The Grapple

by Moshe Ben-Or

  Her general was invisible. She didn’t even know his name, and that was all for the better. But her general had given her a mission. And she would carry it out, no matter the cost.

  Alice was right. No more pills, no more crying, no more being a victim.

  “I’m a human being!” said Maria, locking her eyes with Katrina’s as she extended her shaking hand. “Human beings take revenge!”

  Katrina swallowed visibly, licking her lips.

  “I’m a human being, too.” she whispered hoarsely, covering Maria’s hand with her own. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  Dolores looked up at them all. She’d been staring at her boots the whole time, noticed Maria. Her face shone with tears.

  “Garcia yanked my implant two months ago,” she blurted. “He says that I’m nothing. Just a bunch of holes and a womb and a pair of tits. He wants to make full use of me.

  “I got a nurse to sneak me some pills, but in exchange she…

  “I’m something!” sobbed Dolores as she extended her hand. “I’m not just a toy for their pleasure!”

  “Then we’re all agreed,” said Alice, looking over the other four faces in the circle. “The civilian staff fly out next Monday. Don’t sit together on the bus, and don’t stand together at the muster. Officially, we still don’t know each other. Stick with your color, like everyone else.”

  Dolores cleared her throat.

  “The on-site housing is all cottages,” she said. “Space is tight, especially with all the construction and repair people. Everyone on the project is University. There’s not a single person from Outside.

  “They have me working the bunk assignments, for some reason. I have no idea how it happened, but it did. The task just popped up on my job board out of nowhere.

  “I could wait ‘till the last minute, then screw it up. Assign all the spaces supposedly at random, without regard for tabs. The four of us girls will all end up in the same four-bunk cottage. That way, we’ll officially meet on the very first day.

  “I’m just a dumb red-tab bitch, right? What’re they gonna do, slap me around?”

  “Perfect,” said Alice. “Do it.”

  “I foresee,” grinned Jose, “that the on-site physical security manager’s gonna turn out to be one real dumb jock asshole. He’s gonna put his foot down. Ain’t nobody swapping no bunk assignments, and that’s that!”

  Maria would have thought it impossible, but the lieutenant’s voice dropped another octave. His accent slid effortlessly from simple jock-speak into pure rocks-for-brains barrio trash as he warmed up to the role:

  “We’s gots us a Real Threat of di-rect attack on tha pe-rimeter and a Real Threat of indi-rect fire. I’s gots ta worry ‘bout perimeter ops, QRF positionin’, rovin’ patrols, infiltration drills, casevac, medevac, and goddam’ hunderd per-cent accountability o’ personnel at all times. I ain’t got time for no bunk swappin’! I’s gots ma list of who’s bunkin’ where, and that ain’t changin’!”

  “That’s just awesome,” grinned Alice in return. “There’s going to be illegal bunk swapping all over the place, of course. But I’m Anal Alice, stick-in-the-mud QC bitch born with a rulebook up my ass. Never saw a rule I wanted to break. Nobody likes me, anyway.”

  “Oh yes,” remarked Maria, “I see myself developing the opinion that the physical security manager is best listened to in such matters. We must not overburden the security force. I’m not going anywhere either.”

  “We can really do it, can’t we?” whispered Katrina. Her voice was full of hope.

  “Yes,” answered Maria. “Yes we can. We will. And moreover, as the On-Site Accountant, I guarantee you that no asshole is coming into my cottage in the middle of the night to grab a girl for some fun. Pillár got to rape me because he’s a goddamned Director. Gold-tab seniors aren’t free game. Neither are graduate engineers. And two of us are owned. As long as you’re near us, you’re safe from anything but a Pin. A proper Pin. Real courteous, tabs up front and receipt from the registrar, so there’s no doubt.

  “What’s Doctor Martín’s official title nowadays, Alice?”

  “Chief Planetary Auditor. And I’m on-site head of QA/QC in my own right, on a vital manufacturing project, no less. The On-Site Director reports personally to Dean Weinberger. That’s how important this is.

  “Anybody touches me, they’ll hang by evening. Doesn’t matter who the hell they are. And I’m very particular regarding courtesy to my friends.”

  “Dolores?” asked Maria.

