Poor Man's Fight (16 page)

“We don’t need to,” Ramirez answered. “We just need one FTL jump to get us to the middle of nowhere. I’ll take it from there.”

***

Darren woke to the sight of
Lauren and several other pirates glaring at him with guns drawn. They ordered him to shut up, called for Casey and waited.

Nobody even let Darren up to use the bathroom. The friendliness vanished.
Come to think of it,
Darren realized,
that whore from last night is gone, too.
He could’ve sworn she’d fallen asleep with him.

Casey
came in, took one look at Darren and the room, and sighed. “Darren,” he frowned, “did you talk to anyone about the job Wilson and I had you do on the ship?”

“Ugh,” Darren mumbled. “What job? Ship?”

“The fucking starliner!” Casey exploded. “
Aphrodite
! Your goddamn ship! Did you say anything to anyone?”

“What? No!”

“Want me to ask him?” Lauren offered grimly. Casey only shook his head in response, his eyes still on Darren.

The younger man, for his part, could easily guess what
Lauren meant. “What’s going on? Casey, who was I going to say anything to? What the hell?”

Lauren
and Casey exchanged glances. She shrugged. “He’d have to be a unbelievable idiot to help and not go with them,” she noted.

“Sure,”
Casey agreed, “my question is if he was dumb enough to help without knowing it?”

“What the fuck happened?” Darren repeated desperately.

“
Aphrodite’s
gone, Darren,” Casey fumed. “Took off out of here twenty minutes ago, not an hour after the watch changeover. She powered up all of a sudden and fired off her guns at the dock and
Vengeance
and everything around her, then broke off the docking rings and shot off too suddenly for anyone to pursue. She jumped into FTL before anyone caught up to her. Whoever took her knew exactly what to fix in engineering.”

Darren’s jaw dropped. He looked at the angry faces around him and wondered if he’d even live out the day. How many of them would believe he had nothing to do with it? How many would care regardless? Darren buried his face in his hands… and then realized that something was missing.

The earring with his new holocom, along with all its personal files, was gone. “Oh no,” he groaned, and then looked around the room in a rising panic.

“What?”
Casey demanded.

“Last night—there was a girl here with me, she… God, I think I remember her wanting to get paid before we did it again,
so I opened up my holocom in front of her and… oh my God,” Darren breathed.

Plainly fighting to control her rage,
Lauren stepped away. “Told you he should’ve stayed at the Palace last night,” she said bitterly.

“Yeah, well,”
Casey grumbled, “looks like he’s not going to be able to afford to be in there again for awhile.”

“Tanner, you’re supposed to hit me!”

“Unh. Wha?”

“Shit, are you okay?” Wong sounded somewhere between annoyed and worried. Tanner wasn’t exactly sure where she was. All he could really make out from his vantage point on the mat were the squad bay’s overhead lights and a few silhouettes towering over him.

“’nother win for Recruit Wong,” Janeka said with an audible frown. “Mark that down on your tally sheet whenever you get up off your back, Malone.”

Pain throbbed in Tanner’s jaw. He propped himself into an upright sitting position as he grunted out an “Aye, aye.” Strong hands helped him off the floor. Ravenell and Sinclair stood by him, making sure he could stand on his own before letting go.

“I’m alright,” Tanner mumbled. “I’m alright.”

Then Janeka was in his face. “Look at me, recruit,” s
he demanded. “Now look that way. And that way.” She watched his eyes track her finger and nodded. “How do you feel?” she asked without sympathy.

“Fine, Sergeant Janeka,” Tanner said.

“What?”

“Fine, Sergeant Janeka!”

“Good. No concussion. No excuse to slack off.” Janeka turned to the recruit behind her. “Wong, I catch you goin’ easy on Malone or anyone else again, you’ll have to learn to do push-ups in your sleep.” With that, Janeka strode away to survey other sparring matches.

