Take The Star Road (The Maxwell Saga) (19 page)

Tomkins and Steve came off duty late in the evening of the fourth day, both worn out after a very busy shift. They joined the crew of the ship's second cutter in the mess hall, along with two Fleet spacers who'd been operating one of the two general-purpose cutters assigned to the hospital. Tom Higgins had left 'mid-rats', bread, sandwich materials and an urn of steaming-hot coffee, on the serving counter for the overnight watches. They helped themselves hungrily.

"Anyone feel like something hot for dessert?" Steve asked. "Tom gave me the combination to the pantry, and told me to help myself if I wanted to prepare anything."

"Your cook lets you into his pantry unsupervised?" the Fleet pilot inquired. "He must be a very trusting soul!" He held out his hand. "I'm Davis, by the way. Zabrinski here crews for me." He wore the sleeve insignia of a Petty Officer Second Class on his flight suit, while Zabrinski's showed him to be a Spacer First Class.

"Pleased to meet you." Steve introduced himself and his shipmates, and shook hands with the Fleet spacers. "I help out in here now and again, and occasionally cook for the ship's company when Tom wants a break. I learned to cater for a crowd at the orphanage where I grew up. We brought back supplies for him this afternoon. I recall there were several big boxes of frozen cinnamon rolls."

"What are you waiting for?" Tomkins urged. "Someone's got to make sure they're safe to eat. I nominate us for the job. Go to it!"

"I'll blame you if he complains," Steve warned with a grin. "I'll tell him you pulled rank on me."

"Huh! With friends like you, who needs enemies?"

The Fleet spacers chuckled at the repartee. Steve made a well-filled sandwich for himself, then took it into the galley and set about flash-heating half a dozen large cinnamon rolls while the others ate and drank. He put them on a tray and carried it through to the mess hall.

"Here they are, hot and steaming," he announced, setting it down next to a stack of paper plates. "You'll need a fork - they'll burn your fingers if you try to pick them up." He poured himself a cup of coffee while the others hungrily loaded their plates with cinnamon rolls, then joined them.

Zabrinski wolfed down his roll, blowing on it to cool it so he could eat it faster, then looked longingly at the empty tray. "Any more where those came from?" he asked hopefully.

"I can get away with taking half a dozen, but not more," Steve explained. "I don't want to overdo it, in case the cook withdraws my pantry privileges."

Zabrinski shrugged innocently. "Oh, well. Guess I'll just have to steal some of yours!" As he spoke, he made a lightning grab with his right hand for the half-roll still on Steve's plate.

Steve had just raised his fork to his mouth and taken a bite. He reacted without conscious thought, stabbing downward with karate-honed reflexes. His fork speared deep into the back of Zabrinski's hand before it could reach his plate.

"OW!
Ouch!
Shit
, that hurts!" Zabrinski whipped his hand away, cradling it against his chest with his left arm, glaring at Steve as the others roared with laughter.

"You asked for it," Davis pointed out, still laughing as he shook his finger at his crewman. "I've warned you before about stealing other people's food. You finally met someone fast enough to stop you!"

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" The spacer glared in disbelief at the blood welling up from the fork embedded in the back of his hand.

"Not yours! You've taken more than enough food off your shipmates like that. It's high time someone gave you your come-uppance! No, don't do that," and he reached out a hand to restrain Zabrinski from touching the fork with his left hand. "It's in pretty deep. Let's see the other side." Zabrinski turned over his hand, revealing the four tines of the fork protruding from his palm. "Yeah, he got you good! There's no way you'll be able to just pull that out. We'd better give the hospital its first real business, and let the professionals deal with it."

"You're joking, right?" Zabrinski glared at him. "I'll look like a fool!"

"Yes, you will, and you'll deserve it! Come on, let's go."

"I'm sorry," Steve apologized worriedly. "I didn't mean to cause all this trouble. It was a reflex reaction."

