It’s a twelve-day passage to the squadron’s patrol
sector. As the days drift away, the men become quieter and more
reserved. They have a crude, seldom reliable formula. A day’s
travel outward bound translates to three days’ travel coming
back. We’ve been aboard the Climber seventeen days.
Fifty-one days to go? That seems unlikely. Few patrols last more
than a month. There’s so much enemy
traffic . . . Hell, we could run into a convoy
tomorrow, scramble, clear our missile elevators, and be home before
the mother.
Eventless travel leaves a lot of free time, despite the
depressing frequency of drills. I’m spending a lot of time
with Chief Energy Gunner Holtsnider. He of girder-clinging fame.
He’s refreshing my knowledge of ballistic gunnery.
“This’s your basic GFCS Mark Forty-six
system,” he tells me. I guess this is the fifth time
we’ve been through this. “You got your basic Mark
Thirty gun order converter, and your basic gyros, stabile element,
tracking, and drive motor units. Straight off a corvette secondary
mount. You just got your minor modifications, what they call your
One-A conversions, for spherical projectiles.”
Yeah? Those are killing me. My poor senile brain keeps harking
futilely after my Academy gunnery training.
Half the problem is my sneaking suspicion that the Chief is learning while I am, staying a few pages ahead
in the crisp new manual.
“Now, off your radar, and your neutrino and tachyon
detectors if you have to, and even your visuals if it comes to
that, and your transiting missiles in norm, you get your
B, your R, your dR, your Zs,
your dE, and your dBs. You feed them all to your
Mark Thirty-two. Then you get your
Gf . . . ”
I keep getting lost in the symbols. I can’t
remember which is relative motion in line of sight, angular
elevation rate, angular bearing rate, gravity correction,
relativity correction, light velocity lag time—
“And send your RdBs over V and your RdE over
V to your Mark Thirty . . . ”
I could strangle the man. He has a too-ample store of that most
essential of instructor’s virtues: patience. I don’t. I
never had enough. Many a project and study have I abandoned for
lack of patience to follow through.
“ . . . which brings your B prime
gr and E prime g to your cannon train and elevation
pump motors.” For all his patience, the Chief is ready to
give me up.
“Cheer up, Chief. We could be trying to program a
twenty-meter airburst in tandem quad with the co-battery in
nadir.”
“You did time in the bombards?”
“Second Gunnery Officer on Falconier. Before
this.” I tap the bad leg. “Thought everybody
knew.”
“I was in Howitzer before I cross-rated
Energy.”
We exchanged reminiscences about the difficulties of putting
unguided projectiles onto surface targets from orbit. Tandem quads
are the worst. Two (or more) vessels each fire four projectiles,
over each pole and round each equatorial horizon, so that they all
arrive on target simultaneously. Theory says the ground position
can’t duck it all because it’s coming from everywhere
at once.
The bombards, or planetary assault artillery ships, are a poor
man’s way of softening ground defenses. A way which, in my
opinion, is a little insane and a whole lot optimistic. Budget
people find the system attractive. It’s cheap. A
sophisticated missile delivering the same payload costs a hundred
times as much.
Once a world’s orbital defenses are reduced, bombards are
supposed to blast away, creating neutralized drop zones for the
Fleet Marines. The main weapon is a 50-cm magnetic cannon. It
launches concussion projectiles of the “smart” type.
The bomb packs a hell of a wallop but has to be on target to do its
job.
Bombard tactics were theoretical till the war. I was involved in
just one live operation, against a base used by commerce raiders. I
did most of my shooting in practice.
The system was worthless. In practice on planetary ranges we
found the ballistic ranges so long, and so plagued by variables,
that precision bombardment proved impossible. My First Gunnery
Officer claimed we couldn’t hit a continent using
“dumb” projectiles.
The other firm uses bombards, too. For harassment. For accuracy
they rely on dropships, or use a missile barrage.
“Ever shoot the range at Kincaid?” Holtsnider asks.
“That’s where I screwed up the leg.” Kincaid
is a Mars-sized hunk of rock in Sol System’s cometary halo.
Its orbit is perpendicular to the ecliptic. It’s so far out
Sol is just another star.
“I wondered. Didn’t think it would be polite to
ask.”
“Doesn’t bother me anymore,” I lie.
“Except when I remember that it was my own fault.”
Holtsnider says nothing. He just looks expectant.
I have mixed feelings about telling the tale. The man
shouldn’t give a damn, and probably doesn’t want me to
bore him with the whole dreary story. On the other hand,
there’s a pressure within me. I want to cry on
somebody’s shoulder.
“Remember the Munitions Scandals? With the Mod Twelve
Phosphors for the Fifties?”
“Bribes to government quality-control
inspectors.”
“Yes. Flaking in the ablation shields. Normal routine was
to blow a cleaning wad every twentieth shot during prolonged
firing. With the Jenkins projectiles we were getting flakes instead
of dust. We had orders from topside to use them up practicing. The
Old Man had us blowing a wad after every shot.”
“Royal pain in the ass, what?”
“In the kneecap, actually.” It’s easy to
recall the frustration, the aggravation, and the sudden agony.
They’re with me still. “We’d been at it watch and
watch for three days. Trick shooting. Everything but over the
shoulder with mirrors. We were all tired and pissed. I made the
mistake. I blew the tube without making sure my trainee had opened
the outer door.”
“Recoil.”
“In spades. Those outer doors can take a lot more pressure
than the inner ones. So the inner door blew back while I was
climbing up to reset for live ammo.”
Holtsnider nods sympathetically. “Saw a guy lose his
fingers that way. Our magnetics went out. We had a live time shell
in the tube. He tried to blow it like it was a wad. Worked, too.
But the inner door locks snapped. Lost two-thirds of our atmosphere
before we got the outer door sealed.” He glances at my leg.
“Medics had him good as new in a couple months.”
“Wasn’t my day, Chief. We were alone out there.
Nearest medship was in orbit at Luna Command. And the reason we
were screwing around out there in the first place was because our
number two hyper generator was down.
“The medship hypered in fast, but by the time she arrived
my knee was beyond salvation—more through the agency of an
overzealous medical corpsman than from the initial injury.
“Falconier was so old she wasn’t fit for
training Reserves anymore, which’s what we were
doing.”
Funny. This sharing of an unpleasant past is loosening me up.
I’m more relaxed. My mind works better. I feel the old data
coming back. “Chief, let’s try it from the
top.”
I haven’t spent all my time in Weapons. I’ve tried,
with limited success, to visit with each crewman. Other than the
officers I met on Canaan, only Holtsnider, Junghaus, and
Diekereide have cooperated. Varese’s Engineers barely remain
civil. The men in Ship’s Services tolerate me only because
they have to live with me. I hear they’ve convinced
themselves that I’m the dreaded eido. My sessions with
Holtsnider have eased the situation in Weapons. But only in Ops do
I have much chance to ask questions.
The Ops gang considers itself the ship’s elite. That
pretense demands more empathy with the problems of another
“intellectual.”
I’m worried. Seventeen days gone, and no headway made. I
still don’t know half the names. Climber missions don’t
last long once the ship reaches its patrol zone. It’s in,
make a couple of attacks, and get out fast. The other firm is
sending so much traffic through that quick contact is
inevitable.
Westhause says it takes about a week to get home once the
missiles are gone. Meaning I can’t count on more than another
ten days to find my story.
I mention it to the Commander during a lonely lunch in the
wardroom. The others are preparing the shift to operational mode. I
figure he has similar problems acclimating new men each patrol.
“One thing to remember. No matter how much alike they act,
they’re all different. When you get to the bottom line, the
only thing they have in common is that they stand on their hind
legs. You have to find the right approach for each man. You have to
be a different person to every one.”
“I can see that. From your
viewpoint . . . ”
“You and me, we’re crippled by our jobs. What have
they got to judge you by? The news nosies they’ve seen on
holo. You have to break that image.”
I nod. Those people are the pushiest, most obnoxious ever
spawned. I understand their Tartar style, but I don’t like it
and don’t want to be lumped with them.
“Guess my best chance is a long patrol.”
The Old Man doesn’t say anything. His face speaks for him.
He’s ready to go home now.
A Climber is, I’m convinced, our most primitive warship.
Cheap, quickly built, and highly cost-effective if the combat
statistics are valid. Balancing the statistics against the reality
of Climber life, I develop a conviction that High Command considers
our ships as expendable as the missiles they carry.
We’re almost ready. The tension began building yesterday.
We’re tottering at the brink. This fly, deep into the patrol
zone, is sandpapering nerve ends. It’s about to climax.
Action and death may be no more than an hour away.
As senior ship, even though we don’t carry the squadron
flag, we rate first separation. This is a tradition of
Tannian’s Fleet. To the proven survivors go the small perks.
Will the head start be worth anything in the long run?
Suddenly, we’re beyond the moment of peak tension. The
sealed orders have come through. The mother is about to drop hyper.
We’ll be operational soon.
The Old Man’s face is stiff and pale when he leaves his
stateroom. His upper lip is lifted to the right in a faint sneer.
He gathers Westhause, the First Watch Officer, our two Ops Chief
Petty Officers, and myself. He whispers, “It doesn’t
look good. Figure on being out a while. It’s beacon to
beacon. Observation patrol. We start at Beacon Nineteen, Mr.
Westhause. I’ll give you the progression data after
I’ve gone over it myself.”
Well. I may get time to break the ice after all. Running beacon
to beacon means there’s been no enemy contact for a while. If
they’re out there, they’re slipping through unnoticed.
Because nothing is happening, the squadron will roam carefully
programmed patterns till a contact occurs.
I begin to comprehend the significance of our being on our own.
We’ll be out of contact completely, unless we touch the rare
instelled beacon. No comforting mother ship under our feet. No
pretty ladies in a sister ship to taunt and tease when Throdahl
isn’t using the radio more professionally. Alone! And without
the slightest notion how near we are others of our kind.
