Sten (19 page)

Sten rolled out of his bunk, reflexively sliding up into an attack stance. And then he slumped down again, laughing helplessly.

Gregor screamed louder and started flailing.

Sten and the other recruits gathered around Gregor's area.

The man did have problems.

"It's the Giant Spider of Odal," somebody said in a mock hushed voice. "You're in trouble, Gregor."

Gregor was indeed in trouble. Somebody must've snuck a spray can of climbing thread out of the training area the day before. And while Gregor slept, he, she, or they had spun the thread from bunk to cabinet to boots to bunk to combat shoes to cabinet to end up connected to Gregor's nose.

The high-test, incredibly sticky goo made a very effective spider web, Sten decided. Whoever had spun the web had unclipped the hardener from the nozzle tip, so the more Gregor flailed, the more he became enmeshed in the strands.

Gregor by now had trussed himself neatly in the strands and was moaning.

Sten looked at Tomika. "Who's got the real case at Gregor?"

She motioned blankly. "Just about everybody." The woman giggled. "Guess he'll make a fine officer."

"Bet three-one it won't straighten him out," Sten said. "Not just that, but prog—"

"Are we enjoying ourselves, children?" The recruits turned to instant statuary.

Sten could never figure how Carruthers managed a 116-dB(A) whisper. "Is there any particular reason we aren't all at attention?"

"Ten-hup!" somebody managed. Carruthers waddled forward through the cluster. Looked at Gregor and clucked thoughtfully.

"The Giant Spider of Odal. Knew we had lice and a few rats, but thought we fumigated those spiders last cycle."

Carruthers turned.

"Morghhan! Why don't you stroll down to supply and draw a tank of solvent. If you wouldn't mind."

The squadbay door slammed on Morghhan before Carruthers finished her sentence.

"Giant spiders, hmm. Serious business." Whisper into shout.

"Recruit Sten, what's the uniform of the day for spider hunts?"

"Uh…I dunno, corporal."

"DROP, DROP, DROP. YOU ARE AN EXNONCOM AND YOU

ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT! TRAINEE TOMIKA, YOU

SHOULD HAVE TOLD HIM—DROP, DROP, DROP!"

Carruthers walked back to the door.

"You will fall out in five minutes in full spider-hunt dress, and prepare to spend the remainder of the night looking for what I estimate is five giant spiders."

She slammed out. The recruits looked around. Bewildered.

The door creaked open again.

"Anyone who is not in the proper uniform draws two days'

kitchen detail. That is all, children. Time's a-wast-ing."

When Bjhalstred ran over Corporal Halstead with a combat car, Sten knew he had been right all along. There was nothing stupid about the farmboy. Now, no one ever accused Bjhalstred of crunching Halstead on purpose. It was an accident. Sure, Sten thought to himself, sure.

"This," Halstead proclaimed, "is another Empire tool for wormbrains. One gauge shows you battery charge. Turn this switch, and the car starts. You adjust the lift level stick to the desired altitude. One to one-grand meters. Doppler radar keeps you automatically that far off the ground.

"Shove the control stick forward, you lift up. Farther forward, the faster. Max speed, two hundred kph. Move the stick to the side, the combat car turns. Do we have a volunteer?"

Halstead looked around the trainees until he saw someone trying to be invisible.

"Bjhalstred," he crooned. "Come on up here, my boy."

Bjhalstred locked his heels in front of the corporal. "Never driven a car, hmm?"

"NO, CORPORAL!"

"Why not, trainee?"

"We don't believe in them on Outremer, corporal. We're Amish."

"I see." Halstead considered for a minute, then evidently decided not to say anything. "In the car."

Bjhalstred clambered in.

"You don't have any religious objections to driving, do you?"

Halstead asked.

"NO, CORPORAL."

"Fine. Start it, set it for two meters height, and drive out across the parade ground. Turn it around and come back."

Bjhalstred fumbled with the controls, and the car silently lifted clear of the ground and hung there.

"Well?"

