by Peter Grant
"I can get away with taking half a dozen, but not more," Steve explained. "I don't want to overdo it, in case the cook withdraws my pantry privileges."
Zabrinski shrugged innocently. "Oh, well. Guess I'll just have to steal some of yours!" As he spoke, he made a lightning grab with his right hand for the half-roll still on Steve's plate.
Steve had just raised his fork to his mouth and taken a bite. He reacted without conscious thought, stabbing downward with karate-honed reflexes. His fork speared deep into the back of Zabrinski's hand before it could reach his plate.
"OW! Ouch! Shit, that hurts!" Zabrinski whipped his hand away, cradling it against his chest with his left arm, glaring at Steve as the others roared with laughter.
"You asked for it," Davis pointed out, still laughing as he shook his finger at his crewman. "I've warned you before about stealing other people's food. You finally met someone fast enough to stop you!"
"Whose side are you on, anyway?" The spacer glared in disbelief at the blood welling up from the fork embedded in the back of his hand.
"Not yours! You've taken more than enough food off your shipmates like that. It's high time someone gave you your come-uppance! No, don't do that," and he reached out a hand to restrain Zabrinski from touching the fork with his left hand. "It's in pretty deep. Let's see the other side." Zabrinski turned over his hand, revealing the four tines of the fork protruding from his palm. "Yeah, he got you good! There's no way you'll be able to just pull that out. We'd better give the hospital its first real business, and let the professionals deal with it."
"You're joking, right?" Zabrinski glared at him. "I'll look like a fool!"
"Yes, you will, and you'll deserve it! Come on, let's go."
"I'm sorry," Steve apologized worriedly. "I didn't mean to cause all this trouble. It was a reflex reaction."
"And a justified one!" Davis assured him. "Don't worry, you're not in any trouble, I'll see to that. Want to come along? I think the nurses' faces will be a picture when they see this!"
"Mind if I come too?" Tomkins asked, beginning to grin. "This ought to be worth watching!"
"Why not?"
In the end all six of them trooped into the hospital's small emergency room. Half a dozen nurses and a doctor on the overnight shift were going through the motions of training with various items of equipment. They abandoned their boring, routine tasks with grateful alacrity.
"How the hell...?" the doctor wondered aloud, staring as he unwrapped Zabrinski's hand from the bloodstained paper towel with which he'd covered it.
"He tried to mooch my cinnamon roll, and I stopped him," Steve explained uncomfortably. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it quite so hard!"
"Mooch?" a nurse inquired, eyebrows rising.
"It's a word we use on Old Home Earth to mean finagling or sneaking something out of someone - taking advantage of them," Steve explained.
"Oh. I hadn't heard the term before," she confessed, her eyes twinkling, "I guess we'd better fix up Spacer Mooch before he tries it again!" Her colleagues broke into delighted laughter.
"Hey, my name's Zabrinski, not Mooch!"
"It was," his boss informed him with an evil grin. "I think you've just earned a new nickname. Just wait 'til the word gets around... Mooch!"
Zabrinski glared at him. "And I bet you'll make sure it gets around, won't you?" He rolled his eyes plaintively. "What did I do to deserve this?"
"Please tell me that fork hadn't been in someone's mouth before it ended up in his hand?" another nurse asked.
"Er... sorry, Ma'am, but it was," Steve admitted.
"OK, then you get an anti-infection shot as well," she informed Zabrinski with a smile.
"Better add a rabies inoculation, too," Tomkins suggested helpfully. "I've seen Steve when he's in a fighting mood!"
"We'll treat this as a training opportunity," the doctor declared, grinning from ear to ear. "We'll need an X-ray and blood tests - we'll draw enough for a full battery, everything from anemia to zinc levels, to test our diagnostic machine. It'll only need a liter or two." Zabrinski's eyes opened wide with horror. "Then there's the anti-infection and rabies shots... what else?"
"We can check for ingrown toenails while we're at it," another nurse offered, chuckling.
The doctor nodded. "Uh-huh - hemorrhoids, too!" The nurses and spacers exploded with laughter.