This could get rough, emotionally. These men aren’t the
sort I’d choose as cellmates.
Some three hundred observation/support beacons are scattered
around Climber Fleet One’s operations zone. On
beacon-to-beacon patrol a Climber pursues a semirandom progression,
making a rendezvous each twelve hours. Ours is to be an observation
patrol initially, meaning we’re supposed to watch, not
shoot.
The Commander shuffles order flimsies. “I’ll tell
you what we’re looking for when I get this crap
straight.”
“What’re observation pauses?” I ask the First
Watch Officer. The Old Man says we have to program several into our
beacon progression.
“Just go norm to see who did what last week.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Okay. If we’re not looking for something specific,
we’ll make equally spaced pauses. Say each four hours. If
Command is looking for something, we’ll drop hyper
at exact times in specified places. Usually that means
double-checking a kill. Ours or theirs.”
“I see.”
The beacons are refitted hulks. They form a vast irregular
three-dimensional grid. When a Climber makes rendezvous, it
discharges its Mission Recorder. In turn the beacon plays back any
important news left by previous callers. The progress of a
patrolling squadron is calculated so no news should be
more than twenty-four hours old. It doesn’t work that well in
practice, though.
One in twenty beacons is instel-equipped, communing continuously
with beacons elsewhere and with Climber Command. Supposedly, a
vessel can receive emergency directives within a day and news from
another squadron in two. On the scale of this war, that should be
fast enough.
Sometimes it does work, when the human factor doesn’t
intrude too much.
The other firm occasionally stumbles onto a beacon and sets an
ambush. The beacons are manned but have small crews and few
weapons. Climbers approach them carefully.
Fortune has smiled on us in a small way. The competition
hasn’t broken our computer key codes. If ever they do,
Climber Fleet Tannian is in the soup. One beacon captured and
emptied of information would destroy us all.
The other firm wastes no time hunting beacons. It takes
monumental luck to find one. Space is big.
We’re operational now. Past our first beacon.
Operational. Operational. I make an incantation of it, to
exorcise my fear. Instead it has the opposite effect.
The web between the beacons. The spider’s game. The
vastness of space can neither be described nor overstated. When
there’s no known contact the Climber’s hunt becomes
analogous to catching mites with a spider’s web as loosely
woven as a deep-sea fishing seine. There are too many gaps, and
they’re too big. Though Command keeps the holes moving, ships
still slip through unnoticed. Climbers often vanish without
trace.
After we leave the beacon the Commander repeats all the tests
made at Fuel Point. We commence our patrol in earnest.
I watch a Climber die. Twice. Our first two observation pauses
bracket the event. We drop hyper, allow the light of it to overtake
us, then jump out and let the wave catch us again. Like traveling
in time.
There’s little but a long, brilliant flash each time, like
a small nova. The spectrum lines indicate massive CT-terrene
annihilation. Ops compartment remains quiet for a long time.
Laramie finally asks, “Who was it, Commander?”
“They didn’t tell me. They never tell me . . . “
He stops.
His role doesn’t permit bitterness before the men.
“Forty-eight souls,” Fisherman muses. “I
wonder how many were saved?”
“Probably none,” I say.
“Probably not. It’s sad. Not many believers anymore,
Lieutenant. Like me, they have to meet Him, and Death, face to face
before they’ll be born again.”
“It’s not an age of faith.”
For four hours men not otherwise occupied help maul the data,
searching for a hint that the other firm precipitated the
Climber’s doom. Nothing turns up. It looks like a CT
leak.
Climber Command will add our data to other reports and let it
stew in the big computer.
“It doesn’t much matter anymore,” Yanevich
says. “She blew three months ago. The way they bracketed us,
they were rechecking something they already knew. Glad we
didn’t have to take a closer look.”
“There wouldn’t be anything to see.”
“Not this time. Sometimes there is. They don’t all
blow. Ours or theirs.”
I feel cold breath blowing down the back of my neck. Firsthand
studies of a gunned-out hulk aren’t my notion of fun.
There’s nothing going on in this entire universe. Beacon
after beacon, there’s nothing but bored, insulting greetings
from squadron mates who were in before us. Decked out in his
sardonic smile, the Old Man suggests the other team has taken a
month’s vacation.
He doesn’t like the quiet. His eyes get narrower and more
worried every day. His reaction isn’t unique. Even the
first-mission men are nervous.
First real news from outside. Climber Fleet Two says a huge,
homebound convoy is gathering at Thompson’s World, the other
team’s main springboard for operations against the Inner
Worlds. Second Fleet hasn’t had one contact during the
forty-eight hours covered by their report.
Neither have we.
“Them guys must be taking the year off,” Nicastro
says. Today he’s Acting Second Watch Officer, in
Piniaz’s stead. Weapons is having trouble with the
graser.
I’m exhausted. I hung around past my own watch to observe
Piniaz in command. Guess it’ll have to wait. The hell with
it. Where’s my hammock?
Climber Fleet Two reports a brush with hunter-killers way in
toward the Inner Worlds. Nothing came of it. Even the
opposition’s baseworlds are quiet.
This patrol zone is dead. We’re caught in a nightmare,
hunting ghosts. You don’t want action, but you
don’t crave staying on patrol, either. You start feeling
you’re a space-going Flying Dutchman.
Beacon after beacon slides by. Always the news is the same. No
contact.
Once a day the Commander takes the ship up for an hour, to keep
the feel of Climb. We spend the rest of our time cruising at
economical low-hyper translation velocities. Occasionally we piddle
along in norm, making lazy inherent velocity corrections against
our next beacon approach. There isn’t much to do.
The men amuse themselves with card games and catch-the-eido, and
weave endless and increasingly improbable variations in their
exchanges on their favorite subject. To judge by their anecdotes,
Throdahl and Rose have lived remarkably active lives during their
brief careers. I expect they’re doing some creative borrowing
from stories heard elsewhere. They have their images to
maintain.
I’m making some contact with the men now. Through no
artifice of my own. They’re bored. I’m the only novelty
left unexplored.
The days become weeks, and the weeks pile into a month.
Thirty-two days in the patrol zone. Thirty-two days without a
contact anywhere. There are three squadrons out here now, and the
newly commissioned unit is on its way. Another of the old squadrons
will be leaving TerVeen soon. It’ll be crowded.
No contact. This promises to become the longest dry spell in
recent history.
The drills never cease. The Old Man always sounds the
alarm at an inconvenient time. Then he stands back to watch the
ants scurry. That’s the only time we see his sickly
smile.
Hell. They’re breaks in the boredom.
This is oppressive. I haven’t made a note in two weeks. If
it weren’t for guilt, I’d forget my project.
I think this is our forty-third day in the patrol zone. Nobody
keeps track anymore. What the hell does it matter? The ship is our
whole universe now. It’s always day in here and always night
outside.
If I really wanted to know, I could check the
quartermaster’s notebook. I could even find out what day of
the week it is.
I’m saving that for hard times, for the day when I need a
really big adventure to get me going.
We’re a hairy bunch now. We look like the leavings of a
prehistoric war band. Only Fisherman has bucked the trend and is
keeping some order about his person. The only smooth faces I see
belong to the youngest of the young.
The Engineers express their dissatisfaction by refusing to comb
their hair. I’m the only man who takes regular sponge
baths. Part my fault, I suppose. I spend a lot of time in my
hammock. And I won’t share my soap, which is the only bar
aboard.
Curiously, these filthy beasts spend most of their free time
scrubbing every accessible surface with a solution that clears the
sinuses in seconds. Our paintwork gleams. It’s a paradox.
One point of luck. No lice or fleas have turned up. I expected
herds of crab lice, acquired from hygienically lax girlfriends.
Fearless Fred is sulking. He’s the most bored creature
aboard. No one has seen him for days. But he’s around, and in
a foul mood. He expresses his displeasure by leaving odiferous
little loaves everywhere. He’s as moody as the Commander.
Something is bothering the Old Man. Something of which this
patrol is just part. It began before the mission, before I found
him at Marie’s.
He’s no longer my friend of Academy days.
I did expect to find him weathered by the Service, changed by
the war. War has to change a man. Combat is an intense
experience. Comparing him to other classmates I’ve
encountered recently, I can see how radical the changes are. Even
Sharon wasn’t this much transformed. The Sharon of the
Pregnant Dragon always existed inside the other Sharon.
A few of the changes are predictable. An increased tendency
toward withdrawal, toward self-containment, toward gloominess.
Those were always part of him. Pressure and age would exaggerate
them. No, the real change is the stratum of bitterness he conceals
behind the standard changes.
He was never a bitter person. Contrarily, there was a playful,
almost elfin streak behind his reserve. A little alcohol or a lot
of coaxing could summon it forth.
Something has slain the elf.
Somehow, somewhere, while we were out of touch, he took one hell
of an emotional beating. He got himself destroyed, and all the
king’s horses . . .
It’s not a career problem. He’s very successful by
Navy standards. Twenty-six and already a full Commander. He’s
up for brevet Captain. He may get his first Admiral’s star
before he turns thirty.
It’s something internal. He’s lost a battle to
something that’s part of him. Something he hates and fears
more than any enemy. He now despises himself for his own
weakness.
He doesn’t talk about it. He won’t. And yet I think
he wants to. He wants to lay it out for someone who knew him before
his surrender. Someone not now close, yet someone who might know
him well enough to show him the path back home.
I admit I was surprised that my request for assignment to his
Climber went through. There were a hundred hurdles to surmount. The
biggest, I expected, would be getting the Ship’s
Commander’s okay. What Commander wants an extra, useless body
aboard? But the affirmative came back like a ricochet. Now I know
why, I think. He wants a favor for a favor.
