Chapter 12

The office of 1^st Lieutenant Sparksafroth, HSF Marine Corps, was on the bottom floor of the administration building where Gath had met with Colonel Lister the previous night. It was a small room, originally used for storage but recently and hastily converted to office space when the new position of Officer of the Day Adjunct was created especially for the occupant of the office.

Gath found the door at 0920 local after searching for more than fifteen minutes. Sparky’s name and new title—both hand written in black ink—were posted to the side of the door on a simple piece of printer paper. He touched his finger to the entry pad and the doors slid open, revealing a space barely large enough for the standard issue desk. Sparky was behind the desk, his face glum as he worked on some sort of report. He looked up and became a bit more animated when he saw who his visitor was.

“Gath,” he greeted warmly, standing up and leaning over the desk. “Welcome to purg.”

“Nice place you got here,” Gath said. “It smells like cleaning products.”

“It was a janitorial services storage compartment forty-eight local ago,” he said sourly.

They exchanged the elbow bump shake of friends greeting one another and then Sparky sat back down. Gath grabbed a seat in the chair next to the desk. He had to scoot close, however, or the door would not slide shut.

“So,” Gath asked him, “what exactly is an ‘officer of the day adjunct’, anyway?”

“A makeshift position for bad little el-tees,” Sparky replied. “It means I handle most of the work of the real OD, dealing with the day to day slag that pops up around here. They have to keep me off real OD duty in case there’s an order related to the resolution that needs to be issued.”

“What is the real OD doing then?”

Sparky shrugged. “Today it’s Fang from Third Platoon. If I know that slacker, he’s probably either sleeping at the desk or polishing his torkin’ missile. My declaration is the best thing that’s happened to that slaghole since Skank started selling hooch.”

“Yeah,” Gath said, “I’ve been out with Fang a time or two. He’s about as commanding a presence as a ballerina dancer.”

“What’s a ballerina dancer?” Sparky asked.

“It’s not important,” Gath said dismissively. “I suppose you heard that I’m being shipped out?”

“I did.” He gave a cynical look. “Pretty funny how the low seniority medic on the base gets to go to Mars—the medic who just happens to be the one who came up with the data flooding scheme.”

“Yeah,” Gath said bitterly. “For all the torkin’ good that idea did.”

“It did more good than you know,” Sparky told him. “Have you been following the bulletin boards and watching the media reports? Zing and his band of slagger lickers have increased the number of declarations by at least forty percent with that little stunt they pulled. Humes who are all in favor of the resolution on the merits are now declaring against it. And the media. Whoever wept, are they pissed off. You give them some torches and a little organization they might just storm the torkin’ admin building on Topside.”

“Yeah,” Gath agreed, “I’ve been following all that. The ultra-whites certainly overplayed their hand with that one, but it won’t do any good as far as stopping the resolution goes. Despite all the opposition, the plan rolls on. Maybe a little slower and with less organization, but there are still a lot more in favor than opposed.”

“True,” Sparky allowed. “But no one is going to be able to accuse you of complicity or participating when this is all said and done.”

“There is that,” Gath allowed. “Except for the fact that I installed those drug cartridges in the wells of the Shiloh and the Maidu.”

“That was before we knew what the drug was,” Sparky said. “It was that installation that helped identify the drug in the first place. I’m sure the prosecutors who will some day be sorting through this torkin’ mess will understand.”

“Probably,” Gath agreed, “but that doesn’t help assuage my conscience in the matter.”

Sparky gave him a shrug. After all, his objection to the plan was not based on matters of conscience or personal opposition to the plan. “What can you do?” he asked.

“Well now, that’s kind of why I came to see you, Sparky,” Gath told him.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Gath said. “If you’ll recall, I did a little favor for you the other day and you said you owed me a big one.”

“I did,” Sparky said carefully.

“I need to ask a favor,” Gath said.

Sparky nodded. He had a marine’s sense of honor, after all. “I’ll help you if I can, Gath. You know that. What do you need?”

“I need a hover,” Gath told him. “Do you still have command authority to assign them?”

“A hover?” Sparky asked. “What do you need a hover for?”

