Passage at Arms Read online

  Each time I begin to relax, thinking they’ve moved on, another of their ships whips into detection. I can’t sleep through that.

  “How come they keep on?” I wonder out loud. “You’d think they knew we’re here. That they want to spook us.”

  “Could be,” Yanevich says. “The Leviathan might have gotten some boats away, too. They could be looking for survivors.”

  Not bloody likely. Not at those velocities.

  Yanevich and the Commander are spending more and more time with Westhause. Their faces reflect a deepening concern. The Leviathan’s wake is dispersing. It won’t mask us much longer. Canzoneri keeps coming and going. The computers must’ve noticed something else.

  I stop the First Watch Officer during one of his forays into my part of the compartment. “What’s up? Why the long faces?”

  “They’re going to get a fix pretty quick. They’ve been taking readings on our neutrino emissions from before we went silent. Their computers will figure it out. We’ll have them in our pockets.”

  “Damn. Should have known. The ripples never settle in this pond, do they?”

  “Nope. They just keep going till they get mixed in with other ripples.”

  “So what’s to do?”

  “We run first time it looks good. They know we’re around. There’s no way we’re going to bluff them, even if they can’t computer-fix us. They’ll keep quartering till they get a radar contact.”

  “Stubborn bastards. How’d they catch on?”

  “Who knows? Maybe the Leviathan had an observation drone in her missile screen. Or an escort we didn’t spot. Anything. How doesn’t matter.”

  Fifteen minutes later we have one of those rare moments when there’s nothing in detection.

  “Power up,” the Commander orders. “Engineering, stand by for hyper and Climb.” Varese has the magnetics close to stable. Looks like the Old Man is willing to take a chance.

  “Case like this,” Fisherman says, “it’s better to Climb first, then run. Unless they’ve got somebody doggo right on top of us, they won’t get a track on our Hawking point.”

  “We’ll make a hell of a racket getting started. And draw a hell of a crowd of mourners if Mr. Varese doesn’t have the magnetics right.”

  “Yes sir.” He isn’t especially worried.

  There’s a rush to the honeypots. We may stay strapped in for hours.

  How much longer can I stand their stink?

  “Discharge accumulators. Vent heat. Secure all Class Two systems,” the Commander orders. Acknowledgments and action-completed reports come back as quickly. People are anxious to leave. “Mr. Varese. How do your magnetics look?”

  I don’t hear the response. That’s not reassuring.

  “Commander, I have a tachyon pattern,” Fisherman says.

  “Very well. Engineering, shift to annihilation.”

  The feathers on Fisherman’s screen are faint but nearly vertical. Their foreshortening is extreme. The dorsal and ventral lines are almost invisible. The hunter is coming right at us.

  The Commander says, “Take hyper. Max acceleration. Mr. Westhause, make a course of two seven zero at thirty degrees declination.” His voice is calm, as if this is just another drill.

  The Climber stutters, moves out. The compartment lights dim momentarily. The hasty shift in power is touchy but successful. The Climb alarm tramples the Commander’s line. Afterward, he adds, “Mr. Westhause, make your course two four zero at twenty-five degrees declination.”

  ‘Type two fool ’em, sir,” Fisherman explains. “Show them a course they can fix and hope they think you’ll swing way off it in Climb. We’ll make a little change instead, and stay up a long time. They’re supposed to look everywhere but where we’re at.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “We hope. They’re not stupid, sir. They’ve been at it as long as we have.”

  My companions grow hazy. The screens and display tank die. The nothing of null peers in through the hull.

  We’ve pulled our hole in after us. We’re safe. For the moment.

  For the moment. The destroyer has yelled “Contact!” Her friends are closing in. Their combined computation capacity is producing predictions of our behavior already.

  Despite Fisherman’s prophecy, I’m startled when the Commander doesn’t go down after the customary hour. All those drills... wake up, monkey! This is for real. There’re people out there who want to kill you.

  The air is raunchy. Interior temperature has climbed a half-dozen degrees. The Old Man’s only response is to have Bradley release a little fresh oxygen, then blow the atmosphere through the outer fuel tanks. They’ve been allowed to freeze. Supercold ice makes a nice sink for waste heat.

  It isn’t a ploy which Command approves. Climbers aren’t engineered for it. Our air is rich with human effluvia. It’ll contaminate the water as it melts.

  Operational people don’t care. Heat is the bigger problem. They willingly strain the filters with contaminants.

  It takes only five hours for that water to match interior temperature. The ship is generating too much heat.

  The Commander lets temperature approach the red line. We’re sweltering. The superconductors flash warnings, but they do so long before any actual danger.

  The air feels thick enough to slice.

  The Commander orders heat converters and atmosphere scrubbers activated at hour nine in Climb. From then on, in my humble opinion, it’s all downhill.

  The machines which hold temperatures down and keep the air breathable are efficient and effective, but are powerful heat generators themselves.

