Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Destiny

Munchkin snatched Jude from his high chair and ducked under our table.

In moments the place was still, except for cocoa dripping from a toppled china urn.

Brumby stood beside me, brushing eggs from his tunic with his left hand, shaking the sting from his right, and muttering, “Oh, fuck,” over and over. His eyes blinked like old semaphore lanterns.

Two mess stewards had Brace’s valet under the arms. His eyes were crossed, blood streamed from one nostril, and from the way his bleeding lip sagged it looked like the ship’s dental officer had a new patient. Overall, it wasn’t anything that hadn’t happened a thousand times in bars outside military posts from Fort Benning to Luna Base.

“Sergeant”—Brace stalked from his end of the table, until he could poke his head forward and read Brumby’s name tag—“Brumby! What the—?”

In the holos, the band stops during barroom brawls. Since Brace’s quartet was just photons, Vivaldi whispered on.

Brace spun and stabbed a finger at the quartet. “Somebody shut that damn thing off!”

The band played on.

Brace snatched a sugar bowl from a table and pegged it at a bulkhead-mounted control panel. The bowl shattered, but the musicians faded to green silhouettes, then disappeared, leaving no sound to echo in the low-ceilinged room but raspy breathing. Brumby’s, Brace’s, and someone else’s, which turned out to be mine.

Brace straightened and breathed deep, his quivering face purple. Pasted to his cheekbone with milk was a cornflake. Brace would probably put himself in for a Purple Heart for that. Victim of cereal killer.

I coughed into my hand to cover a snigger.

Brace turned his wrath on me. “Wander, you think brutal hooliganism is funny? Anybody heard of discipline aft of Ninety?” Infantry country began at bulkhead ninety-one.

I mustered a glare at Brumby. “I’ll deal with my sergeant. I’ll leave the seaman to the captain.”

Brace looked over at Rat-nose. Somebody had propped Rat-nose up on a table edge, a napkin pressed to the lower half of his face, his eyes burning into Brumby. He was breathing through his mouth, and when he adjusted the napkin, I saw a black hole where his front teeth should have been. Rat-nose may have been a smart-mouthed coward, but he was Brace’s coward. Until then Brace hadn’t so much as glanced to see whether his man was alright.

Brace drew another breath, then frowned. He ran a finger across his cheek and scraped off the cornflake.

Somebody snorted.

“Wander”—Brace pointed a quivering finger at Brumby—“have him in my conference compartment in thirty minutes.” He spun on his heel, then shot back over his shoulder. “You, too. And clean him up!”

Ten minutes later, while we awaited Brumby’s return from aft in a fresh uniform, I sat with Howard in my cabin.

I rubbed a hand across my face. “I’m gonna have to throw the book at Brumby. You know that.”

“I think he expects that, Jason.”

“Brace’s squid struck the first blow. But I’ll have Brumby on extra duty for a hundred million miles.”

Howard shrugged and unwrapped a nicotine-gum stick. “If it’s up to you.”

“Of course it’s up to me. I’m Brumby’s CO.”

Howard rolled the gum stick like a little blanket and popped it in his mouth. “A ship’s captain under way has absolute authority.”

“That’s crap, Howard.” It wasn’t crap. One of my correspondence courses had been Uniform Code of Military Justice, United Nations modification. Brace could take jurisdiction of any person on this ship, just by saying so. “Anyway, what’s he gonna do? Make Brumby walk the plank?” Maybe. A ship captain’s power extended to summary capital punishment if he felt his ship was in peril. Technically, we were still in combat, so rendering oneself unfit for duty, such as by breaking your knuckles on somebody else’s nose, could even be construed as constructive desertion, a hanging offense. Well, dangling in point-six Gee, it would be more slow strangulation. I let my breath hiss between my teeth and shook my head.

The dull thud of flesh on metal interrupted as someone rapped on my cabin’s hatch.

“Come, Brumby!”

It wasn’t Brumby.

NINE

THE VISITOR WHO SIDESTEPPED through the hatch was Ord.

He hadn’t been at Captain’s Breakfast. And I knew he didn’t attend divine services. Yet he was wearing a Class-A uniform on an off-duty Sunday morning. Not that he would have been caught in Levi’s and flannel. Ord’s idea of casual wasn’t civvies, it was fatigues starched stiff enough to march by themselves.

I cocked my head toward his chest-full of formal decorations. “Going somewhere, Sergeant Major?”

“I heard about Brumby, sir. Would the general care to have me attend the upcoming proceedings?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Sergeant Major, whose side are you on, here, Admiral Brace’s or the Infantry’s?”

“Side, sir?” Ord made his eyes wide.

Exactly twenty-nine minutes after Brace’s ultimatum I let Brumby rap on the bulkhead next to the closed hatch into Brace’s conference room.

Brace let us stew in the companionway for six minutes and fifty seconds.

“Come!”

Brace sat, hands folded and jaw jutted out farther than usual, at the end of the conference table. To his right sat a stiff Navy lieutenant wearing Judge Advocate General shoulder brass and to Brace’s left sat Rat-nose, slumped in his chair and doing his best to look violated.

A circular, silver court Stenobot hummed, centered on the gleaming synwood table, sucking in a 360-degree holo of the proceedings.

Our team consisted of the freckle-faced accused, his CO, being me, and Howard, as a witness more than as anybody who had a clue about helping.

A discreet moment later, Ord slipped neutrally in, closed the hatch behind himself, then strode to the cabin center and planted himself at parade-rest, equidistant from both camps.

Brace cleared his throat and skewered Brumby with his eyes. “Acting Sergeant Major Brumby, as commanding officer of this vessel, I have considered the disposition of this matter. Having personally witnessed the inciting incident, I find that no preliminary inquiry is needed. A general court-martial will be convened at the earliest possible time to consider the charges.”

Brace glanced at the JAG swabbie, who read legalese off a screen. Brace left out constructive desertion but unless Brumby beat the rap his military career was over. In the meantime, he would spend the remaining year of this voyage in the brig.

Brace asked Brumby, “How says the accused?”

Brumby swallowed and his head twitched left. “I’m sorry I hit him, sir. But if I plead guilty I’m screwed, right?”

Brace curled his lip. “Guilty or not guilty? If you’re incapable of a direct answer, ask someone else to speak for you!”

Silence.

Brace sighed. “In my capacity as master of this vessel I deem your statement a plea of ‘not guilty.’ The matter will be set for trial. In the interest of fairness—”

A half snort escaped me.

Brace shot me a look. “In the interest of fairness, the trial panel will be selected not from the accused’s own unit nor from the unit of the assaulted individual.”

In other words, the panel would come from the only other outfit within a few million miles, the Third United Nations Division, the follow-on force who shared Excalibur with us. They were experienced infantry, like Ord, drawn from all the world’s services, not exclusively war orphans like GEF had been. They respected my survivors. The Third’s soldiers resented them, too, because the politicians had passed over the Third’s veterans for me and the rest of GEF’s wet-behind-the-ears kids.

The JAG swabbie whispered something to his screen, then angled it so Brace could read the words.