Starfist: A World of Hurt (16 page)

"Well, if that's what Uncle Joey wants, and you concur, I don't see any problem. But what's so damn important that we have to go that far outside standard procedure for a personnel movement? My kids are doing fine. I had a couple problems that some other starship wanted to dump on somebody else, but they've got their acts straightened out now." He chuckled evilly. "I saw to that."

Jiminez had his answer ready. "Uncle Joey says he's barely cleared to know the why of this, so you know I'm not supposed to. But I've got my suspicions. Someday, after you accept Earthside duty, I'll tell you what I think over a few brews. Then I'll probably have to kill you to make sure the secret is kept. Otherwise, I'll visit you in the old sailors home and tell you then." He snorted. "If I tell you in the old sailors home, I won't have to worry about security, because you won't remember what I tell you. Not that you'd remember it if I told you now. One more detail about this petty officer. It might be a very good idea if he has limited contact with your crew.

"All right, Wazi, we've both got work to do, and these interplanetary calls cost more money than the navy wants to spend on a couple of old chiefs like us. Jiminez out."

He leaned back, satisfied that the orders he had BUPERS cutting and transmitting would be executed. Now to find out what was so important about SRA2 Hummfree.

It took less than two days standard for BUPERS to cut and transmit the orders for the
HM3 Gordon
to intercept the
Philadelphia
and transport SRA2 Hummfree to Thorsfinni's World for duty at the convenience of Commander, 34th FIST, Confederation Marine Corps.

A second set of orders was cut and transmitted at the same time. It was to be given to the executive officer of the
Philadelphia,
and gave a different reason and destination for Hummfree's departure.

The
Gordon
successfully intercepted the
Philadelphia
at a scheduled jump point.

"Hummfree, front and center!" Chief Kem bellowed over the intercom.

"Hmmm?"

"Wake up, Hummfree, the chief wants you." SRA1 Kisegito, the senior of the petty officers who shared the compartment, shook Hummfree's shoulder.

"G'way. M'zleebin'." SRA2 Hummfree had just finished a twelve hour shift a couple of hours earlier and had been asleep less than an hour.

"Not when the chief wants you, you're not!" Kisegito ripped the sheet off Hummfree.

Hummfree rolled over and flopped out an arm, pawing for his missing sheet. "Zleebin'," he murmured.

"Not any more you aren't," Kisegito told him. "You don't get up right now, I'm dumping you on the deck."

"Mmmrph." Hummfree curled himself into a ball.

"Don't say I didn't warn you." Kisegito slipped his key into the control panel for Hummfree's acceleration couch, which was flattened into a bed for travel under gravity, and pressed the button that flipped it upside down.

"Awk!" Hummfree yelped when he thudded onto the deck. He started to spring to his feet to face whoever had attacked him, and slammed straight into his couch, which was now above him--the collision knocked him back down.

"On your feet and get dressed, Hummfree. The chief wants you."

"Wha'?" Hummfree looked bleary-eyed at the senior petty officer. "Whazza chief wan'?"

"You, though why anybody would want you is beyond me."

Hummfree grumbled as he crawled out from under his upside down bunk, the linen trailing from it to the deck, and looked at it. "Whoever did that better put it back by the time I get back," he said, giving Kisegito a dirty look.

While Hummfree was pulling his uniform on, Kisegito turned his key again and the couch returned to its normal position. "Who did what, Hummfree?" he asked innocently, ignoring the sheets that hung from the bunk to the deck.

Hummfree looked at the bunk and made a noise in his throat. "I want my sheets back in place too," he said. "Where is he?"

"In his quarters. Where do you expect to find a chief off shift?"

Hummfree made another throat noise. Dressed, if not totally squared away, he left his compartment.

"Took you long enough, Hummfree," Kem snarled when Hummfree reported.

"I was asleep."

The chief gave him a hard look. "Time enough for that when you die." He scowled at Hummfree for a long moment, then asked, "What the hell did you do?"

"Chief? What do you mean?"

"I mean, you had to have done something. The chief of ship wouldn't want to see you if you hadn't done something."

"Th-The chief of ship?"

"Did I stutter? What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything! What's the chief of ship want to see me for?"