"And a justified one!" Davis assured him. "Don't worry, you're not in any trouble, I'll see to that. Want to come along? I think the nurses' faces will be a picture when they see this!"

"Mind if I come too?" Tomkins asked, beginning to grin. "This ought to be worth watching!"

"Why not?"

In the end all six of them trooped into the hospital's small emergency room. Half a dozen nurses and a doctor on the overnight shift were going through the motions of training with various items of equipment. They abandoned their boring, routine tasks with grateful alacrity.

"How the hell...?" the doctor wondered aloud, staring as he unwrapped Zabrinski's hand from the bloodstained paper towel with which he'd covered it.

"He tried to mooch my cinnamon roll, and I stopped him," Steve explained uncomfortably. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it quite so hard!"

"Mooch?" a nurse inquired, eyebrows rising.

"It's a word we use on Old Home Earth to mean finagling or sneaking something out of someone - taking advantage of them," Steve explained.

"Oh. I hadn't heard the term before," she confessed, her eyes twinkling, "I guess we'd better fix up Spacer Mooch before he tries it again!" Her colleagues broke into delighted laughter.

"Hey, my name's Zabrinski, not Mooch!"

"It was," his boss informed him with an evil grin. "I think you've just earned a new nickname. Just wait 'til the word gets around...
Mooch!
"

Zabrinski glared at him. "And I bet you'll make sure it gets around, won't you?" He rolled his eyes plaintively. "What did I do to deserve this?"

"Please tell me that fork hadn't been in someone's mouth before it ended up in his hand?" another nurse asked.

"Er... sorry, Ma'am, but it was," Steve admitted.

"OK, then you get an anti-infection shot as well," she informed Zabrinski with a smile.

"Better add a rabies inoculation, too," Tomkins suggested helpfully. "I've seen Steve when he's in a fighting mood!"

"We'll treat this as a training opportunity," the doctor declared, grinning from ear to ear. "We'll need an X-ray and blood tests - we'll draw enough for a full battery, everything from anemia to zinc levels, to test our diagnostic machine. It'll only need a liter or two." Zabrinski's eyes opened wide with horror. "Then there's the anti-infection and rabies shots... what else?"

"We can check for ingrown toenails while we're at it," another nurse offered, chuckling.

The doctor nodded. "Uh-huh - hemorrhoids, too!" The nurses and spacers exploded with laughter.

"Hey!
Wait a minute!" Zabrinski protested, turning pale. "I'm outta here!"

It took some time to persuade him that the doctor was only joking. He was still complaining as his wrist and hand were injected with a local anesthetic. The ER staff waited for it to take effect, then strapped down his hand and forearm to immobilize them while the prongs were withdrawn. Two nurses assisted the doctor with the extraction, sponging away the blood from several small incisions required to free the fork's tines from the tendons of his hand.

Lieutenant-Commander Erion hurried in as they were suturing and dressing the wound, his bleary eyes and tousled hair bearing witness that he'd been woken from a sound sleep. He'd dressed in a tracksuit without badges of rank, and was breathing hard, as if he'd run all the way down the passage from his quarters.

"What happened?" he asked. "The charge nurse called to tell me one of our spacers had been injured."

"Gee,
thanks!
" Zabrinski hissed, glaring at the nurse behind the admissions counter.

She stifled a smirk. "Sir, our standing orders are to notify you about any injuries to Fleet personnel," she said innocently, "so I thought you'd want to know about Spacer Mooch's - "

"Zabrinski!"
the injured man insisted furiously.

"Sorry - Spacer Zabrinski's wound," she finished, unable to suppress a giggle as she pointed to the bloodied fork lying on a dressing tray.

"Mooch?" Erion asked, beginning to smile.
"Mooch?"

Steve had to explain once more how he'd defended his cinnamon roll against attack. Petty Officer Davis backed him up. "That's how it was, Sir. I saw the whole thing. Spacer Mooch - I mean, Zabrinski - asked for it."

