Strong Arm Tactics Read online

  “And our interest in advanced education,” put in D-45. He was a very tall man with sallow skin and shining black hair, with a prominent, pointed chin. Wolfe recognized the style of naming. It came from a world named Egalos on TWC’s fringe where the liberal government, in an effort to put behind its people any of the disadvantages or bad memories of the past associated with their names, abolished all family cognomens, instead giving each regional cluster a designation based upon the location of their city, town or neighborhood. One of Daivid’s teachers had been Sarah N’Diya Q-333. He’d had a mad crush on her when he was eight years old.

  “And our weekly smokers,” said Thielind.

  “And the ritual scarification …”

  “And the limerick competitions …”

  “All right,” Wolfe laughed. “Now I know you’re making these up to impress me. Come on! Limericks? Ritual scarification?”

  “Yeah,” Ambering said, rolling up her sleeve. She was a meaty woman with warm brown skin and gray eyes. She pointed to an irregular mass on the inside of her forearm, an oval with three or four little lines sticking out of one side. “There. You lift the skin with a knife. When it heals you lift it again. The color’s office ink—very permanent. It’s supposed to be a cockroach, but I was never very good at art.”

  “All right,” Daivid said, shaken. “Now I am impressed.”

  “Ahem.” Jones cleared his throat and raised a hand theatrically. “‘A surveyor in space, grade E-4 / went out with an antigrav whore. / Ten klicks over the ground, / he spun her round and round, / and centrifugally plumb-bobbed her core.’” The others broke into applause and raucous cheers. Wolfe joined in. Jones rose and bowed, a thick hand across his round belly. “That’s one made up by Toco Bradon. She left us about four years ago. What a mind on that girl! She had a flair for the rhyming word. I can still recall a few more of her ditties.…”

  BLEE-ble. BLEE-ble. BLEE-ble.

  Everyone immediately fell silent. Wolfe glanced around for the communications unit. Thielind clapped down his glass and looked at his wrist screen.

  “Ancom!” he chirped, the signal to answer an incoming transmission on his personal communications unit. The noise ceased at once. Thielind listened for a moment then tapped at the bright yellow stud in his ear lobe. “Gotcha. I mean, aye aye, ma’am!” He looked up at Wolfe. “Inspection tomorrow morning at eleven hundred, sir. The commander wants to make sure you’re checked in and ready, and everything’s under control.”

  “Of course. Thanks, ensign,” Wolfe said. He glanced at the rest of his command. “Okay, company, you heard it. I want this place ship-shape by eleven. That’s an order.”

  Thielind’s large eyes went around the room. He picked up the laboratory flask and filled Wolfe’s glass with it. “Have another drink, Lieutenant.”

  O O O

  “Here’s to fallen comrades,” Borden said, as the chronometer clicked over to 00:00. By now the booze had been joined on the battered table by mixers, cards, and pows. Wolfe selected a caffeine pow two millimeters across and tucked it into the space between his cheek and gum. The heat and saliva melted the coating instantly, releasing a jolt of bitterness into his mouth. It’d be good to keep his wits alert. He held two pairs, jacks and sevens, in a game so ancient that he never even questioned why the guard card was called a jack, and fervently hoped no one else had anything useful in his or her hand. His luck was usually pretty good, but it was being sorely tested. He signalled for one card.

  “Why do you have so many customs?” he asked, watching Jones deal. The Cymraeg’s thick fingers were surprisingly deft. “I’ve been with a few units since I joined up. No one else seems to do it. Apart from the usual ones, breaking in new swabs by making them drink burning cocktails or ramming their new insigne into bare skin, that kind of thing.”

  They all looked at one another. “What, you writing a book?” Mose asked, a sour expression on his creased, pale face.

  “No, officer-sir,” Injaru called, his eyebrows high on his chocolate-dark forehead. “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Shut up,” Mose growled. “Huh, lieutenant?”

  A little puzzled, Wolfe watched the byplay. “No. Just curious. Where’d these all come from?”

