What galled the admiral most was the utter pointlessness of Weatherlee’s feud. Ornery as he was, Old Blunderbutt had never before shown the visceral dislike he aimed at this particular blueshirt. From the start, Weatherlee had sought to block the young man’s rise through the ranks, all the more so after it became obvious that the lad was the most promising officer in the fleet. Now, each new demonstration of brilliance by the young Isitian forced Weatherlee to reach further and further to justify himself. The Demetrian nearly shot through the roof when the young man’s promotion to full commander came through in the aftermath of the Hawkins Massacre; when prejudice joined with real or imagined personal grievance, thought Clay, the result was uncontrollable.
Yet for all of Weatherlee’s shortcomings, the Demetrian was an able backroom politician with well-placed friends, both in and out of the command structure. Though Clay was often hailed as the bravest line commander of his generation, in his heart he knew he was just the smartest, and now was not the time to mount an assault. For now, the matter would sit: the best cruiser commander Clay had ever seen would remain blackballed by a vindictive superior. With all of Terra raging over firestorms that the frontier politicians fanned for their own partisan advantage, there was nothing anyone could do. Even a fleet admiral’s hands were tied by politics, from time to time, and once again he would bow to the inevitable.
But not first thing in the morning, the admiral thought. He relaxed into the soft cushions of his chair, remembering what it was like to be a young, promising skipper with his whole future before him, and wondering whether the fleet commanders of his youth had Weatherlees of their own to contend with. Perhaps the headaches always came with the job, he sighed. The gentle hiss of the ventilator dulled his senses and brought a deceptive peace to his troubled mind. He turned to his console; it was 375 Hours, and the available weekly reports should be in by now. He would make his decisions later. It was time to learn how his men and women spent their time for the last ten days. He turned the screen to the priority index; he would worry about Weatherlee some other time.
* * *
The Old Earth-vintage chandeliers lit the tables with soft, diffuse light. The table orbs glowed dimly, giving a gentle warmth to the room. The rich texture of the wallpaper captured pastoral scenes from Victorian England, of foxes and hounds, and gentry at play. It was the Country Club, the finest restaurant on Ishtar Command, where the gentry of the Eastern Fleet could come to relax in comfort and spend their money at leisure.
In the hallway connecting the annex to the main dining area, Henri looked nervously at Table Forty-seven, where he had placed the three CosGuard officers almost two solar hours ago, when the annex had been empty. But when the shift change brought the dinner crowd, he had no choice but to begin seating patrons wherever he had an available table. To his eternal mortification, that meant seating men and women of refinement next to common spacers.
Worse, he shuddered: they were starship captains, probably freshly returned from deep space and ready to shatter the Club’s reputation into a thousand tiny pieces.
Suddenly, Table Forty-seven erupted in laughter, and Henri saw one of their number—the one with the roguish eyes and the piercing laugh; he believed the name was Tanana—slap his thigh. Throughout the annex, more than one head turned toward the spacers, only to turn away with disdain.
By the time the next eruption came, this time on the heels of a large and unmistakable belch, Henri could stand it no longer. With a face as red as his jacket, he retired to the service lounge. He would leave Maurice to greet their guests. Maurice was an Earther, and Earthers were used to humiliation.
“Well, Fitz, you sure drew the brass ring on that one. Dream as they will, not everyone gets to serve under Miriam Wright.”
“You know, Fitz keeps plugging away, but sooner or later he seems to hit the mark.”
Ignoring temptation, Brian Fitzgerald stuffed another bite of dinner into his mouth. An unkempt mop of graying hair sat atop his head, and mustard lined the corners of his mouth. His eyes crackled with a blunt and practical intelligence, and behind his hearty sense of humor his friends found him the very essence of sturdy honesty. Like most Demetrians he was strong and stocky, with a ready smile and an irreverence born of hard times and working-class roots. His reputation, though, came from his scrappiness as a battler, and the fact that his starship was hardly the most graceful on the frontier. His maneuvers were often compared to a Ceresian mutluk in heat, and Fitz himself had to admit that he lacked the artistry of a Jefferson McKinley Jones, DemCom’s senior wing commander.
But graceful or not, he got the job done, no matter what the grading computers thought of his style. For now, he was too hungry to match insults with Tanana and Chandler, his friends from their days together at CosGuard Tech. And he was too pleased at the duty rotation to feel like doing anything but enjoying himself. Any duty that kept him away from “Whinin’ Winnie” Weatherlee for another turn was a blessing. Besides, Looking Glass never looked better. Not since the day that Admiral Clay turned it over to Miriam Wright.
“You think Fitz is of a mind to settle down now?” Chandler asked with a wicked grin. “Now that he’ll have a ring through his nose, I doubt he’ll want to be joining us for a romp on the planet. I expect he’ll have little use for the girlies of Ishtar, now that he’ll be taking orders from Commodore Wright.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to infect her base now, Tommy,” Fitz replied, able to resist no longer. As his choking friends spat their last bite of lunch all over the table, he smugly reached for a glass of wine. He often thought that good food was wasted on line officers. The cuisine aboard the typical starship made plasterboard seem tasty, and starships had the finest galleys on any ships of the line. But he could usually coax his taste buds back to life by the end of liberty, and Ishtar Command boasted better chow than any starbase this side of New Babylon.