"Hey! Wait a minute!" Zabrinski protested, turning pale. "I'm outta here!"
It took some time to persuade him that the doctor was only joking. He was still complaining as his wrist and hand were injected with a local anesthetic. The ER staff waited for it to take effect, then strapped down his hand and forearm to immobilize them while the prongs were withdrawn. Two nurses assisted the doctor with the extraction, sponging away the blood from several small incisions required to free the fork's tines from the tendons of his hand.
Lieutenant-Commander Erion hurried in as they were suturing and dressing the wound, his bleary eyes and tousled hair bearing witness that he'd been woken from a sound sleep. He'd dressed in a tracksuit without badges of rank, and was breathing hard, as if he'd run all the way down the passage from his quarters.
"What happened?" he asked. "The charge nurse called to tell me one of our spacers had been injured."
"Gee, thanks!" Zabrinski hissed, glaring at the nurse behind the admissions counter.
She stifled a smirk. "Sir, our standing orders are to notify you about any injuries to Fleet personnel," she said innocently, "so I thought you'd want to know about Spacer Mooch's - "
"Zabrinski!" the injured man insisted furiously.
"Sorry - Spacer Zabrinski's wound," she finished, unable to suppress a giggle as she pointed to the bloodied fork lying on a dressing tray.
"Mooch?" Erion asked, beginning to smile. "Mooch?"
Steve had to explain once more how he'd defended his cinnamon roll against attack. Petty Officer Davis backed him up. "That's how it was, Sir. I saw the whole thing. Spacer Mooch - I mean, Zabrinski - asked for it."
"Well, Zabrinski, you've learned a lesson - at least, I hope you have! - and I think you've earned a new nickname as well, whether you like it or not," Erion said with a chuckle. "Unfortunately, even though you were technically 'wounded in action', I'm afraid a fight over a cinnamon roll isn't enough to qualify you for the Combat Injury Medal!"
Zabrinski could only roll his eyes again at the renewed laughter at his expense.
The following day, the emergency room mounted a plaque on the wall above the admissions counter. It bore a picture of Zabrinski's hand, fork embedded vertically in it. Above it were the words, 'The 257th Expeditionary Hospital's first patient!', and below it, 'Spacer First Class "Mooch" Zabrinski', followed by the date of the injury. It would draw many amused comments from passersby in the weeks and months to come.
When Zabrinski learned about it his chagrin redoubled. "I'll never live that down!" he complained bitterly, glaring at Steve over supper that night after the late shift, nursing his bandaged hand.
"You don't deserve to," an unsympathetic Petty Officer Davis informed him. "That was a classic self-inflicted injury, in more ways than one!"
Steve finally made an entire tray of a dozen cinnamon rolls for Zabrinski as a peace offering, after first clearing it with a highly amused Higgins. That mollified the indignant spacer... but his new nickname stuck.
Chapter 13: July 17th, 2837 GSC
Steve was on duty once again in the Engineering department when Cabot arrived at Radetski for the first time. Along with most of the ship's company, he listened to their radio conversation with the makeshift System Control organization, which had been set up by the United Planets mission in lieu of the long-destroyed orbital infrastructure. It was being operated from the mission's command vessel, an old depot ship named LCS Baobab, which served as the mother ship for several heavy and light patrol craft providing system security.
Steve listened curiously to the radio exchange between Cabot and Baobab as the ship repo
rted her arrival. "Why are they calling us 'LCAS' Cabot instead of 'LMV'?" he asked Ignaz, who was again on watch with him.
"It's because we're on charter to the Fleet, which gives us the legal status of a Fleet auxiliary. Instead of being a 'Lancastrian Merchant Vessel' as usual, we're now referred to as a 'Lancastrian Commonwealth Auxiliary Ship'. When the charter's over, we'll go back to plain old LMV again."
"I get it."
