Overkill (25 page)

In the distance, I heard vehicle buzz. I ran down the ramp and peered out through the hangar bars. A half dozen vehicles crawled toward us like black ants.

I called back up the ramp to Kit. “The posse’s onto us. How long will it take to get out of here?”

Kit jogged down the ramp looked up at the grezzen, and said, “You need to get in there.”

The grezzen growled, and didn’t budge.

In the distance, rifle shots crackled.

Kit ran back up the ramp and shouted over her shoulder, “Parker, I’ve got work to do! You talk to him!” Then she disappeared through the hold’s forward hatch, toward the crew compartment.

I never had a pet, and I’ve never been much for small talk. I felt foolish talking to a hairy, six-legged monster, much less trying to persuade him to board a spaceship.

I pointed up the ramp. “You don’t want to do this, I know.”

Visions of tanks afire and friends and family lost welled up in me. “But I know what you just went through. I’ve been through it, too. This is the best thing you can do right now. Believe me.”

The fuel pump hydraulics whined as Kit began the shuttle’s start up sequence.

The grezzen cocked his head at the sound.

I backed up the ramp until I stood in the hold, alongside the lever that would lift the ramp, closing Kit and me in and the grezzen out.

Kit’s voice sounded from the intercom speaker. “Don’t make me come back there, you two!”

I pleaded at the grezzen, palms up. “Were you this much trouble to your mother?”

The grezzen dropped its head, bit into the woog, then sidestepped six-legged up the ramp, dragging the carcass and leaving a smear of blood on the ramp as wide as a Sixer’s wheelbase.

I yanked the up ramp lever, it whined up, and Kit lit the engines.

I swear that as we taxied, bumping and rumbling, out onto the runway, a voice said in my head, “More trouble, actually.”

There is no seat belt for a six-legged monster, so the grezzen spread-eagled all six legs against the hold’s bulkheads.

A shuttle’s hold is separately pressurized from the crew and passenger spaces. Therefore, you pick your side of the hatch before takeoff and stay there for the duration. The grezzen looked scared. Actually, I had no idea how he looked. But I knew I would have been scared if I were in his shoes, all six of them.

Rather than leave our infrequent flyer guest alone on his first flight, I strapped into the loadmaster’s acceleration couch for the Upshuttle trip.

The grezzen made it through boost phase intact, the dead woog less so. This became apparent only when the shuttle made parking orbit, to drift through space awaiting the arrival of the
Midway
.

Kit’s voice crackled through the hold’s intercom speaker. “Everything okay back there, Parker?”

The grezzen drifted weightless, six limbs outstretched and all three eyes wide, as though it were a parade balloon. Its weightless fur fluffed out like it had been blow-dried. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

I said, “It’s a shit storm back here!”

“Grow up, Parker.”

“No. It’s a shit storm. The boost phase squashed the dead woog’s intestines like toothpaste tubes. Crap’s floating everywhere.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not funny!”

“Look on the bright side. It’s only thirty-nine hours until the
Midway
’s due. And at least the grezzen’s not airsick.”

I somersaulted so I could see the grezzen. “I dunno. He looks a little green around the tusks. He might—”

You have no idea how much floating vomit an eleven-ton animal can spew in thirty-nine hours.

So I was too busy to notice the details of the secret handshake Kit used to get a mile-long
Bastogne
-class star cruiser to take a hijacked shuttle and a monster aboard.

I suspect the good citizens of Dead End were perturbed that we got away, but glad to see us gone. The last feeling was mutual
.

Unfortunately, our reputation had preceded us with the good people aboard the
Midway
.

As soon as the
Midway
’s docking bay was pressured up, I cracked the shuttle’s rear ramp and let it whine down. The grezzen, subject again to gravity, courtesy of the big cruiser’s rotation, slid down onto the bay’s deck plates with all six legs splayed, as weak and dopey as a dehydrated puppy.

The bay inner doors opened, and a combat engineer sergeant motioned an engineer team, wearing full eternad armor and dragging welding gear and plasteel girders, forward into the bay.

A wide-eyed embarked Marine security platoon, also full-armored, weapons locked and loaded, scurried in behind the engineers and surrounded the grezz, while the engineers welded a custom plasteel wheeled cage around him.

