Starfist: A World of Hurt (36 page)

"Sound battle stations."

"Sir?"

"Have you gone deaf, Captain?" The admiral paused in buttoning his tunic to glare at Happiness. "I said battle stations!"

"Aye aye, sir!" The
Goin'on's
captain spun about and left the cabin to sound battle stations, even though with the We're Here! fleet as far out of range of Maugham's Station and the orbiting Confederation starship as it was, he knew there was absolutely no need for anyone to head for battle stations for several days to come.

"Incompetents! Why am I surrounded by incompetents!" the admiral muttered as he brushed past Lieutenant Shroom into the passageway. He used his fingers to comb his hair as he headed for the bridge.

The ship's PA system blared out an ear-splitting klaxon, and a carefully modulated female voice crooned, "All hands, now hear this. Battle stations. All hands, battle stations."

"Well, what are you standing around waiting for?" Admiral Orange demanded as he bustled onto the bridge. The members of the bridge crew were all sitting at their duty stations, waiting for orders.

"What does the admiral want us to do, sir?" Happiness asked.

"Stop the
Grandar Bay
from breaking orbit, of course!"

Shortly, Task Forces Toke, Head, and Crashpad were heading toward Maugham's Station under inertial power. They were four days away from a contact position with the
Grandar Bay,
and even Admiral Orange knew the Confederation starship would probably break orbit sooner than that. The admiral began issuing orders to cover all contingencies.

In the absence of any orders at all, Task Force Main followed slowly.

It took a day and a half standard for the Essay to retrieve the string-of-pearls, and another half day for it to return to the
Grandar Bay.
The Essay docked in the starship's welldeck and was locked down, and its crew headed for their berthing compartment. Moments later the
Grandar Bay's
PA system commenced the final countdown to launch, and the mighty amphibious starship began her gracefully ponderous break from orbit. Her exit took her to planetary north, angled away from the sun. There was no rush. Commodore Boreland ordered a flight path that would take the starship four days to reach her first jump point.

Three hours after launch, the commodore ordered gravity restored, and the off-duty crew and embarked Marines were permitted to leave their cabins and compartments. Shortly after, the galleys were in full operation and the first shift was called to the main mess halls.

Most of the Marines headed for other open spaces. Boreland sent a steward to Brigadier Sturgeon and Colonel Ramadan with an invitation to join him in his dining salon for a simple repast.

The mahogany dining table in Commodore Boreland's quarters was covered with a snow-white, damasked linen cloth. Four places were set at it. The commodore and Captain Maugli, the
Grandar Bay's
executive officer, were waiting for Brigadier Sturgeon and Colonel Ramadan when they arrived.

"Gentlemen!" Boreland said, greeting the two Marines and shaking their hands. "I believe you both know Captain Maugli."

"Yes we do, Roger," Sturgeon said. "Good to see you again, Zsuz." He shook Maugli's hand.

"And you, Ted. Ike," Maugli said as he let go of Sturgeon's hand and shook with Ramadan.

"An aperitif, gentlemen?" Boreland asked, and turned to a side table, where a bottle of cognac waited with four snifters. A nearby steward reached for the bottle, but Boreland waved him away and poured himself.

"Gentlemen," Boreland said, when everyone had a glass, "to a strange mission well accomplished."

"Strange indeed," Sturgeon said, lifting his glass. "Mission accomplished."

"Mission accomplished," Ramadan and Maugli agreed, hoisting their glasses in toast.

They savored the cognac's aroma and sipped. Sturgeon noticed it wasn't the same Corsican Special Reserve Boreland had treated him to following the Kingdom campaign.

But neither was this as special an occasion.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?" Boreland asked after a moment.

Sturgeon answered, "Carnivorous plants? Several times. Predatory plants, a few times.

But that method of carnivorous predation was new to me." He looked to Ramadan for further comments.

"Humanity has encountered a few thousand carnivorous plants," the colonel said. "Most of them eat insectoids, a few specialize in small species of lizardlike animals, mammaloids, or small avians. Only a dozen or so have been found that predate on larger animals--such as
H. sapiens.
I've searched the literature and haven't found another incident where several species cooperate the way the flora of the hidden valleys seem to."

