Wolfe raised an eyebrow. Hesitancy in a Cockroach meant trouble. “Where is he?”
“Uh,” Streb gulped, realizing he had given something away. He bent his head to study his wrench. “Compartment 64D, sir.”
Eyes stinging, Wolfe went in search of whatever trouble his platoon had gotten themselves into. He realized he was not going to find 64D without help, and called up a chart of the deck on his infopad. The 64’s were a cluster of small, square chambers that housed cooling pipes adjacent to the main plant. No hatch from the big room gave onto them in case of a breach in the pumping system, so he had to wind his way through the labyrinth of linked rooms behind the long wall until he came to doors marked 64B, 64D, and 64F. He palmed the lock on the center hatch.
The door slid aside, and a huge, clear, bulging pseudopod lunged toward him from the open door. Wolfe jumped back.
“Dammit, halfway! Only open it halfway!” Boland’s voice came. Wolfe heard sloshing noises, and found himself face to face with his noncom.
“Chief Boland,” Wolfe asked with some gravity. “Why is it every time I come looking for you I find you naked?”
“Uh, sir, I can explain,” Boland said, reaching behind him. A dark-skinned hand stretched forward and handed Boland a soggy towel. The noncom wrapped it around his waist, but the towel insisted on floating on the surface of the water which occupied the room from that level downward. Wolfe recognized Ambering, who grinned at him sheepishly. She was naked, too, as were all eight of the Cockroaches in the water with them. Waves of warm air washed out into the corridor.
“I can’t wait,” Wolfe said, folding his arms. “Explain.”
“Uh,” Boland glanced over his shoulder at the others as though looking for inspiration. “Did we tell you there were perks in working even the worst jobs?”
“I don’t really see you working,” Wolfe pointed out. “I ought to report this, you know.”
“Not really, sir?” Boland pleaded.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t!”
“Well, we did all our assignments for the time being. We even asked Master Chief Winston if he had any more tasks. He said not at the moment.”
“Okay, so within the letter of the law you’re not skiving off,” Wolfe said. “Though you know if your chief hasn’t got anything for you to do you ought to look at the job board on the ship system. But what about the waste of energy?”
“There’s no waste, sir,” Ambering spoke up. “This water’s heated in the process of the purification system. In fact, it has to cool down from vapor to liquid before we can use it. This is about halfway down the cycle.”
“What about when it has to be repurified after you bathe in it?”
“It uses about one erg more of energy to raise the temperature back to steam, sir.” Boland added temptingly, “And I bet that pulled muscle of yours would really respond to moist heat.”
“Well …” Wolfe thought about it for a moment. He did miss the water-showers on Treadmill. The sonic cleansers did not really provide a satisfactory substitute. “But what the hell’s this?” He poked the bulging balloon that held the water.
“Emergency shelter, sir,” Boland said. “Practically indestructible, and absolutely weightless.”
“Those things only get to be two meters on a side!”
Boland looked proud. “Not if you fill them with water. They can get to be a heck of a lot bigger than this.”
Wolfe was agog. “You’ve done this before?”
“This happens all the time, sir. I learned the trick from a CPO I served with when I was a grunt the first time. You get stuck down in plumbing as often as we do, you look for the little creature comforts. Besides, who’s going to look? You have to check on us, and you don’t like it.”
“You can’t really hide something like this in inspection. What about your section chief?”
The chief laughed. “Oh, we showed him how we did it. He’s going to keep this in place when we leave. Private facility, you might say. After all, there’s no security eyes in here, and the ambient heat of the section keeps the hot water from being readily detected. It’s okay with him, sir. How about it?” Boland offered him an ingratiating grin. “You’re not really going to make us empty it. After all, they always dump us down here. Nobody cares.”
“I care, dammit! I don’t want us to be the unit everyone points to as the bad example.” No. Wolfe shook his head. What point was there in protesting? If he ordered it taken down, it’d almost certainly go back up the moment he left. And the responsibility for this section really lay with the department chief. He could almost rationalize it, thinking of the seductive roll of hot water running over his sore muscles. “Forget it. You’re right. I’ll be back with my trunks after shift.”
