Starfist: Blood Contact (12 page)

There was a brief bustle as the Marines shoved their packs into lower rack spaces, then clambered into higher ones. They made it just in time.

A loud clang reverberated through the ship, followed by a steady vibration. Gravity returned, not in the smooth transition from zero to one the Marines were accustomed to on navy ships, but in chunks that jerked and bounced them on the polymer sheets.

"Oh, my aching back," MacIlargie grumbled when normal gravity was finally restored. "That thing is hard."

"Now you know why it's called a rack," Kerr said.

The
Fairfax County
was underway, headed for its first Beam jump point on its way to Society 437.

CHAPTER 10

Lieutenant Commander Lydios Bynum, in twenty years as a navy surgeon, had pulled "shore duty" only once: on a tour with the 127th FIST as a battalion medical officer. In charge of the battalion aid station during the Cathagenian Incursions on Wolozonowski's World, she had won a Gold Nova—the Confederation military's second highest decoration for heroism—when the station had come under intense infantry ground attack supported by artillery fire. Unmindful of the incoming fire, Dr. Bynum had found a lightly wounded NCO and ordered him to form a defensive perimeter around the medical complex.

The Marine sergeant had gathered a group of walking wounded who still had weapons, and with those men held off the advancing Cathagenian forces until reinforcements arrived. Meanwhile, Dr. Bynum calmly attended to her patients. Her anesthesiologist, a nurse, and a corpsman had all been killed while assisting her in the operating theater. She herself had suffered multiple puncture wounds caused by the mortar round that killed her surgical team. One small fragment had penetrated her larynx. She had continued her work as she spit up mouthfuls of blood to keep her lungs clear, giving her assistants orders in a whispering gurgle. Later, skilled surgeons replaced the larynx, but she never got back the clear soprano voice she'd been born with.

The Marine they were operating on at the time survived, due mostly to Dr. Bynum's skill and courage.

But it had been a very close thing. Cathagenian grenadiers were already inside the aid station perimeter by the time a platoon of Marines arrived to drive them off.

That experience had taught Dr. Bynum two things: an appreciation for the abilities of Marine noncommissioned officers, and a profound contempt for military chickenshit. With that attitude she was guaranteed two things: never to be promoted beyond the rank of lieutenant commander, and consistently and distinctly unglamorous assignments—more than twenty years as a ship's surgeon, treating the injuries and diseases sailors sustained on shipboard and in a hundred ports throughout Human Space. One thing for sure: nobody ever messed with the ship's doctor on a starship.

When Dr. Bynum wore her uniform, the only decoration she displayed was the Gold Nova. Navy line officers who'd never been in combat, much less decorated for bravery, found themselves distinctly uncomfortable when she was around. Her assignment to the
CNSS Fairfax County
was to be her last.

She'd been offered a pleasant and lucrative job as director of a civilian hospital in Brosigville on Wanderjahr, of all places, and when the current mission was over she would put in her retirement papers and settle down. Maybe she'd marry. Well, this last trip at least would be interesting, and besides, the
Fairfax
would be carrying a platoon of Marines, and she liked Marines.

Lydios Bynum's grandfather, Harry, had been an engineer on a deep-space merchantman, pursuing a profession that had been in his family for generations. Before that his people had sailed far from their West African homeland, earning their keep navigating Old Earth's oceans. Looking for a berth on an outgoing ship after completing a voyage to Kandaros, in the Joannides System, he'd met Lydios's grandmother. Alexandra Malakos had been a statuesque dark-haired beauty working in the shipping office owned by her father, Gregory Malakos. The Malakos family exported olive oil. Kandaros in the 25th century was famous for its olive oil production, an art its early settlers had brought with them from their Hellenic homeland on Old Earth.

Lydios remembered her grandparents vividly as a happy couple who enjoyed the pleasures of life, but of all things, they loved music most. Her grandparents could play various musical instruments and had reasonably good singing voices. Her mother, however, was a natural soprano, and though untrained, had sung professionally in her youth. Her fondest dream was to see her youngest daughter, Lydios, sing in an opera company.