"Then those life-forms are unique?" Maugli asked.

"It does seem so."

"Imagine," the
Grandar Bay's
executive officer said softly. Then, "You Marines sometimes go planetside, into places where you have limited information on local life-forms, isn't that right?"

Sturgeon nodded. "Often times, as on Maugham's Station, we go in with no reliable information."

"And every time you do, you risk running into something like that." Maugli shuddered.

"Maugham's Station had some unpleasant surprises," Sturgeon said, "but I didn't lose any Marines, and that's the most important thing."

Maugli shook his head. "I'm glad I'm a sailor, not a Marine."

Sturgeon and Ramadan chuckled politely and sipped at their cognac.

"Gentlemen--you Marines too," Boreland said with a smile when they finished their aperitifs, "seats, please."

Two of the place-setting napkins were clinched with holders that bore navy emblems, the other two had Marine emblems. They were arranged so Boreland sat at the table's head and Sturgeon at its foot, with their number ones in between.

As soon as the four were seated, a steward poured an ounce of white wine into Boreland's glass for his approval.

"That will do nicely," the commodore said when he'd tasted the wine. The steward poured for all, and at a signal from Boreland, left the bottle on the table. An open bottle of the same sat chilling on a credenza. Sturgeon didn't recognize the label.

"Gentlemen, a toast," Sturgeon said. "To our Corps and Confederation and," with a nod to Boreland, "our navy."

"Corps and Confederation," Ramadan said.

"Confederation and navy," Boreland and Maugli said.

They drank their glasses half down. Before either number one could propose a toast, two stewards appeared. One bore a tray with four dishes on it, the other a tray with two small tureens. He set one down to Boreland's right front, between him and Ramadan, the other between Sturgeon and Maugli. As he put the tureens in place, the other steward began placing the other dishes in front of the diners.

A light repast, indeed, Sturgeon thought as he looked at the dish in front of him, unless it was a very large appetizer. The dish was a large salad plate, on which portions of three different salads of white meats, possibly chicken, were set, along with some sort of pasta salad, all over a bottom of mixed greens, split cherry tomatoes, and diagonally sliced cucumbers.

"I first had this dish in an only slightly pretentious place called Curlie's, in the South District of Melbourne."

"City or world?" Ramadan interrupted.

"The world," Boreland replied, giving the Marine a questioning look.

"On the direct paternal line," Ramadan responded to the unvoiced question, "I'm Australian. Melbourne was only known as the most important city south of the equator on Earth before a planet was named after it."

Boreland nodded understanding. Given Ramadan's looks, he was no more old Australian than anyone else at the table; he looked to be a blend of the old racial types that had evolved before humanity moved into space and most came to realize that, despite superficial differences, all people were human. To be sure, there were those who decried what they called "the mongrelization of racial purity," but most saw that the helter-skelter mixing of human types and lineages strengthened the species.

"But back to the salad," the commodore continued. "You have a sample portion of an Earth chicken salad, a piscoid salad from New Genesee, of all unlikely places, an

'indeterminate meat' salad from Boradu, and a macaroni salad from Dominion. But what really makes this salad worthy of being a main meal is the dressing." He reached out and lifted the lid from the tureen near his right hand. The dressing was a thick liquid of dark olive green in which darker flecks of suspended solids could be made out.

"Gentlemen, I don't know what this dressing is made of, much less where its ingredients come from, but it has made this salad one of my favorite dishes. Please, Ted, Ike, sample it." He handed the ladle to Ramadan, who put a dollop on a corner of his salad and tasted.

His eyes opened wide, as did Sturgeon's at the other end of the table when the smiling Maugli offered some to him.

As he ladled more of the dressing on his salad, Sturgeon said, "You say you discovered it in a restaurant on Melbourne. If you don't know what's in it, or where its ingredients come from, how did it come to be on your menu?"

