by J. L. Doty
“We always do the new bloods first,” Marko said. “It’s a tradition. We add chevrons to the old bloods after them.”
The chief ordered additional ratings, spacers already wearing cutaway sleeves, front ’n’ center. York got a second beer while they added chevrons to the old bloods. He watched the ceremony closely, and at some point, though he couldn’t say when, he found himself hoping that someday he’d get to stand up there and get a chevron or two.
As the pod cycled through its boot sequence, York listened to Straight’s voice in his headset. “Okay, Ballin, you’ve done pretty good on the comp stuff. Seems you’ve got some talent there. So let’s see if you can hit what you aim at.”
York would never admit it to his new friends, but he found the inside of a pod rather cozy, like being wrapped in a cocoon of instruments. The acceleration couch conformed comfortably to his backside, and he had control of local gravity, temperature, humidity, and lighting. It felt strange to have such control over his environment.
Marko said, “In a real firefight, you stay away from any target you’re not allocated. If Fire Control doesn’t give it to you, you ignore it. And if they do give you one, more often than not you’ll just let your onboard computer handle it without intervention. But making that kind of decision is still way over your head.”
York kept the lighting low and liked the temperature a little cool. He kept his right hand near, but not on, the targeting yoke, wouldn’t touch it until they told him to. He rested his left hand on the console near the controls for rate of fire and primary muzzle energy. His computer tracked the motion of his eyes and superimposed a targeting reticle wherever he looked on his primary screen. If he’d been fitted with implants, the computer would have had a direct feed from his cerebral cortex, allowing faster response that included algorithms to anticipate his moves.
Straight took up the dialogue. “Today, we’re going to give you one target at a time. They’re all yours, and you’re to use the pod’s manual fire controls on each. No decision making. Just aim and shoot. We’ve walked you through this enough that you should be able to handle that much.”
A stationary yellow blip appeared on one of York’s screens.
“That’s an enemy warship at four hundred megaklicks. And here comes your first target.”
A yellow blip split off the enemy warship coming their way.
“Don’t fire on it until it’s been allocated.”
The target came in at over three hundred lights and the distance dwindled quickly. York knew it was all simulation, but it felt so real his heart began to pound. At ninety megaklicks, the blip flashed an angry red, and following his eyes, the targeting reticle locked onto it. He gripped the targeting yoke, touched it delicately, and the pod spun wildly, the target slicing completely off his screen. He tried to bring it back, but he only caught a glimpse of the red blip as it zipped across the screen and off the other side.
Straight said, “That was sloppy, Ballin. Let’s try again.”
York didn’t do any better on the second target. Every time he touched the targeting yoke, he overshot, completely missing it.
After he’d missed the third target with the same wild, out-of-control aiming, Marko said, “Hold on a minute. What’s the gain on your gravity servos?”
York looked up at the panel over his head, still wasn’t used to all the readings available there. He found the reading he needed and said, “The gain is set at a hundred percent.”
Straight didn’t laugh openly, but he heard her chuckle. She said, “Your crewmates are having a little fun with you. They’ve got your gain maxed out, which destabilizes all your controls.”
Marko said, “Don’t worry, kid. We all took our turn.”
Straight and Marko helped him set the gain properly, and he did much better after that.
York sat at one of the tables in the lower-deck bunk room studying the operations manual for a defensive Perimeter Ordnance Delivery system, or pod. Three spacers sat at a nearby table playing cards.
There were no real bunks in the lower-deck bunk room, just the access feeds to coffin storage. Beyond that, the bunk room appeared to be a place where gunners relaxed when not in their coffins or on duty. It had a couple of plast tables with bench seats bolted to the deck; an access feed for the gunners’ lockers, which were auto-stored much like the coffins; a caff dispenser; and a number of readers shared among the gunners. York was officially on duty, but Straight had ordered him to study the pod manual, and the bunk room was a good place to stay out of her way.
Under Zamekis’s tutelage, his reading had improved and he only had a little difficulty understanding the pod’s functions, found it far more interesting than the regs. He now understood there was a certain status among pod gunners, a rank that he could control by learning this stuff and getting confirmed kills. It didn’t require approval or authorization by some officer he’d never met, and it couldn’t be taken away. He was so immersed in the manual that he barely noticed the three spacers fold up their card game and leave. Now alone in the bunk room, he could concentrate even more on the manual.
A hand slapped something down on the table in front of him with a sharp smack, startling him. He looked up as Sturpik and Tomlin sat down opposite him, the small plast vial of the tarry stuff resting on the table in front of him. Sturpik glanced over his shoulder at the open entrance to the bunk room and slid to one side a bit, placing himself between the vial and anyone who might come through the open hatch.
Sturpik smiled, though York saw nothing friendly in the man’s face. “Well, kid, you ready to be a team player?”
Predator or prey, there was no question where Sturpik and Tomlin fit into the feeding chain. York said, “I really don’t think—”
Tomlin interrupted him by closing his eyes and quietly shaking his head from side to side.
“Favors,” Sturpik said. “You’re at the bottom of the shit list on this ship, and you need friends. You won’t make friends if you don’t do favors.”
