Strong Arm Tactics Read online

  “At ease,” he ordered, looking around at them. He gave them a smile, hoping it didn’t look nervous or insincere. “This is a casual visit. You all probably know this is my first command. The first-lieutenant bars are fresh off the card. I haven’t got any bad habits to unlearn.”

  “Too bad,” someone snickered low under his breath. A low titter of laughter ran through the room. Wolfe decided to pretend he didn’t hear it.

  “I know a lot of you have been together for a long time. You’ll have to adapt to my style, but I’ve got to learn about you if we’re to work effectively together.”

  Dead silence. Wolfe shrugged. The words hadn’t sounded sincere or convincing even to him. He wished he had gone ahead and written down the brilliant remarks he had conceived when he first learned he was getting a command. Those would’ve rocked ’em in the aisles. Instead, they looked at him as though he’d just piddled on the floor. Maybe he ought to—that would get their attention.

  He continued walking up and down, the adjutant at his heels. The long barracks was divided into three sections, every fifteen meters, as per fire regulations, but during the day the partitions were pushed back to make one big room. The walls were the enameled panels standard in military facilities both shipside and dirtside for their durability and ease in cleaning. Most of it here was drab khaki-gray, except for one panel in drab coral. That one didn’t quite fit into its modular frame. The edges were fire-scarred, and half the surface was etched with names. Some of them were scratched into the hard surface with some sharp object. Others had been laboriously cut, dot by dot, with a laser, all the way through the wall to the insulation. Wolfe ran his fingers along the names, feeling the minute impressions. He knew from experience that the enamel was practically indestructible. Each name had to have taken hours to incise.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  There was a defensive growl from the troops, but only Chief Boland stepped forward.

  “Wall of honor, sir,” he said. “Memory of the dead.”

  “Why not have their names decently engraved?”

  “It’s our custom,” said another trooper, a tall woman with very long legs and sincere brown eyes. “We use the knife or the sidearm of the lost soldier to write his or her name. It’s … more personal that way.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I see. The color … it didn’t start here, did it?”

  “No, sir,” said the female lieutenant. “It came from Platoon X’s first HQ on board the Burnside.” Wolfe recognized the name of a dreadnaught that had been destroyed in a territorial conflict on the TWC borders several years before. “We’ve been moved a few times, whenever someone the brass likes better wants our location. We take it with us.”

  Wolfe raised an eyebrow. A piece of bulkhead that heavy wouldn’t get shipped as part of a unit’s regular kit. In fact, the loaders would raise hell if a company showed up with something like that in tow, and word got back up the line to the brass. In fact, there should have been at least one attempt to confiscate it. On the other hand, he wouldn’t put it past the resourcefulness of X-Ray to make a way to get their memorial on board their troop transport. The more experienced units would recognize and honor the effort for what it was and let it slip by, and the young ones couldn’t outthink them long enough to stop them doing what they wanted.

  “It’s a Cockroach tradition,” Boland said, staring Wolfe straight in the eye.

  “You’re not going to take it down, sir?” the diminutive woman chief asked. Though it was phrased like a question, it was a statement. Wolfe knew enough to take the warning.

  “I wouldn’t dream of taking it down,” Wolfe said. This time, the murmur that ran through the room was positive. Wolfe knew he’d scored a point, but he meant it sincerely. For all the crap they spouted about being in Platoon X, he knew they had their pride. Outsiders didn’t realize that being the outcasts made this unit band together, form their own society, establish their own rules. The Cockroaches didn’t like being questioned by anyone from a legitimate unit, one that had the backing of the regular Thousand Worlds’ navy behind him or her. Because no one cared what happened to them. Because they really didn’t seem to care themselves. Look at the way they lived! Not a single bunk had been made. The curtains at the windows were gray and cracking. The floor creaked when walked on, probably indicating cracked joists underneath. Look at their uniforms! If anyone had given a hoot about them they’d have had those worn fatigues replaced long ago. Someone had to care about these troopers, and resurrect any self-respect they had. That must be why he had been sent here.

