Steel Walls and Dirt Drops

by Black, Alan

  Rezzi looked up from her work and frowned.

  Misha missed the look on Rezzi's face as the blood rushed to her own face. She tried to turn away, but Forrester grabbed her with his good hand.

  "Sorry, Misha," he said. "That was a bad joke."

  "Not funny, Gan. I told you nothing was going on between Britaine and me. Besides," she glanced quickly at Rezzi, then back to Forrester, "this is not the appropriate forum to discuss that anyway."

  Rezzi said, "Don't mind me, I am only the help. I do my work and do my time. What goes on in officer country is for others with better minds than mine to decipher."

  “See there, Misha,” Gan said. “It is just as if we were alone. Anyway, if Britaine isn’t interested…or interesting, what was he doing watching you work out in the training bay?”

  "I didn't say he wasn't interested," Misha said. "I am just telling you that nothing is going on. You'll have to ask him if you want to know what he was doing watching APES train."

  "Well, he wasn't watching APES train, Misha. He was watching you. Besides, I don't hear you saying you aren't interested in him."

  "Gan, it is a good thing you are already in sick bay, because you are about two seconds away from needing more medical attention," Misha said.

  "Whoa, people," Rezzi said. "I just fixed the one broken arm. Let's not have any more."

  Surprised, Forrester said, "Done?"

  "Yep, all fixed. It should be solid in about four days so don’t stress it too much. Now get out of my sick bay. I've got real work to get done."

  Chapter Twenty

  "Hey, vacuum head!" Trooper Dashell, the Foxtrot Squad med tech called out. "Have I got a deal for you!"

  The spacer looked up from the counter. "What, APEShit? You don't got nothing that I need. Besides you got your own supplies. You don't need to be dipping into the Kiirkegaard's medical storage."

  "Nah, it is not that kind of a deal, junior." Dashell said. "I hear that you've got a box of Orion Confed blue smokes?"

  "Yeah, so what? They ain't illegal, just hard to come by."

  "I know, I know," Dashell said. "I just thought we might make a trade."

  "Yeah, like I said, you ain't got nothing I want."

  Dashell smiled, "Leave us not be hasty. I hear that you might be in the market for Binder technology?"

  The spacer looked up quickly. "Well, I might be. What have you got?"

  "A scythe; it is even battle chipped." Dashell said.

  "Really?" The young man's eyes light up. "Maybe it is from Guinjundst?"

  "Nah, I can't lie to you, kid," Dashell replied. "Nothing is coming from Guinjundst. Anybody tries to tell you different is a liar. Everything was quarantined, classified and sent to intelligence for review."

  "Yeah," the spacer said. "Everything but your new boss; I thought maybe she snuck something out."

  "I doubt it. Security is pretty tight on that one. So do we have a deal?"

  "Why not? If our bosses can get together, then I don't see why we can't."

  "Yeah? What have you heard?" Dashell asked.

  "Well, just between us, I don't usually spread gossip. I got this first hand. I was delivering medical supplies to the sick bay. McPherson was in there with that Marshal Sergeant. They were talking about Britaine. She blushed like a school girl every time he mentioned Britaine's name. I couldn't hear it all, but I did hear her say she was interested in him."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Able Squad's Trooper One Gates Singletary cursed just loud enough that only Park, Juarez and Slezak could hear him. Not that he cared. The only other APE in the squad bay was that whiner Steinman.

  "Come on Steinman. Move it! Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Juarez yelled across the squad bay.

  "Shut up, Miguel," Slezak said. "For all we know that little weasel will run straight to the bitch."

  "He won't if he knows what's good for him," replied Park. "Besides, what would he have to tell her? That we are talking loud. Wooooo, I'm scared."

  Slezak said, "All right for you, dipwad. But, I am under house arrest, remember? I ain't supposed to be out of my box. You might get a slap on the wrist for talking to me, but, I would get put in the stockade."

  Singletary nodded. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zip it up all of you." He shook his head. "Damn, I hate these combat jump lock downs. They always give me a headache."

  "Yeah, you and every other creature with human DNA. Quit’cher bitchin’," Park said. "We ain't got much time."

  "Yeah, all right," Singletary agreed.