“They’re kicking my slagger out of here in the next few days,” Gath said. “Before I go, I want to remove those drug cartridges from the wells I installed them in.”

Sparky was already shaking his head. “That’s impossible, Gath,” he told him.

“So, they took away your command authority for hover assignment?”

“No,” he said, “I can and do assign hovers for missions. That’s not really the problem. There is no way I can assign a squad to provide overwatch for you, that’s the first issue.”

“I don’t need a squad,” Gath told him. “I’ll go out there by myself with the engineering tool for access to the wells. I can land and have it done before the first homers can close my position.”

“You want to go out to Homerville by yourself?” Sparky said incredulously. “Do you have a torkin’ death wish? And do you really expect you can get the job done and get out at the Shiloh’s village before they skin you alive with those Whoever damned knives of theirs? That well is less than half a klick from the village.”

“I’ll be armed and armored,” Gath said. “They’ll be hesitant to move in initially. I can get that cartridge out in less than three metric minutes from the moment I’m wheels on the ground. I guarantee it.”

“I’m having trouble believing that,” Sparky told him frankly. “But even if you’re right, I can’t assign a hover to a mission like that. Anything going to a wellhead would be tagged as a mission in support of the concluding resolution. That would automatically send a big red flag to the screens of the ultra-whites, starting with our good friend Colonel Lister.”

Gath gave him a little smile. “I understand that,” Gath said. “You’d have to lie about the purpose of the mission.”

“Lie about it?” Sparky asked.

“I wasn’t exactly truthful in my report of your injury,” Gath reminded him.

Sparky sighed. “No, you really weren’t, were you? But what the purg am I supposed to say is the purpose of the mission? I have to input the Shiloh village and the Maidu village as the mission targets or the Flyer will trigger the ATC with a deviation report.”

“I don’t know,” Gath admitted. “We’ll have to come up with something. It doesn’t even have to sound reasonable, right? I mean, the whole purpose of this exercise is to avoid having a human being other than ourselves noting that the mission even flew in the first place. There must be some ratslag excuse we can formulate.”

Another sigh. “Maybe,” Sparky allowed, “but there is still one other problem. You have to take at least one marine with you. Minimum mission requirements for filing a flight plan are two personnel, one of whom must be a flight qualified marine.”

“How about you?” Gath suggested.

Sparky was shaking his head. “I have been removed from deployment status thanks to my pastry-puff ways,” he said. “Anyone else?”

He did have someone in mind, but he didn’t want to name names just yet. He had to ask first—and he wasn’t quite sure what the reaction was going to be. “I’ll work on that,” he told Sparky. “If I can scrounge up a volunteer, can you get me the AVTOL for tomorrow night?”

Sparky looked at him pointedly. “And what if I said no?” he asked. “Would you change your report on what happened to me the other night?”

“No, Sparky,” Gath told him. “I wouldn’t. You’re in the clear as long as Gnarly keeps her mouth shut. I’m asking a favor here—a big one I realize, but still a favor—I am not engaging in blackmail.”

Sparky thought it over for a second or two and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “You get a volunteer, bring him or her to me in person so I know who they are and that they’re really down with it, and I’ll put in the order.”

Gath grinned. “Thanks, Sparky. Now I’ll owe you one.”

“We’ll just call it even,” he replied. “Only one thing. The mission can’t go at night. You’ll have to fly out during the day.”

“Why?” Gath asked.

“Think about it, Gath. Do you think someone might notice a hover launching after sunset when no known orders are posted? You think that someone might start looking into that slag if they see such a thing?”

“Well ... maybe,” Gath allowed. He hadn’t thought of that.

“You need to fly out during the day, when traffic is heavier and a hover taking off isn’t an unusual sight. And you need to be back before sunset as well.”

Gath frowned a little. “That will certainly make the mission a little more interesting, won’t it?”

“Landing in hostile villages with only two humes while the homers are wide awake and can see you? Yeah, that’s a little more interesting, all right. Still want to do it?”

“I have to,” Gath told him.

“All right then. Bring me a warm marine body and we’ll do business.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Gath told him. “Hold my seats for me.”