The Commander’s moods are a ship’s moods. The men
mirror their god-captain. He’s aware of that and must live
the role every minute. This’s been the iron law of ships
since the Phoenician mariners went down to the sea.
The role makes the Old Man’s problem that much more
desperate. He’s tearing himself apart trying to keep his
command from going sour. And he thinks he’s failing.
So now he can’t open up at all.
I now dread the future for more than the usual reasons. This is
a miserably long patrol. And it’s demonstrated repeatedly
that the best Climber crew, highly motivated and well-officered,
can start disintegrating.
More than once the Commander tracked me down and asked me to
accompany him to the wardroom.
He makes a ritual of our visit. First he gives Kreiegshauser a
carefully measured bit of coffee. Just enough for two cups.
There’s been no regularly brewed real coffee since we learned
we’d be on beacon-to-beacon patrol. What we call coffee, and
brew daily, is made with a caffeine-rich Canaan bush-twig that has
a vague coffee taste. That’s what the Commander drinks during
his morning ritual. After yielding his treasure, the Old Man stares
into infinity and sucks the stem of his tireless pipe. He
hasn’t smoked in an age. The old hands say he won’t
till he decides to attack.
“You’re going to chew that stem through.”
He peers at the pipe as if surprised to find it in his hand. He
turns it this way and that, studying the bowl. Finally, he takes a
tiny folding knife and scrapes a fleck off the meerschaum. He then
plunges it into a pocket already bulging with pens, pencils,
markers, a computer stylus, a hand calculator, and his personal
notebook. I’d love to see his notes. Maybe he writes
revelations to himself.
He has his ritual question. “Well, what do you think so
far?”
What’s to think? “I’m an observer. The fourth
estate’s eido.” My response is a ritual, too. I can
never think of anything flip, or anything to start him talking. We
drift through these things, waiting for a change.
“Remarkable crew?” Today is going to be a little
different.
“A few individuals. Not as a whole. I’ve seen them
all before. A ship produces specific characters the way the body
produces specialized cells.”
“You have to get through the hide. Get inside, to the meat
and bones.”
“I don’t think I’m that good.” I’m
not. I keep seeing the masks they want me to see, not the faces in
hiding. I may have been exposed too long now. An immunological
process may be taking place. Something of the sort happens in every
closed group. After jostling and jousting, the pieces of the jigsaw
fall into place. People adjust, get along. And they stop being
objective about one another.
The Old Man says, “Hmm.” He’s developing that
sound into a vocabulary with the inflectional range of Chinese.
This “hmm” means “do go on.”
“We’ve got people who want to be something the ship
has no niche for. Take Carmon. He believes his propaganda image. He
wants to be Tannian’s Horatio at the bridge. The rest of us
won’t let him.”
“One right guess. Carmon aside, did you find anybody who
gives a rat’s ass about the war?”
Have I stumbled onto something? They are
volunteers . . .
This is as near an expression of doubt as I’ll ever hear
from the Commander.
I’m too eager to pursue it. My sharp glance spooks
him.
“What did you think of Marie?”
I think the relationship is symptomatic of a deeper problem. But
I won’t say that. “She was under a strain. An
unexpected guest. You about to
leave . . . ” There’re things a man
doesn’t do. One of mine: Never say anything bad about a
friend’s mate.
“She won’t be there when we get back.”
I knew that before we left.
Well, it isn’t the realization of his own mortality that
has gotten to him. This isn’t the odds-closing-in blues that
plagues Climber Commanders. If I look closely, I can catch glimpses
of the it can’t happen to me of our age group.
Is it the realization of his own fallibility? Suppose last
patrol he made a grotesque error and got away with it through dumb
luck? The kind of man he is, that would bother him bad because
forty-seven men might have gone out with him.
Maybe. But that’s more the kind of thing that would break
a Piniaz. The Old Man never claimed to be perfect. Just close to
it.
“She’ll be gone when I get home.” His eyes are
long ago and far away. He had had these thoughts before. “She
won’t leave a note, either.”
“You really think so?” I nearly missed the cues
telling me to ask.
Marie isn’t his problem. A problem, and a symptom, but not
the problem.
“Just a feeling, say. You saw how we got along. Cats and
dogs. Only reason we stayed together was we didn’t have
anywhere to go. Not that it didn’t look worse.”
“In a way.”
“What?”
“Hell probably offers a sense of security to the
damned.”
“Yes. I suppose.” He draws his pipe from his pocket,
examines its bowl. “You know Climber Fleet One hasn’t
ever had a deserter? Could be.”
For a moment I envision the man as an old-time sea captain,
master on a windjammer, standing a lonely, nighted weather-deck,
staring at moon-frosted wavetops while a cold breeze fingers his
strawlike hair and beard. The sea is obsidian. The wake churns and
boils. It glimmers with bio-luminescence.
“For what distant, heathen port be we bound, o’er
what enchanted sea?”
He glances up, startled. “What was that?”
“An image that came to me. Remember the poem game?”
We played it in Academy, round robin. It was popular during the
middle class years, when we were discovering new dimensions faster
than we could assimilate them. The themes, then, were mostly
prurient.
“My turn to come up with a line, you mean. All
right.” He ponders. While he does so, Kriegshauser delivers
the coffee.
“Zanzibar? Hadramaut? The Ivory Coast? Or far
Trincomalee?”
“That stinks. It’s not a line, it’s a laundry
list.”
“Seemed to fit yours. I never was much good at that, was
I?” He puts his pipe away and sips coffee. Under ship’s
gravity we can drink from cups if we like. A small touchstone with
another reality. “I’m a warrior, not a poet.”
“Ah?”
“ ‘Ah?’ You sound like a Psych
Officer.”
Whatever its nature, his bugbear won’t reveal itself this
time. Not without inspired coaxing from me. And I have no idea
how to bait my hook.
I think I know how a detective hunting a psychopathic killer
must feel. He knows the man is out there, killing because he wants
to be caught, yet the very irrationality of the killer makes him
impossible to track . . .
Can his problem be this role he lives? This total warrior
performance? Is there a poet screaming to get out of the Commander?
A conflict between the role’s demands and the nature of the
actor who has to meet them?
I don’t think so. He’s the quintessential warrior,
as far as I can see.
He chose me because I’m not part of the gang. And maybe
now he’s hiding from me for the same reason.
“You slated for Command College?” I ask, shifting my
ground. If he hasn’t made the list, that might take him by
the balls. Passing an officer over amounts to declaring he’s
reached his level of incompetence. No one gets pushed out,
especially now, but the promotions do end.
“Yes. Probably won’t get there before this fuss is
over. I’m slated for the squadron next two missions, then
Staff at Climber Command. Won’t get off Canaan for at least
two years. Then back to the Fleet, probably. Either a destroyer
squadron or number two in a flotilla. No time for war college these
days. All on-the-job training.”
A weak possibility lurks here. Upward mobility threatened by
war’s master spirit: Sudden Death.
“Why did you volunteer?”
“For Climbers? I didn’t.”
“Eh? You said . . . ”
“Only on paper. I asked for Canaan. Talk to the officers
our age. A lot of them are here on ‘strong
recommendation’ from above. What amounted to verbal orders.
They’re making it simple. The Climbers are the only thing we
have that works. They need officers to operate them. So, no Climber
time, no promotion. You have an unprofessional attitude if you
don’t respond to the needs of the Service.” A bilious
glow of bitterness seeping through here.
He drains half his cup, asks, “Why the hell would I ask
for this? The chances of me getting my ass blown to ions
are running five to one against me. Do I look fucking
stupid?”
He recalls his role. His gaze darts to Kriegshauser, who may
have overheard.
“What about rapid advancement? Glory? Because Canaan is
your home?”
“That’s shit for the troops and officers coming up.
Navy is my home.”
My stare must be a little too sharp. He changes the subject.
“Strange patrol. Too quiet. I don’t like it.”
“Think they’re up to something?”
He shrugs. “They’re always up to something. But
there are quiet periods. Statistical anomalies, I guess.
They’re out there somewhere, slipping through. Maybe
they’ve found a pattern to our patrols. We don’t really
run random. Human weakness. We have to have order of some kind. If
they analyze contacts, sometimes they figure a safe route. We
change things. The hunting is good for a while. Then, too, Command
wastes a lot of time taking second and third looks at
things.”
There’s bitterness whenever he mentions Command. Have I
uncovered a theme? Disenchantment? He wouldn’t be the first.
Not by thousands.
There’s no describing the shock, even despair, that clamps
down on you after you’ve spent a childhood in Academy,
preparing for a career, when the Service doesn’t remotely
resemble classroom expectations. It’s worse when you find
nothing to believe in, or live, or love. And to be a good soldier
you have to live it, to believe your work has worth and purpose,
and you have to like doing it.
There’s more going on in the Climber than I thought.
It’s happening beneath the surface. In the hearts and minds
of men, as the cliché goes.
I’m sipping coffee with the Commander when the alarm
screams.
“Another fucking drill?” The things have worn my
temper to frayed ends. Three, four times a day. And the only time
that bitching horn howls is when I have something better to do.
The Commander’s pallor, as he plunges toward the hatch, is
answer enough. This time is for real.
For real. I make Ops before the hatch closes, barely a limp
behind the Old Man.
It is easier in operational mode.
Yanevich and Nicastro crowd Fisherman. I wriggle into the
viewscreen seat. The Commander elbows up to the tachyon
detector.
“Ready to Climb, First Watch Officer?”
“Ready, Commander. Engineering is ready for annihilation
shift.”
I hunch down, lean till I can peek between arms and elbows. The
tachyon detector’s screen is alive for the first time since
we lost touch with the mother. It shows a tiny, intense, sideways
V at three o’clock, which trails an almost flat
ventral progression wave. The dorsal is boomerang-shaped. A dozen
cloudy feathers of varying length lie between the two.
