Of Treasons Born (11 page)

She turned to Thorow. “Promote him to spacer third class, and reassign him to Straight's gunner crew.”

York couldn't believe his ears, tried to resist the urge, but a broad grin formed on his face.

Jarwith turned back to him and growled, “Wipe that grin off your face, Spacer.”

York stiffened, and she smiled. “You're dismissed.”

The marines threw a little going-away party for York, which surprised him, because no one before had ever cared one way or the other. It wasn't much: Sissy, Chunks, Rodma, Cath, Bristow, Cochran, and a few others, a beer or two, and Cochran somehow got a small cake from the mess. York regretted leaving them, but he didn't want to be a throwaway.

After the party, he bundled up his few possessions and made his way down to the lower decks. As he followed the curve of the hull past the pod stations, he spotted Sturpik and Tomlin seated at a console playing cards. When he tried to pass them without acknowledging them, Tomlin stood and stepped in his way.

York stopped and Tomlin said, “Hi, kid.”

Still seated at the console, Sturpik said, “Heard you were coming back. Heard you
wanted
to come back. Imagine that, Tomlin, kid actually wants to be a pod gunner.”

Tomlin took a step forward and leaned uncomfortably close to York. “I think he's just an honest kid, wants to live up to his obligations, wants to pay us back the money he owes us.”

York stepped back. “I don't owe you—”

“With interest,” Sturpik said, interrupting him.

Tomlin stepped forward again, leaned down, and hissed, “You try to welch on us, you'll be in such deep shit you won't even see the rim of the asshole we stuff you in.”

Somehow York needed to get them off his back, and he'd gladly give up what little he had in his pay account. “What do I owe you?”

Tomlin grinned, straightened and looked at Sturpik. “You see, I told you he just wants to live up to his obligations.”

York asked again, “How much?”

Sturpik said, “Five hundred imperials.”

They'd chosen a sum so astronomically high, York could never hope to pay them off. “I don't have that kind of money.”

Sturpik leaned back in his chair. “No, I don't suppose you do.” His eyes widened and he straightened. “But wait, I have an idea. You could earn it from us, pay it off with just a favor or two.”

“York.”

Tomlin turned around at the sound of Marko's voice. York looked past him at the older man walking down the deck toward them.

“Heard you were back,” Marko said as he joined York and Tomlin. “Glad to have you, kid.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Come with me. Your old coffin is waiting for you.”

York stepped around Tomlin and joined Marko. The older man turned and, walking side-by-side, the two of them headed toward their bunk room. They'd gone about twenty paces when, without looking York's way, Marko said, “You got some sort of problem with those two?”

York would have dearly loved Marko's help, and considered asking the older man to intervene. But he glanced over his shoulder and looked Sturpik's way, saw him standing in the middle of the deck with his fists on his hips, staring at York angrily and shaking his head from side to side as if he could read York's mind. Beside him, Tomlin simply grinned unpleasantly, both threat and warning quite clear. They must have overheard, or at least guessed at the gist of Marko's question. “No,” he said. “They just wanted to welcome me back.”

Chapter 11:

Gunner's Blood

Straight gave Marko the job of overseeing York's training, which the older man didn't seem to mind. But York quickly learned that Straight still intended to make sure he got much more training in scrubbing decks than in pod gunning. At least being assigned to Marko meant they shared the same watch rotation.

The first time Marko and York were on graveyard watch, as York reached for his bucket, Marko said, “Belay that, Spacer.”

York gave the older man a questioning look. Marko glanced over his shoulder, then grinned at York. “Straight's asleep,” he said. “She won't know you didn't spend all night scrubbing decks.”

He nodded toward one of the pod hatches. “Get in that pod. Let's see how badly the marines screwed up your gunner skills.”

Marko ran him through the basics, which York had long ago mastered. “Good enough,” Marko's voice said in York's headset. “Nothing lost there. Let's try multiple targets, some allocated, some not. You won't know when a target is going to be allocated to you, but you'll have to respond quickly when it is.”

York tried to stay calm, wanted to score well on the sims, if for no other reason than to at least impress Marko. His screens showed three incoming targets, one allocated. He had no trouble with that kill, and none with the next and the next.

“Let's escalate this,” Marko said. “We're part of a fleet of twenty ships in a big battle with a large feddie fleet. You're going to have shit all over your screens, which is distracting as all hell. Stay focused on your targets and ignore everything else.”

Marko took him through a full simulation; the tedious wait for battle to begin, then a few, sporadic targets, then all hell broke loose. York did well up to a certain point, then the sheer number of targets overwhelmed him. After two hours of that, he climbed out of the pod, dark sweat stains coloring his armpits. As his feet hit the deck, he braced himself, ready for Marko to give him hell.

Seated behind the command console, Marko smiled at him and said, “You did pretty good, kid.”

“But I lost,” York said. “They got past me. If it had been real, we'd all be dead.”

