by Mike Moscoe
“More reason not to go,” Tran snapped.
Izzy watched them; as of this moment, the project was dead. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut, and no one was going anywhere soon. Should she? She wished Andy was here. He could tell her whether the blood rising in her was just a tiger who couldn’t pass up a shoot, a woman desperate to avenge her niece, or a captain blinded by loyalty to one marine officer and willing to risk too much to keep her honor unsoiled. There were a lot of reasons to keep quiet. Two hundred innocents had died the last time she shot off her mouth.
But damn it, this wasn’t right.
“I know what your brigades faced on Elmo Four. Ship driving is just my mid-life change. I was the exec of the Ninety-seventh Defense Brigade. I was the one who got the troops in place seconds before you got there. I got the rockets flying just barely in time to send you packing. I organized the five thousand men and women who just barely kept you from winning. We fought off some damn good officers and troops. You telling me the ones left couldn’t shine the shit of the ones we killed?”
She had their attention.
“We know how to fight,” snapped Erwin. “We just don’t know where we’d be fighting. You’ve got to know the terrain, the target. We didn’t know you, and you wiped the floor with us.”
“I didn’t know the terrain before we got there, either. And I sure as hell didn’t know what you sent against us before we even had a chance to unpack. If you’re half as good as the troops who damn near kicked us off Elmo Four, you ought to be able to handle anything we find on Riddle.”
“You assume we find it before it’s eating us for lunch.”
“Yes. It’s a four-day run from the jump point to the station. We’d have a hundred hours to map things out and make a first cut at a plan. Ms. Seyd says she can peel the station like a ripe banana. If she can’t, we back out. The Patton and Junior can handle anything we meet on the way in and out. We don’t move on the station until Seyd sizes it up. We don’t drop on the planet until you say we drop.”
“You’re giving us a veto on the mission. Any time?” Tran asked slowly.
“If I say we run for it, I can’t see you staying behind. I can say drop, but it won’t do me any good if you say no.” Which had to be obvious to everyone and hell on unity of command. If they pulled this off, it would be one for The Book. If not, the next edition of the manual would rip them apart.
Murphy grinned like a thief. “And if my brigade drops, I can just see you guys sitting on your hands back at the station.”
Maybe the command structure was even more complicated than Izzy thought it was.
Tran made one last plea. “Mr. Prime Minister, you are not putting the only three brigades Wardhaven has under the command of a Humanity Navy three-striper.”
The Prime Minister turned to Rita. “I’ve never been in the service. Can we do it?”
Rita laughed. “She’s an O-5 by their pay scale. Our boys are O-4s by our pay scale. She outranks them.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Tran snapped.
“I know it isn’t,” Rita answered. “Mr. Prime Minister, we lost the war. Society allows us to keep our local military forces as a militia. They can call them up in an emergency. We are encouraged to work together at all times. If we’re going after that snake pit, I see no reason we can’t put our troops under a Society officer. I don’t see how else we can do it.”
“I won’t do it. This woman damn near killed me not a year ago. Wiped out half my company. Rita, damn it, Ray uses canes because of this bitch.”
“That’s enough, Major.” The Minister of Exterior Affairs cut him off. “One more word out of you, and your brigade lifts with your exec in command.” Tran sullenly retreated deep into his chair. The minister turned to Izzy. “Captain, I apologize for my subordinate. If you wish, I will have him removed from his command.”
“I think I’ve brought enough trouble into his life. I’ll take him if he’s willing to go.” Izzy hoped she wouldn’t regret this magnanimous gesture.
The prime minister stood. “Major Murphy, are you willing to prepare your unit for action and transport? Will you participate with your superior, Captain Umboto, in a council of war before commencing hostile actions against High Riddle station, and a similar council before taking hostilities to the planet surface?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Major Erwin?”
“We’ve eaten enough defeat pie, woman. We could use a taste of victory for a change.”
“Victory is to my taste, too, Major. But you don’t get to eat either sitting on your hands on post.”
