The First Casualty

Chapter Nine

Lieutenant Mary Rodrigo tried to keep an open mind about her new job. She was getting away from the captain. Of course, she'd be meeting two more. Still, it was a kick taking off with the captain's command car; Dumont said it was better than stealing wheels. The drive was like old times after a shift. No beer, but it felt the freedom you got after long hours in the hole.

Maybe they treated her a bit different, but not that much.

At B company, there was a difference. The others headed off to spend time with the sergeants. A runner, stiff | a board, led Mary to the company HQ. She hoped this new captain wouldn't be as big an ass as hers. She passed through the airlock, prepared to report like she'd learned in boot camp. What she saw stopped her dead in her tracks Not one captain but two were waiting for her. Both sat, feet up on the desk, unlit cigars in their mouths. When she started to salute, the one that seemed to be most behind the desk waved her off. “Damn fine bit of fighting. Lieutenant. Damn fine.”

“'And even more impressive field preparations,” a third man said, standing to shake her hand. “Lieutenant Hampton. They call me Hambone. I'm in charge of the engineering platoon. How the hell did you do all that in the time you had?”

“With the mining gear we ... uh ...”

“Stole,” the other captain put in. “Call me Hassle. That's the best most folks can do with my name. I've got C company, but I figured I might as well trudge over here so you can brief us together. Our passes are only two hundred klicks apart, so we're right neighborly. Right, Trouble?”

“Tordon, Company B.” He reached across the desk to shake Mary's hand. “Tordon to my friends, Trouble to anyone else.” Then he shrugged into a sly grin. “Okay, Trouble to everyone.”

Hambone got her a chair. She was later to discover, not from him, that he was a first lieutenant, and therefore outranked her. What she did discover was a man very intent on learning everything he could about battlefield preparation. For the next two hours, they listened while she described the deployment and battle. When Mary finished, the engineering lieutenant walked around the desk, examining the map Mary had called up. “Outstanding killing field.”

“And holding those SS-12's to the last minute,” Trouble said slowly. “Brilliant timing by your lieutenant. And your targeting was just as smart.”

“The way you played the laser designators.” Hassle looked up from the board and fixed her with a hard eye. “Yours were programmable. I could use a few like that.”

Trouble leaned back in his chair. “We got a lot of retraining to do. And a lot of work. We better get cracking.”

“I figured on a day to fix you up like us.” Mary immediately felt dumb as all three officers shook their heads.

“They've tried straight on with you,” Trouble said.

“They'll be indirect on us,” Hassle concluded.

“We've got to prepare a lot of rim,” the engineer muttered.

Mary kept her mouth shut as they worked their way around a map of their own positions. They didn't expect anyone would be dumb enough to land in the crater. What they did expect was small teams of spotters working their way over the rim and around their positions. “We got to spread out, Mary,” Hassle told her. “Your diggers and sensors can cover a lot of territory. With rockets and gunners to back them up, we should be able to cover a big chunk of the eight hundred klicks of rim we got. How long will it take to bust your gear loose from Ted?”

“There's a truck parked next to our rig. It's got everything you'll need.” Mary grinned. These guys were nice to be around.

“Woman,” Trouble said, “if you could cook, I'd marry >you. On second thought, I've eaten so much marine chow my taste'11 never recover.” He dropped to a knee. “Will you marry me?” .

“Better decide quick,” Hassle cut in. “He's got a lousy memory, but I must say, his tastes are improving.”

“Well. . .” Mary hesitated as if in the throes of indecision. “It is the best offer I've had this week.”

Trouble was off his knee, reaching for a helmet behind his desk. “Let's go see what Santa brought us good little girls and boys in her truck.”

“Too late, Mary, you've lost him,” Hassle sighed.

The Sheffield’s tanks were topped off. What battle damage they could fix was repaired. They floated a hundred klicks from the unruly jump point. Mattim took his chair and punched his mike. “All hands, this is the captain. We've got the ship in as good a shape as we're going to, short of a yard period. We've got a good handle on this system. Let's see how these jump points work.”

Sandy had done her best with what they knew of this point's wanderings. This system might account for as much as ten percent of the travel, or as little as two percent—depending on how you factored in the inverse square effect. In other words, they were guessing.

“As you've probably already figured out, all we can do is try a few jumps and see what happens. Since we're almost dead in space, we should be able to do them fairly quickly. Strap yourselves in tight. Here goes the first test.”

He killed the mike. “Sandy, take us through.”

“Thor, activate course Sandy One. Let's see what a spin with a bit of lateral movement gets us. Keep her under one klick per second.” Mattim forced himself to breathe normally for the minute and a half it took to reach the jump. When had ninety seconds been so long? Right, in battle.

He waited.

The Maggie entered the jump without a shudder. One moment the stars were there, twinkling in the unique way the gravity fluctuation in the point made them. Then they were different. Mattim waited for the specialists to tell him how different.

“It's not Pitt's Hope,” Thor quickly reported.

Sandy and the three middies around her said nothing.

“Scan the system,” Mattim ordered.

“Doing it, sir,” Thor answered. “Got a single yellow sun down there. My middies will need a while to check for planets.”

“Thanks.” Mattim let out a long sigh. He'd have to do better at waiting. He didn't like waiting. He'd better learn.

“I'll need a couple more minutes to refine this,” Sandy said a short time later, “but it looks like we're about fifty light-years from our last system.”

“Closer or farther from human space?” Mattim asked.

“Neither. We lateraled.”

“Sandy, how much of a workup do you want on this system?”

“A pretty full one, Matt, if you don't mind.”

“Thor.”