Taz had been scheduled for clinic duty that day. She was not there, however, when Gath checked in after leaving Sparky’s office. Rif was acting med tech in her place. Bong was the duty medic. While Rif placed a bandage of some sort on the face of a marine private in room three—and while two MPs questioned the private on exactly how he had come by those injuries—Gath sat down next to Bong.

She was working on the DOC regarding the private in question. He saw the words struck several times in the left facial region with a closed fist floating in the air below a holo of a nasty area of swelling. “Hey, Gath,” she said, her tone quiet.

“Hey, Bong,” he returned, nodding toward the DOC. “Another disagreement over the concluding resolution?”

“It’s like you’re psychic or something,” she confirmed, checking a few boxes. “Apparently he and his bunkmate do not agree on the issue and forgot how to use their words to come to an accommodation on the matter.”

“A lot of that going around these days,” he remarked sadly. It really was a sad state of affairs for what was widely considered the most professional and respected branch of the armed services in both spaceborn and groundborn cultures.

“What can you do?” she asked with a sigh, giving the standard fatalistic attitude of the climate of late.

“What we can,” was Gath’s answer. “I notice Taz isn’t here today. Was there a change in schedule?”

“She was having some knee pain so I gave her some prostaglandin inhibitors and a twenty-four local off duty,” Bong said.

“Knee pain?” Gath asked, raising his eyebrows at that. Knee pain was perhaps the number one ratslag excuse the OBDS patients liked to complain about when seeking to get out of duty. Taz, as a regular clinic staffer, knew that.

“I couldn’t find anything wrong with her,” Bong told him, “but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Taz has never tried to pull the OBDS bit before. Besides, there aren’t any deployments scheduled for the next forty-eight local.”

“Maybe she really does have knee pain?” Gath asked doubtfully.

“The scanner didn’t show any unusual sensory nerve activity,” Bong said. She looked up at Gath for the first time, her expression meaningful. “All the same, there was something wrong with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was upset about something, very upset. Her eyes were all swollen like she’d been crying, her fingernails looked like she’d been chewing on them, and she was as tense as a coiled spring. When I touched her shoulders to guide her over to the exam table they were knotted up with tension. That’s mostly the reason why I gave her the medical pass for the day. The knee was ratslag but something is definitely going wrong in her world right now.”

The break-up with me? Or the word that I’m being transferred? Gath wondered, but then dismissed those thoughts as quickly as they had come. Spaceborn broke up with their friends all the time. Whenever one of the friends was reassigned the relationship generally came to an end. They were culturally wired not to get too upset about that. Generally, there was a little bit of sadness involved—not even on par with losing a pet in groundborn culture—but nothing like what Bong was describing in Taz. No, something else had to be going on.

“I think I’ll go check in on her,” Gath remarked. “As long as you have things under control here.”

“I think that’s a good idea, Gath,” Bong told him, still giving the meaningful look. “I think she could use a friend today, even if that friendship has hit a rough patch of late.”

That was about as close as a spaceborn would come to acknowledging that she knew what the score really was between two friends. Gath was surprised she had even said that much.

“All right then,” he told her. “I’ll be on commer if you need me for anything.”

“Sounds good,” she said, turning back to her DOC, a slight smile on her face now.

He left the clinic and made his way through the tunnel to the adjacent building, which was one of the housing units for enlisted marine personnel. Since Taz, like all marines at CVS below the rank of lieutenant, shared her quarters with another marine, Gath had never actually been in her residence before. There had never been any reason to since medics at CVS enjoyed private quarters.

Her room number was 317—he knew that much from previous conservations with her. He walked up to the third floor and followed the signs outside the stairwell to make sure he was going in the right direction. He found the room and then hesitated, staring at the alert button next to the door. Was this really a good idea? Well, there was only one real way to find out. He pushed the button.

Gath knew that Taz, if she was in there, was now looking at his image on her holo screen. She could speak to him through the door intercom if she wished. She did not. Silence ruled for perhaps twenty seconds. Just as he was about to give up and go away—she was either not in there or did not wish to even tell him to tork off—the door slid open. Taz was there, dressed in an off-duty shirt and shorts, her feet bare. Her face looked every bit as miserable as Bong had described.

“Hey, Taz,” he said carefully.

