The patrol is getting to me. I’ve been rude to or
belligerent with almost everybody today. I have a lot of fear and
nervous energy pressure-bottled inside me.
I’m not the only Sam Sullen. I see fewer smiles, hear
fewer jokes. The tone of the crew is quieter. There’s an
unmentioned but obvious increase in tension between individuals.
There’ll be a fight before long. Something has to act as a
valve to relieve pressure.
I’ll hang around Ops till it happens. I don’t want
to be part of the process. The Old Man’s inhibiting effect
makes Ops the safest place to be.
Piniaz has the watch when I arrive. The Commander is on hand.
Command has responded to our report. Finally.
“The sons of bitches,” Piniaz growls.
The Commander hands me a message flimsy. It’s a
congratulatory message. Over Tannian’s chop.
“Not one goddamned word about Johnson,” Piniaz
mutters. “The brass-bottomed bastards. Be the same fucking
thing when we get ours. Some sad sack of shit will move us to the
inactive file, wait a goddamned year, then send the
regret-to-informs.”
Nicastro gives Piniaz a poisonous look. His hands are shaking
and white.
“Goddamned printout form letter, that’s what they
send. Full of Tannian’s bullshit about valiant warriors
making the supreme sacrifice. Jesus. Talk about
insensitive.”
I get in the way as the Chief lets fly. Startled, he pulls the
punch. I tap him back and ask, “How are they hanging,
Chief?” He settles into an embarrassed calm.
Piniaz missed the swing, but catches enough of the postmortem to
understand. He cans the bitching.
Too many eyes missed nothing. Word gets around.
Maybe this will give me my breakthrough. One ordinary
occurrence, entirely unplanned. After all that time trying to
engineer something.
The Commander is first to mention the incident. In private, of
course. “Happened to notice something odd this
morning,” he says, between sips of coffee brewed to spice
another of our sparring sessions.
“Uhm? I doubt it.”
“Doubt what?”
“That you happened to do anything. You
choreograph your breathing.”
He permits himself a weak, weary, sardonic smile. “You
handled that pretty good. Could have caused trouble. Ito
would’ve insisted on his prerogatives.” He goes to work
on his pipe. “You always were good at that. Guess I’ll
have to chew the Chief.” He finds whatever it is that
displeases him about the pipe’s bowl, returns the instrument
to his pocket.
“Sometimes a patrol goes sour after a fight. Just gets
hairier. Like moral gangrene. Between officer and enlisted is bad.
Turns the crew into armed camps.” He reaches for the pipe,
realizes he’s fiddled it half to death already. “You
bought some time. Maybe the Chief will take a look at himself
now.” After a pause, “Guess I’ll tell department
heads to lean on the big-mouths.”
I can imagine the potential for disaster. A blow struck relieves
pressure but plants a seed. Establishes a precedent. We need some
sort of distraction. Pity there’s no room anywhere for
athletics.
“You might suggest that Mr. Piniaz be less
abrasive.”
His eyebrows rise.
“I know. He just said what we’re all thinking.
It’s not what he said. It’s the way he said
it. It’s the way he says everything.”
Still he says nothing.
“Damn it, the man doesn’t have to keep proving
he’s as good as everybody else. We know it. That Old Earther
shoulder chip is going to get his head twisted.”
“Could be me doing it, too. I’m tired of it. But
what can you do? People will be what they are. They have to learn
the hard way.”
He’s been leading me along. I figure it’s time to
punch back. “And you? What’s your chip? What’s
eating you?”
His face darkens like an old house with the lights going out. He
gulps his coffee, leaves without answering. I don’t think to
call after him.
Kriegshauser materializes immediately, ostensibly to clean up.
But he has something on his mind. He makes a production of the
simple task.
I’ve barely tasted my coffee. “You drink this stuff,
Kriegshauser? Want the rest? Go ahead. Sit down.” I’m
sure he gets his sips off each batch. Real coffee is too great a
temptation.
“Thank you, sir. Yes sir. I will.”
I wait, unsure how to draw him out. Like everyone else aboard
this mobile asylum, the real Kriegshauser is well hidden.
He finds his nerve. “I’ve got a problem,
Lieutenant.”
“Yes?”
Kriegshauser chomps his lower lip. “Sex problem,
sir.”
“Ah?” It’s hard to disbelieve the claim that
he never bathes nor changes his underwear. His personal mass must
consist entirely of deodorant and cologne. He reeks.
“This’s my fifth patrol on this ship.”
I nod. I know that much.
“They won’t let me off. I’ve put
in.”
What does that have to do with boy-girl? Maybe nothing. Few of
us are direct.
“There’s this other guy that’s been on,
too . . . ” It gushes.
“Been trying to get me to make it. Putting on pressure.
Kept my requests from going through. That’s why I don’t
wash. It’s not for luck, like the guys think. Anyway,
he’s got me against the wall.”
“How so?”
“There was this girl, see? Leave before last. Said she was
eighteen. Well, she wasn’t. And she was a runaway.”
So? I think. The universe festers with unhappy people. Too many
of them are children.
“She was using me to get at her parents.”
“Uhn?” That happens. Far too often.
“I found out last leave, when I tried to look her up. Her
parents are big in Command. And they’re out for blood. The
kid jobbed me, but they think I did her. When they caught up with
her, she was too far gone for an abortion.”
“You sure it was you?” That’s a reasonable
question considering the situation on Canaan. Anger darkens his
face. I change the subject. He cares about the girl. “This
other party found out?”
“Yes sir. And if I don’t come across, he passes the
word on me.”
Sexual harassment? Here? It’s hard to credit. “Why
tell me? I could be the eido. I could put it in my book. Or I could
pass the word myself. Don’t officers always stick
together?”
“Got to talk to somebody. And you don’t finger
people.”
Wish I was as sure of me as he is.
An advice columnist I’m not. As bad as I’ve screwed
up my own life, I’d be a positive peril counseling anyone
else. “Is he bluffing?”
“No sir. He’s tried petty shit before. Did it to my
friend Landtroop.”
“How about you just tell him you’ll kick the shit
out of him if he don’t back off?”
“I’d be bluffing.”
I nod. That’s understandable. We’re military and at
war. And the thought of personal violence is repellent. An act like
Nicastro’s occurs only under stress. People are schooled from
childhood to contain their animal violence. Society does a fine
job. Then we take the kids and make them warriors. We’re a
curiously contrary breed of ape.
“The damage would be done already, wouldn’t
it?”
“I suppose. But what would happen if he did talk?
We’re talking staff-type parents, aren’t we?”
Staff people are in a position to exact agonizing bureaucratic
revenges.
“I don’t want to find out, sir. I just want to get
my ten, get laid in between, and get the hell out when I can. Maybe
move to a training billet.”
Few Climber people expect to survive the war. Most suspect
they’re playing for the losing team anyway. All they want to
do is survive.
This is a strange kind of war. No end in sight. No out till
it’s over, unless you’re torn up so bad you’re
good for nothing but dog food or sitting by the window at the
veteran’s hospital. None of that hope for tomorrow which
usually animates the young. It’s a war of despair.
“That’s what you stand to lose. What about
him?”
“Huh?”
“It can’t be all one way. Isn’t he vulnerable
too?” I feel like an ass, playing games with people’s
lives. But I asked for it. I made a deal with Mephistopheles. You
can’t be selective about getting into lives. I want to know
and understand the crew. The cook is one of them. There’ll be
no understanding him without dealing with his problem. Otherwise
he’ll remain a simple human curiosity, a bundle of odd
quirks.
“Not that I know of, sir.”
“Let’s backtrack. How did he find out about the
girl?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Who’d you tell?”
“Just Landtroop and Vossbrink, sir.”
“Landtroop? You mentioned him before.”
“Kurt Landtroop. He was here last patrol. Went cadre. We
spent our leaves together.”
“The three of you?”
“Yes sir. What’re you getting at, sir?”
“You talked to Voss? Ask him if he told
anybody?”
“Why, sir?”
“If you only told two people, one of them told somebody
else. I’d guess Landtroop. You said he was under the same
pressure. You should make sure.” He’s being
intentionally dense. Doesn’t want to involve his friends,
doesn’t want to risk his faith in them. Maybe he figures
he’ll lose his best friend if he questions Vossbrink. A very
insecure young man. “You need to isolate the leak. It could
give you a handle. Get back to me after you talk to Voss.
I’ll think on it meantime.”
“All right, sir.” He isn’t pleased. He wants
miracles. He wants me to push a magic button and make everything
right. It’s a nasty little habit we humans have, wanting an
easy way out. “Thanks for the coffee, sir.”
“You’re welcome.” It would help if he could
give me a name. I could corner the predator and threaten him with
my book. Power of the press, what? But Kriegshauser won’t
reveal it. I don’t have to ask to know that. The fear in him
is obvious.
There could be a second side, too. We humans, even when we try,
tend to tint the facts. Kriegshauser might be doing more than
tinting.
My proposed book is a for-instance. I want to be objective. I
plan to be objective. Of course. But how objective can I be? I saw
little of Command and wasn’t impressed by what I did see. I
identify with the fighting men too much already. I’m too much
tempted to ignore the reasons why they have to endure this
hell . . .
I snort in self-mockery. I’m a powerful man. One reason
these people won’t open up is that they’re afraid of
what I’ll do to them in print. So I’m a species of eido
after all.
The occasional threat might have amazing results.
Yanevich says that clown Tannian has ballyhooed my presence
since I boarded the Climber. He’s promised all Confederation
a report from inside, the true story of the everyday life of
heroes. His PR people are good. Half the population will be waiting
breathlessly. Oh, ye mighty megaConmarks, gather ye in mine
account—
I think Fearless Fred is going to be pissed. I think he assumes
I’ll follow the Party line.
