by David Weber
The Quick and the Dead
The XO stomped down the deserted corridors of the crew compartment, looking around in delight at the near pristine conditions. With none of the pesky crew cluttering things up, it was possible to have a truly efficiently run ship. Suddenly he slid to a stop.
"BOSUNNN!" he shouted, pointing at the floor. "What is that??!"
"Gum, sir," the bosun replied.
"Who is in charge of this area?" the XO asked, furiously.
"Cooper," the bosun replied. It was getting easier and easier to remember as the number of crew dropped precipitously.
"Well, space him!" the XO said. "Gum on the floor is just slackness."
"Yes, Sir," the bosun replied. "You'll remember that we're returning them to their families . . ."
"Very well," the XO said, continuing on his survey. "Send him to the medics."
"No, no!" Cooper yelled, hopping up and down in the grip from two men-at-arms and winking for all he was worth. "Don't kill me, Doc!"
"Oh, shut up and take it like a man," Tyler replied tiredly. He rolled up Cooper's sleeve and injected the engineering tech with a sedative. "Take him to the forecastle."
"I bet he dropped that gum on the floor on purpose," one of the men-at-arms grumped. "I could do with a three day vacation at this point."
"If we lose many more engineering techs, we're never going to make it," Sean replied darkly.
Captain Zemet opened his eyes and stared blearily into the face of Admiral Judah Yanakov. A quick glance to the side showed the two medics, the engineering officer and the astrogator lined up against one wall of what was apparently a hospital room.
"Captain, would you kindly tell me what in the Tester's name was going on up there?" the admiral said furiously. "I would especially like to know how you came to be in a coma and left that Masadan of an XO in charge. The one hundred and twenty-three personnel that your former XO had sedated have all been returned to duty, by the way."
"Well, Sir," the captain said, not even glancing at the figures against the wall, "we were drilling on compensator adjustments in movement. The ship went right and I went left and that's all I remember."
"Warrant Officer Kearns?"Admiral Yanakov asked. "Corpsman Tyler? Is that an accurate report?"
"He's our Captain, Sir," Kearns replied. "What he says is what happened."
"Hmmmph." The admiral peered at the captain for a moment then shook his head. "That's not quite the same as saying 'It happened like he said.' I don't have anywhere more out of the way to put you, Zemet, except Blackbird Base and I already stashed your XO there. So I guess I'll have to leave you in command. The rest of you are dismissed."
"That's it?" Tyler asked, collapsing into the sickbay chair. The flight back from Grayson had been made in total silence.
"What's it?" Kearns asked, pulling out his bladder of whiskey and pouring some into his cup.
"No investigation?" the Manticoran asked. "We just go back out on patrol?"
"You remember you're in Siberia, right?" the warrant asked, taking a sip of his tea. "And you know that Siberia was nothing but a giant prison?"
"Sort of."
"We're all prisoners, trapped in a Siberia called the Francis Mueller. You. Me. The Captain. Hell, even Kopp and the Chaplain, both of whom have been thrown out of at least one decent ship so far. And prisoners don't rat out other prisoners to the warden."
"Oh."
"I notice you didn't say anything," Kearns pointed out.
"Well . . . hell," Tyler said. "I guess you're right. Why didn't he just say he fell in the shower?"
"He's too professional for that," the warrant officer said, tossing the bladder over to the corpsman. "Only amateurs fall in a shower. Welcome to Siberia."
LET'S GO TO PRAGUE
by John Ringo
CHAPTER 1
A PLAN IS HATCHED
"Let's go to Prague, Johnny!"
John Mullins looked across at his partner and seriously contemplated pegging him in the head with his beer mug. Instead he slid the container of thin, sour brew aside and let the next drop of condensation hit the tabletop.
He recalled the heady days when they first arrived at Seaforth Nine. The most prestigious base in the entire Havenite Republic had just been taken intact by a coup de main and since ONI was already going to be pouring over it, what better use could it be put to than stabling the elite Covert Insertion Teams. Heady days indeed; the unit had been barracked in a converted warehouse behind the Manticoran consulate on New Ghuanzou.