“Give us a few hours. My team's pretty excited. That sun's got about the same heat and light as old Sol. If we find a rock in the right place, we might go into the real estate business when we get back.”

Or know where to go when we give up, Mattim added to himself. “Guns, any ideas from your team?”

“One of them may have something. We aren't sure.”

“Could we make the return trip at just a few meters per second?”

“Sandy?”

“It's worth a try.”

Time was a blur for Mary. Both companies had half a platoon of miners. Once Mary gave them a chance to shine, they were quick to open their own private stashes. The captains were honest enough to admit they'd goofed, hearing about what Mary'd done and not looking in their own ranks for the same skills. They quickly corrected that, establishing an interim two squads of engineers in each company. Battlefield prep went quickly.

B and C companies spread out until they touched in the middle, then they stretched the other way as far as they could. B company should have touched A company, but Captain Teddy refused any assistance from Mary and her team. Digging in the other two companies turned into an endless task. First they did it as far as they could, as quickly as they could. Then they did it again, better. Finally, they did it a third time, looking for what they'd missed, improving what they had. They were only half done with the third iteration when all hell broke loose.

The Maggie D rifted toward the jump point at exactly ten meters per second. Mattim had this terrible urge to keep asking “Are we there yet?” He had a moment of dizziness as the stars changed; there was a ... bump?

“What was that?” Sandy asked even as she started her search to pinpoint their location; four suns were not waiting for them.

“Felt just like when we hit a waterlogged log in the boat back home on the lake,” Zappa mused without looking up from her work. “Did we hit something?”

“Damage control,” Mattim snapped.

“No alarms, sir. No reports. No visible damage to the hull.”

“Guns, did that happen in the jump or around it? Were you expecting something like that?”

“I don't know, and no. We're stumped down here, too, sir.”

Mattim put the thump aside for the moment. “Thor, am I right, a new system?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sandy?”

She rubbed her jaw like she'd been hit. “Speed was the only variable. But it's not supposed to have any effect!”

“It looks like it did this time. Flip this ship while we've still got the same motion on it, and put us back through the jump at the same slow speed. Now.” Mattim couldn't wait for this new disaster to shoot through the ship. The middies might be having a ball studying new worlds, but the rest of the crew, not to mention the captain, wanted to find their way home.

Thor did the flip. He headed them back at the same terribly slow pace. This time, Mattim still felt dizzy, but there was no thump. And the stars changed back to the last system they'd been in. “We can repeat a trip,” Mattim breathed in relief.

“But velocity shouldn't have any effect,” Sandy mumbled.

“It does now,” Mattim concluded. “It does now.”

“No bump the second jump,” Zappa noted. “Wonder what it was?” Mattim had other questions. That one he'd leave to the kids.

Lek alerted Mary and the captains as soon as the first jump point coughed up activity. The Collies were expected; not thirty minutes later, Pitt's Hope spat out its contribution. Everyone dug in deep and sweated out the eight hours for the relativity bombs to hit. They did a lot of rocking and shaking, but there was no damage. Mary's team sidestepped to the right of B company. They would cover the midpoint between A and B. If the captain didn't want them, at least they wouldn't be too far away if he hollered.

Eight hours later, the scene above Mary was hellish in its beauty. The Navy and the colonials went at each other with no holds barred. Lek showed Mary the situation. There were thirty, forty transports. The Navy wanted at them; the colonials had to keep them away. In the black sky above Mary, ships burned yellow and red. Bright comets swept across the sky, ships holed and bleeding incandescent. Stars, as bright as Mary had ever seen, flared up and disappeared in a blink. She knew this was war and people were dying, but it was beautiful.

Lek kept a running count of the transports destroyed. The marines on net cheered at each he reported gone.

Rita held the Friendship in formation, jinking and dodging. The Earthies had not gone for a head-on pass, but had angled over, matched orbits with them. Two were now dogging the formation's right flank, nipping and cutting at any transport that came in range. Rita jinked wrong.

“We're hit. Losing pressure in tank five,” Cadow reported.

“Pump it dry,” she snapped, and jinked again. Her little transport didn't have the ice to take too many hits. Where were those damn Unity cruisers? Three dropped from the higher orbit, and the Humanity cruisers got busy and then got gone.

She came in fast and low for her landing zone and hit heavy. The troops didn't mind; they piled off in less than ten minutes. Their rigs and a month's supplies added another ten minutes to the Friendship’s stay. It was too long.

A rocket landed close; fragments rattled the ship. A second missile took out the Brotherhood . Loaded with heavy weapons and ammunition, the ship disintegrated. A thick slab of hull smashed down next to the Friendship—and bounced in the other direction.

“That was close,” Cadow breathed.

“Too damn close. Hesper, we unloaded?”

No answer. Rita scanned through her video stations. An outside shot showed a supply rig upside down, smashed by a jagged fragment. Hesper's orange suit was half under it. Rita tuned to the vitals from Hesper's suit. The suit was still sending; it just had no vitals to report.

“Prepare to lift ship,” Rita ordered.

Mary hated each and every ship that landed. They seemed to be setting up a base in the general direction of C company. Mary was glad to have them over there—then ashamed. Hassle and his crew didn't deserve what was headed their way. “Mary, Trouble here. Can you spread out to cover my right? C's going to catch all hell, and I'm shuffling some teams to cover his right.”

“No problem.” Mary sent Cassie and Dumont to fill the hole. They'd be covering thirty klicks, but with the sensors and rockets, they should be able to keep any surprises under control.

“Mary,” Lek interrupted her, “one, maybe two ships have landed in front of A company.”