  Singletary thought that it has been a long lockdown for such a short jump. The AMSF bastards decided to use these jumps to practice combat entry into a simulated battle. All he knew about it was that it required all personnel to be strapped into their stations. For the APES, this meant they were strapped into their bunks with the blast shutters in place. The engines pushed to the maximum speed in normal space; then without warning the spacecraft would snap into sub-space, spin and roll for twenty or thirty minutes, and snap back into ordinary space. Since it was a combat insertion and might mean a high probability of enemy presence, the flight crew would run a computer-generated random flight pattern that would cause the spacecraft to tumble, twist and turn just barely within the limits of the inertial dampers and anti-gravity systems. For an AMSF squadron or wing combat insertion, multiple spacecraft computers linked into a real-time network to avoid collision with the friendly spacecraft. The flight crew would retake control only after the automated targeting systems assessed any possible enemy presence.

  "Now with this damn headache that bitch McPherson got us volunteered to stand at AMSF stations," Singletary complained. "I quit the AMSF because I hated standing station on spacecraft."

  Park smiled, "Hell, Gates. There ain’t nobody here but us chickens. We all know you left the AMSF one step ahead of a court-martial because you were running their quarter master's supply room like your personal garage sale."

  Slezak nodded, "Yeah. You got to agree that the APES let you scrounge a bit more creatively-"

  "Or at least, Cans did," Juarez interrupted, seeing the look of irritation on Singletary's face. "McPherson seems to have a different attitude. And anyway, how the hell did she get Britaine to agree to us standing watch? Everybody knows he thinks ground troops are a waste of military spending."

  Slezak nodded, "All I can say is she must be better in the rack than Vark. I can't imagine it, but it must be true."

  "The word is he refused her request the first time on us standing stations and she had to ask him twice. But, it doesn't matter how," Singletary said. "Maybe we can use this time creatively, push for a few contacts to replenish our lost stock. Since we are only getting assigned as bottom-rung assistants on the first watch, we'll have to be careful. First watch is where all of their best crew gets put. Some of those guys are pretty gung-ho and on the up-and-up so watch yourselves. That bitch McPherson may have dumped our inventory, but she didn't take us out of the game, got me?"

  Everyone nodded their agreement.

  Singletary continued. "Miguel, I hear that Dashell from Foxtrot made a new trade contact in the med storeroom. Talk to him and see what the deal is, find out if we can get in on whatever he has cooking. And Jem Li, your old AMSF station was fighter bay maintenance. I know you’ve got some side connections with Ivanov and Jacobis over there. Push 'em on whatever inventory we can turn for them, got it? And Aimee, dear stupid little Aimee."

  "Ah, come on, Gates. Get off my back," Slezak said.

  "In a tri wave sim? What the hell were you thinking? Never mind. We can't do a thing about it now. You'll probably get down checked for this upcoming op, but she can't make any serious charges stick. She might force a transfer on you after that. Shit, if you had been a bit smarter, we could have used you to get some cameras dropped into a couple of the AMSF women's bays. I never understood why those prudes separate the sexes and then build special private comfort rooms to let them get back together. Anyway, I got a guy in the AMSF
who would pay big bucks for the right pictures of the right female spacer, or you could have got some of your AMSF girlfriends to do some amateur porn gigs for us. Never mind, it’s a done deal, just get back in your box."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Misha stepped through the hatch into the intelligence vault. It was called a vault because it was more like a bank safe than any normal room aboard a spacecraft. The hatch was a meter thick with massive tumbler locks and deadbolts as wide as her arm. To gain entry, she buzzed through a dedicated and hardwired intercom. She had her glass pack scanned and knew as she stepped through the hatchway the security devices physically scanned her for weapons, recording devices, hidden cameras, and dozens of other items not allowed in the vault. The hatchway automatically transmitted a signal to glass packs, shutting them down upon entry. From her duty tour in AMSF intelligence she knew the bulkheads were packed with high tech counter surveillance gear. No scan could penetrate into its interior and any effort to do so would trigger ear-shattering alarms throughout the craft.

