McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1)

by Robert Frezza

  “It’s over, David,” she continued in a slow, gentle voice. “Just give me the guns.”

  “No. Don’t make me use these,” Davie Lloyd said, his voice fraying.

  “Look, David. I won’t come any closer. But give me the guns. It’s over. You can’t lock us all up. And there’s no place you can go.”

  “I’ll... I’ll tell them you all mutinied against me,” Ironsides said, trying to work himself up to something.

  “It won’t wash. Why don’t you give the guns to Bernie? Ken and I saved your life. You’re not going to shoot us. Besides, they’re not going to do you any good. I’m a vamp, remember?” Catarina flashed him a lazy smile. “You need silver bullets.”

  That froze Davie Lloyd completely.

  “Just give Bernie the guns to hold and we’ll talk,” she urged. Sasha Louise vanished down the corridor, just like a sneaky cat.

  Ironsides awkwardly pulled his fingers out of the trigger guards. As he turned to hand them to Bobo, Clyde leaped up gracefully and his right foot swung in a long arc. He caught Davie in the nape of the neck. The pistols went flying one way, and Davie Lloyd dropped as though he’d been kicked in the head, which he had.

  “Petty Officer Witherspoon, at your service.” Clyde sprung up lightly on his toes as Catarina scooped up the weapons.

  A flicker of interest animated Rosalee’s face. “That looked like fun. Can you teach me how to do that?”

  Clyde smiled and nodded as he leaned over and patted down Ironsides and Bobo.

  “This is crazy!” McHugh said. “I’m getting out of here before something else happens.” She took off down the corridor. I heard her door open and slam shut.

  I turned to Catarina. “You really took a chance with the silver bullet stuff, didn’t you?”

  “Calculated risk. I really didn’t think he’d shoot. Besides, I’m wearing body armour under my clothing, just in case.” She looked at me. “Should I ask you about that stupid cylinder you claimed Frido stuffed in a Brazil nut?”

  “It’s the battery from the coffeepot I bought on Schuyler’s.”

  Clyde—Petty Officer Witherspoon—took three steps toward Spooner, but when he tried to put his arm around her, she jerked away.

  Catarina looked down at the floor plates where Bobo was cowering with his head in his hands and Ironsides was rubbing the back of his neck, groaning. “We’ve got enough evidence for a conviction,” she said. “When we make planetfall, hopefully we’ll be able to wring enough from these two to identify whoever set the operation up. If they want to salvage anything from the wreckage, they’ll spill whatever they know.”

  “Do I get to be captain again?” I asked. Nobody disagreed. “Clyde, will you and Dykstra weld these guys into their cabins? We’ll stick them there.”

  “Good,” Spooner muttered, “that’ll get the lying cheat off my bridge.”

  If this had been a movie, we would have ridden off into the sunset while a couple dozen spear-carriers took care of the details. As it was, Catarina and I stood guard while Clyde marched off to clear everything moderately harmful out of the prisoners’ cabin.

  The two of them were not particularly effective housekeepers, and he had some tough choices to make distinguishing what had evidentiary value from what was too unsanitary to keep. I suspect he fed a lot of things he didn’t want to handle into the disposal chute. It took about two hours to make a jail out of the place.

  In the interim, we wrapped Ironsides and Bobo in sticky tape. I wouldn’t have taped them together if they hadn’t tried to bump me off a couple of times.

  After we got them welded in, we flipped coins to see who collapsed. Catarina and I ended up taking the next watch.

  After things quieted down, I made a minor course correction. “Catarina Lindquist, why didn’t you tell me you were Navy CIB?”

  She smiled. “I wasn’t completely sure you weren’t in on the scheme. No, that’s not true. I didn’t trust you to lie convincingly.” She turned on a grin and waved a finger. “Remember, you were going to stop swearing.”

  “Sugar and spice!” I said very loudly. “ ‘How big is a class E?’ You were assigned to break up the smuggling ring, right?”

  She nodded. “Right.”

  “Why you? Why somebody from Naval Intelligence?”

  “The CIB boys are a little shorthanded, and they needed some fresh faces to work undercover. Besides, we needed to get the trafficking stopped rather quickly. There are political dimensions to all this that I’d rather not go into.”

