Passage at Arms Read online

  “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 nun 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 co
mputer. “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 half-heartedly. 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 loose-leaf 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 Eke 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 diem 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 snookered. 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 through.” 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 die 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.