The Hot Gate - [Troy Rising 03]

by John Ringo

  “Sometimes we have to pull high-g maneuvers,” Dana said. “A good bit of the time, if the coxes know what they’re doing. And sometimes things go wrong when you least expect it. Which means you might have to chin yourself up the entire boat to fix something. So, yeah, we need to be in good physical condition.”

  “And you intend to return to the null grav court so we can be pummeled by Islamic terrorists,” Palencia said.

  “Yep,” Dana said. “And as you get better, you’ll get less and less pummeled. Since for reasons of both regulation and size I can’t do wall-to-wall counseling on you for not being able to handle yourselves in micro, I’m going to let the Pathans do it until you learn. Of course, you better hope they don’t learn faster than you.”

  “You are so kind, Quipu,” Palencia said.

  “Hah, she is a quipu, no?” Benito called.

  “She is our quipu, Benito,” Palencia said. “Thus we get to call her Quipu. Not some ghetto monkey.”

  “Who are you calling ghetto, you horse-dick sucking wimp,” Benito said, coming up off his bench with fists raised.

  “EM Palencia,” Dana said sharply. “I’m going to pretend that I did not hear an EM3 refer to an EM2 in a derogatory fashion because that would be disrespect to an NCO which is a chargeable offense and then I’d have to request you be masted. As I will ignore when you very politely apologize to the EM2.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “Now, Engineer’s Mate,” Dana barked.

  “I sincerely apologize for any offense I may have rendered you, Engineer’s Mate,” Palencia said, his teeth grinding.

  “I apologize, as well, for any offense my division may have presented you, Engineer’s Mate Benito,” Dana said, standing up and looking him in the eye.

  “He can’t call me those things,” Benito said hotly.

  “Correct,” Dana said. “Which is why the regulation exists. You are a superior rank. I might add that it is also a chargeable offense to refer to a superior as a whore.”

  “That was never said,” Benito replied angrily.

  “You guys apparently didn’t pay attention to the fact that Leonidas records pretty much anything said in a public venue,” Dana said. “So. These are my brothers. This is my team. And we now have a balance of power. You drop the dime on my team, I drop it on yours. Or we can return to neutral corners and be all friendly and stuff. Or at least act that way.”

  “No one would listen to you,” Benito said. “Nobody cares what you say.”

  “Really?” Dana said. “Leonidas? Were you monitoring yesterday morning’s altercation in the gym?”

  “Would you like me to play back the recording?” the AI asked.

  “No, thank you, Leonidas,” Dana said. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Comet.”

  “And before you say that the AI talks to me because I’m a Norté, think again. I’ve heard that they rarely speak to anyone at my rank, Norté or otherwise. I just seem to have a knack. But the point is made. So I’d suggest we return to neutral corners.”

  “Bitch,” Benito muttered.

  “Correct,” Dana said. “Not normally, but you guys seem to bring it out. And I’m not going ‘Oh, Benito, I’m so afraid!’ So you’ve got to wonder why? Why am I perfectly comfortable playing null ball with Pathan Marines who dearly hate my guts and would like nothing better than to kill me? Or more likely rape me to make me learn my ‘place’? What makes me comfortable sitting here eyeball to eyeball with you? You want machismo? Try not only surviving being mid-spaced by a shuttle where your buddy just ate a missile but flying the broken bird back to the Jimmy, picking up another load of Marines and taking same broken bird back into a hot LZ, Benito. What you have to wonder is where I’ve been, what I’ve done, that makes me not give a rat’s butt about your very capable stare, Benito. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know why Pallie called you ghetto. You don’t know anything about me, either, Benito. I’ve spit in death’s eye so many times he’s tired of being blinded, Benito. So I’d really suggest we take it to neutral corners.”

  “You’ve got...” He paused, clearly unsure how to continue.

  “The term you’re looking for is massive ovaries,” Dana said.

  “Heh,” Benito said, grinning. “Yeah. Big ovaries.”

  “Seriously, no idea how big,” Dana said. “But if you want to play a little null ball we can discuss it.”

  “I’ve heard,” Benito said, shaking his head. “No way.”

  “To clarify,” Dana said, raising her voice. “Yeah. I really am a farm girl. Big farm, mind you. Right at three thousand acres. Three older male cousins, which starts to get you some of the backstory. And, yeah, I’ve tossed haybales. And I was a gymnast. And the way that I’d get my mad out on the Troy was by going to the welder bars and kicking ass. Of course, to do that here I’d have to have somebody I could trust to have my back and so far nobody but the Pathans seem up to the party. Any takers?”

  “You aren’t a bitch,” Benito said, shaking his head. “You’re crazy.”

  “Certified as high level PTSD since I was three years old,” Dana said, leaning forward into the El Salvadoran’s personal space. “Walked out of L.A. Three. Years. Old. Do the math.”

  “Mother of God...” one of the group muttered.

  “The fires,” Benito said quietly.

  The L.A. superfire, started by the Horvath kinetic energy weapon that had wiped out one of the world’s wealthiest and best known cities, had caught just as the chaparral was at peak. Less than ten percent of the population had made it out of the basin alive.

