Papa nodded. “We do that in the Marines, too. It’s called ‘kicking someone upstairs.’”
“And with me gone, they can start turning out shoddy equipment again.”
“Right. Which means I have to double my scrutiny. As soon as you told me about the promotion offer, I put in for a dozen new privates and some very elaborate diagnostic machinery.”
She looked up at him, astonished.
“Why so surprised?” He smiled, amused. “Just because it takes a dozen soldiers to make up for you.”
“I—I’m flattered.”
“That’s right. Now, about that discrepancy?”
Alice frowned, jolted back to her worry. “You think they’re expecting me to catch it?”
Papa shrugged. “If it’s so obvious that you caught it your first day on the job, and without looking for it, they meant for you to find it.”
Alice lifted her head slowly. “So they’ll be suspicious if I don’t find it.”
“That would be my guess. And, of course, if you tell them and they fire you, then that gets you out of the whole sticky situation.”
“Yes . . .” Then she looked up, startled. “You’d like it that way, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t want you to do anything dangerous, Alice,” Papa said. He stopped and turned to her, slowly. “Not anything dangerous.”
Her heart skipped a beat, but she said, “I won’t, Peppy. Not if I can help it.”
The under-manager frowned. “Let me see.”
Alice showed her the hard copies. “That’s just the one, ma’am. There are three more current. And I haven’t even checked the histories.”
The department head shoved back her seat and swung around the desk. “I want to see this for myself.”
Alice led the way, the under marching stiffly after her. Alice wasn’t worried about her immediate superior—the woman had lost both real legs in the first Hothri attack, and was rabid at the thought of defective weapons going out to the soldiers. It was the big bosses who worried Alice.
They came down to the loading dock, where a dull-eyed super watched the pig iron roar into the hopper. Alice stepped up, waved to the worker to show it was all right, and punched the button that stopped the dumping. She disengaged the hopper, reached into the truck, and started pulling out pigs, weighing them in her artificial hand. On the fourth one, she nodded, set it aside, and engaged the hopper again. She gave the swab-O sign to the worker, who pressed the green patch, and the roar started up again.
Alice picked up two bars as the under swung up to her. She held the bars up, then dropped them both.
One of them bounced. The other broke.
Alice held up the broken halves. The under took them, staring. Then, outraged, she turned one broken end for Alice to see, and pointed to the myriad of bubbles in the metal, around a hollow core.
The three Hothri dreadnoughts floated in the void, each surrounded by its six daughter cruisers and thirty-six destroyers—except that they weren’t really floating, but hurtling toward Arista at tremendous velocity.
Well, they had that much advantage, at least. Human ships came in groups of ten—five fingers on each hand. But Hothri squadrons came in sixes. Six fingers total; ships in multiples of six.
Not that Papa could see them, of course. All his eyes saw were yellow blips on a vast wall-screen marked with concentric circles, at whose center was Arista—but memory and imagination provided what the battle monitor couldn’t; in his mind’s eye, he could see the Hothri battlewagons, gleaming in the distant light of Arista’s sun, as they hurtled toward the double cluster of Aristan ships that drifted, waiting for them, grouped around the moon’s two orbital stations.
He sat at the back of the Operations Room, watching over the heads of the dim, low-voiced forms before him. Pools of yellow light on desk-tops showed hard copies; small data screens glowed amber here and there about the room. On a raised dais in its center sat the rear admiral, watching the progress of the battle, ready to respond to any calls from the fleet commander at the site.
But the whole room was dominated by the huge situation screen at its far side, flanked by smaller screens that showed the view from each of the battle stations around the moon. All those showed were the silvery forms of Aristan cruisers and the glints of destroyers; the approaching Hothri fleet wasn’t even a glimmer.
On the screen, the triple yellow cluster approached the two smaller, green clusters steadily, remorselessly-but Papa could envision the Hothri dreadnoughts, oblong and manyhatched, like huge mechanical hives, each with its cruisers and destroyers going before it like so many warrior ants. But those hatches would open to reveal the barrels of cannons, not tunnels.
This was his greatest single privilege of remaining in uniform, his greatest reward for rank—the ability to watch the progress of the battles, to ache with the anxiety of his fellow soldiers, to share the joy of their victory, or the horror of their defeat. Under it all ran the guilt of being safe here on Arista, while they staked their lives on the strategies of their commanders—and the quality of their weapons.
The weapons Papa had allocated to them.
There! On the side screen, a circle of points of light became visible, points that swelled to discernible disks. And on the big screen, the Hothri swarmed down on the battle stations like the pincers of a giant mantis.
Then the screen filled with red streaks as the battle computers strained to track each torpedo, each laser strike. The side screens showed distant flares of light as Hothri ships blew up.
But there were closer flares that filled the screen, then died with supernatural quickness as the computers subtracted them.
“One hit on the eastern Hothri fleet.” A yeoman called out the information; the computer needed all its capacity to track the battle.
“Jones is hit,” a closer yeoman responded. “Screens down . . . Jones is dead.”His voice tightened at the end of the sentence, but showed no more emotion than that.
Papa felt all the agony the man had repressed. Had it been his screen generator that was at fault? His laser cannon that had failed to bring down the torpedo?
On the big screen, the western battle platform was suddenly denuded as half its destroyers, and two cruisers, shot off toward the Hothri line. The side screen boosted magnification, showing them as a circle, tightening around the Hothri dreadnought.
Hothri cruisers scurried to intercept them, and the dreadnought hurled its stings.
“Center and eastern Hothri dividing laterally,” chanted a distant yeoman. “Center and eastern accelerating toward eastern platform.”
Papa’s heart sang—the Hothri had missed a bet! They should have pounced on the western station!
“Western sally force engaged,” the nearby yeoman recited. “Screens down on Wallace . . .. Screens down on Boru . . . Hothri destroyer exploded . . . Second Hothri destroyer exploded . . . Hothri destroyer in to Wallace . . .” His voice caught. “Wallace dead . . .”
“Eastern fleet responding,” called the distant yeoman. “Torpedoes off and away . . . Hothri cruisers’ screens down . . . Nobunaga in toward Hothri cruiser . . .”
Light flared on the side screen.
“Hothri cruiser dead,” the near yeoman said, his voice carefully neutral. “Nobunaga drifting, screens down, controls dark . . .”
And Nobunaga was probably dead, too, Papa realized, with a wrench of anguish. There was little or no chance that some Hothri destroyer would not pick off the wounded ship, almost no chance it would survive the battle.
“Hothri center veering,” called a lieutenant, “top and bottom. Hothri center pinching western fleet . . .”