Of Treasons Born (3 page)

Sturpik gave York's bucket a nudge with his toe. “She's supposed to be training you. You call this training? What are you learning you didn't already know?”

York couldn't deny the truth of that. “I don't have any choice, do I?”

Sturpik shrugged and rolled his head from side to side. “You got more options than you think, kid. When you get some time off, look me up.”

Sturpik was right. York had done nothing but scrub decks for days now. “Thanks,” he said.

“Don't worry about it, kid. Us gunners, we gotta stick together.”

Sturpik wandered away, and York went back to scrubbing the deck.

For ten days, York scrubbed decks from the moment he climbed out of his coffin until the moment he climbed back into it. Then one day after evening mess, as he picked up his bucket, Straight said, “Belay that, Ballin. XO wants you to start learning the regs.”

“XO?” York asked.

“Executive officer.”

York returned the bucket to the maintenance closet and reported back to Straight. She and seven other petty officers shared a small bunk room where they slept in real bunks, not coffins. She had York sit next to her on her bunk, handed him a small reader, and said, “Read the first paragraph out loud and tell me what you think it means.”

York looked at the jumble of symbols on the screen, and his gut tightened with fear. The first word he recognized. “The …” And the next few words. “naval … code of …” The next word was
long
, with a few characters he didn't recognize. “Uh …”

He noticed several of Straight's roommates had paused and were looking his way.

Straight's eyes narrowed and she said, “You can read, can't you?”

York said, “Uh … a little.”

“Ah, shit!” Straight said as she raised both hands and rubbed the sides of her temples.

After that, York's evenings were spent learning to read and write, with
The Naval Code of Regulations
as his primary lesson book.

Chapter 3:

Gotta Do Favors

York came up out of stim-sleep to the sound of a loud horn blaring an irritating burp. The lights in his coffin flashed to full brightness, and a disembodied male voice said, “
Watch Condition Red. All hands, this is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill. Battle stations.”

No one had told York about
battle stations
, but any idiot could figure out it wasn't good. As the rookie in Straight's crew, he was assigned the top bunk, which meant he had to wait longest for his coffin to cycle out of storage. He waited while the horn continued to blare and the male voice repeated the call to battle stations. Then his coffin suddenly cycled into the bunk room and his reflexes took over. He'd practiced this move a dozen times now and was getting reasonably good at it. He sat up and at the same time killed the grav field in his bunk, let the deck gravity start him into a fall toward the deck. By hooking one hand on the edge of his bunk, he spun himself so he landed on his feet like a veteran, almost. He followed the others as they ran out of the bunk room. And now what?

He stood there in his underwear, watching people rush about. Everyone had some purpose or destination to get to, everyone but him. Marko and Straight dropped into seats at a large console nearby. Marko glanced over his shoulder at York and said, “Get to your battle station, goddammit!”

York said, “What's a battle station?”

At that, Straight looked over her shoulder and said, “Ah, shit!”

That seemed to be the only thing she ever said regarding York. Her face screwed up into an angry scowl as she said, “Get over here.”

York hotfooted it across the deck. She slapped him in the back of the head, pointed to the deck, and said, “Sit down against the console and stay there.”

York dropped to the deck and pulled his knees up to his chest.

When the loud horn stopped blaring, York closed his eyes and tried not to listen to the sounds around him. He heard the slap of booted feet crossing the deck at a run, heard a shout here, a grunt there, the clatter and whine of some mechanism being activated. But one by one, the sounds died and an oppressive silence settled over the ship.

A woman's voice echoed around them coming from a speaker somewhere—York had learned it was called allship. She identified herself as the captain, said something that York didn't understand, then the silence returned and nothing happened for what felt like the longest time.

York started as a vibration rippled through the deck where he sat, and the air echoed with a sound like a deep bass drum. It was repeated five more times.

“Stay calm, kid,” Marko said. “That's our main transition batteries echoing through the hull. That means we're throwing shit at them, which is better than them throwing shit at us.”

“Who is ‘them'?” York asked. “Who are we fighting?”

“Feddies,” Marko said, and glanced his way. The look on York's face must have prompted him to say more. “Warships of the Federal Directorate of the Republic of Syndon—feddies.”

“What for?”

Straight gave him an odd look, and Marko said, “Don't know. War's been going on since before I was born, probably be killing each other long after I'm dead.”