“If Captain Teddy Boy can't handle two ships with twice the people we had to hold six ships, he's not much of an officer.” Lek didn't ask Mary what she honestly thought.

Rita lifted ship fast, but a Society cruiser was swinging by just as she did. With no other target, it devoted itself to her obliteration. Rita jinked and ducked the other way, heading in-system—away from the jump. It got her out of range of that damn cruiser soonest. She was almost clear when a laser sliced through the Friendship's cockpit like it was a ripe grapefruit.

Mary watched as the battle raged, in space and on the ground. Transports didn't hang around this time, but took off fast. Still, Commander Umboto got a couple of long range missiles off at them. That woman is one bloodthirsty lady.

Mary didn't feel even a tiny bit guilty twelve hours later when things started to settle down and her sixty klicks had not been tapped. Only a fool looked for a fight.

“Lieutenant Rodrigo, battalion here. Report to A company and assume command.”

“Sir?”

“Do I need to repeat myself, Lieutenant?”

“No sir.” She recovered herself. No need to ask over the net for what he didn't want to give her.

“Lieutenant, we're assuming all radio and cables are compromised. There will be a coded situation report waiting for you at A company HQ. Try to straighten up that mess over there.”

“Yes, Major.”

Mary was quite amazed at what a command rig could do. She made it back to A company in two hours even with stops to return fire. The HQ was a shambles, but casualties were few. The miners and kids had learned how to look out for themselves.

She doubted there were more than two companies attacking, but they'd spread out and come in as infiltrators. The captain had done a poor job of spreading his outposts. When they broke through, he'd led a fire team out to fill the hole—and died.

It took Mary most of the next day to stabilize the situation. Keeping a firm hold on her center, she threw her teams first at her right flank, then at her left. Once the colonials saw they weren't going to take the pass from the rear, they fell back in good order. Mary tried to track them, but they spread out and went to ground. They'd be back.

“A company, battalion here. Could you spare C company a platoon? They're being pushed mighty hard.”

“They're on the way, Major.”

“Thanks for cleaning up the mess.”

Mary refused to say “You're welcome.”

She hadn't cleaned up all the mess. She checked in where they had the captain's body. The wound was in the back; it had come at close range. So the miners and kids had done what they had to do to keep their casualties down.

She turned to the medic who'd brought her. “Clean the burn off his armor and patch it. We may need it. Once you peel the body out, make it presentable and send it back to brigade.”

“Will do, sir.”

Mary wondered what other messes she'd have to clean up.

Out of consideration for his rank, they informed Longknife the day before the casualty list was released. They asked him to invite a vid crew out. He should make a statement, he and industrialist Ernest Nuu. They didn't tell him what he should say, but something along the lines of “It is a joy to die for the Fatherland” was strongly hinted at. Ray told them to go to hell.

Mrs. Nuu's wailing went long into the night. It did not keep Ray awake. He sat in the chair he had been sitting in when they brought him the news. He had sat there ever since. The doctors said he had to move, to circulate blood and avoid skin lesions.

The doctors could go to the same hell as the politicians.

About 0200 hours, Mr. Nuu came to his door to apologize for his wife. Ray invited him in, offered him a seat, and pointed to where an untouched bottle of cognac waited. The man poured two glasses, offered him one, and sat. For a long time, they stared silently out the window, undisturbed by the weeping. “I am sorry I could not protect your daughter, Mr. Nuu. I always thought it was a man's place to die, a woman's place to live.”

A wail from upstairs punctuated Ray's sentence. It died out and the night was quiet before Mr. Nuu shook his head. “Since she was twelve, Rita wanted to be a pilot. 'How can I carry a man's child if he has faced death and I am too delicate to stare it in the eye? Let me fight, then see the mother I'll be.' “ The man took a long drink. In the dim light, Ray saw his eyes blinking. Ray's did too; it was not easy to keep the tears back.

“She would have been a very good mother,” Ray finally said.

“Yes,” her father sighed. After a long moment, he muttered, “What a waste.” He seemed taken aback by his words. He glanced at Ray, expecting condemnation. Ray was long past any emotions.

“It's all a waste. All of it. This whole war is nothing but a waste. Those who died under you. Your being crippled. My daughter. It is all for nothing.”

Ray let the word—nothing—roll around his skull. It was a good word. To feel nothing. To be nothing. A good word. For now, he could do nothing. Say nothing. Begin being nothing, as so many of the men and women under his command had become. Did their mothers still weep? Were their fathers looking at what they had sacrificed their lives for and seeing nothing?

Ray deserved to be nothing with them.

“We had such hopes, such dreams when it all began. Unity would bring us together. United behind one powerful man, there would be nothing we and Urm could not do. Foolish lies by those who said them. Foolish dreams by we who listened. And a foolish old man has killed his only child.” Now the man wept, deep, racking sobs that shook his body, yet hardly a noise escaped him.

Ray left him to his silent tears. He had much to contemplate. He had gambled with the lives of so many men and women. They had died, trying to make true the foolish lies he spoke as orders. Rita had said he was forgiven, and in her body he'd found the words could be true. Now she was gone, swept away by a commander's foolish lies. Gone, leaving him alone with hundreds of faces, faces that screamed “murderer” at him, “foolish dreamer” at him, “nothing” at him.

An officer and a gentleman would use a pistol. Yet among all his gear that Rita had brought to her parents' house, neither pistol nor knife were present. He raised his glass in silent salute to the hundreds of eyes accusing him in the dark. “To nothing,” he whispered, and drained the glass.

Having successfully repeated one jump, they turned the Sheffield into an experiment. If speed mattered and ten meters per second got them to one system, where was the change? Fifty meters, one hundred meters got them to the same system. Somewhere between five hundred meters and one klick per second found them staring at a new sun.