"It may come as a surprise to you, Hummfree, but the chief of ship doesn't always confide in us lowly division chiefs. Why the hell do you think I'm asking what you did?"

Hummfree looked at Kem aghast. The chief of ship never sent for a petty officer unless the PO had done something wrong and was going to get reamed a new one. "I swear, Chief, I didn't do anything."

Kem shook his head. "Well, I guess I just have to wait until you get keelhauled to find out.

Report to the chief of ship immediately. If you get there fast enough, maybe he won't add to your punishment for being as late as you already are."

"Right, Chief. Immediately." Without waiting for further encouragement or permission, Hummfree took off at a sprint. He hoped he wouldn't encounter another chief on his way--sprinting in the passageways was forbidden except when General Quarters was sounded.

The chief of ship was in his office-cum-quarters, adjacent to the executive officer's quarters. The hatch was open and Hummfree rapped on it.

"Chief, SRA2 Hummfree, reporting as ordered," he said in as strong a voice as he could muster.

Master Chief Petty Officer Underhaven looked up from his reader and crooked a finger for Hummfree to enter.

Hummfree stepped inside and stood at attention, eyes fixed on a 2-D of a sailing ship on the bulkhead behind the chief's desk. Chief Underhaven stood and casually walked over to Hummfree. He leaned toward his face and sniffed.

"You've certainly done a good job of cleaning the smell," he growled.

"Chief?" Did the chief of ship think he'd been
drinking?
Onboard a starship in space?

"Have you wondered why we've been at jump point for nearly a full day standard when we should have jumped back into Beamspace after only an hour or so?"

"Ah, nossir, Chief, I've been on duty and wasn't paying attention to that."

"Because of you, that's why. I expected to smell turd breath when I leaned in. You had to be doing some serious ass-sucking for this." Underhaven turned his reader so Hummfree could see the document on it.

Hummfree read with increasing interest and confusion. The document was orders transferring him to Headquarters, Third Fleet, as a surveillance and radar instructor. "Is this why...?" he asked.

Underhaven nodded. "This is why we were intercepted at a jump point, yes. It's why you just came off a twelve hour shift guiding us through space debris to a rendezvous." He shook his head. It happened sometimes that a starship on cruise was intercepted at a known jump point. Not often, but sometimes. Usually it was for a change in orders, the starship had to go in harm's way, or maybe the harm's way it was headed for had been dealt with and she no longer needed to go there. The only other time Chief of Ship Underhaven had ever seen an intercept to take a man off the intercepted starship, it was to arrest him for a capital crime that hadn't been discovered until after the ship sailed. He didn't quite know what to make of it, other than it was going to deprive him of the talents of the most skillful SRA he'd ever seen. "So get your shit together and say your good-byes. You're transferring in," he checked the time, "eighty-seven minutes."

"Aye aye, Chief." Hummfree started away, then turned back. "Ah, Chief, sir? It's been good working on the
Philadelphia.
I've learned a lot here, this is a good ship."

Underhaven looked at him and wanted to shake his head, but didn't. He didn't think Hummfree had learned a damn thing on his ship, but Hummfree had taught the other SRAs a lot. "You did good for us. We'll miss you. Now scoot, son."

Hummfree grinned. "Aye aye, Chief." He turned again.

"Hummfree!" Underhaven's voice stopped him again. "You know, the SRA trainer's billet at Fleet is a first class billet."

Hummfree nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

"In my opinion, you deserve it. Now get out of here before you miss your transit and we have to do it again."

Farewells were brief. Most of the people he worked with were sleeping, and the women were in their own quarters, where men weren't allowed. He was all packed and ready at the bo'sun's chute in plenty of time. Two ratings strapped him and his gear into the deep-space skiff and a first-class checked their work. The skiff launched at the designated second, and its coxswain gentled it into the docking bay at its destination less than fifteen minutes later.

A chief with a holstered sidearm met him at the docking bay, led him to a small, unoccupied compartment and locked him in. Hummfree spent several days wondering what was going on. He hadn't expected to be locked in the brig! And transit to Third Fleet Headquarters shouldn't take so long. Meals were slid through a slot in the hatch three times a day. Twice a day he spent an hour in required physical exercise, though nobody else was in the small gym he was allowed to use. He also had access, only partly restricted, to the starship's library of vids, trids, books, and journals.

