“Well!” Sargus exclaimed, with fresh heartiness, his color paled to light peach. “I heard you were one of those Wolfes. Wasn’t sure. But you had to be a crazy bastard or canny as a fox to pull a gun on me in the middle of one of the most heavily secured buildings on the base, didn’t you? Nice to be connected, huh, admiral? I’m an organized man, you know. I like to have my facts in order. Now, those rounds I’d have to send away for. No way I’ll have them before you ship out, sir. No lie.” Daivid nodded slowly, backing away and putting the gun back into its holster. He deplored having to invoke the Family reputation, but it cut out at least forty minutes of the “I don’t have it” dance and negotiations. Lin had told him everyone already knew who he was; he might as well use other people’s imaginations to get what the company needed. It wasn’t as if he was threatening to have his father’s minions come down and wreck the chief’s storehouse. Not that Benjamin wouldn’t do it if Daivid had been stupid and rash enough to ask. “But within, say, six weeks, sure. I’m expecting at least three major shipments in that interval. By the time you get back I’ll have ’em.”
“Good,” Wolfe said, letting his hand drop away from the holster. “I’ve still got two hundred-round magazines in my kit. What about the rest of it?”
“Your group isn’t due for rotation into new dress gear for two more months,” the master chief said, shaking his head. This time Daivid believed him. “Fatigues—I’m only authorized to replace worn items, not ones that were willfully damaged. Otherwise, it comes out of your people’s pay. You know that. Ammo, yeah, Commander Mason sent me a message that you needed supplies. But fifty cases of P-130 shells, admiral! I can’t give you fifty.”
“We need fifty,” Daivid insisted patiently, though he had inflated the numbers just because he expected to have to negotiate. “That’s what my master chief said, and I want backups. I can’t just walk into a trading post or a department store and ask for heavy artillery rounds.”
“Thirty-five,” Sargus countered. “And I’ll make sure you get all ten rapid-charges for the dragons.” Daivid nodded slightly, satisfied. Dragons, the space service’s light, one-or two-man hovertank, were the workhorse of small field units. X-Ray had two. Lin had insisted that they couldn’t do without at least five backup power sources per dragon, especially since they were working under blind orders. Like the ammunition, it would be too late to hunt for more once they were at their task site. He wondered what assignment was so important that it had to be kept secret even on the base, but was being handed to a unit that everyone knew was considered expendable.
Sargus ran through the list. The two of them bantered back and forth over one item after another. Daivid noticed that the chief was purposely ignoring the item on the top.
“Well, that’s it, admiral,” Sargus said, slapping the infopad down on the counter. “Success to your mission. I’ll have your special order ready when you get back. Forgot to ask—is it official, or will you be, er, making some other arrangement for reimbursement?” He leered, showing the big yellow teeth. “A … favor, maybe?”
“The Dockery ammunition is personal,” Daivid said, cringing at the use of the word. The man really did understand who he was. “We can talk about what you’d like in exchange when you know what it’s going to cost … but we’re not done yet. You still have not signed off on one of my requests, and it’s the most important of all.”
“No can do, Lieutenant Wolfe,” Sargus said, clapping his big hand down on the screen. His jovial manner evaporated and he was back to all business. “Sorry. No CBS,Ps.”
“Sorry? What do you mean, sorry?” Wolfe asked, drawing his brows down over his eyes. He knew he was losing his temper, and fought to control it. What had gone wrong? It had looked like he’d been establishing a good working rapport with Sargus. “You know that those CBS,Ps are the one vital item on that list. We might as well not have shells or power packs if the human beings in my company carrying them can’t function in their armor.”