As it turned out, there were worse things than New Guano; the "most advanced base" the People's Republic of Haven had ever produced turned out to be a dump. Make that a dump and a half.
Much of the interior partitioning was of wood, for Christ's sake. Combined with the fact that the dessicators didn't and the chillers wouldn't, the place was a perpetual steam bath. It said much that teams had been trying to get moved up in the mission roster, just to get the relative luxury of beating around on Silesian tramp freighters and risking their lives behind Peep lines.
But that didn't mean he was willing to take leave in Prague.
"So, for our leave, you want to go beat around on tramps for two weeks, maybe a month, spend a couple of tension-filled months hoping we don't get picked up by StateSec and then have to hop tramps back? In what possible way does that differ from work?"
"I hear it's lovely in the spring," Charles said with a sardonic grin. He pushed his hair back and chuckled. "And we can drink as much of that fine Peep beer as we choose. Besides, you know how much you love your work."
When Charles Gonzalvez wasn't on a mission he was the spitting image of a mad scientist. Same wild hair, same crazed, glazed expression, same oddball sense of reality. He would be discussing Peep information system security in one breath and be off on how best to kill a sentry in the next.
Come to think of it, that was pretty much how he acted when he was on a mission.
Gonzalvez been through a half a dozen partners before he and Mullins met up. Nobody wanted someone who was that . . . frenetic when they were snooping and pooping around in the Peep's back yard. But, somehow, he and Mullins made a great pair. The hyper aristocrat from Manticore A and the quiet farmboy from Gryphon balanced each other. Or, perhaps, enhanced each other; there was no question that they were both the most experienced insertion team and the most successful. The former sort of assumed the latter; losses in CITs ran upwards of thirty percent per mission.
Insertion teams had a variety of uses, from direct reconnaissance, checking out Peep installations and equipment, to retrievals. Sometimes there were defectors to be pulled out or cells to be extracted or the occasional deep mole to be rescued. There was one Manty intelligence agent, Covilla, who had been supplying information for years from deep in Peep territory. That operative was one of the survivors, but not all were so capable. Or lucky.
The People's Republic of Haven had some pretty decent counterintelligence goons in their State Security. They were quite good at compromising cells and rolling up lines. So all too often some poor unsuspecting CIT would go strolling into what was supposed to be a safe house, only to find out that "safe" is a relative term.
Gonzalvez and Mullins had, so far, managed to avoid that fate. Whether it was Johnny's habit of never accepting anything at face value or Gonzo's ability to extract any information he needed at the drop of a cred piece, the two of them had survived every mission, despite some hairy encounters. And if nothing else worked, they had both proven on several occasions that, stolid or wacky, they were, in that delightful phrase, "good with their hands"; the very few times that it had come down to violence the situation ended up in their favor.
But he still wasn't going to Prague.
"How are we getting there?" Mullins asked, finishing the beer with a grimace. It really wouldn't have taken that much to improve the living conditions on Seaforth, but the fact that insertion teams were on the base was so secret it was hard to complain to the right
people. "Minister, we need to upgrade the living conditions on Seaforth." "Why?" "Uh . . ."
"It's not like going to Basilisk or Manticore; we can't just jump on a freighter. Where are the travel documents coming from? The cover gear? Where, precisely, are we going to get the internal Peep documentation?"
"Ah, well," Charles said with a grin. "That's not a problem, old boy. Let's just say that Q has some files on his computer he doesn't want coming to life."
"Well, sure, doesn't everyone?" Mullins said. "But . . . wait . . . you cracked Q's computer?"
"Boredom doesn't befit me, old boy," his partner replied. "I asked him, politely, for an upgraded extraction pack. When he said no, what was I to do but take it as a challenge? All I was really looking for was inventory information. How was I to know he had a thing for wee beasties."