"Well, Zabrinski, you've learned a lesson - at least, I hope you have! - and I think you've earned a new nickname as well, whether you like it or not," Erion said with a chuckle. "Unfortunately, even though you were technically 'wounded in action', I'm afraid a fight over a cinnamon roll isn't enough to qualify you for the Combat Injury Medal!"

Zabrinski could only roll his eyes again at the renewed laughter at his expense.

The following day, the emergency room mounted a plaque on the wall above the admissions counter. It bore a picture of Zabrinski's hand, fork embedded vertically in it. Above it were the words, 'The 257th Expeditionary Hospital's first patient!', and below it, 'Spacer First Class "Mooch" Zabrinski', followed by the date of the injury. It would draw many amused comments from passersby in the weeks and months to come.

When Zabrinski learned about it his chagrin redoubled. "I'll never live that down!" he complained bitterly, glaring at Steve over supper that night after the late shift, nursing his bandaged hand.

"You don't deserve to," an unsympathetic Petty Officer Davis informed him. "That was a classic self-inflicted injury, in more ways than one!"

Steve finally made an entire tray of a dozen cinnamon rolls for Zabrinski as a peace offering, after first clearing it with a highly amused Higgins. That mollified the indignant spacer... but his new nickname stuck.

Chapter 13: July 17th, 2837 GSC

Steve was on duty once again in the Engineering department when
Cabot
arrived at Radetski for the first time. Along with most of the ship's company, he listened to their radio conversation with the makeshift System Control organization, which had been set up by the United Planets mission in lieu of the long-destroyed orbital infrastructure. It was being operated from the mission's command vessel, an old depot ship named LCS
Baobab
, which served as the mother ship for several heavy and light patrol craft providing system security.

Steve listened curiously to the radio exchange between
Cabot
and
Baobab
as the ship reported her arrival. "Why are they calling us 'LCAS'
Cabot
instead of 'LMV'?" he asked Ignaz, who was again on watch with him.

"It's because we're on charter to the Fleet, which gives us the legal status of a Fleet auxiliary. Instead of being a 'Lancastrian Merchant Vessel' as usual, we're now referred to as a 'Lancastrian Commonwealth Auxiliary Ship'. When the charter's over, we'll go back to plain old LMV again."

"I get it."

Looking at Radetski on the monitor as they approached the planet, Steve could see that it was mostly water, with islands of various sizes poking above the surface here and there.
Cabot
was directed to take up a geostationary orbit above the largest island, big enough to be considered a continent. As soon as she'd settled into orbit, the hospital's small craft began a week-long shuttle service, bringing injured children and their travel companions - parents, guardians or older siblings - up from the planet. Meanwhile
Cabot
's two cutters, plus small craft from
Baobab
, delivered thousands of tons of medical supplies to field hospitals established on the main island. They were treating the crippled and maimed left in the wake of Radetski's decade-long civil war, and standing in for the continent's own hospitals, most of which had long since been destroyed.

On the third day, Tomkins and Steve were tasked to deliver a shipment of medicines and dressings to a field hospital on the south coast. It was received with relief.

"Thank Heaven you got here when you did!" a clerk exclaimed as he checked off the details of the shipment on an electronic clipboard, while hospital porters and robotic conveyors packed it away in containers set up as makeshift warehouses. "We were almost out of a lot of this stuff. By next week we'd have been in real trouble."

"We aim to please," Tomkins said with a smile. "We're supposed to take back several cases of powered prosthetics, to be shipped to Vesta for repair and reconditioning. Are they ready?"

"I'm sorry - we're still packing the last of them. It'll take another hour. They've got to be padded just right to prevent damage in transit. Have you eaten yet?"

"Not since a very early breakfast."

"Our mess hall's in that big tent over there. We hired some of the local women to staff it. They cook good food, spiced in their traditional style. Lunch is almost over, but there'll be plenty left. Here's two meal chits. Our shipment should be ready by the time you get back."