“Your company,” Sargus said, leaning close and showing the red-veined whites of his eyes, “should have thought of that before. I’m tired of getting all sorts of crap from the reconditioning facility when I send the used units from your company back to them to be refurbished. The unauthorized modifications make it almost impossible to tune them up so they can go to another, decent unit who don’t screw with the programming of your so-called most vital item! And I don’t even want to talk about the extra mess. Now, if you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d like to get back to what I was doing on my restday before you decided to waste my time.” With a shove, he propelled the infopad back toward Daivid, who caught it just before it fell off his side of the counter. Sargus backed up and stabbed a button with his thumb. The security wall crashed down out of the ceiling, sealing the supply hatch before Daivid could reach over the counter and grab him by the neck. Fuming, Daivid stormed out of the building and marched back toward the transportal.
O O O
“What unauthorized modifications?” Daivid demanded.
After forty minutes bottled up on the transport where he couldn’t even vent his temper because security eyes were all over the tube-train, he had stormed all over the barracks looking for someone, anyone, to explain the last humiliation to him. Having dismissed everyone to enjoy the remainder of their restday meant hunting out the various hiding places in which the Cockroaches could find a little peace and quiet without the brass coming upon them casually with a scut assignment. He had managed to find Thielind practicing tai chi in his swim fins in the mess hall.
“It’s not for me to explain, lieutenant,” Thielind explained, leading Daivid back to his quarters. “I’m just the ensign. But I have got about a dozen locations where Lieutenant Borden or Chief Lin might be.” He held up a small personal tracking device. “They’re in the memory.” Daivid reached for it, but Thielind held it just out of reach. “Looey, don’t let this finder get into range of an infopad. It took us ages to get those spaces the way we like them. If the data hits the base source computer everyone will know they exist. I mean, they could use our implant tracers to find us in ’em if they really wanted, but … just don’t, sir. These are our vacation spots.”
Daivid gestured impatiently. “Agreed, ensign,” he said. He activated the little device, noticing that its ‘eye’ had been covered by a strip of duct tape. Thielind was right: that wouldn’t stop a handshake transmitter from picking the unit’s memory. But Daivid wasn’t out to destroy yet another Cockroach tradition. All he wanted was either Lin or Borden, in front of him, immediately.
The screen showed the first nook no more than fifty feet from where he was standing. His feet driven by the memory of the smug look on Chief Sargus’s face, he strode toward it, readying a diatribe on not giving him sufficient briefing to handle a situation, and how he felt, personally, about being humiliated.
He missed the entrance three times before he found a gap between two ancient and battered metal tanks feeding the water-purification plant. He squeezed through it and discovered a circular area about four meters across and lined with discarded ship’s carpeting. He hastily backed out again.
“… The contemplation of the newfallen snow is less lonely with you beside me, and the stars look down upon us and laugh for joy …” Mose read off an infopad. He lay with his head on Streb’s chest at the far end of the enclosure. The muscular petty officer plucked grapes from a bunch in a bowl beside them and fed one to the poet, who continued with his reading, letting his warm baritone voice echo magnificently in the metal tube. “… Cold the future, and cold the past, but warm the present held in your hand fast.…” Daivid backed hastily out; hoping Streb and Mose hadn’t noticed him. Activating the tracker again, he headed for the next ‘vacation spot.’
It amazed him how many dead areas there were on a spaceport where every square centimeter was supposedly in use and under tight surveillance. Adri’Leta was lolling in the sun reading a book out behind a spent-fuel storage block. She glanced up
in surprise when he appeared almost beside her, and he threw her a salute. If not for the silhouettes of the fighter craft behind her, she might have been in a luxury resort, up to and including holoposters adhered to the side of the storage shed.
Daivid didn’t really need to use the finder to locate Jones. He found the Cymraeg standing knee deep in waders, fishing in the rocky brook that flowed parallel to the landing pad about a kilometer out and singing light opera in his big voice. Ewanowski and Aaooorru sat slung in a pair of insulation rings sipping out of cocktail glasses festooned with paper umbrellas which they lifted in toast to Daivid as he frowned at them. Funny, corlists and semicats were not species that usually got along well. But he still hadn’t found the right person. He strode on, stalking his prey with all the intense concentration of his namesake animal.
