Poor Man's Fight (31 page)

Several corvettes made their homes on Augustine, though their berths were little more than painted lines on the pavement beside service equipment. Two of the planet’s five corvettes
rested in port at the moment. One of them,
St. Martin
, had her main thrusters half-disassembled and strewn on the deck. The other,
St. Patrick
, looked ready to go. Tanner saw no sign of activity in or around either ship.

Cargo crates, pallet lifters and service vehicles made up most of the scenery on the flight line. Out beyond them were larger berths for bigger ships, though they, too, were out at the moment. Beyond the flight line stood the permanent buildings that made up Augustine Harbor.

A signal on the deck chief’s holocom caught Tanner’s attention. The chief pointed to a moving dot of light in the sky. “That’ll be your ride,” he said. Other dots of light moved up in the black sky, all going this way and that. The one he indicated didn’t seem to be coming for the base.

“How can you tell it from the others?” Tanner asked.

“Flight path.
St. Jude
always makes the regulation sweep around the base before landing.”

“The other ships don’t?”

The deck chief pursed his lips. His eyes hinted at something both regretful and amusing. “Corvette duty was at the top of your wish list, right?”

“Yes, chief,” Tanner nodded. There were only so many non-rate billets on corvettes to go around.
Tanner needed endorsements from Everett and Janeka just to put in for corvette duty. Quite a few of Tanner’s fellow recruits made the same request of their trainers. Not all of them received it.

It was therefore a little disconcerting when the deck chief smiled, shook his head and said, “Well, like they say, you’ve gotta be careful what you wish for.”

Tanner didn’t press for details. Corvette duty didn’t carry special prestige; its crews were not an elite. Such duty simply offered more involvement for junior personnel than one could find on a larger ship.  On destroyers or cruisers, non-rates like Tanner performed mostly menial, low-skill tasks. Anything beyond that was subject to close supervision by personnel who had gone through specialist schools and had earned their “ratings” as operations specialists, gunner’s mates and such. It would be a year at the very least before Tanner could go to such a school. He accepted that there would be frequent grunt work in his first year regardless of his assignment, but placement on a corvette meant that grunt work wasn’t all he could expect.

Minutes later,
St. Jude
’s white, dagger-shaped hull dropped out of the darkness and into the floodlights of the flight line. She floated down under the power of her antigrav engines, making horizontal corrections with small thrusters embedded along her length and breadth. The corvette settled with a rippling metallic thunk as each of her three landing struts came down. Tanner watched as the deck chief waved his handful of men and women in to connect hoses and cables to the ship.

Nobody told Tanner whether it was okay for him to move past the safety line. He considered calling out to ask, but opted not to interrupt real work or embarrass himself. He walked over to stand parallel to the aft loading ramp.

After two seemingly endless minutes, the ramp dropped. The first person to appear was a man in a grey navy vac suit, who quickly turned off and walked to the side opposite Tanner. A second, younger crewman followed him a moment later. Tanner watched without comment.

A
bell rang out from the ship’s PA. Out walked a tall, bald, broad-shouldered man in a service uniform. He wore a lieutenant’s rank insignia, but the bell clearly marked him as the ship’s captain. The pale lieutenant strode toward Tanner with a preoccupied frown. Tanner popped to attention and saluted. The lieutenant did not return the salute. He passed by without a word. Tanner blinked, turning to watch him head off to the command building a hundred meters beyond. His stride was just short of a jog.

“Boot,” someone grunted. Tanner turned back to find a large, muscular navy crewman
before him. His black horseshoe mustache accentuated his frown. “You the new guy?”

“Yes, uh, Bos’un Morales,” Tanner said, quickly reading the insignia on the man’s vac suit. “Crewman Apprentice Tanner Malone, reporting as—“

“Where’s the rest of your gear?” the bos’un cut him off. His voice was cool and devoid of anger, but also lacking in friendliness or patience. Something about his gaze conveyed a hint of disdain.