Looking at Radetski on the monitor as they approached the planet, Steve could see that it was mostly water, with islands of various sizes poking above the surface here and there. Cabot was directed to take up a geostationary orbit above the largest island, big enough to be considered a continent. As soon as she'd settled into orbit, the hospital's small craft began a week-long shuttle service, bringing injured children and their travel companions - parents, guardians or older siblings - up from the planet. Meanwhile Cabot's two cutters, plus small craft from Baobab, delivered thousands of tons of medical supplies to field hospitals established on the main island. They were treating the crippled and maimed left in the wake of Radetski's decade-long civil war, and standing in for the continent's own hospitals, most of which had long since been destroyed.
On the third day, Tomkins and Steve were tasked to deliver a shipment of medicines and dressings to a field hospital on the south coast. It was received with relief.
"Thank Heaven you got here when you did!" a clerk exclaimed as he checked off the details of the shipment on an electronic clipboard, while hospital porters and robotic conveyors packed it away in containers set up as makeshift warehouses. "We were almost out of a lot of this stuff. By next week we'd have been in real trouble."
"We aim to please," Tomkins said with a smile. "We're supposed to take back several cases of powered prosthetics, to be shipped to Vesta for repair and reconditioning. Are they ready?"
"I'm sorry - we're still packing the last of them. It'll take another hour. They've got to be padded just right to prevent damage in transit. Have you eaten yet?"
"Not since a very early breakfast."
"Our mess hall's in that big tent over there. We hired some of the local women to staff it. They cook good food, spiced in their traditional style. Lunch is almost over, but there'll be plenty left. Here's two meal chits. Our shipment should be ready by the time you get back."
"We never say 'no' to free food," Tomkins assured him. "Thanks. I'll just let the ship know that our return flight will be delayed, so they won't worry about us."
The food proved to be as good as the clerk had promised; a savory, paprika-rich goulash served over a local variety of rice, accompanied by salad and coffee. Both spacers cleared their plates speedily.
"You are still hungry?" one of the servers asked. She spoke a local language that Steve couldn't identify, but her PIA translated her words into a formal, precise version of Galactic Standard English and repeated them over an external speaker on her lapel.
"I sure am," he nodded, and waited while her PIA translated his words into her own language.
"Everyone has eaten by now, and there is food left. Bring your plates and I will refill them." They wasted no time accepting her invitation.
"If no-one else is likely to arrive, how about joining us?" Steve invited as she dished up the food. "I'd love to hear about Radetski from your point of view. All we've learned comes from the news media and a few short official briefings. You can add some local color for us."
She sighed. "Very well. We do not like to talk about the recent past, but you have come here to help us. You deserve answers." She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down opposite them at the table, adjusting her headscarf. "May I ask your names?"
"Sorry," Steve apologized. "I should have thought of that. I'm Steve Maxwell, and this is Dale Tomkins. He's the pilot of the cutter out there, and I'm his crewman."
"Thank you. I am Irena Kulovic." She thought for a moment. "For you to understand us will be difficult. In your Commonwealth you have free exchange of citizens between places on planets, and between planets themselves, yes?"
"That's right," Tomkins agreed. "In the Commonwealth citizens can go anywhere they like, provided they can support themselves."
"And your cultures mix freely? You are not accustomed to people of one race or language being expected, or even forced, to live apart from those of others?"
Tomkins' eyebrows rose in astonishment. "Oh, heck, no! The Lancastrian Commonwealth was initially formed by several minor colony planets. They realized they needed to band together for mutual support. They'd been settled by people from many different backgrounds, but understood right from the start that they had to set aside their differences and work together. They codified that very carefully in our constitution, along with severe restrictions on government size and powers so that no group could use the political system to dominate another. We've stuck to that.
"We recognize every group's right to their own culture, language and so on, but we insist there has to be an overarching commitment, a loyalty, to the principles of the Commonwealth as a whole. Each member planet accepts the Commonwealth Constitution in its entirety as the basis for its own laws, but it's free to add to it and establish its own internal structures and policies, as long as they don't conflict with those basic principles. We're expected to be Lancastrians just as much as we're citizens of a planet, or members of a particular ethnic group or culture. We focus on what unites us, rather than our differences."