  Misha was surprised to see Gan Forrester sitting on the corner of a desk. How he had found a clear space on the desk to park even his small posterior would be an hour-long program on the popular video show ‘The Universe’s Unanswered Mysteries’. Piled high on the desk were glass-pack readers, hyper projectors, stylus highlighters, 3-D scramblers, coffee cups, used lunch trays, an assortment of tiny spacecraft models and a very bizarre assortment of Plasticine figures representing a militaristic group of what looked like wild boars in battle armor with weapons. Forrester and the female chief master sergeant Misha has seen earlier at Britaine’s pre-mission briefing were playing a mock battle with the figures. Both were making weird and quite impossible noises. A junior-grade major sat facing the two, while scanning through a glass-pack, completely ignoring the Plasticine carnage threatening to engulf the chief's desk.

  Without turning around the chief called out to Misha, "Come on in, Third McPherson, and shut the hatch, you're letting the flies in. Gan, you lying sack of civilian sheep shit, I just killed your commander and you know it."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what you think." Forrester looked up at Misha and smiled. He tossed her the figure he held. "What do you think? Should we recruit these guys to fight the Binders for us?"

  Misha turned the figure over in her hands. It did indeed look like a semi-intelligent pig of some kind, wearing armor with odd weaponry stuck out at every angle. "I don't know this species. But, it looks like there would be serious gaps in their armor. I don't recognize the cannon this man… er, pig… um, whatever it is carrying. Who are they?"

  "Relax, Third," the junior-grade major spoke without looking up from his reading. "Those are just some of Dead-eye's toys. Children's toys. You know how silly some chiefs can get in their old age. They are the P.O.O.P.; Pigs Out On Patrol. You can get them at any station exchange in the toy section."

  The chief smiled, "Yep, I got the whole set." She stood up and stretched out her hand to Misha. "Chief Master Sergeant Elizabeth Brown, intel's NCOIC. And that is Major Junior-Grade Hiero Krandiewsky. We call him Buzz for short. We let him think he is the head intel puke around here. And you know Sergeant Forrester, I believe?"

  "Yes, Chief," Misha smiled. "You don't know how relieved I feel to be back in an intel shack. I think that outside of APES country, this is the only room on an AMSF craft that I feel comfortable in."

  "That’s not surprising. If you felt comfortable out there, you probably wouldn't have made a good intel puke," the chief said. "I pulled up your personnel files when we got Colonel Britaine's authorization to let you guys play with us. It looks like you were pretty good at intelligence work, for a beginner."

  "Thank you," Misha said. "I believe Major…um…Buzz called you 'Dead-eye'. Should I call you that or Chief Brown."

  "Shoot, child. It doesn't matter either way. Try it with just Chief. That seems to work fine for most of us. Besides, Dead-eye is more of a joke than a serious nickname," the chief said.

  Forrester replied, "That is not what I hear. Word is that you are deadly with a hand weapon."

  Chief Brown snorted. "Right and that does me diddly-squat. I am a pure bred intel puke. Who am I gonna shoot? Buzz or maybe some annoying Marshal's Service sergeant? Even if we got boarded, I wouldn't be given a handgun. We would lock ourselves in this vault and hold up until the APES either saved the day or the ship blew up."

  "Still," said Buzz, tossing down his glass-pack and looking up for the first time. "You earned the nickname on the firing range." He pointed to the bulkhead behind the chief's desk. A paper target with a human silhouette was stuck to the bulkhead. There was a small cluster of bullet holes inside the center heart ring, a very small cluster of bullet holes in the center of the head, and a very, very small cluster of bullet holes in the groin.

  "That is some impressive shooting," Misha said.

  "Yeah," said Chief Brown. "That is why I keep it stuck up there. It keeps the lower-ranking intel pukes in line and it seems to have a calming effect on the raging childishness of some of our FAC jocks. But, it is just a piece of paper with holes in it."

  "Yes," Buzz interrupted. "But, they are holes you put there from twenty-five meters out with an old-style .45 caliber hard projectile weapon."

  Forrester said, "I have shot those things on our range. They have recoil and enough of a kick to break your wrist. If you can do that kind of damage with them, you would be twice as dangerous with a needler or a driver."