“One of ours,” I remark. “Battle Class
cruiser. Probably Mediterranean subclass. Salamis or
Lepanto. Maybe Alexandria, if she’s
finished refitting.”
Four pairs of eyes drill holes into my skull. Too wary to ask,
both men are thinking, “What the hell do you know?”
Chief Canzoneri calls out, “Commander, I’ve got an
ID on the emission pattern. Friendly. Cruiser. Battle Class.
Mediterranean subclass. Salamis or Alexandria. We’ll
have to move closer if you want a positive for the log. We need a
finer reading in the epsilon.”
“Never mind. Command can decide who it was.” He
continues staring holes through me. Some of the men look at me as
if they’ve just noted my presence. “Mr. Yanevich.
We’ll take her up for a minute. No point them wasting time
chasing us.”
Making a Climb is a simple way of saying friend.
Back in the wardroom, the Old Man demands, “How did you do
that?”
Why not play a little? They’re always playing with me.
“What?”
“ID that cruiser.”
I was surprised when they stared but was more amazed that
Fisherman bothered with the alarm. “The display. Any good
operator can read progression lines. I saw a lot of the
Mediterraneans, back when.”
“Junghaus is good. I’ve never seen him do anything
like that.”
“Battle Class ships have unique tails. Usually you look at
the feathers. But Battle Class has a severe arch in the dorsal
line. The Meds have a top line longer than the bottom. From there
it’s just arithmetic. There’re only three Meds out
here. I can’t remember the feathers or I would’ve told
you which one. I didn’t do any magic.”
“I don’t think Fisherman could’ve done it.
He’s good, but he doesn’t worry about details.
He’ll argue Bible trivia from now till doomsday, but
can’t always tell a Main Battle from a Titan tug. Maybe he
doesn’t care.”
“I thought that was the point of having an operator and a
screen.”
“In Climbers we only need to know if something’s out
there. Junghaus is just cruising till he gets his ticket to the
Promised Land.”
“That’s a harsh judgment.”
“The man gets on my nerves—But they all do.
They’re like children. You’ve got to watch them every
minute. You’ve got to wipe their noses and kiss their
bruises . . . Sorry. Maybe we should’ve
had a longer leave. Or a different one.”
Fearless Fred wanders in. This is the first I’ve seen him
this week. He one-eyes us, chooses my lap.
“Remember Ivan the Terrible?” I ask, scratching the
cat’s head and ears.
“That idiot Marine unarmed combat instructor? I hope
he’s getting his ass kicked from pole to pole on some
outback . . . ”
“No. The other one. The cat we had in
kindergarten.”
“Kindergarten? I don’t remember that far
back.” After a moment, “The mascot. The cat that had
puppies.”
“Kittens.”
“Whatever. Yeah. I remember.”
First year in Academy. Kindgergarten year. You were still human
enough and child enough to rate a few live cuddly toys. Ivan the
Terrible was our mascot, and less reputable than Fearless. All
bones and battle scars after countless years of a litter every four
months. The best that could be said for her was that she loved us
kids as much as we loved her, and brought her offspring marching
proudly in as soon as they could stumble. She died beneath the
wheels of a runaway electric scooter, leaving battalions of
descendants behind. I think her death was the first traumatic
experience of the Commander’s young life.
It was my biggest disappointment for years. That one shrieking
moment unmasked the cruel indifference of my universe. Thereafter
it was all downhill from innocence. Nothing surprised or hurt me
for a long time. Nor the Commander, that I saw, though we
eventually suffered worse on an adult value scale.
“I remember,” the Commander says again.
“Fearless, there was a lady of your own stripe.”
“Bad joke.”
Fred cracks an eyelid. He considers the Commander. He yawns.
“But he don’t care,” I say.
“That’s the problem. Nobody cares. We’re out
here getting our asses blown off, and nobody cares. Not the people
we’re protecting, not Navy, not the other firm, not even
ourselves most of the time.” He stares at the cat for half a
minute. “We’re just going through the motions, getting
it over so we can go on leave again.”
He’s getting at purpose again, obliquely. I felt the same
way during my first active-duty tour. They hammered and hammered
and hammered at us in Academy, then sent us out where nobody had a
sense of mission. Where no one gave a damn. All anyone wanted was
to make grade and get the retirement points in. They did only what
they had to do, and not a minim more. And denied any responsibility
for doing more.
Admiral Tannian, for all his shortcomings, has striven to
correct that in his bailiwick. He may be going about it the wrong
way, but . . . were the Commander suddenly
deposited on one of the Inner Worlds, he’d find himself a
genuine, certified hero. Tannian has made those people
care.
Even the smoothest Climberman, though, would abrade the edge off
his welcome. Like a pair of dress boots worn through a rough
campaign, even Academy’s finest lose their polish in
Tannian’s war.
“Don’t scratch. It’ll cause sores.”
I find myself digging through my beard again. Is that a double
entendre? “Too late now. I’ve got them already. The
damned thing won’t stop itching.”
“See Vossbrink. He’ll give you some
ointment.”
“What I want is a razor.” Mine disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. In a ship without hiding places
it’s managed to stay disappeared.
“Candy ass.” The Commander uses his thin, forced
smile. “Want to ruin our scurrilous image? You might start a
fad.”
“Wouldn’t hurt, would it?” The atmosphere
system never quite catches up with the stench of a crew unbathed
for weeks, and of farts, for which there are interdepartmental
olympiads. Hell, I didn’t find those funny in Academy, when
we were ten. Sour grapes, maybe. I was a second-rate athlete even
in that obscene event.
Urine smells constantly emanate from the chamberpots we use when
sealed hatches deny us access to the Admiral’s stateroom.
Each compartment has its own auxiliary air scrubber. These
people won’t use them just to ease my stomach.
“Feh!” I give my nose a stylish pinch.
“Wait a few months. Till we can’t stop the mold
anymore.”
“Mold? What mold?”
“You’ll see, if this goes on much longer. First time
they make us stay up very long.” What looked like a drift
toward good humor ends as that thought hits the table. The ship
will stay out as long as it takes.
“Enough piddling around. Got to write up the war log. Been
letting it slide because there’s nothing to say. Shitheaded
Command. Want you to write twice as much, saying why, whenever
there’s nothing happening. Someday I’ll tell
them.”
I’ve glimpsed that log. Its terse summations make our days
prime candidates for expungement from the pages of history.
The minimum to get by. From bottom to top.
I clump after the Old Man and consequently reach Operations in
time for a playback of the news received last beacon
rendezvous.
Johnson’s Climber preceded ours in. The girls left love
notes.
“How the hell did they know we were behind them?” I
ask.
“Computers,” Yanevich says, amused. “With
enough entries you can determine the patrol pattern. It’s
never completely random.”
“Oh.” I’ve watched Rose and Canzoneri play the
game when they have nothing else to run. They also try to identify
the eido. It’s just time-killing. The eido is as anonymous as
ever.
They’re making a huge project of trying to predict first
contact. To hedge the pool. They run a fresh program every beacon
call, buy more pool slips, and are convinced they’re going to
make a killing. The pot keeps growing as the weeks roll along.
There’re several thousand Conmarks in it already.
The compartment grows deadly still. Reverently, Throdahl says,
“Here it comes.”
“ . . . convoy in zone Twelve Echo
making the line for Thompson’s System. Ten and six. Am in
pursuit. Eighty-four Dee.”
I estimate quickly. We aren’t that far away. We could get
there if we hauled ass. Must be an important convoy, too. Six
escorts for ten logistical hulls is a heavy ratio, unless
they’re battle units coincidentally moving up. The other firm
likes to kill two birds with one stone.
The orders don’t come. Climber Command won’t abandon
patrol routine to get something going. Yanevich tries to raise my
spirits by telling me, “We’ll get our shot. Maybe
sooner than you really want.”
The Commander shouts down. “I’m going to give him a
chance to work off his boredom, Mr. Yanevich. Gunnery exercises
next observation break. We’ll see what he can do with his
toy.”
Now I know why Bradley has been hoarding waste canisters.
They’ll make nice targets.
Always something strange going on here. And no one explains
anything till it’s my turn in the barrel.
The Old Man is no help. For no reason I can fathom, he keeps
every ship’s order ultra top clam till the last second. What
point security out here? The only rationale I can see is, he wants
the crew ready for anything.
He is, probably, following Command directives. Logic never has
much to do with security procedure.
Do those clowns think our competitors have an agent aboard?
Not bloody likely. There’s a limit to the power of
disguise.
Gunnery exercises are little more than gun error trials.
Everything but the final firing order is handled by computer. A
dull go. No sport. But a break in an otherwise oppressively
monotonous routine. The Energy Gunners spear their targets on
second shot. I batter mine to shrapnel with my third short burst.
The range, however, isn’t extreme.
Later, I suppose, there’ll be exercises on full manual, or
with limited computer assistance, simulating various states of
battle damage.
I do find a constant error in gun train or gun train order. I
enter a correction constant. So much for another exciting day.
Curious that gunnery exercises weren’t scheduled till this
late in the patrol. Did the Commander know there would be no
action? The man nearest me is an Energy Fire Control Technician
named Kuyrath. I ask him, “How come the Old Man put this off
so long?”
“Typical crap, probably. Command probably sent us out
knowing we wouldn’t run into anything. Just for the hell of
it. Just to have us jacking around. And you wonder why morale
stinks?”
He has a lot more to say. None of it compliments Command. He
hasn’t a bad word for the Commander. But now I’m
wolfing off along a new spoor.
I’ve decided that I’ve been overlooking an inexplicable
undercurrent of confidence among the more experienced men.
As if they knew no action was imminent. If gunnery exercises are
a signal, that should change. We shall see.
The changes comes, and sooner than any of us expect. With the
possible exception of Climber Command.
The word is waiting at the next beacon, which is the
contact-control for our present patrol sector.
There won’t be time for manual gunnery exercises.