  A blooping sound interrupted his thoughts. The Cockroaches looked surprised, then shamefaced. Then defensive. The bloop erupted again. Daivid followed the noise to a distant corner of the long room and grabbed for the handle of a well-traveled upright packing case two meters on a side that served the unit as a storage closet. The box wouldn’t open. He shook the handle and looked for a locking mechanism.

  “Thielind,” he ordered, “open this box.”

  “Sir …”

  BLOOP! A cloud spread out from the top of the box. Wolfe got a faceful of sharp fumes and started coughing.

  “Open this damned box!” he gasped.

  Two of the spacers jumped forward and thrust their fingers into apertures that he thought at first were projectile-weapon damage the old box had sustained in transit. The front divided into two halves and swung open.

  Inside, though, the crate wasn’t derelict, as it had appeared on the outside. It had been lined with the kind of sound-insulation foam that was found in TWC starship engine compartments. Ventilation holes had been drilled into the ceiling and rear walls of the closet to allow the flow of air and the occasional escape of warm liquor fumes, which were now rising from the contraption that was propped on a tripod at waist level. The device, for that was all he could find to call it, consisted of shiny copper tubing, gleaming metal vacuum flasks, twisted gray and white flexible piping and half a dozen pieces of laboratory glass. Underneath it all lay a survival stove, its orange heat circle glowing like a sunset, and a hundred liter tank, the recipient of the still’s output.

  “And the booze?” Wolfe asked as mildly as he could, considering the current ethanol content of his lungs. “I take it this is a tradition, too?”

  “Uh-huh,” Boland said, his face stony. “Long time, sir. Dating all the way back, sir.”

  “There’s only one bar on the launch pad, lieutenant!” Thielind protested. “You oughta see what they charge for one watered-down beer. Four credits.”

  “Four credits!” Wolfe frowned at Thielind, who nodded vigorously. “Hell, I’d go into business for myself at prices like those.” Eyebrows lifted all around the room.

  “So that’s what we did, sir,” Petty Officer Jones assured him in his musical voice. “I’m glad you feel the same way we do, sir. There’s a longstanding trrr-adition of self-sufficiency in our unit. You wouldn’t want us wasting our precious resources on overpriced booze, would you?”

  Wolfe grinned. “That’s a big tank for twenty-odd troopers. You’re not supplying the bar, too, are you? That’s not self-sufficiency, that’d be going into business for yourself on Space Service territory with Space Service property.”

  “Well …” Jones rolled the final ‘l,’ trying to find the words.

  “It’s not strictly against the rules,” Borden said in her bloodless voice. By now, Wolfe had figured out that the XO was a bunkroom lawyer. She liked rules, good for a woman in her position. Normally, it wouldn’t make her popular among the rank-and-file, but this company seemed to like her. She must have other redeeming traits. Wolfe had to get to know what those were. Clearly, one of them was being able to rationalize anything that the Cockroaches wanted to do that wasn’t exactly in the books. “All of this material is salvage. Half of it we fished out of vacuum or grubbed up out of dumps, sir. As such, it is no longer Navy property, because the Navy has discarded it.”

  “Not like Boland’s runabout, eh?”
>
  “No, sir!” The XO’s voice rose to an emphatic point, though she continued to stare at a spot on the wall.

  “We’re just being resourceful,” Petty Officer Mose said. “Is there anything in the Space Service regs preventing resourcefulness?”

  “Not exactly,” Daivid began, then realized 1) this was an argument that would go on for weeks and 2) he was being baited. “But there’s resourcefulness, and there’s going outside the lines.”

  Boland laid an innocent hand on his chest. “No one has ever caught us going outside the lines, sir.”

  Daivid laughed. “I bet they haven’t.”

  “Want a snort, sir?” Chief Lin asked.

  “No,” Wolfe said. The others stared at him suspiciously until he smiled. “I have to finish the inspection first.”

