Passage at Arms Read online

  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 rucking 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.

  6 First Contact

  Pushing hell out of two months now. Same old zigzag. One step back, two forward. But...

  Our baseline has twisted around. We’re headed toward Canaan now. More or less. Westhause figures about twelve years to get there at our present rate of approach. We’re not taking it in one big rush.

  We’re turned around. That’s the point. Something has happened. We have hunting orders. At last.

  Like everything else about this patrol, they make no sense.

  Command has targeted us a vessel crippled more than a year ago. She’s been rediscovered, running in norm. Must be a crafty bunch, to have kept their heads down this long.

  The Old Man doesn’t like it. He keeps mumbling, “Coup de grace,” and, “Why waste the time? The poor bastards deserve better.” I’ve never seen him so sour.

  None of the others are excited, either.

  I’m nervous as hell. It’s been a long time.

  Yanevich says it could get complicated. The target is running for the hunter-killer base we called Rathgeber before the other firm took it away. She is pushing. 4 c. That’ll mean some fancy maneuvering when we engage her.

  And some trick shooting. That’s a lot of inherent velocity. We haven’t the time or fuel to match it. “What are they doing for fuel?” I ask.

  “Ramscooping, probably,” Yanevich says. ‘They may have tankers dumping hydrogen ahead of her.”

  Still, she must have been fat to start. Maybe she’s a tanker herself. “Why the hell didn’t they abandon her? Or, if she’s that important, why didn’t a repair ship come fix her generators?”

  Yanevich shrugs. “Maybe they got a lot of pressure from our people back then. Maybe running in norm was their only option.”

  Our first chore will be to relocate the ship. Those aren’t dummies running the other team. They’ll know she’s been spotted. She’ll be running a jagged course.

  First we’ll run a search pattern surrounding a baseline drawn from the target’s last known position to her suspected destination. During the search, Piniaz will decide how to tackle a vessel traveling almost too fast to track. Point-four c in norm. That’s smoking.

  The obvious tactic is to drop hyper ahead and shove a missile flight down her throat. Hitting the tiny, necessary relative motion window would be a trick, though. The target is moving too fast to hit from even a slight angle. Knowing that, she’ll be running a constantly changing course.

  Shooting down the throat means shooting blind. The target is moving too fast. (That’s an endless refrain, like a song with only one-line lyrics.) She’ll run over us if we take time to aim. The Fire Control system needs a quarter second, after detection, to lock and fire. In that split second our target will traverse more than thirty thousand kilometers.

  “You’re right,” I say. “They aren’t dummies. I don’t see how we can stop them. I suppose Command says we can’t waste missiles.”

  Yanevich smiles. “You’re thinking Climber now. Damned right. Never waste a missile on a cripple.” More seriously, “We couldn’t use one. No time to target and program in norm, not enough computation capacity to compute simultaneity close enough to plop one into their laps from hyper. Tannian should send minelayers. Seed the target path.”

  “Why’re we bothering?”

  “Because Fearless Fred told us to. Why do we bother with any of this shit? Don’t ask why. Why doesn’t matter in the Climbers.”

  How sour he is lately. He’s saying the things the Commander is thinking. He’ll have to learn to control himself if he wants to
become a Ship’s Commander.

  “It doesn’t matter anywhere else, either, Steve. You’re supposed to do your job and trust your superiors.”

  “What the hell? Anything beats what we’ve been doing. It’s something to mess with till a convoy shows.”

  Later, while the First Watch Officer confers with Mr. West-hause, Fisherman says, “I hope they make it, sir.”

  “Hmm? Why’s that?”

  “Just seems right. That their efforts be rewarded. Like it says in the Bible... but the Lord’s will, will be done.”

  Curious. Compassion for the enemy...

  I find it a widespread attitude, though the men all say they’ll do their jobs. Even Carmon shows no hatred or hysteria, just respect and a hint of an anachronistic chivalry.

  The gentlemen of the other firm aren’t wholly real, of course. Making them real, believable, and sinister, has been a problem for our captains and propaganda kings. The men can’t get worked up about someone they have never seen. It’s hard to interact emotionally with an electronic shadow in a display tank.

  It’s like fighting specters who take on flesh only for those inescapably in their clutches. Only on our lost worlds do our people actually see their conquerers.

  It’s hard to hate them, too, because they practice none of the common excesses of war. We never hear atrocity stories. There have been no pointless massacres. They avoid civilian casualties. They don’t use nuclears inside atmosphere. They simply operate as a vast, efficient, and effective disarmament machine. From the beginning their sole purpose has been to neutralize, not to subjugate or destroy.

  We’re baffled, naturally.

  Confederation won’t be as charitable, if ever the tide turns. We play tougher, though we’ve stuck to the tacit rules so far.

  The Commander and Mr. Westhause comp a program that will drop us on the target’s last known position. Nicastro keeps nagging the computermen for a search program. Mr. Yanevich flutters hither and yon, mothering everyone.