The base was quiet, otherwise; most of the active groups were out on some kind of maneuvers, and only the new recruits and the usual business units at the base were out and about and doing their daily tasks.Dar entered the long wooden barracks structure at one end and looked around the empty interior for a moment before she walked down the large central aisle. To either side were partitions with bunks in them, each bunk with its footlocker and open set of shelves made from what looked to her like old orange crates. Now that the new recruits had settled in, shirts were folded and in place, and the beds had obviously just been made.
Dar smiled. Probably remade a half-dozen times before the petty officer had been happy with them, the dark blankets tucked with meticulous neatness around the thin mattresses. She remembered watching the new groups come in and peeking through the window as they’d been badgered and badgered by the admitting officers.
Not her, she’d decided once. She’d have done it exactly right the first time out. After all, hadn’t her daddy taught her to make a regulation bunk and fold pants and shirts when she was only six years old?
With a smile, Dar continued through the room and out the other Red Sky At Morning 183
side, exiting onto a long, wooden porch with shallow steps that led down to the muddy ground. She looked to one side and spotted her little targets, now dressed in their new clothes, struggling to follow the orders of a new, different petty officer.
Dar wandered over and watched for a few minutes, until the new officer noticed her and walked over. This one was a woman, with short, crisply curled dark hair and an efficient attitude. “Ma’am? Something we can help you with?”
With a better attitude, at any rate. “No, just observing,” Dar replied.
“Where’s the guy you relieved?”
The woman cocked her head in question. “Petty Officer Williams?”
She waited for Dar’s nod. “Off duty, ma’am.”
Uh-huh. Dar looked over her shoulder at the recruits, surprised to find her slim blonde friend looking back at her. The gray eyes met hers and sparkled, then the girl looked straight ahead, her body stiffening into an efficient attention. “Good group?”
The new officer, whose name was apparently Plodget, looked behind her, evaluating the question seriously. “A few of them, ma’am.
It’s always the same. Most aren’t much use, but we always do find a few that’ll make it.”
“What’s your dropout rate?”
A guarded look fell over the woman’s face. “I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”
“Ballpark,” Dar pressed. “I’m sure you’ve got a feeling as to how many of these poor saps you lose.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” Plodget assured her. “We only get them for the first two weeks, then someone else takes over.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how it’s done, ma’am.”
Dar nodded slowly. “Where are their admitting records?”
“Haven’t gotten here yet.”
“Why not? You guys use a computer system to recruit. What’s the holdup?”
Unemotional dark brown eyes met hers squarely. “That’s just how it’s done, ma’am.”
“All right.” Dar straightened. “I’ll just go see if I can’t change that for you.”
Dar turned and walked away, feeling the eyes on her back as she headed for the Admittance Center. She ducked inside with a feeling of relief and went to the computer console, seating herself in front of it and cracking her knuckles slightly. “Okay. Answer time.” She logged in, and this time, instead of going through the regular channels, she keyed in a master code. “Idiots.” The code still worked, and dropped her to a command line. “Where do you want to go today, hmm?”
Master database was where Dar wanted to go, and a string of commands got her there. She accessed the file structure and entered it 184 Melissa Good through a back door, watching as the screen filled with line upon line of file records. Dar watched it for a few minutes, her eyes flicking back and forth searching for a certain pattern.
Ah. One long finger stopped the display. “Gotcha.” She keyed in another command string and accessed the recruits’ records, bringing them up and comparing them.
Her brow creased. “What in the hell?” Of the twenty, ten were, as the petty officer said, fairly standard, pretty much ordinary kids from lower-class backgrounds, with bad grades and poor ASVAB test results—destined, if they did make it, to be shipped out as seamen or women in whatever grunt job the Navy needed when they spit them out of training. Dar had known hundreds like them. Some might, she admitted, if they worked very hard, break through the ranks and ascend higher, but most would happily fill a berth and take three squares a day for as long as the US was willing to give it to them.
“What in the hell?” she repeated, then shook her head and captured the data, opening a second command page with a flick of her fingers.
She snagged the files she’d been studying and zipped them, then sent them up the network path into her own, now specially protected file space.
Dar drummed her fingertips on the keyboard for a moment, then searched another file, working from instinct and an innate knowledge of these systems, the core of which she’d helped design all those years ago.
There. She stared at the results. I thought I saw something wrong. I thought those accounts didn’t match. One column of the screen showed a normal series of general ledger listings, the other a list of twenty accounts that weren’t linked anywhere she could find. She called one up, looking at the account balance, which was well into seven figures.
The entries were regular, and substantial, and manually keyed, because there was no equivalent ledger account to charge them off against.
A bucket. A bucket full of money, which nothing in this system could account for.
Dar sat back, her heartbeat picking up. What in the hell have I found?
“Hey, Dar!”
She almost jumped at Chuckie’s cheerful greeting. Her eyes lifted to see him approaching, and she quickly closed the file and sent it to her file space, then closed out of the command windows she was using just as he rounded the console and peered over her shoulder. “Hey.”
“Whatcha doing?” He looked curiously at the innocuous admitting records. “New spuds?”
“Yeah.” Dar licked her lips, then signed out of the system. “Just checking them out. Interesting group.” Her peripheral vision focused on his face, but saw nothing but benign interest. “You ever see what they’re bringing in these days?”
“Nah.” Chuckie slung a long, powerful arm over her shoulders.
“Hey, we were figuring to go over to the Longhorn steakhouse tonight, Red Sky At Morning 185
that okay by you? Your daddy’s a steak man, if I remember right.”
Dar took a breath, and released it. “Yep, he sure is. My mother’s going to pitch a fit, but I guess she can get a potato or something.” She managed a smile. “She’s a vegetarian...unless they’ve got fish there.”
“Fish?” Chuckie snorted. “You must be kidding. But, yeah, they’ve got potatoes, and I think they’ve got some kinda green beans or something. How ’bout your main squeeze, he a veggie lover, too?”
Something twitched in Dar’s brain. “She.” The word came out in a calm voice, unexpectedly. “And no, Kerry’s as carnivorous as I am.”
Chuckie went very still, his eyes fastened on Dar’s face for a long, long moment. Then he slowly removed his arm and stepped back.
“What?”
Dar allowed a hint of amusement to reach her lips, and she turned on the stool, leaning against the console with one elbow. “You heard me.” She watched his face, watched the expression go from consternation to uncertainty to a detectable disgust, then back to a stillness. So. Dar felt vaguely disappointed.