The sergeant’s “dojo” was only a temporary configuration of the squad bay. Every afternoon, the company collapsed their bunks and stacked them along the walls. They rolled out large foam mats and
erected sparring dummies and other gear from two floors below. At the end of each session, they put everything back the way it was until the next afternoon. Only those on light duty due to minor injuries got out of sparring, and even they had to help out however possible.

Tanner sighed as Janeka
left. Alicia Wong promptly took up the sergeant’s vacated spot. “I left myself wide open three times,” she complained.

“I’m pretty sure I swung at you three times,” Tanner replied. “Or kicked. Or whatever I did.”

“My great-grandmother could’ve blocked those.”

“You’re only nineteen and you’re already a bad ass. I don’t want to know how many black belts your great-grandmother
—.”

“Swear to God,” Wong scowled, “if you make an ‘
all Asians know kung fu’ crack—“

“Woah! Just sayin’. You’re a scary bad ass.
I’m willing to bet it’s a family trait.”

Wong scowled. “I’m serious. You should be doing better than this. Your forms are fine, but you lose almost every sparring match.”

“I’ve won a few. I even beat Ravenell once.”

“I sneezed
that time,” the taller recruit noted.

“
Hey, don’t diminish my glory.”

“
Einstein, stop!” Someone behind Tanner yelled. “He tapped! He tapped!”

Tanner and the others turned to the growing commotion. Einstein had his sparring partner on the ground, one arm wrapped around the recruit’s throat while he punched with the other
again and again at his opponent’s kidney area.

Janeka moved across the room in a heartbeat. “Stop!” she
ordered. “Einstein, stop!” She grabbed Einstein’s punching arm, twisted it and pulled him off and away. She shoved Einstein back while other recruits attended to their beaten comrade.

For a brief second, Einstein looked as if he would take Janeka on. Then he hesitated. Tanner wished he had gone for it. A
dumb move like that would’ve solved a big problem for the whole company.

“Your observers said he tapped,” Janeka said coldly.

“I didn’t see.”

“You didn’t see
what?
”

“I didn’t see him tap, sergeant.”

“That’s why you’ve got observers, jackass.” She looked to the other recruit without stepping away from Einstein. “Rivera, who is that? Is he okay?” Normally, she could identify any recruit at a mere glance, but all the blood from the fallen man’s nose made it a little difficult.

Oscar C
ompany’s unofficial “recruit corpsman” shook his head. Rivera was a couple of years older than most of the recruits, having gone on a religious charity mission between graduation and enlisting. As such, he had a little more worldliness than the rest, and certainly more first aid training. “It’s Andrews, sergeant,” Rivera said. “He doesn’t look too good.”

Janeka stepped away from Einstein to look Andrews over. She was only there for a moment before Einstein giggled—quietly, but she heard it. It was the first time they’d ever seen Janeka’s anger run hot rather than cold. “Who’s laughing?” she demanded. “Which asshole thinks this is funny? You’ve got a shipmate down
and you laugh? On your faces! Everybody but Rivera, on your faces now!”

The entire company dropped into push-up position wherever they stood. “Down!” Janeka ordered. Everyone lowered themselves to a held position six inches from the floor. They did not, however, rise up. Janeka hadn’t ordered it.

Tanner now realized just how forcefully Wong had kicked him under his left arm. His jaw didn’t feel too great, either, but that wasn’t involved in holding him up. Everything began to throb with pain.

“How are you doing, Andrews?” Janeka asked. Her composure had already returned. “Can you hear me?”

Andrews grunted weakly.

“Your nose looks bad. How’s your back feel?”

“Bad, sergeant,” Andrews stammered. “I think something might be wrong.”

Most everyone near him heard just fine. The only other sounds in the squad bay were the occasional grunts and gasps of one hundred sixty-five young men and women still only halfway through a push-up.

“Just relax, Andrews.” Janeka activated the holocom on her wrist. “Medical to Squad Bay Oscar. Potential internal trauma.”