Can I really do it straight? I really am afraid I won’t
give the broader picture that shows why Command does
things that make the men in the trenches furious.
My real coup, arranging participation in a Climber mission,
didn’t reside in getting the Admiral to agree. The man is
publicity-mad. No, it was getting the predators senior to Tannian
to guarantee not to interfere with what I write. I conned them.
They think I have to show the warts or the public won’t
believe.
Maybe the coup isn’t that great, though. Maybe they
outsmarted me. Tannian’s foes are legion, and bitter. A lot
of them reside in Luna Command. The guarantees could be a ploy to
discredit the popular hero.
I haven’t found anything but warts. So many warts
that an imp voice keeps telling me to hedge my bets, to be sure I
get past not only Tannian but that coterie of Admirals eager to
defame him.
After talking to Kriegshauser, I clamber into my hammock.
It’s been an exhausting few days.
The loss of Johnson’s Climber finally rips through the
shroud of more immediate concerns. I replay the entire incident,
looking for something we might have done differently. And end up
shedding tears.
I give up trying to force the gates of slumber and go looking
for the cat. Fearless confesses this confessor. He’s awfully
patient with me.
He remains as elusive as the eido.
Despite the long, enforced proximity of the patrol, I’ve
begun feeling lonely. I’ve begun detecting traces of the same
internal desolation on other faces.
I’m not unique in remembering our sisters. The long,
leave-me-alone faces are everywhere. It’s a quiet ship
today.
Our ship and Johnson’s had an unofficial relationship for
a long time, a romance that was a metal wedding, a family
understanding. The two hunted and played together through a dozen
patrols and leaves, beginning long before anyone in either crew
came aboard. In the Climbers that makes an ancient tradition.
I find myself asking a bulkhead, “Do Climbers mate for
life?” Will we, like some great, goofy bird, now go hunting
our own demise? Have we become a rogue bachelor?
An inattentive part of me notes that the bulkhead has grown a
layer of feltlike fur, like blue-green moleskin. I touch it. My
finger leaves a track. I wander off, forgetting it.
In Engineering I find a surly Varese supervising two men
cleaning the guts of a junction box with what smells like carbolic.
“What’s up?”
“Fucking mold.”
I recall the moleskin wall. “Ah?” I don’t see
anything here.
In Weapons half the off-watch are scrubbing and polishing. The
carbolic smell is overpowering. Here the fur is everywhere, on
every painted surface. It has a black-green tinge. The paler green
paint seems to be the mold’s favorite snack.
“How the hell does it get in here?” I ask
Holtsnider. “Seems it’d be wiped out going through
TerVeen.”
“They’ve tried everything, sir. Just no way to get
every spore. It comes in with crew, food, and equipment.”
Well. A distraction. Instead of pining about dead women, I can
research mold.
It’s an Old Earth strain that has adapted to Canaan,
becoming a vigorous, fecund beast in the transition. Left
unchecked, it can pit metal and foul atmosphere with its odor and
spores. Though more nuisance than threat, it becomes dangerous if
it reaches sensitive printed circuitry. The heat and humidity of
Climb encourage explosive growth. Climber people hate it with an
unreasoning passion. They invest it with a symbolic value I
don’t understand.
“Who won the pool?” I ask as I enter Ops, still
having found no sign of Fearless.
Blank faces turn my way. These men are busy with mold and
mourning, too.
Laramie catches on. “Baake, in Weapons. The little
shit-head.”
Rose nods glumly, head bobbing on a pull-string. He says,
“He only bought one goddamned slip. To get us to quit
bothering him. Ain’t that a bite in the ass?”
“Better get him to teach you his system,” Yanevich
suggests, with a heaviness that implies this scene has been played
before. “You only need one when it’s the right
one.”
“Useless goddamned electric moron.” Rose kicks the
main computer. “You screwed me out of a month’s pay,
you know that? What the fuck good are you if you can’t figure
out . . . ”
Laramie and Throdahl bait him halfheartedly. Others join in.
They start to show some spirit.
It’s a distraction, the cut-low game. Not an amusement
anymore. They go at it viciously, but no tempers flare.
They’re too drained to get mad.
Throdahl’s comm gear pings gently. The games die. Work
stops. Everyone stares at the radioman.
We’re lying dead in space beside the instelled beacon. The
rest of the squadron is parsecs away. We assume that we’ll be
ordered to catch up.
Command has other ideas. Only now does Fisherman tell me
we’ve been awaiting special orders.
That little ping brings the Commander swinging down
from his cabin, an ape in a metal jungle. “Code book,”
he calls ahead. Chief Nicastro produces the key he wears on a chain
around his neck. He opens a small locker. The closure is symbolic.
The box is hardly more than foil. A screwdriver could break it
open.
The Chief takes out a looseleaf book and pack of color-coded
plastic cards banded with magnetic stripes.
“Card four, Chief,” the Commander says after a
glance at the pattern on Throdahl’s screen. He slides the
card into a slot. Throdahl thumbs through the code book. He uses a
grease pencil to decode on the screen itself.
Only the initial and final groups translate:
commander’s eyes only and acknowledge.
Muttering, the Old Man scribbles the text groups in his
notebook, clambers back to his hideout. Shortly, a thunderous,
“Jesus fucking Christ with a wooden leg!” rips through
the compartment. Pale faces turn upward. “Throdahl, send the
acknowledge. Mr. Yanevich, tell Mr. Varese to establish a lock
connect with the beacon.”
The beacon begins feeding a sector status update while
he’s talking. Our chase, kill, and escape has kept us out of
the biggest Climber operation of the war.
The convoy that took so long to gather at Thompson’s
System is on the move. Second Fleet pecked at it and let it get
away. In his grandiose way, Tannian has declared that none of those
empty hulls will survive his attentions. One hundred twelve and one
twenty are the estimates. Thirty-four Climbers are in the hunt.
Every ship in three squadrons. Except ours and Johnson’s.
“Shee-it,” Nicastro says softly. “That’s
one hell of a big iron herd.” His eyes are wide and
frightened.
“Bet that escort figure goes up fast,” Yanevich
says.
“Hell. With that many Climbers they should take the escort
first.”
“Smells like a trap to me,” I say. “With bait
Tannian couldn’t resist.”
The fighting hasn’t yet begun. Our brethren are still
maneuvering into attack positions.
At first I think the Commander is upset because he’s been
ordered into the cauldron, too. Wrong. The sense of that is too
clear. Instead, our orders are bizarre.
The Old Man explains over coffee, in the wardroom, with all
officers present.
“Gentlemen, we’ve been chosen—because of our
superb record!—to initiate a new era of Climber
warfare.” There’s an ironic cast to his smile. He taps
a flimsy. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t make it up.
I’m just telling you what it says here. We’re supposed
to take advantage of the brawl back yonder.” He jerks his
head as if in a specific direction.
He doesn’t pass the message around. He holds to the
eyes-only rule. “A hint or two here that they had this
planned all along. It’s why we were off chasing that
Leviathan. Johnson was supposed to go in with us.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I mutter. “What the
hell is it?”
He smiles that grim shipboard smile. “We’re going to
scrub the Rathgeber installations. Right when the other team needs
them most.”
Puzzled silence. Makes a strange strategic sense. With
Rathgeber’s backing the hunter-killers will have a field
day, finding thirty-four Climbers in one small sector.
“Didn’t we just get out of there?” I ask, more
to break the silence than because I want to know.
“Sure. We were a couple of days away. Still are, on
another leg of a triangle.” He muses, “Rathgeber. Named
for Eustaces Rathgeber, fourteenth President of Commonweal
Presidium. Brought Old Earth into Confederation. Only moon of
Lambda Vesta One, a super-Jovian, sole planet of Lambda
Vesta.” He smiles weakly.
“Been doing my homework. For what it’s worth, the
base started out as a research station. Navy took over when the
research outfit lost its grant. The other firm picked it up during
their first sweep.”
The wardroom echoes,
“But . . . ” like a single-stroke
engine having trouble getting started. The Commander ignores
us.
“We’ll hyper in to just outside detection limits.
That and the other intelligence data we’ll need will be
assembled aboard the beacon. They have a printer. Then we Climb and
move in. We go down, tear the place apart, and run like
hell.”
“What the fuck kind of idiot scheme is that?” Piniaz
demands. “Rathgeber? We use our missiles up, we won’t
have anything to shoot back with while we’re getting away.
Hell, they’ve got fifty hunters ported there.”
“Sixty-four.”
“So how the hell do we get out?”
No one questions our ability to get in, or to smash the base.
It’s not a plum ripe for picking. I’ve been there.
It’s tough.
“Maybe Command doesn’t care about that,”
Yanevich says.
“Nobody will be home but base personnel,” the
Commander counters. “This convoy operation will draw them
off. Tannian isn’t stupid. He figures it’s a trap. So
we give them what they want, then scrub Rathgeber so they
can’t take advantage. Hell, everybody’s always saying
it’d be a rabbit shoot out here if it weren’t for
Rathgeber.”
It makes sense. The strategic sort of sense, where a chess
player sacrifices a pawn to take a bishop. Rathgeber’s loss
would hurt the other team bad, just as we’d be bad hurt if
Canaan went.
The Old Man continues, “I think the Admiral is counting on
us to pull the escort off the convoy.”
“Hitting them with rabbit punches,” Bradley mumbles.
He and I lean against a bulkhead, staring down at the in-group.
“Threaten here, threaten there, make them drop their game
plan.”
“Right out of the book.”