“Mr. Prime Minister, the First will lift when ordered.”
“Major Tran, will you do as I’ve asked the others?” the Prime Minister asked.
“I didn’t think I had a vote.”
Izzy stood. “Major, I’d prefer to have three brigades. I’ll lift, if I see a chance to take Riddle, with only two. Why not come along? There will be nothing wrong with the ride.”
Tran shook his head ruefully. “I’ve got to be crazy to go along with this, but include my brigade.”
Rita and the other minister stood. “Looks like we need to set Captain Umboto up with a staff.” Rita turned to the spy. “I imagine you have a few suggestions.”
• • •
Switching gears, Izzy tapped her comm unit the second she came aboard the Patton. “Vu, Chips, how are my engines coming?”
“We’ve loaded the software from Pitt’s Hope,” Chips said. “We’re troubleshooting it right now. We’ve got a printout of the Sheffield’s backup, and we’re comparing them line by line.”
“You need more help?”
“We just got thirty more software specialists up from Wardhaven. They’re new, but they’ve actually slept in the last thirty-six hours, ma’am. We’re confident we’ve got the problem progressing.”
Izzy noted that he didn’t say the problem solved, or under control. Progressing. “Stay on it, Chips. I just offered some very demanding army types the Patton for their ferryboat across the river Styx. Don’t make a liar out of me. I don’t want to be the reason Trouble has to take it another day.”
• • •
Trouble wasn’t sure he could take another day of this. Ruth had let slip that her days as an employee were numbered. Ruth didn’t know what to expect if she was shipped to the vats. Ruth shouldn’t have to expect anything like that. Every muscle in Trouble’s body wanted to do something, anything, to keep her out of there.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. He was a marine, trained to solve problems with the appropriate degree of skill, expertise, and violence. And his hands were tied. Rather, his neck was yoked. If he crossed their line, they’d kill him.
And every day they rubbed his nose in it. Every day was slop to eat, whips for any reason the guard felt like, and work without end. Trouble watched the fire go out of men’s eyes, beat down by the rain, the heat, and the whip.
A manager Steve knew stuck in Trouble’s mind. The man may once have been fat, but now he was a skeleton. His work got slower and slower. The guard reduced his food allowance. The man quit eating entirely. Then he quit working. No amount of beating or pounding could get him out of his bunk. He just lay there curled in a ball.
Trouble brought half of his biscuit, put it under the guy’s nose. The vacant eyes did not see the food, or Trouble. The marine lingered with him until total darkness, as much to keep someone else from stealing the half biscuit as to study the dying man. He just lay there. Not moving, hardly breathing.
“You better get some sleep,” Tom whispered in the darkness. Trouble ate his half biscuit as he crawled into an empty bunk.
“How do you keep going?” he asked Tom.
“I wanted to die, right after they dumped me here. Steve kept me from attacking a guard, getting him to kill me. After a while, I followed his example. Put one foot in front of the other. Everything changes. Sooner or later, if I live long enough, this will change. I don’
t know why or when. Hell, most of the time in my real career I didn’t know why things happened. They just did, and most of them were good, so I claimed them for my work. Truth is, much of it was just damn luck and good hunches. So now my luck’s bad. It’ll change.” Tom rolled over, said nothing for a while.
“Your problem, marine, is you want to make it change. You want your invasion. You’re going to end up like that poor slob real soon if you keep waiting for a squad of big, hairy, gun-lugging marines to come blasting into the farm, and they don’t come soon enough. Maybe they need to send another spy in. Maybe they’ll do a legal approach. Those take time. A long time. If you can’t manage for the long haul, you may die five minutes before they show up.”
“Just my luck.”
“Get some sleep. Everything changes.”