“I was told to report here with a vac suit and work
coveralls,” Tanner blinked. He tucked his plastic folder under his left arm so he could shake hands with Morales, but the bigger man didn’t react. “Uh, the other stuff is in my room in the barracks. Should I have—?”

“You have the rest of your flight gear?” Morales asked. “Helmet? Thermal regulator? They give you all that shit already?”

“Yes, bos’un.” He dropped his hand.

“I guess you’d better be comfortable in that one vac suit for the next few days, then
.” The dismissive tone left no ambiguity as to his impression of Tanner’s intelligence. He turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Stumpy!”

Two more crewmen had appeared from the loading ramp. Their amiable chatter ended when one answered
the summons. He was short, stocky and swarthy, appearing only a few years older than Tanner. His uniform marked him as an unrated crewman. “Yeah, boss?”

“New boot’s here,” Morales said, turning to
Stumpy. “Take him aboard and tell him where to put his shit. Then take him to the XO to report in. Make it quick.” Morales walked away without another word.

Stumpy
turned back toward the ramp. “C’mon,” he grunted. He either ignored or completely missed Tanner’s outstretched hand.

Following quickly behind, Tanner found himself at a bit of a loss for words. Everyone seemed to be in a foul mood, but only the captain looked rushed. As he followed
Stumpy up the ramp and through the half-empty cargo bay, though, he was struck by something else—something physical. He quickly felt weary and worn out. His bag grew heavy. His shoulders felt heavier. A brief, fuzzy sensation appeared in his head and along with it came a nasty weight in his gut.

Tanner chalked it up to stress and nerves. It wasn’t like he expected hugs or fanfare, but this wasn’t much of a welcome. He tried to break the ice with his fellow non-rate. “So, uh, does everyone call you
Stumpy, or is that only for some people?”

“
Stumpy’s fine,” came the grumble. They headed up a ladder to the upper deck and back, through a narrow passageway to the lower-ranked crew berth. The compartment spanned little more than three meters from end to end and less than that across. The bulkheads on Tanner’s left and right each held three recessed bunk beds and three tall lockers. On the opposite side from the hatch was a very tiny head.

“Take either
top bunk and put your shit on it,” Stumpy told him, gesturing to the beds. “Doesn’t matter which. You got a helmet and everything already?”

“Yeah,” Tanner nodded, putting his bag on the bunk to his left. Like the one on the top right, it had a thin mattress but no sheets. The other bunks were unmade.
Articles of clothing and other personal belongings sat on them. Discarded food wrappers, empty cans and even worn underwear littered the floor. The whole musty compartment needed to be wiped down.

“Does it work?
You trained with it?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s all fine,” Tanner answered. “Been doing decompression drills with this gear since the second week of basic.”

“In basic?” Stumpy blinked, then shrugged. Once again he turned to walk away while speaking. “Oh yeah, you got that six-month deal. That must’ve sucked. Guess they gotta fill all those extra weeks with one sort of bullshit or another. C’mon, the XO’s on the bridge. BM1 oughta be there, too. He’s our department head, so he’s our boss. You already met Morales. He’s BM2, so he’s also your boss. Basically everybody’s your boss.”

“Low man on the totem pole,” Tanner acknowledged. His friendly tone was, once again, either missed completely or deliberately ignored.

They made their way down the passageway toward the front of the ship.
St. Jude
had only two decks, with the top being mostly crew quarters and the bridge. The ship’s commissioned officers and its engineering chief had their own rooms. The rest shared two crew berths between them, one for the rated crewmen and the smaller one for the non-rates. Stumpy opened the hatch to the bridge and led the way through.

Tanner
noted that the bridge, thankfully, was not at all in the same condition as the crew berth. There were only two chairs on the bridge, each of them mounted against opposite bulkheads and facing front. Windows all around offered a view of the flight line.