It’s a twelve-day passage to the squadron’s patrol
sector. As the days drift away, the men become quieter and more
reserved. They have a crude, seldom reliable formula. A day’s
travel outward bound translates to three days’ travel coming
back. We’ve been aboard the Climber seventeen days.
Fifty-one days to go? That seems unlikely. Few patrols last more
than a month. There’s so much enemy
traffic . . . Hell, we could run into a convoy
tomorrow, scramble, clear our missile elevators, and be home before
the mother.
Eventless travel leaves a lot of free time, despite the
depressing frequency of drills. I’m spending a lot of time
with Chief Energy Gunner Holtsnider. He of girder-clinging fame.
He’s refreshing my knowledge of ballistic gunnery.
“This’s your basic GFCS Mark Forty-six
system,” he tells me. I guess this is the fifth time
we’ve been through this. “You got your basic Mark
Thirty gun order converter, and your basic gyros, stabile element,
tracking, and drive motor units. Straight off a corvette secondary
mount. You just got your minor modifications, what they call your
One-A conversions, for spherical projectiles.”
Yeah? Those are killing me. My poor senile brain keeps harking
futilely after my Academy gunnery training.
Half the problem is my sneaking suspicion that the Chief is learning while I am, staying a few pages ahead
in the crisp new manual.
“Now, off your radar, and your neutrino and tachyon
detectors if you have to, and even your visuals if it comes to
that, and your transiting missiles in norm, you get your
B, your R, your dR, your Zs,
your dE, and your dBs. You feed them all to your
Mark Thirty-two. Then you get your
Gf . . . ”
I keep getting lost in the symbols. I can’t
remember which is relative motion in line of sight, angular
elevation rate, angular bearing rate, gravity correction,
relativity correction, light velocity lag time—
“And send your RdBs over V and your RdE over
V to your Mark Thirty . . . ”
I could strangle the man. He has a too-ample store of that most
essential of instructor’s virtues: patience. I don’t. I
never had enough. Many a project and study have I abandoned for
lack of patience to follow through.
“ . . . which brings your B prime
gr and E prime g to your cannon train and elevation
pump motors.” For all his patience, the Chief is ready to
give me up.
“Cheer up, Chief. We could be trying to program a
twenty-meter airburst in tandem quad with the co-battery in
nadir.”
“You did time in the bombards?”
“Second Gunnery Officer on Falconier. Before
this.” I tap the bad leg. “Thought everybody
knew.”
“I was in Howitzer before I cross-rated
Energy.”
We exchanged reminiscences about the difficulties of putting
unguided projectiles onto surface targets from orbit. Tandem quads
are the worst. Two (or more) vessels each fire four projectiles,
over each pole and round each equatorial horizon, so that they all
arrive on target simultaneously. Theory says the ground position
can’t duck it all because it’s coming from everywhere
at once.
The bombards, or planetary assault artillery ships, are a poor
man’s way of softening ground defenses. A way which, in my
opinion, is a little insane and a whole lot optimistic. Budget
people find the system attractive. It’s cheap. A
sophisticated missile delivering the same payload costs a hundred
times as much.
Once a world’s orbital defenses are reduced, bombards are
supposed to blast away, creating neutralized drop zones for the
Fleet Marines. The main weapon is a 50-cm magnetic cannon. It
launches concussion projectiles of the “smart” type.
The bomb packs a hell of a wallop but has to be on target to do its
job.
Bombard tactics were theoretical till the war. I was involved in
just one live operation, against a base used by commerce raiders. I
did most of my shooting in practice.
The system was worthless. In practice on planetary ranges we
found the ballistic ranges so long, and so plagued by variables,
that precision bombardment proved impossible. My First Gunnery
Officer claimed we couldn’t hit a continent using
“dumb” projectiles.
The other firm uses bombards, too. For harassment. For accuracy
they rely on dropships, or use a missile barrage.
“Ever shoot the range at Kincaid?” Holtsnider asks.
“That’s where I screwed up the leg.” Kincaid
is a Mars-sized hunk of rock in Sol System’s cometary halo.
Its orbit is perpendicular to the ecliptic. It’s so far out
Sol is just another star.
“I wondered. Didn’t think it would be polite to
ask.”
“Doesn’t bother me anymore,” I lie.
“Except when I remember that it was my own fault.”
Holtsnider says nothing. He just looks expectant.
I have mixed feelings about telling the tale. The man
shouldn’t give a damn, and probably doesn’t want me to
bore him with the whole dreary story. On the other hand,
there’s a pressure within me. I want to cry on
somebody’s shoulder.
“Remember the Munitions Scandals? With the Mod Twelve
Phosphors for the Fifties?”
“Bribes to government quality-control
inspectors.”
“Yes. Flaking in the ablation shields. Normal routine was
to blow a cleaning wad every twentieth shot during prolonged
firing. With the Jenkins projectiles we were getting flakes instead
of dust. We had orders from topside to use them up practicing. The
Old Man had us blowing a wad after every shot.”
“Royal pain in the ass, what?”
“In the kneecap, actually.” It’s easy to
recall the frustration, the aggravation, and the sudden agony.
They’re with me still. “We’d been at it watch and
watch for three days. Trick shooting. Everything but over the
shoulder with mirrors. We were all tired and pissed. I made the
mistake. I blew the tube without making sure my trainee had opened
the outer door.”
“Recoil.”
“In spades. Those outer doors can take a lot more pressure
than the inner ones. So the inner door blew back while I was
climbing up to reset for live ammo.”
Holtsnider nods sympathetically. “Saw a guy lose his
fingers that way. Our magnetics went out. We had a live time shell
in the tube. He tried to blow it like it was a wad. Worked, too.
But the inner door locks snapped. Lost two-thirds of our atmosphere
before we got the outer door sealed.” He glances at my leg.
“Medics had him good as new in a couple months.”
“Wasn’t my day, Chief. We were alone out there.
Nearest medship was in orbit at Luna Command. And the reason we
were screwing around out there in the first place was because our
number two hyper generator was down.
“The medship hypered in fast, but by the time she arrived
my knee was beyond salvation—more through the agency of an
overzealous medical corpsman than from the initial injury.
“Falconier was so old she wasn’t fit for
training Reserves anymore, which’s what we were
doing.”
Funny. This sharing of an unpleasant past is loosening me up.
I’m more relaxed. My mind works better. I feel the old data
coming back. “Chief, let’s try it from the
top.”
I haven’t spent all my time in Weapons. I’ve tried,
with limited success, to visit with each crewman. Other than the
officers I met on Canaan, only Holtsnider, Junghaus, and
Diekereide have cooperated. Varese’s Engineers barely remain
civil. The men in Ship’s Services tolerate me only because
they have to live with me. I hear they’ve convinced
themselves that I’m the dreaded eido. My sessions with
Holtsnider have eased the situation in Weapons. But only in Ops do
I have much chance to ask questions.
The Ops gang considers itself the ship’s elite. That
pretense demands more empathy with the problems of another
“intellectual.”
I’m worried. Seventeen days gone, and no headway made. I
still don’t know half the names. Climber missions don’t
last long once the ship reaches its patrol zone. It’s in,
make a couple of attacks, and get out fast. The other firm is
sending so much traffic through that quick contact is
inevitable.
Westhause says it takes about a week to get home once the
missiles are gone. Meaning I can’t count on more than another
ten days to find my story.
I mention it to the Commander during a lonely lunch in the
wardroom. The others are preparing the shift to operational mode. I
figure he has similar problems acclimating new men each patrol.
“One thing to remember. No matter how much alike they act,
they’re all different. When you get to the bottom line, the
only thing they have in common is that they stand on their hind
legs. You have to find the right approach for each man. You have to
be a different person to every one.”
“I can see that. From your
viewpoint . . . ”
“You and me, we’re crippled by our jobs. What have
they got to judge you by? The news nosies they’ve seen on
holo. You have to break that image.”
I nod. Those people are the pushiest, most obnoxious ever
spawned. I understand their Tartar style, but I don’t like it
and don’t want to be lumped with them.
“Guess my best chance is a long patrol.”
The Old Man doesn’t say anything. His face speaks for him.
He’s ready to go home now.
A Climber is, I’m convinced, our most primitive warship.
Cheap, quickly built, and highly cost-effective if the combat
statistics are valid. Balancing the statistics against the reality
of Climber life, I develop a conviction that High Command considers
our ships as expendable as the missiles they carry.
We’re almost ready. The tension began building yesterday.
We’re tottering at the brink. This fly, deep into the patrol
zone, is sandpapering nerve ends. It’s about to climax.
Action and death may be no more than an hour away.
As senior ship, even though we don’t carry the squadron
flag, we rate first separation. This is a tradition of
Tannian’s Fleet. To the proven survivors go the small perks.
Will the head start be worth anything in the long run?
Suddenly, we’re beyond the moment of peak tension. The
sealed orders have come through. The mother is about to drop hyper.
We’ll be operational soon.
The Old Man’s face is stiff and pale when he leaves his
stateroom. His upper lip is lifted to the right in a faint sneer.
He gathers Westhause, the First Watch Officer, our two Ops Chief
Petty Officers, and myself. He whispers, “It doesn’t
look good. Figure on being out a while. It’s beacon to
beacon. Observation patrol. We start at Beacon Nineteen, Mr.
Westhause. I’ll give you the progression data after
I’ve gone over it myself.”
Well. I may get time to break the ice after all. Running beacon
to beacon means there’s been no enemy contact for a while. If
they’re out there, they’re slipping through unnoticed.
Because nothing is happening, the squadron will roam carefully
programmed patterns till a contact occurs.
I begin to comprehend the significance of our being on our own.
We’ll be out of contact completely, unless we touch the rare
instelled beacon. No comforting mother ship under our feet. No
pretty ladies in a sister ship to taunt and tease when Throdahl
isn’t using the radio more professionally. Alone! And without
the slightest notion how near we are others of our kind.