  O O O

  “At ease,” Wolfe said, and winced as the scrawny adjutant relayed the order in a shout from under his right ear. He sat down on the nearest footlocker and took off his hat. At his signal, most of the troops resumed the seats they’d left when he entered, kicking back on their bunks with their boots up, sitting on reversed chairs, perching wherever a human buttocks or alien analog would fit. Thielind popped open the still closet and brought a beaker of liquor and a relatively clean glass to Wolfe. Gingerly, Daivid took a sip, and hastily sucked in a double lungful of air to cool his windpipe. The rotgut wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, but it still burned its way down into his belly.

  “So,” he gasped, slinging a hip as casually as he could onto the nearest table while the others helped themselves to the booze. “Tell me about your last few missions. I hear this company gets the worst assignments, in the worst possible conditions. Where do we usually end up getting sent?”

  The ‘we’ was accepted as a positive sign, too.

  “You know how they say ‘slag happens’?” the tall woman asked. She was called Adri’Leta Sixteen, which meant she was a clone, the sixteenth generation of her combination of genes. From her record Daivid had learned she was the first one to go into military service, and wondered why.

  He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, that’s where we go. Where slag’s happening.”

  “Right. Do we have to watch them make it, or do we just clean it up afterwards?” Wolfe asked reasonably. “We get to critique ’em on technique?”

  Boland sputtered between his lips.

  “No one cares about our opinion, sir,” Borden informed him.

  Wolfe shifted to face her, giving her his full attention. “I do. Yeah, I know I got sent here, same as you, but giving me these bars means that I have access to the chain of command. I don’t want slag assignments, so I don’t want you to get slag assignments, because we’re all going there together.” They all grumbled. They’d heard the speech before, probably one time per commanding officer. How was he going to get through to them? “So, where’d you get sent last? How come I’m here, and not your last CO?”

  For a moment no one said anything. Wolfe felt his heart sink, thinking he’d lost them again. He should have waited for the booze to kick in. It turned out they were all sucking in breath. They all started talking at once.

  “We got pinned down on Sombel,” Lin blurted out.

  “The brass screwed us,” Boland snarled, interrupting her. “No air cover …”

  “We needed three platoons to cover, not two,” Adri’Leta added.

  “Heavy fire from guarded positions …” Borden explained.

  Wolfe sat in the middle of it, letting them talk. Terran civilization had spent its first fifteen hundred years bringing itself into existence. Humanity had spread from the single world called Earth out to every T-class planet it could find, and adapted to hundreds of others with atmosphere domes, undersea habitats, or orbiting space stations. During the Building Phase, as the historians liked to call it, spacefarers and settlers cooperated, seeing one another as fellow seekers in the drive to open up the galaxy to humanity. Explorers led the way, sending back reports to Earth Central, and later to Alpha Centauri and Delta Glius of viable systems. In their wake, industry and colonists followed, as did traders, teachers and scientists, as well as those who saw their mission in life to take advantage of those who trusted in the basic goodness of human nature. Wolfe was ashamed to admit that many of his ancestors fell into the last category. He saw it as his goal to make amends by undoing some of the harm they had done.

  Settlements grew into civilizations. The first Galactic Government arose. It lasted fifty years before it was obsolete, unable to keep up with the growth of its power base. It fell, to be replaced by the First Terran Empire. Which split up into the Power Enterprise, the Vargan Trade Union, and the Star Systems Alliance. Which reconformed into the Second Terran Empire. Which, after a few more reconfigurations, including the brief but colorful reign of Mad Emperor Haviland, elections, both crooked and otherwise, plenty of bullying, conquest, persuasion and preferential treatment in trade, became the Thousand Worlds Confederation. Modeled upon the ancient Roman and American patterns of historic Terra, the TWC was a looser association than many of the past govermental structures, reestablishing a common defense, a common language, and a common currency, but allowing member systems to regulate themselves, with certain basic rights guaranteed to all citizens, such as the child protective system and the marriage rights act, which had held up for thousands of years, though it was always attacked whenever there was a change of regime. (There weren’t really a thousand worlds in the system yet, since the statute insisted only a viable planet with T-class characteristics and a breathable atmosphere qualified, but it sounded better to the founding members than the Six Hundred and Fifty-Three Worlds Confederation.)

