Glen Cook - Passage At Arms

Weapons should be the most altered. It's been the most bored. The triggermen have nothing to do but sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

Everyone else is here simply to give them their moments at their firing keys.

They're excited. Piniaz has undergone a renewal of spirit.

He actually welcomes my visit. "I was going to look you up," he says, wearing a smile he can't control. "We've been running cost-effectiveness programs."

I glance at Chief Holtsnider. The Chief nods pleasantly. Piniaz says, "We may try your cannon." He babbles on about accuracy probabilities, cumulative ion stress in the lasers, and so forth.

There's no tension in Weapons. Every mug brandishes a smile. How simple we've become. Just the prospect of change has us behaving as if we'll be home tomorrow night.

One of the gunnery trainees, Tuchol Manolakos, asks me, "Can you imagine what one of those bearings would do, sir?"

"Ricochetoff their meteor shunt. The velocity they're making, with their ramscoop funneling, they're running with screens up and shunts on all the time. Detection-activation circuitry would be too slow."

"Yeah. Didn't think of that."

"Have to screen against hard radiation, too."

"Yeah."

I wonder if they're moving fast enough to see a starbow. Certainly there'll be gorgeous violet and red shifts fore and aft. Rectification of Doppler will consume most of their enhancement capacity.

The faces round me go grim. "What is it? What did I say?"

"I didn't consider the screens," Piniaz grumbles.

"Better consider the subjective time differential, too," I suggest.

"I thought of that. Ain't much, but it's to our advantage."

"And the Doppler on your energy beams?"

"Considered. Damned toy cannon."

"You could still try. If we're close enough to shoot, they'll shoot back. If they're armed.

They'll have to break screens to doit."

"Put a two-centimeter ball into a ten-centimeter shield gap with a point-four-second endurance on a target moving at point-four cee? From how far away? Shit. Shit and more shit. Why're we chasing these clowns, anyway? They aren't exactly what you'd call a major threat to the universe. Ain't there a goddamned convoy somewhere?"

"Guess the Admiral thinks it would be a propaganda coup."

"Shit." Piniaz's vocabulary is suffering. "It'll just piss them off over there. You don't keep kicking a guy when he's out of it. They'll start kicking back."

"I'll tell old Fred next time we take tea together." I don't know what it is about Piniaz. He can aggravate a stone just by standing beside it.

My antipathy is, in part, prejudice against bis origins. I know it, and probably am overcompensating. Piniaz's dark little features are tight. He can guess my thoughts. "You do that.

And tell him from me... Never mind."

The eido hasn't been fingered.

Piniaz didn't reach his present status by letting Outworlders get his goat. He knows how to play the game.

It's a game in which the Outworlds' elite have rigged the rules, though not quite enough to keep him from beating them on their own terms.

I respect the man despite disliking him. More than I respect my own kind. My people aren't brought up being told they're the dregs of the human race.

Still... Old Earthers have an infuriating habit of blaming the motherworld's problems on the rest of us. And they're disgustingly consistent in their refusal to help themselves. We Outworlders are expected to carry them simply because Old Earth is the motherworld.

We all have prejudices. Piniaz should resent me less than the others. I make an attempt to control mine.

Varese tells Old Earther stories in Piniaz's presence. His favorite goes, "You hear about the Old Earther who comes home from the Social Insurance office and finds his woman in bed with another man?"

Someone will say, "No."

"He runs to the closet, grabs his Teng Hua, points it at his own head. His woman starts laughing at him. He yells, 'What's so funny, bitch? You're next.'"

There are several false assumptions in the story. There are in all Old Earther jokes. Welfare status. Extreme stupidity. Promiscuity. Universal possession of a Teng Hua hand laser. And so on.

Varese makes me ashamed of my breed when he does that.

After touring the ship I evict Fearless from my hammock. It's^become the cat's favorite loafing place. He isn't often disturbed.

I can't sleep. The prospect of action doesn't excite me anymore. All I want is to go home. I'm tired of the Climbers. I'm sorry I had the idea. Please, can I take it back? No? Damn.

Sleep sneaks up on me eventually. I have my best nap since coming aboard, a solid twelve hours that end only because Fearless starts a flamenco on my chest.

"You're getting goddamned bold, cat."

The animal places chin on paws four centimeters from my face. He closes his good eye. The warmth of him, the quick patter of his heart, leak through my grimy shirt.

"You'd better not have fleas."

Fearless twitches disdainfully, resumes his snooze.

I don't know why I've been selected main friend for the patrol. I can put up with cats, but comprehend them no better than women. This one lives like a prince. He has forty-nine lackeys keeping his castle for him.

I scratch his ears. He rewards me with a gravelly purr and a few gentle nips at my finger.

The shrill cry of the general alarm shatters our interlude.

I make Ops with time to spare, wondering how I slept through the alarm when we dropped hyper.

I didn't. The story I get is, Westhause was whipping the ship through complex search loops as he approached the new operational area. Fishermen got something on screen.

I didn't expect such quick results.

Glancing over Junghaus's shoulder, I see that we have not lucked onto our quarry.

Of course not. The target would generate no tachyon disturbances running in norm. "One of ours?" I slide into the First Watch Officer's seat.

Fisherman smiles. Yanevich grins. The Commander says, "Very good. Which one?"

I shrug. "A Climber, but I've only seen textbook plates. They just show the basics."

"Johnson's. That teensy lump on the arch of the fourth feather."

I glance at Westhause. He's pounding program keys like a mad organist.

Climbers have no instel. Smart operators communicate, in pidgin at close ranges, with behavior and the detection gear.

I give the Old Man a look.

"No hanky-panky, sir. Wouldn't think of it. There's a war on, you know. That's serious business."

Yanevich whispers, "We'll drop hyper and trade search patterns. Two of us working will find where she isn't real quick."

"How can we learn anything without going norm?"

He looks at me oddly. "We're norm now. Hadn't you noticed? We've been norm one minute in five for the last six hours. We're not up to the mark yet, but we thought we'd get the routine pat. Haven't you been paying attention?"

"The alarms..." Better keep my mouth shut. I slept through one of my watches.

"Jesus. You think I'm going to bang that mother all year long? Screw the regulations. People have to sleep. Speaking of which—where were you on the eight to twelve?"

What can I say? There's no excuse.

"Not to worry, Mr. Better-Late-Than-Never. The Recorder hears the alarm. That's good enough for us." Yanevich manages the grin the Commander can't quite produce. "You learn these little tricks.

The Recorder remembers what we want it to remember. They know what's going on at Mission Review.

They've been out here, too. As long as it doesn't endanger the ship, and doesn't leave out anything important, they let it slide. Got to be flexible. That's what they told us in Academy, wasn't it?"

"Maybe. This isn't the Navy I knew."

"Yeah?"

"I thought wartime would get the regs pushed harder."