by Mike Moscoe
“Yes sir” echoed all around.
As personnel scattered over the launch bay, Mattim found himself next to Mary. “Where'll it be safe to stand when that thing goes off?” she asked.
“Good question.” Mattim doubted the usual answers had any value. “The autoloader could take your hand off. The acceleration tube'll be loaded with energy.” He glanced around. “I suspect there's a reason for the shiny new handholds.” The bay and launch control were lined with railings at waist height.
“I hadn't noticed them. Strange what people miss.” They exchanged a smile. There were five crises as young marines demanded explanations from sailors for what they were doing. Whitebred was into those rows in a flash. Mattim, Mary, and Sergeant Dumont were right behind. The list of people Whitebred wanted shot if this didn't go right grew longer and longer.
Fifteen minutes later, they had a firing solution. Without orders, most of the work crews arranged themselves along the wall, handholds in reach. Only Whitebred and his pet Sergeant Dumont stood in the middle of the bay. “Fire, commander, and you're a dead woman if you fail me again,” the admiral growled.
Sergeant Dumont pointed his assault rifle around the room menacingly.
“I'm just doing my job the best I can,” Gandhi answered. “Launch one.”
A mechanical rammer shoved a round forward into a cage of cables and metal. For a second, the ugly slug just sat there—then it began to move. The naked eye could follow it for only a second as it shot down the launcher rail.
Then all hell broke loose.
Monitor reviews would later show the round departing the track at midpoint and tearing a wide gash in the port side of the Maggie D , exactly as Mattim and Chief Aso had planned it. At the moment it happened, Mattim was busy holding on to keep from being sucked out by the air rapidly evacuating the launch bay. Any space this large in a starship had to be designed with this in mind. Even as Mattim struggled to hold, the ship acted. Doors sliced shut along the launcher, sealing the damage and holding in the fleeing air.
Unfortunately, it also sealed Whitebred and his favorite sergeant in as well. Before Mattim could get a report on the Maggie 's situation, Whitebred was screaming at the top of his lungs, “Shoot them. All of them. Shoot them all.”
While Dumont looked around, trying to catch his bearings and decide whom to shoot first, Mattim and Mary hustled to put themselves in the line of fire.
“Don't be stupid,” Mattim snapped. “You can't start shooting people when we've got a damaged ship to handle.”
“Shoot them!” was all the answer he got.
“We won fair and square,” Mary said softly to her sergeant. “Marines don't shoot marines.”
“Fair and square,” Mattim and Whitebred both echoed.
“You had full rein to search. You didn't catch them,” Mary continued slowly.
“We caught them. We just couldn't make it stick.”
“It's the same thing, Du.”
“Shoot them!” Whitebred screamed.
“Captain!” blared from the speakers in the launcher bay. “Comm here, I have a message for you from Captain Ramsey of the Sendai . He has orders for you.”
“I'll take it in my quarters,” Whitebred shouted.
“It's not for you. It's for the captain. Putting it on the screen down there.” The wall across from the launcher control lit up. There was Buck Ramsey.
“Matt, this message is for you. Whitebred is released from command and rank immediately. All his orders are countermanded. Skobachev will assume command. I repeat, Whitebred is no admiral and he gives no orders. The orders promoting him are being looked at real close. I know nothing about that. What I do know is I have official orders from the military commander at Pitt's Hope to return him immediately. I will wait for your response. We would have been here sooner, but I don't know how Sandy found that point so fast. We've spent the last three days trying to pin it down. By the way, I think the war is over. I will await your answer. Ramsey out.”
“Wait one, comm,” Mattim said, then turned to Whitebred. “I don't know what this is about, but it's over.”
Like so many things lately, Mattim had that one wrong too.
* * * *
“You bastard. You lying bastard.” Sergeant Dumont was so enraged he ignored his rifle and went for Whitebred's throat with his bare hands. As Whitebred fended him off with one hand, his other went for the assault weapon.