  But not everyone was happy with the status quo. Because the current government found itself loath to lean too heavily on individual worlds’ administrations, sometimes excesses grew unchecked into abuses. TWC found itself having to send in troops to defend beings’ rights or extract diplomats from a deteriorated situation. Word spread that TWC’s overgovernment was attempting to conquer member worlds and run them under a local governor from a central location, as had been done in the bad old days of the Empires. Out of this misunderstanding insurgency had flared up, a movement seeking to overturn the galactic government. TWC had been trying to quash the rebellion for years. Where diplomacy failed, armed intervention became necessary, to prevent noncombatants from becoming prey to the rebel forces, and to prevent trade routes from being cut off. The main problem was that no matter how many ships or troopers that TWC had, the space service could be and was always being stretched too thin over too many fronts. Daivid had only been in the Space Service for three years, but even he saw that the galactic government was always fighting too many battles at once. X-Ray had fallen victim to this latest round of bad planning.

  They’d been sent into a location that had not been adequately scouted or even scoped, with insufficient firepower to protect them while they tried to accomplish their task.

  “It ought to have been pretty straightforward,” Lin said, her small face concentrated. “We were sent in to do a surgical shutdown of a major power plant. Not to destroy it, but to close it down. The Insurgency had taken over a factory in this city and was regearing it to use as a munitions plant.”

  D-45 made a disgusted gesture. “They weren’t making weapons there, they were making flitters. The trick is it was in a city sympathetic to the rebels, and they had plenty of notice that we were coming. They were ready for us. We started taking fire almost as soon as we were inserted.”

  “It turns out we were only a diversion,” Thielind added bitterly. The normally cheerful adjutant wore a grim expression on his thin face. “Halfway around the globe, the big ships were pulling prisoners out of a bunker. They’d sent us in to draw the fire from the insurgents. It worked. We had half the local army on our asses. If they’d only told us we were the stalking horse we could have dug in and given a good show, potshotting at the power plant without exposing ourselves
. As it is, we lost Captain Scoley, who was a damned good officer.”

  “They wanted us all to die.” Round-faced Jones clamped his lips shut after delivering his single opinion. All of them crossed their arms and looked at Wolfe. He looked back, uncertain what to say.

  They obviously didn’t care if he reported the gossip up the line. Apart from being sent to the brig or a prison ship, what worse thing could happen to them? They were already being sent on death missions. Mustering out would be a favor, compared to what he was hearing.

  “Tell me more,” Wolfe said. They hardly needed further encouragement. The cork was out of the bottle. They were dying to tell him more. The Cockroaches got all the bad duties: garbage detail, prisoner escort, munitions guard, hazardous waste cleanup.… Name the task; if it was dangerous or disgusting the Cockroaches had had to deal with it. And, Wolfe thought as he listened, they dealt pretty admirably. They didn’t complain about the task itself, just about the lack of respect and support from the brass. And they were absolutely right. No one cared if they lived or died. By the reckoning of the powers that be, they had already been discarded. They caught hell if they failed or wasted navy resources, and got precious little praise if they succeeded. They had to be their own cheering section. And now he was in the dumper with them. He was determined to raise their stock somehow. Let someone else be Brand X for a change. These were good people. He’d certainly met worse in his lifetime.

  “… And that’s how we got started with the bulkhead,” Borden explained, at the end of a long narrative, interrupted along the way by half her fellows. “It’s our way of coping.”

  “So’s the still,” Jones added, in his lilting baritone. Wolfe hated to admit it, but he was almost one hundred percent sure he could place the heavyset trooper’s planet of origin. Cymrai had been settled thousands of years ago by people named Jones. Most of them were of Terran-Welsh descent, but the rest had assumed the name somewhere along the way or had it imposed on their ancestors by others. In the long run Cymrai’s culture had taken a Celtic turn, preserving ancient arts and music. The communications directory was strictly arranged by given names.