O O O
“Hey, we just heard,” Lt. Ti-Ya said eagerly, when Daivid appeared in the wardroom for a late meal.
He eyed her uneasily. Had word spread about the hot tub? “Heard what?”
“The other day, you kicked Bruno’s ass.”
Daivid looked around. The Supply lieutenant was sitting with his posse at the table at the wall farthest from the door where he could watch everyone. Daivid nodded to him. Bruno returned the nod curtly.
“He’s the one who kicked my ass,” Daivid said, loud enough to be heard. “I got killed. That was stupid. My senior chief shredded what was left of my posterior afterwards.”
“No, really, we heard you slagged them,” Ti-Ya grinned. “Literally.” Wilbury came in studying his infopad and glanced up. His face lit up when he saw Daivid.
“Hey, I heard you busted up the home team,” the lanky man crowed. “It must have been …!” He noticed Bruno and the others glaring at him from the back of the room, and hurried to flop down beside Carmen. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t see him back there. Now I’m going to get all my assignments screwed over. I better eat some crow.” He picked himself up again and strode to greet the fuming assembly. “Bruno! Big guy!”
“I want to hear all the details,” Carmen said, keeping her voice down. “It happened, when, four days ago, and all we knew was the new guys reached the objective within the time frame. That was it! And then today one of the guys on the squad broke silence. We were doing water survival rotations, and she mentioned your … nonstandard technique. Tell me all.”
Daivid rolled an eye towards Wilbury, who was giving a grandstand-quality clown act for Bruno and his friends. The severe lieutenant still hadn’t changed his expression, so Daivid doubted that Wilbury had managed to appease him. “The loss must really have pissed Bruno off.”
“He never loses,” Carmen insisted. “If everyone else on his squad gets killed, he goes and creams the rest of the enemy by himself. This was the first time his hand-picked company ended up in second place.”
“Cleaning the battlefield,” Daivid recalled, unable to keep a big grin off his face.
“Yeah. Since no one is really killed or hurt in these exercises, Captain Harawe figured that there ought to be some penalty for losing, and he came up with making the unsuccessful squad mop up, or reseal the enamel on the walls, or whatever. That stinky pipe is one of their favorite hiding places. Cleitis likes to sic Bruno’s group on newcomers, to see what they’re made of.”
“I guess we’re made of slag,” Daivid pointed out, not at all ashamed of himself. “At least, that’s what we left all over them.” In an undertone, he began to recount the event, including the uneven odds, the convenient AI that forced X-Ray to take all its losses but seemed to let even mortally wounded spacers keep fighting, and the conclusion, which he had had to watch from the floor. As he spoke, others dining or reading in the wardroom began to drift over, sitting close so they could hear his low voice. The chortles and outright laughter that erupted from the group as he got to the part about Jones yanking open the sump lid couldn’t be ignored, and they weren’t. Bruno cut Wilbury off with a curt gesture, rose to his feet, and stalked out of the room with Varos and Rindel on his heels.
“You’re going to pay for that,” Wilbury said ruefully, coming back to join them. “He’s a real son of a bitch when he’s embarrassed.”
“My fault,” Carmen said, with a tilt of the head for apology. “I should have IM’ed you for the details, but voice is a lot more satisfying than text.”
Daivid looked after the retreating Bruno with contempt. “I can live with it.”
O O O
The mayor of a small town seized Daivid’s hand and pumped it gratefully. The people behind him, all statuesque women in scanty clothing, looked as though they were close to tears with joy. “Lieutenant, we’re all so thankful. Your army saved us from the blobs, and all you had was a crate of bubble gum! Thank you so beep. Beep. Beep! Beep!”
Daivid rolled over as the town faded into the blackness of his cabin. He stared at nothing, until the noise came again. It was the door signal. With a groan he noticed the chrono: 0314. He swung his legs out of the bunk and yanked his robe on over his skivvies. “Come in!” he called.
A skinny female frame stepped hesitantly into the room. Daivid thumbed the lights to reveal the face of a very junior midshipman.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir,” the midshipman said, “but Commander Cleitis wants to see you.”
“Now?”
“Aye, aye, sir. That’s what he said. He said not to send a message, but to notify you in person. That’s why I’m here.”