Mattim relaxed only when he was once more gazing at four suns. Or, rather, he returned to that level of tension that had become his norm since the dead admiral ordered him to the tag end of the squadron line. Mattim wondered if he'd ever relax again.

Using both hands to push himself up from his chair, he stood. “All right, crew, we can repeat jumps. Let's knock off, get some rest, and look things over in the morning.” There were a few mutters, but most of the bridge watch headed for the hatch, the middies chattering enthusiastically to each other. Tomorrow, he suspected, they'd have a lot to say.

“Guns, have your chiefs make sure those middies get at least eight hours sleep.”

Guns was chuckling. “I've already had a few chiefs ask me if I'd back them up. I told them there was a baseball bat behind my stateroom door they were welcome to.”

“Exec, set a minimum watch. Keep the middies out of it.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Sandy, do I need to get Ivan to haul you away?”

“No, I've fought my demons. I'll get a good night's sleep and return a hardheaded rationalist.” With a wave, she went.

Mattim treated himself to a long, thoughtful shower. They'd gone where no human had gone—and come back. There was a logic to these damn jump points. Yet, they still didn't understand something. What was it about their original jump? The question did not keep him awake.

Ray was still in his chair the next morning; he doubted he had slept. The day passed slowly, marked by the ticking of the clock on the fireplace. Ray let the tick-tock fill his mind. For a man who had been forever active—thinking, planning, doing—this was the closest to nothing he'd ever been. They offered him food. He ignored it, as he did the pitcher of tea they left.

Night and day and night came again. The cook begged him to eat, to drink. Mr. Nuu pleaded with him. “Even my wife eats something. Drinks a little tea. Please, Major.”

He answered them with nothing.

Captain Santiago arrived and sat beside him. The silence between them stretched. They spun it into soft nothing. Occasionally, the captain would add words, more to ornament the silence than break it. First words were about the brigade. It was being rebuilt as a division. Its commander had two stars, though until recently he'd been a party hack. Santiago had wrangled command of a company of old hands.

The quiet grew. Others left them alone. Only then did Santiago weep—and it was not for Rita. His kid sister had shared with her church group how much she didn't want her only son drafted. The police had come for her in the night. The family had been required to pay for the bullet. Only the captain had dared to face the police and collect her ashes.

Paying for the bullet was an old tradition. Santiago had never thought he would serve a government that followed it. Neither had Ray. For this Rita had died?

Ray did not notice when the captain left.

Another night and day passed . . . maybe two. The doctor came; he muttered of dehydration and punctured Ray's arm with a needle, left a pole standing beside his chair with a plastic bag that slowly emptied clear liquid into him. That night Ray removed the needle. They did not put another into him.

Time passed into nothing. A car drove up the tree-lined driveway. Rita raced across the grass. It was not the first time he had seen her. This time, she seemed so happy. Maybe this time she had come for him. He closed his eyes, willed himself to nothing.

The door slammed open. “Ray, Mother, Father. I'm not dead. I'm home.” Ray opened his eyes. Rita... bedraggled, begrimed, still in a pilot suit that stank of fear and old vomit. . . threw herself at his knees. “I'm alive, and you look like shit.”

If he had the moisture to spare, he might have cried.

First Lieutenant Mary Rodrigo stared at the map projected on her eyeball. The damn colonials had landed another ship on her front. Just one. Not more than a company. More people to kill. More people killing her own. With an exhausted sigh, she began moving her forces to meet them.

For the next three hours, they came at her in twos and threes. Nothing bigger. Most of the time, Mary did nothing. Her troops were dug in; sensors out, rockets ready. Colonials died trying to cross her rim, find her people, fix them in place or force them into the open, do anything that would let them kill the pass's defenders, punch a hole through the wall into the crater.

The colonials came, and fought, and died.

And through it all, Mary hardly felt a twitch.

She felt nothing even when she sent Dumont out with a fire team to mop up what was left of half a platoon of colonials. She watched the hostile icons disappear from her map, but felt no relief. There were more behind those. She wasted no time on visuals of the fight. The enemy was colored pixels. Just that, no more. Her forces were different-colored icons. Just that. No more. Friendship was something hardly remembered from a distant, forgotten past. She sent a sergeant here, another there. She tried not to think of the name—Cassie, Dumont, whatever name had been attached to the rank.

In four hours, this battle was over, the wreckage of the colonials slinking back. She let them go; she had nothing to risk in pursuit. She'd held them, and kept them from learning what they could not be allowed to know. Company A was not here.

Mary commanded the remnants of first platoon, puffed up with a few green replacements. Second and third platoons were long gone, gone to reinforce bled and shattered C company. Mary could not remember how many times she'd held the pass. She'd held it again, and would keep holding it until. . .

Hold until relieved, her orders said. She wondered if there would be anything left of them by the time relief came. She shivered, and shook that thought off. She had things to do.

She keyed her mike. “Sergeant, fourth squad. The left needs some shoring up. Can you loan a fire section to first?”

“We're getting a little thin.” Cassie answered as the tough sergeant, then softened. “But Dumont looks to be even thinner. They're on their way, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

“Mary.” The voice was soft, full of memories Mary couldn't afford to touch. “When are you going to take some R&R? Everyone's been back to brigade for a couple of hours. Everyone but you. Mary, you can't carry this damn pass forever.”

“Thank you for your opinion, Sergeant. I'll take it under consideration. HQ out.”

