Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Destiny

In the embarkation corridor, Brumby dismissed the men and whispered, “Shower!” It sounded like a four-letter word. In point-six gravity, it would be more a sponge bath, but anticipation of warm, soapy water cascading over my skin made it tingle. An orderly led my troops off to clean fatigues and showers and cheeseburgers while I followed Division Sergeant Major Ord toward Excalibur’s bridge.

Excalibur’s layout seemed just like Hope’s, where I had lived for nearly two years. I probably could have found my own way through the onion-peel deck layers to the bridge. But traveling behind Ord had entertainment value. We reached a stairwell, what the swabbies called a ladder. A pair of starched, enlisted Space Force ratings knelt on the deck plates, blocking the ladder, while they polished away grime that had been imaginary for the last hundred million miles.

“Make a hole!” Ord’s command bellow seemed to physically blow the swabbies to stand at attention. The female was cute. As we passed them, their backs plastered against the bulkhead, her eyes were wide but her nose wrinkled. I became acutely aware of the Ganymede grit packed into every wrinkle in my uniform and every crevasse of my body. Seven months in the same armor was no way to impress a lady and generals didn’t date enlisted ratings.

If Ozawa was any indication, women were going to be a problem. Like any twenty-two-year-old male het, a nerve as thick as a jumper cable linked my eyeballs to my groin. But moments after I looked at an eligible female, the thought of being with any woman other than Pooh Hart washed over my brain like a stain.

I sighed and just followed Ord as our bootsteps echoed along one corridor, then another.

Ten minutes later we got piped onto Excalibur’s bridge. Hope’s bosun had just keyed an electronic recording — Excalibur’s bosun actually blew a little silver whistle. Either way, it was for me as a general officer.

The bridge was the size of a low-ceilinged schoolroom, dim-lit in red so the flatscreen wall displays glowed brighter. In front of the screens, twenty swabbies sat at twenty consoles, each whispering data and instructions to the ship through cherry-stem microphones.

The master holo, Excalibur in iridescent miniature, floated centered amid the pilots and contollers like a translucent giant squid. The ship’s pressurized payload and fuel-storage sections were forward and the propulsion booms trailed aft like tentacles. All along the master holo, colored-light streaks and blips winked on, crawled, then faded up and down the holo as the ship’s vital signs changed. Every elevator that moved, every hatch that opened or closed, made a spark that a seasoned vessel commander could read like a living, three-dimensional book.

The holo would have dominated the room, except for the figure who stood staring into it, head bowed, feet spread shoulder width apart, hands clasped in the small of his back.

Rear Admiral Atwater N. Brace had chosen Class-A uniform for this day, Space Force powder-blue and more coverall than suit. A service-ribbon rainbow plated the space over his heart. Not a combat decoration among them. His chin thrust forward as outsized and steel-smooth as an aircraft carrier’s bow. His skin shone crimson, reflecting the master holo’s glow.

Ord and I waited at attention, helmets tucked under our left arms, swallowing, blinking, and listening while the console operators’ whispers made elevator music on the great ship’s bridge.

I counted to three hundred while Brace let us dangle. His ship, his rules.

Brace raised his head and faced us. Ord and I saluted. Brace returned a crisp one. Space Force officers who came up through any country’s Air Force saluted with that fly-boy limp wrist. Brace had to have been wet-Navy.

“Sir, Acting Major General Wander commanding United Nations Expeditionary Force Ganymede requests permission to come aboard.”

“Granted, Acting General.”

Brace forgot to give Ord and me “At ease.” But he didn’t forget to emphasize “Acting.”

I thought the console jockey seated nearest us inclined his head a millimeter to listen.

Brace stretched a smile, showing polished teeth. “We’re cleaning up your troops, Wander.”

Philistine grunts couldn’t bathe themselves.

“Field hygiene was tough. The water down there’s been ice since the Pre-Cambrian.” Bathing had been cold, ineffective, and just frequent enough to keep soldiers from getting sick.

Brace’s small blue eyes squinted as they flicked up and down my body armor. The infrared-absorbent crimson coating had scuffed down to bare Neoplast at the wear points and the torso had taken a few Slug-round hits. Plenty to gig there.

“Obviously.” He turned to Ord. “Sergeant Major, show Acting General Wander to his quarters.”

Ord saluted. “Aye-aye, sir!”

Hearing Ord say “aye-aye” instead of “yes, sir” was like watching a rhino polka. Brace was driving this bus and even Ord knew it.

Ord led me down a short corridor to my quarters. Unlike aboard Hope, when I was a specialist, fourth class, I was billeted forward, in officer country.

“Is he always an asshole, Sergeant Major?”

“Who, sir?”

“Who? I’m not a Basic trainee anymore, Sergeant Major. I may not be in your chain of command. These stars may not stay on my collar past this evening’s chow. But at this moment I command seven hundred GIs who’ve been through hell. For the next two years they’re gonna slack off and feel sorry for themselves. They’ll pick fights like six-year-olds with people on this ship who haven’t watched nine thousand friends die. But they’re my six-year-olds until somebody takes them away. I need to know what kind of ship Brace runs. I need candor from an NCO. From another combat infantryman.”

Ord looked back at me as we walked. His eyes had that twinkle again, like he was watching a baby’s first stumbles.

“Admiral Brace was top-twenty at Annapolis, sir. That let him pick a Naval Aviation slot. He pulled temporary astronaut duty with old NASA, then back to wet-Navy carriers. Commanded the Tehran. He knows space and he knows how to manage big ships.” Ord stopped at a stateroom door and laid his hand on the latch. “Your quarters, sir.”

“And you know how to dodge questions, Sergeant Major.”

The corners of Ord’s mouth twitched up one millimeter, then he nodded. “He’s one solid-brass asshole, twenty-four/seven, sir.”

I stepped into a private room with my own shower for the first time since I was a suburban teenager with a living biological parent. Before the war, a million years ago. I motioned Ord to follow.

“Sit, Sergeant Major?” I was a general officer. He was a noncom. I didn’t need to make it a question. But Ord was Ord and I was a kid.

Ord nodded, then sat, as though his back rested on bayonet points.

My officer cabin’s wall had a built-in thermcab. Now, that was living wick! I pulled two coffee plastis, popped their therm tabs, then handed one, steaming and black, to Ord. No noncom turned down coffee. Few took it other than black.

Ord may have relaxed one millimeter.

“Sergeant Major, I’ve never met Brace before. What’s his problem with me?”

Ord hooked his helmet over one armored knee. “Sir, technically, you outrank the admiral.”

I sipped coffee, scalded my tongue, and nodded. “Even though I’m a kid who doesn’t have the education to swab an Annapolis toilet?”

Ord swallowed coffee like it was a milkshake. “It’s beyond that, sir. You’ve led troops in combat. Few contemporary officers have. As a military man, the admiral respects that. But as a man who’s trained his whole life to do what you’ve done before you turned twenty-five, he’s jealous, too.”