Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

“Not quite, that fire is still growing!” Berd backed away from the blaze.

Chrysum backwinged. The fire kept coming.

“We need water!” Berd called.

(Then make water,) the dragon called. He sounded almost drunk. Were two barrels enough to make a dragon tipsy?

Then the dragons’ words penetrated Berd’s mind, reminding him that he’d barely taken time to take a leak this morning. After last night’s beer he really needed to take a leak.

He approached the edge of the fire, opened his trews and loosed a stream. A bit of fire retreated. He spread his aim. More fire retreated. Lyman joined him with a really impressive stream. Someone handed Berd a mug of beer and he replenished his load. Within seconds all of his men had a full tankard and a weapon against the fire.

Berd drank deeply, as much as he craved, and then some. “Good thing there aren’t any women with us. They’d line up judging accuracy and duration.”

“And awarding prizes,” Lyman chuckled.

The fire tried valiantly to hold its own.

Chrysum joined the party drowning half an acre.

Berd looked over his shoulder at the milling steeds still attached to their sledges some distance off. They were safe for now.

Just then the dragon belched again. Not a hint of flame left his mouth and his recycled air smelled of hops and yeast and barley. He eyed the fifth barrel longingly.

“Thanks, master dragon, aye, I’ll drink with you. But then I’ve got a cargo to deliver and a farm to buy. You come to me when your dinner doesn’t sit well and I’ll give you new beer to damp your flames.”

Master Sergeant Ernest Kravitz stood at attention on the specially constructed platform, staring off at the cloudless, teal sky, a bead of sweat hanging on his eyebrow. Beside him, his crewmate Technical Sergeant Ranolph Urquell dug a finger under the starched collar of his dress uniform and tugged.

“I’ve never even seen an actual hero before now, and here we both are, heroes ourselves,” Urquell whispered. Ernie just stared at his crewmate, his lip curled in distain before his smile broke through.

“ If they ever let us off this waterlogged hell,” Kravitz muttered before he noticed the Nimrazzian First Counselor loping sideways toward them. The FC turned to face them and bowed, bending from his lower knees, back curled and eyestalks stretching to look both of the emissaries in the face at once. His thorax flaps jiggled and emitted a long, modulated shriek that the exos described as a sign of respect and awe.

Personally, Ernie couldn’t see how they distinguished the Nimrazzian’s gender, if Nims even came in different genders. All he could say for sure was that they’d probably taste delicious poached in apricot ale. Or they smelled like they would.

Col. Hazelshen moved in Kravitz’s direction, stepping right through the Nim’s First Counselor in the process. Her holographic image shimmered like a mirage overlaying the FC’s iridescent shell until she realized the faux pas and quickly stepped back. A low, fluttering noise came out of the speaker, a sound of contrition the exos had recorded in their sessions with their Nimrazzian counterparts. All the Nimrazzians on the platform curled themselves in concave gestures of confusion—acknowledging such a social misstep would have obliged them to break off contact for at least a dark-light cycle, which lasted for 87 hours on Nimra.

Twelve Earth-standard days out from Hyperion, just about the whole crew had gone down for the Big Sleep. Thanks to time-contraction, at .89c, the 24-year trip to HD 40307g would take just about thirty-seven days, as they counted them aboard ship. Even so, the sociopsychs had determined that more than 16 days of idleness led to a breakdown of morale and decreased fighting effectiveness.

Urquell’d had first anti-collision watch, two relative weeks on his own except for the ulitibots. Ernie had taught about half of the general utility robots to render a fair approximation of small talk to keep Randy from going insane on his own like that. The ‘bots’ basic SDK included a vocabulary of around 200 words, a dozen grammar elements, and a heuristic rule generator. But they also had a five-branch limiter to their logic tree to keep them from getting too independent or creative in their work, so they didn’t make what you’d call stimulating conversationalists.

Kravitz just wanted to finish giving his final instructions so he could crawl into his Sleep chamber and meditate his way into a few weeks’ oblivion. He had tired of listening to his friend go on about being alone and bored. Randy never seemed to run out of energy to bitch about things he couldn’t change and Ernie had never had the heart to just order him to shut up.

“Why don’t you make some of that rice ale of yours? That ought to keep you occupied between the proximity detector checks.” As a mess sergeant in the Terran Expeditionary Marines he specialized in making the crew delicious meals from whatever came to hand. It was a gift. One Urquell had never shown even a glimmer of talent for. Still, Randy had turned out to be a better sous chef than most technical sergeants he’d had under his command. And the man had a knack for making home brew out of just about anything. “You can set up the fermenter and train the ‘bots to monitor it until they rouse us.”

Famous last words. Utilibots were idiot savants by design. They learned routine tasks by example but they were less than worthless when it came to handling the unexpected. And, truth to tell, Randy wasn’t much better in an emergency.

Kravitz had known he was in trouble as soon as his eyes popped open. For one thing, he hadn’t been due to be roused from the Big Sleep for at least another week. For another, Randy was standing there, frozen at attention, a stricken expression on his face and Field Lt. Bengessert firmly clutching his arm. Ernie could read the animus in the lieutenant’s eyes. Son of a flag admiral, Bengessert was a stickler for regulations: first a courts martial, then throw them out the airlock.

Kravitz could almost feel Bengessert’s cold, hard hatred as the junior officer escorted them from the Sleep Chamber. Led into the mess, Kravitz was nearly bowled over by an overpowering smell of yeast. Then he saw the gaping holes it had eaten in the walls and he understood his buddy’s panic stricken face. No one said a word. Bengessert pulled them roughly by the arms and marched the pair out of the galley, describing their fates in graphic detail as they went.

The brig occupied an all but unused section of the ship—a half dozen standard Sleep chambers and a single large, caged space with three bunk beds. Built-in toilets and sinks grew out of the far wall and a noisy ten-gallon recycling plant in the corner supplied them with all their water needs.

Ernie could not recall even hearing of a Marine being confined in a ship’s brig. Major breaches of protocol or onboard rules were exceedingly rare. When transgressions did occur, they usually resulted in a double or triple shift on some scut detail, or maybe a day or two confined to quarters, isolated and awake. Then again, he’d never heard of anyone who had disabled a major component of an Expeditionary Battle Cruiser before.

“What do you think they’re going to do to us?” Randy whispered once the lieutenant had moved out of earshot.

“Maybe they’ll just send us back to Hyperion,” Kravitz said, hoping to wipe the fear off his friend’s face. He did not believe it himself. But dwelling on worst case scenarios did him no good—that was Urquell’s specialty and Ernie had no intention of being sucked into it.