  “Doctor Garcia is Head Thoracic Surgeon at Polytechnic University Hospital,” answered Dolores, listlessly. The mere mention of the man’s name seemed enough to set her weeping again.

  “All this girl-grabbin’ shit ’s gonna get nipped in the bud, anyway,” rumbled Jose. “Bad for discipline. I’ve got a Real Threat outside the wire, and we’ll have more men than girls on site. Last thing I need to worry about is men fighting over girls. Pin her or leave her alone, that’s what I’ll say.”

  “Will you be able to enforce that, really?” asked Alice. “There are no open Personal Staff slots by now. Most will not be able to bring their girls out to the site. They will all miss them.”

  “Not with the OSD or the senior staff. But they all get to bring a girl from day one. I can ask them to set an example.

  “For everyone lower down,” Jose curled his hand into a massive fist, “I gots my ways. I’m the PSM. Outside the work sheds, my word is law.

  “They can hold it for a couple of weeks, until the repairs and extra construction are done. Then all the girls come out, for the production ramp-up. I checked the list. Everyone gets his girl.

  “And I’ll be spending lots o’ time in a certain cottage. I just loves me the girls who live there. Ain’t nobody messin’ with any of them.

  “In point of fact, as of this morning I’m allowed three Personal Staff, same as an Assistant Professor. Comes with the promotion. I think I’ll meet a cute little white-tab girl on the very first day and Pin her on the spot. Won’t even force her to do a thing.”

  Katrina squealed, and jumped into his arms.

  “But what if...” stuttered Dolores.

  She paused for a moment, as if gathering her courage.

  “Garcia will come,” she said. “I know he will. He’ll try to take me back.

  “He… He stalked me before the war.

  “He grabbed me during the Siege. Early. On the ninth day. I worked at the clinic. I think I might be the very first girl...

  “He was talking about getting me pregnant even then.”

  “Martín will try to take me back also,” sighed Alice. “Without doubt.

  “He waited at the registrar’s door, when they opened preregistration. He was the first one in, that morning. I was the first girl to be Registered. Not just the first in my dorm, or the first in Engineering, or the first grad student. First Girl Registered Ever.

  “Other girls congratulated me. They called me lucky.”

  Alice swallowed a sob.

  She never understood it either, thought Maria. So few girls ran and hid. Most went willingly. They’d arranged it in advance. Even the ones who’d supposedly had no one, turned out to have someone. When the Assembly broke up, the girls didn’t run away. They ran forward, toward the men.

  There was a mob at the boards, where they’d posted the lists of Professors’, TAs’ and grad students’ girls, and of girls who belonged to the men on duty, up on the Wall. Only the Senior Lecturers’ and the Dean’s Personal Staff had been announced at the Assembly.

  The registrar got swamped. They ran out of undergrad owner tabs, for a little bit.

  There’d been rumors, she supposed. She was always last to find out everything. And the girls were relieved. It was official status. Official protection. The few professors’ wives on campus who weren’t Staff themselves had worn the exact same tabs since the second week of the Siege. When all the smart clothes had died, there’d been nothing in store to issue them
but student uniforms. But then the need had arisen to tell them apart from the students.

  The girls had treated Pin Day like a mass wedding. In a way, thought Maria, it kind of was.

  When Professor Armagnier had hung in front of an Assembly three days later, for rape, the girls’ ranks had broken into cheers. They had proof now that it was real. If you were Personal Staff, you were safe. There was a Law.

  They hadn’t even cried over the two girls hung immediately after, for resisting a Pin. Many had even said they deserved it.

  All they’d wanted were rules. Some kind of order. To be able to walk alone at night again. To be safe during the day, without a male escort. They’d accept anything, in exchange for that.

  “Martín always says that he’s wanted me since the first time he laid eyes on me,” continued Alice. “That was six years ago. He taught Engineering 101 my freshman year. The year after his wife got killed. No matter where I sat in the lecture hall, that’s where he’d look. The whole time.

  “I thought it was cute. Stupid ninny.

  “On Pin Day,” said Alice, swallowing another sob, “I was a virgin. I didn’t know a thing. I’d never done anything.

