Passage at Arms

by Glen Cook

  Lucky the med team aren’t female. Good way to get torn apart. These men aren’t human anymore.

  In a few months the process of degeneration will begin anew, aboard a new Climber. But I won’t be going out. Thank god. Not again. Neither will Chief Nicastro...

  The Chief. “Steve. Waldo. Where’s the Chief?”

  “Nicastro?” Yanevich says. “He was right... come on.”

  We spread out. Not much to search. Westhause finds him immediately. “Here. DC station. Medic!”

  I find him with fingers against Nicastro’s jugular. He shakes his head. “Medic!” I shout. “What happened, Waldo?”

  “I don’t know. Heart maybe.”

  Yanevich mutters, “He was determined he wasn’t going to make it.”

  The doctor goes the whole CPR route. No good. “Nothing I can do here,” he says. “Under normal conditions...”

  “Nothing’s normal in the Climbers.”

  I’m so numb I couldn’t mourn my best friend. Nothing but low, banked coals of rage remain.

  The men are leaving. The Marines are making sure they stay civilized.

  “Where’s the Old Man?” Westhause asks.

  “Upstairs.” I point.

  “I’ll get him,” Yanevich says. “Go ahead.”

  “Where’s Fearless? Hey! Fred!” Suddenly, that cat is the most important thing in my universe.

  The men are all out. Westhause clambers through the hatchway. “Now you,” the doctor says.

  “Can’t. Got to find...”

  The Marines make short work of me.

  The long tight tube leads to a receiving bay aboard the Rescue ship. I scramble through fast. Another med team is waiting. They’re expecting animals. A barrage of water smashes me flat. I tumble across a cold, hard deck. Three times I get to my feet and go after the hose man.

  He has no trouble protecting himself. The bay is under full gravity. My weary, weak muscles can’t handle it. Disgusted, I surrender to the inevitable, let myself be driven into an immersion bath. They don’t give me time to shed my clothing.

  Takes the piss and vinegar out of you fast. I suppose that’s why they do it.

  Splashing and wailing, I struggle to the tank’s far side. There’s no fight in me anymore. A hand comes down. I grab it. In a moment I’m lying on the deck, panting. My shipmates gag and gasp around me. Throdahl, in the bath, is promising murder. The med crew don’t let him out till he changes his mind.

  “Can you stand up?” My helper’s voice is spooky. Planetary atmosphere here, and he’s wearing a mask. I grunt an affirmative. “Get your clothes off. Sir.”

  It’s a struggle, but I manage. “What about my stuff?”

  The medic scoops my rags into a basket with a little plastic pitchfork. “You’ll get it back. If you want it.”

  “I mean my stuff from the ship. It’s important.” This is the critical passage. My notes and pictures could disappear without my being able to raise a finger.

  A horrible caterwauling erupts from the escape tube. An orange Fury whirls out. Fearless is reluctant to leave home. He’s giving a Marine all he can handle. Man, is he going to be mad when... the hose man goes to work.

  I’m wrong. Old Fearless is so stunned by the indignity of it all he just goes along. He barely reacts when I drag him out of the pool. He hasn’t the strength to don his usual mask of aloofness.

  A hand is in my face. “Drink this.” I drain a small squeeze bottle. “Now use one of the showers.” The medic points. “Be thorough, but don’t waste time. Your buddies are waiting. So is breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “It’s morning to us, sir.”

  “Come on, Fearless.” I waste little time showering. That squeeze bottle contained an all-time purgative. There’s little for my stomach to be rid of, but it’s making a valiant effort.

  Breakfast turns out to be lunch. They put us through four hours of intensive decontamination before they dump us into the ship’s hospital quarters and feed us. By then I’m so dopey I don’t know where I am. I fall asleep with an IV in my arm, feeling like a voodoo doll after the ceremony.

  I waken much later. Pain. Gravity gnawing at my every cell. Yet I feel healthier than I have in months. My body has been flushed of accumulated poisons.

  My stomach knots in hunger.

  Clean! I feel clean. There’s nothing more sensual than clean sheets against freshly scrubbed skin.

  A male nurse helps me sit up. I survey the ward. Seems we’re still aboard the Rescue ship. Westhause is in the bed to my left, Yanevich to my right. Both are awake, staring into nothing. “Where’s the Old Man?” Varese, Diekereide, and Piniaz lie beyond the astrogator. We’re laid out in Service pecking order.

