David Drake - The Voyage

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2024-12-03 0 0 634.6KB 316 页 5.9玖币

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Telaria

AS NED SLADE walked toward the dockyard building with the HEADQUARTERS—

PANCAHTE EXPEDITION sign on the door, a line of six human males and a squat,

shaggy alien from Racontis jogged past

"You wonder why I'm a private," the leader sang.

' 'And why I sleep in the ditch,'' sang-wheezed the remaining joggers in

several keys. The Racontid had a clear, carrying voice which would better have

suited an angel than a creature which could pull a strong man apart with its

bare hands.

A metal saw shrilled within the starship in the adjacent frames, overwhelming

the song. Ned's mind supplied the words anyway: "It's not because I'm stupid,

but 1 just don't want to be rich..."

The door was ajar. Ned knocked, but he couldn't hear the rap of his own

knuckles over the saw, so he let himself in.

"Shut the curst thing!" ordered the man at the electronic desk, cupping a palm

over his telephone handset. He was paunchy and at least sixty standard years

old. "I can't hear myself think!"

2 — DAVID DRAKE —

As he spoke, the sawblade coasted back to silence. The fellow at the desk

returned to his call. The rangy, somewhat younger man leaning against the

office wall prevented Ned from swinging the door to. "Leave it, kid," the man

said. "I like the ventilation.''

Ned looked from one stranger to the other. Neither of them paid him any

attention. "No," the older man said into his handset, "I'm Adjutant Tadziki,

but it will not help if you call back when Captain Doormann is here. She's

already made her decision on a supplier."

Tadziki looked like a bureaucrat. The other fellow wore a stone-pattern

camouflaged jumpsuit with WARSON, T over the left breast pocket. Ned didn't

recognize the uniform, but War-son was as obviously a soldier as the men and

the Racontid jogging around the starship outside were. Warson continued to

gaze out the window, singing under his breath, ' 7 could've been a general and

send out folks to die..."

"No," said the adjutant, "since she'll be eating the rations herself, your

offer of saving three-hundredths per kilo isn't very important to her—and it

bloody well isn't important to me!"

"But the sort of things a general does," Ned murmured, watching the soldier, '

'they make me want to cry.''

Warson turned sharply. "You know the song?" he asked.

Tadziki slammed down the handset. "Fucking idiot!" he said.

"Yeah, but in an armored unit it's 'You ask why I'm a trooper,' "Ned said.

"That's the way I learned it."

"Where?" Tadziki asked. "And for that matter, who the hell are you?1'

"On Nieuw Friesland," Ned said. "In the Frisian Defense Forces. I'm Reserve

Ensign Slade, but I'm from Tethys originally."

"Slade?" Warson said in amazement. "You're Don Slade? Via, you can't be!"

Ned's lips tightened. "You're thinking of my uncle," he said stiffly. "I'm not

Don Slade, no."

The voices of the jogging troops became faintly louder.

— THE VOYAGE — 3

They were making circuits around the vessel under construction. Warson nodded

disdainfully toward the window and said, "Herne Lordling's got us doing an

hour's run each day to shape us up. They're singing that to piss him off.' *

"Lordling's a general?" Ned asked.

"He was a colonel," Warson said. "He'sapissant,is what he really is. Sure you

want to join a rinkydink outfit being run by a pissant, kid?"

"Lordling isn't running anything," Tadziki said sharply. "Captain Doormann

gave the order, and she gives all the orders."

He suddenly smiled. "Via, Toll," he added, patting his gut. "I'm twenty years

older than you and I'd never run across a room before this stuff started. It's

still a good idea."

' 7 could have been a colonel,'' the joggers chorused, ' 'but there it is

again..."

"I want to join the Pancahte Expedition, yeah," Ned said, handing an

identification chip across the desk to the adjutant. "Whoever's running it."

"We're pretty full up," Warson said without emotion. He could have been

commenting on the color of the Telarian sky, pale white with faint gray

streaks.