Tomlin opened his eyes and said, “And holding that for us for a while will be a nice start.”
Cracky and Ten-Ten hadn’t given him much choice, either—predator or prey; be lookout for them, or victim to them.
“If you ain’t gonna help us,” Cracky had said, “then we gotta figure you’re going to rat us out.”
York had pleaded with them, told them, “I ain’t no snitch.”
Cracky had ignored him. “And if yer gonna snitch, then we gotta protect ourselves, gotta make sure the snitch ain’t around to do any snitching. Yer either with us, or against us, Ballin.”
York had reluctantly agreed to help them. It hadn’t done them much good, hadn’t done York any good, either.
Straight’s voice startled all of them. “Ballin, you in there?”
Sturpik’s and Tomlin’s eyes widened; Sturpik looked at the vial of tarry stuff and hissed, “Get rid of that or you’re going to get us all in a lot of trouble.”
Without thinking, York reacted, reached out, and palmed the small vial just as Straight walked into the room. “Ballin,” she said. “Time for more pod training.”
Sturpik and Tomlin’s eyes narrowed, looking at him angrily.
York lifted the reader and said, “Can I take a second to put this away?”
“Sure,” she said. “But make it quick.” She turned and walked out of the room.
Sturpik and Tomlin both smiled and nodded their approval, then stood and walked away.
York put the reader away, cycled his locker out of storage, and wrapped the vial in spare coveralls. He’d give it back to Sturpik as soon as he could.
Chapter 5:
Trouble Again
The alert klaxon woke York from stim-sleep, the lights in his coffin flashed to full brightness, and Straight’s voice said, “Battle stations, this is a drill. Hop to it, Ballin.”
&n
bsp; York had to wait several seconds for his coffin to cycle out of storage. They’d taught him to sleep with a clean set of coveralls tucked under his arm so he didn’t waste time searching for them. When his coffin cycled out, he hit the deck, got his legs into the garment, and sprinted out of the bunk room while getting his arms into the sleeves. He hit the switch on his pod hatch on the inner hull, dove through the gravity sheer as it cycled open, yanked it shut, and sealed it behind him. He grabbed a handgrip, straightened his body, and shoved off, using the zero-G to float the length of the tube to the outer pod hatch—another trick the veterans had taught him.
He hit the switch on the hatch and pushed through it as it opened. He’d learned to rotate his body so he was at the proper angle. All he had to do was tuck slightly and coast in zero-G until he dropped into the acceleration couch. Then with one foot, he kicked the hatch closed, hit the switch to seal and lock it, and strapped in.
Comp was already running his pod through pre-combat check. He scanned the readout, watched closely as the status check ran its course, and the instant it was complete he slapped the active switch. He was on station.
Straight’s disembodied voice sounded in his headset. “Not bad, Ballin. A little over a minute, which is pretty good given that your coffin is always the last to cycle out.”
Marko said, “Here’s the drill, Ballin. You got an enemy warship at a hundred million kilometers, spitting transition shells at us at a hundred lights. How much time you got to make a decision?”
“A little under eight seconds,” York said.
“Good. You’ve been doing your homework.
“Today we’re going to walk you through a simulated engagement. And this time, when you think it’s appropriate, go ahead and override.”
For the last month, York had spent five to ten hours a day strapped into a pod learning and practicing. His training had started with the scramble to battle stations. He learned it was a tradition to put a new pod gunner trainee through that test. He then graduated to basic pod systems, had studied emergency procedures and backup systems. He’d moved up to pod control, had practiced targeting, aiming, and firing. It didn’t seem that hard to him, and he was anxious to have a try at a real combat situation. He wasn’t yet participating in full ship-wide drills, but that would come if he did well today.
He scanned his screens: guidance and ballistic control, ordnance, fire control, three tracking screens … a large yellow blip on his tracking screens at a hundred million kilometers. The yellow blip spit out a smaller yellow blip, a transition launch aimed at Dauntless; it spit out several in rapid succession. The simulation included all of the sounds of a battle, the hull thrumming with the sound of her main batteries, the pops of the pods around him firing at incoming ordnance, the sound of the ship’s engines changing pitch as they maneuvered. One of the yellow blips turned red, indicating it had been allocated to him as a target. He tracked it, let it go, allowed the computer to control his pod and deflect it. Over a period of an hour, they gave him forty targets, though he only found it necessary to override the computer on five. When they ended the simulation, he crawled down the tube to the Pod Deck thoroughly exhausted.
Marko helped him out of the hatch on the inner hull. “Not bad, kid. I would have overridden the third target we gave you, not let the computer handle it, but Straight disagrees, so it’s a toss. Let’s go review the whole thing.”
As they turned to walk back to the command console, Marko hesitated, frowned, and said, “Hmmm!”
Straight stood near her console talking to Chief Zhako and an officer about Zhako’s age.
“What’s wrong?” York asked.
Marko’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Zhako is master-at-arms. I wonder what he’s doing down here? And with Pallaver?”
“Who’s Pallaver?”
“Lieutenant Pallaver is our section head.”
As York and Marko walked toward them, the three turned to look their way. None of them looked happy, and Straight looked just plain angry. As they approached, she snarled at York, “You idiot.”