The future navy surgeon loved music too, but as a child she endured the endless voice training sessions with a succession of tutors only because that was what her mother wanted. When asked by admiring adults if she would pursue a career in the opera, she would answer, "Yeah, maybe, kinda, sorta," which aggravated her mother, but instead of asking Lydios if she might have other goals in life, she pressed on with the interminable voice lessons. In later life that phrase, "maybe, kinda, sorta," became Lydios's stock response whenever asked a question she really did not want to answer.

Left to herself and among her friends, Lydios loved singing the ribald, humorous songs of the Kandaros folk tradition. By the age of eight she knew all the verses to "Clementine" and "Goober Peas."

At her thirteenth birthday party she severely embarrassed her parents and voice teachers by substituting

"Goober Peas" from Mozart's Don Giovanni:

Sittin' by the roadside on a summer's day,

Chattin' with my messmates, passin' time away

Layin' in the shadows, underneath the trees,

Wearin' out our grinders, eatin' goober peas.

But Lydios was good, very good. By the time she graduated from conservatory, she'd developed a

"lush" mezzosoprano, as one critic described her voice. At her first public performance she sang Helmut D'Nunzio's arrangement of Virgil Thompson's Symphony on a Hymn. Her rendition of "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" so moved one critic that he wrote, "Her voice brims with warmth and a nuanced and imaginative interpretive gift that is utterly spontaneous and true to the languorous phonic poetry of late twentieth century American English."

Both her mother and father, but particularly her mother, almost had apoplexy when, shortly after her twenty-second birthday, the young woman solemnly announced she was going to become a doctor.

"Lidi!" her mother screamed, brown face almost turning white with fury, "You can't! You can't! Why, it'd mean—" She coughed and sputtered and staggered to a nearby settee where she labored to catch her breath.

"Honey," her father intervened, "you have trained for years to be a wonderful soprano, and you are—"

He gestured, looking for the right word. "—you are a true artist. You have a great career ahead of you.

Medical school now would mean years more of study. Why, you'd have to start all over again! You would never sing professionally! Think of what this means to your mother and me."

"And you will have to deal with—with dead things and blood!" her mother gasped from the settee. She groaned and put her head in her hands. "You will pull slimy things out of people's insides, Lidi!" Her mother almost fainted at the thought.

"I will save people's lives, Mother," Lydios responded quietly. "And I will make people feel better.

Mama, Daddy, I love music too. But I will be a doctor."

When her youngest brother, whom Lydios loved dearly, was nearly killed in an accident, she had accompanied him to the hospital. She was so small and slight she was able to stand in a corner behind a partition and watch the proceedings without being noticed. When the surgeons had finished the ministrations that saved her brother's life, one of them spotted her standing there, her small brown face peering out at him. He said nothing, just pulled off his surgical mask and winked at her. From that moment forward Lydios Bynum knew she would be a doctor. But she had never dared mention it to her parents until now.

"And just how do you intend to pay for your medical schooling?" her father demanded, losing his patience at last. "I'll tell you this, young lady, you won't get anything from us! Not a thing! Come on, Lidi, how will you pay for this—this fantasy?"

Lydios had no answer to that, but Grandpa Harry did. "Lidi," he'd told her, "anybody can succeed with a Bynum behind them."

It took her thirteen years to complete undergraduate school, medical school, her internship and residency. Grandpa Harry left her enough money in his will so she could finish. Her parents passed on just before she graduated from medical school. They had left her nothing of the family fortune. And then she enlisted in the Confederation Navy. She knew that Grandpa Harry would've enjoyed living to see that, but it was just as well her parents were already gone because surely they would have died if they knew their intransigent daughter had opted to become a sailor.

Since a ship's surgeon was technically on call all the time, Dr. Bynum had learned to sleep whenever and wherever the opportunity arose, so often she would be awake when most of the crew were sleeping or standing watch. She frequented the wardroom during the mid-watch, or 04 hours standard, when she could have it mostly to herself. There, she would enjoy a quiet cup of coffee and a smoke. She usually avoided the place during the dog watches between 16 and 20 hours, when the dinner meal was served.

Because of her irregular schedule, she could be in there when most of the other officers were at ship's stations or in their staterooms.

