A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet

by Ron Miller

  “So she was a thief, too, sir?”

  “Well, I guess not; to give the little devil ‘er due, she wasn’t. At least not that time, but it sure enough looked that way. ‘Sides, she was such an almighty snot no one ever doubted she done it. Came out months after she skipped, little by little. She was just trying to shield the real thief, pet brother of a kid she was stuck on. Got herself all mixed into th’ mess. Anyway, th’ boy got th’ dope straight somehow an’ made his brother own up. Upshot was their dad took ‘em both outa school—”

  “Rhys made his brother do that?” Judikha blurted.

  “Hey! That’s ‘sir’ when you’re speakin’ to me!” he growled in drunken dignity. Judikha, knowing she had made a fatal mistake, anxiously studied his face; she could see the realization thickening, then curdling. “‘Rhys’ is it?” he said, finally. “Who said anything ‘bout ‘Rhys’? Hey? That’s th’ kid’s name, right enough, but I’d never have remembered it without hearin’ it. ‘Rhys’ eh? Say...I know who you are. I’m onto you, Judikha, an’ I’ll make you crawl before I’m done with you! What’s your game, anyhow?”

  “No game, sir,” answered Judikha, her hands slippery with perspiration, her skin and mouth as dry as flannel. “I’m only listening to what you’ve been saying. I don’t know these people. I don’t know who this Judikha is. How could I?”

  “How could you? D’ye mean to stand there an’ deny you’re th’ Judikha I knew? Then how’d you know that kid’s name?”

  “You’d just mentioned it, sir,” she lied. “And not knowing anything else about him, I repeated the name. I was just interested, that’s all. Not all boys would have done what he did. Turn in his brother and all, I mean.”

  “I b’lieve you’re lying. How could I’ve said his name when I’d forgotten it?”

  “You must have remembered it subconsciously, sir. Such things happen. I’m not your Judikha, Mr. Glom, whoever she was. My name is Veronica beRothesay and I’ve never heard of these other people before.”

  “Well, it’s mighty strange, that’s all I gotta say. If I find you’re lyin’ to me, I’ll make it so hot for you you’d suck vacuum rather than have me get my hands on you!”

  The mate turned just in time to meet the captain coming in through the hatchway. The man glowered blackly at his officer.

  “Now look here, Mr. Glom,” he said angrily, holding up a fist that looked as grey and solid and hard as a stone, “I want you to understand something before you’re one minute older. I’ve been listening to this pow wow and I let it go on, wondering just when you’d stop. If you don’t know no more than to talk to the man at the helm you’d better get back to the engine room until you do know something! I don’t want to have to tell you this a second time!”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” replied the chastened officer as the skipper stepped up to the console and scrutinized the instruments. He nodded with satisfaction. Had he looked even a second earlier he would have seen that their course had been a full point off. Now the instruments showed nothing amiss. He gave Judikha a curt nod and left. Glom immediately turned on her and snarled, sotto voce: “I got that on your account, damn you. Just watch out, that’s all I got t’ tell you. Watch out!”

  -IX-

  At eight bells Judikha was mustered into the engine room to be counted with the rest—as was customary at the change of the night watches.

  She sought out Birdwhistle and told him about Glom’s suspicions. The lieutenant, sleepy, cross and sore, was unsympathetic. He only reiterated his standing order for her to play her part—to submit to whatever abuse, whether oral or physical, in order that she could be at hand when wanted, rather than clapped uselessly in irons.

  “Besides,” he concluded, “it’ll do you good to be pushed around a little when you can’t push back. It’ll develop your self-control. I suppose you already know that both watches are planning to protest against the menu right after breakfast. If they do, keep in the background and let the others do the talking.”

