Personnel had to be off duty, the ship in a code green stand down situation. Liquor was allowed into private quarters only if it was prescribed by the medical officer as a “bracer” after a particularly rough go of things, or at the captain’s table for a formal meal. It had yet to interfere with O’Brian’s performance but Jason worried about it. Drinking had been one of the symptoms of trouble with his Gettysburg commander as well. Briefly he wondered what he had done in a past life to get saddled with two such in a row.
He was also a nightmare for paperwork, demanding lengthily written reports to be fed into his command computer every twelve hours, returning the reports with sarcastic notations about grammatical errors. For Jason, English, the language of the fleet, was not his native tongue. Though his mother was Australian, his father was Russian and he had been raised in a Russian colony on Alpha Centauri. Jason found himself reduced to dictating his reports while out on maneuvers and it was slowly driving him mad, something he knew O’Brian took delight in. Worse, however, was O’Brian’s open playing up to Kevin Tolwyn, inviting him to the wardroom for dinner, currying favor, and also pumping him for information.
Janice finished her coffee, went to the side table, and poured herself another cup.
“Oh, by the way, I heard the Marine First Commando battalion, the old Cat Killers, are in this little convoy,” Janice announced casually, and as she spoke she looked over at Jason from the corner of her eye.
“So what,” Doomsday interjected, “those planet jumpers are all crazy; they live even shorter lives than pilots. At least we get clean sheets to sleep on and when we die a decent body bag if they can find our pieces; they’re buried in a hundred thousand unmarked graves on a hundred planets whose names we barely even remember.”
“Cheerful advantage,” Janice replied. “I never looked at it that way before.”
“So why the interest in First Commando?” Doomsday asked.
“Oh, just an old friend is with them, that’s all,” Janice replied.
Doomsday, seeing that Janice was looking at Jason, turned around and saw the look on Jason’s face.
“What’s with this First Commando unit, Jason?”
Jason felt as if he had been kicked in the gut and was tempted to haul off and chew Janice out, even as she stood before him with a smug expression.
“I really needed to hear that Janice, thanks a lot.”
“Oh, no problem at all boss.”
She settled back into her chair and looked at him, just waiting, not saying a word.
“I’m missing something here,” Doomsday said.
“Just an old friend from when Jason and I were in flight school.”
“I take it a female friend from that ’punched-between-the-eyes look,’” Doomsday said, looking back at Jason.
Jason only nodded, still saying nothing.
“Do you think she knows I’m with the convoy?” Jason finally asked.
“How should I know?” Janice replied innocently.
“Some woman you’re trying to steer clear of?” Doomsday asked.
Jason felt his face go red. It was over, it’d been over ever since she flunked a lousy ground school exam and run off in a fit of hurt pride to join the Marines. She had refused to pull an assignment on board Gettysburg with him, where they could have been together, perhaps even gotten married. Damn it, it was over, and even as he tried to argue that point with himself he could still feel the hurt.
Doomsday chuckled softly.
“Remember that girl I told you about that I met on my last R&R? Gloria, that was her name. Gloria with the glorious…”
“Shut the hell up,” Jason snapped, “it wasn’t like that at all.”
“You know you could drop over for a friendly chat. You need an afternoon off,” Janice said coyly. “Her unit’s on the Bangor. Doomsday and I will stand watch. Take one of the Ferrets.”
“She’d most likely break my arm, or something else for that matter.”
“I doubt it,” Janice said with a smile.
“Bear, you are cleared for external dock.”
“Thank you Bangor, initiating clamp-down now.” Hovering above the top side docking bay, Jason gave a nudge to his down thruster and felt his Ferret scrape up on the deck of the transport ship. There was a quick groaning snap as the Bangor’s external docking locks clamped around the landing skids of his ship.
Shutting down his ship, he bled off the cabin air until it was vacuum, and then popped the canopy hatch. Slowly standing up he looked out across the open vista of space. A glorious binary was off to port, a red giant with a tiny white dwarf above it, a trail of incandescent fire spiraling up from the red giant’s surface into the glowing white dwarf. The Milky Way spanned the heavens with a hundred million jewels of light and he paused for a moment to admire the view. It was hard to imagine that there was really a war on. The silence of space was all encompassing, an eternity to be explored, and he again felt that wonder of it all, and the sense of irony about the fact that even out here, humankind could not escape the bitterness of war.
He realized as well that he was stalling. Cautiously taking hold of the side of the canopy he pulled himself out of his cockpit, turning a somersault while still holding on to his ship. If he didn’t lock to the deck of the Bangor, and should let go now, it’d be most embarrassing to call for a rescue party to come out and reel him back in. He always hated external dockings for that reason. Bangor, as did all marine landing transports, had a launch bay, but they were just large enough to hold the assault landing craft, without an inch to spare for anything else.
His feet hit the hull of the Bangor and he felt the magnetic lock snap his shoes down. Moving slowly he walked across the deck and reached the airlock door, punching it open and then stepping inside. The door shut, and he felt the ship’s gravity take hold, slapping him from weightlessness to one standard gravity as a flood of air washed around him. Seconds later the interior door opened, and a marine corporal in dress blues was before him, standing at rigid attention.
“Permission to come aboard,” Jason said.
The guard saluted him, Jason returned the salute and then saluted the ship’s colors painted on the far side of the corridor wall.
He stepped into the corridor and instantly felt a difference between this ship and the one he had just left. Marine transport vessels were a compromise between minimal comfort and the ability to haul as many marines and their equipment as possible. The corridor was narrow, painted standard fleet green, and lined down its entire length with crates of supplies.
“Looking for headquarters company, First Commando battalion,” Jason said.
The corporal gave directions and Jason set off, weaving his way down corridors, ducking low through emergency airlocks. There was a slightly gamey smell to the ship and it made him realize just how luxurious a pilot’s life was with three cooked meals a day rather than ship standard rations, and the luxury of luxuries, a hot shower as often as you wanted one, rather than the one allowed per week aboard military transports.