Three men stood at the center of the bridge, facing a standing work desk that occupied much of the rear of the compartment.
Over the desk floated a holographic star chart. Though the two older men addressed the third, who looked younger than both, as “sir,” everyone spoke with casual familiarity.

“They’ll probably run us on a patrol pattern through here, is my guess,” the younger man said. He reached inside the projection to trace a finger from Augustine’s icon out in a wide line and then back again. Tanner was familiar enough with his home system to recognize its outer orbits on a chart. He received just enough basic navigational training on
Los Angeles
during his apprenticeship phase to realize how complicated it was. This chart was much more detailed and technical than anything he’d trained with. It showed markers for buoys, outer-orbit satellites of Augustine and frequent traffic routes, along with floating numbers to denote distances to and from many points of interest.

“Pretty wide path, sir,”
observed the eldest-looking of the three. Either he hadn’t undergone longevity treatments until he was around fifty, or he was positively ancient. The grim weariness to his face seemed permanent.

The younger man, wearing junior lieutenant’s bars, gave a shrug and a wry grin. Tanner took him for the XO. “I’m just throwing it out there, Bill. Not a clue where we’re really going to be, but it’ll still be a while before they shift more ships out here with us.
St. Martin
ain’t going anywhere.”

“Nah, they’d have to actually put in a day’s work first, sir,” grinned the third man. He lo
oked to be in his mid-thirties—again, depending on his longevity treatments—with close-cut blond hair and a fit build. Like the XO, he at least showed signs of cheer. He was also the most aware of Stumpy’s presence, along with the newcomer. “This our new boot?” he asked.

“Yup,”
Stumpy nodded. He moved aside as the XO stepped forward.

“Crewman Apprentice Tanner Malone, reporting as ordered, sir,” Tanner said with a salute. The XO returned his salute, though with less crisp formality.
To Tanner’s relief, the XO offered a handshake.

“At ease. Welcome aboard, Apprentice Malone,” the XO said. He released Tanner’s hand to accept the plastic file from his new subordinate. “I’m Lieutenant Gagne. This is Bos’un Freeman and Ops Specialist Reed.” Freeman
stepped over to shake Tanner’s hand. Reed merely waved and mumbled something unintelligible and noncommittal as he turned back to the charts.

“Thank you, sir,” Tanner said.

“How long have you been waiting for us?” Gagne asked.

“Just since yesterday, sir. They set me up in the barracks and told me to be here waiting
for you this morning, sir.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you were here on time or you might’ve missed us. We’re going back out within the hour, or so’s the plan.
Stumpy, you getting him squared away?”

“Yes, sir,”
Stumpy confirmed. “He’s got flight gear already.”

“
Good. Malone, get aft and get changed out of that service uniform. You’ll get caught up with us as you go.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Tanner nodded. He popped to attention and saluted once more. The XO gave a half-smirk, saluted casually and turned back to the charts.

“Hey, Stumpy, give his gear a once-over before you do anything else,” Freeman added.

“Okay. C’mon, boot,”
said Stumpy, leading the way once more.

In the crew berth, Tanner opened up his flight bag and removed his vac suit and boots. He handed over the helmet and detachable emergency gear to
Stumpy, who put each piece through its self-diagnostic tests as Tanner changed. “So what’s going on?” Tanner asked.

“A lotta hurry up and wait,”
Stumpy said without looking up. His tone of disinterest remained. “They say we’re out of here in an hour, but it’ll be at least two. Probably three or four. We get ready in a rush and then sit here waiting for someone to get his thumb out of his ass and tell us to go. Every time.”

“Huh,” Tanner replied. “Do you know what we’ll be doing?” he tried again
.

“Refugee pickup,”
Stumpy shrugged.

Tanner blinked. “Refugees?” His mind raced. He’d always followed the news. There hadn’t been stories about refugees, but he could guess where they were coming from. Archangel’s closest and largest neighbor was on the verge of civil war. “Hashemites?”