  “Boredom,” Boland announced. “Boredom, maybe. Some of ’em we do for the hell of it, but a few do come from remembering old colleagues-in-arms. We’ve got nothing to do in between missions or on long space hauls except drink. In case you haven’t noticed, they keep us pretty isolated out here. No one wants to associate with us. Afraid they’ll get the stink, I don’t doubt. We come up with things to keep our brains from dying in the isolation. We can’t think ahead. We don’t know where we’re going, where they’re sending us next. We don’t want to think about the past. You wouldn’t, if you had been through what we have. So we have our own ways. Keeps people guessing when they overhear us.”

  “Keeps us out of trouble,” Meyers said. The curvaceous woman gathered up three cards with careful fingers. She looked up at him with a provocative eye. “In case you were wondering, we don’t try to get into trouble.”

  “Maybe we have a little more imagination than most of those bobble-heads,” Lin said fiercely.

  “Hah!” Thielind barked. “That’s how you ended up here! Well,” he turned to Wolfe, “that’s how I ended up here, anyway. Imagination.” He poured another tot into Wolfe’s glass. “Have a drink, lieutenant.”

  Wolfe eyed the glass, wishing there was a potted plant within reach. He didn’t know how many more applications of that flensing acid his system could take before it shut down. “Maybe a little more,” he agreed. “Thanks, ensign.”

  A few eyebrows were raised. “Don’t you say ‘enswine,’ like the rest of them?” Thielind asked, curiously. “I’m used to it.”

  “Yeah. We even let him drink with us,” Boland joked, bringing a huge hand around to impact jovially between the slight junior officer’s shoulder blades. Thielind bounced into the table and fell back, but his eyes never left Wolfe’s.

  Daivid squirmed a little. “I know it’s not corps practice, but I got so sick of it when I was an ensign that I promised myself I wouldn’t use it. Er, it’s just respect. You’re on the line, same as the rest of us.”

  “Respect, huh?” D-45 asked, with a sound of the same in his voice. To cover up what for the moment sounded like marshmallow-gooey sentimentality, Daivid took a huge swig of the company’s rotgut, and let out an audible gasp as it hit the back of his throat.

  “Too strong for you?” Jones asked. He emptied his own beaker, smacking his lips.

  “It’s fine,” Wolfe assured him, trying not to gasp as the next sip found a portion of his esophagus that hadn’t yet been cauterized. “Nice, but a little too rough to go to sleep on.”

  “Dilute it,” Borden said, tossing him a beaker of mild mixer. To his own surprise Wolfe caught it one-handed. Coordination was not yet completely gone. “It’s about 150 proof. What do you normally drink? Wine?”

  “Yeah,” the lieutenant admitted sheepishly, hoping he wouldn’t sound like a wimp, but it was better to admit the truth than to pickle himself just to try and fit in.

  “That’s okay,” she said with more friendliness than before. “We like wine, too.”

  “Yeah,” Boland said, raising steadily reddening eyes from his current hand. “Do we ever! How come we can’t get assignments escorting vintage booze, like the guy they caught with an unlicensed shipload of Earth wine the other day?”

  “Yeah, that guy! His name was Wolfe,” Injaru said thoughtfully. “Nicol Sambor some-other-middle-names Wolfe. One of that big-time Family with all them connections. You know what kind I mean.” The others nodded knowingly. “I bet that stuff they confiscated was pretty fine. Too bad we couldn’t get a hold of some of that. He wouldn’t be any relation to you, looey?” he joked.

  Daivid cleared his throat, and shifted uncomfortably. “As a matter of fact, he’s my cousin.”

  “Yeah, right,”
Boland said, scornfully. He caught a yellow-eyed glance from his new commanding officer. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Uh, yeah. I am. Nicol’s a second cousin.”

  “You’re one of that Wolfe Family?” the long-legged lieutenant asked, staring at him.

  “Well, hell!” Lin said, as if everyone ought to know that. “They have connections all over!”