Marko leaned back in the console chair. “That's not the point. I wanted to see how much you could handle, so I kept throwing more and more at you. I wasn't going to let you out of that pod until I swamped you with targets. And you did as good as just about any gunner on this ship.”

York couldn't hide his surprise. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Though I shouldn't be surprised. The best gunners are always young. It was almost like you kept practicing all those months with the marines.”

York said, “But I did.”

Marko frowned and said, “They don't have any pods in marine country.”

York thought it was obvious. He shrugged. “I configured the gunboat turret simulator like a pod so I could keep practicing at both.”

Marko smiled and nodded his approval. “Good for you, kid.”

A couple of tendays later, Sissy, Chunks, and Cath showed up in the lower deck bunk room late on third shift. As they walked into the room, Zamekis said, “Well, to what honor do we owe the privilege of a visit by three of the meanest, toughest marines I know?”

Cath looked at York and said, “Just came to wish the kid a happy birthday.”

Zamekis frowned and turned to York. “It's your birthday, and you didn't tell us.”

York was as surprised as her. “I … forgot.”

Zamekis shook her head and they all got a good laugh out of the fact that York had completely forgotten his own thirteenth birthday.

Late one night on fourth watch, while Marko and York were seated at the command console reviewing York's simulation scores, Marko cocked his head at an odd angle and went silent, a sure sign he was receiving some message through his implants. He listened for a moment, then said, “Yes, sir. I'm with him now.”

Again the silence while he listened, then he said, “I'll be right up.”

Marko looked at York. “Yesterday I showed your sim scores to Pallaver.” The older man grinned conspiratorially. “He wants to see me now, wants to look at your scores again.” He stood. “I won't be long. Practice your reading while I'm gone.”

As Marko headed up to officer's country, York pulled up a copy of the regs on a screen and began reading. But only a few minutes later, Sturpik and Tomlin came sauntering down the deck toward him. Both men walked with a wise-guy swagger York had seen too many times on the streets, and he knew it was no coincidence the two men had shown up shortly after Marko had left him alone. While sharing Marko's watch rotation, York didn't have to constantly look over his shoulder for Sturpik or Tomlin, and he realized now he'd grown complacent, didn't have his wrench with him.

As the two men approached, York stood and backstepped away from them. He'd learned the hard way not to let them put him between them.

Sturpik glanced at Tomlin, grinned, and said to York, “What's wrong, kid?”

“Nothing,” York said, backing slowly away from them. “Just need to stretch my legs.”

York had grown in the year he'd been on
Dauntless
, and now stood almost eye-to-eye with Tomlin, though both of them were shorter than Sturpik. But he had no illusions about being able to beat either man in a fight, let alone the two of them together. He backed up against a bulkhead and stopped. The two men stopped just out of reach.

Tomlin said, “Thought about what we told you?”

York shrugged, tried to think of some way to stall. “No. I haven't had time. Been too busy.”

Sturpik's eyes narrowed. “This is important shit, kid. You need to make time.” He stepped forward and York tensed.

Tomlin laughed. “The kid just ain't too smart. Maybe we need to smarten him up a bit.”

Tomlin stepped forward, but as he did so Marko came into view, weaving his way between the instrument clusters and command consoles.

“Marko,” York said.

Tomlin and Sturpik both stiffened, glanced over their shoulders, and took a step back. Sturpik turned and said, “Marko, old buddy. How's the kid doing in his sims?”

Marko stopped a few paces away, his eyes narrowing. He spoke slowly, cautiously. “He's doing just fine.”

Tomlin said, “Nice that he got a promotion out of that marine firefight.” He looked at York. “Apprentice pay grade is just shit, ain't it?”

Still frowning at Sturpik, Marko said, “Kid's got to come with me. Pallaver wants to see him.”

Sturpik stepped aside and said, “By all means. We were just about to leave anyway.” He and Tomlin walked away together, with no sign of their wise-guy swagger.

Marko watched in silence as they left, and once they were gone he turned that same appraising look on York for several seconds. Then he cocked his head and said, “Pallaver wants to see you, going to assign you to a real battle station.”

York was on his hands and knees scrubbing the deck when the alert klaxon started blaring, and a voice on allship said, “
Watch Condition Red. All hands, this is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill. Battle stations.”

He jumped to his feet, grabbed his bucket, and rushed to the maintenance closet, emptied it, and stowed it. He jogged down the deck to the empty console seat, almost sat down and strapped in, but at the last instant remembered that was no longer his battle station.

Pod G-26!

He spun around, hoping Straight hadn't seen his hesitation, ran back up the deck to the pod hatch. Less than a minute later, he strapped in and booted the pod's system. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw he wasn't the last crew member on station. He couldn't shake the fear that he'd screw up somehow and get demoted, though he tried not to obsess on that as he waited for something to happen.

The captain addressed them on allship. “We're down-transiting blind outside a system with suspected Federal activity. We don't know if we're going to run into any trouble or not, so stay alert.”

York waited, his screens blank. Ten minutes later, he felt that tickle up his spine as they down-transited, and his screens lit up, though he had nothing to look at but a few stars on a black background.

