The Sirens of Space (12 page)

Shamus turned from the helm console to the
trailer controls, on the left-most panel, and began to enter the
security code to jettison their cargo train. He hated the thought
of decoupling. The payday that awaited them on delivery would have
left them sitting pretty for half the year, and given them plenty
of cash to spend on Demeter once the paperwork cleared. But if it
came down to their hides, they’d leave the cargo for the pirates
and be off, as quick as a Ceresian gigolo.

* * *

As the tramp freighter
struggled to free itself from its cargo, at a dry dock back
at the starbase an alarm tone exploded deep inside the cerebral
cortex of CosGuard’s newest captain. Struggling toward
consciousness, Cook groped to shut it off. His head was a symphony
of pain, repaying him dearly for the hours of abandon he shared
with the crew on his full last day commanding the
Constantine
. The clock by his bed
read 350 Hours; he’d slept half the day—nearly five cosmic
hours—and vaguely recalled that he still had a lot to do. He
couldn’t remember what any of it might be, but he knew he had a
full day in store. And he had the sinking feeling that in his
stupor he’d quite forgotten to call Vera, his old classmate, to
tell her that he was in no shape to leave the ship and wouldn’t
make it back to her place until today. Actually, he slowly
realized, he hadn’t called her at all since the day he’d learned of
his promotion, when he felt the need for an old friend’s company,
and invited himself to her place to celebrate.

Still clothed in his standard blues, Cook
staggered to the shower in his cabin and fumbled at the activator
until the warm water began to flow. He leaned against the stall,
grateful to have mastered his first major task of the day.
Gradually, he shed his clothing, leaving it in an inert pile in the
corner of the shower, and stood transfixed by the streams of water
from the dual nozzles. After what seemed like several hours he
opened the hatch, dragged himself back into the cabin, and fell
onto his bed, face down and dripping wet, where he remained until
his yeoman came to call him to duty.

“
Commander—I mean, Captain Cook,” said
the startled young woman. Tactfully, she tossed a bedsheet over his
bare bottom before gently shaking his shoulder to wake him. As Cook
began to stir she took to tidying the room a bit, throwing soiled
fatigues and socks into the laundry shoot.

“
You’re needed in security,” she said,
as matter-of-factly as she could. “Some of the redshirts got rather
out of hand last night, you see, and Lt. Moll would really like you
to conduct the captain’s mast. You know...before you turn over the
ship to Mr. LaRue.”

Cook grunted an acknowledgment of sorts, his
groggy mind fighting its way toward consciousness. As his yeoman
chattered merrily away, reminding him of the duties of a outgoing
skipper, his two major tasks of the day gradually began to
crystallize in his foggy brain.

First, he told himself, he would speak to
Mr. LaRue about overdoing discipline upon assuming temporary
command. This was a good crew, and good crews need nurturing, not
an iron fist. The sooner LaRue understood this, the quicker his own
command would follow. He started to sit up until he was interrupted
by his giggling yeoman. Her face flushed beet red, as she quickly
turned her eyes toward the far wall.

“
Wrong again, Cook,” he smiled at her
wearily, too tired to care about his loss of dignity. As carefully
as he could, he leaned over to recover the fallen
bedsheet.

“
The second thing I’ll do is see Mr.
LaRue.”

After a tasteless
breakfast in the cafeteria, Cook made his way from B-Deck to
Security, where he declared an amnesty for all infractions of the
day before. The cheers still ringing in his aching head, he went
down two more levels to Engineering, to say goodbye to Chief
Engineer Seth Montgomery. The old-time Cozzie had been a favorite
of Cook’s, with a Demetrian’s contempt for pomp and an endless
supply of stories. The two had passed many an hour sharing a
whiskey bottle and bemoaning the luck of the draw that had infected
the ship with such a stickler of a first officer. They’d had a
falling out the past few months as Cook’s personal life intruded
upon their friendship, and Cook wanted to square things before he
left. But Monty interrupted Cook’s apology with the observation
that real friends had little need of such formalities, and such
things were usually understood. “Especially,” Monty said, his eyes
twinkling, “when the insulted friend is proven right.”