He shrugs.
The Old Man says, “Our problem will be ground and orbital
defenses. Intelligence is supposed to give us what we need, but how
good will the data be? Those clowns can’t figure what side of
their ass goes in back. Anybody ever been to Rathgeber?”
I wave a reluctant finger. “Yeah. A two-day stopover six
years ago. I can’t tell you much.”
“What about defenses? You were gunnery.”
“They’ll have beefed them up.”
“You look them over? How’s their reaction time? They
won’t have messed with detection and fire control.”
“What do I know?”
“What size launch window can we expect? Can we do it in
one pass? Will we have to keep bouncing up and down?’
“I spent my time getting snockered. What I saw looked
standard. Human decision factor. You’ll get seven seconds for
your first pass. After that you only get the time it takes them to
aim.”
“Very unprofessional. You should’ve anticipated.
Isn’t that what they taught us? Never mind. I forgive
you.”
I stare at the Commander. Why has he accepted a mission he
doesn’t like? He has the right to refuse.
No one suggests that.
They bitch about Command’s insane strategies but always go
along.
“Mr. Westhause, program the fly. We’ll take hyper as
soon as all the data comes dirough.” He steeples his fingers
before his face. “Till tomorrow, gentlemen. Bring some
thoughts. I want to be in and out before this convoy thing blows
up. Our friends are counting on us.”
I smile grimly. He really hopes we get an extended leave out of
this.
Is Marie in his thoughts? He hasn’t mentioned her for a
long time.
Wonder what she did after we left. By now she must think
we’re done. Our squadron is overdue. Command knows
we’re alive, but they don’t keep civilians posted.
Varese keeps fidgeting. He decides to tell us what’s on
his mind. “We’ve been out a long time, Commander.
We’re way down on hydrogen and CT.”
“Mr. Westhause, see if there’s a water beacon on our
way.”
We haven’t spent much time under pursuit, but daily Climb
routine draws steadily on our CT. Normal hydrogen is less of a
problem. Some beacons maintain water tanks for in-patrol
refueling.
That’s the Engineer mentality surfacing. It compels them
to start having seizures when fuel stores reach a certain level of
depletion. The disease is peculiar to the breed. They’ve got
to have that fat margin. In the bombards they got antsy when down
by 10 percent. At 20 percent they kept everyone awake dragging
their fingernails over the commander’s door.
They want that margin “in case of emergency.”
Varese is less excitable than most Engineers.
“We won’t need much CT after we shake loose,”
the Commander muses. “We’ll burn what’s left
going home anyway. We can pick up more water anytime.”
Once a Climber concludes active patrol, she remains on
annihilation till she has just enough left to sneak in to Canaan.
Venting excess is too dangerous, especially near TerVeen.
A Climber is most vulnerable before CT fueling and after final
CT consumption. Those are the times when she needs big brothers and
sisters to look out for her. She’s just another warship then.
A puny, fragile, lightly armed, slow, and easily destroyed warship.
Vulnerability is why she has a mother take her out to Fuel
Point.
Climbers aren’t sluggers. They’re guerrillas. In the
open they’re easy meat.
Lieutenant Varese takes no reassurance from the
Commander’s confidence. Engineers never do. A wide streak of
pessimism is a must in the profession.
“Any more questions?”
There are. No one cares to broach them.
The Commander allows us to board the beacon. I go through the
hatch just to see how those people live.
Holy shit! Fresh faces! Clean faces. Well-fed, smiling faces,
with welcomes for the heroes of the universe. Gleaming,
apple-cheeked babies. But no women, damn it.
We look like prisoners lately released from a medieval dungeon.
Sallow, gaunt, filthy, wild of hair and eye, a little tentative and
timid.
Damn! There really are other
people . . .
Right now, the first few minutes, while we’re staring at
the beacon crew, I feel a fresh wind blowing on our morale.
It’s a cool gale driving away a poisonous smog. Some of the
men grin, shake hands, clap backs.
There’s a shower! Rumor says there’s a shower! These
boys must live like maharajahs. Crafty old me, I disguise myself as
a great spacedog and con one of the lads into showing me the way.
I’m first man there. Hot needles nibble and sting my crusty
skin. I bellow tuneless refrains, luxuriate in the warmth, the
massagelike effect.
“Hurry up in there, goddamnit! Sir.”
Shouldn’t be a pig, should I? There’s a line out
there now. “One minute.” Grinning, I thunder out the
“Outward Bound.” Several men threaten to make it a
shower I’ll remember the rest of a very short life.
They have sinks, too. Several of them. Men line up there too,
shaving. Don’t think I will, though. I’m used to mine
now. Completes the spacedog disguise.
Tarjan Zntoins, a Missileman, begins hopping about in a parody
of an old-time sailor’s hornpipe while his compartment mates
honk and hoot, using their hands as instrumental accompaniment.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
The beacon is a one-time Star Line freighter. Big mother.
Only the quarters are in use these days. The crew of nine have
been out here four months. They’re eager for fresh faces,
too. Their long vigil is lonely, though never as harrowing as ours.
Their tachyon man tells me he’s been in beacons since the
beginning. He’s had only two contacts in all that time.
They’re overdue for relief. Three months is their usual
stint. A converted luxury liner makes regular rounds, changing
crews each three months. Something is happening, though. Command
has withdrawn the liner.
They’re hungry for news. What’s going on? How come
they’ve been extended? Poor bastards. In continuous contact
with Command and kept constantly ignorant. I tell them I
don’t know a thing.
Great guys, these people. They put on a spread. A meal fit for a
king. Command didn’t skip the luxuries here.
The mess decks are small. We wolf our feast in shifts, dallying
and stalling while our successors curse us for farting around.
One last trip to the can. Isn’t this great? No waiting. I
take another look at my beard. I look like a real space pirate.
Like Eric the Red, or somebody. I give it a big trim, to a nice
point beneath my chin. There. Gives me the look of a pale devil.
The girls will love it.
“Attention. Climber personnel. Return to your ship. Please
return to your ship.”
The holiday is over. “Up yours, Nicastro,” I
mutter.
On my way I stop by the beacon’s vegetable crate of an
office, liberate a half ream of clean paper. I’m tired of
keeping notes on scraps.
Command’s intelligence is astonishingly detailed. Tannian
has had this raid in his trick bag a long time. The man is a little
brighter than his detractors admit.
The orbital data for Rathgeber have been redefined to the
microsecond and millimeter, finer than we need or can handle. We
could make a setdown in null, using the data.
The defense intelligence looks just as good. Surface and holo
charts, which can be fed to the display tank, detail scores of
active and passive systems, revealing their fields of fire and kill
ranges. The companion fire control grids look as though they were
lifted from Rathgeber’s Combat Information Center.
Alterations to the original Navy installation are carefully and
prominently noted.
“We must have a guy on the inside,” Piniaz chortles.
He’s delighted with the information.
“Bastards probably gundecked the whole thing,”
Yanevich counters. “Made it look solid so idiots like us
would go in with smiles on our clocks.”
“I doubt it,” I say. “I mean, Tannian only
looks like a prick of the first water. He’ll throw lives
around like poker chips, but I don’t see him wasting
many.”
“For once we agree,” Piniaz says. “This was
put together right. And saved for the right time.”
Yanevich won’t flee the field. “Yeah? Wonder what
the big brain had to say about our chances of getting out. Bet you
won’t find that in there anywhere.”
I say, “Only thing I question is the need for the raid.
And why they’re sending a Climber.”
Sourly, Yanevich says, “Fishing for propaganda points
inside Navy. It’s a job for the heavies.”
“Regular units couldn’t get past the orbital
defenses,” Piniaz snaps. “And maybe we don’t know
everything. Could be some other reason, too.”
The Commander says, “Maybe it’s occurred to them
that this’s a classic way to get rid of an
embarrassment.” He drives one hand into a shirt grown ragged
with continuous wear, pauses momentarily. One eye narrows as he
looks at me. A what-the-hell crosses his face. “Friend of
mine slipped this into the intelligence dispatch.” He throws
out a piece of flimsy.
Yanevich snatches it. “Shee-it!” He flips it to
Piniaz. Ito reads it, gives me an unreadable look, passes it on. It
finally meanders around to me.
It’s a typical Command press release, describing the Main
Battle encounter. That the vessel we destroyed was crippled
isn’t mentioned. Neither is the loss of Johnson’s
Climber. The only outright untruths are improbable patriotic quotes
attributed to my companions . . .
And to me. In fact, the whole damned thing is supposed to be my
report from the front! “I’ll kick that asshole
right in the cocksucker!” My juice squeezie ricochets off a
bulkhead. “He can’t do that to me!”
“Nice throw,” Yanevich observes. “Smooth. No
break in your wrist.”
According to the release, I filed a report running,
thematically, “Shoulder to
shoulder . . . Heedless of the death screaming
round them . . . United in their implacable
will to exact retribution from the destroyers of Bronwen and
plunderers of Sierra . . . ”
“Shit. ‘Shoulder to shoulder’ is the only true
thing here. Should’ve said asshole to elbow. Screaming? In
vacuum? Where the hell is Bronwen? I never heard of it. And Sierra
is such a nothing we didn’t bother defending it.”
Grinning, Yanevich intones, “ ‘Driven by the justice
of their cause . . . ’ ”
Piniaz titters. “ ‘Inspired by the memories of the
slavery these vermin impose . . . Every man a
hero . . . ’ Hey. You’re one hell
of a writer.”
“Sure. When butterflies give milk.”
“You saying I ain’t a hero? I’ll sue, you
slanderer. I can prove it. Says so right here. If the Admiral says
it, it’s got to be true.”