' 'The plush seats colonels sit on, they tickle my sensitive skin..."

"The captain makes all those decisions, Toll," said the adjutant as he watched

the data his desk summoned from Ned's ID. "Especially those decisions."

"I never met your uncle," Toll Warson said, eyeing Ned with quiet speculation.

His look was that of a man who had absolutely nothing to prove—but who would

be willing to prove it any way, any time, anywhere, if somebody pushed him a

little too far.

Ned recognized the expression well. He'd seen it often enough in his uncle's

eyes.

The door to the inner room opened. A man in fluorescent, extremely expensive

clothing looked out and said, ' 'Did you say Lissea had . . . ?" He seemed to

be about Ned's age, twenty-four years standard. A quick glance around the

outer

4 — DAVID DRAKE —

office, empty save for the three men, ended his question.

Tadziki answered it anyway. "Sorry, Master Doormann," he said. "I'm sure she's

coming, but I'm afraid she must still be in the armaments warehouse with

Herne."

The young man grimaced in embarrassment and disappeared behind the closed door

again.

"Lucas Doormann," Tadziki explained in a low voice. "He's son of Doormann

Trading's president—that's Karel Doormann—but he's not a bad kid. He's trying

to help, anyway, when his father would sooner slit all our throats.''

"Didn't have balls enough to volunteer to come along, though,'' Warson said,

again without emotional loading.

"Via, Toll, would you want him?" Tadziki demanded. "He maybe knows not to

stand at the small end of a gun."

Warson shrugged. "Different question," he said.

The phone rang. Tadziki winced. "Toll," he said, "how about you play adjutant

for half an hour and I take Slade here over the Swift? Right?''

Warson's smile was as blocky as ice crumpling across a river in spring. He

reached for die handset. "You bet," he said. ' 'Does that mean I get all the

rake-off from suppliers, too?"

Tadziki hooked a finger to lead Ned out of the office.' 'Try anything funny,"

he growled, "and you'll save the Pancah-tans the trouble of shooting you.''

Warson laughed as he picked up the phone. Ned heard him say, "Pancahte

Expedition, the Lord Almighty speaking."

The adjutant paused outside the office and looked up at the vessel in the

frames. She was small as starships went, but her forty meters of length made

her look enormous by comparison with the fusion-powered tanks Ned had learned

to operate and deploy on Friesland.

"What do you know about this operation, kid?" Tadziki asked.

"I know," Ned said carefully, "that I prefer to be called Slade, or Ned, or

dickhead... sir."

Tadziki raised an eyebrow. "Touchy, are we?" he asked.

Ned smiled. "Nope. When I get to be somebody, maybe I'll

— THE VOYAGE — 5

get touchy, too. But since it was you I was talking to, I thought I'd mention

it."

"Yeah, don't say anything to Toll Warson that he's likely to take wrong,"

Tadziki agreed. "Do you know about him?"

Ned shook his head.

"Well, this is just a story," Tadziki said. "A rumor. You know, stories get

twisted a lot in the telling."

"... could've been an officer," sang the joggers as they rounded the nose of

the vessel. They moved at a modest pace, but one that would carry them seven

or eight kilometers in an hour if they kept it up. The Racontid ran splay-

legged, like a wolverine on its hind legs.

' 'But 1 was just too smart..."

"Seems Toll and his brother Deke had a problem with a battalion commander on

Stanway a few years back," Tadziki said.

' 'They stripped away my rank tabs..."

* 'One night the CO pushed the switch to close up his command car—"

"When they saw me walk and fart!"

"—and the fusion bottle vented into the vehicle's interior," Tadziki said. He

cleared his throat. "Toll and Deke turned out to have deserted a few hours

before, hopping two separate freighters off-planet. Some people suggested

there might have been a connection."

He nodded to the boarding bridge to the hatch amidships. "Let's go aboard."

They walked in single file, the adjutant leading. Power cables and high-

pressure lines snaked up the bridge and into the snip, narrowing the track.