  And indeed they did, as Daivid was all too aware, in shipping, gambling, smuggling, commodities trading, every moneymaking venture known to civilization. ‘Whenever there’s big money inside, there’s a Wolfe at the door,’ as the tired old joke went. Daivid tried to console himself with the thought that his family didn’t commit murder for hire, or slaughter innocent people in pursuit of credits. They specialized in what were known as ‘bloodless crimes’: games of chance, control of shipping rights, exclusives on certain goods, influence with government officials, transport of desirable items or people who wished to go from point A to point B without drawing attention. Since the bad old days, when space had been totally lawless and a crackdown had ensued that left few members standing from any Family, the Wolfes had sworn off involvement with drugs, prostitution, animal smuggling, or anything that would trigger a quarantine or give the Thousand Worlds Confederation galactic government an excuse to toss one of their warehouses. Occasionally, some law-and-order candidate would shake things up upon coming into office, impounding ships whose ownership could be traced back to a family. But while the Wolfe family played rough to survive, its business practices were clean. They had a policy of charitable contributions, no strings attached, and ran a fine string of soup kitchens as well as their fabulous chain of restaurants. Wolfe took a perverse measure of pride in that; few of the other families could say the same. But rumor tarred all of them with the same brush.

  It was the last thing he wanted to come out, but he might as well have handed a curriculum vitae out to everyone in camp. There was no way to get away from his Family.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” Thielind asked Lin accusingly.

  Boland growled protectively—Wolfe suspected a personal interest—but the small woman tossed her head nonchalantly. “Sure I did, but why would I tell? There is no bad blood between our families. We enjoy a centuries-old alliance. I am not in the inner circle anyhow.” She gave her new CO a sloe-eyed glance. “I’m a bastard. My mother won’t tell who my father is, so the Ancestors won’t acknowledge me. I don’t inherit anything from the Lin Family, and no one looks out for me. But if you didn’t say who you were I figured you didn’t want to. It’s your secret.”

  “Thanks,” Wolfe mumbled, feeling more uncomfortable than ever in the frankly admiring glances some of his company was now giving him. “It’d have come out sooner or later.”

  “So, what the hell are you doing here,” the broad-faced woman pressed, “if your family has all that money?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it, Meyers, is it? How long have you been in the corps?”

  Meyers gave him a funny look, but let him distract her. “Five years. I was bonking my former CO. He happened to be in a strict marriage contract with an admiral he only saw about once every two months. When someone caught us and threatened to report him, he made up some offense to get me off the base. Wish I’d had some loathsome disease I could have left him with, as a parting gift. I like it here better, sir. No one cares who I sleep with, so long as I live through my assignments.”

  “Well, you can’t sleep your way through missions with me. I expect everyone to be awake during missions.” The room had fallen silent. He looked around, feeling eyes peeling strips off him, though when he met anyone’s gaze, it dropped. “What’s the matter?”

  Round-faced Jones cleared his throat. “With all due respect to your rank, sir, you don’t have the right to make a crack like that. We’ve served together for years now. She has earned her right to be here. With respect,” and the word was spat out, “you haven’t. Yet.”

  It smarted, but Wolfe could take it. At least they hadn’t fragged him and left him in the disintegration bin for a first offense. “Point taken, trooper,” he said, pleasantly. “I apologize, Meyers. Perhaps I should take some lessons in humor. OTS was a little deficient in it.”

  “Accepted, sir.” Meyers lifted her glass.

  There seemed to be nothing left to say after that. He put down his cards, rose, and made towards the door, hoping that it didn’t look like a retreat. “Er. Well, then, good night.”

  “Night, sir,” Boland called to him.

  Just before the door shut behind him, he heard someone, probably Corporal Meyers, making a crack about his old man taking her out on a trip halfway to the moon and letting her walk the rest of the way back for making his little boy feel bad.

  O O O

  Meyers wasn’t completely wrong, Daivid mused as he hiked hastily toward his quarters. Benjamin Wolfe was very protective of his only son. Except for one thing, the don of the Wolfe Family had paid Daivid the compliment of assuming that he could stand on his own feet. However, that one thing was as dangerous as carrying a planetkiller bomb around with him.

  Daivid took a drink of water, hoping he could dilute the alcohol he had consumed somewhat before he went to sleep. After he undressed he peeled the card off his chest and turned it over in his fingers. A tap on the touch-screen, which analyzed his DNA, scanned his retina and read his pulse, turned the display on. Here was what the others were joking about. This was the Wolfe Family power they meant.