Uh-oh. What had the Cockroaches done now? They’d been good about running under the radar since he discovered their hot tub and let them keep it. Even Jones had been freed from confinement, after he had promised to make up no more limericks about the captain.
“But you know how it is, sir,” the hearty Petty Officer had said. “They tell you not to think about something, and then you can’t think of anything else. I’ve got dozens of good ones … but I’ll save them until we’re deployed somewhere else.”
No point in asking this youngster about the crime of which he or his unit had been accused. Cleitis always preferred to lower the boom himself.
“Thank you, midshipman,” Daivid said, reaching for his pants. “I’ll be there as soon as I’m dressed.”
“Aye, aye, sir, I’ll inform him.” The junior officer was already taking up her infopad as the door closed behind her. Daivid ran the depilator over his scratchy chin and yanked on the rest of his clothes. What now?
O O O
“What now, Lt. Wolfe?” Commander Cleitis asked, his narrow face looking even more narrow and haggard, since it appeared that he, too, had been pulled out of bed. His usually crisp uniform collar sagged a little, and a haze of gray-white whiskers frosted his cheeks. “Isn’t a schedule change notation good enough for you? Do you require an engraved invitation? Must we provide an escort for each and every one of your troopers?”
“To attend what?” Daivid asked. He was wide awake now, but his head felt as though it had been filled with insulation.
“Antigrav combat practice,” the XO replied, with some asperity. “You must be aware how crowded the ship is, lieutenant. Do you think you can screw up the entire workings of the ship just because something is not convenient for you?”
“What, sir?” Daivid asked, feeling as though plascrete had been poured in to compact the insulation in his skull. “The only thing I’ve asked for in the last several days is to have us get more rotations in the chamber.”
“And you got them,” Commander Cleitis snapped. “Your group ought to have been in that very anti-grav chamber as of 0300 hours. Where were they?”
The whole scenario became clear in his mind as if set out on a screen. Ti-Ya had warned him, and he hadn’t paid any attention. Daivid stammered. “I … I didn’t know we had been given a slot at 0300, sir. I asked Lt. Bruno yesterday if we could be assigned for 1300, the same time as our future assignment in three days. I didn’t realize.…”
“Oh-three-hundred, not one-three-hundred,” Cleitis said, exasperatedly, pointing at the screen in his desk. “Did you not check your next thirty hour schedule when you retired, as you were instructed to do all the way back in OTC? You’re on evolutions every two days at 0300 until we reach our destination. You were sent details of this change last night.”
Wincing, Daivid examined his infopad. His friends in the wardroom during his free shift had been sending messages during the nightly poker game to avoid distracting the other players. By that time word had spread all over the ship about the ‘dirty win’ the Cockroaches had pulled over the Eastwood home squad. A few were jeers from Bruno supporters, but most were brief, and often anonymous, congratulations. There were so many coming in that after a while Daivid couldn’t concentrate on his own game, and had stuffed his unit back into the pouch on his belt. He’d been buoyed on the fun he was getting out of telling the story, and had a lucky night, with, it seemed, one glaringly obvious exception.
Just as he feared, sandwiched among the hundred or so IM’s was an official schedule notification from the Supply Department, datelined 2915, informing him that X-Ray’s first official zero-gee assignment was four hours hence. And now he recalled that Bruno had been in the lounge when he put his infopad away. He had then gone to bed, without clearing the unread message buffer. Bruno had him. Daivid looked up at the XO.
“I … I missed it, sir. I apologize. I did not mean to throw off the schedule of the entire ship. I will get my platoon down to the chamber immediately.”
“It’s too late for that, wouldn’t you think?” Cleitis asked, eyebrows raised. “It’s already half past. You’d have less than two hours to complete the course.”
“I … yes, sir. We could do part of the exercise tonight, and start fresh in two days.”
“Every part of the module has meaning, lieutenant, meant to train each part of your body to the uttermost skill level. Do you think that the enemy will excuse you if you don’t know how to perform a certain defensive move? That he’d give you a pass, and let you kill him out of sympathy?”
“No, sir,” Daivid replied.