Bjhalstred looked puzzledly at the controls, then firmly took the control stick in his hand and yanked it to the right.

Halstead had just time to scream "
NOO
" as the combat car pivoted on its own axis, the bumper catching Halstead in the head and sending him spinning off the stand to the ground, and the car smoothly soared forward. Its radar had enough range to pick up the trainee-filled (but rapidly emptying) bleachers, and lifted the vehicle neatly up and over the bleachers, after which it turned neat fifteen-meter circles. Bjhalstred sat petrified at the controls.

Eventually Lanzotta and Carruthers got a second car and maneuvered alongside the aimlessly circling first vehicle.

Lanzotta jumped lightly into the troop compartment, reached over Bjhalstred's shoulder, and turned the power off. The car settled down to the ground. Lanzotta levered Bjhalstred out.

"At the moment," Lanzotta said, "I do not love you, trainee.

You have knocked one of my cadremen unconscious, and this is a Bad Thing.

"I am sure you will want to make Corporal Halstead happy when he finally comes to, won't you?"

Bjhalstred nodded.

"Otherwise he is liable to kill you, trainee. And then I'll have to write up a report on why he did that. So I'm sure you want to volunteer to do the poor corporal a personal favor, don't you?"

Bjhalstred nodded again.

"You see that mountain," Lanzotta said, pointing at the

kilometers-distant ridge. "There is a creek on that mountain, trainee. Corporal Halstead is particularly fond of the water from that creek. So why don't you get a bucket and run up there and get him a bucket of water?"

"Huh?" Bjhalstred managed.

"That is, ‘Huh, Sergeant,'" Lanzotta said. "And I think you heard me."

Bjhalstred nodded, got slowly up from the seat, and started for the barracks.

Lanzotta watched him run into the building, dash out carrying a bucket, and disappear in the distance. Sten, watching from the company formation meters away, thought he saw Lanzotta's shoulders shake slightly. No, Bjhalstred wasn't that dumb.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

LANZOTTA LOOKED HAPPY.

Sten shuddered and wished he'd hit formation in the rear ranks. This would be a bad one.

Halstead started to call the company to attention. Lanzotta waved him into silence. "Something very interesting just happened, children," he said smoothly.

Pacing back and forth. This would be very bad.

"I just received the notification from, shall we say, a higher authority. It seems that I may not be performing my duty to best suit the needs of the Empire."

Sten wanted to find a very deep, very heavily shielded shelter.

He hoped he didn't know what was going on.

"I may not be giving some of my trainees the proper attention.

Particularly in the area of acting rank. It seems this authority wonders if some very capable leadership might be squelched by this suppression.

"Yes. A very interesting letter."

Lanzotta's smile vanished, replaced with a look of sincerity. "I would hate to err on the Emperor's service, would I not? Gregor!

Post!"

Sten thought right then would be a very good time to die.

Gregor double-timed to the head of the formation, snapped-to and saluted.

"Recruit Gregor? You are now recruit company commander."

Someone in the rear rank said "Clot!" very loudly.

Lanzotta evidently decided to be deaf momentarily.

"Take charge of the company, Recruit Company Commander Gregor. You have one hour to prepare the unit for transshipment and combat training."

It was possible, Sten decided, to think somebody had bad breath just by listening to them wheeze on a radio. He itched between his shoulder blades. It didn't do any good. Some genius had designed vacuum assault suits to itch a soldier everywhere it was impossible to scratch. Sten told himself he didn't itch, and went back to listening to Gregor wheeze on the command circuit.

Come on
, he thought.
Make up your mind
.

"First Pla—I mean one-one."

Sten keyed his mike.

"Go."

"The ship is a Class-C patrolcraft. That means we go in through the drive tubes. I had my first sergeant take a reading.

They're cool."

Sten unclipped from the asteroid he and his platoon were

"hiding" behind and drifted out a little.

The old hulk hanging in blackness two kilometers away had been more or less tarted up to look like a C-Class, right enough.