  Once Old Wolfe had come to terms with Daivid’s decision, he kept a calm expression on his face, but his eyes were worried. “I am not sending you out there unprotected.”

  “It’s the space service, not a wildlife safari!” Daivid had flung himself up out of the armchair opposite his father’s desk and stormed for the door.

  “Don’t do it.” Benjamin held up a warning hand. “It may not be the wilderness, but you’re still going to be out there with people. Strangers. You can’t give me an absolute no. I still know people. You walk out of here without protection, and I will make some calls. They won’t process you. You’ll be back here in an hour.” Daivid put out a hand to open the privacy lock. “And if you don’t come back here, out of pique or I don’t know what, pride, I will send Randy and Sven after you.”

  Daivid gave himself a moment to cool down. He knew that he’d been beaten. Randy and Sven were the most trusted of what in more respectable families would have been known as ‘loyal retainers.’ Where the Wolfes were concerned, they were more likely to be called henchmen. In fact, Randy, all 2.2 meters of him, had been Daivid’s nurse and protector when he was little and had never let him forget it. It was hard to engender respect in someone who had taught him to wear ‘big boy’ underpants. Fealty and undying devotion, yes. Respect, no. If Randy decided to call him Bucktooth Boy or any of his many other embarrassing childhood nicknames in front of the recruiting officers, Daivid would shoot himself right there. Sulkily, Daivid sank into the chair that his father indicated. “I don’t know why I bothered to tell you I was going.”

  “I’d have found out anyhow,” Benjamin assured him. “You wouldn’t have gotten your clothes off for the physical before I’d be down there signing you out. So, are you going to take what I’m offering you, or not?”

  “What protection do you want me to take? I can’t bring bodyguards with me into the space service!”

  Benjamin reached into an invisible pocket in the breast of his ten-thousand-credit tunic and withdrew a small card, which he tucked into his son’s hand. “This. It’s a database of every single person in the galaxy who owes me a favor. There are more listings than any one man can use up in a hundred lifetimes. If you need it, use it. I don’t want you out in the middle of the void with your bare tuchas hanging out when all you had to do was ask somebody for help. Someone who has to say yes. You take it, you promise me you’ll use it if you need it, you can go. Otherwise, you might as well study viniculture, because I’m shipping you to
your Aunt Hilda on Crekis. You can help her run the wine business out there.”

  It was the compulsory nature of that yes that grated on Daivid’s psyche. But Benjamin Wolfe didn’t hold onto control of the Wolfe Family purely through the charm of his personality. He knew how to get what he wanted, and how to get people to give him what he wanted. Daivid took the card, and promised to guard it with his life and check in periodically, but he had also promised himself that he would never use the database under any circumstances whatsoever.

  O O O

  So far, Daivid mused, lying in the dark of his quarters with only the tiny screen of the card for illumination, he’d been able to do without its help. For three years he had slogged his ass off. He had earned his promotions honestly—he hoped—and been able to call on others for assistance by doing favors for them. Simple ones. No blood oaths involved, no horrendous penalties if they failed to comply. He took pride in that. He was making his way in the universe. There, dad, he thought, take that.

  Still, curiosity drove him to browse through the database from time to time, as now. The favors were graded from 1 to 6. In reverse order, class 6 favors were big favors the person owed the Don personally, the ‘please will you blow up a planet for me’ kind of favors. Next were big Family favors, generally incurred among members of the bloodline or owed to one of them. Then big friend-of-the-Family favors. Next came small personal favors, small Family favors and, lastly, small friend favors. (No one else got favors. If you asked for help, you became a friend. For life.) Daivid could hear the voice of his father ringing in his ears, reminding him, “Ask! If you need something, it’s stupid if you don’t ask.”

  Ask! He didn’t ask to be the Don’s eldest and favorite child. For all his aspirations to make it honorably in life there would always be the doubters, the ones whom he made nervous because he was who he was. X-Ray must have heard all the rumors, and probably suspected that if he didn’t like one of them he could arrange for a little ‘accident,’ as Meyers had implied when she thought he couldn’t hear her.