Starfist: A World of Hurt (9 page)

A few minutes less than sixteen hours after jumping into Beamspace, the
Goin'on
jumped back into Space-3. This time, sedated at his own request, Admiral Orange stayed in his cabin.

Lieutenant Stems'n'seeds double-checked the astrogation computer's calculations and informed Commander Happiness they'd reentered Space-3 no more than three light-minutes from their target point. Commander Happiness complimented her on the accuracy of her astrogation--three light-minutes was very precise over 4.1 light-years.

Then everybody waited anxiously while Ensign Freelion worked his magic with the sensors. Their anxiety wasn't caused by what they expected Freelion to find, but rather Admiral Orange's reaction when he learned that Freelion didn't find anything. But Ensign Freelion surprised everybody.

"Sir, traces of recent passage!" Freelion yelped.

"What?" Happiness squawked. He pushed himself out of his jump couch and managed to grab the back of Freelion's before his momentum carried him past. He looked over the radar officer's shoulder at his displays.

There it was, signs of rapidly dispersing electromagnetic radiation showing where a starship returned from Beamspace, burned its forward thrusters to cut its velocity, and turned 68 degrees high starboard onto a new trajectory.

"Get a lock on that pattern," Happiness ordered before he could be overcome with sheer incredulity at the unlikeliness of jumping out of Beamspace in the same location as the ship they were following.

"Aye," Freelion said, and did something with his controls. "Locked, sir," he said a few seconds later.

"Lieutenant Stems'n'seeds, take the con and get us a pursuit vector."

"I have the con," Stems'n'seeds replied, awe in her voice. "Will maneuver to a pursuit trajectory."

"I'm going to tell the admiral." Happiness left the bridge.

"See? I told you it was easy," Admiral Orange said when told of the track they'd found.

"You may return to the bridge, Captain. I will stay here until after the jump into Beamspace."

He fumbled on a shelf beside his bed for the buzzer that connected him with the med section--he wanted to be sedated again before the jump.

Their luck ran out. There was no sign of a starship transiting into, out of, or through Space-3 when they reemerged into it seven light-years farther along. The only occupied world in range was the colony world of Maugham's Station, seven lights beyond their present position. A quick check of the
Atlas of the Populated and Explored Planets of Human
Space, Nineteenth Edition
showed that the government and populace were not the sort to engage in the piracy that had taken the
Broken Missouri.

Admiral Orange was convinced that the failure to find the freighter's second jump point was entirely due to the incompetence of either Commander Happiness or Lieutenant Stems'n'seeds. He ordered a series of one-light jumps along the trajectory of
Broken
Missouri's
last jump, beginning from the place where the freighter had entered Beamspace and continuing six lights beyond Maugham's Station.

Naturally, they found no traces whatsoever.

Admiral Orange ordered a return to We're Here! to assemble a destroyer escort. The next time, they'd have a far better chance of following the pirate ship no matter where she went.

CHAPTER SIX

The preparations for the FIST's movement to the uninhabited equatorial island of Nidhogge were complete and the Marines were just waiting for transportation.

"Waiting" was the key word.

"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up," Lance Corporal "Wolfman" MacIlargie groused. He was sitting at his tiny desk in third fire team, second squad's room, positioned so he could look out into the passageway beyond without having to turn his head. A reader was on his desk, loaded and lit, but he wasn't reading. Everything else he wasn't taking on the training exercise was secured in the company supply room, along with everyone else's belongings.

Everything he was taking was in his pack or attached to his gear webbing, both of which, along with his helmet, were in a ditty bag under his rack. The ditty bag was necessary, because the pack and webbing were chameleoned but the bag wasn't--he wouldn't have to grope to find his gear when it was time to move out.

Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz was sitting at his own desk. Unlike MacIlargie, however, the big man was hunched over his reader, studying Fingshway's recently published analysis of the classic
Technology and War,
by the twentieth-century military scholar Martin van Creveld. While part of him wished he'd read the original before the Diamunde war a few years earlier, he still found it useful because the Skinks kept coming up with technological innovations. He ignored MacIlargie's complaints.

