Whether by coincidence or by design, the UAN Ulysses
S. Grant happened to be patrolling less than one thousand miles from a disc station. Traveling from Mars to the deck of the Grant took less than ten minutes.
My new tour of duty started on a positive note. Second Lieutenant Vincent M. Lee met me as I stepped from the transport. He was made to wear the gold bar on his shoulder—well, maybe not made for it; but with his bodybuilder’s physique, he looked like the ideal of how an officer should look.
“Wayson,” he said in a whisper, rushing up to me and shaking my hand. “I half expected to hear that you were killed in a freak accident on the way here.”
“How did you know I was coming?” I asked.
“It’s all over the chain of command. Captain Pollard heard that another of the Little Man 7 was coming aboard and sent word down the line.”
That didn’t sound bad. It sounded like I had caught a break, like Huang possibly wanted to separate me from Klyber but didn’t care much what happened to me beyond that. “You heard how I got this transfer?”
“Jeeezuz, Harris! Huang himself?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The little specker looked like he was going to wet his pants he was so jazzed with himself. But if the worst he has planned is sending me here, maybe he’s not so bad.”
Having said that, I noticed a tense reaction in Lee’s expression. His eyes darted back and forth, and his lips drew tight. “Harris, Captain Pollard wants to meet with you to discuss your orders. Maybe we can talk after that.”
“That doesn’t sound so good,” I said.
“It isn’t,” Lee said. He led me down a long corridor toward the elevator to the Command deck. “I had to trade favors just to meet your transport. Huang wanted a team of MPs to escort you from the transport directly to the brig.”
“You’re taking me to the brig?” I had never visited the brig of a Perseus-class carrier. But I doubted it would be near the Command deck. The area we were passing through was pure officer country, all brass and plaques. Naval officers walked around us, some pausing to catch a quick glimpse of me.
“I’m taking you to Pollard’s office. He was one of Klyber’s protégés. He’s doing what he can for you, but it’s not much.”
“You have enemies in high places, Lieutenant,” said Jasper Pollard, captain of the Grant. “From what I can tell, Admiral Huang personally arranged this transfer.”
“I’m not surprised, sir,” I said.
“I would not assign a rabid dog to Ravenwood Station, Lieutenant.”
“Where, sir?” I asked.
“Ravenwood. Have you been briefed?”
“No, sir,” I said.
He shook his head, pursing his lips as if he had bitten into something sour. “Pathetic. How can they send an officer into action without a proper briefing? Under other circumstances…” Pollard walked to a shelf and selected two small tumblers. Using silver tongs, he placed three cubes of ice in each tumbler. “You drink gin?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He splashed three fingers of gin over the ice. “I know about Little Man, of course. You must be one hell of an officer.
“I have also heard about your hearing before the House.” He handed me a tumbler. “Leave it to those assholes to turn a medal ceremony into an inquisition.”
Pollard downed his gin and jiggled his glass so that the ice spun. “Considering your record, you’re probably a good choice for Ravenwood. You’ve got as good a chance of survival as anybody. Then again, I hate wasting a perfectly good officer on an assignment like that.” He shot me a wicked smile. “Even a Liberator.”
Sitting behind his desk with his hands on his lap, Captain Jasper Pollard looked too young to command a fighter carrier. With smooth skin and no visible gray strands in his brown coif, the captain looked like a man in his early thirties, though I am sure he was closer to fifty. “Let me tell you about Ravenwood. We’ve lost a lot of men on that speck of ice.”
“Sounds bad, sir.”
“We’ve kept a lid on the story. As far as I am concerned, if Morgan Atkins wants that planet, we should give it to him. We should pay him to take it. That goddamn planet is of no value, industrially or strategically. Apparently the big boys in the Pentagon have an itch about giving in, so they keep throwing men down that rathole.”
He walked to his desk and sat down. “Ravenwood is on the inner third of Scutum-Crux, near the area where Scutum-Crux and Sagittarius merge. We never colonized it. It’s too far from a sun. The goddamn rock is half ice, but it has an oxygen atmosphere.
“Anyway, the Navy set up a refueling depot on Raven-wood. It wasn’t much—a small base, fuel, food, ammunition, emergency supplies. They stationed a hundred men there. It was one of those assignments. Get caught screwing some admiral’s daughter and you might get sent to Ravenwood.”
Or Gobi, I thought.
“The base went dark four weeks ago.” Pollard raised his hands, palms up, to show confusion. “They did not send a distress call. For all we knew, they just blew up their communications equipment.
“So Thurston sent us to investigate. We found the base empty.”
“It was empty?” I asked.
“Someone attacked it,” Pollard said. “Someone broke through the outer wall. There was a fight. We found bullet casings and burns on the walls. What we did not find was bodies.
“Thurston ordered me to leave a unit behind to guard the place while he investigated. That unit disappeared the next day.”
“How many men, sir?” I asked.
“A platoon,” Pollard said in a hollow voice. At that moment he looked ancient and cold. “We don’t know if they are dead. We never found bodies. We have recovered equipment and a few dog tags.”
“This sounds like a ghost story,” I said.
“It just might be that,” Pollard said. “I’ll tell you what I think happened, and maybe you’ll wish it were ghosts. I think the Mogats are in Central Sagittarius. I think Raven-wood Station has a good view of their base. I can’t prove it, but that is what I think.”
We sat silently as a few moments ticked by. “How big a squad am I taking on this assignment?” I asked.
“You have a handpicked platoon. Good men. I’m sorry to lose them.” He slid a thick personnel file across the desk. “Here’s your mission profile. You have a few hours before you leave. I can loan you an office if you want to meet your men.”
“Thank you, sir, but I think I’d rather place some calls.”
“Huang sent a memo instructing me to make interLink and mediaLink facilities available for you. Admiral Klyber is your guardian angel, right? I think he wants you to contact Klyber. This is Huang’s way of thumbing his nose at him. Now that you are in Scutum-Crux territory, there’s not much Klyber can do.
“I’ll give you that office. You’re free to use the communications as you like.”
***
The truth was that I was embarrassed to run to Klyber for help. I was supposed to be the head of security, and I’d let myself get abducted. God, I hated Huang. How long had that bastard been waiting for a chance to nab me? Probably since Ronan Minor. Admiral Che Huang, the secretary of the Navy, had spent more than one year looking for some way to cap me, a lowly grunt. I should have been flattered.
With three hours before my shuttle left for Ravenwood, and Lee waiting outside the office, I picked up the media-Link shades and toyed with the idea of writing a letter to Kasara. I wasn’t really interested in her, but who else could I write to? So I tried to write to her and found myself struggling with every word. After less than five minutes, I deleted the letter and went out to grab a drink with Vince.
“How’s the sea-sailor’s bar on this boat?” I asked.
“Not as good as the one on the Kamehameha,” Lee said. “But it’s got plenty of booze.”