"He looks like the kind who'd play hardball," Ned said with deliberate calm,

"Toll Warson does. But that's what I'd expect from people who'd—respond to

Lissea Doormann's offer."

Tadziki laughed harshly as he ducked to enter the vessel. He would have

cleared the transom anyway, unlike Ned who was taller by fifteen centimeters.'

'You don't know the half of it, Slade," he said. "The battalion commander was

their own

6 — DAVID DRAKE —

brother. Half brother."

The inner face of the airlock projected a meter into the vessel. Tadziki

gestured around the vessel's main bay, crowded now by workmen in protective

gear operating welders and less identifiable tools. "Welcome to the Swift,

trooper," the adjutant said.' 'If you decide to go through with your

application, and if you're picked, she'll be your home for the next long

while."

Tadziki looked at Ned.' 'Maybe the rest of your life.''

"It'll do," Ned said. "Anyway, it's roomier than a tank."

The bay was filled with bunks stacked two-high on either side of a central

aisle. The pairs were set with a respectable space open between them, because

they gimballed in three axes to act as acceleration couches. That meant there

was no storage within the bay except for the narrow drawer beneath each

mattress.

There were two navigation consoles forward, still part of the open bay. Astern

were two partitioned cubicles and, against the heavy bulkhead separating the

bay from the engine compartment, an alcove holding a commode. Workmen were

installing a folding door to screen the commode.

"That was my idea," Tadziki explained with a glance toward the alcove.'

'Lissea said she didn't need special favors. I told her she might think she

was just one of the guys, but things were going to be tense enough without her

dropping her trousers in front of everybody on a regular basis.''

Ned nodded to show he was listening while he scanned the confusion to count

places. There were sixteen bunks, plus the pair of navigation couches and the

private cubicles for— presumably—the captain and adjutant. It was possible but

very unlikely that there were bunks in the engine compartment as well.

"Twenty places," Tadziki said in confirmation. "Six of them for snip's crew—

sailors. A few of the others can double in brass. lean."

He looked sharply at Ned. "I gather from the curriculum in your ID you know

something about ships yourself?"

Ned shrugged. "I've had a course in basic navigation," he

— THE VOYAGE — 7

agreed. "In a pinch, I'd be better than punching in coordinates blind, I

suppose. And fusion bottles are pretty much the same, tanks or starships.''

The saw began to shriek again as a workman shortened the mounting stanchion of

the pair of bunks which had to clear the airlock's encroachment. The sound was

painful. Despite the tool's suction hood, chips of hot steel sprayed about the

bay.

Ned backed out onto the boarding bridge a moment before the adjutant gestured

him to do so. When the workman shut the saw down, Ned said, "I was at home in

Slade House on Tethys when Captain Doormann's message came. That's all I know

about the expedition—that Lissea Doormann's preparing to visit me Lost Colony

of Pancahte with a picked crew.' *

"And," Tadziki said, nodding but smiling slightly as well, "that she invited

Captain Donald Slade to accompany her."

"She could do worse than take Uncle Don," Ned said crisply. "She could do

worse than take me, too."

An air-wrench began to pound within the Swift's bay. Tadziki motioned Ned to

follow him back down the boarding bridge, sauntering this time.

"Telaria's pretty much a family concern," the adjutant explained. "The

Doormann family. There's a planetary assembly here at Landfall City, but the

real decisions get made at the Doormann estate just outside the town proper.''

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摘要：

TelariaASNEDSLADEwalkedtowardthedockyardbuildingwiththeHEADQUARTERS—PANCAHTEEXPEDITIONsignonthedoor,alineofsixhumanmalesandasquat,shaggyalienfromRacontisjoggedpast"YouwonderwhyI'maprivate,"theleadersang.''AndwhyIsleepintheditch,''sang-wheezedtheremainingjoggersinseveralkeys.TheRacontidhadaclear,carr...

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David Drake - The Voyage

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