This could get rough, emotionally. These men aren’t the
sort I’d choose as cellmates.
Some three hundred observation/support beacons are scattered
around Climber Fleet One’s operations zone. On
beacon-to-beacon patrol a Climber pursues a semirandom progression,
making a rendezvous each twelve hours. Ours is to be an observation
patrol initially, meaning we’re supposed to watch, not
shoot.
The Commander shuffles order flimsies. “I’ll tell
you what we’re looking for when I get this crap
straight.”
“What’re observation pauses?” I ask the First
Watch Officer. The Old Man says we have to program several into our
beacon progression.
“Just go norm to see who did what last week.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Okay. If we’re not looking for something specific,
we’ll make equally spaced pauses. Say each four hours. If
Command is looking for something, we’ll drop hyper
at exact times in specified places. Usually that means
double-checking a kill. Ours or theirs.”
“I see.”
The beacons are refitted hulks. They form a vast irregular
three-dimensional grid. When a Climber makes rendezvous, it
discharges its Mission Recorder. In turn the beacon plays back any
important news left by previous callers. The progress of a
patrolling squadron is calculated so no news should be
more than twenty-four hours old. It doesn’t work that well in
practice, though.
One in twenty beacons is instel-equipped, communing continuously
with beacons elsewhere and with Climber Command. Supposedly, a
vessel can receive emergency directives within a day and news from
another squadron in two. On the scale of this war, that should be
fast enough.
Sometimes it does work, when the human factor doesn’t
intrude too much.
The other firm occasionally stumbles onto a beacon and sets an
ambush. The beacons are manned but have small crews and few
weapons. Climbers approach them carefully.
Fortune has smiled on us in a small way. The competition
hasn’t broken our computer key codes. If ever they do,
Climber Fleet Tannian is in the soup. One beacon captured and
emptied of information would destroy us all.
The other firm wastes no time hunting beacons. It takes
monumental luck to find one. Space is big.
We’re operational now. Past our first beacon.
Operational. Operational. I make an incantation of it, to
exorcise my fear. Instead it has the opposite effect.
The web between the beacons. The spider’s game. The
vastness of space can neither be described nor overstated. When
there’s no known contact the Climber’s hunt becomes
analogous to catching mites with a spider’s web as loosely
woven as a deep-sea fishing seine. There are too many gaps, and
they’re too big. Though Command keeps the holes moving, ships
still slip through unnoticed. Climbers often vanish without
trace.
After we leave the beacon the Commander repeats all the tests
made at Fuel Point. We commence our patrol in earnest.
I watch a Climber die. Twice. Our first two observation pauses
bracket the event. We drop hyper, allow the light of it to overtake
us, then jump out and let the wave catch us again. Like traveling
in time.
There’s little but a long, brilliant flash each time, like
a small nova. The spectrum lines indicate massive CT-terrene
annihilation. Ops compartment remains quiet for a long time.
Laramie finally asks, “Who was it, Commander?”
“They didn’t tell me. They never tell me . . . “
He stops.
His role doesn’t permit bitterness before the men.
“Forty-eight souls,” Fisherman muses. “I
wonder how many were saved?”
“Probably none,” I say.
“Probably not. It’s sad. Not many believers anymore,
Lieutenant. Like me, they have to meet Him, and Death, face to face
before they’ll be born again.”
“It’s not an age of faith.”
For four hours men not otherwise occupied help maul the data,
searching for a hint that the other firm precipitated the
Climber’s doom. Nothing turns up. It looks like a CT
leak.
Climber Command will add our data to other reports and let it
stew in the big computer.
“It doesn’t much matter anymore,” Yanevich
says. “She blew three months ago. The way they bracketed us,
they were rechecking something they already knew. Glad we
didn’t have to take a closer look.”
“There wouldn’t be anything to see.”
“Not this time. Sometimes there is. They don’t all
blow. Ours or theirs.”
I feel cold breath blowing down the back of my neck. Firsthand
studies of a gunned-out hulk aren’t my notion of fun.
There’s nothing going on in this entire universe. Beacon
after beacon, there’s nothing but bored, insulting greetings
from squadron mates who were in before us. Decked out in his
sardonic smile, the Old Man suggests the other team has taken a
month’s vacation.
He doesn’t like the quiet. His eyes get narrower and more
worried every day. His reaction isn’t unique. Even the
first-mission men are nervous.
First real news from outside. Climber Fleet Two says a huge,
homebound convoy is gathering at Thompson’s World, the other
team’s main springboard for operations against the Inner
Worlds. Second Fleet hasn’t had one contact during the
forty-eight hours covered by their report.
Neither have we.
“Them guys must be taking the year off,” Nicastro
says. Today he’s Acting Second Watch Officer, in
Piniaz’s stead. Weapons is having trouble with the
graser.
I’m exhausted. I hung around past my own watch to observe
Piniaz in command. Guess it’ll have to wait. The hell with
it. Where’s my hammock?
Climber Fleet Two reports a brush with hunter-killers way in
toward the Inner Worlds. Nothing came of it. Even the
opposition’s baseworlds are quiet.
This patrol zone is dead. We’re caught in a nightmare,
hunting ghosts. You don’t want action, but you
don’t crave staying on patrol, either. You start feeling
you’re a space-going Flying Dutchman.
Beacon after beacon slides by. Always the news is the same. No
contact.
Once a day the Commander takes the ship up for an hour, to keep
the feel of Climb. We spend the rest of our time cruising at
economical low-hyper translation velocities. Occasionally we piddle
along in norm, making lazy inherent velocity corrections against
our next beacon approach. There isn’t much to do.
The men amuse themselves with card games and catch-the-eido, and
weave endless and increasingly improbable variations in their
exchanges on their favorite subject. To judge by their anecdotes,
Throdahl and Rose have lived remarkably active lives during their
brief careers. I expect they’re doing some creative borrowing
from stories heard elsewhere. They have their images to
maintain.
I’m making some contact with the men now. Through no
artifice of my own. They’re bored. I’m the only novelty
left unexplored.
The days become weeks, and the weeks pile into a month.
Thirty-two days in the patrol zone. Thirty-two days without a
contact anywhere. There are three squadrons out here now, and the
newly commissioned unit is on its way. Another of the old squadrons
will be leaving TerVeen soon. It’ll be crowded.
No contact. This promises to become the longest dry spell in
recent history.
The drills never cease. The Old Man always sounds the
alarm at an inconvenient time. Then he stands back to watch the
ants scurry. That’s the only time we see his sickly
smile.
Hell. They’re breaks in the boredom.
This is oppressive. I haven’t made a note in two weeks. If
it weren’t for guilt, I’d forget my project.
I think this is our forty-third day in the patrol zone. Nobody
keeps track anymore. What the hell does it matter? The ship is our
whole universe now. It’s always day in here and always night
outside.
If I really wanted to know, I could check the
quartermaster’s notebook. I could even find out what day of
the week it is.
I’m saving that for hard times, for the day when I need a
really big adventure to get me going.
We’re a hairy bunch now. We look like the leavings of a
prehistoric war band. Only Fisherman has bucked the trend and is
keeping some order about his person. The only smooth faces I see
belong to the youngest of the young.
The Engineers express their dissatisfaction by refusing to comb
their hair. I’m the only man who takes regular sponge
baths. Part my fault, I suppose. I spend a lot of time in my
hammock. And I won’t share my soap, which is the only bar
aboard.
Curiously, these filthy beasts spend most of their free time
scrubbing every accessible surface with a solution that clears the
sinuses in seconds. Our paintwork gleams. It’s a paradox.
One point of luck. No lice or fleas have turned up. I expected
herds of crab lice, acquired from hygienically lax girlfriends.
Fearless Fred is sulking. He’s the most bored creature
aboard. No one has seen him for days. But he’s around, and in
a foul mood. He expresses his displeasure by leaving odiferous
little loaves everywhere. He’s as moody as the Commander.
Something is bothering the Old Man. Something of which this
patrol is just part. It began before the mission, before I found
him at Marie’s.
He’s no longer my friend of Academy days.
I did expect to find him weathered by the Service, changed by
the war. War has to change a man. Combat is an intense
experience. Comparing him to other classmates I’ve
encountered recently, I can see how radical the changes are. Even
Sharon wasn’t this much transformed. The Sharon of the
Pregnant Dragon always existed inside the other Sharon.
A few of the changes are predictable. An increased tendency
toward withdrawal, toward self-containment, toward gloominess.
Those were always part of him. Pressure and age would exaggerate
them. No, the real change is the stratum of bitterness he conceals
behind the standard changes.
He was never a bitter person. Contrarily, there was a playful,
almost elfin streak behind his reserve. A little alcohol or a lot
of coaxing could summon it forth.
Something has slain the elf.
Somehow, somewhere, while we were out of touch, he took one hell
of an emotional beating. He got himself destroyed, and all the
king’s horses . . .
It’s not a career problem. He’s very successful by
Navy standards. Twenty-six and already a full Commander. He’s
up for brevet Captain. He may get his first Admiral’s star
before he turns thirty.
It’s something internal. He’s lost a battle to
something that’s part of him. Something he hates and fears
more than any enemy. He now despises himself for his own
weakness.
He doesn’t talk about it. He won’t. And yet I think
he wants to. He wants to lay it out for someone who knew him before
his surrender. Someone not now close, yet someone who might know
him well enough to show him the path back home.
I admit I was surprised that my request for assignment to his
Climber went through. There were a hundred hurdles to surmount. The
biggest, I expected, would be getting the Ship’s
Commander’s okay. What Commander wants an extra, useless body
aboard? But the affirmative came back like a ricochet. Now I know
why, I think. He wants a favor for a favor.