York wasn't sure what to think of that, and in the silence that followed he found he was holding his breath, had to force himself to breathe, but not overdo it. He heard the bass drum sound again several times, more silence, more drums, then a long, drawn-out silence. Then a voice over allship, “
Stand down to Watch Condition Yellow. All clear.”

Marko leaned back from the console in front of him and let out a long sigh. He looked at Straight and said, “Did you forget to assign the kid a station?”

Straight glanced down at York, a sour look on her face. She said it again, “Ah, shit.”

“Don't get mad at the kid,” Marko said. “It wasn't his fault.”

“We aren't that far out,” Straight said. “I didn't think we'd get into it yet.”

She stood and said to York, “Come with me.”

He jumped to his feet and followed her. She led him to a console with an empty seat. “This is your duty station. Any watch condition other than green—I don't care if it's yellow, red, or as brown as the shit in your pants—you run like hell to this seat, you sit down, you strap in, and you don't touch nothing.”

She turned around and marched away, leaving him standing there. He wasn't sure what he'd done wrong, but there was no question Straight was not happy with him.

Seated at the empty console during his free time, York struggled with the regs, which is what the veteran spacers called
The Naval Code of Regulations
. Too many of the words were big and long, and he had to sound them out carefully, never sure if he did it right. But after a month of sweating over the words during every moment of free time, he was getting better.

“Hi, kid.”

He'd been so focused on the small reader screen he hadn't seen Sturpik approach. Next to the older man stood a younger fellow York guessed was probably in his late teens. He had blond hair cut in a buzz cut and a pimply face.

“This here's Tomlin,” Sturpik said, introducing Pimply Face. “Tomlin, meet Spacer Apprentice York Ballin.”

Tomlin stuck his hand out and York shook it.

Sturpik said, “We seen her hit you. I told you Straight's a mean bitch.”

“She didn't really hit me,” York said. “She just slapped me up the back of the head. My foster mother used to do that all the time.”

Sturpik ignored him and glanced around in a way York had seen too many times on the streets, the way one of the older boys looked to see if there were any police near. Tomlin did the same, then held out his hand, palm up. On it rested a clear, cylindrical, plast container about the size of the tip of his thumb. Again, he glanced from side to side and said, “Need a favor, kid. Hold on to this, will you?”

Inside the clear plast, York saw some sort of greenish-black tarry substance. He shook his head and said, “I don't think I should.”

Sturpik confirmed York's suspicions when he said, “Get that out of sight or you'll get us all in trouble.”

Tomlin closed his hand around the container and shoved it in a pocket in his coveralls.

Sturpik glanced around again and said, “We need you to hang on to that for us. Just hold on to it for a bit for safekeeping.”

York didn't know exactly what the tarry stuff might be, but he knew he didn't want anything to do with it. “I don't think I should—”

“Hold on, kid.” Sturpik leaned close to him and spoke softly. “You got to do favors for people. Otherwise, they don't do favors for you.”

That was one of the rules of the streets York knew well.

Sturpik looked at Tomlin. “Give me a moment alone with the kid.”

Tomlin nodded, turned, and walked away.

Sturpik lowered his voice to a whisper. “You gotta do favors, kid. You don't do favors, it makes people unhappy. They start thinking you're maybe not willing to help out a friend. You see, I'm gonna do you a favor right now. I'm gonna give you some real valuable advice.”

“Okay,” York said, realizing he didn't have much choice in the matter.

“Straight's making you look weak, kid. You look weak, and everybody's gonna take a piece of you. You gotta stand up to her—just once will do, show her you ain't one of the weak ones.”

That's the way it had been on the streets: There were predator and prey, and no in-betweens. If you didn't establish that you were one, then you were automatically classified as the other. York thought the navy would be different from the streets, but he was learning otherwise.

Without waiting to hear agreement from York, Sturpik turned around and walked away. York knew he hadn't heard the last of this.

“Tri …” York said, struggling with the word on the reader.

Seated at the console next to him, Zamekis said, “Tribunal.”

Before York had come along, Spacer Third Class Meleen Zamekis had been the low rating on Straight's crew. Zamekis was a fair-haired girl in her late teens, and it would have come as no surprise if she decided to make York's life difficult. He'd seen that on the streets a few times, where the shit always flowed downhill. But Straight didn't tolerate any excessive hazing on her crew, so Zamekis didn't have a backlog of petty mistreatment that she needed to pass along. Straight had ordered Zamekis to help York with his reading, and she was quite nice about it, had confessed that it was easier duty than many of the alternatives.

