Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga) (7 page)

“Hi yourself.
Are Brooks and Carol still asleep?” She looked around.

“Yes.”

She lowered her voice. “We’d better be quiet then. Ready?”

“You bet.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and grasped the cooler’s handle. “Where are we going?”

She stepped back from the doorway to let him through. “I thought I’d take you to a valley in the foothills of the mountains. It’s about thirty kilometers out of town. I don’t often go there, because my little runabout can’t handle the dirt road that leads to it, but you’ve got an all-wheel-drive truck. It’s about ten clicks off the main road. We can park your truck five kilometers out, then hike the rest of the way. It’s a tough climb up a rocky slope, then easier going along a ridge and down into the valley.”

“OK. Will we have to break trail through brush? Should I bring a machete? I know Brooks has one.”

“There isn’t a path, and the brush will have grown thicker since I was last there several months ago, so it might come in handy. We certainly won’t be able to tow that cooler behind us! Can we put the food in our backpacks?”

Steve turned to fetch the machete and its belt sheath from the hall closet. “Sure. It’s in smaller containers. I just put it in the cooler to keep it cold on the way there.”

“Oh, good! Do you have a swimsuit with you? Further up the valley a stream empties into a pool, shaded by trees. It makes a great swimming hole.”

“I have a pair of running shorts. Will they do?”

“They sure will.”

He added
the shorts and a towel to his pack, joined her outside, locked the door, and led the way to his pickup. He opened the passenger door for her and began to offer his hand in support, but she reached up, grasped a handle and lifted herself lithely into the seat, tossing her backpack into the rear of the cab. He put the cooler and his pack beside hers, then climbed in himself and energized the power pack. With a muted whine, the truck pulled slowly out of the parking lot.

They traveled in companionable silence for a few minutes while Steve threaded his way through the morning traffic. As they reached the outskirts of Preston and turned onto a highway,
Abha said, “I guess we’ve got a lot to share about our orphanage backgrounds. You start. Where were you born and raised, and how did you end up in an orphanage?”

“I was born on Old Home Earth,” Steve began. He told her what little he could remember about his parents, their death in a vehicle accident when he was only five years old, and the provisions in their will that ensured he was admitted to a private orphanage
, rather than entrusted to the self-serving bureaucracy of Earth’s Child Welfare Services.

“I guess I was very lucky that my folks were wealthy enough to do that. CWS was much more interested in itself than in the kids it was supposed to help. Its bosses concentrated on bureaucratic infighting and turf wars with other agencies instead of their mission. Later, when I was old enough to understand, I read about all sorts of scandals where its field agents ‘cooked the books’ for their own benefit at the expense of the kids in their care. You know – inflated expense claims, falsified record-keeping certifying that they’d checked on kids when they hadn’t, that sort of thing. A lot of the kids ended up being neglected or abused as a result. I was very lucky to be spared that.”

Abha made a
moué
of distaste. “I ran into some of that too – but I don’t want to interrupt your story. I’ll tell you mine later. Go on.”

“OK. I was in the orphanage for almost twelve years, until I graduated high school at the age of seventeen. It was… not good.” He was silent for a moment as he remembered. “If you dump a bunch of boys together, of different ages and sizes, they’re always going to establish a very physical ‘pecking order’. There was a lot of bullying, even though the Benedictines did their best to keep it under control. Their best was pretty good, but they couldn’t be everywhere all the time. I learned to hate bullies with a passion, as well as those who use or abuse others rather than accept and respect them for who they are. As a result, I guess I’m a bit fanatical about those things to this day. I won’t permit them in my subordinates, and I won’t accept them towards me from anyone else.”

“What happens when you find it in your superior officers?” she asked.

“That’s only happened twice during my eight and a half years in the Fleet. Each time I was able to sort it out by talking to the person concerned. If that hadn’t worked, I’d have taken it up the ladder, and if necessary resigned my commission rather than accepted it. Thankfully, that’s never been necessary – at least, not yet.”