Boreland smiled and drenched his own salad with dressing as he answered. "When I returned to my ship, I asked the chief of mess if he knew the dish. He didn't, but promised to look into it. I don't know what happened when he visited the chef at Curlie's, but when he came back, he had the recipe. He told me what the portions are, but refused to say anything about the dressing." He shook his head. "Chiefs of mess are as bad as civilian chefs when it comes to secrets. I don't know--and don't even want to think about--what the chief had to do to get that recipe."

"Have you been back to Curlie's since then?" Sturgeon asked with a twinkle in his eye.

"Every time I've been to Melbourne."

Then they stopped talking and paid attention to their food, pausing only occasionally to wash a morsel down with a sip of wine.

After the dishes were cleared away, they sat sipping cognac and puffing on Davidoff Anniversario No. 1's provided by Colonel Ramadan, discussing the ways they were dealing with the inevitable morale problems raised by 34th FIST's quarantine and the supposed loss of the
Grandar Bay.
So far there hadn't been many major problems with the junior people; few of the Marines had families on other worlds who were expecting them to come home soon, and the seriousness of their situation hadn't yet sunk into most of the sailors. There were more problems with the officers and middle-level NCOs and petty officers, who saw their possibilities of career advancement by any means other than the death or incapacitation of higher ranking people cut off. As for the commanders themselves, both Sturgeon and Boreland saw themselves frozen in what they considered the best duty a Marine or navy officer could wish for. Colonel Ramadan enjoyed being a FIST executive officer and had no aspirations for a command of his own or staff duty in a higher headquarters somewhere. Captain Maugli kept his own counsel.

"Excuse me," Boreland said when a beep drew his attention. He turned away from the table and spoke into his comm. "Commodore here." He listened for a moment, then said,

"I'll be there immediately," and signed off.

"Gentlemen," he announced as he rose to his feet and headed for the bridge, "it appears that Maugham's Station is under assault by an unknown force--and the Combat Information Center reports that a flotilla of unidentified starships is on an intercept vector with us."

The others jumped up and headed out of the salon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"The commodore is on the bridge!" the officer of the deck announced.

"Carry on," Commodore Boreland said as he stepped through the hatch, followed by Brigadier Sturgeon. Colonel Ramadan and Captain Maugli had gone to their own duty stations.

The bo'sun nodded at Boreland, then returned his attention to overseeing the petty officers and seamen of the bridge watch. Nobody else so much as glanced in the commodore's direction.

Boreland stood near the left shoulder of the ensign who was serving as the assistant officer of the deck and looked at the navigation radar globe the AOD was studying; the
Grandar Bay
was centered in the globe, and Maugham's Station was a larger dot toward one edge. "That's them?" he asked, using a laser pointer to indicate a cluster of dots to one side.

"Yessir." The AOD didn't shift his eyes from their concentration on the radar globe.

"Show me."

The AOD touched controls and a line appeared, running from Maugham's Station through the dot that represented the
Grandar Bay,
and on to the edge of the globe. Another line ran through the cluster of dots for the unidentified flotilla. The two lines crossed midway between the
Grandar Bay's
position and the edge of the globe.

"Has CIC identified them yet?"

"No positive IDs yet, sir. Tentative ID is one heavy cruiser, three destroyers, and five smaller starships--the smaller ships might be spaceships rather than starships, but CIC

says
that
identification is unlikely." Spaceships, unlike starships, only functioned within a planetary system and were incapable of interstellar travel. Maugham's Station didn't have any spaceships, much less starships."

"Communications?"

"Radio reports there has been no response to broad-spectrum communications. If they are communicating among themselves, they're using lasers or tight directionals that we can't pick up."

"Estimated time of intercept?" Boreland asked the quartermaster's mate first class, who was the duty navigator.

"At current velocities and vectors, twenty-five hours, seventeen minutes standard, sir," the navigator replied. "At current velocity, we are twenty-seven hours, forty-eight minutes standard from our plotted jump point. At flank speed we can reach jump point in fourteen hours standard."

"Thank you. Good work, both of you. Keep me informed." Boreland turned from the nav globe and stepped over to the OOD. "What do we know about the situation planetside?"