I admired their caution, but not their grasp on the reality I knew. If the grezz chose to pick a fight, even weak as it was, those Marines and engineers would be smeared on the bulkheads like strawberry compote in a half minute.

The cage finished up just smaller than an assault transport. Therefore, it just fit into the docking bay’s radial elevator, one of thirty-six elevators that ran up and down shafts that led like bicycle spokes from the docking bays ringed around the cruiser’s beltline down to the centerline cargo bay.

Kit and I rode down the dark, echoing shaft with the grezzen and his jailers.

Once we offloaded the cage in the bay, one marine popped his helmet faceplate and drew a breath.

He saluted Kit, who had changed into pilot’s coveralls during our flight. No such amenities for the grezzen and me.

She returned his salute, then he scrunched up his nose while he jerked a thumb at the grezzen. “Colonel, is that thing as strong as it smells?”

Actually, he was probably smelling me as much as the grezzen. After thirty-nine hours I could no longer smell myself, for which I was grateful. But I did smell something unfamiliar.

I looked around the cargo bay. Another of the thirty-six elevators from the docking bays clanged down. It was full of export kerosene bladders. I glanced at the grezzen. I have no idea how a
Xenoursus grezzenensis
looks when it’s terrified, but I was pretty sure the way he shrank back against the far wall of his new cage was it.

I thought, “Don’t worry. That smell doesn’t mean these guys are going to burn you.”

If my assurance relaxed him, it didn’t cause him to move away from the cage wall.

Then I realized what the jarhead had just called Kit. I stared at her with my mouth open. Colonel? My five thousand soldier brigade was commanded by a colonel.

She smiled at him. “You don’t want to find out, corporal. Sling the rifles. The grezzen won’t bother you, and the rifles wouldn’t do you any good if it did.”

“As you say, ma’am. Uh. Captain Halder sends his compliments. He’d like to see you and this gentleman,” he nodded to me, “on the bridge immediately.”

It took ten minutes for the jarhead to escort us to the bridge, clumping along in armor with his rifle at port arms. There Kit was piped aboard like, well, the full bird colonel that she apparently was.

The
Midway
’s “captain” was actually of equivalent rank to Kit, but he was gray enough to have been her father, and had bushy eyebrows. He wore a Colonial shoulder patch that marked him as non-Trueborn, which I counted as a strike in his favor, though it probably meant he had hit the promotion ceiling, and would never make admiral no matter how well he did his job.

Kit saluted him first, he returned it, then frowned. “Colonel Born, we had to dig pretty deep into the recognition files to verify the codes you transmitted. But you check out. May I ask why I have turned my ship into a spook circus train?”

She dipped her head and smiled at him. “I appreciate your cooperation. And your concern.”

I raised my eyebrows. Kit had been very polite. She also hadn’t uttered one substantive word that answered his question.

“Concern? Do you know how much it costs to hold a
Bastogne
-Class cruiser in orbit, like I’ve just done for you?”

She nodded. “I do. And I’m sure you know that the spook budget’s big enough to cover it.” It was Kit’s turn to frown. “I’m afraid us spooks are going to have to impose on you further, Captain Halder.” She drew a pad and stylo from a pocket in her coverall’s sleeve, scribbled a note, and passed it to him. “Grocery list for our big guest below. Could you arrange to have these items acquired, and upshipped on the next shuttle?”

“This is a big ship. We have plenty aboard to feed it.”

“He’s picky.”

“You’ve already put us behind schedule. I’m afraid we won’tbe able to wait on the next shuttle.”

“I’d appreciate it if you would.”

Halder’s eyes bugged like she had asked him to swim through grezzen puke. Trust me, I know the look.

Kit smiled again. “So would my boss.”

The captain pressed his lips together, but he didn’t speak. Then he waved the officer of the deck over, handed him Kit’s note, and said, “Russ, please have Logistics and Procurement attend to the colonel’s requirements. And please re-plot an extended parking orbit.”

Wow. Most armed forces called their intel people spooks. And most regulars didn’t like their spooks. But Kit was apparently a very important spook.

Halder also said, “Please find the colonel a suitable billet.” He nodded my way while he made a face. “And something for this gentleman. Preferably with an immediately available shower.”