  Judikha turned in and, being both young and conscienceless, lost only a few minutes before dropping into a dreamless sleep. She awakened with the others at seven bells. As she had agreed with her watch mates, she ate no breakfast. Both watches intended to preserve their meal intact to show the captain what the miserable mess looked like—in the naïve conceit that he had no idea. One of the others had told her, with a confidence she found altogether insupportable, about a past experience where victory had been the result of a similar episode. Nevertheless, when eight bells sounded, the crew arose with no little anxiety. Carrying their uneaten breakfasts, they trooped out and waited for the other watch to obtain its share of food from the galley. Then they marched aft in a unified body, where they were met by Mr. Wopple, looking down upon them with a steely, unsympathetic eye. Bob, the spokesman, told Wopple that they wanted to see the captain. Wopple looked at the sailor warningly, but without saying a word went to fetch Captain Krill. When he returned he was carrying a five-thousand-watt DeLameter. Following him were the captain and Glom, each with a similar burden, and a tall, watery-eyed, bland-looking man who carried his right arm in a sling. Judikha had no trouble recognizing Mr. Queel, the first mate. He held a light-weight thousand-watt toaster uneasily in his left hand. As these grim-looking men ranged themselves along the catwalk, they were joined by the engineer, hefting a four-foot jet-wrench, and the cook, who was as bristling with glinting knife blades as the fretful porcupine. Seven armed men looked cooly down on the two dozen space-slaves with never an irrelevant glance between them.

  “Well, ladies and gentlemen,” said Captain Krill, as he balanced the cathode of the big toaster on the railing, “what do you want?”

  “Just this, sir,” said Bob, holding up his pan of whack. “We ain’t looking for any trouble and we don’t want to say nothing that’ll bring on any toasting, sir, but we just want to ask you, sir, if this is the right kind of mess to feed men on, sir. We ain’t got nothing to say about it’s being government whack, because that’s all we signed for, but we don’t sign for maggots, sir—they’re not in the scale of provisions, sir.”

  “No,” replied the captain evenly, “they’re not. Your getting them extra as good, fresh meat over and above your allowance. Mr. Queel,” he said to his first mate, “d’ye recognize your man?”

  “I do,” answered the officer, a peculiar shimmer in his cloudy blue eyes. “That tall, dark-haired hussy sneaking back of the others there.” He raised his toaster unsteadily in his left hand and the men parted before it, leaving a kind of corridor with the toaster’s nozzle at one end and Judikha at the other. She had no more than a quarter of a second to appreciate the horror of her situation—just long enough for her jaw to drop. He touched the trigger and she fell to the deck as though struck by lightning, which was more or less the truth.

  “By Musrum!” cried Wopple. “That was murder! That girl wasn’t turned to until four o’clock that morning. She were doped and in her bunk until Mr. Jone’s pulled her out!”

  “Shut up!” thundered the captain. “Shut up, or I’ll clap you in irons yourself! Sure of your man, Mr. Queel?”

  “Sure, sir?” answered the mate with a smirk. “Of course I am. I’d recognize her face and shape right enough. It weren’t no man I grappled that night.”

  “You’re wrong,” protested Wopple. “Your dead wrong, Mr. Queel. That girl was stupid in her bunk all through that watch. Mr. Glom’ll bear me out. He turned her to at eight bells, too dopey to know her own name.”

  Mr. Queel swung the muzzle of his toaster until it nearly touched Wopple’s stomach, his watery eyes like slivers of glass.

  “Don’t you point that thing my way,” said Wopple, raising his own weapon to cover the mate. He called to the second mate, “Ain’t I right, Mr. Glom?”

  Taken a little aback at being suddenly drawn into a debate he wanted no part of, Monkfish Glom blurted: “Well, yes, I suppose she didn’t wake until eight bells. I had to rustle her twice, I know that. I guess it mus
t have been someone else, Mr. Queel.”

  “Enough of this,” growled the captain. “Take that female forward. Mr. Wopple, lower that gun. Remember where you are. I can make allowance for mistakes in judgment, but put that gun down.”

  “All right, sir, but I couldn’t keep shut under the circumstances.”

  “Men,” said Captain Krill to those crowding the floor below him, “take that girl forward and take your grub with you. I don’t want to see it or smell it. I told you you’ll be getting no different until you give up the man what crippled my first mate and I got no reason to change that order.”

  “How can we do that, sir?” replied Bob. “He won’t give hisself up, knowing he’s likely to be killed. And there’s no other way to find out. And we can’t eat this stuff no more, sir.”

  “That’ll do! Get forward!”

  “All right, sir, we’ll go, but can we ask you, sir, if you’ll make the cook shake out the maggots before he cooks up the hash?”