Mary switched off before Cassie could argue with her. Before the soft voice would remind her of another person she no longer could afford to be. “Rest is for the dead,” Mary muttered, and checked the ammunition expenditure for the last four hours. Battalion wouldn't like it, but she'd forward the list to them. If she had to look like a company, she had to shoot like one. Supplies and how they got here was a Navy problem. It was her job to see that every round counted.

She'd taken care of her job. Those Navy pukes had better take care of theirs.

Mary glanced at the list of the messages that had backed up during the firefight. One said she was a first lieutenant. The rest were end-of-month reports; she'd be all night. She didn't mind all the reports. She didn't even mind all the colonials. She just wished they'd get their acts together and coordinate.

Rita told her story as she spooned soup into Ray, her mother and father at her elbow, the handyman and cook standing at the door of his parlor. “They knew we were coming. There were Earthie ships all over the place.” A spoonful of broth.

“I think our admiral goofed when he killed their last one. This one's a fighter.” A spoonful of broth.

“They went straight for us transports. It doesn't take a genius to know that you can dash around in space all you want, but Ray's ground-pounders were the ones who'd give us that damn moon.” A spoonful of broth.

“I took hits, but landed in one piece. I had a hundred troopers, and every one of them was alive when they left the Friendship.” A spoonful of broth.

“We had cargo rigged for a quick drop. I offloaded despite a missile damn near taking the rockets out from under us. The Brotherhood wasn't so lucky.” A spoonful of broth.

“When we booted out of there, I thought the worst was over, but the Earthies weren't done with us. They hit us hard. Cadow died. Hesper died. We lost most of our comm gear. The main tanks were hit, streaming, making us a target, so I ducked and ran, headed in-system, away from the fight. There were other, smaller, gas planets. I refueled from one.”

The bowl of broth was in her hand. Her eyes were somewhere else. Ray had been there. He was hungry now, but not hungry enough to call her back. He waited.

“We patched her tank as best we could. Comm was lost: We could barely navigate. Once everyone had left, we tried for the jump. More by luck than anything else, we found it. I even made it to the next jump point. There was a tiny picket boat that took us aboard. We aimed the Friendship at the sun and left her. I tried to call. They said the battle was under strict secrecy. The Earthies kicked ass, and our brass doesn't want anyone to know. Christ, the Earthies damn well know what they did.” She glanced at her father. “The Earthies aren't the ones the brass are keeping secrets from.” Her father, her mother, and Ray nodded. The handyman and cook just stared.

“I landed a half hour ago. They said I needed to debrief. I told them where they could go and grabbed the first car I could get my hands on. I'm afraid, Dad, it may be considered stolen.”

“William and I will return it. William, you may drive my car. I will drive the borrowed one.”

“Yes sir.” The handyman looked relieved.

“Oh, Ray, it must have been horrible for you.” She threw her arms around his neck. The soup bowl, inconveniently placed and forgotten, spilled its contents. Neither mother nor cook fussed. For a long time, Ray just held Rita as she cried. Now the tears came. She was here, safe in his arms. He would never let her leave.

Mattim joined the wardroom for breakfast. Guns presided like a proud grandfather over a table of chattering middies. At Sandy's table, personal computers took up as much space as trays. The damage control officer, Gandhi, had a table with one vacancy; he headed for it. The officers at her table were watch-standers, leaders of the divisions that kept environmental support going, the ship working while the flashy kids explored stars. They led the young and scared able spacers who held the ship together. They deserved his attention.

They also fell silent as he sat down. Half his plate was empty, this table a quiet island in the sea of stormy, excited conversation, when one JG put his fork down and looked square at him. “Are we going to make it back, sir?” Forks hesitated just short of mouths. Eyes, directly or furtively, were on him. They had a right for a straight answer from their captain.

“We've gone out, and we've come back.”

“Yes sir, but we didn't. ..” An ensign fell silent as she was nudged by the officers on either side of her.

“Right, Ensign. We went, but not where we wanted to go. Not yet. The team we've put together here on the Sheffield has learned more about the jump points in the last couple of days than the best scientists have learned in the last three hundred years. We've still got some trial and error. I'd like to tell you we'll have it all together for the next jump, but it may be the fifth or the tenth. Still, if I was a betting man, I'd give better than even odds we're home in a month. Six weeks at worst. And you can pass that along to your chiefs, and they can tell the crew. We've got sensors like no other ship before us. The best the Navy has and the best my Maggie had as a merchant ship going through jumps the Navy would never touch.”

“Right,” Commander Gandhi agreed. “We got the best of both worlds. And those kids may have been a pain in the ass to lead, but no one ever said they weren't smart.”

There were murmurs of agreement around the table. Most plates were empty. A collection of late-rising middies were just exiting the steam tables, plates full. The officers around Mattim excused themselves. He sent them on their way with a smile, hoping he'd made their day better.

Quickly, he found himself surrounded by the kids, talking between themselves. Arguments over the data were settled by dueling computers. Arguments over the significance of the results were settled with rising voices. Following Guns' lead, he let it roll for a while before rapping a glass with a fork. “Let's take it down to a dull roar. Volume does not make truth.”

Shamefaced, the two culprits did. A few minutes later, Mattim dismissed himself. His departure did not interrupt a discussion of something he knew nothing about.

The house returned quickly to the bustling, happy place it had been. Rita had Ray on the rails, walking. It took him two days to recover to where he had been; Rita was merciless. She was also loving.

Mr. Nuu watched the news each day. The propagandists were in hyperdrive. The dead were saints; Earthies were devils. Every man, woman, and child along the frontier must avenge the fallen martyrs. More workers were called up, divisions formed. Ray frowned at the reports. Why organize troops you could never use?