“I’m glad. I share your hatred for bullies from my own experience. Oh – we turn off here.” She indicated an upcoming off-ramp. “Turn right at the stop sign.”

“Gotcha.”
Steve took his foot off the throttle.

“After about half a kilometer, the
plascrete ends and the road becomes hard-packed dirt. It’s pretty rough and rutted – it’s just a farm road. We go about five clicks until we reach a grove of trees at the foot of a ridge. We’ll leave the truck there, in the shade.”

“OK.”

“Go on about the orphanage.”

“I was lucky to end up at St. Anselm’s. It had a really rigorous academic program with very high standards, and only kids who tested as particularly bright were sent there. The brothers encouraged
all of us to do more than the required minimum, and as soon as we reached our teens they offered us access to college-level courses through another Church institution. By the time I graduated high school I also had half a Bachelor of Science degree under my belt.”

“You were very lucky. My school education was nowhere near as complete, or as challenging.”

“Yeah. That helped me a lot when I joined the Fleet – but I’m getting ahead of myself.” Steve stopped talking for a moment as he negotiated the turn at the foot of the off-ramp, then headed towards the foothills of the mountains in the distance. “I was stuck on Old Home Earth, in a society riddled with competing bureaucracies, where individuals had to conform or be frozen out of anything worthwhile. I wanted to get the hell away from there, and the only way I could see to do so was to become a merchant spacer and earn my way to someplace better.”

He explained how, after several months, he’d landed a merchant spacer apprentice berth aboard the Lancastrian freighter
Sebastian Cabot,
with the help of her Bosun, Vince Cardle, who went on to become a father figure to him. His face and voice turned somber as he described Vince’s death at the hands of pirates, eighteen months later. He left out details of his encounters with the Dragon Tong, before and since. He’d never shared them with anyone in the Fleet – not even Brooks. There was too much risk of being tarred with the Tong’s fearsome reputation.

“So that’s how it was,” he concluded as the truck bounced slowly down the uneven farm road. “I enlisted eight and a half years ago, served a four-year term under the Foreign Service Program to earn Commonwealth citizenship, then applied for a commission. I
’ll be promoted to Senior Lieutenant when the mid-year promotion signal takes effect on the first of July, at the same time you’re advanced to First Lieutenant.”

She nodded slowly. “I know you’ve skipped over a lot during your Fleet career. Brooks has talked about you a couple of times. He says you’re the best Spacer officer he’s ever encountered, and it’s thanks to you he earned his first prize money at Midrash. Apparently it was quite a substantial award.”

Steve grinned. “It was – we found smuggled rhodium aboard a big freighter, and the total Prize Court proceeds were very nice indeed.” He didn’t add that Brooks had received over four hundred thousand credits, while Steve had earned twice that sum as a member of the team that had made the actual discovery. “I was shot during the fight that led to the confiscation, so the prospect of all that money helped to speed my healing! Brooks is the best Marine officer with whom I’ve ever served. We’re very close friends, and have been ever since we were roommates at Officer Candidate School. I guess he’s become the brother I never had.”

She smiled, teeth flashing white against her darker skin. “I’m glad for both of you. I haven’t had any luck with prize money so far, but I live in hope. It would help a lot with some plans I have for the future.” She gestured ahead. “There are the trees I mentioned. You’ll see a faint track leading off the road into them. There’s a little glade out of sight of the road where we can park. Your truck should be quite safe while we’re gone.”

“I’m sure it will. There hasn’t been any other traffic since we turned off the highway.”

He parked the truck beneath a tall, shady tree. They spent a few moments transferring the food containers to their packs. Steve threaded his belt through the loops of the machete sheath, then selected a couple of long, straight fallen branches and trimmed protruding twigs and leaves off them
to make hiking staffs.

“Thanks,”
Abha said as she accepted one of them. “I know I owe you my story, but we’ve got a hard hike up this hill ahead of us, then it’s another hour’s walk to the stream and swimming hole. Can I tell you more when we get there?”

“Sure. We’ll probably need all our breath for hiking anyway.”