  “He took me eight times. Did everything, all at once. Didn’t care about my bleeding, gagging, begging, crying... He couldn’t wait. Couldn’t get enough. I was naked the whole day. I thought he would kill me. He was sore, afterward. It was like he had a fever.

  “He has five other girls to choose from, but he still has me every day. Touches me all the time. Kisses me. When there’s a trip, I’m always the one going with him. I sleep in his bed, every night. He’s put away all reminders of his wife, and put up pictures of me instead. Just me, no one else. I swear he must have Pinned his CA girl just so she would draw the pictures. He barely even looks at the others, most of the time. They’re all jealous.

  “He loves me. He really does. No way is he giving me up. And he is the Planetary Auditor!”

  “We have a protector,” interrupted Maria. “Someone arranged this. Someone with a lot of power.

  “What would it take to administratively reassign Doctor Martín’s favorite girl in the whole wide universe, overnight, to a textile mill out in the middle of nowhere, with Mr. Real Threat lurking outside the wire? In the face of his pending petition to remove your contraceptive implant, no less! Who could arrange such a thing, without his knowledge or consent?”

  “Yes,” nodded Alice. A wan shadow of a smile graced her face. In a flash, Maria could imagine what she’d looked like, the morning before the war. A smart, happy girl in a sharp navy-blue college uniform with azure Master’s in Engineering tabs. Her final year at school. Interviews already, no doubt. Looking forward to a shiny, bright future. A pretty little light bulb, oblivious to the lurking darkness all around.

  “Yes we do,” she continued as the wan little smile faded away. “An unseen protector, with immense, secret power.

  “I expect that both Martín and Garcia will find it quite difficult to get out to the mill. For Garcia, it’s far, and without Official Business. And for Martín, there’s Mr. Real Threat. I’ve never been out on a trip with a Real Threat. Never. I bet such trips require authorization, even for him.

  “I expect that they’ll find it even more difficult to have us transferred back to Poly. I’m good at my job. I was top of my class, always. Martín doesn’t take me along just so he can have me in the aircar. I’m his best assistant. The only time he leaves what’s under my skirt alone is when I work for him. When I produce, he’ll even take “wait” for an answer, if I’m careful about how I say it. The only time he ever hit me was after Pin Day, when I’d stopped producing.

  “I’ll have that mill humming in no time. And I bet you’re all good at your jobs too, aren’t you?”

  There were nods all around, even one from Dolores.

  She’d been beaten down bad, thought Maria. But the bastard hadn’t flattened her. He thought he had, but he hadn’t.

  “So we’re safe,” she said out loud. “More or less.”

  “Only as long as we carry out the mission,” replied Alice. “If we fail...”

  “We will not fail,” insisted Maria.

  “No,” echoed Jose, “we will not fail. That ain’t an option.”

  * * *

  “One more jump,” thought Buzheslav Frolov as his scout’s torch burned velocity match for Paradise. “One more jump, and the race is on. Fedya vs. the Cats, take sixty-nine.”

  Six nasty-ass jumps in six hours, run like hell around the system, and then another three bitch-ugly jumps back down the gradient, to the rendezvous. By the time you were done, a pair of ratings were needed to lift you out of the control pod and drag you to your bunk. The three hundred grams of clear fortifying liquid were optional. “Mouse” Frolov was the only pilot aboard who wouldn’t gulp down the flask.

  The enemy was massing new forces at Paradise. A major operation was in the offing. Surely the Zin would make some attempt to rescue the remnants of their defeated fleet. Old probes had to be checked, before they were discovered, and their data lost. New probes had to be sown. The Allmother would intercede. They wouldn’t expect a scout today. Not on the Day of Sealing.

  That’s how the song had gone. And Buzh Frolov had drawn the short straw.

  Figured, really. He’d always drawn the short straw, in everything. Short straw in looks, short straw in wealth, short straw in talents… Short straw in courage, too.

  He’d wanted to be a doctor, but His Right Honorable Lordship Commodore Count Viktor Buzheslavovich Frolov would hear none of it. Counts Frolov had barked orders from quarterdecks since the days of wooden ships and iron men, and that was all there was to it.