• • •
Change came over the Patton slowly, but it came. She was coming back to life. Some changes were easy to recognize. The network worked noticeably faster. When they reinitiated fusion, the ship didn’t blow up. Guns chortled when all his batteries took a full charge; he was dying to play with his new rangefinder. Izzy managed to squeeze in a six-hour cruise. The Patton and Patton Jr. had only that practice being cruisers before it was back to the pier to be loaded as freighters.
The gripe sheets from the live fire exercise were a lot shorter than Izzy had any right to expect. Stan, who had commanded Junior for the short run out, was back aboard, the Patton still his first responsibility. “Yard will handle all of this while we take on containers and troops,” he observed over the paperwork before his eyes lit up. “Damn, Guns, your shooting was good. Junior’s stuck with the old fire control, and our shooting showed it.”
Guns pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Let me have a look-see. Maybe, if we’re fighting in line, if I got a good bearing on you and another good bearing on the target. It might work.”
“Would that limit us to one target at a time?” Izzy asked. In battle, it was critical to keep all hostiles busy. Leaving one comfortable to plan its shooting at leisure was a good way to get yourself converted to atoms.
“We’ve got upgraded computers, both central and fire control. We might have the spare resources,” Guns answered.
“Check it out, if you have time.”
The madly ordered disorder of getting a warship under way now took over, made worse by the obligation to be both a warship and a troopship. There were never enough minutes in an hour and far too many problems.
And now the ship wasn’t her only problem. She had a Guard command staff, drawn from officers and civilians. The spy vouched for their trustworthiness; Rita made sure they knew the job. The duties were familiar: operations, supply, intelligence, personnel. Wardhaven’s solutions to them were no different from those the 97th applied. Her chief of staff was a major swiped from Wardhaven’s War College. A lost arm five years ago had sidetracked Urimi from Unity’s war. Intelligence was Ms. Seyd; she brought with her a dozen youngsters and boxes of computer gear. Izzy had to remind her there was more to battlefield intelligence than interrogating electrons. Urimi dug up a team of mappers and interrogators to handle the less sexy side of data gathering and dissemination. Supply and personnel was a balding fellow, Captain Von Kerkin. Izzy handed him off to her supply officer; together they went off to figure out how many containers they could hang on the Patton before Guns screamed.
And now she had a place to settle Joe Edris; the spy sent up a civic action team: a hotshot manager from Nuu’s shop, a lawyer and three guys who swore they could manage a city’s full range of services, water, sewer, transportation. Izzy hoped she wouldn’t have to count on just three people to run a city. That was one of many things she didn’t know.
The days were full of meetings, the nights full of ghosts. She was tired, and getting cranky.
“Comm for you, Captain.”
“Yes,” Izzy answered, trying to use her voice as a calming influence on whoever it was bringing her a new problem.
“So, my tiger’s got herself a ship and a ground task force for her next fine show.”
“Captain Anderson.” Izzy’s voice lit up. Her old commander from the 97th’s timing was lousy, but what the heck.
“How’s it going, Izzy?”
“Could be better. Has been worse.”
“Hasn’t it, though?”
“You picked a hell of a time to show up, sir.”
“As usual, I have little control over my time. I hear from Elie that this won’t be your first shoot.”
Izzy sighed. “No.”
“Got a few seconds we can talk?”
“Not really.”
“I’m on the station. Got a table reserved for us at the Wharf Rat.”
Izzy scanned the confusion around her. “Stan, can you take over for an hour?”
“No trouble, Captain.”
“Okay, Andy, you got one hour of your tiger’s time.”
“I think you need it.”
• • •
Izzy found Andy in a quiet corner of the lounge. He put down his well-worn volume of Shakespeare as he stood to greet her. “What’s it been, three, four months?” He smiled.
“Seems longer.” Izzy found her throat going dry on her. She slid into the booth across from Andy.
“I took the liberty of ordering steaks with all the trimmings…and water. You’re headed out, aren’t you?”
“As soon as we’re loaded.” Izzy found that one an easy answer. “I wish you’d been here when I first showed up. Had a hell of a time deciding to trust this bunch.”