~ ~ ~

Steve unfolded a solar sheet and spread it over a bush in bright sunshine, then plugged two food containers into sockets in its capacitor pack, to warm while they swam. He undressed behind a tree and donned his running shorts. A few moments later
Abha appeared from the bushes behind which she’d changed into her swimsuit. It was a one-piece design, modestly cut, but it couldn’t disguise her trim, athletic figure. Small, firm, nubile breasts topped a flat, muscular torso flowing down over broad hips to long, dusky-brown legs. He couldn’t restrain a smile of appreciation at the sight.

In turn, her eyes wandered over his lithe, well-muscled figure. “You’ve looked after yourself, I see,” she teased. “You’ve got almost enough muscles to be a Marine!”

Steve sniffed. “Someone has to set an example for the ground-pounders! You look very good yourself.”

“Thanks. I wouldn’t dive in if I were you. The water’s not very deep.”

They waded into the mountain-brown water and launched themselves into the center of the pool, both sighing audibly with satisfaction as it washed the perspiration from their bodies..

“I’m surprised the water’s this cold,” Steve commented.

“Don’t forget it flows out of the mountains,” she pointed out. “There’s still snow-pack up there at higher elevations.”

“You’re right. The water’s warmer in the sunlit patches.”

They floated in companionable silence for a while. Eventually Steve said, “Your turn now. How did you end up in an orphanage?”

Abha
turned her head to look at him. “I was born on Nasek. Ever heard of it?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“It’s one of the planets of the Bihar Confederation.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “Doesn’t
Gandaki, the planet of the Gurkha mercenaries, belong to the same Confederation?”

“It’s an associate member, not a full member. We’ll meet some of its mercenaries on Rolla. Major Venter told Captain Shelby and
I on Thursday that the planet’s hired a battalion of them to provide security while its own armored battalion undergoes re-training, and to assist while a second armored battalion is raised and trained.”

“That’s good. I’ve never worked with them before, but I understand they’re very professional.”

“So I’m told. It’ll be a new experience for all three of us to train with them. Anyway, Nasek was settled by emigrants from Old Home Earth in the first phase of the Scramble for Space. There’s a great deal of race consciousness on the planet, unfortunately. They take so-called ‘purebred’ birth very seriously – having parents of pure Indian ancestry. It’s considered very important. If you have mixed or foreign ancestry, they look down on you. Problem is, both my father and mother were what’s called Eurasian – having mixed Indian and Caucasian ancestry.”

Steve couldn’t prevent an angry frown. “I thought the settled galaxy
– except for Earth and a few of the earliest planets to be colonized – had got over that nonsense, given how interbred all races, cultures and creeds became during the Scramble for Space. I’ve only encountered strong racial consciousness in ethnic cultural societies like the Chinese Tongs.”

“
I wish you were right,” she said with a sour face, “but it’s not always like that, particularly on ethnically homogenous planets like Nasek. I grew up under that social discrimination, and it hurt. We lived in Ambarad, a city full of people like us, so we were sheltered to some extent: but the ‘purebred’ would always find ways to make their feelings known. It got much worse when an epidemic hit the city and surrounding region. It was a really nasty disease, a mutation of diphtheria from Old Home Earth combined with a local germ. The authorities later classified it as a unique illness. They gave it a scientific name, but because it began in Ambarad, people on Nasek called it ‘halfbreed disease’. They even blamed those of us with what they called ‘impure ancestry’ for causing and spreading it! That wasn’t true, of course, but there’s no arguing with that depth of prejudice.” Her brow furrowed angrily.

“Standard vaccinations didn’t protect against it, and
regular diphtheria had been under control for so long that no-one had any experience in treating it. It spread very fast – local hospitals and doctors were simply overwhelmed. It eventually killed over half a million people in and around Ambarad. The authorities couldn’t figure out how to stop it, so they resorted to desperation measures. They threw a cordon around the entire province and quarantined it. No-one was allowed in or out. Of course, that effectively condemned many of the victims to death.”