  He should’ve told the Right Honorable Count Viktor to go fuck himself, but he didn’t have the balls. Didn’t matter that the only thing left of the Ancient and Honorable House Frolov was a giant pile of debt, a marble family crypt, a fancy title and a famous old name. He was still The Heir, and Appearances Would Be Maintained.

  At least he’d managed to insist on the Scout Corps. He didn’t know why, really. Maybe because it had sounded better than commanding a corvette, or bossing around a bunch of ratings aboard a capital ship. He didn’t want to boss anyone or command anything. He sucked at all that stuff, anyway.

  As a scoutship pilot, the only thing he bossed around was his ship’s AI. The two thin gold stripes on his sleeve were all about flight status and hazard pay. And that was just fine with Lieutenant JG Frolov, thank you very fucking much.

  The velocity match indicator pinged green as the scoutship’s torch flared out. Buzh Frolov floated in weightlessness.

  His chest itched. To the side, on the left, just below the nipple, where Leo Freeman had put that damned lead slug.

  The doctors all told him that it had healed just fine. There wasn’t even a scar. But it itched.

  Always, before the final jump. Always. Worse today than ever before. So bad, it took his mind off his queasy stomach. If he scratched it, it would only itch more. He could scratch himself bloody, and still it would itch like a motherfucker.

  It had all been his own damned fault, no two ways about it. That moronic crack about Leo boning the Baroness up the ass. Of all the fucked-up, stupid shit to say...

  He’d known that Miranda was off limits. He’d known!

  Leo had come back different from Miranda. Whatever had happened there, it changed him, and not for the better.

  He’d fought six duels, in the twelve months after he’d come back. Not puppy fights, not gloves in the ring, not stunner tag, not wax bullets, blunt sabers and safety-capped rapiers, not shock wands or “honorable first blood”. The real deal. Hot lead from dueling pistols at full powder charge, and cold, sharp steel. Got himself shot twice, and once stabbed through the gut. But the other guy had gone straight to the ICU, every time.

  Miranda was off limits. But he’d been drunk as a swine.

  Emma Levsson had wanted nothing more than to get back where she
hadn’t been since ninth grade, even if she had to share again with her sister. But Leo Freeman wouldn’t give either of the twins the time of day.

  He’d been there all her life. And she wouldn’t even look at silly, fat old Buzh. All she’d wanted was Leo. And all he’d ever wanted was her. Always. Since the first day they’d met.

  So he’d drunk himself stupid, again. And he’d wanted to hurt her. And then...

  Surely, Leo hadn’t really slept with the Baroness...

  How to get a lung blasted out of your chest and lose a friend, in three easy steps.

  “I quit drinking, Leo, you know that?” muttered lieutenant Frolov. “Because of that. They all think it’s because I’m Count Frolov now, but it’s not. It’s because of that...”

  The jump indicator pinged ready. Solution adjusted. Ignition sequence computed. Drive all set. Time to go.

  Fedya vs. the Cats, take sixty-nine.

  Other pilots assigned to the Prizrak had all kinds of things painted on their control pods. Wolves and foxes, hawks and owls, leopards and cheetahs and cobras and bats and galloping Notosi. Tough things. Swift things. Clever things. Stealthy things. Deadly things.

  Ship 17 had Fedya the Mouse.

  The other pilots were all fools.

  The hunter shot the wolf. The hounds caught the fox. The hawk fell from the sky with an arrow through his heart. A Royal Fusilier’s minié ball punched the fierce Notosi right out of the saddle mid-gallop, and the saber slipped from his lifeless hand.

  There was no real thing that was immune to Death. No real thing swift enough to outrun Him. No real thing clever enough to outwit Him, nor tough enough to outfight Him, nor stealthy enough to escape His all-seeing gaze.

  Buzh Frolov had his first assignment to thank. Scout Squadron 9973, aboard the Nevidimka. Some wit among the techs had had the bright idea to sneak a white mouse shipside for the newbie pilot’s welcome aboard prank, and let it loose inside the control pod, just before the fellow’s maiden flight. The greenhorn’s ship had gone loop-d-looping all over the place ten seconds or so after launch, there’d been a whole lot of cussing and plentiful laughter on the radio, and a good time was had by all.