Even in defeat, Whitebred still wanted to “shoot them all.”
Mattim hardly saw her coming. Kat the Zap came in fast and low. One moment the two men were struggling; the next second they lay ten feet apart and the middie stood between them not even breathing hard. Whitebred was screaming, clutching his knee. When this was all over, Mattim wanted to know two things: how his crew pole-axed up the launcher, and how one tiny young woman put two men twice her size down so fast.
* * * *
“Mr. Crossinshield, you have a problem.” Trevor gulped; when his client knew he had a problem before Trevor did, something had gone terribly wrong. Today, his client met him at the edge of a pond in a pleasant park. The noise of the city was held at bay, whether by the trees or more exotic means Trevor did not need to know. The big man fed crumbs to white swans. To Trevor, he fed gall. “You have been out of touch with your man, the one who knows the door to the galaxy.”
“Yes, sir. He is in the Navy and does sometimes go aboard ship. Communications through those channels are often strained.”
“Yes, but do you know where he is? I am picking up strange rumors. I do not like rumors, Mr. Crossinshield. I like facts.”
From across the pond, two ebony black swans knifed through the water to scatter the white ones. Trevor's client smiled and tossed them corn as their reward. Trevor glanced around. From the path through the trees, three men emerged and walked toward them. The one in the lead looked straight ahead. The two behind him signaled. People whom Trevor would have sworn were part of his client's security detail nodded and began to close in.
His client continued to feed the swans, both black and white. “Sir.” Trevor was surprised to hear himself squeak.
“Speak up, boy.”
“Sir, I believe you have company.”
His client turned. And maybe for a split second Trevor saw surprise on his face. Then he calmly turned back to the pond. This time, however, he tossed nothing to the swans.
“Good afternoon, Henry.” The man paused to smile down at Trevor's client. “I thought I'd find you here. There are things we must talk about. If you gentlemen will leave us alone.” The guards turned at his command—all of them— and returned to their alert meanderings.
Trevor turned to go. “Not you. You will stay.”
“Edward, is that any way to treat one of mine?”
Trevor had not recognized the man with his clothes on. Now he did. This was the other man, the man who had locked horns with his client in the sauna—and lost. He did not act like a loser now. “Henry, the question is, is anyone yours?”
Trevor's client made no reply. The new arrival settled comfortably on the other end of the bench. Then he reached over, took the small sack of grain from Trevor's client, and began feeding the swans. Behind the bench, Trevor wanted to run, but his legs were water. Unable to stand, he risked leaning his hands on the back of the bench. Surprise filled Trevor; despite the power shooting between the two men, he was not electrocuted.
After upending the sack, the man spoke. “Henry, the dogs of this war you released are chewing up some very unhappy legs. Your President Urm has met with an accident.”
Henry's usual aplomb vanished. His head jerked around to spear Trevor with hard, obsidian eyes.
“I have had nothing but normal reports about President Urm, sir.”
“When the general holding your security contract on Urm failed so miserably, Trevor,” Edward said, “he came looking for a new employer. We reached an agreement very quickly.”
Henry's glare was for Edward, but
there was enough heat along its edge to burn Trevor down to cinder.
“I must thank you, Henry. Your man in Pitt's Hope has succeeded most admirably for me. By threatening all life on Wardhaven, he has driven the colonials to send emissaries, real emissaries with authority to negotiate. And by showing the planetary governments just how easy their own bureaucracy is turned against them, you have gotten their attention. Attention we do not want, Henry. None of us.”
“Governments are nothing!” Henry huffed.
Edward cut him off with a smile. “So you have said many times. We give the politicos money to buy the votes they need, but they still think those votes give them power. They are ready to turn that power to a scrutiny of us and this unpleasantness.”
“I can handle them.”
“Yes. Yes, you can. And we have decided to let you. But you will need time.” Edward sounded so solicitous. “With your many duties, you might have problems squeezing in the time you will need. So, Henry, we have decided that you should step down from most of your positions on boards of directors. If you do not, you will be voted out.”