I can’t take any more. I fling the flimsy at Bradley.
“Here, Charlie. More toilet paper.”
That goddamned Tannian. Just when I was starting to defend him.
Issuing press releases over my name.
It’s a kick in the head, that’s what. I don’t
mind having my name spread all over Confederation. That’ll
help the book when it comes out. But I want the words by which
I’m known to be my own.
I can cut my own wrists just fine, Admiral. Don’t give me
any help.
Maybe Johnson’s fate and Command’s failure to
acknowledge it are making me a little touchy. I don’t know.
But these cockamamie reports have got to stop.
I suppose it’s time to follow through on a project
that’s hung around the back of my mind for a month. From here
on in I’ll keep duplicate notes and have somebody smuggle
them out. Let’s see. Somebody to get them off the ship.
Somebody to carry them down to Canaan. Maybe my friend the courier
to carry them back to Luna Command . . .
First I have to survive this Rathgeber raid.
Right now, judging by this release, my assurances that
I’ll be allowed to write what I want are worth the paper
they’re written on.
The bastards. I’m going to pound it to them.
“Don’t get your balls in an uproar,” Varese
sneers. “If you complain, they’ll just look surprised
and say it’s what you’d’ve written if you’d
really filed a report.”
He’s probably right.
The Commander agrees. “It would’ve come out the
same. They’ve probably been publishing under your by-line
since we left. You being out here is too good not to turn into a
circus.”
Yanevich says, “Wouldn’t be surprised if they had an
actor who does live holo reports.”
“I’ll give them reports. I’ll write a bomb
that’ll blow the asses off those charlatans.” I’m
mad, yes, but I have only myself to blame. I should’ve seen
this coming. I had enough clues. It was these dreadfully
false-sounding releases that brought me snooping in the first
place.
“Now, now,” the Commander says. He grins a real
old-time grin. “Just think what you’ll have to say
about the Rathgeber raid.”
“I can’t wait.”
“They might not mention it,” Yanevich says.
“They haven’t admitted losing the base.”
“Little thing like consistency won’t slow them
down.” The Old Man turns my way. “The spooky thing is,
Tannian believes the shit he puts out. He keeps it up in private.
He lives in a whole different universe. I’m going to get us
through this. Whatever it takes. I want you to tell the real
story.”
“That would be nice.” The anger is going.
‘Trouble is, people have been served bullshit so long they
might not believe the truth.”
Piniaz, Varese, and Bradley fidget. Westhause looks bored. They
don’t give a damn what the public believes. All that
interests them is staying alive long enough to get out.
Do Yanevich or the Commander care? This may be a game of spit
and roast with me playing the suckling pig.
“I divided the data into packets,” the Commander
says. On cue, Chief Nicastro appears with several folders.
“Take yours. After we finish our hyper approach, I plan to
order holiday routine. Be a meeting then. Bring your
questions.”
Holiday routine? Sounds like a mistake. Too many men getting too
much time to think.
One man got too much time. Me. I ease into the wardroom in a
near-panic.
I have this feeling that I’ve just moved to the one slot
on death row. I’ve quit duplicating notes almost before
starting. Why bother?
“Mr. Yanevich?”
“All go in Ops, Commander.”
“Mr. Westhause?”
“Concur, Commander. Penetration program ready to
run.”
It better be. He calculated it often enough, trying to reduce
the chance of error. He’s good, this Westhause. Does that
make me confident? Hell no. Something will go wrong.
Murphy’s law.
Chief Nicastro agrees. And the Chief doesn’t suffer in
silence till the Commander has him aside.
“Mr. Piniaz?”
“Go, Commander, though I’m getting minor stress
indicators from the graser. They’ll get four missiles, the
accumulator banks, and whatever your friend can throw with his
popgun.”
I’ve been directed to operate the magnetic cannon. The
Commander wants to hit them as hard as he can. The missiles will be
targeted on Rathgeber’s ship-handling facilities. The energy
weapons are supposed to take out detection and communications
facilities. The rest of the base is mine.
I’ve chosen the tower at the hydrolysis station as my
first target. On follow-up passes I’ll snipe at the solar
power panel banks.
The Commander is contemplating three missile passes. None should
last long enough for us to be targeted.
Why bother with the cannon? Even perfect shooting on my part
will contribute little. The other firm can jury-rig some means of
extracting hydrogen from water. The solar panels are there only as
an emergency backup for the base fusion plant.
“Mr. Bradley?”
“Ship’s Services go, Commander.” He’s
cool. He doesn’t understand what we’re jumping
into.
“Mr. Varese?”
“Commander, I’m damned short on fuel. If we have
to . . . ” He wilts before a basilisk
glare. “Go in Engineering, Commander.”
Does the Old Man have some special interest in this assignment?
He looks willing to sacrifice ship and crew to prove Tannian
incompetent.
Yet the only real fault of the plan is that this isn’t a
traditional Climber mission. Precedent is, perhaps, too important in
Navy.
“You ready to go?” the Commander asks me.
“Of course not.” My grin hurts. “Let me off at
the next corner.”
He frowns. This is no time for whimsy. “I’ll go over
it again. Down to fifty meters in null, over Base Central. Four
seconds in norm. Missiles launch at one-second intervals. Cameras
rolling. Energy weapons on continuous discharge. Same for the
cannon. Then twelve minutes of Climb. That’ll require fast
target evaluation.
“Positional maneuvers in null will conform to lunar
motion. We’ll go norm again at the same point. Two seconds.
Four missiles at half-second intervals. Energy weapons and
cannon.
“Then thirty minutes in null for comprehensive evaluation
and selection of final targets. We’ll take an attack position
suited to neutralizing the most important facilities remaining. Two
seconds for the final salvo. Half-second intervals again.
We’ll then climb and evaluate.
“If the computer recommends it, we’ll continue
attacking with energy weapons. If not, we move out. I estimate our
maximum attack window at two hours . . . If
we’re to escape the hunter-killers.
“Gentlemen, the actual attack looks like an exercise. I
don’t see how they can stop us. Getting away will be the
problem. Questions?”
Again, scores are left unasked. Sometimes you’d rather not
know.
“All right. Have the men take care of their business. We
begin in a half hour.” He catches my arm as I start to go.
“Don’t miss a thing on this one. If we luck
through . . . I want it all on the
record.”
“If? It’s an exercise, remember?”
“The easy ones never are. Murphy’s law operates on
the inverse-square principle.” He grins.
“I can’t follow anything from the cannon
board.”
“I had Carmon bug Engineering and Ops for you. A plug for
each pointy little ear. You’ll hear everything. Have the men
fill in any blanks later.”
“Whatever you say.” Resigned, I collect notebook and
recorder and get in line outside the Admiral’s stateroom. The
place is drawing a crowd. There’re all the usual cracks about
taking a number, selling tickets, and using someone’s
pocket.
I finish with time to spare, so I visit Kriegshauser, who looks
in need of encouragement, and Fearless. All the activity has the
cat edgy. He knows its meaning. He’s not fond of Climb. I
even grab a few seconds with Fisherman. “I’m no good at
praying. Say one for me, will you?”
“Ability has nothing to do with it, sir. He hears every
prayer. Just accept Christ as your Savior
and . . . ” The alarm cuts him short.
The cannon board control chair seems harder than usual. I set
out my notekeeping materials, start writing. My hand shakes too
much. I concentrate on getting Carmon’s talking earplugs into
place. The hyper alarm sounds before I finish. I see Holtsnider
looking my way, smiling nervously. I wave in pure bravado.
Climb alarm.
It’s begun. We’re on our way. I feel cold. Very
cold. My pores are twisted into tight little knots. I’m
shivering. Air temperature is down, but not that much.
It begins, as always, with waiting. The seconds grind slowly
away. At hour two Westhause takes us down just long enough to make
sure he won’t have to fine-tune his approach.
Rathgeber’s sun is the brightest star.
There’s nothing to do but think.
Are they keeping a close watch out there? Did they see us
drop?
Just sitting here waiting for the walls to cave in. We’re
in the final leg of our approach. I have the cannon pre-aimed.
I’ve gone through the numbers four times, just to have
something to do.
Nothing is happening anywhere. The bugs are a waste. Except for
occasional muffled remarks from the First Watch Officer or
Commander, Ops could pass as a tomb. From Engineering there’s
nothing but Varese’s occasional remark to Diekereide
bemoaning the fuel situation. And, of course, the endless,
repetitive, ritualistic status reports. Those I tune out
automatically.
It’s no different in Weapons, though it was livelier while
they were arming, testing, and programming the first missile
flight. The tests have been re-run and the programming
double-checked. Done to death for something to do.
Just like an exercise. As the Commander promised.
So why are we all scared shitless?
“Five minutes.” Nicastro is doing the time-scoring.
His voice betrays as much humanity as that of a talking
computer.
We must be close. Within a few kilometers of our point of
appearance. We’re playing mouse in the walls of the universe,
looking for the perfect hole to the inside. A mouse armed to his
cute little teeth.
It seems incredible that the other firm won’t know
anything till we start shooting. All my instincts say they’ll
be waiting with a megaton of death in each hand.
God, this waiting is shitty. The fear thoughts, the what ifs,
keep chasing one another round my head like a litter of kittens
playing tag. My palms are cold and wet. I keep moving slowly and
carefully so as not to do anything clumsy. I don’t want the
others to see how shaky I am.
They don’t look scared. Just professional, businesslike.
Inside, though, they probably feel the way I do. I don’t see
how it can be helped. We’re great pretenders, we
warriors.
Shit. Almost time. God, get me through this one and
I’ll . . .
I’ll what?