Meyers looked up with concern and gathered up the arrangement of Tarot cards she had spread out on a cloth across the bottom of an unused shipping container and snuffed out the candles burning at the corners.
“Sorry, sorry,” Daivid kept saying, getting more and more angry in his embarrassment.
Finally, he located one of his two quarries, at the bottom of a gully bounded on three sides by an ox-bow of the ancient river that bounded the spaceport.
“There you are!”
A naked Chief Boland scrambled up and out of the double-recliner chair at the sound of Daivid’s furious voice. The big man reached for his discarded breeches and started to tug them on. Lin, similarly unclad, merely shrugged and shifted her eyeshades up onto the top of her head. Her slight but taut body was a criss-crossed network of healing scars and decorated here and there with tattoos. On her knee was a raised area resembling Ambering’s do-it-yourself Cockroach.
“So, you went to Supply,” she said, her eyes crinkling up at Daivid with amusement. “How far’d you get?”
“What unauthorized modifications?” Daivid exploded. “You set me up.”
“Nah,” Lin waved a protest. She found a bottle of sunprotectant on the ground and handed it to Boland. Obediently, he opened it and began to rub it on her back and shoulders. “It was worth a try. I thought your background might get the request past him. You’re going to have to go through Mason to get replacements after all. Sorry. I was hoping you wouldn’t have to.”
“You knew he was going to refuse?” Daivid asked, feeling his blood pressure rising.
“Well … maybe 80%.” She took the bottle and began to anoint her small breasts with the white lotion.
Daivid lost his patience. He threw his hands in the air. “What unauthorized modifications? What did you do to the CBS,Ps that I am going to have to take the request to the commander instead of just requisitioning them like any other unit?”
“Everybody does it,” Boland interjected. Daivid just glared at him. The big chief looked momentarily sheepish. Daivid transferred the glare to Lin.
She looked a little embarrassed, too. “All right, maybe they don’t. But they could.”
“Do what?” Daivid pressed.
“Well, you know what the CBS,P does,” Lin began. “It monitors circulation, and responds to drops or increases in ambient pressure. It keeps up a wave of compression going all over the body.”
“Yes, so where does.…?”
“Let me explain,” Lin pleaded. “So … you know, sometimes transport to the arenas takes so long, and people were getting bored … we adapted it so that maybe it compresses a little harder in some places.…”
“… And a little faster,” Boland added. “Okay, a lot faster. Not all the time, just after a while. Then it stops.”
Daivid eyed them. “And where does it start this faster, har—oh, tell me you’re kidding!”
The two chiefs had the grace to look ashamed of themselves. “Uh, no.”
“So you’ve turned the space service’s main survival garment into an all-over masturbation machine? No wonder Supply is furious with you!”
“He’s quick on the uptake,” Lin told Boland. “Most of ’em don’t get it right away.”
“Would you like us to adjust yours?” Boland offered. “If you’re not interested in the sex thing, it also gives a hell of a good backrub.”
“And a footrub,” put in Lin. “Totally sensual.”
“No!” Daivid exclaimed, horrified. “So … you say you turned in the used garments for new ones, and they refurbished the material, and then some poor unsuspecting bastard in another unit puts it on and activates the mechanism, and …” The image in his mind of a body stocking putting intimate moves on its wearer started to form in his mind. The guy had to be squirming in his armor, unable to explain what was happening to him. Daivid tried to remain upset about it, but the more he thought about it, the harder it was not to laugh. The situation struck him as irresistibly funny. “And he’s got to explain to his commanding officer that he can’t … because he’s got … and then he …” He gestured feebly as words failed him. He started laughing. His knees folded under him and he slid down until he was sitting on Lin’s deck chair. Tears leaked out of his eyes. He wiped them away with the edge of his hand. In a while he gasped for breath. “Oh, my God! I love it.”