“Gath,” she repeated, her voice barely audible, her eyes looking into his.

“I ... uh ... heard you weren’t doing so well today,” he said.

“No,” she agreed with a short, angry laugh. “I’m really not.”

“I came by to see if there was anything I could do ... you know ... to help.”

She shook her head a few times, her misery increasing. “There’s nothing you can do, Gath,” she said, her voice choked, tears forming in her eyes. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

She broke down completely, sobs pouring out of her, the tears running freely down her cheeks. Gath stepped forward and took her in his arms. She did not pull back. Instead, she returned the embrace almost desperately and laid her head on his shoulder.

“Come on, Taz,” Gath whispered to her. “Let’s go inside. Ghoul isn’t here, is she?” Ghoul was Corporal Golishovinski, her quarters-mate.

“She’s on duty,” Taz blubbered.

Gath led her inside the residence. She did not resist. The room was tiny, smaller than Gath’s even though it was designed for twice as many occupants. There were two single beds and two tiny desks with holo stages upon them. A door led to the shitter/shower combo room that was only slightly larger than the communal showers on transport spacecraft. He led Taz to the nearest bed, not knowing if it was hers or Ghoul’s. He sat on the edge of it and pulled Taz into his arms again. She came willingly and resumed her crying, letting it all out, her hot tears wetting the side of his neck and running down to dampen the collar of his duty shirt. He rubbed her back soothingly with one hand while stroking her short hair with the other.

He did not know how long it went on—maybe five minutes, maybe ten—but finally the sobs petered away to sniffles. She took a deep breath and pulled away from the embrace. Though her eyes were still swollen and red, there was now a little color to her face. She looked better.

“Whoever’s slagger hole,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I just did that.”

“It seems like maybe you needed to,” Gath told her, still rubbing her back as she arranged herself to sit next to him.

“Yeah,” she said, “it’s still embarrassing. If you tell anyone about this, I’ll squash your bells together.”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that,” Gath said. “What’s seen here stays here. I’ll never say a word.”

She nodded. “Thanks,” she told him. “For everything.”

He gave her a one-armed hug and then released her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She wiped at her face, clearing the last of the tears away, as she thought about this. “You always were a good listener,” she told him. “That was one of the reasons I really ... you know ... liked having you as a friend.”

“I’m still your friend, Taz,” he assured her. “Maybe not in the spacie context of the word, but in the friendship context. Obviously, something significant is going on to make a bad-slagger marine cry. Maybe I can help.”

She thought it over for another moment and then nodded. “I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to help, but I’ve got to talk to someone about this. I feel like my whole torkin’ life is spiraling out of control.”

“What’s the problem?” Gath encouraged.

“It’s Ox,” she said.

“What about him?”

“I talked to him on the commer last night,” she said. “He’s still stuck at berth up on Topside.” She hesitated for a moment. “He’s ... he’s against the concluding resolution.”

“Is he?” Gath asked, surprised. He would have thought Taz’s husband would have been full front in favor of it.

“That’s what he told me,” she said. “He’s opposed to it for the same reason Sparky is, for the same reason a lot of the marines and naval personnel are—because he thinks it is eventually going to be declared an illegal order and that those who participate in it are going to face repercussions.” She looked at him. “The same torkin’ thing you tried to tell me the other night.”

“Is that why you’re so upset?” he asked. “Because Ox is opposed?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No,” she said forcefully. “What do you take me for? You think I’d cry over some simple slag like that?”

“Well ... uh ... I don’t know,” he said weakly. “Your emotions were pretty strong about my disagreement with you, and I’m not even your husband.”

She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Thrusters and lasers,” she said, using the spaceborn analogy for two different things that could not and should not be compared to one another. “The reason I’m upset is because this torking resolution is putting Ox in a position where he may very well end up V-wasting his naval career.”

“What do you mean?”

“He got orders yesterday,” she said. “There is unrest going on at Mars Topside. Dock workers, naval personnel, and food production workers are getting extremely agitated and episodes of violence are occurring.”

“I’ve seen reports of that on the media channels,” Gath said.

“Well, apparently it’s getting worse and there are rumors of organization starting to spread among the agitators—most of whom are anti-resolution, of course.”