Rita discovered she was an unwanted commodity. Less than half the transports had survived, and most needed major time in the body and fender shops. Despite the casualties among the crews that came back, the brass weren't sure they would have a ship for her. She cut the flip-flopping at Personnel by demanding to be seconded to Military Intelligence.

“They knew we were coming. Who's looking for the leak?”

She got her reassignment, but to Threat Assessment, not Internal Security. “At least I can stay close to you,” she told him. That was all that now mattered to Ray.

Rita's father was changing. The near death of his daughter had drained something out of the buff, confident industrialist. There were no more references to his early party membership, and the news reports did not go un-commented upon, though never when the cook or handyman was in the same room.

Still it was a surprise when he asked Ray to visit his plant. “I'll go too,” Rita jumped in. Ray shrugged; he'd had enough of being the invalid. It was clear, even to him, that he would never command troopers again. He might as well get to know the industrial side. He had married the boss's daughter; there had to be something he could do with himself.

The “plant” turned out to be a sprawling complex that they drove through on an electric cart. “This is just the ground side. We've got mines in the asteroids. The dirty work is done there. One of the larger shipyards in orbit is mine, too.”

“Dad began with that little shop we started at,” Rita said, pride shamelessly dripping from her voice. “When I was just a little girl, I'd go there. I've watched it grow.”

“These were good times.” Ernest—yes, they were now Ernest and Major; Ray had been offered and ignored— shrugged off his daughter's praise, but with a happy smile. “People were looking for work. I gave them jobs. The more work we did, the more opportunities came our way. We grew together, me and the crew.”

“Have you been able to keep them together, your workers, what with the draft?”

“Some volunteered. I've promised them jobs when they return.” It was kind of him to say “when,” not “if.” “Out in the mines, I just installed some new equipment, reduced my staffing needs by half. I'd intended to spread the miners out and expand. I'll save that for after the war. Unlike other companies, I've managed to keep the raw materials flowing to the plants. My people are busy, and the draft boards have plenty of idle workers elsewhere.” He shrugged. “Some say I'm using my connections with the party. Maybe, but if I did not deliver the ships, war supplies and other gear, they would not remember my low party card number for long.”

Ray had been checking out the equipment; jigs, presses, drills in one shop; chip fabrication in another building. “You have a very sophisticated setup. The names on your heavy equipment read like a who's who of the largest corporations in developed space. How could you afford it?”

“It is close to lunchtime.” Ernest's face had gone flat.

We have a picnic basket, and I always keep green around my plants. Let us eat among the trees.”

As usual, Mattim's check with Guns and Sandy showed teams hard at it and swapping members back and forth. Thor's teams, done with the present system, had expanded the scope of their study to the galaxy's core. Nobody had ever been this close. Kids at Christmas could not be happier. Mattim wasn't sure how that would get them home, but he wouldn't rain on their parade.

Since nobody had any miracles to report, Mattim did what he usually did when things were slow aboard the Maggie D ; he took a walk. Starting at the bow, he worked his way down. Any work party got a few moments' pause to observe. Some seemed a bit flustered by the attention, but there were enough hands from the Maggie who knew him. After one old chief asked his officer's permission and invited Mattim over to see how they'd patched some battle damage, the rest got the hang and invited him over for proud sessions of show and tell.

The Sheffield wasn't just being patched. Imaginative ratings and recruits were changing her, adding improvements, making her stronger. None of these were solo performances; each involved checking with the chiefs and officers. Each mod went into damage control's data file. Here was a captain's job as Mattim had learned it. Observe and praise. Toss in a suggestion here and there. Running a ship, that he understood. Running the galaxy he'd leave to any god who wanted the job.

He enjoyed the day, including lunch and supper on the mess decks with whatever team he happened to be with when they got the word to knock off for chow. The crew looked a lot happier, and even a bit relieved. How bad could it be? The old man had time for us enlisted swine. Things were looking up.

Mattim found himself relaxing, too. He finished his day with a drop by the teams. Guns' and Sandy's teams looked wilted. He shooed them out of the room and threatened to post a guard on it until 0800 tomorrow. Muttering counterthreats of mutiny, rebellion, and a strike, they went.

Thor's stargazers were in just as grubby a state. Mattim considered giving them the same treatment, flipped a coin, and decided no. If somebody wanted to see into the heart of their god, why interfere? He did turn up the air flow.

The industrialist was strangely quiet as he guided the cart among the trees, as if hunting for just the right place for their lunch break. Rita did the final preparations while her father meandered around them, whistling off key and frequently glancing at his watch. “Father, I am working as fast as I can.”

“Oh. Sorry, dear. Not you at all. Something else.”

“Will someone be meeting us?” Ray asked from where he still sat in the cart.”

“I certainly hope not.”

Sandwiches prepared to order, Rita settled on the blanket she had spread. Ray took a bite, swallowed, then casually said, “Ernest, how could you afford the plant machinery? The costs and the duties for half of that would beggar a business man. You do not live in poverty.”

Ernest laughed, glanced once more at his watch, and shook his head. “No, my family does not live in poverty. My plants were built debt-free. Or at least they were before those crushing war taxes were passed.” He pursed his lips, studied his daughter and Ray. “Major, I hope you and my daughter will have a long and happy marriage. I hope to pass all of this along to you”—now his face took on the impish grin Ray saw so often on Rita—”and my grandchildren. I wish you much success growing this business, so let me tell you how my garden grows.”

And Ray learned that not all trade between planets went through customs. No surprise; everyone bought wine, whiskey, perfumes, silks, and vids with custom seals that would not stand scrutiny. This was the frontier. Thumbing your nose at Earth's laws was a duty solemnly observed by all. But entire factories!