  “All right. What about the crazy stories you and Clyde put together?” I asked.

  Clyde walked in, presumably having no better place to be. “Our cover stories? Blame that on sector. The cover story they came up with had us being put off the Potash and Perlmutter for causing trouble,” he said.

  “The Potash and Perlmutter? That’s old Jackie Stein’s ship. I know Jackie, I roomed with his son. Jackie wouldn’t do something like that,” I exclaimed. “Jackie loves causing trouble.”

  “Sector missed that. They also missed the fact that the Scupper wasn’t rated for passengers,” Catarina explained. “After talking with Harry, I figured that you would have ripped holes in our covers in about five minutes, so we had to improvise. Did you know that Clyde majored in dramatics? It was actually a lot of fun.” She nodded. “I’m still going to strangle a few people when we get back.”

  “It was still a pretty stupid plan you came up with,” I persisted.

  “After sector screwed up, we didn’t have much choice.” Clyde held his hands out in the universal gesture that said, So sue me. “We could have done worse. Who knows, maybe in about ten years Wyma Jean will start talking to me again. Besides, everybody we spoke with pretty much said that nobody on this bucket had the sense God gave groundhogs.”

  I put true feeling into my voice. “Well, thanks a lot!”

  “On the whole, our cover wore thin, but it held up better than any man could have expected,” Catarina said. A light came into her eyes.

  “Oh, no. Sort of like a manhole cover?” I said wearily.

  “Not bad, Ken. Not bad at all,” Catarina said admiringly. “You recovered pretty well.”

  Clyde started laughing so hard, he almost fell down.

  As the Poles say, “What could Adam have done to God to make Him put Eve in the Garden?”

  Errands, and Biting Irony

  We pulled into orbit twelve hours later. Catarina locked herself into her cabin and didn’t emerge until nearly the last minute to beam a call to the port commander, Commander Hiro. He sent in the marines, both of them, Corporal Sin and Lance Corporal Trujillo. They arrived on the shuttle with a news type—marines never go anywhere without photographers.

  Spooner volunteered to take the anchor watch, a little too loudly, and she refused to look at Clyde. Catarina tapped him on the back and shook her head. As the rest of us were about to board the shuttle, Dykstra watched the marines frog-march Bobo and Ironsides through the lock and spoke for all of us. “They’re the ones going to jail. Why do I feel like I got screwed?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Spooner told Bobo, “I’ll take care of your cat. I’ll treat her like she was my own. Every ship has to have a ship’s cat.” Bobo thanked her, and for the first time in a while I saw him smile. We ignored the news type.

  We also pulled Frido’s body out of the freezer. The marines brought a bag to put him in. He was a very stiff stiff.

  We drifted down in the shuttle. I looked out at the twinkling lights—both of them—of the city of Schenectady at dusk. Another reporter type in a brown beret and a military van driven by a yeoman named Bunker were waiting for us when we landed. We slid by the reporter and climbed in the van. Clyde and the marines got out at the city jail to unload prisoners. Ironsides wouldn’t look me in the eye, but the last thing he said before they put him off was “I’m sorry we tried to do what we did to you, Ken. Now that that’s all over, I feel kind of sick about that.”
r />   Somehow I did, too. “What about the rest of us?” I asked Yeoman Bunker.

  “Sir, I have orders to convey you and Lieutenant Lindquist to see Commander Hiro. I can let the rest of your party off anywhere.”

  “Veinticinco de Mayo Boulevard and Esquimaux Street!” McHugh said loudly. We let her and Dykstra off there and continued on to the navy base, which turned out to be a building about six blocks away from the port where we’d started. Bunker parked the van and took us into Hiro’s office.

  The office was nice. You could lose golf balls in the carpeting, and the panelling was real wood. The desk was bigger than the bed I sleep in.

  Commander Hiro was seated behind his desk with his feet propped up, studying what looked to be the local equivalent of The Racing Form. As we walked in, Bunker cleared her throat, and the paper and the soles of Hiro’s feet disappeared quickly.