Cook laughed along with his friend, hoping
that Monty wouldn’t be too disappointed when he learned that
CosGuard’s newest starship skipper still had a few blind spots in
affairs of the heart. He declined the offered drink; his head was
still recovering from the last batch of “one more rounds” he’d had
the previous night, and his stomach was already having trouble
adjusting to the near-zero gravity that Monty kept in the engine
room to make traversing easier. Instead, Cook spent his time
listening to his friend tell about the starship skippers he should
watch out for.

“
The sorriest batch of losers in the
heavens,” the engineer snorted, a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“Egos a parsec wide and mouths to match. Particularly that jackass
from Demeter.”

“
Jones?” smiled Cook. Jefferson
McKinley Jones, the senior wing commander at DemCom, was reigning
champion at the semi-annual maneuvers six times running. Cook’s
sole encounter with the man—Jones literally patted him on the head
after the
Constantine
had
staunched a Red Fleet breach that would have cost Blue the
encounter and Jones his sixth gold medal—had not endeared the
esteemed Commodore Jones to the young Isitian.

“
That self-important twit was a
squirrelly frigateer when I knew him, befuddled as a fly in a glass
ball. His idea of battle is two ships dead in space, firing
amidships until someone’s shields buckle. The pompous bastard
couldn’t tell his butt from a black hole then, and I hear he ain’t
changed much since.”

Cook heard about men he already knew—Drexler
from CentCom, Addison from Ceres, McIntyre from Looking Glass—and
even shopworn stories about the old days, when Captain Porter Clay,
with “Fighting Joe” Ferrigan and Little Dickie Blodgett, finally
drove the pirates out of the Demeter sector. In the end, he quickly
conceded that he’d fallen in with a hopeless cast of scoundrels ,
and led Monty on a last inspection of the ship’s powerful engines.
The nine large cylinders, each three stories high, had seemed so
huge when he first took command; it was hard to believe that they
would be dwarfed by the fifteen monstrous engine blocks of a
starship. All too soon, time came to bid his friend farewell.

“
Next stop,” Cook called over his
shoulder as he leaped toward second-story catwalk leading to the
main corridor,
“la maison de
l’Escargot
—and then, you’ll have a new
skipper.”

“
Still trying to talk some sense into
François?” Monty shouted in return. In the low gravity Monty kept
in the engine room, Cook sailed through the air like a diver,
deftly coming to rest between the handholds on either side of the
gangway atop the ’tweendecks companionway.

“
Nice shot, Captain!”

“
So long, Monty,” Cook laughed. “Maybe
you’ll find someone who can beat your next skipper at no-grav
bandyball.”

* * *

The voice
on the public
address speaker boomed monotonously, announcing the routine
departures and arrivals to those assembled at IshCom Central, the
mammoth starbase’s civilian terminal, filling the gaps with items
of interest to the starbase.

“
Shuttle to Ceres,
departing from Dock C-7. All passengers please report to Departure
Gate A. Last call for New Babylon Express, departing from C-6
enroute to Ishtar Main in 10 minutes; Departure Gate B closes in
seventy-five ticks—repeat Gate B closing in seventy-five
seconds—mark!

“
The following
announcement is posted on all Eastern Fleet bulletin boards by
order of Admiral Clay: ‘All CosGuard personnel wishing to place
their names on the rotation list are reminded that the deadline for
submitting transfer applications is Zero Hour on cc:142-9000.
Officers and enlisted personnel currently on off-base assignments
are reminded that applications must be received by their home base
before the deadline in order to be considered for the next rotation
in duty, unless written permission is secured from Eastern Fleet
Headquarters in advance. There will be no exceptions.’

“
Local Trunk Daily Three
Fifty-five has arrived from Ishtar and environs, disembarking at
Gate E. Base Security, report to Dock C-12, Code Seven. Commodore
Turner, please call Eight-Three-Four....”

