V
In Command Navigator training, there is a short classroom segment on the art of leadership in an emergency. I inhaled and exhaled twice rather than scream obscenities at Colonel LeClerc the way that I so badly wanted to. I was not alone, after all, and the women who surrounded me were all working hard under my orders, doing their very best to salvage this impossible situation. So instead of cursing I simply signed off in calm, correct terms.
“When is the shuttle coming?” asked the Dragon as soon as I removed the headset. “How are they going to dock onto us?”
I smiled carefully. “Things are kind of busy back on Lagrange,” I explained. “I’m not sure when they’re coming. In the meantime, it might be quicker for me to try and go get Aphrodite myself.”
The dominatrix cocked her head slightly to one side and scowled, but said nothing. “All right,” she agreed. “Where is your suit?”
“Well,” I said slowly. “There’s just one wee little problem there…”
“Beauregard!” Michelle hissed. “He was too cheap to buy you a special suit after he made you change your body, wasn’t he?”
“No!” I corrected her. “He bought me three, just like regulations required. One of them is over in Aphrodite,” I explained.
“A lot of good that one will do you,” Georgia observed. “Where are the other two?”
“One is kept in each control area. So, that means that one went with the other half of the station.”
“Right,” Michelle agreed, looking around and not finding what she sought. “So the last one is right here in this room. Great!” She smiled. “Where?”
I smiled weakly and pointed. “In that cabinet right over there. The one with the two great big shrapnel holes in it.” Carefully I reached over and tried to open the door; it fell clean off of its hinges. Then a cloud of broken helmet-fragments drifted out, followed by a severed suit-hand.
There was a long moment of silence as the girls digested the situation. Clearly, my suit was beyond salvage. “However,” I said slowly, pointing to another very similar cabinet on the other side of the room, “there’s another suit in there. I can’t wear it, but a normal unmodified human can.”
Michelle spoke up again. “But… But none of us are suit-qualified. We can’t go EVA!”
“No,” I agreed. “You can’t. Especially not under these conditions. Nor could you pilot the pod back once you got there.” I turned to face the Dragon. “We’ll be docking to the emergency airlock down here; it’s not as big as a standard lock, but in a pinch it will work. I’ve done it before in training.” Then I turned to face the rest of the group. “There’s someone who can both go EVA and pilot a pod, however, up in the saloon. Commodore Tottson is sitting up there right now.” Merely thinking about his always calm and cool features made me feel better deep down inside. “He’s been in worse spots before.”
“He’ll be stoned out of his mind,” Georgia predicted. “Marvin, you haven’t been up there. It’s a madhouse!”
“Have you seen him with your own eyes?” I demanded. “This is Commodore Tottson that we’re talking about here! He’s the most resourceful man in space. He probably saw what was happening and rigged up some kind of filter for himself.” I suddenly believed in Commodore Tottson like nothing else in the universe, believed in him so deeply that I actually smiled for real. “We’re incredibly lucky to have him on board.” Next I turned back towards my console and rang up the saloon. “Arnold?” I barked. “Are you still there?”
There was a long silence. I flipped the switch again. “Arnold, can you hear me?”
This time he answered. “Marvin!” he cried out. “Thank God you’ve called! It’s a madhouse up here! An absolute madhouse!”
“What’s going on?” I demanded reflexively.
“There’s fights going on, men raping men, others masturbating out in front of God and everybody… It’s incredible! The waitresses and I have given up on keeping things under control. I’m hiding them under the bar and trying to keep the cattle off of the women. So far I’ve had to hurt a couple of them pretty badly.” The Chief Steward paused. “Marvin, I conked a man in the head a few minutes back with a bottle to keep him off of Miriam. He hasn’t moved since, and I’m afraid that I might have killed him. I didn’t mean to! Really I didn’t!”
Jesus! “All right,” I declared. “We’re coming up just as soon as we can, Arnold. The cavalry is coming.”
“Thank God!” he answered, the relief evident in his voice. “Bring weapons and plenty of restraints.”
I clicked my beak, thinking things over. If we were going to evacuate the Henhouse, then eventually we’d have to restore order in the saloon; it was that simple. Whether the Commodore was in a position to help or not, we absolutely would have to have order when it came time to evacuate. Even assuming that Arnold could hold out indefinitely, there just wasn’t time to wait for the drugs to wear off. “Right,” I agreed. “There’s one more thing, Arnold. Have you seen Commodore Tottson lately?”
“Tottson? No, I can’t say that I have. He certainly hasn’t been trying to get down behind the bar with us, like… Goddammit, you horny son a bitch! Get your filthy hands off of…” Then there was a loud cracking sound, and a scream of pain. “Sorry, Marvin” Arnold replied. “I don’t exactly have much time to talk here.”
“Right,” I agreed flatly. “We’ll be right up.” Then I cut the connection and turned to face my phalanx of loyal Amazons. “I guess you heard,” I said slowly.
“We heard,” Michelle replied.
“They are ignorant fools!” the Dragon declared angrily. “They endanger us all with their childish games and desires! We must get them under control. For their own good!”
“For their own good,” I echoed. “Come on, girls. It won’t be so bad. Haven’t you ever had to deal with a bunch of drunken johns before?”
VI
“The thing is that we’ve got to work together as a team,” I said to my girls as we stood just outside the locked Saloon entrance. “The johns are only out for themselves in the state that they’re in, and they aren’t thinking very clearly.”
“They tear each other up as much as anything else,” Barbara said, clutching her improvised weapon convulsively. Barb was a new recruit; we’d just picked her up a few moments before. She’d been fighting off two johns single-handedly for almost the entire time since the accident, and judging by appearances had inflicted a lot more damage than she’d received. Her two assailants were now safely stuffed into mummy bags and secured to the railing two levels down, while their object of desire was now armed with a severed chair leg. “When you look into their eyes, it’s like no one’s at home. No one at all.”
“Right,” I agreed, once more trying to sound confident. After all, we were fifteen untrained police officers about to try and quell one of the ugliest riots in the history of space travel while outnumbered more than ten to one. If our confidence failed, we were utterly sunk. I hefted my own chair leg and grinned easily. “Remember how easy it was to round up the rest down below? The johns can’t think of anything but sex, sex, sex.”
“So this is news?” Michelle murmured. The rest of the girls giggled, and I smiled too.