  “Ah, welcome back to Schuyler’s World! Please sit down,” he said. Catarina and I shook his hand and settled into chairs on the far side of the desk.

  “Can I offer you something to drink? Lieutenant Piper brought me the text of your transmission about your, ah, murder and a drug-smuggling operation. And a real ship-to-ship naval encounter!” His eyes started to glow. “I wish I could have been there.” As I turned my head to look at Catarina, I heard a quick whap! whap! whap! like a couple of people knocking their Academy rings on the desk top.

  “My earnest congratulations on a successful conclusion to your operation, Lieutenant Lindquist!” Hiro smiled a toothy smile. “Twenty-three.”

  “Thirty-four. You’re too kind, Commander,” she said.

  I presumed the numbers designated their respective graduating classes. Regular navy types try not to talk like that in front of strangers, but I made allowances since Hiro had undoubtedly been stuck in this postage-stamp sideshow for what must have seemed like forever.

  “And this is Mr. Mickey?” Hiro asked, eyeing me specula-lively.

  “Ensign MacKay. All the credit belongs to him,” Catarina corrected on my behalf.

  This time, I got the smile. “Ah, very good, Ensign! What class were you?”

  Catarina coughed discreetly. “Naval Reserve.”

  Hiro lost his smile. The regular navy maintains a certain reserve toward the Reserves. “Ah, well. Good work in any case,” he said, turning back to Catarina. “Special performance appraisals? Citations? What medal would you like?”

  “Oh, nothing elaborate.” She looked at me. “Perhaps a recommendation for a below-the-zone promotion for Ensign MacKay?”

  “In the Reserve? No problem. I’ll get the sector commander, Captain Crenshaw, to countersign it.” Hiro smiled again. The regular navy considers a merit promotion in the Reserves the equivalent of a gilt potato.

  “And perhaps also a small monetary award for Ensign MacKay,” Catarina added, kicking me in the shin.

  “Can I do that?” Hiro asked her tentatively. He looked toward the door. Yeoman Bunker stuck her head in the door and nodded solemnly.

  “Under chapter seven of the Narcotics Control Act. It’s provided for in the General Regulations. In a case like this where we have one smuggler’s vessel destroyed and a second captured, there are excellent precedents. He acted at the risk of his life, I might add. It’s all in my report.” Catarina kicked me a second time for good measure. Yeoman Bunker nodded.

  “Chapter seven, you say.” Commander Hiro figuratively scratched his head. “Is it customary?”

  “Yes, sir. And I can truthfully say that without Ensign MacKay, we would not have cracked the case the way we did,” Catarina said, turning my lower leg into one large bruise as I was about to open my mouth.

  Hiro wrinkled his brows in puzzlement. “But—”

  “Ensign MacKay was acting in a purely civilian capacity when he helped break up the smuggling ring,” Catarina added smoothly. “I was on active service at the time, so it would be inappropriate for me to accept any reward from public monies.”

  “How much do you think?” Hiro said, stroking his jaw. “Say, a thousand?”

  “Make it five.”

  Hiro glanced at Bunker, who nodded yet a third time. “Well, by damn, we’ll do it! Bunkie, draw up the paperwork!”

  “Here’s my preliminary report; that should finish things,” Catarina said, handing over a thick wad of foolscap.

  “Splendid. Now may I offer you a drink?” Hiro got up and walked over to a handsome, hand-carved vitrine.

  “Does he know you’re a vamp?” I whispered.

  “He will.” She coughed delicately. “I put it in my report. It would have come out anyway.”

  Standing beside the vitrine, Hiro turned his head around.

  “Commander, it’s in my report that I have McLendon’s Syndrome,” Catarina told him. When he blinked, she added, “I’m a vampire.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to order you into quarantine. Honour system?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand. I will be resigning my commission as soon as I finish wrapping up the loose ends.”

  What she said hit me like a brick.

  “On behalf of the service, I wish to express my deepest sympathy, and I wish you a speedy recovery from your condition,” Hiro said unctuously.

  Reading my expression, Catarina elbowed me solidly in the ribs.

  Hiro was lost in thought for a moment. “Go ahead and stay at our VOQ for now,” he said. “It would be too much of a bother to place you in the hospital until we finish wrapping this case up.”