  The request was made respectfully and reasonably and, surprisingly, seemed to have an effect on Captain Krill, who said to the steward, after a moment’s hesitation and in an uncharacteristically calm voice:

  “All right. Serve the men from the new stores. Give them the allowance but not an ounce more, understand? Now, men,” he said to the crew, “I’m giving you new grub for just one month and if you don’t give up that murdering thief by then, back you go to what you’ve been getting. But if you do, it’s full and plenty.”

  “Thank you, sir, we’ll do what we can.”

  The crowd broke up, moving forward, a half dozen carrying Judikha’s still unconscious body. Her face and right temple were marred by the long scorched welt left by the toaster. A swath of hair was burned away, like a firebreak in a forest, and the skin was raw and broken as though it had been abraded by coarse sandpaper, leaving her face smeared with red. When she was moved, there was left on the deck a perfect outline of her head in blood.

  -X-

  “Am I a slave or a convict?” she asked later. Lieutenant Birdwhistle was bandaging her head while she sat unsteadily atop a barrel in her quarters. They were alone. Her watch was at work in the engine room and Birdwhistle’s was in their quarters, trying to swallow breakfast. “Isn’t there a law,” she asked, “about these things?”

  “Sure, but not much justice,” replied the lieutenant grimly. “Thank Musrum he didn’t get you between the eyes. Well, now you know what kind of men you’re dealing with. Queel didn’t think twice about shooting you merely on suspicion. If he didn’t kill you, well, I can only suppose it’s because he’s not handy as a left-hand shot. The same icewater runs in the captain’s veins.”

  “Well, sir, I’ll tell you this: when our time comes I’m shooting to kill.”

  “Quiet—someone’s coming.”

  It was the second mate and he said, “All right, enough philandering there. Come on out of there and turn to.”

  “Just a moment, sir,” interceded Birdwhistle, “and I’ll have her ready. Just let me finish this bandage. She’s lost a lot of blood and she’s weak, sir.”

  “Who asked you?” Glom said as he took a pace toward them. “I don’t want to hear any of your lip.” And without any warning whatsoever, backhanded the lieutenant across the face so violently that he stretched him out on the floor. Judikha felt a hot flush of anger at seeing the defenseless man treated so contemptuously. Had there been a weapon within Judikha’s reach—a knife, a length of pipe—it would not have been well for any of them. The lieutenant merely sat up, keeping his eyes lowered to the floor, and said meekly through lips and tongue mashed to bloody pulp, “I was only stopping the bleeding, sir, so she wouldn’t get any weaker.”

  “Dry up, you damned pussy.”

  The mate grasped Judikha’s collar in one massive fist and hauled her to her feet. He shoved her toward the door and when she staggered he raised his foot and kicked her into the engine room. She fell to the deck outside and as she raised herself painfully erect she saw the old reddish tinge creep over the walls and deck—perhaps not so brilliantly as of old but strong enough to remind her of her old curse of temper. By a supreme effort of will she forced herself to visualize the fatal consequences of an altercation with the second mate; worse: it would not be what a Patrolman would do; she brought herself down to a dull, repressed anger. The steel around her cooled to its familiar dingy grey. This effort, in her weakened condition, cost her senses and she dropped to the deck like a sandbag.

  She recovered consciousness to find herself drenched in icy water and Glom straddling her, an empty bucket in his hands.

  “All right,” he snarled, “going to get up and turn to or do you want to be tucked into your cradle and rocked to sleep?”

  Judikha staggered to her feet and just managed to stay erect. But she couldn’t speak, if for no other reason than the distraction of the wobbly and hazy appearance of her surroundings, as though her eyes were made of jelly. The second mate was only a opaque blur, an effect which would have been, of course, welcome in any other circumstance. A second blur joined it and she heard the captain’s gruff voice.

  “You blundering fool! Your damned senseless idiot, are you trying to kill this girl, just because you know how? Don’t you know when someone’s had enough, or will you never know anything? I’ve been watching you the last ten minutes, bully ragging a spaceman already under control, with the rest of your watch lazing around doing nothing. Attend to your affairs now, or I’ll have no more of you!”

  Glom, cowed and frightened, hurried away. Captain Krill regarded Judikha with hard, cool eyes. She was dripping wet, shivering, her face pale; the bandage had fallen away and fresh blood was mixing with the water that dripped from her hair.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “J-jud-ah-Veronica, sir.”