York recognized Zamekis's voice when she said, “Looks like the feddies are a no-show.”

Marko said, “Better a no-show than a firefight.”

Ten minutes later, they dropped back to Watch Condition Yellow. York listened to the chatter in his headset for an hour, then the captain took the ship off alert, and York climbed out of his pod exhausted.

During the next month, York went through that same sequence twice more. Both times the ship down-transited at the edge of a system and nothing happened. But the next time, actually growing a bit bored as he waited in his pod for them to down-transit, York felt that tickle at the back of his spine, and as his screens lit up,
Dauntless
's hull shrieked.

“Heavy damage amidships, starboard.”

As
Dauntless
's hull thrummed with the deep, bass sound of its main batteries spitting transition shells at some enemy, York tried to ignore the desperate voices in his headset and scanned his screens. But there was nothing there, no friendlies, no bogies.

“Helm, protect starboard.”

Dauntless
spun, and York's screens filled with yellow targets, nothing allocated to him. Reflexively, he wanted to fire at everything, but he forced himself to hold to discipline, not to fire at unallocated targets. An incoming transition torpedo allocated to Zamekis caught his eye, ranged at a hundred million kilometers and streaking toward them. She fired, missed, fired again, and as the bogie drew closer, targeting allocated it to more pods, but still nothing for York. He tracked it anyway, locked a target designator on it but held to discipline as his crewmates fired and missed. Then only twenty million kilometers out, it flashed a bright red on his screens and he fired. He thought his own shot went wide, but someone hit it and it blossomed into a ball of thermonuclear fire.

After that, they gave him targets on a regular basis. He was pretty certain he deflected several, but no kills. His gunner mates had told him that was the life of a gunner. Rarely did they actually hit incoming fire with a pod round, just deflected it most of the time, which was good enough. That was the reason it took years as a gunner to accumulate an arm full of chevrons, and why spacers like Straight, who'd served only a few years in a pod, never got any.

There came a moment in the battle when the number of targets on his screens threatened to overwhelm him. Then they grew fewer, and in just a few short minutes, it all stopped as abruptly as it had started, no more targets.
Dauntless
's
main batteries fired a few more rounds, but after that all York heard was a frightening silence.

The silence lasted for well over a minute, and then Zamekis said, “Wish I'd worn my brown pants.”

One of the male gunners York didn't know said, “Sweetheart, if you need help changing your pants, I'll be happy to give you a hand, or two.”

Zamekis countered, “If I didn't know your hands spent so much time in your own pants—”

Straight said, “Cut the chatter.”

An hour later, York climbed out his pod hatch onto the lower deck, feeling a little weak in the knees. Straight's gunner crew had gathered around her console, so York joined them.

“Hey, hot shot,” Stark said. “You look a little shaky.”

Zamekis said, “Don't worry about it, York. It's tough to have your first firefight in really deep shit like that.”

York felt he owed someone an apology. “Sorry I didn't do better.”

She frowned and looked at Marko. Marko grinned. “I told you he's a natural.” He turned the grin on York and said, “Kid, you got three kills. We'll see you at gunner's blood tonight.”

In the lower deck bunk room Straight's entire gunner crew—Marko, Durlling, Stark, and Zamekis—surrounded York and examined him carefully. All four had changed into coveralls with cut-off sleeves.

Looking York up and down, Marko said, “This won't do,” and they all shook their heads sadly.

Zamekis and Durlling each grabbed one of York's arms. He'd rolled the sleeves of his coveralls up past his elbows, and the two women carefully unrolled them. The butterflies in York's stomach churned.

“That's better,” Marko said.

Durlling said, “You're going to make us proud tonight, York Ballin.”

Marko said, “Let's go.” He led the way.

Durlling and Zamekis each took one of York's arms and followed him with York walking between them, almost as if they thought he might try to escape. Stark laughed and took up the rear. Several times, the passage was too narrow for the two women and York to pass walking three abreast. Durlling always led the way, followed by York, Zamekis, and Stark.

When they stopped at the closed hatch in the aft of the ship, all York could think about was that he wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. He knew it would hurt when they cut into his arm.

Marko knocked; they were admitted. York's four companions rolled up the sleeves of their cut-off coveralls to expose their gunner's rank. Zamekis grinned, leaned close to York's ear, and said, “Before this is done, you're going to outrank me, you little shithead.”

York looked at the scar on her arm, and realized she only had a single half-chevron. She'd gotten another kill that day, so that night she'd get another to complete the chevron, but York would have a chevron and a half before the night was over. His nerves ratcheted up a notch, and then she slapped him on the back with no hint of resentment or jealousy.

The chief who'd admitted them announced the name and gunner's rank of the four, then turned to York. He stuck his hand out and York didn't know what he was supposed to do, then realized the fellow wanted to shake his hand. He reached out and clasped the older man's hand, which completely engulfed his. The chief nodded and said, “Fucking good shooting today, Ballin.”