  He pulled out a bottle of sake and two glasses. After a slight hesitation, he added a third glass and came back our way. I had the distinct impression that he thought my Wavy Navy commission was more of a communicable disease than McLendon’s. As he poured out a libation, he asked, “Well, is there any more business to attend to?”

  I coughed discreetly. “There is the ship.”

  Hiro raised his eyebrows slightly as if I’d said something profound, apparently on the theory that it’s not how well the horse talks, it’s the fact that the horse talks at all.

  “Ah, yes. We must convene a court in admiralty.” He looked at his watch. “Lieutenant Lindquist, if you feel up to it, we could have it done in time to change for happy hour.”

  “Mess whites? I’m afraid I didn’t bring any. Inconsistent with my cover.”

  “Then you’ll go as my guest. Ensign Mickey, too.” Hiro took up a miniature ship’s bell and rang it.

  “We accept,” Catarina said, clamping a hand hard over my wrist before I had a chance to consider anything violent.

  “Bunkie? Oh, Bunkie! We’re going to have a trial! Draft up some charges.”

  His yeoman popped her head in. “Anytime you’re ready, sir. Shall I bring out your wig and your robe?”

  “Yes, I think that’s appropriate. Tell Lieutenant Piper she’s been detailed as defence counsel and have her confer with her clients. Say, five minutes?” He looked at Catarina—excuse me, Lieutenant Lindquist.

  Catarina cut in. “Make it ten. Mister Ironsides sometimes needs to have things explained twice.”

  “Ten minutes then, Bunkie.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. They should be finished booking them over at the jail by now. I’ll take Lieutenant Piper with me, and she can confer with them on the ride back.” Yeoman Bunker took off, and Commander Hiro left to change clothes.

  I leaned over and whispered to Catarina. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”

  “You didn’t get any admiralty law at Woolmera, did you? Let me try and explain. A navy court in admiralty can only hear cases brought against ships for breach of contract or for tort actions occurring outside the inner atmosphere. It’s really a sensible system; there’s no skipper alive who’d want a jury box full of groundhogs deciding whether he clipped the station going past. Too many planets would try and pay their maintenance bills with traffic fines. Commander Hiro is going to try the Scupper for freighting contraband. Because Commander Hiro doesn’t have jurisdiction to hear
the criminal charges against them, Ironsides and Bobo will go back to Earth for trial in a Federal criminal court.”

  “But why wouldn’t they just deny everything if Commander Hiro can’t hear the criminal charges?” I asked.

  “Ah! That’s what the navy likes to call Catch-22. Nobody ever lies in an admiralty suit, because if you’re caught lying, after they finish with your ship, the court has jurisdiction to try you gleefully for criminal contempt. Criminal contempt is good for about five years, your Guild rating gets revoked, and best of all, it counts as a federal conviction for impeachment purposes. When you get to Earth for trial on Federal criminal charges, instead of having a fair to middling chance of beating the rap or at least conjuring a reduced sentence, you have the enjoyable task of explaining to your defence counsel why you can’t testify on your own behalf without being crucified.”

  Yeoman Bunker walked in a few minutes later, followed by Ironsides, Bobo, and a female lieutenant. Bunker coughed. Hiro hurriedly came back into the room wearing a white wig and black robe, and she intoned, “All rise.”

  Hiro nodded, sat down in his chair, and began thumbing through his manual. “I declare this court in admiralty to be in session. The Confederation versus Rustam’s Slipper, Guild registry 19747. Said ship is charged with carrying contraband in defiance of Confederation law.” He set the manual down, tilted forward, and looked directly at Ironsides and his defence counsel. “Lieutenant Piper, any motions?”

  Piper stood up. She was a tall, thin woman with freckles and that wholesome, freshly scrubbed look the Academy cultivates. “Yes, Your Honour. The libelee would request a continuance.”

  Hiro swivelled his chair around and began twiddling his thumbs. “Grounds?”

  “To retain local civilian counsel.”

  “Bailiff, are there any civilian attorneys on this dump certified to practice before an admiralty court?”

  “Not as of two o’clock today, sir,” Yeoman Bunker replied.