After dinner, the three friends walked from the restaurant down the central concourse toward Corridor C. Fitz always marveled at the immensity of the spanning archways of IshCom. A starship’s hexagonal hallways and corridors seemed cramped by comparison. After endless months in space even the illusory roominess of a starbase gave a feeling of freedom that land dwellers—“groundtoads” in spacer’s jargon—could never understand. Spaceflight freed Man from earthly bounds only to impose others from which he could not escape. Few content with life on land could comprehend existence inside the constraints that space pressed upon the fragile hulls protecting spacers from the blackness through which they sailed.
But today the three friends were not in a philosophical mood. Neither space nor the Guard had much use for philosophy, and they had more pressing concerns.
“You sure, Fitz?” Tanana asked, his wispy eyebrows raised in amazement.
“Yeah, you guys go ahead without me. I have other things to do.”
They neared the Corridor C pneumatic tube station, the largest on the base, with shuttles to every corner of the starbase.
“Madame Tarneaux will be disappointed,” Chandler said. The last time the three of them got together, she’d kicked them out of her establishment for starting a fight with a squad of drunken security guards. Fortunately, CosGuard captains were her favorite customers—profitable to a fault, thanks to regulations which frowned on commanders sleeping with members of their own crews—and she’d promised them special treatment the next time they called.
“I’ve got other things on my mind,” replied Fitz. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
After his friends left, he walked toward the fountain in the middle of the concourse. The statue in the middle was hardly worth the bother—the modernist school had such jagged edges, reminding Fitz of the grotesque sculptures of the late 1900s—but running water held a magical fascination for him. He’d spent half his adult life in enclosures where every drop was captured and recycled, and crewmen had standing orders to hold their bladders until they returned to ship. Now even the meager abundance of a st
arbase fountain held him in thrall, returning him to younger days along the Demetrian shores, where wind and water were details of life that passed unnoticed and unappreciated.
After what seemed an eternity, he rose and walked once more toward the tube, his footsteps lost amid the daily shuffle of those who called the base home. He checked the screen for destination listings and punched in the code for Z-Deck, Northeast Quadrant. His ex-wife had recently moved to IshCom, and he’d never seen her new quarters. Besides, it had been ages since he’d seen their son.
* * *
Sitting back in his chair, Admiral Clay yawned. Official reports might be his last link with the old days, he thought, but they were dry as Ishtar itself. Often, the most interesting thing about them were the listings of equipment malfunctions, and today was no exception. Clay was about to deactivate his screen when a flashing yellow light caught his eye, signaling an incoming Priority II report. His eyes widened when he put the teaser on the screen; it was from the very commander he’d spent the last hour putting out of his mind.
The screen read:
CGC 587 <
POSITION: Ishtar Orbit, 43-110901/a2
SPEC RPT CODE II cc:142-7920.4
“Roscoe Cook,” he said, stunned by the coincidence.
He was even more stunned by the report.
A half-hour later, Clay leaned back and looked up at the sterile paneling on the ceiling, chuckling long and deep. For two years the government had tried to cultivate contact with the aliens on a personal level, and for two years their own people had bungled the job through clumsiness and ineptitude. Now Cook had done it by accident. For the last week he’d spent more time visiting the aliens on the ground than tending his ship, and his insights into their psychology and culture looked to be more valuable than anything Terra’s best diplomats had gleaned from across the conference table. It was almost as if the young Isitian had determined that the quickest way to advance in the modern Guard was by rubbing CentCom’s nose in their own directive about showing initiative in all dealings with non-human civilizations. Inventiveness had worked for him in the past, and he showed no signs of stopping. Clay was determined not to let that kind of initiative pass unrewarded.
“Roscoe Cook,” he marveled, “you lead a charmed life.” Over the intercom, he told his secretary to arrange a command staff meeting for 475 Hours the next day.
“And notify the base commanders as well,” he added, with a self-satisfied smile. “We’ll be convening the fleet Promotions Board.”
* * *
“Admiral Weatherlee!” exclaimed the young lieutenant. “Is something wrong?”
Contempt filled the admiral’s face, and the young officer sensed that it would be better for his career to say nothing more. Weatherlee stormed past, almost running into his office door before it opened to admit the admiral to the one place on the base where he could find the solitude to ride out the disgust welling inside him.
Winthrop Weatherlee had seen this day coming for the last week, but knew he was powerless to stop it. Ever since notifying IshCom that the Challengers were on the way, he’d smelled the foul odor of another promotion for Roscoe Cook. Now, thanks to the damn aliens, the admiral was again powerless to do anything. He walked to his desk and poured himself a stiff drink of Demetrian rum. The soothing music he had piped into all administrative offices in his command was now grating on his nerves. To make matters worse, the tune that had just begun was an Isitian melody. He plopped heavily into his chair and sat for several minutes, seething with outrage. His heavy jowls pulsed with anger and his eyes burned with cold fury.