But…

Sten went on command. "Six? This is one-one. Request seal."

Gregor grunted and shut the rest of the company off the circuit.

"Going in the tubes is a manual attack, sir."

"Of course, Sten. That's why…"

"You don't figure those bad guys maybe read the book? And have a prog?"

"DNC, troop. What do you want? Some weird frontal shot?"

"Clot, Gregor! We go up the pipe, somebody'll be waiting for us, I figure. If you could put out a screen, I'll take my platoon on the flank."

"Continue…one."

Sten shrugged. No harm in trying.

"We'll tin-can it. Peel the skirt and bleed internal pressure off.

That'll throw 'em off, and maybe we can double-prong them."

More wheezing. Sten wondered why Gregor's father couldn't afford to get his son an operation.

"Cancel, one. I gave orders."

Sten deliberately unsealed the circuit.

"Certainly, captain. Whatever the captain desires. Clear."

Carruthers' voice crackled.

"One. Breaking circuit security. Kitchen detail."

Sten heard Gregor bury a laugh in his open mike.

"This is six. By the numbers…leapfrog attack…maneuver element…go."

Sten's platoon jetted into the open. Sten checked the readout and automatically corrected the line.

Diversion fire lasered overhead from the other two platoons.

Sten tucked a random zig program into the platoon's computer.

They continued for the hulk.

By the time they closed on the hulk's stern, half the platoon hung helplessly in space, shut down as casualties by the problem's computer.

Sten rotated the huge projector from his equipment rack and positioned it. He figured to go in just below the venturi and—

And there was a massive flash in his eyes, Sten's filter went up through the ranges to black, and Sten stared at the flashing CASUALTY light on his suit's control panel.

By now he'd gotten used to being "killed." As a matter of fact, this was the first time he'd enjoyed it. He did not think any of the casualties would collect the usual scut details when they got back to the troop area.

Lanzotta had a much bigger fish to barbecue. Or maybe much smaller, now.

* * *

Lanzotta was stone-faced and standing very still.

Sten relaxed, and flickered an eye toward Gregor.

"You went in by the book, recruit company commander?"

"Yes, sergeant."

"Did you bother to check EM range?"

"No, sergeant."

"If you had, you could have seen that your enemy modified those solar screens into projectors. Aimed straight back at their normally undefended stern. Why didn't you check, recruit company commander?"

"No excuse, sergeant."

"Did you consider an alternate assault?"

"No, sergeant."

"Why not?"

"Because—because that's how the fiche said to assault a C-ship, sergeant."

"And if you didn't do it by the manual, you might have gotten yourself in trouble. Correct, Recruit Company Commander Gregor?"

"Uh…"

"ANSWER THE GODDAMNED QUESTION."

Sten and the others jumped about a meter. It was the first time Lanzotta had ever shouted. "I don't know, sergeant."

"I do. Because you were thinking that as long as you stuck by the book, you were safe. You didn't dare risk your rank tabs. And so you killed half a company of guardsmen. Am I correct?"

Gregor didn't say anything.

"Roll your gear, mister," Lanzotta said. And ripped the Guard Trainee patch off Gregor's coveralls. Then he was gone.

Carruthers double-timed to the head of the formation.

"Fall out for chow. Suit inspection at twenty-one hundred hours."

Nobody looked at Gregor as they filed back into the barracks.

He stood outside a very long time by himself.

But by the time Sten and the others got back from chow, Gregor and his gear had disappeared as if they'd never existed.

"First sergeant! Report!"

"Sir! Trainee Companies A, B, and C all present and accounted for. Fifty-three percent and accounted six in hospital, two detached for testing."

The trainee topkick saluted. Sten returned the salute, about-faced to Lanzotta, and saluted again.

"All present and accounted for, sergeant!"

"It is now eighteen hundred hours, recruit captain. You are to take charge of your company and move them via road to Training Area Sixteen. You will disperse your men in standard perimeter defense. You are to have them in position by dusk, which is at nineteen-seventeen hours. Any questions?"