  This heat isn’t the sudden, shocking heat we experienced when the Main Battle died. This is a creeping heat. It comes on as inexorably as old age. Weariness doesn’t help when one is battling its debilitating effect.

  The Climb endurance record is fourteen hours thirty-one minutes and some-odd seconds, established by Talmidge’s Climber. Talmidge commanded one of the early craft. It carried less equipment, fewer personnel, and entered Climb under ideal pre-Climb conditions.

  Sitting here in stinking wet clothing, sucking a squeezie, unable to leave my station, I wonder if the Old Man is shooting for the record.

  By hour eleven I’m toying with the notion of a one-man mutiny. The Commander’s voice breaks through the mist clouding my mind. What’s this? Hey! He’s counting down to an emergency heat drop?

  We’ll plunge into norm, vent heat briefly, then get back up and see what our detection systems have to say about the habitability of this neck of the night.

  “Isn’t he a little too cautious?” I croak at Fisherman. The TD operator is barely sweating. “They can’t have stayed with us this long.”

  “We’ll see.”

  From the corner of my eye, while I’m watching the lances of the energy weapons discharging the accumulators, I see the weak V on Fisherman’s screen.

  “Contact, Commander. Fading.”

  “Very well. He’ll be back. Mr. Westhause, we’re making for Beacon One Nine One. Get out of here before he fixes our course. Drop us again as soon as we’re beyond detection.”

  The emergency venting procedure lasted forty seconds. Each second bought about one more minute of Climb time.

  Two hours roll past sluggishly. The Commander takes us down again. He’s kept the ship up on pure guts. Throdahl, Berberian, and Laramie have gone slack in their harnesses. Salt tabs and juice only help so much.

  This can’t be doing our health much good.

  It seems the more experienced men should handle the hardships easier. Not necessarily true. Nicastro is the next to go. Is it the cumulative effect of ten missions? Tension? The physical wear of hustling round seeing to everyone else?

  Nicastro isn’t quiet about going, either. He screams as sudden cramps tear at his legs and stomach. My nerves won’t stand much of this.

  I suspect the Commander wanted to stay up longer. Losing both his quartermasters changes his mind.

  “Mr
. Yanevich, work on Laramie and the Chief. Use stimulants if you have to. Junghaus, keep a wary eye.”

  “Aye, Commander.” This time five minutes pass before he announces a contact.

  “We’re gaining on them,” Yanevich tells me as he massages Nicastro’s calves. There’s barely room to lay the Chief out on the deck grating. The First Watch Officer grins like a fool. “Better get some salt into him.” He shouts into the inner circle, “We have any calcium pills in the medkit?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Shit.”

  Westhause whips the Climber off at a wild angle. He asks, “Commander, you want to change beacons? They could get a baseline?”

  “No. Keep heading for One Nine One.”

  Despite a temperature fit for making raisins, I’m shivering. Internal is down twenty degrees and falling. Humidity is a sudden ten percent.

  “What are you fucking smirking about?” I snarl at Yanevich. And, “Shit! I’m getting as foul-mouthed as the rest of you. Anyway, seems to me that if the bastards can hang on this good, they’ll run us down. How the hell do they do it, anyhow?”

  Nicastro groans, tries to throw Yanevich off. The Commander helps hold him down.

  “They’ve got a giant think-box at Rathgeber. Instel linked to all their hunters. Human brains cyborged in for subjectives. And nothing else for it to do. By now they know what ship this is, who’s commanding, and how long we’ve been out. They’ve made an art of it. The head honcho at Rathgeber is sharp. And he gets better all the time.”

  “So why didn’t we stay put and let them chase their computer projections?”

  “Because that’s the oldest trick of all. We would’ve come down in somebody’s lap. See, our main problem is, we’re outnumbered. They can follow up a lot of projections. They’re probably working the top forty from that last contact.”

  “And we’re not going to do anything about it?” Why is he so cheerful? That irritates me more than the other firm’s stubbornness.

  “Of course not. We don’t get paid to slug it out with destroyers. We beat up on transports.”

  Next tune down we vent heat completely, dispose of accumulated wastes, and take hyper before the opposition shows. We’ve shaken them. The Old Man says it was an easy routine. I find the assertion dubious.

  I race for my hammock the instant he lets us off battle stations. The men who had difficulty getting through Climb are supposed to have first shot, but this time I’m taking advantage of my supernumerary status and my commission. I’ve had it. I can be a candy ass once in a while.

  More than one man curses me for having my ass in the sink. I tell them what they can do with their personal hygiene.

  No one has gone out of his way for me.

  The last I see of the Commander, he’s standing at a still parade rest, staring into the empty display tank.

  Our destination proves to be an instel-equipped beacon. The Recorder busies itself reporting the Leviathan affair. It’s a time of relaxation, a time of realization.

  We still have our missiles.

  7 Orders

  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 do
es 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?”