Mullins choked back a laugh and shook his head. "You're serious."
"Disgusting really," Charles said, taking a swill of beer. "So, are we going to sit in this bleeding steam bath for the next few months or what?"
"What's wrong with just going home?" Mullins asked. "You go to Manticore and hang out at the family estates and I'll . . ."
"Go home to the farm?" Gonzo asked with a grin. "Wander down to the local pub and not show off the uniform you don't have? Not impress the girls with the medals you can't wear?"
"Oh, shut up."
"I suppose we could go down to south coast and hang out on the beach," Charles continued. "Watch all the swabbies wandering around in uniform, telling their tales of how they all fought with the Salamander at Basilisk and Grayson. Flexing their nonexistent muscles and flashing their measly collection of ribbons."
"I get the picture . . ."
"While the girls ooh and ahhh . . ."
"All right . . ."
"Then we can go to the bar and watch the bartender filling up their mugs for free . . ."
"I really do understand . . ."
"While we're spending all our credits on overpriced sex in a canoe beer . . ."
"All right . . ."
"You know, very close to water . . ."
"All right . . ."
"When we could be in Prague . . ."
"I'll go . . ."
"Wearing StateSec uniforms, not having to pay for our really good beer . . ."
"I'LL GO . . ."
"Impressing the girls with our stories of how we were in on the kill of the Salamander . . ."
"I said I'LL GO! Okay, enough. I give. You're right!"
"I knew you'd see it my way old boy."
"Thanks."
"And it really is lovely in the spring."
CHAPTER 2
SUPPLY AND COMPROMISES
"Hallo, Q! Beautiful day isn't it?"
The position of covert operative supply officer had been known as "Q" since time immemorial. The reason was lost in the mists of time, but various reasons, most dependent on the nature of the current holder, had been suggested over the years. "Quality officer" was one. The current holder of the title suggested "Queer Bastard" to most who had to deal with him.
"You don't have a mission scheduled," Q said, waving at the door. The severely overweight supply officer was bent over what appeared to be a beer flask, picking at the base with a dental tool. Whatever was involved must have been very small because he had a video loupe slipped over his right eye. "And I don't have any interest in listening to your whining. Get out."
"Oh, is that any way to treat a friend?" Charles continued. "We're just here to pick up a few items for our leave."
"And what makes you think I'd let you have anything to take on leave?" Q asked, straightening up.
Johnny always imagined Q as some weirdly transformed amphibian. He had a wide mouth with fat lips and a foreshortened forehead that gave his face a faintly piscine look. Combined with the hundred kilos or so that he could stand to lose, the impression of an annoyed toad was hard to ignore.
"Oh, nothing old boy, just these," Charles said, handing the supply officer an envelope.
Q accepted it suspiciously and opened it with a closed expression. After a moment he took off the loupe and went to his computer. A few taps later he was rubbing his jaw.
"These were obviously planted on my system," the supply officer said with a questioning tone.
"Don't think so," Mullins interjected. "Files are logged onto secure systems."
Q made a moue of distaste and tapped a couple more keys. Only then did his expression start to become more waxen.
"I took the liberty of locking down the evidence while I was in there, old boy," Charles said. "Just doing my job as a good citizen. Those pictures are illegal just about everywhere but New Las Vegas; and they're questionable even there. What that fellow is doing with the goat . . . tch, tch, tch . . ."
"Err . . ."
"And that picture of you and the sheep . . ."
"What picture???!" Q said then hit a series of other keys. His head tilted to the side and an unfathomable expression crossed his face. "Hmmm . . . . But that's definitely a fake!"
"Hard to prove, old boy," Charles said. "What with all the others . . . I mean, you're not even a Marine."
"Hey!" Johnny said.
"Sorry old boy."
"Bastard," the supply officer said, giving up.
"Definitely," Gonzalvez said, handing him another envelope.
Q opened this one with a great deal more trepidation and his eyes widened as he read the list. "What in the hell do you want with these?"