She nodded slowly. "Our way of life was very different, although it has begun to change since the war." She fell silent for a moment, her eyes far away. "Radetski's problems go back many centuries, to two former nations on Old Home Earth called Serbia and Croatia. About three hundred years ago, both of them became provinces of the Central European Hegemony."
Steve said, "I remember studying the Hegemony Wars in school on Old Home Earth."
"Then you may know more about them than I do. I have only heard of them through the one-sided propaganda that was common here. Before the Wars, the Hegemony mounted its own colonization effort during the Scramble for Space. It claimed six planets, including Radetski. We have only one continent - this one - and several islands large enough to be habitable, with no land mass at the equator on which to base a Planetary Elevator. That made our planet-to-orbit costs much higher, so it was never as easy or as economical to develop this planet as it was the others. Instead, the Hegemony used Radetski as a dumping-ground for political prisoners and those whose loyalties it considered suspect, particularly during the Wars.
"The islands were used for smaller ethnic and national groups. The two largest groups were Serbians and Croatians. The friction between them dates back to long before the Space Age. The Hegemony could not stop it flaring up on Old Home Earth, so they exiled all the hard-line nationalists and activists they could find. The Serbs were dumped in the eastern half of this continent, while the Croats were sent to the west. Inevitably, and precisely because those sent here were selected for their intolerance and xenophobia, the rivalry between both groups was intense. Each expanded towards the center of the continent, where they eventually met."
"Sounds like a recipe for disaster," Steve observed. "Didn't the Hegemony realize what might happen?"
Irena gave a short, bitter laugh. "I think they did not care. They just did not want the conflict to erupt in their own back yard. They did not even station Hegemony police here - they simply dumped their unwanted people, then left them to their own devices." She paused to sip her coffee.
"Zaharich, the instigator of our civil war, was as much a product of those ethnic tensions as a master manipulator of them. He set himself up as some sort of prophet, preaching that people of Serb descent were to make Radetski the heart of what he called 'The Greater Serbian Empire of the Diaspora'. He was quite mad, of course, but also very, very persuasive. He duped tens of thousands into following him. He preached that the whole continent - the whole planet - should be under Serbian domination.
"The Radets
kians of Croatian origin on this continent, and those from other groups on the other islands, were not going to let that happen, of course. When Zaharich realized he could not persuade or intimidate them to agree to his demands, he secretly armed and trained his followers, then launched an uprising. There were horrific atrocities, just like the history books describe the worst years of 'ethnic cleansing' or pogroms back on Old Home Earth. Extremists took over on both sides, and violence begot more and worse violence. The fighting went on for five years, during which the population of this continent was halved, until Zaharich was killed."
"It's the same old story," Tomkins observed sourly. "Megalomaniacs and demagogues almost always kill a whole lot of people before they die themselves. A lot of them are their enemies, sure, but historically at least as many have usually been their own people."
"You speak truth. By the time Zaharich was dead, neither our Serb nor our Croat communities were capable of sustaining civilized existence, much less continuing a full-scale conflict - yet even in the midst of such misery, the extremists' hatred was too strong to allow them to make peace. That is when the islands intervened."
Steve frowned. "The islands? I thought you said they were the dumping-grounds for smaller ethnic groups."
"They were. Each governed itself, trying to retain as much independence as possible. However, the war changed that. Both sides on the continent sought to gain allies among the islands, trying to force them to send weapons, material, and conscripts. They used the old threat of 'if you are not for us, you must be against us'. None of our islands was strong enough to resist such pressure on its own. They had a simple choice - they could either stand together, or fall separately. They dissembled as best they could, making excuses to avoid getting too involved with the war, while secretly they pooled their resources and trained a joint intervention force.
"They knew that sooner or later, the Serbs and Croats would weaken each other so much that they could no longer resist them. When that time came, they sent their force to the continent and drove right up the middle, forcing the two sides apart." She sighed. "Perhaps the only reason I and my children are alive is that they landed near here, and pushed the violence away from us. My husband was killed only three weeks before they arrived.