“Things can get a bit weird when enemies become allies almost overnight. I’ve enjoyed working with them.”
“Now that’s something I’ve done a lot of, lately, once we got this mission on. Sure wished you’d been at that batch of meetings. This tiger was having second thoughts. Was I just running off to do something, or was this something that needed doing?”
“But my tiger was thinking.” Andy smiled. “Woman, you may just grow up some day.”
“I feel like a million years old. Andy, I knew in my head that being Navy, we killed people. But twenty-plus years of peace, I guess I never really knew it.”
“It was in your head, but not your heart,” Andy offered.
“Yeah. Then the war hit and we were too busy staying one step ahead of dead to worry. Now, this universe is crazy and I don’t know who’s trying to kill me and who I should be killing.”
“And you wish I’d tell you.” Andy’s smile was warm and fatherly. Izzy had never known her father.
“Silly of me. You don’t know any more than I do.”
“Of the evil lurking out there, maybe I do. It is out there, and it has to be stopped. Who must die to stop it? Ah, Izzy, that is the quandary we all live with. For most, it is purely philosophical. But you wear the uniform. You have the power to stop it. You can kill it…and you can kill others, too.”
Izzy let that sink into her slowly. “So I’m headed out to meet that evil with a full gunnery kit and three brigades of Wardhaven’s best.” At that she could not help but laugh. “Eight months ago, I was trying to kill them. Now, I’m praying they are as good as advertised.”
Andy nodded. “Peace has given us a very strange world. Enemies become friends, friends become unknowns, and legitimate targets become…”
Izzy swallowed hard. “I fall asleep exhausted, but somewhere in the middle of the night, they show up. People I’ll never know, that I had no quarrel with…and that I killed.”
Andy sighed. “Forty years I put in the Navy. Never harmed a fly. Then comes last year. Lord God, the slaughter of good men and women, ours and theirs.”
“But that was a fair fight, Andy. We knew what we were heading into. So did the Unity troops. These folks, women, men, kids, had no beef with me. No chance. No chance at all. I just killed them.” Izzy’s eyes were rimming. In a moment she’d be crying. She looked away from Andy. Where are the damn steaks? Andy said nothing. His silence was a vacuum, pulling word
s out of her.
“You told me tigers got people killed. You warned me I was too damn trigger-happy. You told me, and I laughed and went right on. I didn’t want to be bothered by prisoners. I wanted the pirates wondering what happened to their raider. I had it all thought out. All thought out. Except for what might be in their brig. Damn!” Now Izzy was crying. She never cried. You didn’t cry in the slums. You didn’t cry in the Navy. You didn’t cry for yourself or for your dead.
Andy handed her a small box of tissues. She took a handful. “You came prepared.”
“I’ve used enough of them, the last six months.”
“You!”
Andy thumped his book. “I’ve read Will’s plays and sonnets since I was a boy. I think I only began to understand them this year. Maybe I only began to understand the pain that’s behind them now, after I’ve…commanded death and fled from it in all its myriad faces. The dead and the might-have-beens that would have given them longer life haunt my wakings and sleepings. Izzy, we are not alone, and”—Andy opened the book at random—“and we are not the first. Prince Hal gave his God full credit for victory at Agincourt, not because he was a saint, but because it liberated him from the responsibility for the slaughter. You have a god, Izzy?”
“There’s no god in the slums. Just devils to hide from.”
“Elie’s been a good person to talk to. College professors don’t think the way Navy does. Softer or something.”
“I always told you she was soft in the head.” Izzy tried to laugh; Andy smiled.
“You probably figure I’m going soft between the ears, too, but I found myself a padre to talk to. Old, retired trooper from Wardhaven’s army. Someone I didn’t have to explain how a place shakes when a shell goes off next door to you. In your buddy’s hole, but, thank God, not yours.”
“Think I should talk to him?”
“She’s dirtside, and you’re headed out again. What you gonna do if you get pirates shooting at you?”