“After a while you get used to the effect,” Boland explained. “I mean, once I had to do an insertion dive before I … er … finished. It was kind of cool, getting turned on in mid-air. It doesn’t interfere with your effectiveness, I swear. We don’t run it during the missions themselves. It just keeps us from being bored during the long stretches in the suits.”
“So what are the limericks and the other time-fillers for, then?”
“Hey, you can’t jerk off all the time!”
“Are you sure you don’t want to have the programming installed yourself?” Lin asked.
“Hell, no,” Daivid said, passionately, getting himself under control. “And if anyone does that to my suit without my permission I’ll space them.”
Boland made a face. “You gonna make us undo ours?”
“It would help if you deprogrammed the old ones before we turn them in for replacements,” Daivid pointed out, reasonably. He stood up. “If I can get that tightass in Supply to give us replacements.”
Lin waved a hand. “They’ve got to give them to us anyhow. Just get Mason to sign off on it. She’ll do it, no problem. She’s done it a bunch of times.”
“Fine,” Daivid said. He’d had enough, and he had his answer. “I’ll leave you alone now. Enjoy the rest of your day. See you at 0600 for PT tomorrow.” He boosted himself up the bank.
“Hey, lieutenant?” Lin called. “You passed the test. You were a good sport. Captain Cohen, the CO we had before Scoley, went into a complete snit the first time he found out about the CBS,Ps, and we ended up doing survival evolutions every day for a month. But then he asked Boland to reprogram his, and he never again gave us shit about it.”
Daivid smiled down at them, the sun behind him casting his long shadow over their faces. “How do you know I won’t?”
Lin gave him a half-smile, soldier to soldier, Family to Family, woman to man. “I just know.”
“Don’t think you’ve pegged me as a softy, chief,” Wolfe warned her. He waved and walked away.
O O O
The soft blue glow of the chronometer on the front of the mess hall read 0200. Two of Treadmill’s three moons, tiny gleaming white bubbles, sailed high overhead through a clear, black, star-spangled night. That night, Daivid moved on soft-footed tiptoe to the door of the enlisted barracks. In the red glow of the emergency lighting, he could see humped shapes on each of the bunks and floating in the corlist’s tank. He knew they had been over the big room with electronic detectors and other means of investigating whether he had planted some form of discipline upon them. Sometimes, he mused, low-tech was best. Standing at attention in the doorway, he removed a finger-long silver cylinder from his breast pocket, raised it to his lips, and blew.
The whistle’s blast tore the air like a descending tornado. Snatched from sleep, the Cockroaches
sprang out of bed. Or tried to. As each of the occupants of the bunk attempted to draw his or her feet out of the covers, the Vortex, a complicated but nearly undetectable folding together of top and bottom bedsheets, twisted together around their lower limbs, immobilizing or significantly hobbling them. As Daivid punched on the overhead lights, he was treated to the morally satisfying sight of nineteen of his twenty enlisted personnel flailing about as they thrashed, fell out of bed, or staggered upright with their sheets clinging to their legs. The corlist swam to the side of his tank and hung there by his upper limbs, watching with bemusement. With a final grin at his troopers, Wolfe pocketed his whistle, spun on his heel, and marched out of the barracks into the night, leaving the confusion behind him.
A touch on the arm nearly made him jump out of his shoes.
“It’s me, sir,” Borden’s voice whispered. She drew forward into the light. Thielind stood at her elbow, his large eyes gleaming. Both of them wore grins that nearly reached their ears. “Very nice, sir. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. The Vortex is … very effective.”
Daivid couldn’t help sharing their grin. “A shock for a shock,” he said succinctly. “Let the punishment fit the crime. Good night, lieutenant, ensign.”
“Good night, sir,” they chorused. Daivid marched off to his own quarters, cognizant of a job well done. This might be the start of a battle of practical jokes, but he was ready for it. On the way back from the main base he had had plenty of time to review all those long-dormant tricks he had learned at camp. What with modern technology and the experience of the intervening years, he was pretty sure he could hold his own. If he woke up the next morning with his clothes soaked and tied into knots, he would cope.
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