Corporal Rachman Claypoole, like his men, sat at his desk. He was working on a problem in the Marine Corps Institute's squad leaders' tactics course. He hadn't planned on making a career of the Marines, but he was stuck, along with everyone else in 34th FIST, possibly for life. If he had to stay in anyway, unlike Schultz, he wanted to get promoted, maybe even get commissioned someday.

"Marines always have to hurry up to get ready to go. Then we sit here with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the navy to get around to picking us up," MacIlargie continued.

"That's why when I'm a staff sergeant, you'll still be a lance corporal," Claypoole said without looking up from his problem. Then he remembered and shot a glance at Schultz.

"Not that there's anything wrong with being a career lance corporal, of course." Schultz was adamant about not getting promoted; he liked being a lance corporal.

MacIlargie snorted. "You, a staff sergeant? Sure. You'll be old and gray by then and I'll be a brigadier. I'll promote you just because I remember how hard you tried to be a good fire team leader. Then I'll put you in charge of issuing athletic equipment, or something else where you won't be able to screw things up too badly."

Claypoole slowly turned his head to look at MacIlargie, then equally slowly turned back to his reader.

"'The independent worlds of Frump de Dump and Spangle have been waging war against each other on the unpopulated world of Ratatat,'" he read aloud. "'After several unsuccessful diplomatic attempts on the part of the Confederation of Human Worlds to bring about a cessation of hostilities, 17th FIST, embarked on the CNSS
Corporal S. A. Jones,
an amphibious landing ferry, has been deployed on a peace-making mission. After a week of fierce fighting, 17th FIST has been successful in forcing a cease-fire.

"'You are a squad leader in first platoon, Alpha Company. First platoon, reinforced by a UAV team, is providing security for the commander of the Frump de Dump forces, which is en route through heavily wooded hills to a meeting at FIST headquarters with the Spangle commander to make the cease-fire permanent. The UAV scouts the way. Halfway to FIST

HQ, the UAV's infrared sensors show what could be a company-size unit in position next to the road five kilometers ahead of your current position. The platoon commander has the UAV investigate more closely while he prepares to assess the threat and makes a plan to, if necessary, neutralize the possible threat. The UAV clearly shows a company of Spangle soldiers in ambush position in a saddle between two hills overlooking the road from the left side.

"'The platoon commander alerts the Frump de Dump commander, and deploys the platoon ahead. He assigns the gun squad to set a base of fire on the military crest of the hill overlooking the saddle. He takes second squad to the gun squad's left, from which he will assault the ambush from the flank. Your squad, first squad, is sent across the road from the ambush to catch the ambushers in a cross fire. Your squad is not to open fire until you receive the platoon commander's signal.

"'You are nearly in position when you hear on the platoon net that the gun squad is approaching the hill's military crest. Suddenly, two things happen simultaneously. One: you hear a firefight begin beyond the gun squad's position, where you think second squad is maneuvering to its assault position. Two: you lose all communications except for your squad net.

"'It is absolutely essential that the commander of the Frump de Dump forces reach FIST

HQ without being ambushed. Sergeant, what do you do now?'" Claypoole turned from his reader and looked at MacIlargie. "All right, brigadier-to-be, what
do
you do now?" he asked smugly.

"What?"
MacIlargie squawked.

"You heard me. That's a problem in the squad leaders' tactics course. I have to come up with a solution that will allow the convoy to make it through. If you're brigadier material, you must have a solution to the problem. So what would you do?"

"I--I...No comm?"

"That's right. Except for squad comm."

"I..." He looked at Claypoole, appalled.

"That's why I'm going to be a staff sergeant when you're still a lance corporal." Claypoole turned back to his reader.

He flinched when Schultz rumbled: "Break up the ambush."

MacIlargie wasn't the only one having trouble with "hurry-up-and-wait," but Ensign Charlie Bass's problem had absolutely nothing to do with waiting for the navy to provide the promised transportation to Nidhogge.

"Sir," he said to Captain Conorado, "the brigadier commissioned me as an ensign."