  Westhause won’t meet my gaze. He hears me, I know. But he won’t answer.

  “Steve?”

  “Psych detention,” he whispers. “They brought him out in a straitjacket. Didn’t realize it was over. Wanted to light off the drive. Said he had to help Johnson.”

  “Shit. Goddamned, shit. Wonder if I can find Marie? Maybe she can put him back together. Shit. This fucking war.”

  “Won’t find Marie. Won’t any of us see Canaan again.”

  I survey the ward. Everyone is here. Including Bradley and his gang. How can that be? That missile got them-----Or did it? Did Ito get in one straight shot, when it counted?

  Yanevich plunges ahead. “They have troops down on the surface.”

  What? If Canaan is lost, everything is done for. Holy shit. I twist toward Westhause. He has family down there. There’s a tear track on his cheek.

  Something stirs beside me. Fearless rises, stretches, moves to a new napping place atop my chest. What are the medics doing? “At least you’ll get out, you one-eyed pirate. Whether you want it or not. How long till we make TerVeen, Steve?”

  Yanevich gets the same hollow look Westhause has. “We’re headed outsystem. They’ve broken through TerVeen’s defenses, too. Hand-to-hand fighting, last we heard. Rescue people say they’ve lost contact.”

  Westhause curses softly.

  “He had a girl there. Under your seat, all your stuff; I made them bring it out.”

  Down the way Rose and Throdahl revise plans for their leaves, wherever we’re going. Second Fleet’s baseworld, I’d guess. Laramie and Berberian trade half-hearted insults. Fisherman is seated in the lotus position on his bed, looking more oriental than Christian as he communes with his god. Diekereide is telling Bradley a story we’ve heard before. Varese and Piniaz have retreated into their sullen, solitary worlds. Kriegshauser is curled in a fetal ball, facing the wall. They’re all here. All but the paterfamilias.

  “Shit. This fucking war.”

  You cheated me, my friend, you never did come in out of the bushes. You didn’t shed your warpaint and reveal the man behind. Maybe now you’re so well hidden no one will see you again. If so, goodbye. We loved you well. I wish you’d given us the chance to understand.

  This goddamned war.

  That evil-mouthed Laramie is humming the “Outward Bound.” One by one, with malign grins, the others take it up.

  What the hell? Here’s up yours, Fred Tannian. “Hmm-hmm-de-dum...”

  Epilog

  Twenty years have fled since Clara Barton carried the crew of 53-B from the Canaan System. The hospital was the last ship out, given safe passage by the other firm. Admiral Frederick Minh-Tannian died with weapon in hand twelve days later, as TerVeen finally fell. He lived and died the role he demanded of his command.

  His death was his great triumph. Historians now mark it as the watershed of the war.

  We who served him, for one mission or many, and survived, can neither forget nor forgive. Yet the man was a genius. He established a goal, and fulfilled it. One stubborn mongrel nipping at the enemy’s hamstrings, he broke Ulant’s inexorable stride. After that the war was won. Numbers and production were our advantages, though blunt instruments slow to hammer out the armistice.

  They
were heroes, the people of Climber Fleet One. They were everything Tannian claimed. In the aggregate. However, we were individuals, frightened men and women trapped in the crucible of war.

  True heroes seldom picture themselves as heroes. True heroes just stick to their jobs in the teeth of the dragon winds of heart and hell.

  Twenty years have flown. Only now has the bitterness waned enough to permit this true tale to be told. There was no effort to censor me, back when. Civilians decided the public was not ready for this. Even now, those who bring you this are afraid of the furor it may raise-----

  For all he seemed shattered and lost, my friend recovered with his confidence redeemed and renewed. Six years later he commanded the Task Group that reclaimed Canaan.

  Yanevich, Westhause, and Bradley likewise prospered. The first and last are still in, and Admirals today. Westhause is a math professor on Canaan.

  Piniaz perished his second mission after they gave him his own Climber. Diekereide was his Engineer. What became of Varese no one knows.

  Of the enlisted men of 53-B, six survived the war. Of those, two have survived the peace. The price of the Climbers, and of victory, continues to be paid. Sometimes it seems Ulant came out better than we did.