t think I was out of trouble yet. He came into the room, and stood next to my bunk. “And what did you really talk about over there for so long, Dunne?”
I was running out of possessions to dump into my bag. “Excuse me, sir, I need to use the head.”
He stopped me, putting one of his great, slab-like hands on my bony shoulder. “I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.”
“Sir?” I glanced his way. He was dark with suppressed anger.
“Sit, Dunne. Now.”
I sat on my bunk, hunching my head over so I didn’t bang it on the upper bunk. Ferguson perched himself on the opposite bunk, hands on his knees, watching me. His uniform was immaculately pressed.
“First of all, boy, I want you to unpack that bag and stow all your gear where it was.”
“May I ask why, sir?”
He roared: “Just bloody do it, Dunne! You hear me?”
I jumped, banged my head, ignored the pain, and set about replacing my stuff into storage. I wasn’t aiming for neatness, just chucking things wherever they’d go. Finished, I sat again, hands on my bed covers, scared. Outside I heard groups of other officers heading down the corridors, talking about their plans. They sounded happy: teasing each other, organizing drinking contests, comparing taverns and brothels.
“All right, Mr. Dunne. Now listen to me, and listen to me very well. Something happened during your, shall we say, lengthy visit with Admiral Greaves. I don’t know what, but I will. And you’re going to tell me.”
“Sir?”
“What?”
“There’s nothing to tell, sir.” Nothing I’d tell you about, that’s for sure. I remembered Greaves referring to Ferguson as “that pig.”
“What are you smirking about?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Spit it out, Dunne. Let’s hear it!”
“It’s nothing, sir!”
“If there’s a joke I would like to hear it, Mr. Dunne. God knows I could use one!”
I couldn’t agree more, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Mr. Dunne,” he said, his tone quieter now, and getting to his feet to pace back and forth before me, “I’ve been talking to Mr. Janning.”
I listened.
For a moment he looked actually disappointed in me, and he shook his head a little and let out a breath that smelled bad. “Mr. Dunne, Mr. Dunne, Mr. Dunne. You know I was starting to think, particularly after the Contact mission, I thought, maybe the kid’s going to be all right after all. Learned your lesson, had a good hard look at yourself.”
“Sir?” Somehow the thought of disappointing him was a horrible thing to bear.
“Well,” he said, looking at me. “And now this.”
“This?”
“You know very well what I mean, boy. You were supposed to report your meeting with the admiral to me. It’s in the Standing Bloody Orders, for Christ’s sake.”
I felt things clench deep in my guts. And a quick search through my headware copy of Standing Orders showed an obscure fine-print clause including the optional instruction that the contents of meetings with senior officers from other ships may be reported to one’s own senior officers. To the best of my knowledge the clause was no longer active, but had yet to be removed from the Standing Orders.
“That order is optional, sir,” I said, glancing at him, knowing I had the text of the Orders on my side.
There was a long, cold silence. His face darkened. His lips disappeared. He said, softly, “I will not be lectured on Standing Orders by a Level Bloody 1 piece of shit like you.”
My bowels turned to water. I said nothing. Bitter experience had shown me that clinging to the text of regulations once things reached this point was asking for trouble.
At length, visibly trembling with suppressed anger, he said to me, “I’ve arranged with Janning for your temporary reassignment to me.”
Oh God. “Yes, sir.”
“Which means, of course, that you will be my little slave boy — my pet, my plaything if you will — for as long as it takes you to tell me what happened during your visit with Admiral Greaves.”
Suddenly I was very glad I was sitting. Memories shot through my mind of the underside of Academy life, the vile system in which upperclassmen kept junior cadets as pets and slaves to cater to their whims. In theory the idea was that the senior cadets would act as mentors and counselors to the juniors, be role models and friends. In practice, however, juniors were kept as errand boys, butlers, domestic servants — and worse. The unlucky junior cadets were also used to get contraband items into the Academy grounds such as booze, drugs, disposable prostitutes. All in all, it was considered miraculous if a cadet could find time for study, sim work, parade drill practice, lectures, presentations and everything else. Until, of course, you made it into the later years and could get a slave of your own. And such was the degree of bitterness you had about how you were treated as a junior that you felt obliged to treat your junior the same way.
I escaped the loop of slavery when my senior, Philip Dewey, graduated and moved on to his first commission. The day he left I felt strange: relieved, happy — and devastated. Somebody suggested I try some counseling to deal with how I felt — some treacherous part of me missed Dewey! — but that lasted only two sessions. I couldn’t talk about it.
And here was Ferguson threatening to drop me in all that again. It was damned tempting to break right there and tell him everything about that evening on Greaves’s couch. But I still had faith in her plan; I was convinced that if I stayed the course, Rudyard and Ferguson were history. I vowed to stay silent, no matter what it took.
I said, “Fine, sir.”
He hesitated, surprised at my reaction, I think. Then, “Have you ever wondered how much floor space there is in all the crew decks, Mr. Dunne?”
“I’m sure I’m about to find out, sir,” I said, feeling more chipper by the moment now that I had resolved to stick with the admiral’s plan. While I concentrated on the greater good, I felt I could stand whatever he had to throw at me. Thinking back now, after all that’s happened, I find myself laughing at this. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Good attitude, son. Good attitude.” He said this with a tone of cautious approval, like he was wondering what was going on.
“Sir. Permission to ask a question, sir?”
He looked surprised again. Looking at me more carefully, he said, “Mr. Dunne?”
“Mr. Ferguson, sir,” I said my voice as loud as his had been, my eyes staring straight ahead, “what was it like watching the captain murder harmless aliens? Sir!”
I saw his face color, and watched him get up. He crossed the floor in one stride, “Why you weaselly little shit!” he said, and clobbered me.
So it began.
Thirteen
Ferguson didn’t mess around. He fabbed me a brush the size of my index finger, provided a fab machine code that would generate weak, soapy water in a heavy steel bucket, and set me to work on my hands and knees, scrubbing every square millimeter of deck surface. He started me at Deck E, and told me to work my way up to Deck A. I went through a lot of soapy water and bru
shes. After two days, working sixteen hours straight each day, my knees were wrecked and I was in agony. Ferguson granted me grudging permission to visit the Infirmary. The docs were only able to give me mild painkillers. Requests for kneepads were refused, on Ferguson’s orders. Anything that would make the scrubbing experience more tolerable was out of the question. Telling him about the meeting with Admiral Greaves, on the other hand, was the cost of escape, even if it would only be an escape from one kind of trouble to another.
In the evenings, I had to wait on him in the Officer’s Mess, standing at attention by his side as he ate his space chunder. He actually liked the chunder, which made him about the only officer on the ship who did. If Ferguson wanted anything at all, I was to fetch it, without delay. Standing there like that, my legs howling with pain, my whole body a solid, grinding ache, I wanted to kill him. Senior officers would come by Ferguson’s table to chat, and much humor was tossed about at my expense. I learned that Ferguson was infamous for this treatment of junior officers he thought needed his personal touch. I didn’t like the way everyone snickered at the phrase “personal touch,” and neither did I like him occasionally patting me on the backside. “Bit of good meat there, eh?” he’d say, laughing.
I felt grateful so many of the crew were planetside, taking in the sights. Most of all, I was grateful not to see Sorcha. There had been no mail from her. During the endless hours of scrubbing, I imagined her with Alastair. My jealous anger over that was a relatively pleasant distraction from my loathing of Ferguson.
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