“It can be done. Best by skipping the usual ports.”

“Dad, I'm a jump pilot. You come through a jump hole, you better stop at the nearest station and clear customs.”

“If you come through the usual jump points. Others are not so closely watched.”

Rita sat back to munch, her sandwich. Ray was no longer hungry. “Corporations, like armies, take inventory seriously. I can not lose a rifle or rocket. I can't imagine a corporation that takes no notice when an expensive plant vanishes.”

“Not a plant,” Ernest agreed, “but scrap metal, ah, that is another matter. Upgrade, improve, replace is the lifeblood of business. If you do not improve productivity, you are out of business. And what do you do with the inefficient machines?”

“Sell them to someone less efficient,” Ray said slowly.

“Yes, Major. If you are great Earth or one of her seven sisters, you sell off to one of the newer forty. But the forty developed planets are the end of the line. We frontier planets do not exist. No, on Pitt's Hope, the end of the line is worthless scrap, worth a few pennies a pound.”

“But...” Ray kept the door open. Ernest slowly turned around, his eyes on his watch. Ray hadn't heard that anti-listening devices could be fitted into a watch case. Then again, he was learning a lot today.

Ernest turned back to them, a grin on his face. He tapped the watch. “From a friend on Pitt's Hope. Very versatile. If you know the right people, you can get anything. Scrap metal, for example. A check for a few pennies a pound from a legitimate scrap dealer. A second check of equal value on another account to the right person, and look what you have!” His arms stretched out, taking in his domain like a proud king.

“But how do you get it here, Dad?” Rita's sandwich was down.

“Pitt's Hope is easy. Two jumps, one hardly noticed, the other hardly known but to a few smugglers.”

Ray and Rita looked at each other. Her eyes were wide.

“Dad, it's seven jumps to Pitt's Hope. It's four even by the shortcut through ELM what's-its-number.”

“You don't know all the jump points.”

“Dad, I've jumped into ELM. There are two jumps. We got one, they got the other.”

Ernest glanced at his watch. “There is a third.”

And it came to Ray why that hunk of rock was worth all the blood that had been and would be paid for it. It was not the jumping-off point to seize a fully developed planet. Earth had them by the dozen. No, it was the last line of defense between the Earthies and Wardhaven, one of the few planets the frontier had making ships and the heavy equipment war ate so voraciously.

Unity knew this. Had Earth learned yet?

As Mattim left the wardroom, Sandy fell in step with him, a half dozen middies behind her. “We need another test jump.”

“What's up?”

“Velocity, sir.” One of the middies stepped on Sandy's line just as her mouth opened.

“All right, Chandra, you tell the captain.”

“Sorry, ma'am, but look at it. We hit that first jump point racing like a tiger. We went thirty thousand light-years. We tapped the same jump at a walk, and only go fifty light-years. At a crawl, we went even less. The more energy you have, the farther you go. We need some high-energy test jumps to see if it's acceleration or velocity.”

Mattim saw the point; testing would eat time. “Sandy?”

“That seems to be what we're learning, Matt. Speed never made a difference, but every jump point has a maximum posted speed. You don't exceed it, and no one makes money going slower. Damn, I wish we knew what we were doing, not just flopping around in the dark. But we ought to try some more test runs.”

Five days later, they headed into the jump with the same spin, velocity, and lateral displacement as on the sour jump. The stars looked familiar to Mattim as they exited, but not enough to say anything. While the bridge waited silently for Sandy and her team to do their search, Thor said, “It's a single star system.”

Sandy did her numbers, shushed a middie before he said something, then spent five minutes rechecking all the numbers again. “We're about one hundred light-years from Pitt's Hope.”

“I've found two, maybe three jump points,” a middie chirped in. “Maybe one of them will take us home.”

Mattim shook his head. “We know one jump point took us there and will take us back. We are not going to go chasing down every blind alley. Thor, turn us around and head us back.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Well, at least we know speed or acceleration does have something to do with reach,” Sandy sighed.

“Sir, would you please come look at this?” The speaker was Zappa, the guard, now midshipman, who'd started the whole crazy process with her offer to run tests for Mattim.

“The text book says the jump is instantaneous, right?”

“That's the way it's always looked to me,” Sandy agreed.

“For proof,” Zappa went on, “they offered the behavior of the atom lasers that keep the ship stable and spot jump point gravity fluctuations. They don't show any change, right?”

“Right.” Sandy nodded.

“I always wondered. Nobody's done any high-speed data recovery on the gyros recently.” Zappa smiled. “Everybody knows.” Mattim wondered if he'd put up with a boy doing this slow routine on him. Zappa was cute as a button; he kept listening.

“We hitched a computer to one gyro. Next couple of jumps didn't do much; the digital readout kept missing the moment of jump. We changed to analog this jump so we could choose just what point we wanted. Look at this.” The film's elapsed time in the corner was measured in nanoseconds. One showed the usual screen. The next showed a wavering. The third was all over the place. By the fifth shot, everything was back to normal.

“Does it usually do that?” Mattim asked.

“No,” Sandy answered slowly, pulling on her ear.

“Might be why I felt dizziness on the slow-speed jump.”

Zappa reran the five shots. “There's another question, sir, ma'am. Near graduation, what with a war coming on, the profs had us do some practical stuff, things that might help us land a safe job in a wartime economy. I tested explosives. They didn't come out right.” Mattim raised an eyebrow.

“Explosives should expand equally in all directions. That's what the manufacturers advertise. Mine didn't. It wasn't mixed properly, so it didn't explode evenly. Did the missile that missed us before we jumped explode evenly, or did its shrapnel hit us unevenly? What did it do to our spin?”