"Yes he did, Charlie." Conorado smiled. "Congratulations. It's well past time you became an officer." They were in the company commander's office.

"But, sir, I'm a...I'm an ensign."

"That's right." Conorado cocked an eyebrow in question.

Bass worked his jaw. This was proving harder than he'd expected. "But, sir--"

"Charlie, we're alone." Conorado nodded toward the closed door. "My name's Lew."

"Yessir, I know that," Bass said, confused.

"So use it."

"Sir?" A light blinked on. "Oh. I mean, right. Lew."

Conorado was mostly successful in keeping his amusement at the difficulty Bass had saying his first name to his face. "When officers are alone we generally use first names."

"First names. Yessir--ah, Lew." Bass had spent entirely too many years calling officers

"sir," or in the case of junior officers, "mister," to be immediately comfortable calling his company commander by his given name. But he was a Marine, he was accustomed to accomplishing the merely difficult immediately, and just needed a clarification.

"Does that mean the next time I run into the brigadier in the officers' club, I should call him Ted?"

Conorado had to laugh at that. "Discretion, Charlie. I think for now you should restrict your familiarity to company-grade officers. Unless, of course, the brigadier invites you to call him Ted."

"Yessir--Lew." The corner of Bass's mouth twitched at his slip, but he managed to get the captain's first name in immediately.

"So what was it you wanted to see me about, Charlie?"

"Well, s--Lew, I'm an
ensign
--"

"So you are." Conorado was pretty sure what was coming and was having trouble not laughing.

"Well, Lew--" Why was the Skipper making this so difficult? "--I don't
like
being an ensign.

I was a gunnery sergeant, a senior NCO--"

"Three different times, as I recall." Conorado gestured for Bass to continue.

Bass briefly gave him a hard look; he hadn't needed to be reminded he'd twice been busted from gunnery sergeant. "Well, Lew, the thing is, I feel like I'm starting over again. I've been in this man's Marine Corps for too long to have to start over again."

"You
are
starting over again, Charlie. You're starting as an officer."

"But--But...You know, Lew," he shifted his chair closer and leaned his elbows on the desktop, his hands raised almost as though he was going to clasp them in prayer, "ever since I was a salty corporal, I figured I outranked most ensigns--at least, I knew as much as most, and more than a lot of them."

Conorado couldn't help it, he broke out in laughter. After a moment he managed to say,

"I've been there, Charlie. I thought the same thing when I was a salty corporal." He lowered his face and shook his head. When he looked back up, he wasn't smiling. "But we both know better now, ensigns--
Marine
ensigns--
do
know more than most corporals, no matter how salty."

Bass tried so hard not to glare he looked sullen instead. "I'm sure you remember, Lew,"

he kept to his point, "the brigadier said he would commission me a lieutenant."

Conorado clasped his hands behind his neck and looked up at the ceiling while he reconstructed in his mind just what the brigadier had actually said. He lowered his hands to his desktop and his eyes to Bass. "As I remember it, Charlie, he said he
could
do that."

"But--But, sir--Lew, he
knows
I don't want to be an ensign."

Conorado leaned forward earnestly. "He also said he was making you an ensign no matter
what
you wanted."

"But--"

Conorado raised a hand to cut him off. "Charlie, you're right, the brigadier did imply that he'd promote you to lieutenant. I'm sure he will. Either at what he deems to be an appropriate time or when he
has
the time. A FIST commander is a very busy man, you know that."

"Yessir--Lew. I know he's very bus--"

"I'm not going to go to Commander van Winkle with this, Ensign."

"But--" Bass's jaw snapped as he bit off whatever he'd been about to say. The Skipper had just called him
Ensign.
That made their conversation official, brought it into the sphere of strict military discipline, and meant no further discussion was permitted.

"Yessir. I understand, sir." Bass stood. "By your leave, sir?"

Conorado nodded. Bass turned and left the company commander's office. He remembered to leave the door open behind him.

"So how'd it go, Charlie?" Top Myer asked.

Bass snapped something inarticulate and left the company office without even looking at the first sergeant.