  “Well, Veronica, are you the one what crippled my mate?”

  “N-no, sir,” she stuttered. “I never saw him before this morning. I was in my bunk when that happened, sir.”

  “Are you hurt bad?”

  “Only an open scalp, sir. I’m a little weak, but I’ll be all right.”

  “Get to your bunk. Peel off them wet duds and I’ll send the steward forward with some first aid. Let him dress your wound and don’t turn to until you feel up to it. Your not lazy, I can see that, and I don’t want no sick spacemen aboard the Rasputin. It’s a waste and I don’t tolerate waste.”

  “T-thank you, sir.”

  Birdwhistle, who had remained aside, came forward and assisted her to her bunk. The steward appeared soon thereafter with hot water, bandages and medication. She slept through three watches, not awakening until suppertime, still weak and nerveless but clear-headed and with an appetite for the now-welcome cold boiled meat and hard bread, neither of which was more than a year old.

  She found Birdwhistle sitting outside the galley hatch staring at a gleaming pile of pots and pans. He asked after her health, then pointed to the pile of utensils.

  “See that? Took all afternoon, all by myself, too. I tell you, I’m proud of it—I really am. I like to look at them. It fascinates me. The cook gave me an extra piece of pie. Here, I saved you the crust.” He handed her a chunk of pastry wrapped in waxed paper as though he were displaying a medal.

  “No thanks,” said Judikha. “To tell you the truth, I’m full. Besides, I’m more accustomed to this kind of food than you are.”

  “Go on, take it,” insisted the lieutenant. “Do you think that I’ve resisted the temptation to bolt the whole thing for an entire hour, just to weaken now? Eat it. Consider it an order.”

  She ate the crust.

  “This morning,” continued Birdwhistle, “when I saw that brute beating you when you were completely defenseless, it was all that I could do to restrain myself. But I managed; I did it.”

  “You must be proud. Tell me,” Judikha asked, “do you ever see red when you get angry?”

  “No, but I suppose you do.”

  “Us
ually. I did this morning, anyway, when the mate kicked me. I would have jumped him if I hadn’t been so far out of it. At any other time I would have gone crazy.”

  “That’s bad. That’s when people do murder. It’s a weakness of the vascular system, you know—I once heard a lecture about it—certain nerve centers failing to act and all that and there’s a rush of blood. But it’s all really just a matter of the will, Judikha. Just make up your mind to control your temper. That’s all there is to it. Will power.”

  “I did try this morning, and it worked, but only for a second—then I was ready to kill again.”

  “Well, keep on trying. You’ve got to for your own sake and, besides, it’ll do you good in the long run. You’re too good a spacer to be toasted.”

  “What do you think of the skipper’s sending me off duty? Show’s he’s got some semblance of humanity, don’t you think?”

  “It was purely a business proposition. He can tell you’re a good spaceman and it would just be poor judgment to ruin you. The time lost letting you heal would be a lot less than that which would have been lost if he’d let Glom continue ragging you. Give him half an excuse and he’ll kick you just as hard as the mate did.”

  “Well, what about the cook? Think he’s taken to you? A possible ally?”

  “Hardly. He’s as corrupt and opportunistic as the rest, and maybe twice as stupid. Besides, all he has on his mind is the engineer. He’s as nervous as MacHinery and ten times more of a cutthroat and coward. That pie I got was just a bribe. He’s hoping that I’ll keep an eye on the engineer and let him know what he’s up to.”

  “I told him,” said Judikha, “that I saw MacHinery sharpening his broadaxe and heard him say that he means to split the cook’s head open.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “I still don’t think that the cook has forgiven me for what I did to him. What do you want me to do if he comes after me?”

  “Run. Your legs are long enough. But I don’t think that he’ll bother you. He’s spiteful enough to never forgive an injury, but he’s also the rankest of cowards. I told him that you’d killed a Serpukhoffian in Picaroon, another in Habobenny Bay and had developed a taste for it. He asked me if you were down on all his kind, or merely him. I told him that you weren’t especially particular as to whom you killed so long it was a Serpukhoffian. Devilishly questionable behavior for a Patrol officer to get in, lying and all, but—well, all’s fair, I suppose, in love and—hellships.”