Downbelow Station

“Med’s ready,” she heard, watched a familiar figure reach the troops and take charge. Graff was out there. She found leisure for a quieter breath.

“Europe’s still holding,” com advised her. She punched that cha

“Captain Mallory. What war are you fighting out there?”

“I don’t know yet, sir. I’m going to find out as soon as I can get my troops aboard.”

“You’ve got Australia’s prisoners. Why?”

“Damon Konstantin’s one, sir. I’ll be back in touch as soon as I can get a word out of Janz. Your leave, sir.”

“Mallory.”

“Sir?”

“Australia has two casualties. I want a report.”

“I’ll get one to you when I can learn what happened, sir. In the meanwhile I’m dispatching troops to green dock before we have some sort of trouble with civs over there.”

“India is moving forces in. Leave it at that, Mallory, and keep your troops out of there. Off the docks. Pull them all. I want to see you at soonest, hear?”

“With a report, sir. By your leave, sir.”

The light and the contact winked out. She slammed her fist onto the console and shoved the chair back, headed for the cubbyhole of a surgery in the half corridor off from the main lift topside.

It was not as bad as she had feared. Di kept a steady pulse under the medic’s ministrations, showing no signs of leaving them. Chest wound, a few burns. There was a great deal of blood, but she had seen far worse. A chance shot, in an armor joint. She stalked over to the door where Uthup stood, smeared with blood from head to foot of her armor. “Get your filthy selves out of here,” she said, herding them out into the corridor. “It’s going sterile in there. Who shot first?”

“Australia bitch, drunk and disorderly.”

“Captain.”

“Captain,” Uthup said thinly.

“You hit, Uthup?”

“Burns, captain. I’ll check in when they’re done with the major and the others, by your leave.”

“I tell you to stay out of that territory?”

“Heard over com they’d picked up Konstantin and Talley, captain. A sergeant was in charge and they were drunk as stationside merchanters in there. The major went in and they said it was off-limits to us.”

“Enough said,” she muttered. “I want a report, trooper Uthup; and I’ll back you on it. I’d have ski

They scattered. She walked forward to the bridge, looked about her at the crew who had gotten to stations. Graff was there, himself liberally bloodstained.

“Clean yourself up,” she said. “Mind your stations. Morio, get back there and interview trooper Uthup and anyone else in that detachment; I want names and id’s on those Australia troops. I want a formal complaint and I want it now.”

“Captain,” Morio acknowledged the order.

He left in haste; she stood on the bridge and looked about until heads turned to their work. Graff had left to put himself in order. She continued to pace the aisle until she realized she was doing it and stood still.

There was the matter of showing up on Mazian’s deck. There was blood on her uniform, Di’s blood. She decided finally to go and not to clean up.

“Graff’s in command,” she said brusquely. “McFarlane. I need an escort over to Europe. Move it.”

She started for the lift, hearing the order echoing in the corridors. Troops met her in the exit corridor, fifteen of them in full rig. She walked out through the troops which guarded the access ramp on the docks. She had no armor. It was a secure dock and she was not supposed to need any, but at the moment she would have felt safer walking green dock naked.

v

Mazian was not late showing up, not this time. It was an audience of two, herself and Tom Edger, and Edger had gotten there first. That was expected.

“Sit down,” Mazian told her. She took a chair on the opposite side of the conference table from Edger. Mazian had his own. at the head, leaned on his folded arms, glared at her. “Well? Where’s the report?”

“It’s coming,” she said. “I’m taking the time to interview and collect positive id’s. Di took names and numbers before they shot him.”

“Your orders that sent him in there?”

“My standing orders to my troops that they don’t back off from trouble if it sets itself in front of them. Sir, my people have been systematically harassed since the incident with Goforth. I shot the man, and my people are harassed, shouldered, subtle stuff, until someone got too drunk to know the difference between harassment and outright mutiny. A trooper was asked for her number and directly refused to give it. She was arrested and she drew her gun and opened fire on an officer.”

Mazian looked at Edger and back again. “I hear another story. That your troops are encouraged to stick together. That they’re still under your orders even on supposed liberty. That they go in squads and under officers and throw their weight around the dock. That the whole operation of Norway troops and perso

“I have given my troops no duties during their liberties. If they’re going in groups it’s for self-protection. They’re set upon in bars that are open to all but Norway perso

Mazian sat and stared a moment, tapped the table in front of him, a slow, nervous gesture. Lastly he looked toward Edger.

“I’ve hesitated to file a protest,” Edger said. “But there’s a bad atmosphere building out there. Apparently there’s some difference of opinion about how the Fleet as a whole is ordered. Ship loyalties — loyalties to certain captains — are encouraged in some quarters, for reasons I refuse to guess at, perhaps by certain captains.”

Signy sucked air and slammed her hands down, all but out of her chair before colder sense asserted itself. Much colder. Edger and Mazian had always been close… were close, she had long suspected, in a way in which she could not intervene. She evened her breath, leaned back, looked only at Mazian. It was war; it was as narrow a chute as ever Norway had run, the straits of Mazian’s ambition, and Edger’s. “There is something vastly amiss,” she said, “when we start shooting at each other. By your leave… we’re the oldest in the Fleet, the longest survivors. And I’ll tell you plainly I know what’s afoot and I’ve played your charade, gone on with this station organization, which isn’t going to have any importance whatsoever when the Fleet moves. I’ve done your make-work operations and done them well. I’ve said no word to my troops or my crew about what I know; and I get the drift of things, that the troops are allowed to do what they like on this station because in the long run it doesn’t matter. Because Pell has stopped mattering, and the survival of it is now contrary to our interests. We’re aiming at something different now. Or maybe we always were, and you’ve moved us to it by degrees, never to shock us too much, when you finally propose what it is you really have in mind, the only choice you’ve left us with. Sol, isn’t it? Earth. And it’s going to be a long run and dangerous, with plenty of trouble when we get there. The Fleet — takes over the Company. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the only thing to do. Maybe it makes sense and it began to make sense a long time ago, when the Company quit backing us. But we don’t get there if Pell destroys the disciplines on which this Fleet has functioned for decades. We don’t get there if the units of it are homogenized into something that can’t work apart. And that’s what this harassment does. It tells me how to run Norway. If that starts, then it all breaks down. You take from the troops their badges and their designations, their identification and their spirit and it goes, it all goes… and whatever you call it, that’s what’s in progress out there, when a ship is made to conform to a standard against every rule they’ve ever known, when captains in this Fleet are subtly encouraging their troops to the harassment of mine, and they’re taking to it, in the absence of another enemy. The Fleet as a whole hasn’t existed in decades, but that was our strength… the latitude to do what had to be done, across all this vast distance. Homogenize us and we become predictable. And few as we are… then we’re done.”