“Of course,” Gath agreed.

“Command is afraid that there might be an out and out uprising of some sort, so they’re sending a battalion of ninety marines from Earth to Mars to help out if the slag hits the intake. They want them there as quick as possible and the Magnum is the fastest ship available at Topside.”

“They’re going to put ninety marines and all of their weapons and equipment on a ninety-nine ship?” Gath asked. “Whoever wept. Where are they going to put them all?”

“It’ll be a little tight,” Taz agreed, “but that’s not the issue. Ox got his orders yesterday. He is going to have to declare opposition.”

“I suppose he will,” said Gath.

“Do you know what happens to ship captains who declare opposition?” she asked him, her voice angry again. “He’ll be relieved of command! And once a captain is relieved of command, it’s gone forever. He’ll never command another ship as long as he lives. He’ll never have another promotion! He’ll spend the rest of his career in the Fleet riding a torkin’ desk in some slaghole AZ orbital platform, ordering food stocks and torkin’ toilet paper!”

“Unless the concluding resolution is ruled illegal,” Gath said. “If that’s the case...”

“That slag doesn’t matter, Gath,” she told him, tears running down her eyes again. “He’s in a mothertorking impossible position. If he follows orders and the resolution is declared illegal he’ll be removed from command and likely prosecuted for following any orders related to it. If he declares himself in opposition, he’ll be removed from command immediately and it won’t even matter if the resolution is declared illegal. Someone else will have already taken his place by then and he won’t get his command back. And he’ll always be remembered as the captain who gave up his command, no matter what happens. They’ll never give him another. It’s torkin’ infuriating.”

“True,” Gath had to agree. “I don’t really see an easy way out of the box he’s in.”

“There is no way out,” Taz said. “And Ox knows it. He’s starting to talk some wild slag, Gath. He was torkin’ scaring me!”

“What kind of wild slag?”

“He ... he...” She took a deep breath, hardly able to say it. Finally, she spit it out. “He told me he was thinking about just getting in the ship and making a run for the circuit point so he can spread the news about what’s going on here.”

Gath raised his eyebrows up. “Really?”

“Torkin’ really,” she said. “Isn’t that the craziest torkin’ thing you’ve ever heard of?”

“Was he serious, do you think?” Gath asked.

“He seemed awful damn serious to me,” she said. “I don’t know that he would actually do something like that, but he’s certainly thinking it over. Do you have any idea what would happen if he did that? That’s Whoever damned mutiny! No matter how the concluding resolution comes out, he’ll be guilty of mutiny, stealing a torkin’ ship, and probably ten or fifteen other charges as well. I tried to talk him down when he mentioned it, but...”

“Could he actually do it?” Gath asked, feeling the beginnings of an idea forming in the back of his mind.

“What the tork are you talking about?” she demanded. “Is everyone going torkin’ mental around here?”

“Could he do it?” Gath repeated. “Is it physically possible for him to take that ship through the circuit points and get it to groundborn space without getting caught?”

Taz looked in his eyes, not liking one bit what she saw there, but she answered the question anyway. “He could do it,” she said. “With a little luck, anyway. There’s nothing faster than a ninety-nine in system right now except a few other ninety-nines that are hanging out. His officers are divided on the resolution, as are the enlisted, but there are enough of both that are loyal to him that he could operate with a skeleton crew. Why are you asking this slag, Gath? Tell me you’re not thinking it’s a good idea.”

“Word of what is going on here has to get out of this system, Taz,” he told her. “It has to get out before we reach the end of phase one. Ox’s ship just might be the answer.”

“Oh, Whoever’s left testicle,” she moaned. “Everyone has gone torkin’ mental.”

“But just getting out won’t be enough,” Gath said, the loose ends of the plan starting to thread together. “There needs to be ... evidence of what’s going on, and ... there needs to be someone who can testify before a judge and maybe a legislative body, someone who can turn the tide in favor of the homebodies and establish their right to live.”

“Who is that?” she asked.

He turned to her. “Are you still in favor of the resolution?” he asked.

The scowl on her face deepened. “No,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. After that slag that went down with the data limits and especially after talking to Ox and hearing his rationale ... I’ve decided not to support the resolution until it’s been ruled on by a judge.”