The Commander’s moods are a ship’s moods. The men
mirror their god-captain. He’s aware of that and must live
the role every minute. This’s been the iron law of ships
since the Phoenician mariners went down to the sea.
The role makes the Old Man’s problem that much more
desperate. He’s tearing himself apart trying to keep his
command from going sour. And he thinks he’s failing.
So now he can’t open up at all.
I now dread the future for more than the usual reasons. This is
a miserably long patrol. And it’s demonstrated repeatedly
that the best Climber crew, highly motivated and well-officered,
can start disintegrating.
More than once the Commander tracked me down and asked me to
accompany him to the wardroom.
He makes a ritual of our visit. First he gives Kreiegshauser a
carefully measured bit of coffee. Just enough for two cups.
There’s been no regularly brewed real coffee since we learned
we’d be on beacon-to-beacon patrol. What we call coffee, and
brew daily, is made with a caffeine-rich Canaan bush-twig that has
a vague coffee taste. That’s what the Commander drinks during
his morning ritual. After yielding his treasure, the Old Man stares
into infinity and sucks the stem of his tireless pipe. He
hasn’t smoked in an age. The old hands say he won’t
till he decides to attack.
“You’re going to chew that stem through.”
He peers at the pipe as if surprised to find it in his hand. He
turns it this way and that, studying the bowl. Finally, he takes a
tiny folding knife and scrapes a fleck off the meerschaum. He then
plunges it into a pocket already bulging with pens, pencils,
markers, a computer stylus, a hand calculator, and his personal
notebook. I’d love to see his notes. Maybe he writes
revelations to himself.
He has his ritual question. “Well, what do you think so
far?”
What’s to think? “I’m an observer. The fourth
estate’s eido.” My response is a ritual, too. I can
never think of anything flip, or anything to start him talking. We
drift through these things, waiting for a change.
“Remarkable crew?” Today is going to be a little
different.
“A few individuals. Not as a whole. I’ve seen them
all before. A ship produces specific characters the way the body
produces specialized cells.”
“You have to get through the hide. Get inside, to the meat
and bones.”
“I don’t think I’m that good.” I’m
not. I keep seeing the masks they want me to see, not the faces in
hiding. I may have been exposed too long now. An immunological
process may be taking place. Something of the sort happens in every
closed group. After jostling and jousting, the pieces of the jigsaw
fall into place. People adjust, get along. And they stop being
objective about one another.
The Old Man says, “Hmm.” He’s developing that
sound into a vocabulary with the inflectional range of Chinese.
This “hmm” means “do go on.”
“We’ve got people who want to be something the ship
has no niche for. Take Carmon. He believes his propaganda image. He
wants to be Tannian’s Horatio at the bridge. The rest of us
won’t let him.”
“One right guess. Carmon aside, did you find anybody who
gives a rat’s ass about the war?”
Have I stumbled onto something? They are
volunteers . . .
This is as near an expression of doubt as I’ll ever hear
from the Commander.
I’m too eager to pursue it. My sharp glance spooks
him.
“What did you think of Marie?”
I think the relationship is symptomatic of a deeper problem. But
I won’t say that. “She was under a strain. An
unexpected guest. You about to
leave . . . ” There’re things a man
doesn’t do. One of mine: Never say anything bad about a
friend’s mate.
“She won’t be there when we get back.”
I knew that before we left.
Well, it isn’t the realization of his own mortality that
has gotten to him. This isn’t the odds-closing-in blues that
plagues Climber Commanders. If I look closely, I can catch glimpses
of the it can’t happen to me of our age group.
Is it the realization of his own fallibility? Suppose last
patrol he made a grotesque error and got away with it through dumb
luck? The kind of man he is, that would bother him bad because
forty-seven men might have gone out with him.
Maybe. But that’s more the kind of thing that would break
a Piniaz. The Old Man never claimed to be perfect. Just close to
it.
“She’ll be gone when I get home.” His eyes are
long ago and far away. He had had these thoughts before. “She
won’t leave a note, either.”
“You really think so?” I nearly missed the cues
telling me to ask.
Marie isn’t his problem. A problem, and a symptom, but not
the problem.
“Just a feeling, say. You saw how we got along. Cats and
dogs. Only reason we stayed together was we didn’t have
anywhere to go. Not that it didn’t look worse.”
“In a way.”
“What?”
“Hell probably offers a sense of security to the
damned.”
“Yes. I suppose.” He draws his pipe from his pocket,
examines its bowl. “You know Climber Fleet One hasn’t
ever had a deserter? Could be.”
For a moment I envision the man as an old-time sea captain,
master on a windjammer, standing a lonely, nighted weather-deck,
staring at moon-frosted wavetops while a cold breeze fingers his
strawlike hair and beard. The sea is obsidian. The wake churns and
boils. It glimmers with bio-luminescence.
“For what distant, heathen port be we bound, o’er
what enchanted sea?”
He glances up, startled. “What was that?”
“An image that came to me. Remember the poem game?”
We played it in Academy, round robin. It was popular during the
middle class years, when we were discovering new dimensions faster
than we could assimilate them. The themes, then, were mostly
prurient.
“My turn to come up with a line, you mean. All
right.” He ponders. While he does so, Kriegshauser delivers
the coffee.
“Zanzibar? Hadramaut? The Ivory Coast? Or far
Trincomalee?”
“That stinks. It’s not a line, it’s a laundry
list.”
“Seemed to fit yours. I never was much good at that, was
I?” He puts his pipe away and sips coffee. Under ship’s
gravity we can drink from cups if we like. A small touchstone with
another reality. “I’m a warrior, not a poet.”
“Ah?”
“ ‘Ah?’ You sound like a Psych
Officer.”
Whatever its nature, his bugbear won’t reveal itself this
time. Not without inspired coaxing from me. And I have no idea
how to bait my hook.
I think I know how a detective hunting a psychopathic killer
must feel. He knows the man is out there, killing because he wants
to be caught, yet the very irrationality of the killer makes him
impossible to track . . .
Can his problem be this role he lives? This total warrior
performance? Is there a poet screaming to get out of the Commander?
A conflict between the role’s demands and the nature of the
actor who has to meet them?
I don’t think so. He’s the quintessential warrior,
as far as I can see.
He chose me because I’m not part of the gang. And maybe
now he’s hiding from me for the same reason.
“You slated for Command College?” I ask, shifting my
ground. If he hasn’t made the list, that might take him by
the balls. Passing an officer over amounts to declaring he’s
reached his level of incompetence. No one gets pushed out,
especially now, but the promotions do end.
“Yes. Probably won’t get there before this fuss is
over. I’m slated for the squadron next two missions, then
Staff at Climber Command. Won’t get off Canaan for at least
two years. Then back to the Fleet, probably. Either a destroyer
squadron or number two in a flotilla. No time for war college these
days. All on-the-job training.”
A weak possibility lurks here. Upward mobility threatened by
war’s master spirit: Sudden Death.
“Why did you volunteer?”
“For Climbers? I didn’t.”
“Eh? You said . . . ”
“Only on paper. I asked for Canaan. Talk to the officers
our age. A lot of them are here on ‘strong
recommendation’ from above. What amounted to verbal orders.
They’re making it simple. The Climbers are the only thing we
have that works. They need officers to operate them. So, no Climber
time, no promotion. You have an unprofessional attitude if you
don’t respond to the needs of the Service.” A bilious
glow of bitterness seeping through here.
He drains half his cup, asks, “Why the hell would I ask
for this? The chances of me getting my ass blown to ions
are running five to one against me. Do I look fucking
stupid?”
He recalls his role. His gaze darts to Kriegshauser, who may
have overheard.
“What about rapid advancement? Glory? Because Canaan is
your home?”
“That’s shit for the troops and officers coming up.
Navy is my home.”
My stare must be a little too sharp. He changes the subject.
“Strange patrol. Too quiet. I don’t like it.”
“Think they’re up to something?”
He shrugs. “They’re always up to something. But
there are quiet periods. Statistical anomalies, I guess.
They’re out there somewhere, slipping through. Maybe
they’ve found a pattern to our patrols. We don’t really
run random. Human weakness. We have to have order of some kind. If
they analyze contacts, sometimes they figure a safe route. We
change things. The hunting is good for a while. Then, too, Command
wastes a lot of time taking second and third looks at
things.”
There’s bitterness whenever he mentions Command. Have I
uncovered a theme? Disenchantment? He wouldn’t be the first.
Not by thousands.
There’s no describing the shock, even despair, that clamps
down on you after you’ve spent a childhood in Academy,
preparing for a career, when the Service doesn’t remotely
resemble classroom expectations. It’s worse when you find
nothing to believe in, or live, or love. And to be a good soldier
you have to live it, to believe your work has worth and purpose,
and you have to like doing it.
There’s more going on in the Climber than I thought.
It’s happening beneath the surface. In the hearts and minds
of men, as the cliché goes.
I’m sipping coffee with the Commander when the alarm
screams.
“Another fucking drill?” The things have worn my
temper to frayed ends. Three, four times a day. And the only time
that bitching horn howls is when I have something better to do.
The Commander’s pallor, as he plunges toward the hatch, is
answer enough. This time is for real.
For real. I make Ops before the hatch closes, barely a limp
behind the Old Man.
It is easier in operational mode.
Yanevich and Nicastro crowd Fisherman. I wriggle into the
viewscreen seat. The Commander elbows up to the tachyon
detector.
“Ready to Climb, First Watch Officer?”
“Ready, Commander. Engineering is ready for annihilation
shift.”
I hunch down, lean till I can peek between arms and elbows. The
tachyon detector’s screen is alive for the first time since
we lost touch with the mother. It shows a tiny, intense, sideways
V at three o’clock, which trails an almost flat
ventral progression wave. The dorsal is boomerang-shaped. A dozen
cloudy feathers of varying length lie between the two.