The arching ceiling of the terminal lobby
loomed like a cathedral dome. On either side of what locals called
Little Chicago, snack shops and boutiques lined the corridor and
the lobby itself teemed with an endless crowd. Every day, all kinds
of people flocked to the bustling stalls and shops. It was, after
all, one of the few ports of call along the frontier offering the
amenities of twenty-sixth-century life. Because IshCom was the only
starbase this side of Demeter accepting civilian traffic, IshCom
Central was port of choice for half the spacers in the Ishtari
outlands—namely, the half that had nothing to fear from being
recognized. This meant that the terminal saw its share of
riff-raff, and the command staff forever complained to Central
Command about the drain on base security that the open port policy
caused. It came as a shock to new arrivals whenever a temporary
space dock shortage caused diversion of a CosGuard ship to the
civilian facilities, to see that their new base played host to half
the flotsam of the frontier. But the square’s carnival atmosphere
made up for any inconvenience they felt, for nowhere else on the
frontier did two such diverse cultures—the military and the
free-wheeling pioneers—co-exist in such proximity, with so little
friction.

Duffle bag slung over her shoulder, Ensign
Connie McKenzie hurried down the middle of the square, marveling at
the energy of the merchants lining the terminal hallway. After the
week-long trip from Demeter, the bright colors of the shops and
tantalizing aromas of the food stands teased her senses. On all
sides, the merchants hawked their wares. Seen through the porthole
of their ship, IshCom seemed immense and sterile, hanging in the
blackness like a hollow shell. From the inside it buzzed with life,
like the market street of any city.

Much as she wanted to, she could not stop to
answer the merchants’ call. In rigid formation, she and the other
new arrivals from Demeter moved through the square, ushered through
the chaos by a squad of guards from the CosGuard Security Office,
led by a handsome young lieutenant. His assignment was to take the
newcomers to Orientation as quickly as possible. With practiced
ease, his steely voice parted the river of people, hurrying the
newcomers to the tube station en route to Central Processing. The
guards he led, all clad in CSO tan and sporting black garrison
caps, flanked the arrivals to form the small phalanx that moved
briskly through the crowd. Occasionally they brushed past a
civilian a little too closely and knocked him to the floor. But the
guards moved too quickly for tempers to get out of hand; and in any
event, they were too big and strong to challenge.

They neared the end of the corridor,
approaching the mammoth arch of the Little Chicago Concourse.
Connie felt anticipation surge through her body and felt the
giddiness of starting a great adventure. She had already given four
years of her life to the Cosmic Guard, studying engineering and
astrophysics, principles of navigation and elements of modern
weaponry. She’d had fun along the way, and some of her friends,
like Paul Jackson, would always be more than just a mysterious
smile on her lips. But Paul was long gone, to the Western Fleet and
Zarathustra. She was on her own now, to make a name for herself
along the eastern frontier.

“
Hello, Connie,” said a familiar
voice, belonging to a too-familiar figure coming to hover close
beside her as they rushed along. She cringed at the very sound of
his voice, and the lovesick look on his face every time he talked
to her made Connie want to retch.

“
Hello, Dexter,” she said dryly,
wishing she were really on her own. Completely on her
own.

“
Isn’t this something? I mean, it’s so
big. Like DemCom multiplied by two. I bet you could fit the grounds
of CosGuard Tech inside a single concourse here. And the
people—look at them all. Why, this place is almost a city all by
itself.”

“
It is a city, Dexter. All starbases
are cities. This one is bigger than most, that’s all.”

“
But the engineering that went into
building this thing! They built it from scratch, you know, from
asteroids and rock, smelting the metal in temporary stations built
specifically to process the raw materials. And it’s a half
light-year from Ishtar itself, so for the five years it took to
build this place they had no real landfall to speak of. And Ishtar
isn’t much to begin with in the first place, you know?”

“
Who cares, Dexter?” she replied.
Quickly, she cut in front of the yeoman on her left and pushed
toward the outer reaches of the formation, where she hoped to be
left alone. With all the friends she had at the college, and all
the people she knew who could have drawn the same first duty, she
got stuck with Dexter—a myopic non-entity with tangled hair and a
crush on her a mile wide. Life could be so cruel,
sometimes.