After two weeks' incarceration, he felt the starship fall into orbit around a planet. A few hours later the hatch to his isolation compartment opened and the same armed chief met him and escorted him to the bo'sun's chute, where he was hustled onto a waiting Essay.

"What's going on, Chief?" Hummfree asked, but the chief wouldn't say anything to him.

He and his gear were strapped into the webbing of the otherwise unoccupied Dragon that was the only one on the Essay. Moments later the Essay launched and went into the first-ever combat assault landing Hummfree had ever experienced. Of course, he thought the Essay was out of control and he was going to die. But it wasn't and he didn't. The Essay splashed down on water and the Dragon emerged, to speed over the ocean to the distant shore. When the Dragon stopped and dropped its ramp for him to exit, a burly Marine master sergeant was waiting for him. Using an absolute minimum of words, the master sergeant walked him through an abbreviated in-processing, followed immediately by a transfer in which he was handed over to a chief petty officer. The chief escorted him to another otherwise unoccupied Dragon waiting aboard an Essay, which launched as soon as he and his gear were strapped in and the hatches closed.

The flight back to orbit was much less violent than the descent had been. The Essay docked in a welldeck. When atmosphere was restored and the ramps opened for him to exit, he was met by a burly chief who was chewing on a stub of one inch hemp cable, the same way Hummfree had seen other chiefs chew on cigar butts.

"Your name Hummfree?" the chief growled.

"Sure is, Chief. What's going on?"

The chief stuck out a hand that could well be called a paw and growled, "I'm Chief Nome.

Welcome to the
Grandar Bay,
the worst assignment in the Confederation Navy. Your ass belongs to me."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Come on, Sergeant Ratliff, you can tell me, you know I won't blab it all around," Corporal Dean said. He and his squad leader were alone in the squad leaders' quarters.

"Even if I believed you wouldn't blab," Ratliff said without looking up from the gear he was cleaning, "which I know better than to believe, I wouldn't tell you because higher-higher has decreed that you aren't cleared to know."

"But--"

"Besides which," he looked at Dean, "higher-higher hasn't bothered to enlighten the best squad leader in the FIST."

Dean opened his mouth to say,
I don't care if Sergeant Linsman doesn't know, it's you I
want to hear from,
but thought better of it--Ratliff didn't look all that happy about the cleaning he was doing and just might welcome a chance to take it out on one of his fire team leaders.

Instead he asked, "What about Gun--ah, Ensign Bass?"

Ratliff shrugged and turned back to his cleaning. "He says he doesn't know either." He paused, looked at what he was doing, then said, "Is your fire team ready to pass an inspector general's inspection?"

"It's not an IG. The commandant himself was just here. An IG wouldn't come right after the commandant."

"That doesn't answer my question, Corporal."

Corporal.
His squad leader had addressed him as "Corporal." That must mean he was getting annoyed. "Just about, Sergeant."

"'Just about'? They better be completely ready by the time I finish here and go to conduct my own inspection."

"Ah, right. They will be, Sergeant Ratliff." He hurriedly headed for his fire team's room.

"He doesn't know," he told Lance Corporal Godenov and PFC Quick when he entered the room. "And he's pissed. He's coming to conduct an inspection, so let's make sure everything is ready." He began inspecting his men's uniforms and equipment to double-check that everything was shipshape.

An hour later Ratliff looked in.

"Oop," Godenov said. He was the first to see the squad leader.

"We're ready for your inspection, Sergeant Ratliff," Dean said sourly. He thought it was very unfair that Ratliff was going to inspect them now.

"You sure you're ready?" Ratliff asked.

"Yes, Sergeant."

Godenov and Quick stood at attention.

"Well, I'm too damn hungry to conduct an inspection. I want to go into Bronnys and scarf a reindeer steak, and wash it down with a few gallons of Reindeer Ale. You want to come with me? We'll see who else wants to go." He looked at Godenov and Quick as though seeing them for the first time. "What's the matter with you, Corporal? Chow call's already been sounded, dismiss your men."