The patrol is getting to me. I’ve been rude to or
belligerent with almost everybody today. I have a lot of fear and
nervous energy pressure-bottled inside me.
I’m not the only Sam Sullen. I see fewer smiles, hear
fewer jokes. The tone of the crew is quieter. There’s an
unmentioned but obvious increase in tension between individuals.
There’ll be a fight before long. Something has to act as a
valve to relieve pressure.
I’ll hang around Ops till it happens. I don’t want
to be part of the process. The Old Man’s inhibiting effect
makes Ops the safest place to be.
Piniaz has the watch when I arrive. The Commander is on hand.
Command has responded to our report. Finally.
“The sons of bitches,” Piniaz growls.
The Commander hands me a message flimsy. It’s a
congratulatory message. Over Tannian’s chop.
“Not one goddamned word about Johnson,” Piniaz
mutters. “The brass-bottomed bastards. Be the same fucking
thing when we get ours. Some sad sack of shit will move us to the
inactive file, wait a goddamned year, then send the
regret-to-informs.”
Nicastro gives Piniaz a poisonous look. His hands are shaking
and white.
“Goddamned printout form letter, that’s what they
send. Full of Tannian’s bullshit about valiant warriors
making the supreme sacrifice. Jesus. Talk about
insensitive.”
I get in the way as the Chief lets fly. Startled, he pulls the
punch. I tap him back and ask, “How are they hanging,
Chief?” He settles into an embarrassed calm.
Piniaz missed the swing, but catches enough of the postmortem to
understand. He cans the bitching.
Too many eyes missed nothing. Word gets around.
Maybe this will give me my breakthrough. One ordinary
occurrence, entirely unplanned. After all that time trying to
engineer something.
The Commander is first to mention the incident. In private, of
course. “Happened to notice something odd this
morning,” he says, between sips of coffee brewed to spice
another of our sparring sessions.
“Uhm? I doubt it.”
“Doubt what?”
“That you happened to do anything. You
choreograph your breathing.”
He permits himself a weak, weary, sardonic smile. “You
handled that pretty good. Could have caused trouble. Ito
would’ve insisted on his prerogatives.” He goes to work
on his pipe. “You always were good at that. Guess I’ll
have to chew the Chief.” He finds whatever it is that
displeases him about the pipe’s bowl, returns the instrument
to his pocket.
“Sometimes a patrol goes sour after a fight. Just gets
hairier. Like moral gangrene. Between officer and enlisted is bad.
Turns the crew into armed camps.” He reaches for the pipe,
realizes he’s fiddled it half to death already. “You
bought some time. Maybe the Chief will take a look at himself
now.” After a pause, “Guess I’ll tell department
heads to lean on the big-mouths.”
I can imagine the potential for disaster. A blow struck relieves
pressure but plants a seed. Establishes a precedent. We need some
sort of distraction. Pity there’s no room anywhere for
athletics.
“You might suggest that Mr. Piniaz be less
abrasive.”
His eyebrows rise.
“I know. He just said what we’re all thinking.
It’s not what he said. It’s the way he said
it. It’s the way he says everything.”
Still he says nothing.
“Damn it, the man doesn’t have to keep proving
he’s as good as everybody else. We know it. That Old Earther
shoulder chip is going to get his head twisted.”
“Could be me doing it, too. I’m tired of it. But
what can you do? People will be what they are. They have to learn
the hard way.”
He’s been leading me along. I figure it’s time to
punch back. “And you? What’s your chip? What’s
eating you?”
His face darkens like an old house with the lights going out. He
gulps his coffee, leaves without answering. I don’t think to
call after him.
Kriegshauser materializes immediately, ostensibly to clean up.
But he has something on his mind. He makes a production of the
simple task.
I’ve barely tasted my coffee. “You drink this stuff,
Kriegshauser? Want the rest? Go ahead. Sit down.” I’m
sure he gets his sips off each batch. Real coffee is too great a
temptation.
“Thank you, sir. Yes sir. I will.”
I wait, unsure how to draw him out. Like everyone else aboard
this mobile asylum, the real Kriegshauser is well hidden.
He finds his nerve. “I’ve got a problem,
Lieutenant.”
“Yes?”
Kriegshauser chomps his lower lip. “Sex problem,
sir.”
“Ah?” It’s hard to disbelieve the claim that
he never bathes nor changes his underwear. His personal mass must
consist entirely of deodorant and cologne. He reeks.
“This’s my fifth patrol on this ship.”
I nod. I know that much.
“They won’t let me off. I’ve put
in.”
What does that have to do with boy-girl? Maybe nothing. Few of
us are direct.
“There’s this other guy that’s been on,
too . . . ” It gushes.
“Been trying to get me to make it. Putting on pressure.
Kept my requests from going through. That’s why I don’t
wash. It’s not for luck, like the guys think. Anyway,
he’s got me against the wall.”
“How so?”
“There was this girl, see? Leave before last. Said she was
eighteen. Well, she wasn’t. And she was a runaway.”
So? I think. The universe festers with unhappy people. Too many
of them are children.
“She was using me to get at her parents.”
“Uhn?” That happens. Far too often.
“I found out last leave, when I tried to look her up. Her
parents are big in Command. And they’re out for blood. The
kid jobbed me, but they think I did her. When they caught up with
her, she was too far gone for an abortion.”
“You sure it was you?” That’s a reasonable
question considering the situation on Canaan. Anger darkens his
face. I change the subject. He cares about the girl. “This
other party found out?”
“Yes sir. And if I don’t come across, he passes the
word on me.”
Sexual harassment? Here? It’s hard to credit. “Why
tell me? I could be the eido. I could put it in my book. Or I could
pass the word myself. Don’t officers always stick
together?”
“Got to talk to somebody. And you don’t finger
people.”
Wish I was as sure of me as he is.
An advice columnist I’m not. As bad as I’ve screwed
up my own life, I’d be a positive peril counseling anyone
else. “Is he bluffing?”
“No sir. He’s tried petty shit before. Did it to my
friend Landtroop.”
“How about you just tell him you’ll kick the shit
out of him if he don’t back off?”
“I’d be bluffing.”
I nod. That’s understandable. We’re military and at
war. And the thought of personal violence is repellent. An act like
Nicastro’s occurs only under stress. People are schooled from
childhood to contain their animal violence. Society does a fine
job. Then we take the kids and make them warriors. We’re a
curiously contrary breed of ape.
“The damage would be done already, wouldn’t
it?”
“I suppose. But what would happen if he did talk?
We’re talking staff-type parents, aren’t we?”
Staff people are in a position to exact agonizing bureaucratic
revenges.
“I don’t want to find out, sir. I just want to get
my ten, get laid in between, and get the hell out when I can. Maybe
move to a training billet.”
Few Climber people expect to survive the war. Most suspect
they’re playing for the losing team anyway. All they want to
do is survive.
This is a strange kind of war. No end in sight. No out till
it’s over, unless you’re torn up so bad you’re
good for nothing but dog food or sitting by the window at the
veteran’s hospital. None of that hope for tomorrow which
usually animates the young. It’s a war of despair.
“That’s what you stand to lose. What about
him?”
“Huh?”
“It can’t be all one way. Isn’t he vulnerable
too?” I feel like an ass, playing games with people’s
lives. But I asked for it. I made a deal with Mephistopheles. You
can’t be selective about getting into lives. I want to know
and understand the crew. The cook is one of them. There’ll be
no understanding him without dealing with his problem. Otherwise
he’ll remain a simple human curiosity, a bundle of odd
quirks.
“Not that I know of, sir.”
“Let’s backtrack. How did he find out about the
girl?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Who’d you tell?”
“Just Landtroop and Vossbrink, sir.”
“Landtroop? You mentioned him before.”
“Kurt Landtroop. He was here last patrol. Went cadre. We
spent our leaves together.”
“The three of you?”
“Yes sir. What’re you getting at, sir?”
“You talked to Voss? Ask him if he told
anybody?”
“Why, sir?”
“If you only told two people, one of them told somebody
else. I’d guess Landtroop. You said he was under the same
pressure. You should make sure.” He’s being
intentionally dense. Doesn’t want to involve his friends,
doesn’t want to risk his faith in them. Maybe he figures
he’ll lose his best friend if he questions Vossbrink. A very
insecure young man. “You need to isolate the leak. It could
give you a handle. Get back to me after you talk to Voss.
I’ll think on it meantime.”
“All right, sir.” He isn’t pleased. He wants
miracles. He wants me to push a magic button and make everything
right. It’s a nasty little habit we humans have, wanting an
easy way out. “Thanks for the coffee, sir.”
“You’re welcome.” It would help if he could
give me a name. I could corner the predator and threaten him with
my book. Power of the press, what? But Kriegshauser won’t
reveal it. I don’t have to ask to know that. The fear in him
is obvious.
There could be a second side, too. We humans, even when we try,
tend to tint the facts. Kriegshauser might be doing more than
tinting.
My proposed book is a for-instance. I want to be objective. I
plan to be objective. Of course. But how objective can I be? I saw
little of Command and wasn’t impressed by what I did see. I
identify with the fighting men too much already. I’m too much
tempted to ignore the reasons why they have to endure this
hell . . .
I snort in self-mockery. I’m a powerful man. One reason
these people won’t open up is that they’re afraid of
what I’ll do to them in print. So I’m a species of eido
after all.
The occasional threat might have amazing results.
Yanevich says that clown Tannian has ballyhooed my presence
since I boarded the Climber. He’s promised all Confederation
a report from inside, the true story of the everyday life of
heroes. His PR people are good. Half the population will be waiting
breathlessly. Oh, ye mighty megaConmarks, gather ye in mine
account—
I think Fearless Fred is going to be pissed. I think he assumes
I’ll follow the Party line.