Kit smiled at Halder. “Why, thank you, Captain.”

Kit might be the spook from hell, but her smile could charm even an old squid like Halder. He smiled back.

Kit said, “On the subject of accommodation, could you separate the animal and the kerosene bladders? He doesn’t like the smell.”

Halder’s smile vanished and he stiffened. “Ma’am, the bay’s the only space aboard big enough to hold our legitimate cargo and yours.”

Kit nodded, and Halder smiled again. I think she served up the last demand so he could smack it back and feel good. I knew she was tough, I knew she was smart, I knew she could be funny. Now I knew she could be diplomatic. Each new side of Kit Born that I saw I liked. The beauty of a multi-jump cruiser trip was that I’d get to see even more of her, especially if we shared a cabin.

Ten minutes later, a steward led us to our quarters, Kit first, then me.

Unlike most of the great and aging cruisers that linked the worlds of the Human Union, the
Midway
didn’t see action in the War. On the ways when hostilities ceased, she wasn’t even commissioned until two years later, the last ship built before the vast shipyards of Mousetrap closed down.

Combat configured, a
Bastogne
-class cruiser like
Midway
could bunk a ten-thousand-soldier embarked infantry division, in addition to its own crew.

But on peacetime runs to the far outworlds, passengers were scarce. On the outbound legs, cruisers carried manufactured goods to build up the outworlds. On the inbound legs, the cruisers carried to Earth stuff like Weichselan diamonds, which made sense to me, and kerosene, which didn’t. Apparently Trueborns found kerosene too environmentally noxious to refine at home, but so valuable for charming mood lighting that they would overpay for it. The ‘zines called the system commercial symbiosis. I called it neocolonial exploitation.

So the troop spaces of warships like
Midway
were reconfigured. She was like a wet bottom tramp steamer, with space for her crew, which was military, like Kit, and separate space for a handful of civilian passengers, into which I would have to fit. There was just one billet available for Kit, sharing a cabin in female officer country with the
Midway
’s chief engineer.

Accommodations for the colonel’s anonymous gentleman friend were less deluxe. I was installed in the only vacant passenger space, a second-class cabin. But in a cruiser’s embarked division space lots of relics got left in place because somebody was too lazy to remove them. Therefore, my “cabin” was a junior non-commissioned officer’s sleeping drawer that shared a sanex with another “cabin.”

As a Yavi and a tanker, I didn’t mind the close and spartan quarters. But Kit and I would be able to visit only in the ship’s public spaces. So much for having her all to myself.

That afternoon, she invited me to lunch with her in the officer’s mess. We carried buffet trays to a corner table and sat facing each other.

I raised my linen napkin. “Officers travel well. Colonel? Really? You could have told me.” I wasn’t really angry about her lack of candor. After all, I was a fugitive from justice and I still hadn’t told her that.

She swayed in her chair. “I’m not a real colonel.”

“Halder seems to think you are.”

“I mean I’ve never commanded a brigade, or anything like that. My outfit was organized during the Blitz, before I was born. The Army drafted every civilian extra-terrestrial intelligence geek who it could find and told them to win the War. Now there’s no War. My rank’s more like a parallel civil service designation.”

“You don’t shoot like a civil servant. I just watched you flya low orbit hypersonic like a pro. You’ve probably got a Ph.D. in xenobiology.”

She smiled. “Master’s. From Dartmouth. I’m one of your favorites, a Trueborn rich kid.”

“I was a soldier because I couldn’t be anything else. Why the hell are you a soldier when you could be a surgeon, or a diplomat, or a yacht racer? Or at least study planets that won’t kill you.”

She looked down at her tray and smiled. “My parents ask me the same thing. The Borns have never suffered the embarrassment of a common soldier before.”

“I don’t think you’re common.”

I think I made the full bird colonel blush.

I said, “So? Why do you do it?”

She shook her head. “It’s a story you don’t have time for.”

“It’s nine jumps just to Mousetrap. Time I have.”

She smiled, laid her palms on the tablecloth. “Okay. There are three kinds of planets, right?” She ticked them off on her fingers. “First, Earth. Second, the Seeded Worlds—the triple handful of planets where abducted Earthlings got planted or left behind thirty thousand years ago. Third, the Outworlds.”