"Going on leave, old boy," Johnny interjected with a creditable mimicry of his partner. "Prague's beautiful in the spring, don'cha'know."
With Q's more than willing support, getting to Prague was remarkably easy. With their bags marked as "Secure Material: Courier Only" they got a ride on a destroyer headed for Basilisk easily enough. Once there they changed identities to Silesian diplomats and, again, cleared customs without incident. A tramp freighter to Chosan, another change of clothes and in less than two weeks they were sitting in a bar in downtown Prague.
"You were right, Charles," Johnny said in Allemaigne. "The beer is definitely better."
One of the oddities that had led the then Private John Mullins from the Marines to the insertion teams was his ease with languages. What oddity of genetics had permitted a farm boy from Gryphon to smoothly learn nine languages, and he was working on Egyptian, was unsure. All that he knew was that he only had to hear one for a few days and before he even realized it, he was idiomatic.
Stranger things had happened in the universe. But not many.
"So are the girls old boy," Charles said, slipping a ten credit coin into the thong of the dancer in front of him. "So are the girls."
Prague had been settled by a society of Aryan racial homongenists from old Earth. The planet itself was a paradise with a temperature and weather regime remarkably similar to Earth's and the residents were among the "prettiest" to be found in the human settled worlds. Soon after landing the initial nutcases that had founded the colony were tossed out and a more realistic social structure based upon constitutional democracy was installed. The colony, which had been rather small to start and well off the main trade lanes, was nonetheless undergoing a real renaissance when the Peeps landed.
Since then it had been turned into just another Peep slave planet. Albeit with very pretty blond and red-headed hookers.
The People's Republic of Haven was, technically, the most egalitarian society in all the galaxy. Or at least that was what their Ministry of Information would have the rest of the galaxy believe. In reality, the social stratification, especially on subject planets such as Prague, was horrible. There were a few Peep senior officials who lived like Roman emperors, their StateSec and Navy officers who enforced the peace and lived like barons and knights, and the common people. The last group survived however they could and many of the females survived in the oldest profession in history. Any of the remarkably good-looking girls in the room could be had for less than an hour's pay of the State
Security captains he and Gonzalvez were dressed as.
Charles watched the dancer step down off the stage and into the arms of a StateSec major and sighed. "Story of my life, really." Then he gasped at the sight of the next girl up.
Her hair was red and long enough that the braid was woven into her minimal clothing, a half bra and a thong that left very little to the imagination. Her breasts were high and almost unnaturally firm, but the clothing was brief enough to determine that there were no scars; indicating that the lift was natural. Her shape was an almost perfect hourglass topped by a heart-stoppingly beautiful face.
"A girl like that should be in videos," Charles said, nudging his partner. "Not dancing in a cheap strip-joint."
When there wasn't a response he looked over at Johnny, who was frozen to the chair, his mouth open.
"She's good looking, my friend, but not that good looking," Charles said.
"Ugah . . ." was the only response he got.
"Are you all right, Johnny?"
"Oh, God," Mullins finally gasped. "I'm dead."
"What's wrong?"
"Never mind," Mullins said, starting to stand up. "Maybe she hasn't . . ." but before he could leave his chair the girl had danced her way across the raised stage and now was dancing directly in front of him.
To top off her looks, she was an extraordinary dancer.
"I think I need a cold shower," Charles said as she entered a series of complicated sinuosities. "Several cold showers."
"Hi, Rachel," Johnny said in New French.
"Hi, Johnny," Rachel replied. "Long time." She bent over backwards until she was a curve balanced on her toes and fingertips then swayed back and forth. "Remember this one?"
"So you used to date her?" Charles asked when the dancer had left the stage.
"It's a long story," Johnny replied. "I was on a mission in Nouveau Paris–" He stopped as Rachel walked up. She had thrown a light blue robe on over her bra and panties but the sheer material didn't so much cover as reveal enticingly.