  “Three years old,” Dana said, quietly. “Who are any of you to call me whore? So I suggest that we return to neutral corners.”

  “Yes,” Benito said. “I agree.”

  “Thank you,” Dana said, sitting back down at the weight machine. She gave an image of perfect calm.

  “I paid too little attention to one of the articles about you,” Palencia said as she started doing reps. “I’d noticed you were an orphan, but... there are many.”

  “Dad died in Anaheim,” Dana said. “Mom committed suicide right after we got to the farm.”

  “I’m sorry,” Palencia said.

  “Don’t be,” Dana replied, grunting as she worked off the adrenaline on the weights. “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Pal, I’ve been thinking about everything you said yesterday.”

  “And?” the Argentinean asked.

  “And I’m going to have to ignore it,” Dana said. “I’ve looked at my goals and your goals. The team’s goals to the extent that you’re correct about those goals. I don’t know how I can positively effect your goals. I’ll keep trying to think of a way but you’re right. My background means I can’t really positively affect your environment. I might negatively affect it. People might take umbrage to my pointing out that, no, the shuttles are not ready for service. But I can’t worry about that. With no way to work your social side, I need to concentrate on what I do know. So we’re going to just fix the damned shuttles.”

  “Simple as that?” Palencia said, chuckling.

  “I thought a lot about what you said,” Dana said. “As much as I understand about your side and as much as I could figure out about mine. And I realized that I was going about this all wrong. Oh, same basic idea, but I was going at it wrong. You see, what you described of dealing with your ... monkeys? We call that micromanagement.”

  “I’ve heard the term,” Palencia said, shrugging. “But it is necessary.”

  “Unfortunately,” Dana said, sitting up. “You see, I’m a natural micromanager. I’m OCD as hell as well as being PTSD. I’m naturally the sort of person who wants things to be absolutely perfect. One of the docs said that it was because I couldn’t control my environment in my early life, but from what I heard my mom was the same way. Nature, nurture, take your pick, I’m OCD as hell.

  “Which means I’m actually kind of good for space. But most American spacemen I’ve
dealt with, that’s the wrong approach. Being a micromanager doesn’t work real well with American spacemen. They’re motivated, in general, to do the best job possible. Among other things, they don’t want to die by sucking vacuum or being blown apart by a plasma explosion. You give them a task, condition and standard, give them the training to meet it and, by and large, they’ll try to meet it to the best of their ability.”

  “Feel lucky,” Palencia said. “Trying to get the monkeys to do anything is tough.”

  “And that’s the problem,” Dana said. “Because I’m about to be insulting. You’re describing yourself in my eyes. You are a monkey.”

  “What?” Palencia said, sitting up. “How dare—?”

  “I can’t just tell you the mission and expect you to do the task to standard,” Dana said. “To get you to work I’m going to have to be on your ass every single God damned day and every single God damned moment. That may get me a string of ‘reply by endorsements’ and it may even get my shuttle sabotaged. I can’t worry about that. It’s beyond my ability to control without just crossing my arms and letting you guys hang yourselves. Which is in the long run guaranteed to destroy my career and, in my opinion, much more likely to get me killed. So, congratulations, my natural inclination to be a micromanaging bitch is now given free rein. Speaking of horse metaphors. And, by the way, yes, I can ride the hell out of a horse.”

  “You didn’t listen to a thing I said,” Palencia said.

  “No, I did” Dana said, racking her weights. “Remember, it was recorded. And you and I can both access the recording. I even replayed parts. I thought about it a lot. And what I realized was that you had no intention of helping me with my goals. Ergo, I don’t really have any moral reason to help you with yours. Your ‘social political’ goals or your personal goals, like having plenty of free time to get laid. By the way, not going to happen. Not unless you get a lot better really fast.

  “So you can feel free to complain to high heaven. And Megdanoff can feel free to counsel me on cultural issues. I quite simply don’t care. When the dust settles what is going to be the final recording is that I did my job. I spent my time and energy ensuring my division’s shuttles were up and my division was trained to the tasks. Period. And I get to be the OCD, micromanaging bitch I am by natural inclination. Way less stress for me. It’s a two-fer.”

  “Mother of God.”

  “More like Mother of Satan,” Dana said, moving over to the crunch table and angling it. “So, feel free to nickname me after an ornery pseudo-camel with nice fur. I’m sure you’re going to call me worse as soon as I’m out of earshot. But ninety percent of the time I’m going to be in earshot, and up your ass so far you’re going to have my head sticking out of your mouth, until you either figure out I’m serious and start working to effect my goals, or pull enough strings to get me transferred. Either one works for me.” She hooked her feet into the bar and started doing inverted crunches. “As for what works for you? Just really don’t give a damn!’

  * * * *

  “Next thing on the agenda,” Tyler said.