Can I really do it straight? I really am afraid I won’t
give the broader picture that shows why Command does
things that make the men in the trenches furious.
My real coup, arranging participation in a Climber mission,
didn’t reside in getting the Admiral to agree. The man is
publicity-mad. No, it was getting the predators senior to Tannian
to guarantee not to interfere with what I write. I conned them.
They think I have to show the warts or the public won’t
believe.
Maybe the coup isn’t that great, though. Maybe they
outsmarted me. Tannian’s foes are legion, and bitter. A lot
of them reside in Luna Command. The guarantees could be a ploy to
discredit the popular hero.
I haven’t found anything but warts. So many warts
that an imp voice keeps telling me to hedge my bets, to be sure I
get past not only Tannian but that coterie of Admirals eager to
defame him.
After talking to Kriegshauser, I clamber into my hammock.
It’s been an exhausting few days.
The loss of Johnson’s Climber finally rips through the
shroud of more immediate concerns. I replay the entire incident,
looking for something we might have done differently. And end up
shedding tears.
I give up trying to force the gates of slumber and go looking
for the cat. Fearless confesses this confessor. He’s awfully
patient with me.
He remains as elusive as the eido.
Despite the long, enforced proximity of the patrol, I’ve
begun feeling lonely. I’ve begun detecting traces of the same
internal desolation on other faces.
I’m not unique in remembering our sisters. The long,
leave-me-alone faces are everywhere. It’s a quiet ship
today.
Our ship and Johnson’s had an unofficial relationship for
a long time, a romance that was a metal wedding, a family
understanding. The two hunted and played together through a dozen
patrols and leaves, beginning long before anyone in either crew
came aboard. In the Climbers that makes an ancient tradition.
I find myself asking a bulkhead, “Do Climbers mate for
life?” Will we, like some great, goofy bird, now go hunting
our own demise? Have we become a rogue bachelor?
An inattentive part of me notes that the bulkhead has grown a
layer of feltlike fur, like blue-green moleskin. I touch it. My
finger leaves a track. I wander off, forgetting it.
In Engineering I find a surly Varese supervising two men
cleaning the guts of a junction box with what smells like carbolic.
“What’s up?”
“Fucking mold.”
I recall the moleskin wall. “Ah?” I don’t see
anything here.
In Weapons half the off-watch are scrubbing and polishing. The
carbolic smell is overpowering. Here the fur is everywhere, on
every painted surface. It has a black-green tinge. The paler green
paint seems to be the mold’s favorite snack.
“How the hell does it get in here?” I ask
Holtsnider. “Seems it’d be wiped out going through
TerVeen.”
“They’ve tried everything, sir. Just no way to get
every spore. It comes in with crew, food, and equipment.”
Well. A distraction. Instead of pining about dead women, I can
research mold.
It’s an Old Earth strain that has adapted to Canaan,
becoming a vigorous, fecund beast in the transition. Left
unchecked, it can pit metal and foul atmosphere with its odor and
spores. Though more nuisance than threat, it becomes dangerous if
it reaches sensitive printed circuitry. The heat and humidity of
Climb encourage explosive growth. Climber people hate it with an
unreasoning passion. They invest it with a symbolic value I
don’t understand.
“Who won the pool?” I ask as I enter Ops, still
having found no sign of Fearless.
Blank faces turn my way. These men are busy with mold and
mourning, too.
Laramie catches on. “Baake, in Weapons. The little
shit-head.”
Rose nods glumly, head bobbing on a pull-string. He says,
“He only bought one goddamned slip. To get us to quit
bothering him. Ain’t that a bite in the ass?”
“Better get him to teach you his system,” Yanevich
suggests, with a heaviness that implies this scene has been played
before. “You only need one when it’s the right
one.”
“Useless goddamned electric moron.” Rose kicks the
main computer. “You screwed me out of a month’s pay,
you know that? What the fuck good are you if you can’t figure
out . . . ”
Laramie and Throdahl bait him halfheartedly. Others join in.
They start to show some spirit.
It’s a distraction, the cut-low game. Not an amusement
anymore. They go at it viciously, but no tempers flare.
They’re too drained to get mad.
Throdahl’s comm gear pings gently. The games die. Work
stops. Everyone stares at the radioman.
We’re lying dead in space beside the instelled beacon. The
rest of the squadron is parsecs away. We assume that we’ll be
ordered to catch up.
Command has other ideas. Only now does Fisherman tell me
we’ve been awaiting special orders.
That little ping brings the Commander swinging down
from his cabin, an ape in a metal jungle. “Code book,”
he calls ahead. Chief Nicastro produces the key he wears on a chain
around his neck. He opens a small locker. The closure is symbolic.
The box is hardly more than foil. A screwdriver could break it
open.
The Chief takes out a looseleaf book and pack of color-coded
plastic cards banded with magnetic stripes.
“Card four, Chief,” the Commander says after a
glance at the pattern on Throdahl’s screen. He slides the
card into a slot. Throdahl thumbs through the code book. He uses a
grease pencil to decode on the screen itself.
Only the initial and final groups translate:
commander’s eyes only and acknowledge.
Muttering, the Old Man scribbles the text groups in his
notebook, clambers back to his hideout. Shortly, a thunderous,
“Jesus fucking Christ with a wooden leg!” rips through
the compartment. Pale faces turn upward. “Throdahl, send the
acknowledge. Mr. Yanevich, tell Mr. Varese to establish a lock
connect with the beacon.”
The beacon begins feeding a sector status update while
he’s talking. Our chase, kill, and escape has kept us out of
the biggest Climber operation of the war.
The convoy that took so long to gather at Thompson’s
System is on the move. Second Fleet pecked at it and let it get
away. In his grandiose way, Tannian has declared that none of those
empty hulls will survive his attentions. One hundred twelve and one
twenty are the estimates. Thirty-four Climbers are in the hunt.
Every ship in three squadrons. Except ours and Johnson’s.
“Shee-it,” Nicastro says softly. “That’s
one hell of a big iron herd.” His eyes are wide and
frightened.
“Bet that escort figure goes up fast,” Yanevich
says.
“Hell. With that many Climbers they should take the escort
first.”
“Smells like a trap to me,” I say. “With bait
Tannian couldn’t resist.”
The fighting hasn’t yet begun. Our brethren are still
maneuvering into attack positions.
At first I think the Commander is upset because he’s been
ordered into the cauldron, too. Wrong. The sense of that is too
clear. Instead, our orders are bizarre.
The Old Man explains over coffee, in the wardroom, with all
officers present.
“Gentlemen, we’ve been chosen—because of our
superb record!—to initiate a new era of Climber
warfare.” There’s an ironic cast to his smile. He taps
a flimsy. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t make it up.
I’m just telling you what it says here. We’re supposed
to take advantage of the brawl back yonder.” He jerks his
head as if in a specific direction.
He doesn’t pass the message around. He holds to the
eyes-only rule. “A hint or two here that they had this
planned all along. It’s why we were off chasing that
Leviathan. Johnson was supposed to go in with us.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I mutter. “What the
hell is it?”
He smiles that grim shipboard smile. “We’re going to
scrub the Rathgeber installations. Right when the other team needs
them most.”
Puzzled silence. Makes a strange strategic sense. With
Rathgeber’s backing the hunter-killers will have a field
day, finding thirty-four Climbers in one small sector.
“Didn’t we just get out of there?” I ask, more
to break the silence than because I want to know.
“Sure. We were a couple of days away. Still are, on
another leg of a triangle.” He muses, “Rathgeber. Named
for Eustaces Rathgeber, fourteenth President of Commonweal
Presidium. Brought Old Earth into Confederation. Only moon of
Lambda Vesta One, a super-Jovian, sole planet of Lambda
Vesta.” He smiles weakly.
“Been doing my homework. For what it’s worth, the
base started out as a research station. Navy took over when the
research outfit lost its grant. The other firm picked it up during
their first sweep.”
The wardroom echoes,
“But . . . ” like a single-stroke
engine having trouble getting started. The Commander ignores
us.
“We’ll hyper in to just outside detection limits.
That and the other intelligence data we’ll need will be
assembled aboard the beacon. They have a printer. Then we Climb and
move in. We go down, tear the place apart, and run like
hell.”
“What the fuck kind of idiot scheme is that?” Piniaz
demands. “Rathgeber? We use our missiles up, we won’t
have anything to shoot back with while we’re getting away.
Hell, they’ve got fifty hunters ported there.”
“Sixty-four.”
“So how the hell do we get out?”
No one questions our ability to get in, or to smash the base.
It’s not a plum ripe for picking. I’ve been there.
It’s tough.
“Maybe Command doesn’t care about that,”
Yanevich says.
“Nobody will be home but base personnel,” the
Commander counters. “This convoy operation will draw them
off. Tannian isn’t stupid. He figures it’s a trap. So
we give them what they want, then scrub Rathgeber so they
can’t take advantage. Hell, everybody’s always saying
it’d be a rabbit shoot out here if it weren’t for
Rathgeber.”
It makes sense. The strategic sort of sense, where a chess
player sacrifices a pawn to take a bishop. Rathgeber’s loss
would hurt the other team bad, just as we’d be bad hurt if
Canaan went.
The Old Man continues, “I think the Admiral is counting on
us to pull the escort off the convoy.”
“Hitting them with rabbit punches,” Bradley mumbles.
He and I lean against a bulkhead, staring down at the in-group.
“Threaten here, threaten there, make them drop their game
plan.”
“Right out of the book.”
