Though Hell Should Bar the Way

by David Drake

  Besides, Wedell had three who’d collapsed in the cart she was hauling behind a farm tractor. I think the only reason the Sunrays and I were doing so well was that we were embarrassed at the thought of giving up in front of the Saguntines.

  “Catch you in the showers,” I wheezed to the spacers I’d been helping. I moved over to where Wedell had pulled up to help her with the people who’d gotten a lift in the cart.

  They were actually in better shape than I was after having a few miles rest. Lieutenant Smith was among them. “Sir,” he said. “My right calf cramped. I’ll do better next time, I swear I will.”

  “We all will,” I said. “And I’ll know better the next time than to start the program with a ten-mile hike.”

  “Need a hand, sir?” Wedell said. From the worry on her face, I wonder what I looked like.

  “No, just park the tractor and show up at 0800,” I said. Before we started off I’d told my people they were automatically dismissed for the day when we got back. A shower would feel good. Especially if there was still something left of the water that the sun had been warming in the rack of drums while we were gone.

  I was so tired that I only noticed the men who’d been waiting on the bench in front of the barracks when they got to their feet. The figures could have been bushes for all the impression they’d made on me but my eyes registered the motion.

  “Good afternoon, Olfetrie,” Captain Leary said. The man beside him was Hogg.

  “Sir!” I said and tried to straighten to attention. I started to topple; Hogg’s left hand steadied me. He didn’t say anything but he smiled.

  “Let’s sit down on this very comfortable bench for a moment,” the captain said. He was smiling too.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said as I thumped down. “I’m trying to get the Strike Force into shape, but I started out with too ambitious a program. Bloody near too ambitious for me, obviously.”

  The army engineer company had put in the bench in front when they built us the barracks. Most troops and all the militia were in tents or shelters they’d built themselves, but I’d asked Director Foliot to jump the Strike Force to the head of the line. Somebody had to be first, after all, and my boys had seen real action.

  “I watched you coming in,” Captain Leary said. “I’d say you were doing pretty well. But you said, ‘Strike Force’?”

  “Well, I changed the name for, well …” I said. “Anyway, I changed the name to reflect what we really do. That attack on Karst wasn’t defense, after all, and we cleared hostile vessels out of the system pretty actively!”

  “Indeed,” Leary said. “Exercising together should help build team spirit, too.” Without changing his mildly positive tone, he went on, “Are you planning to build a career here?”

  “Sir!” I said. I’d have jumped to my feet except I was pretty sure my legs would dump me back on my arse, looking like a fool. “Sir, I’ve just been doing this until you gave me orders to do something else.”

  “You’ve clearly done very well,” Leary said, “but you’re technically a civilian and wouldn’t have to answer to anybody if you wanted to take a position on Saguntum. And before you answer, you should know that Resident Jimenez has made a strong request that I transfer you to the diplomatic service at the rank of Counsellor of Mission.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Indeed,” Leary said, bobbing his head. “I gather the status of the position varies depending on the importance of the world involved, but even on Saguntum you’d be the equivalent of a lieutenant commander in the RCN.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would Jimenez recommend that?” I said. I hadn’t seen the Foreign Ministry delegation since before the invasion. They’d been captured along with Perez and the civil government when the Kurfurstendamm landed.

  “I gather he’s convinced that you held Saguntum to its Friendship with the Republic while he and his staff were incarcerated,” Leary said. “And from what I’ve seen, he may have been right.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “Colonel Foliot was Saguntum until you came back and freed the civil government. He could be that now if he wanted to be. And he wasn’t going to cut a deal with the Alliance.”

  I wondered how much Maeve had to do with the Foreign Ministry offer. I wondered a lot of things about Maeve.

  Taking a deep breath, I got carefully to my feet. Leary and Hogg stood also.

  I said, “Sir, what I want to be is an officer of the RCN. If you can arrange it for me to reenter the Academy, I’ll be eternally grateful. I think this—”

  I waved sort of generally, indicating the harbor and the Rotherham now floating there. We’d heard the destroyer descending halfway through the hike, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it meant anything in particular for me.

  “—has been enough to make people forget my dad. I hope so, anyway.”

  Captain Leary pursed his lips over a thought.

  “Sir,” I said, “you don’t have to do that, do anything more for me to be eternally thankful. I’ll enlist as a common spacer if I have to and work my way into a commission that way.”

  “That’s not easy,” Leary said, “but you know, I think you might be able to pull it off. Still, I don’t think third-year cadet is really the best use of you. You’re aware that my current post makes me a commodore?”

  “Yessir,” I said. He was the captain in charge of a squadron; or in this case, flotilla, because they were destroyers.

  “The rank permits me to appoint a flag lieutenant,” Captain Leary said. “That’s a dogsbody, really, an aide who might have to do any bloody thing that might come up.”

  Hogg snorted. “And he means any bloody thing,” he said. “Except for women—them he can take care of himself.”

  Leary’s smile wasn’t directed at me; I’m not sure it was directed at anybody. “A range of duties, at any rate,” he said. “The choice out here is slimmer than it would be on Cinnabar, but even on Cinnabar I don’t think I could find a better man for the position than you’ve proven to be in the time I’ve known you. Do you want the job, Olfetrie?”

  “Sir,” I said. I was afraid I was going to cry, but that wouldn’t be the first time I’d embarrassed myself. “Sir, there’s some things I need to take care of here”—I wanted Monica in my life; forever, if that was possible. But if she wanted me as I hoped she did, she was getting an RCN officer—“but sir, yes. If you’ll have me.”

  I did start crying. I tried to salute when I remembered to, but as my hand rose. Captain Leary gripped and shook it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Dan Breen continues as my first reader, thank goodness, and archives my texts; as does my webmaster, Karen Zimmerman. Dorothy Day, who was the West-Coast member of my distributed archive, died while I was writing this one.

  I regret this a lot. Dorothy was a good person.

  My printer and computers behaved well during the writing until Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, forced a software update, at the end of which my three computers didn’t talk to one another and only one of them recognized my printer. Fortunately, my son Jonathan was able to fix things.

  What do people do if their kids aren’t geeks? But perhaps there aren’t such people nowadays.

  I eat well and the house stays clean and neat, which is wholly due to my wife Jo.

  I thank all of you for making it possible for me to write.

  —Dave Drake

  Chatham County, NC

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. His books include the genre-defining and bestselling Hammer’s Slammers series, and the nationally bestselling RCN series including In the Stormy Red Sky, The Road of Danger, and The Sea with
out a Shore.