  For a change he was on Earth and at the LFD headquarters in Littleton, New Hampshire. Prior to the various KEW strikes on Earth the Littleton office had been a spur of the main office in Boston that existed mostly so Tyler, who tried to avoid Boston as much as possible, had somewhere to go when he wanted an office.

  After the nuking of Boston, it became the de facto main office. And Tyler found that it was useful to drop in from time to time if for no other reason than to quell the rumors of his untimely demise.

  In his rare free time, Tyler Vernon did do a bit of ego shopping. There was a website so convenient for it if it didn’t exist he’d have had to create it. AllaboutVernon.com was maintained by a rather nice chap in Kansas who, from fairly early on, had become simply obsessive about one Tyler Vernon. The retiree scooped up every snippet of information about Tyler Vernon, every protest, every rumor, every news article, and created a convenient database of links. And it was everything. Tyler had had Argus do a search one time and the most the AI could come up with that wasn’t on the site was stuff in obscure languages.

  One of the recurring rumors since he’d been spending most of his time off-planet was that he was dead and it was being covered up by, variously, the U.S. government, the Alliance, the Glatun who were secretly running the Alliance, LFD without the knowledge of the U.S. government or the Alliance—the list went on. The latter years of Howard Hughes were often mentioned.

  So when the rumors got to making “real” news, major blogs that weren’t given to rumor mongering and the increasingly irrelevant network news shows, he’d schedule a trip to Earth to “cover some bases.” There’d be a press conference, he’d jokingly offer some DNA to prove it was him—ABC took him up on the offer once—visit the various offices, shake hands, go to a couple of parties of the Rich and Famous, pose for paparazzi with some supermodel on his arm and, notably, attend meetings and sign stuff.

  The board generally required it at least once a year. They wanted to know, among other things, that space radiation hadn’t driven him insane. Not that most of them could tell the difference between his normal method of business, eccentric, and true insanity.

  “We’re getting increasing complaints, especially since E Eridani, about quality control.” Knut Stormkartr was the President of Manufacturing of Apollo. Generally, Tyler hired Americans if for no other reason than he more or less understood what he was getting. But Knut, a Swede, was about as good as it got when it came to managing the wide-flung supply chain and manufacturing facilities of Apollo.

  “Given what happened with the relays in the Myrmidons, I take that sort of thing very seriously,” Tyler said, frowning. “Can we pin it down? Define ‘increasing complaints’”

  “We’ve had a problem with, well, Granadica from the very beginning.” Jim Haumann was the CEO of Apollo and knew that beating around the bush with Tyler was a very good way to be the former CEO of Apollo. “It just seems to be increasing.”

  “I’m not going to pooh-pooh this,” Tyler said. “I’ve heard about the problems for longer than you’ve been CEO. I was also under the impression it was under control.”

  “Control is not the way I’d phrase it, sir,” Jeff Murphy said. The Vice President for Relations for LFD handled the combined marketing and “image” departments. “We’ve been trying to step on this but it’s getting a bit out of hand.”

  “I don’t like stepping on quality control issues when it comes to stuff like space,” Tyler said. “Why aren’t we stepping on the issue and not the buzz about the issue?”

  “We’ve been trying,” Haumann said. “The problem is, we can’t find the fundamental source except Granadica. And the range of issues is just...” He paused and the normally phlegmatic CEO looked as if he wanted to snarl.

  “You guys know the drill,” Tyler said. “If you bring something to me to fix then you’d better be aware of the way I fix things. Which is generally with a hammer.”

  “Mr. Vernon, if you can find a hammer that will fix this, I would appreciate it,” Stormkartr said. “What my department, working with outside experts, the Argus AI and various other methods, has not been able to find is a pattern. If we could find a pattern then we believe we could... gently reprogram Granadica’s workings and improve quality control. As it is...”

  “Just to cover all the bases,” Tyler said. “We’re sure it’s Granadica?”

  “We are now getting vessels from Vulcan and Hephaestus as well,” Knut said. “There are, occasionally and at great remove, small items. The universe isn’t perfect. Granadica, however, has a much higher, while not exactly critical, level of faults in her outputted systems.”

  “Especially the Myrmidons,” Murphy said. “We’re getting some really nasty complaints from the South Americans on those.”

  “The context of which are... ?” Tyler said.

  “There was a recent MASSEX, or massive exercise, involving the 143rd Boat Squ
adron from the Thermopylae as well as support ships, the Thermopylae Marines and various others,” Haumann said.

  ”Saw it in the news,” Tyler said. “I got the impression there were some issues.”

  ’”Some issues’ is putting it delicately,” Knut said. “The 143rd, with rare exception, was deadlined in some form or fashion. There were no fatalities but they were unable to complete many of their missions. The after action report noted many issues but the most critical was that many of the systems on the Myrmidons simply were not working.”

  ”Because of Granadica?” Tyler asked.

  ”That is the position of the South American nations,” Murphy said. “As I said, we’re being blasted in their news media.”

  ”I saw some of that,” Tyler said. “I wasn’t sure why. They didn’t specifically mention the Myrmidons. We just seemed really unpopular. I figured it was because we were, well, gringos.”