York got through several sentences without struggling too much, and just as he came to a word he didn't know, Marko approached the two of them saying, “Zamekis, Ballin, come with me.”

Zamekis looked up from the reader and said, “What's up?”

Marko smiled at York. “Ballin here is gonna get his first gunnery lesson.”

Marko led them to Straight, who waited with the rest of her crew at one of the round hatches set in the inner hull. Straight scowled at York and asked Zamekis, “How's his reading coming?”

The girl nodded. “Not bad.”

As York stopped in front of Straight, her crew gathered around behind him. She asked, “Marko tell you what's up?”

“He said I get my first gunnery lesson.”

She grinned and looked at the hatch next to her. It was round with a large valve wheel in the middle of it. “This is a pod hatch. It's powered and can be controlled from here, the bridge, or engineering.”

She slapped a switch just above the hatch. The valve wheel in the center of it spun and the hatch popped open, swinging out on heavy plast hinges. “It defaults to manual, so if you hit the switch and it doesn't work—like if this section has lost power or something—you turn that wheel, then you can pull it open.”

She stepped aside and said, “Take a look.”

York peered through the hatch and saw a round plast tube large enough to crawl through, about three meters long with plast hand grips running its entire length.

“We call it a zero-G tube. Why do you think we call it that?”

York shrugged and guessed, “There's no gravity in the tube?”

“Sort of,” she said. “The whole ship's under several thousand G's
^*
right now, so if we didn't have compensation everywhere, we'd just be red stains on the deck. Deck gravity is compensated so we feel one G. Out in the tube, it's compensated so you feel zero-G; it's easier and faster to crawl through the tube that way. There's a gravity shear at the hatch, so don't let it scare you. And whatever you do, when you pass through it, don't blow lunch, cause you'll be the one has to clean it up.”

She leaned down and looked into the tube with him. At the far end, he saw what looked like another hatch. “That's the outer hatch that lets you into the pod itself. Normally, once you're past the inner hatch, you seal it before crawling to the pod. But this time, I'm gonna be right behind you, so we'll leave it open.”

Following Straight's orders, York crawled up into the hatch and through the gravity shear. It felt strange but didn't bother him. As he floated toward the pod, using the handgrips to propel himself along, he heard Straight crawl into the tube behind him. When he reached the pod's hatch, she said, “Just hit the switch to the side.”

The switch was a large red button on the inner edge of the hatch. He pressed it and the hatch popped open toward him.

Straight said, “There are fail-safes built in so it won't open if there's a serious pressure differential on either side. Go on and strap yourself in.”

The inside of the pod was a cramped maze of instrument clusters and screens surrounding an acceleration couch. York had to twist around, then get his butt aimed at the couch and pull himself into it. By that time, Straight had crawled halfway into the pod, and in the tight confines, the very short distance separating them was almost intimate. For the first time, it hit York that Straight was a girl—woman—with all sorts of curves and bumps, and quite attractive at that. She wore her brown hair shoulder-length, and always tied back in a ponytail.

After she showed him how to buckle into the couch's harness, she helped him pull on a headset and adjust a wire-thin pickup just to one side of his mouth. “We don't fit you with implants until you make spacer first class—if you survive that long.”

She showed him how to boot the pod's system and bring it online, gave him a rundown on the controls he'd need to operate, then closed the hatch and left him there alone. A few minutes later, he heard her voice in his headset. “Okay, Ballin, we're going to start with basic operational procedures. We can see the inside of the pod, so if you have any questions, just point and ask.”

York spent the next three hours going through the pod's boot sequence, learning to read debug dumps and diagnostic data. Then Straight had him shut the pod down, open the hatch, and crawl back down the zero-G tube. So far, it had been a lesson in computer science, and he had yet to see what pod gunning had to do with gunning.

“Now we're going to see how fast you can be on-station from a dead sleep,” Straight said. “Get in your coffin, and when I wake you, you run like hell to get into that pod and have it booted and online.”

York climbed into his coffin and cycled it into storage. He never felt anything when they turned on the stim-sleep, he just simply began dreaming. Then he awoke to the sound of the alert klaxon and Straight's voice.

When his coffin cycled out of storage, he hit the deck running. As he sprinted toward the pod hatch on the inner hull, he noticed that most of the occupants of the Lower Pod Deck had paused to watch him. He dove through the first hatch, sealed it, climbed up the zero-G tube, through the pod hatch, and when his pod had finished its boot sequence, he was online.