Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Destiny

My division commander’s table sat four: Munchkin, Howard, Jude in a high chair improvised from ladder rails, and me.

I carried Munchkin’s tray while she strapped Jude into his chair. He made bubbles and looked around, unaware that it was his first birthday.

At our table’s center, the cooks had made Jude an elongated cake, shaped like Excalibur herself done in chocolate. He grabbed for it, more from curiosity than hunger, but couldn’t get within a foot. Meanwhile, his mother snapped a bib around his neck and mashed vegetables for him with her fork.

At the front of the buffet line a mess-jacketed string quartet — holo, but such a good recording you couldn’t spot a flicker — played what Howard identified as Vivaldi.

Howard ignored them and his French toast. He leaned forward and studied Jude, while my godson smeared mashed peas across his cheeks, occasionally landing some in his mouth.

Munchkin looked up from her omelette at Howard, frowned, then punched his bicep. “Stop looking at him like he’s from another planet!”

Howard rubbed his arm and pouted. “He is from another planet!”

“You know what I mean.”

Howard wrinkled his forehead and pointed as Jude caught a pea gob before it hit the tablecloth. “There’s something about the way he moves.”

Munchkin swung her fork like a broadsword. “Dammit, Howard! He’s a perfectly normal one-year-old! The ship’s surgeon sees Jude every week. He hasn’t found any tentacles yet.”

Howard sighed.

“If you act like he’s a freak, he may grow up to be one!” Munchkin’s lower lip thrust out.

I had learned that the Munshara-Metzger lip thrust preceded explosion. Time for a subject change.

My eyes darted around the room, then I pointed. “Look! Ozawa’s here!” Major Ozawa, the pilot who had roasted me for being late on Ganymede, stepped into the buffet line.

Munchkin raised her eyebrows, while one hand cut sausage with a fork and the other wiped Jude’s nose. “You like her?”

“Huh? No. I mean, I don’t know her.”

“You want to know her?”

It seemed to me that when I was ready to reenter the dating game after Pooh’s death was my decision. However, a month before, Munchkin had shifted into sisterly matchmaker mode. There were thousands of females on this ship. Ozawa was one of the few left, it seemed to me, that Munchkin hadn’t tried to fix me up with.

I could’ve turned the tables, I suppose. Push Munchkin back into circulation. Metzger died just days after Pooh. But the pain would have been worse for Munchkin. For me, too. She had lost a husband and her son’s father. I had lost a lover.

Munchkin said, “We work out together. Fantastic body! Smart, too.”

“Dammit, Munchkin! I’m not interested.”

“Then why’s your face red?” Munchkin stood and waved her hand. “Major! Mimi!”

Ozawa smiled and nodded, both hands on her tray.

I leaned toward Munchkin and whispered, “She hates me!”

Munchkin cocked her head. “Oh? I thought you didn’t know her.”

Ozawa set her tray down, then knelt beside Jude and flashed a smile that would melt Neoplast. “How’s my big boy?”

Jude giggled and grabbed for the ribbons on her chest.

Babies are better hottie magnets than Maseratis. And Major Ozawa was some hottie. I thought she was pretty when I met her, helmet-head and all. In a dress uniform with everything in place, she sparkled.

Munchkin said, “Major Ozawa, you’ve met General Wander?”

Ozawa turned her big brown eyes on me and her smile cooled. “General.”

Howard extended his hand. “I’ve wanted to meet you. The pilot who tested the VSFV. Amazing!”

Ozawa grinned at him. I fell into third place in attractiveness among males at this table, behind a guy with four teeth who ate with his fingers and a prune-faced geek who dressed like an unmade bed. No wonder Munchkin had trouble setting me up.

I made myself noticed. “What’s a VSFV?” I winced. My snappy patter didn’t make Munchkin’s job easier.

Howard nodded at Ozawa. “Venture Star Fighter Variant. Before Excalibur left Earth, the major test-piloted a Venture Star fitted with a high-capacity thruster system. For space maneuver. The first space fighter.”

I blinked. It was the sort of assignment Pooh Hart would have killed for.

Ozawa shrugged at Howard. “It looked like hell, hung with all that plumbing, but it was a hoot to fly.” She leaned toward Howard. “You’re the Slug Spook!”

Howard shrugged back.

Everybody at this table seemed to have a purpose in their post-war life but me, the infantryman. A test pilot, a cryptozoologist, a mother, and a preschooler.

I pointed at the bacon alongside Ozawa’s waffles. “I figured you’d be eating off the sushi bar.”

She chipmunked her breakfast into a porcelain cheek. “Ozawas are fourth-generation Texan. Raw fish is bait.”

We sat ten feet from the omelette station, at the end of the line. Brumby sidestepped down the line and arrived in front of the omelette station.

Three swabbies stood in line behind him, one a skinny, rat-nosed guy I recognized from somewhere. I pointed. “Who’s the little guy?”

Mimi swiveled her head, swallowed bacon, then snorted. “Brace’s valet.” Mimi and Brace had astronauted together at NASA. About all they had in common was that they were both high achievers and they both took to me like a vegan to veal chops.

I snorted. Valet? Why the Navy and the Space Force felt that the more senior an officer got the less capable he was of laying out his own uniforms and shining his own shoes was beyond me.

Brumby held out his plate and it quivered. “Extra bacon, please, ma’am.” Bacon was a premium item. Both Brumby and the mess steward he was wheedling were enlisted, so the “ma’am” was gratuitous. But wheedling cooks was every infantryman’s secondary Military Occupational Specialty. In Brumby’s case, so was a freckled grin.

The steward smiled back at Brumby and dumped her entire remaining bacon reserve onto Brumby’s eggs. That meant the rest of the lineup would have to settle for reconstituted sausage or soy-based fakon.

Brace’s rat-nosed valet snorted, then stage-whispered, “You eating for the dead fuckers, too, blinky?”

Brumby stiffened and blinked as the steward slid the omelette onto his plate. As a corporal, Brumby’s squad’s position had been overrun by Slugs during the first major ground assault of the Battle of Ganymede. Brumby’s leadership and valor had earned him the Distinguished Service Cross. But his bunkmate was decapitated by a Slug round.

In the lull after the first assault was beaten back, something disconnected in Brumby. He drifted into an aid station, eyes glazed, his headless bunkmate in a fireman’s carry across his shoulders, the corpse’s head in an ammunition bag. Brumby wanted the medics to sew his friend up.

Brumby had been wound like a quivering spring ever since. Rat-nose’s whisper was shitty to say to any GEF survivor. To say it to Brumby was like pulling a grenade’s pin.

Rat-nose flipped Brumby’s plate with a finger. Buttered egg spattered Brumby’s tunic. Brumby’s left eyelid flicked.

I sprang from my chair and lunged for Brumby’s elbow as he cocked his fist, but my fingers closed around recycled air.

Rat-nose sailed majestically backward across the officers’ mess, his head snapped back by Brumby’s punch. You’d be amazed how far a straight right hand can launch a man in point-six Gee. Tiny white objects arced on the same trajectory as Rat-nose’s back-bowed body. Teeth.

Rat-nose might have sailed twenty feet, but after fifteen feet, he and his incisors hit the captain’s table.

Brace’s mouthy little valet crash-landed on a white-linen runway and skidded shoulder-blades-down across the tabletop. Ship’s officers scattered, too slowly. Maple syrup exploded from pedestaled silver tureens. Boysenberry compote napalmed immaculate mess jackets. Sausage patties buzzed past my ear like shrapnel.