“No, of course not. And now every unit that follows yours has to be bumped up the line. It throws off the whole day, and it’s all your fault.”
“It won’t happen again, sir.”
“Damn right it won’t. I’ve heard about X-Ray platoon, lieutenant. I checked out your service record, too, after the other evening’s victory, thinking that perhaps the brass had assigned you to X-Ray in hopes of reforming it. I’m beginning to think they put the two of you together to keep both of you in one place, to lessen the damage you can do.”
“No, sir, it’s not like that,” Daivid protested.
“Get out of here,” Cleitis said wearily. “I have too much to do in the coming weeks than worry about one sad little scout unit. You go to exercises when you’re scheduled, you do them to the best of your ability, and you stay under the radar, do you hear me? Don’t let me see you in here again.” He flipped a hand toward the door.
“No, sir,” Daivid said. “You won’t, sir.”
With his tail firmly between his legs, he retreated.
O O O
“Sir?” Borden asked, on the way to PT the next morning. She held her infopad out to him. “I was going to ask you about this entry, but … you look terrible.”
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep, Borden,” Daivid admitted, stretching his arms over his head. “I got skunked. We got skunked. It’s my fault. We’ve made an enemy for life, and he won the latest round. The alert came through after you went to bed. I didn’t check, so I couldn’t notify you. I don’t know why I didn’t hear the priority alarm.”
Thielind pointed at a code in the header of the order. “No alarm, looey,” he said. “It was disabled. You can do that, if you want to send a priority message but you don’t want to wake someone up. It’s just a command in the menu.”
“So we missed zero-gee practice?” Lin asked. “Sorry. I don’t mean to rub it in.”
“Yeah,” Daivid said, glumly. “And I have s
ome good news and some bad news. The good news is we have zero-gee every other day. The bad news is it’s at 0300.”
“We saw. It’s not your fault. The guy’s a prick. ’Scuse me: the officer’s a prick.” The hatch leading to the gym slid open, and Bruno emerged, cheeks pink and with a towel around his neck. Lin’s hand shot up in a salute. “Why, sir, we were just talking about you!” The rest of the Cockroaches followed suit, grinning widely.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” Wolfe said, evenly.
Bruno ignored him. He started to push past the platoon without returning the salute, but the Cockroaches blocked his way, shifting as if to make room for him, then cutting off his retreat. Wolfe cleared his throat meaningfully. Finally, grudgingly, the supply officer tipped his fingers against his forehead. Thielind was the last to lower his hand. He beamed blindingly at Bruno.
“Out of my way, enswine,” Bruno growled, shouldering directly at the smaller man. Thielind, not moving quite fast enough, got slammed into the corridor wall.
“That’s ‘ensign,’ sir,” Thielind said in a very small voice, to the retreating officer’s back. If Bruno heard him, he showed no sign. Daivid vowed that one way or another he was going to make sure the supply lieutenant got the message that no one got the better of a Wolfe, not for long, and no one was going to undo the good work he had started on his platoon’s self-esteem.
O O O
Endorphins, Daivid reflected, pulling on fresh fatigues after a sonic shower, were amazing things. A good stretch, followed by a brisk run and strength-building exercises, more stretching and a little target practice, did wonders for the brain that was running on insufficient sleep. He felt ready to dig into his paperwork, ready to ream out every detail and provide the best and most complete report Lt. Commander Iry had ever read.
No, he thought, slumping down at his desk and flipping open his infopad, no matter how he tried, he just couldn’t convince himself that paperwork was either interesting or vital. Who in hell ever decided that you couldn’t run a military operation without fifteen forms having to be filled out for every bolt, every battery and every pair of underwear? You would think, five thousand years after the first electronic computer had been built, that they would have a program that funneled the information from one form into all the others, but they had not. Once he was running things, they would. That pair of shorts would begin in a report from supply as being issued to a spacer, then the data would run fleetly into a report to procurement for replacement, then to the physical base, ship or station where the spacer was assigned to work out parameters on how much space was needed to store it, how much power was needed to clean it, the approximate life after which it needed replacement, and a note to engineering at that time on the disposal of that many grams of waste. They’d hail him as the man who set the officers free!
Strong Arm Tactics Page 15