Lance Corporal Rachman Claypoole started and tried to jump to his feet when someone woke him up by thrusting a hot mug of coffee at him. He'd been dozing on the wardroom detail—nobody had come in for over an hour—and an officer had caught him sleeping. Damn! Court-martial offense. "Yessir! Right away sir," he mumbled, taking the mug to fill it before he realized it was already full. The officer stood there, grinning down at him. It was the dark-skinned female lieutenant commander, the doctor, the one with the Gold Nova. He'd seen her in the wardroom once or twice before, and she had always nodded at him in a friendly way. He wanted desperately to know how she'd won the Gold Nova, but Marine lance corporals, even one as bold as Claypoole, avoided familiarity with officers, even doctors, who were not quite the same as other officers. She never asked for anything when she came in, and served herself when she wanted something. Sometimes she just sat at a table for hours, smoking and reading on her personal vid, seldom talking to the other officers when they happened to wander in. Whenever Claypoole had managed to look over her shoulder at the stuff on her vidscreen, it'd been medical jargon, so he'd quickly lost interest.

"I thought you could use some coffee, Lance Corporal," she said, still smiling.

"Uh, yes si—ma'am." Claypoole took the mug, but from the expression on his face, he didn't seem to realize he was to drink it.

The doctor sat opposite him with her own mug and sipped from it. Her eyes twinkled as she watched Claypoole over the steaming coffee. She was a very small woman with closely cut black hair and fine features. Claypoole had often thought, in an idle, sexless way, like a man admiring a painting in a museum, that she was a pretty woman.

"You know, in eight hundred years the human species hasn't managed to invent anything that'll do it for you like coffee," she said, lifting her mug.

"Umm," Claypoole responded, raising his mug to his lips.

"I thought you could use a pick-me-up," she said.

"Thank you, ma'am. Uh, I better get back to work—"

"Relax. You're under the doctor's care now." This time she smiled broadly, revealing perfect, pearly white teeth. "Besides," she said, looking around the wardroom, "this place is already too sanitary for the
Fairfax
. You'll give the rest of the ship a bad reputation."

Now it was Claypoole's turn to laugh. "Oh, well..." He shrugged and drank some more of the coffee.

It was clear she wasn't going to report him for sleeping on duty. "I have to apologize, ma'am, but I just sat down for a minute, and next thing I knew..."

Dr. Bynum nodded. "Tell me about your Gunny," she said.

"You know something about Marines, don't you, ma'am? I mean you know our ranks and stuff." He hesitated, looking over his shoulder, but the wardroom was still empty except for the two of them. "Most navy officers, begging your pardon, ma'am, don't know a private from a sergeant major," he continued in a low voice.

She nodded again. "I was battalion surgeon with 127th FIST." Claypoole realized that must have been when she earned the Gold Nova, but still he did not ask about the medal.

Aside from talking about himself, Gunnery Sergeant Bass was Claypoole's favorite topic. The doctor listened, fascinated, as Claypoole told her about the knife fight with the Siad chieftain on Elneal. Another officer came into the wardroom during the telling but Claypoole was so wrapped up in the story he never noticed. Dr. Bynum glanced up briefly. It was that supercilious Lieutenant Snodgrass. Ignoring him, she turned her attention back to Claypoole's animated narrative.

Snodgrass seated himself on the other side of the wardroom. What the hell was the goddamned steward doing, he wondered, jawing with that officer? That was entirely unacceptable familiarity—fraternization. It was that doctor. Goddamn independent bitch. Count on a medic, especially a female, to destroy what little military discipline there was on a scow like the
Fairfax
, he reflected. He watched them, growing angrier by the minute. Well, she was a lieutenant commander, so she outranked him—in the wardroom anyway. A lieutenant commander and a doctor. He shook his head. And a goddamn woman.

Lieutenant Argal Snodgrass had graduated in the top five percent of his Confederation Naval Academy class, and in the five years since his commissioning—he'd been promoted to full lieutenant below the zone—he'd made no bones about his career plans. He would be an admiral. The lower classmen at the Academy—and every enlisted man afterward—who'd encountered Snodgrass when he was a midshipman wished he'd just get lost somewhere in space. He'd derived great pleasure from making the lives of those under him at the Academy as miserable as possible. As a junior officer with the Fleet, he had carried on the practice, to the extent his superiors would allow him, which never gave him the latitude he wanted. But one day...