He shrugs.
The Old Man says, “Our problem will be ground and orbital
defenses. Intelligence is supposed to give us what we need, but how
good will the data be? Those clowns can’t figure what side of
their ass goes in back. Anybody ever been to Rathgeber?”
I wave a reluctant finger. “Yeah. A two-day stopover six
years ago. I can’t tell you much.”
“What about defenses? You were gunnery.”
“They’ll have beefed them up.”
“You look them over? How’s their reaction time? They
won’t have messed with detection and fire control.”
“What do I know?”
“What size launch window can we expect? Can we do it in
one pass? Will we have to keep bouncing up and down?’
“I spent my time getting snockered. What I saw looked
standard. Human decision factor. You’ll get seven seconds for
your first pass. After that you only get the time it takes them to
aim.”
“Very unprofessional. You should’ve anticipated.
Isn’t that what they taught us? Never mind. I forgive
you.”
I stare at the Commander. Why has he accepted a mission he
doesn’t like? He has the right to refuse.
No one suggests that.
They bitch about Command’s insane strategies but always go
along.
“Mr. Westhause, program the fly. We’ll take hyper as
soon as all the data comes dirough.” He steeples his fingers
before his face. “Till tomorrow, gentlemen. Bring some
thoughts. I want to be in and out before this convoy thing blows
up. Our friends are counting on us.”
I smile grimly. He really hopes we get an extended leave out of
this.
Is Marie in his thoughts? He hasn’t mentioned her for a
long time.
Wonder what she did after we left. By now she must think
we’re done. Our squadron is overdue. Command knows
we’re alive, but they don’t keep civilians posted.
Varese keeps fidgeting. He decides to tell us what’s on
his mind. “We’ve been out a long time, Commander.
We’re way down on hydrogen and CT.”
“Mr. Westhause, see if there’s a water beacon on our
way.”
We haven’t spent much time under pursuit, but daily Climb
routine draws steadily on our CT. Normal hydrogen is less of a
problem. Some beacons maintain water tanks for in-patrol
refueling.
That’s the Engineer mentality surfacing. It compels them
to start having seizures when fuel stores reach a certain level of
depletion. The disease is peculiar to the breed. They’ve got
to have that fat margin. In the bombards they got antsy when down
by 10 percent. At 20 percent they kept everyone awake dragging
their fingernails over the commander’s door.
They want that margin “in case of emergency.”
Varese is less excitable than most Engineers.
“We won’t need much CT after we shake loose,”
the Commander muses. “We’ll burn what’s left
going home anyway. We can pick up more water anytime.”
Once a Climber concludes active patrol, she remains on
annihilation till she has just enough left to sneak in to Canaan.
Venting excess is too dangerous, especially near TerVeen.
A Climber is most vulnerable before CT fueling and after final
CT consumption. Those are the times when she needs big brothers and
sisters to look out for her. She’s just another warship then.
A puny, fragile, lightly armed, slow, and easily destroyed warship.
Vulnerability is why she has a mother take her out to Fuel
Point.
Climbers aren’t sluggers. They’re guerrillas. In the
open they’re easy meat.
Lieutenant Varese takes no reassurance from the
Commander’s confidence. Engineers never do. A wide streak of
pessimism is a must in the profession.
“Any more questions?”
There are. No one cares to broach them.
The Commander allows us to board the beacon. I go through the
hatch just to see how those people live.
Holy shit! Fresh faces! Clean faces. Well-fed, smiling faces,
with welcomes for the heroes of the universe. Gleaming,
apple-cheeked babies. But no women, damn it.
We look like prisoners lately released from a medieval dungeon.
Sallow, gaunt, filthy, wild of hair and eye, a little tentative and
timid.
Damn! There really are other
people . . .
Right now, the first few minutes, while we’re staring at
the beacon crew, I feel a fresh wind blowing on our morale.
It’s a cool gale driving away a poisonous smog. Some of the
men grin, shake hands, clap backs.
There’s a shower! Rumor says there’s a shower! These
boys must live like maharajahs. Crafty old me, I disguise myself as
a great spacedog and con one of the lads into showing me the way.
I’m first man there. Hot needles nibble and sting my crusty
skin. I bellow tuneless refrains, luxuriate in the warmth, the
massagelike effect.
“Hurry up in there, goddamnit! Sir.”
Shouldn’t be a pig, should I? There’s a line out
there now. “One minute.” Grinning, I thunder out the
“Outward Bound.” Several men threaten to make it a
shower I’ll remember the rest of a very short life.
They have sinks, too. Several of them. Men line up there too,
shaving. Don’t think I will, though. I’m used to mine
now. Completes the spacedog disguise.
Tarjan Zntoins, a Missileman, begins hopping about in a parody
of an old-time sailor’s hornpipe while his compartment mates
honk and hoot, using their hands as instrumental accompaniment.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
The beacon is a one-time Star Line freighter. Big mother.
Only the quarters are in use these days. The crew of nine have
been out here four months. They’re eager for fresh faces,
too. Their long vigil is lonely, though never as harrowing as ours.
Their tachyon man tells me he’s been in beacons since the
beginning. He’s had only two contacts in all that time.
They’re overdue for relief. Three months is their usual
stint. A converted luxury liner makes regular rounds, changing
crews each three months. Something is happening, though. Command
has withdrawn the liner.
They’re hungry for news. What’s going on? How come
they’ve been extended? Poor bastards. In continuous contact
with Command and kept constantly ignorant. I tell them I
don’t know a thing.
Great guys, these people. They put on a spread. A meal fit for a
king. Command didn’t skip the luxuries here.
The mess decks are small. We wolf our feast in shifts, dallying
and stalling while our successors curse us for farting around.
One last trip to the can. Isn’t this great? No waiting. I
take another look at my beard. I look like a real space pirate.
Like Eric the Red, or somebody. I give it a big trim, to a nice
point beneath my chin. There. Gives me the look of a pale devil.
The girls will love it.
“Attention. Climber personnel. Return to your ship. Please
return to your ship.”
The holiday is over. “Up yours, Nicastro,” I
mutter.
On my way I stop by the beacon’s vegetable crate of an
office, liberate a half ream of clean paper. I’m tired of
keeping notes on scraps.
Command’s intelligence is astonishingly detailed. Tannian
has had this raid in his trick bag a long time. The man is a little
brighter than his detractors admit.
The orbital data for Rathgeber have been redefined to the
microsecond and millimeter, finer than we need or can handle. We
could make a setdown in null, using the data.
The defense intelligence looks just as good. Surface and holo
charts, which can be fed to the display tank, detail scores of
active and passive systems, revealing their fields of fire and kill
ranges. The companion fire control grids look as though they were
lifted from Rathgeber’s Combat Information Center.
Alterations to the original Navy installation are carefully and
prominently noted.
“We must have a guy on the inside,” Piniaz chortles.
He’s delighted with the information.
“Bastards probably gundecked the whole thing,”
Yanevich counters. “Made it look solid so idiots like us
would go in with smiles on our clocks.”
“I doubt it,” I say. “I mean, Tannian only
looks like a prick of the first water. He’ll throw lives
around like poker chips, but I don’t see him wasting
many.”
“For once we agree,” Piniaz says. “This was
put together right. And saved for the right time.”
Yanevich won’t flee the field. “Yeah? Wonder what
the big brain had to say about our chances of getting out. Bet you
won’t find that in there anywhere.”
I say, “Only thing I question is the need for the raid.
And why they’re sending a Climber.”
Sourly, Yanevich says, “Fishing for propaganda points
inside Navy. It’s a job for the heavies.”
“Regular units couldn’t get past the orbital
defenses,” Piniaz snaps. “And maybe we don’t know
everything. Could be some other reason, too.”
The Commander says, “Maybe it’s occurred to them
that this’s a classic way to get rid of an
embarrassment.” He drives one hand into a shirt grown ragged
with continuous wear, pauses momentarily. One eye narrows as he
looks at me. A what-the-hell crosses his face. “Friend of
mine slipped this into the intelligence dispatch.” He throws
out a piece of flimsy.
Yanevich snatches it. “Shee-it!” He flips it to
Piniaz. Ito reads it, gives me an unreadable look, passes it on. It
finally meanders around to me.
It’s a typical Command press release, describing the Main
Battle encounter. That the vessel we destroyed was crippled
isn’t mentioned. Neither is the loss of Johnson’s
Climber. The only outright untruths are improbable patriotic quotes
attributed to my companions . . .
And to me. In fact, the whole damned thing is supposed to be my
report from the front! “I’ll kick that asshole
right in the cocksucker!” My juice squeezie ricochets off a
bulkhead. “He can’t do that to me!”
“Nice throw,” Yanevich observes. “Smooth. No
break in your wrist.”
According to the release, I filed a report running,
thematically, “Shoulder to
shoulder . . . Heedless of the death screaming
round them . . . United in their implacable
will to exact retribution from the destroyers of Bronwen and
plunderers of Sierra . . . ”
“Shit. ‘Shoulder to shoulder’ is the only true
thing here. Should’ve said asshole to elbow. Screaming? In
vacuum? Where the hell is Bronwen? I never heard of it. And Sierra
is such a nothing we didn’t bother defending it.”
Grinning, Yanevich intones, “ ‘Driven by the justice
of their cause . . . ’ ”
Piniaz titters. “ ‘Inspired by the memories of the
slavery these vermin impose . . . Every man a
hero . . . ’ Hey. You’re one hell
of a writer.”
“Sure. When butterflies give milk.”
“You saying I ain’t a hero? I’ll sue, you
slanderer. I can prove it. Says so right here. If the Admiral says
it, it’s got to be true.”