“You can't.”
“You will find in the next week that we have. Not all, Henry. I have gone out of my way for you. Two boards you will stay on. Ones I direct. It will be a pleasure to see you sit through meetings quietly listening while others hold the reins. Watch you squirm when you can't get enough votes to even wipe your own ass. Yes, Henry, you will be an interesting diversion.”
“You have not seen the last of me,” Henry hissed, getting to his feet.
“Of that I am sure, Henry.”
Trevor's ex-client stomped away. Only two guards departed with him—the two that had come with Edward.
“Would you like a seat, Mr. Crossinshield?”
Trevor stumbled his way around the bench and sat on its edge; it felt more like a collapse. He awaited his fate.
“I don't hold Urm's death against your general. Henry failed to see the pressure building. We don't have nearly the power he thinks we have. You, however, are interesting. Initially, you provided Henry with information my own sources overlooked. That was good.” Trevor risked a faint smile.
“In the end, however, Mr. Crossinshield, you failed.”
“Words spoken, sir, are not always heard.” Trevor tried a gentle gambit.
The man sighed. “Yes, that is the problem. Whose words to believe, the ones you want to hear or the ones you need to hear? Damnably tough call.” For a long minute the man stared at the swans. “I will take you on, Mr. Crossinshield. At a reduced rate, mind you. We will all have to trim our budgets thanks to Henry. Some of your people are worth keeping.”
“Mr. Whitebred?” Trevor risked.
“Failed miserably,” Trevor's new client snapped, then seemed to rethink himself. Was that a personal trait, or was today a day for second thoughts? Trevor would wait and see. “However, his heart was in the right place. Find a window office for him. Who knows, he may yet do us a service.” Then his brow darkened. “Those others, the ones who stopped him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We can not have people like that succeed, even in stopping Henry's blunders. Sets a bad example. Find a hole and make them disappear.”
“Yes, sir.” The meeting was turning out far better than he had any right to expect. He hastened up the hill. He had work to do. It would be good to impress his new client quickly.
* * * *
The fleet was gone by the time Mattim brought the Sheffield into orbit around Wardhaven. Shedding energy had taken them on a grand tour of the system. Repairs would take longer. Orbit was a wreck; the squadron had really shot up the place on its first pass. Parts of stations and ships drifted everywhere, but shuttles were already back, bringing workers, parts—and a station manager.
“Earthie Navy ship, respond.”
“Let me handle this one. I know Owen.” Mattim switched on his comm. “Owe, it's me, Matt. Maggie D looks a bit different, but she's still the same old girl under all this extra gear.”
“I don't care who you are. While you wear that uniform, you don't park there. Back off five hundred klicks. One of your boats is waiting for you.”
“Boss, I've been meaning to talk to you about your bad breath,” Ding laughed.
“Can't get no respect. Thor, what's five hundred klicks back?”
“Old tub, looks rigged for passengers, but just barely.”
“Comm, can you raise a transport aft of us?”
“On the line already, Captain. Putting him through.”
“Captain Abeeb, I am ordered to relieve you of Captain Whitebred and Commander Stuart. I am also to take off your draftees and give them a lift home.”
“I figured we'd be going back to Pitt's Hope together.”
“I don't believe so, sir. My orders just relate to your junior personnel. I'll transmit your orders, now, but the scuttlebutt is that the Sheffield is too banged up. She's being scrapped.”
“Scrapped!” Sandy howled.
“You got to be wrong,” Mattim assured him.
“Could be, sir. They're your orders. Read them.”
Mattim did. “He's right. They're scrapping the old girl.”
“Her engines are in great shape,” Ivan roared as he came on the bridge. “Call 'em and tell 'em they're wrong.”
Mattim tapped his board. “Comm, get me the port master.”
“You got him.”
“Owe, this is Matt, I need to send a message to Navy Command, Pitt's Hope.”
“Who's paying?”
“Didn't the squadron set up an account at the armistice?”