  "Nope," Chief Brown said. "It's just a hobby, a talent, a skill to be so admired I will be adored by those beings lesser than I. Speaking of which, Buzz, what did you do with Jimmy?"

  "Sent him off duty, why do you need him for something?"

  "Majors!" Brown said with mock exasperation. "You can teach them chain of command until you are blue in the face, but they still think they are in charge. Why pray tell, Major, did you send Jimmy off duty?"

  "Damn, Chief. I thought we talked about it. With Third McPherson here, we didn't have enough for him to do. I thought he might as well fill in on third shift. Sergeant Sticks will punch him through some more on-the-job training."

  Misha said, "I am sorry. I didn't mean to cause any disruption when-"

  Brown interrupted, "Nonsense, glad to have you here. We shift people around all the time. Normally, Colonel Britaine wants only the best personnel on first watch, then the next best on second and the dregs on third. But, we kind of mix and match here in intel. When we do our final jump into Altec space we will pack this vault with everybody we've got handy. But, until then we could have handled a bunch of you APES."

  Misha smiled, "Well, it seems that I am the only one in my outfit with AMSF intelligence experience."

  Forrester laughed, "Doesn't that say something about the intelligence level of APES?"

  Brown glared at him. "No, Sergeant Forrester. It says something about the intelligence level of our AMSF intel people. It means we are smart enough to stay away from where we could get killed. Present company excepted of course, Third McPherson."

  "Call me Misha, please. No offense, trust me. I caught all kinds of spacer flak when I first joined the APES. My AMSF commander thought I was nuts and the NCOIC wanted to lock me up until I changed my mind."

  "Smart people," Buzz said. "I would have sent you off for a psych eval. Your record looks too good to let you go easily."

  Brown nodded. "I would trade you right now for some of these nitnoys we got saddled with. Still, you will only have a few days with us, and we are almost fully staffed, so I am afraid there isn't much to see and do. I hope you understand I have most of our major Altec campaign tasks assigned to my regular people."

  Misha smiled. "Sure, I understand. I don't want to be in the way. No offence, but I was looking for some extra work for my people so that they can keep busy. I don't want them worrying about the upcoming drop and I did not want to assign them extra duty without me doing it as well. That would be a bad example."

  For
rester said, "That makes sense. You are pushing them pretty hard with their training, but it is a new command. It doesn't take much to shift morale."

  Brown nodded, "True, all too true. Misha, if it is busy work you are looking for, I can bury you for all time to come. Your records indicate that you rate 1A on communications analysis, right? Well, we got a pile of that with your name on it."

  "Great. I am ready when you are, Chief."

  Forrester said, "Hey! If you guys are going to actually do something, then I am going to get out of here, before you put me to work."

  Brown snorted, "Doing what? I already have someone to empty the trash."

  Misha and Buzz laughed while Forrester looked on in mock hurt.

  "I am crushed, Chief," he said.

  "Yeah, I can tell. Now get your skinny marshal's butt out of my vault and let us do some real intelligence work." They all laughed as Forrester stormed out of the vault and with exaggerated force tried unsuccessfully to slam the vault hatch behind him. Buzz turned back to his glass-pack reading.

  Misha said, "Oh, Chief, before I get started, can I ask a question?"

  "Sure, Misha, fire away."

  "Funny you phrase it that way, Dead-eye," Misha smiled. "I know the AMSF requires all officers and NCOs to be proficient in old-style slug throwers. What I don't get is why? I mean, hardly anybody uses them anymore."

  "Ah, good question, Misha. It is just history and tradition. And like most traditions, it bears little connection to reality."

  "Not true," Buzz said, not looking up. "Handling a needler is a no-brainer if you can shoot a .45 with accuracy."

  "True," said Misha, "But, why not train on what you are going to use. And you said it yourself: chances are you wouldn't ever get issued a weapon."

  Brown leaned down and popped open a lower drawer. She pulled out a handgun, dropped the magazine into her free hand and checked the chamber for a live round. She tossed the handgun to Misha. "I did say we probably wouldn't get issued weapons. I didn't say we wouldn't have them if we needed them. That is a fully functional replica of a 2119 Smith and Wesson .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun. The Kiirkegaard's manifest lists it in my personal affects for entertainment purposes."