I can’t take any more. I fling the flimsy at Bradley.
“Here, Charlie. More toilet paper.”
That goddamned Tannian. Just when I was starting to defend him.
Issuing press releases over my name.
It’s a kick in the head, that’s what. I don’t
mind having my name spread all over Confederation. That’ll
help the book when it comes out. But I want the words by which
I’m known to be my own.
I can cut my own wrists just fine, Admiral. Don’t give me
any help.
Maybe Johnson’s fate and Command’s failure to
acknowledge it are making me a little touchy. I don’t know.
But these cockamamie reports have got to stop.
I suppose it’s time to follow through on a project
that’s hung around the back of my mind for a month. From here
on in I’ll keep duplicate notes and have somebody smuggle
them out. Let’s see. Somebody to get them off the ship.
Somebody to carry them down to Canaan. Maybe my friend the courier
to carry them back to Luna Command . . .
First I have to survive this Rathgeber raid.
Right now, judging by this release, my assurances that
I’ll be allowed to write what I want are worth the paper
they’re written on.
The bastards. I’m going to pound it to them.
“Don’t get your balls in an uproar,” Varese
sneers. “If you complain, they’ll just look surprised
and say it’s what you’d’ve written if you’d
really filed a report.”
He’s probably right.
The Commander agrees. “It would’ve come out the
same. They’ve probably been publishing under your by-line
since we left. You being out here is too good not to turn into a
circus.”
Yanevich says, “Wouldn’t be surprised if they had an
actor who does live holo reports.”
“I’ll give them reports. I’ll write a bomb
that’ll blow the asses off those charlatans.” I’m
mad, yes, but I have only myself to blame. I should’ve seen
this coming. I had enough clues. It was these dreadfully
false-sounding releases that brought me snooping in the first
place.
“Now, now,” the Commander says. He grins a real
old-time grin. “Just think what you’ll have to say
about the Rathgeber raid.”
“I can’t wait.”
“They might not mention it,” Yanevich says.
“They haven’t admitted losing the base.”
“Little thing like consistency won’t slow them
down.” The Old Man turns my way. “The spooky thing is,
Tannian believes the shit he puts out. He keeps it up in private.
He lives in a whole different universe. I’m going to get us
through this. Whatever it takes. I want you to tell the real
story.”
“That would be nice.” The anger is going.
‘Trouble is, people have been served bullshit so long they
might not believe the truth.”
Piniaz, Varese, and Bradley fidget. Westhause looks bored. They
don’t give a damn what the public believes. All that
interests them is staying alive long enough to get out.
Do Yanevich or the Commander care? This may be a game of spit
and roast with me playing the suckling pig.
“I divided the data into packets,” the Commander
says. On cue, Chief Nicastro appears with several folders.
“Take yours. After we finish our hyper approach, I plan to
order holiday routine. Be a meeting then. Bring your
questions.”
Holiday routine? Sounds like a mistake. Too many men getting too
much time to think.
One man got too much time. Me. I ease into the wardroom in a
near-panic.
I have this feeling that I’ve just moved to the one slot
on death row. I’ve quit duplicating notes almost before
starting. Why bother?
“Mr. Yanevich?”
“All go in Ops, Commander.”
“Mr. Westhause?”
“Concur, Commander. Penetration program ready to
run.”
It better be. He calculated it often enough, trying to reduce
the chance of error. He’s good, this Westhause. Does that
make me confident? Hell no. Something will go wrong.
Murphy’s law.
Chief Nicastro agrees. And the Chief doesn’t suffer in
silence till the Commander has him aside.
“Mr. Piniaz?”
“Go, Commander, though I’m getting minor stress
indicators from the graser. They’ll get four missiles, the
accumulator banks, and whatever your friend can throw with his
popgun.”
I’ve been directed to operate the magnetic cannon. The
Commander wants to hit them as hard as he can. The missiles will be
targeted on Rathgeber’s ship-handling facilities. The energy
weapons are supposed to take out detection and communications
facilities. The rest of the base is mine.
I’ve chosen the tower at the hydrolysis station as my
first target. On follow-up passes I’ll snipe at the solar
power panel banks.
The Commander is contemplating three missile passes. None should
last long enough for us to be targeted.
Why bother with the cannon? Even perfect shooting on my part
will contribute little. The other firm can jury-rig some means of
extracting hydrogen from water. The solar panels are there only as
an emergency backup for the base fusion plant.
“Mr. Bradley?”
“Ship’s Services go, Commander.” He’s
cool. He doesn’t understand what we’re jumping
into.
“Mr. Varese?”
“Commander, I’m damned short on fuel. If we have
to . . . ” He wilts before a basilisk
glare. “Go in Engineering, Commander.”
Does the Old Man have some special interest in this assignment?
He looks willing to sacrifice ship and crew to prove Tannian
incompetent.
Yet the only real fault of the plan is that this isn’t a
traditional Climber mission. Precedent is, perhaps, too important in
Navy.
“You ready to go?” the Commander asks me.
“Of course not.” My grin hurts. “Let me off at
the next corner.”
He frowns. This is no time for whimsy. “I’ll go over
it again. Down to fifty meters in null, over Base Central. Four
seconds in norm. Missiles launch at one-second intervals. Cameras
rolling. Energy weapons on continuous discharge. Same for the
cannon. Then twelve minutes of Climb. That’ll require fast
target evaluation.
“Positional maneuvers in null will conform to lunar
motion. We’ll go norm again at the same point. Two seconds.
Four missiles at half-second intervals. Energy weapons and
cannon.
“Then thirty minutes in null for comprehensive evaluation
and selection of final targets. We’ll take an attack position
suited to neutralizing the most important facilities remaining. Two
seconds for the final salvo. Half-second intervals again.
We’ll then climb and evaluate.
“If the computer recommends it, we’ll continue
attacking with energy weapons. If not, we move out. I estimate our
maximum attack window at two hours . . . If
we’re to escape the hunter-killers.
“Gentlemen, the actual attack looks like an exercise. I
don’t see how they can stop us. Getting away will be the
problem. Questions?”
Again, scores are left unasked. Sometimes you’d rather not
know.
“All right. Have the men take care of their business. We
begin in a half hour.” He catches my arm as I start to go.
“Don’t miss a thing on this one. If we luck
through . . . I want it all on the
record.”
“If? It’s an exercise, remember?”
“The easy ones never are. Murphy’s law operates on
the inverse-square principle.” He grins.
“I can’t follow anything from the cannon
board.”
“I had Carmon bug Engineering and Ops for you. A plug for
each pointy little ear. You’ll hear everything. Have the men
fill in any blanks later.”
“Whatever you say.” Resigned, I collect notebook and
recorder and get in line outside the Admiral’s stateroom. The
place is drawing a crowd. There’re all the usual cracks about
taking a number, selling tickets, and using someone’s
pocket.
I finish with time to spare, so I visit Kriegshauser, who looks
in need of encouragement, and Fearless. All the activity has the
cat edgy. He knows its meaning. He’s not fond of Climb. I
even grab a few seconds with Fisherman. “I’m no good at
praying. Say one for me, will you?”
“Ability has nothing to do with it, sir. He hears every
prayer. Just accept Christ as your Savior
and . . . ” The alarm cuts him short.
The cannon board control chair seems harder than usual. I set
out my notekeeping materials, start writing. My hand shakes too
much. I concentrate on getting Carmon’s talking earplugs into
place. The hyper alarm sounds before I finish. I see Holtsnider
looking my way, smiling nervously. I wave in pure bravado.
Climb alarm.
It’s begun. We’re on our way. I feel cold. Very
cold. My pores are twisted into tight little knots. I’m
shivering. Air temperature is down, but not that much.
It begins, as always, with waiting. The seconds grind slowly
away. At hour two Westhause takes us down just long enough to make
sure he won’t have to fine-tune his approach.
Rathgeber’s sun is the brightest star.
There’s nothing to do but think.
Are they keeping a close watch out there? Did they see us
drop?
Just sitting here waiting for the walls to cave in. We’re
in the final leg of our approach. I have the cannon pre-aimed.
I’ve gone through the numbers four times, just to have
something to do.
Nothing is happening anywhere. The bugs are a waste. Except for
occasional muffled remarks from the First Watch Officer or
Commander, Ops could pass as a tomb. From Engineering there’s
nothing but Varese’s occasional remark to Diekereide
bemoaning the fuel situation. And, of course, the endless,
repetitive, ritualistic status reports. Those I tune out
automatically.
It’s no different in Weapons, though it was livelier while
they were arming, testing, and programming the first missile
flight. The tests have been re-run and the programming
double-checked. Done to death for something to do.
Just like an exercise. As the Commander promised.
So why are we all scared shitless?
“Five minutes.” Nicastro is doing the time-scoring.
His voice betrays as much humanity as that of a talking
computer.
We must be close. Within a few kilometers of our point of
appearance. We’re playing mouse in the walls of the universe,
looking for the perfect hole to the inside. A mouse armed to his
cute little teeth.
It seems incredible that the other firm won’t know
anything till we start shooting. All my instincts say they’ll
be waiting with a megaton of death in each hand.
God, this waiting is shitty. The fear thoughts, the what ifs,
keep chasing one another round my head like a litter of kittens
playing tag. My palms are cold and wet. I keep moving slowly and
carefully so as not to do anything clumsy. I don’t want the
others to see how shaky I am.
They don’t look scared. Just professional, businesslike.
Inside, though, they probably feel the way I do. I don’t see
how it can be helped. We’re great pretenders, we
warriors.
Shit. Almost time. God, get me through this one and
I’ll . . .
I’ll what?