“Yeah, and closed it when they left. You want to make a call, get me your charge code.”
“You think they'd take a collect call?” Sandy asked.
Whitebred limped onto the bridge surrounded by three guards, including the tiny middie. “I want to get my personal effects. I understand there's a liner here to take me home.” Mattim pointed to the transport on screen. “That? It's no bigger than an admiral's barge. Well, at least I'll have it to myself.”
“You and three quarters of the crew.”
“What? I will not be surrounded by a sea of... of...” Whitebred quit hunting for words.
Mattim grinned as he sputtered down. “You'll also go with only the brig suit you're wearing. I've got your gear under seal until a criminal investigator goes over it. Security, get this man off my bridge.” They did, none too gently.
“Ding, pass the word to all hands. This may be the only ride home. Anyone wants on that transport, we will find space.”
That led to a lot of griping, from Whitebred, from the transport's captain, and from the crew that got shoehorned into it. It took a day to load them all out. Zappa showed up halfway through the drill. “Sir, do we have to go?”
“May be the only ride for a while.”
“Yes, sir, but we'd like some time to look over our raw data on that little excursion. We got the fixings for some great papers. If we could take the time now, while we're still together, to get everything in order, we could hit the journals like a ton of cement.”
So the Sheffield or Maggie D or whatever she was today settled down in orbit. Without a station to swing her, there was no way to put gravity on the ship. What was usually only a momentary inconvenience became the norm. To the old hands, both Navy and merchant, it was something to adapt to. To the kids, it was fun. Part of the ship took on the look of a university, though one run by the students. The rest did what needed doing to keep the ship going. To some she might be scrap; to her crew, she was home. She'd taken care of them through some rough times; they wouldn't abandon her now.
Seventeen
The third day, the port master called. “Hey, you squatter over there. We got orders to open that hulk to space and kill all the vermin. We're sending a couple of shuttles to lift you out. Be packed and ready. And pack lightly, you hear.”
“Owe, this is Matt. You've inspected the Maggie D a dozen times. You ne
ver found one bug. Hassan's baking up a batch of his focaccia bread. Come over for a loaf or two.”
“Hassan's!”
“Yep. Even zero-gee baked, it tastes great.” “Damn it, Matt, I got my orders. You folks got to go.” “Can you give me an extra couple of days?” “You really got some of Hassan's focaccia bread?” “Three loaves are yours.” Mattim rang off on that promise.
“What we gonna do, sir?” Ding asked. “What's the Book say?” he asked. “Nothing in the Book, sir, about being marooned on your own ship as it's going under the breaker's torch.”
“Yeah.” They'd won their battle and their war. They were alive and in one piece. So why didn't it feel so good? That night, as had become their custom, all hands shared supper on a single mess deck. With mostly officers and chiefs left aboard, and the middies falling somewhere in between, there seemed little reason to keep the crew divided along arbitrary lines. The eviction was news to no one as they settled in to their meal. They chewed Hassan's delicious rations and their future. The chow was good—the future lousy.
“We save the life of everyone on this planet and this is what we get?” seemed to say it for all. Finding a way home across half the galaxy was easy compared to finding a way through two bureaucracies bent on ... what?
“What do they want?” Ding asked. “We're here. We've got no money for food or fuel. We can't call home. This is crazy. I always knew the ship I was on might be lost in battle, but lost in filing ...”
“Matt, we got any credit on the Red Flag Line?” Sandy asked.
“Folks, Ding and I have tried everything, legal or no. We had some charge codes left over from our merchant days. Tried them. They're not valid. Tried our navy charge codes. All canceled. I even tried my own personal charge accounts. Funds are unavailable.”
“I tried mine too,” Ding added. “Same answer.”
“We don't exist,” Chief Aso said.
“You must have pissed a lot of people off—big time,” Sergeant Dumont put in snidely.
“Can think of five or fifty, but all of them getting together to get me ...” The miner/marine Lek shook his head.