“One of ours,” I remark. “Battle Class
cruiser. Probably Mediterranean subclass. Salamis or
Lepanto. Maybe Alexandria, if she’s
finished refitting.”
Four pairs of eyes drill holes into my skull. Too wary to ask,
both men are thinking, “What the hell do you know?”
Chief Canzoneri calls out, “Commander, I’ve got an
ID on the emission pattern. Friendly. Cruiser. Battle Class.
Mediterranean subclass. Salamis or Alexandria. We’ll
have to move closer if you want a positive for the log. We need a
finer reading in the epsilon.”
“Never mind. Command can decide who it was.” He
continues staring holes through me. Some of the men look at me as
if they’ve just noted my presence. “Mr. Yanevich.
We’ll take her up for a minute. No point them wasting time
chasing us.”
Making a Climb is a simple way of saying friend.
Back in the wardroom, the Old Man demands, “How did you do
that?”
Why not play a little? They’re always playing with me.
“What?”
“ID that cruiser.”
I was surprised when they stared but was more amazed that
Fisherman bothered with the alarm. “The display. Any good
operator can read progression lines. I saw a lot of the
Mediterraneans, back when.”
“Junghaus is good. I’ve never seen him do anything
like that.”
“Battle Class ships have unique tails. Usually you look at
the feathers. But Battle Class has a severe arch in the dorsal
line. The Meds have a top line longer than the bottom. From there
it’s just arithmetic. There’re only three Meds out
here. I can’t remember the feathers or I would’ve told
you which one. I didn’t do any magic.”
“I don’t think Fisherman could’ve done it.
He’s good, but he doesn’t worry about details.
He’ll argue Bible trivia from now till doomsday, but
can’t always tell a Main Battle from a Titan tug. Maybe he
doesn’t care.”
“I thought that was the point of having an operator and a
screen.”
“In Climbers we only need to know if something’s out
there. Junghaus is just cruising till he gets his ticket to the
Promised Land.”
“That’s a harsh judgment.”
“The man gets on my nerves—But they all do.
They’re like children. You’ve got to watch them every
minute. You’ve got to wipe their noses and kiss their
bruises . . . Sorry. Maybe we should’ve
had a longer leave. Or a different one.”
Fearless Fred wanders in. This is the first I’ve seen him
this week. He one-eyes us, chooses my lap.
“Remember Ivan the Terrible?” I ask, scratching the
cat’s head and ears.
“That idiot Marine unarmed combat instructor? I hope
he’s getting his ass kicked from pole to pole on some
outback . . . ”
“No. The other one. The cat we had in
kindergarten.”
“Kindergarten? I don’t remember that far
back.” After a moment, “The mascot. The cat that had
puppies.”
“Kittens.”
“Whatever. Yeah. I remember.”
First year in Academy. Kindgergarten year. You were still human
enough and child enough to rate a few live cuddly toys. Ivan the
Terrible was our mascot, and less reputable than Fearless. All
bones and battle scars after countless years of a litter every four
months. The best that could be said for her was that she loved us
kids as much as we loved her, and brought her offspring marching
proudly in as soon as they could stumble. She died beneath the
wheels of a runaway electric scooter, leaving battalions of
descendants behind. I think her death was the first traumatic
experience of the Commander’s young life.
It was my biggest disappointment for years. That one shrieking
moment unmasked the cruel indifference of my universe. Thereafter
it was all downhill from innocence. Nothing surprised or hurt me
for a long time. Nor the Commander, that I saw, though we
eventually suffered worse on an adult value scale.
“I remember,” the Commander says again.
“Fearless, there was a lady of your own stripe.”
“Bad joke.”
Fred cracks an eyelid. He considers the Commander. He yawns.
“But he don’t care,” I say.
“That’s the problem. Nobody cares. We’re out
here getting our asses blown off, and nobody cares. Not the people
we’re protecting, not Navy, not the other firm, not even
ourselves most of the time.” He stares at the cat for half a
minute. “We’re just going through the motions, getting
it over so we can go on leave again.”
He’s getting at purpose again, obliquely. I felt the same
way during my first active-duty tour. They hammered and hammered
and hammered at us in Academy, then sent us out where nobody had a
sense of mission. Where no one gave a damn. All anyone wanted was
to make grade and get the retirement points in. They did only what
they had to do, and not a minim more. And denied any responsibility
for doing more.
Admiral Tannian, for all his shortcomings, has striven to
correct that in his bailiwick. He may be going about it the wrong
way, but . . . were the Commander suddenly
deposited on one of the Inner Worlds, he’d find himself a
genuine, certified hero. Tannian has made those people
care.
Even the smoothest Climberman, though, would abrade the edge off
his welcome. Like a pair of dress boots worn through a rough
campaign, even Academy’s finest lose their polish in
Tannian’s war.
“Don’t scratch. It’ll cause sores.”
I find myself digging through my beard again. Is that a double
entendre? “Too late now. I’ve got them already. The
damned thing won’t stop itching.”
“See Vossbrink. He’ll give you some
ointment.”
“What I want is a razor.” Mine disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. In a ship without hiding places
it’s managed to stay disappeared.
“Candy ass.” The Commander uses his thin, forced
smile. “Want to ruin our scurrilous image? You might start a
fad.”
“Wouldn’t hurt, would it?” The atmosphere
system never quite catches up with the stench of a crew unbathed
for weeks, and of farts, for which there are interdepartmental
olympiads. Hell, I didn’t find those funny in Academy, when
we were ten. Sour grapes, maybe. I was a second-rate athlete even
in that obscene event.
Urine smells constantly emanate from the chamberpots we use when
sealed hatches deny us access to the Admiral’s stateroom.
Each compartment has its own auxiliary air scrubber. These
people won’t use them just to ease my stomach.
“Feh!” I give my nose a stylish pinch.
“Wait a few months. Till we can’t stop the mold
anymore.”
“Mold? What mold?”
“You’ll see, if this goes on much longer. First time
they make us stay up very long.” What looked like a drift
toward good humor ends as that thought hits the table. The ship
will stay out as long as it takes.
“Enough piddling around. Got to write up the war log. Been
letting it slide because there’s nothing to say. Shitheaded
Command. Want you to write twice as much, saying why, whenever
there’s nothing happening. Someday I’ll tell
them.”
I’ve glimpsed that log. Its terse summations make our days
prime candidates for expungement from the pages of history.
The minimum to get by. From bottom to top.
I clump after the Old Man and consequently reach Operations in
time for a playback of the news received last beacon
rendezvous.
Johnson’s Climber preceded ours in. The girls left love
notes.
“How the hell did they know we were behind them?” I
ask.
“Computers,” Yanevich says, amused. “With
enough entries you can determine the patrol pattern. It’s
never completely random.”
“Oh.” I’ve watched Rose and Canzoneri play the
game when they have nothing else to run. They also try to identify
the eido. It’s just time-killing. The eido is as anonymous as
ever.
They’re making a huge project of trying to predict first
contact. To hedge the pool. They run a fresh program every beacon
call, buy more pool slips, and are convinced they’re going to
make a killing. The pot keeps growing as the weeks roll along.
There’re several thousand Conmarks in it already.
The compartment grows deadly still. Reverently, Throdahl says,
“Here it comes.”
“ . . . convoy in zone Twelve Echo
making the line for Thompson’s System. Ten and six. Am in
pursuit. Eighty-four Dee.”
I estimate quickly. We aren’t that far away. We could get
there if we hauled ass. Must be an important convoy, too. Six
escorts for ten logistical hulls is a heavy ratio, unless
they’re battle units coincidentally moving up. The other firm
likes to kill two birds with one stone.
The orders don’t come. Climber Command won’t abandon
patrol routine to get something going. Yanevich tries to raise my
spirits by telling me, “We’ll get our shot. Maybe
sooner than you really want.”
The Commander shouts down. “I’m going to give him a
chance to work off his boredom, Mr. Yanevich. Gunnery exercises
next observation break. We’ll see what he can do with his
toy.”
Now I know why Bradley has been hoarding waste canisters.
They’ll make nice targets.
Always something strange going on here. And no one explains
anything till it’s my turn in the barrel.
The Old Man is no help. For no reason I can fathom, he keeps
every ship’s order ultra top clam till the last second. What
point security out here? The only rationale I can see is, he wants
the crew ready for anything.
He is, probably, following Command directives. Logic never has
much to do with security procedure.
Do those clowns think our competitors have an agent aboard?
Not bloody likely. There’s a limit to the power of
disguise.
Gunnery exercises are little more than gun error trials.
Everything but the final firing order is handled by computer. A
dull go. No sport. But a break in an otherwise oppressively
monotonous routine. The Energy Gunners spear their targets on
second shot. I batter mine to shrapnel with my third short burst.
The range, however, isn’t extreme.
Later, I suppose, there’ll be exercises on full manual, or
with limited computer assistance, simulating various states of
battle damage.
I do find a constant error in gun train or gun train order. I
enter a correction constant. So much for another exciting day.
Curious that gunnery exercises weren’t scheduled till this
late in the patrol. Did the Commander know there would be no
action? The man nearest me is an Energy Fire Control Technician
named Kuyrath. I ask him, “How come the Old Man put this off
so long?”
“Typical crap, probably. Command probably sent us out
knowing we wouldn’t run into anything. Just for the hell of
it. Just to have us jacking around. And you wonder why morale
stinks?”
He has a lot more to say. None of it compliments Command. He
hasn’t a bad word for the Commander. But now I’m
wolfing off along a new spoor.
I’ve decided that I’ve been overlooking an inexplicable
undercurrent of confidence among the more experienced men.
As if they knew no action was imminent. If gunnery exercises are
a signal, that should change. We shall see.
The changes comes, and sooner than any of us expect. With the
possible exception of Climber Command.
The word is waiting at the next beacon, which is the
contact-control for our present patrol sector.
There won’t be time for manual gunnery exercises.