Weatherlee’s teeth could grind ultrynium whenever he thought of the arrogant young blowhard. Despite his laziness as an administrator, Cook never lacked for friends in high places, though the stars alone knew why. Isitian smugness oozed from his every pore, and the fool never did have any sense when it came to dealing with the aliens. The obnoxious Isitian personified everything that Weatherlee found infuriating about that miserable planet—quoting books nobody read anymore, peppering conversations with pointless parables, and though never so uncouth as to voice it aloud, posturing as the poster boy for the Isitian boast of the best educational system in all of Terra.
Weatherlee turned to his desk console to write. Writing always helped when he felt outraged; it gave him something to do. But today what enraged him was knowing that he might never get the chance to set things right. He dashed off a half-dozen blistering and long overdue memos to subordinates, as well as two or three letters to friends in Covington. Venting his frustrations in a constructive fashion always made him feel better, even if it didn’t really solve the underlying problem.
After an hour, he buzzed his receptionist and told the young man to order something from the officer’s mess and schedule a staff meeting for later in the day. There was lots to do, he told the lad, and it promised to be a long day. From the tone of the admiral’s voice, the receptionist knew that it would be a long day for all of them.
Peering through the open library door, Weatherlee saw the young midshipman sitting at a table. Charts and textbooks were strewn everywhere, apparently at random, and the boy looked lost in thought. Commodore Weatherlee paused before he stepped inside, and he closed the door behind him. He knew he’d embarrassed the young man that afternoon, backing him into a corner and teasing him about his home planet. But the tactics seminar the commodore had come to attend was more than a mere formality before his elevation to admiral. He really did need a live opponent for the simulator, to show that he’d mastered this last hurdle. And he’d actually intended the invitation as a compliment to the boy—who, the commodore sensed, was something of a loner. Just like another lonely midshipmen he remembered from his own past.
“Preparing for our contest tomorrow, I see,” he said cheerfully. Walking down the aisle from the entrance, Weatherlee came to sit on the table, four feet away from the young man who’d be his opponent on the simulator the following day.
The boy looked up; to Weatherlee’s astonishment, the lad did not bolt to his feet, as any other academy student would have done. Few would have been aware that libraries were one of the few places on campus where most protocols of deference did not apply; even fewer would have dared to remain seated when a superior officer popped in, unannounced. For an instant, Weatherlee thought he saw a flash of disdain cross the young man’s face, but he dismissed the thought at once. Midshipmen did not treat commodores with contempt, he sneered inwardly; especially not commodores who were already admiral-designates. The lad’s reply came like a blow to the commodore’s stomach.
“Not really,” yawned the student, leaning back in his chair. “I’m tutoring a friend in Advanced Navigation, and needed to unravel the textbooks they’re using in class before I try to explain it to her.”
“I’d think you’d have your mind on our upcoming simulator duel,” Weatherlee smiled. “I’m sure your own plans aren’t quite fully developed. I could have some of my staff help you with a few of the details if you like, since you really haven’t had much time to get ready. But Advanced Navigation is a senior’s elective. Aren’t you studying it yourself?”
“Actually, I placed out of Navigation entirely on the entrance exam,” the boy replied; Weatherlee could see a smirk forming on the boy’s lips. “And I’ve already prepared all I need to, for our little exercise tomorrow.”
“You know,” the commodore smiled, stepping closer to the young man. “I really shouldn’t have made that crack about your home. I’m sure that Isis is a wonderful place for a bright and handsome young man like you to—”
“Distractions won’t work on this midshipman, Commodore,” the young man interrupted sharply; Weatherlee could feel the arrogance in the boy’s voice, and saw his pretty eyes narrow with condescension.
“Besides, I’ve looked over our scenario, Commodore. I’m on defense, which means that my plan is really quite simple: I’ll just be disrupting whatever it is you’re planning to do, an
d striking wherever you leave yourself open. So my advice to you is to worry more about your own plans than about mine, because I’ll be doing my level best to blow yours up, once we get going. And as combat tends to make a hash of everything anyway, I suspect your plans will be largely worthless, once they close the doors and we start having at it.”
“Midshipman Cook! ” snapped Weatherlee, his eyes cold with hate.
“In any event, my friend’s midterms are the day after tomorrow. She has lots to digest between now and then, and I need to see what kind of misinformation they have in these books of yours so I can explain what she needs to know for her test—and what she really needs to know on board a ship.”
“You arrogant little snot.”
Furious, Weatherlee turned on his heels and left, slamming the library door behind him. As he walked out of the building and into the crisp air of early spring, the commodore felt a knot growing in the pit of his stomach. He hated the Academy. He still bristled at the memory of countless humiliations he’d endured as a young man struggling to show everyone his appointment hadn’t come only through his father’s connections, on Demeter and beyond. Weatherlee knew he’d earned his place there just as much as anyone else, but nobody ever let him forget about his father’s political clout in the capital.
The Sirens of Space Page 5