Gath smiled, though a part of him marveled that he, her lover and closest confidant, had been unable to convince her to change her position but her husband, a man she hardly saw, had no sexual relations with, and had only spoken to via com link for most of their relationship had done so in one conversation. Maybe there really was something to these spacie marriages besides genetic and financial combinations. Maybe there really was a deeper friendship between them than a romantic relationship could foster.

He decided to leave that thought for later ponderance. Right now, something much more important was at hand. “Taz, I want you come back to my quarters with me.”

“What for?” she asked suspiciously. “I really appreciate you giving me a shoulder to cry on, but I don’t think I’m quite up for...”

“Not for that,” he said—although he certainly wouldn’t turn it down if it were offered. “I need you to get Ox on the comm for me. I want to speak to him.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I want to save his naval career,” he said. “And my own career as well, and yours, and the lives of all these homebodies on the planet.”

Ox—in holographic form—looked as miserable as Taz, but he seemed genuinely happy to see Gath.

“How are you doing, Gath?” he asked. “Taz updated me on what kind of slag is going down with you. Raw deal, huh?”

“Pretty raw all right,” Gath agreed. “Is this comm secure, Ox?”

“It should be,” he said. “It’s a person to person comm, and those are still privileged communications under the Fleet code of justice. Unless the ultra-whites have traveled way outside their sector, we should be able to speak freely.”

“I guess we’ll just have to chance it,” Gath said. At this point there was little he wouldn’t put past the ultra-whites.

“What are we chancing?” Ox said. “Taz, did you tell him what my situation is up here?”

Taz, who was hovering over Gath’s shoulder, just enough to keep her face in the holo camera’s view, looked immediately guilty. “I’m sorry, Ox,” she said. “I was very upset by the news and Gath came by and ... well ... I had to talk to someone. Gath hasn’t told anyone else.”

“And I don’t plan to,” Gath assured him.

Ox looked stern for a moment and then nodded. “I guess I did drop a full waste load on you last night, didn’t I?” he asked her.

“With chunks in it,” she agreed.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “So, Gath, you know what’s happening up here. I’m pretty much slagger-torked no matter what I do, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Maybe not,” Gath said.

“Oh?” Ox said. “Taz tells me you’re pretty smart for a groundie. Did you come up with a miraculous plan to somehow get me clear of this slag-storm?” He did not sound hopeful by any means, just sarcastic.

“Maybe I have,” Gath replied.

Ox gave a cynical smile. “By all means, let’s hear it.”

“I’m still kind of putting things together in my head,” Gath said, “but before I go any further, I need to ask you something.”

“Fire at will,” Ox told him.

“How serious were you about taking your ship and making a run for the circuit point?”

Ox let his head hang down while he shook it back and forth. “Whoever wept, Taz. You told him that part too?”

“You seemed torkin’ serious about it to me,” Taz barked at him. “What the purg do you think I was the most worried about? For Whoever’s sake, Ox!”

He looked back up at them. “I’d had a few down at the club before I talked to Taz,” he said. “I was venting. I don’t think I’m quite ready to go full-on mutiny as a way to express my opposition to a poorly thought out plan.”

“A mutiny is in the eye of the beholder,” Gath said. “Ox, word needs to get out of this system about what is going on here. It has to. If we just let things go as they are, virtually the entire breeding age population of Earth is going to be permanently sterilized in the next one hundred days and the genocide will be irrevocable. Do you disagree with this statement?”

“No,” Ox said. “I do not.”

“You have, at your hands, a way to stop the genocide from being carried out to completion. Far Space command, who issues orders to you, have proven themselves unworthy of that trust by their initiation of the plan in the first place and their repeated, illegal actions to suppress information and keep it here in the system. The ratslag probe shortage, the holding of ships in the system, and, most recently, the data transfer limits designed quite obviously to keep the data probes from firing. In addition, they are arbitrarily and punitively transferring personnel who oppose their plans and try to thwart them. I believe there is a very strong argument, both legal and ethical, that any order given from Far Space command is an illegal one on the basis of breech of trust and violation of mission statement.”