As the last words left her mouth, every light in the bay went to a distinct, bright red
. A siren wailed. Everyone snapped out of their push-up positions and scrambled for their bunks. Many were well across the room from where they needed to be, leading to some chaos. Several recruits stumbled; others tripped. Headed in opposite directions, Einstein and Tanner barely avoided a collision. Even with the crash avoided, though, Einstein shoved Tanner further aside anyway as he passed.

Tanner got to his collapsed bunk, scooped his helmet off the floor and shoved it over his head.
With its firm, metal faceplate and snug padding, putting the thing on quick was always unpleasant. At least it was broken in well enough that both lenses lined up with his eyes now instead of riding too high. As the smart-fabric seals wrapped around his neck and tightened against his vac suit, Tanner reached for a brightly lit green panel on the bulkhead nearby. He tore the panel off, pulled out the small compressed oxygen cartridge mounted in the recess behind the panel and slammed it into the receiving slot in the back of his helmet.

The ready lights of Tanner’s helmet blinked green a half-second before the squad bay lighting dropped completely.
Looking out through the lenses of his helmet, Tanner saw other tiny green indicator lights scattered throughout the darkness. He also saw more than a few reds.

The
regulation goal was to have the helmet on and sealed in fifteen seconds or less. It already held one pre-loaded oxygen cartridge, which would last at least thirty minutes. Immediately loading up a fresh cartridge was standard procedure, however, because there was always the chance of a leak or diminished capacity in the pre-loaded cartridge. Any of a dozen things could go wrong. Oscar Company held to the standard of having the secondary supply loaded and ready within that same fifteen seconds.

“I say again,” Janeka repeated in the silent darkness, “medical to Squad Bay Oscar. Potential internal trauma.”

“Acknowledged,” replied a voice from her holocom.

Silence held for a moment more. “Recover,” Janeka finally ordered. The lights
returned. The members of Oscar Company stood up wherever they were. Only a couple of the recruits were missing their helmets. Poor Rivera was still looking for his helmet where it had fallen on the mat. Given the circumstances, it was a much better performance than Tanner expected. But it still wasn’t flawless.

“So that’s seventeen of you dead,” Janeka announced, “along with Andrews and Rivera here, whom nobody came to help.” The fallen recruit remained sprawled out on his back next to Janeka in a bloody mess with Rivera still kneeling
beside him. “Nice job, Oscar Company.”

Tanner winced. Standard Operating Procedure held that every crewman saw to himself first and then his shipmates. Loyalty and selflessness aside, a dead crewman couldn’t rescue his buddies. At the same time, however, there was no excuse for Andrews and Rivera “dying” in the drill. Tanner could see that nobody had even
moved toward Andrews… including Tanner himself.

“Now then,” Janeka went on, “there’s still the matter of some sick shithead among you who’s amused to see one of his shipmates in pain. Down.”

Again, everyone assumed the push-up position. “Down. Stay down,” Janeka ordered calmly. “Maybe those helmets will keep me from hearing any of you giggle at your shipmates’ pain. We’re all supposed to be able to rely on one another out there, but I’d hate to have my life in
your
hands.”

***

Not one of them had seen sun or stars in thirty-six days.

R
ehabilitation of Squad Bay Oscar became the company’s first order of business. For over a week, each day held an hour of organized physical training (PT), followed by marching drills for the remainder of the morning (punctuated, constantly, by PT) and then work crew details inside the shelter (also punctuated by frequent PT) right up to lights-out. They knew there were other recruit companies because they saw them at chow in the base galley, but there was no socializing with them.

According to Tanner’s reading, there should likely have been more in the way of formal orientation to military customs, courtesies and traditions. There should have been endless inspections and care for uniforms. Instead, most of the formal clothing issued to the recruits stayed in their canvas bags, which remained in each recruit’s small storage unit beside each bunk. Rather than learning military etiquette, Tanner learned an awful lot about
plumbing, ventilation and atmospheric recycling systems.