Marko asked, “What’s going on?”
Pallaver ignored him and said, “Bring him.”
Straight and Zhako each took one of York’s arms and marched him in Pallaver’s wake. The lieutenant led them to the bunk room where a couple of spacers waited near the locker access. They’d cycled one of the lockers out of storage and had it open, and as the five of them entered the room, one of the spacers turned and held out a pair of coveralls. He peeled back a few layers of cloth, revealing the small vial of tarry stuff. York’s stomach knotted up.
Pallaver said, “We found this in his locker. Looks like a stim-hype. We’ll have to analyze it to be sure.”
He turned and towered over York. “Cuff him.”
A cell was a cell. At least York now knew how to get into and out of a grav bunk. He lay there wondering how he could fix this. They hadn’t questioned him yet, though he knew that would come. He considered telling them the truth, how he’d refused to accept the stuff once before, and then the second time Sturpik and Tomlin had practically forced him, had certainly tricked him … at least a bit. But as he thought about what he might say, it sounded whiney, like a phony excuse, which would only get him in more trouble.
In any case, those who ratted out their friends on the streets paid a painful price, ranging from a thorough beating up to and including a knife in the gut. And little by little, he was learning that these navy people had a bunch of unwritten rules not unlike those of the streets. No, he’d be a fool to squeal on his friends, though he reminded himself that Sturpik and Tomlin weren’t his friends, but that really didn’t matter, either. Friends or not, a snitch’s life was short and unpleasant. He’d have to keep his mouth shut and pay the price.
About an hour after they locked him in the cell, some sort of mechanism in the cell hatch clanked loudly and the hatch swung open. York killed the gravity field on his bunk, caught the edge with a hand as he fell out of it, and pivoted so he landed on his feet on the deck. Zhako and Straight walked into the cell carrying manacles. “You idiot,” Straight said as they cuffed his hands and ankles.
They marched him to a small room furnished with a plast desk and a couple of chairs. Pallaver and an older officer with gray in the hair at his temples were waiting there. They watched silently as Zhako sat York down in one of the chairs and locked his manacles to the chair so he couldn’t move. The chair was bolted to the deck.
The older officer approached York with some sort of palm-size instrument in one hand. He gripped York’s wrist and pressed the instrument against the back of York’s hand. Then he raised the instrument and looked at it. “Passive scan says he’s clean, but I’d still like to confirm that with a live blood sample.”
Pallaver said, “Go ahead.”
The older man said to York, “I’m going to take some blood.”
He pressed the instrument to York’s neck. It emitted a little puff of sound and he felt a momentary sting. The man raised the instrument and looked at it again.
“Well, Doc?” Pallaver asked.
The older officer shook his head. “He’s clean. Nothing.”
“How long?”
Still looking at the face of the instrument, the man shrugged. “This thing is sensitive enough to spot even trace elements. If he’d taken anything within the last two months, we’d know. And I’m including everything in that, not just the crap we confiscated. The only thing I see is some liver enzymes that indicate he had a small amount of alcohol a few days ago.”
He looked down at York and asked, “Gunner’s blood?”
York nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”
The man looked again at his instrument. “And he didn’t overdo that, either.”
He turned to Pallaver and said, “I’m done here,” then walked out of the room.
Pallaver, Zhako, and Stra
ight surrounded York and stood looking down at him. Pallaver said, “So tell me, Spacer Ballin, where did you get that stuff?”
York had seen nothing to change his mind about the ramifications of squealing on Sturpik and Tomlin. “I found it, sir,” he said. “What is it?”
Straight leaned down and put her nose a centimeter from York’s. “What is it? You know fucking well what it is.”
“Easy, Petty Officer,” Zhako said, and she straightened up.
Zhako asked, “You don’t know what it is?”
York shook his head. “Some sort of drug, I guess.”
Straight threw her hands up in the air and said, “This is bullshit.”
Pallaver said, “Back off, Petty Officer Straight.”
She took one step back, folded her arms, and stood there staring at York.
“Okay, Spacer Ballin,” Pallaver said. “You claim you found it and you don’t know what it is, other than that it’s probably some sort of drug.”
York nodded, and Pallaver’s brow furrowed. “Let’s pretend I believe you about not knowing what it is. I certainly don’t believe you just found it.”
York stuck to his story. They attached some sort of instrument to him, looked at the instrument as they asked him questions, and agreed he was lying about finding it, but conceded that he didn’t know what it was. After an hour, they finally gave up and locked him in his cell.
York spent his twelfth birthday in the brig, but after two days there, they released him into Straight’s custody. As she marched him back to the Lower Pod Deck, she repeatedly slapped him in the back of the head and said, “You fuck up like this again, I’ll have your balls.”
As punishment, he’d been sentenced to unflavored protein cake and water for a tenday, and Straight had him back on his hands and knees scrubbing decks. Every fourth day, his watch rotation put him on first watch—graveyard. When not on an elevated watch condition, most of the ship’s personnel slept through first watch, with just a skeleton crew on duty. York didn’t really mind the quiet and solitude—he scrubbed the deck and stayed out of trouble.