Mattim mashed the comm link at Sandy's station. “Guns, pull up those pictures from just before we jumped. Enhance them all you have to, but tell me exactly what our spin was.”

He turned to Thor. “Hold us at a gee and a half. Turn us around fast. We're going back through the jump. This time don't bother with lateral displacement, just spin and velocity.”

“Yes sir.”

Two days later they were back to the four-star system. It took another two days to get turned around. The explosion had changed their rotation. The tiny fraction of one percent spin had been a bear to hunt down. Still, it had been there, and they added it as they approached the jump. The stars twinkled, then changed.

“Two suns,” Thor shouted.

A moment later Sandy confirmed, “We're home.”

“Comm,” Mattim ordered, “get me the watch at Ninety-seventh Brigade.”

“Got them, sir.”

“Ninety-seventh Brigade, this is the Sheffield . Are there any colonial warships in system?”

“Hey,” came a surprised voice, “we lost the Sheffield a couple of battles back. Who are you? Uh, code Delta Alpha, one three seven. Respond.”

Mattim looked at Ding*. She glanced at the quartermaster of the watch. “We got any answer to that challenge?”

“No, ma'am.”

The exec raised an eyebrow. “You're on your own, Captain.”

“Ninety-seventh Brigade, this is Sheffield . We are not lost, just misplaced. Helm, begin a three-gee deceleration. Ninety-seventh, do you have a science officer of some kind?”

“Commander Miller on sensors was a college professor.”

“Please patch me through to him.”

“I shouldn't, but the longer you talk, the better targeting fix we get. It's your funeral.”

“Commander Miller here,” a woman's voice said.

“Commander, this is Captain Abeeb of the cruiser Sheffield . We sour-jumped thirty thousand light-years. It's taken us this long to get back. We have several new theories about how jumps work. Before we risk a jump to Pitt's Hope, I'd like to download them to you.”

“I imagine you would, colonial, but I don't want to crash our system nearly as much as you do.”

“Miller, all our codes are a month old. If you'll give us some calls that we can answer, we will.”

“And since New Canton was raped two weeks ago, you colonials got plenty of codes to answer with. Still no takers, you Unity bastard.”

Mattim glanced at Ding; apparently the war had taken a bitter turn since they left. He took a deep breath. “By now, you know it was Beta jump we used. I can convert our data dump into encapsulated packets. What's in them stays in them. Load them to a stand-alone computer and bring it up with no network attachment. It can't crash what it's not hooked to.”

Before any answer could come back, Mattim found Midshipman Zappa at his elbow. “Are you professor Elaine Miller? I studied under Professor Uxbridge at Nuevo Madrid University. He still speaks of you as his best student.”

“So how's Gimpy getting around? Does that beer belly still look like he's ten months pregnant?”

Zappa eyed the mike like she might a snake. “He's thin as a rail and jogs. Are you thinking of someone else?”

“Nope, and you do know the old prune. Captain, what is this data you want to send me so much?”

“I'd rather not go too deeply into it on voice. We've put it in our highest code. Is it enough to repeat that we've been halfway across the galaxy and are back?”

“The first ship back from a sour jump” came in awe from the speaker. “Yes. Yes, I do want that data! Send me your first packet. If it causes us any trouble, I swear . . .”

“It won't.”

Twelve hours later, the Sheffield had killed all its momentum and was heading back for the jump point when Commander Miller came back. “Sweet God, I can't believe it. This worked?”

“We're here.”

“Yes. Hey, is there any chance you could come down here? I'd love to go over this data with your specialist. What are you doing with a team of scientists on a combat cruise anyway?”

Mattim explained their brain trust.

“Jesus, this war is a waste. On second thought, when would a bunch of kids get a chance to cut loose and show what they can do in a situation like that? You lucky bunch.”

“We weren't so sure of our luck after three bum jumps.”

“Well, say hello to the new admiral. She's a real scrapper.”

“We got a new admiral?”

“We're on our fourth.”

“That bad?”

“Up there and down here both.”

The Sheffield jumped, ship steady as a rock, and moving at only a few klicks a second. Pitt's Hope never looked so good. ,

Every jump point has a navigation buoy. It would go through before a ship did, announcing its pending arrival, avoiding a collision in space. Many buoys had a second duty, transferring speed-of-light messages from one side of a hole to the next side.

In wartime, buoys became listening stations.

The buoy at Alpha jump had acquired additional antennas, a faster computer, and more storage. The struggling colonial troops on the rock called it to order supplies. Intercepted messages among the Earthies were passed to it. Only very high-priority messages could cause the buoy to make a trip through the jump before it had filled its storage. The code the Earthie cruiser used raised a flag.

The buoy slipped through the jump, transmitted the contents of its storage to the next buoy, and then returned. The message passed from one buoy to another several times, each time its code raising a flag. Emotional surprise was not registered until a human downloaded the message on Wardhaven. “This must be a beauty. Let's see if any of the codes from New Canton like it.”

One did.

The technician knew a lot about communication protocols and a bit about the theory behind the codes he used. The rest of his education stopped at middle school. Still, what he saw made him whistle. “Worlds as numberless as the stars. Hey, Senior Tech, know anyplace I could get my hands on a ship?”

“They're either on guard or in the yard. Why?”

The junior tech explained the message to his senior, who shook his head. “Ain't you heard, kid? There's a war on. If it don't help the party kill Earthie scum, it ain't worth shit.”

The junior didn't argue, but he did take special care to send a copy of the package to the folks at Intelligence Assessment. Some of those people used their brains.