"Surely they'll follow orders?" Badeley asked, his round, youthful face screwed up in droll surprise.
He was alternately a headache, a laugh, and a raving bore. It was the universal opinion that he was likely to remain an ensign. Two years on a troop ship that had made four landings on hostile planets - and in which he had had to defend the Mandalay from vicious attacks by would-be boarders - had not shaken the down from his cheeks or given him any significant insights into Life and the Real World. He could be counted on to ask just such a stupid question as he had.
"No, laddie" - Hamish's accent became thickly ethnic when emotional - "they wouldn't. And I, for one, would not lay a feather of blame on them."
"But… that would be tantamount to mutiny!" His eyes bulged. "Wouldn't it!" Argyll agreed too amiably.
"It's inhuman to ask any soldier in their current depressed states to trundle off and fight another war." Loftus brought both fists down on the table, his expression deeply troubled. "They've got to have some R and R on a decent planet, not one with the stench of weasel and blood and death. They need sleep and unprocessed food and rest… Plague take it, Trotter, can't you do something about the air?"
Amalfi tried to hide behind Damia Pharr, who was looking down at her with a slightly quizzical expression on her face.
"Yeah, Malf, isn't there something you can do? Who can sleep easy with tainted air in their lungs all night long?"
"I've done everything I can," Amalfi said, her voice just one note away from a whinge. She brandished her clipboard. "I changed every plant in 'ponics when we were grounded. I've cleaned every duct, refitted every filter…"
"Had my gun crew jumping out of their skins when they heard her sweeping out the shafts above us," Hamish said, grinning encouragingly at her. "They thought the captain had found the still."
"Which reminds me," Damia said, "I'll need four liters tonight if I'm to get my patients to sleep."
"Has Farmeris come out of his coma yet?" Loftus asked.
"No, and I've done nothing to wake him up. He's better off asleep in that babbling bedlam I used to call my infirmary," Pharr replied, her wistful tone intimating envy of the man's condition. "He's okay apart from staying asleep. He's got the right idea. Sleeping it out till better days."
A tinny voice filtered through from Major Loftus's corn unit. "Major, fight broke out in D barracks: tranked nine combatants, but infirmary says they've no room for 'em."
"That's right," Damia replied cheerfully. "Any injuries?" she added as an afterthought. "No, sir. We had warning of the mood and arrived in time to restore order."
"List their IDs for report, Sergeant Norly, then dump 'em in their bunks with wrist and ankle restraints. There's no more room in the brig anyhow." Loftus swore as the crack- ling of the intercom ceased.
"Do you think they feel safer fighting among themselves?" Pharr asked rhetorically, glancing about the room.
Amalfi saw Badeley open his mouth, and she glared so fiercely at him that he subsided. A depressed silence fell on those waiting at the table. Two of the marine captains who had listened intently to their commanders' remarks were now obviously trying to get a few winks of sleep in the lavender-scented air. Amalfi was only too relieved that no one started in on her again. The sound of boots clomping on the metal decking alerted them all. As one, they looked toward the door, anticipating Gruen's return and whatever hope he might have gleaned from his wife.
The blank expression on Jay Gruen's face as he entered was sufficient to depress all hope. He closed the door behind him with meticulous care and then leaned against it with the weariness of total dejection.
"The truth is so bad," and he paused, "that not even High Command has the balls to put it in the orders."
"Well?" demanded Damia Pharr when Gruen let an atrocious span of time go by without enlightenment.
"I agree." He pushed himself off the door and toward the table. Loftus and Argyll made room for him as he folded, like a decrepit aged man, into the chair. "It would appear that the Khalians are not the primary enemies of the Alliance."
"Say what?" demanded Loftus.
Gruen clasped his hands before him, one thumb massaging the other. He didn't lift his eyes once as he continued to speak. "The Khalians appear to have been the first line of defense of an oligarchy of merchant families - of human or humanoid stock - known as the Syndicate. The Khalians questioned named them the Givers."
"They give war?" asked Damia softly.
"There are a lot of gaps about the Syndicate but one thing is sure: they subjugate any useful entities and massacre any that defy them." Gruen's voice mirrored the defeat in his expression. "The Khalian War, the one we just finished, is apparently only the prelude to the Big One. And the Alliance has got to win it or expect that every single planet and star system in the Alliance could, and would be, destroyed by the Syndicate."
"But surely in a large group, a Syndicate, there would be an outcry against wholesale destruction?" Brace asked, "It's just not economical to obliterate whole planets and star systems…"
"The Syndicate doesn't think the way we do. They may be technologically superior, but not sociologically," Gruen said, massaging his thumbs with such force the blood suffused the tips. "They're prime bigots - hate any alien race and enslave or exploit them. And we thought the Khalians were bad…"
"They were," Loftus muttered respectfully. "But surely if the Alliance sticks to our sphere of influence…"
"That would work with anyone but the Syndicate. And the Syndicate doesn't tolerate powerful neighbors…"
"The Alliance isn't hostile," Badeley began. "We live in peace with lots of other species and civilizations."
"We blew the peaceful image by fighting the Khalians…"
"But, Colonel, they began the hostilities," Badeley replied belligerently; "we were only defending ourselves."
"Oh, plug it up, Badeley," Argyll said. "Jay, what about other regiments? Can they take another all-out offensive?"
"I don't have to worry about other regiments," Jay Gruen said, slapping both hands palm down on the table, his eyes averted. "I have to worry about mine. And mine is not ready to hear the score."
"We can't keep them in the dark for long," Loftus protested. "And if we don't level with them, whatever faith they have in us as commanders flushes right down the tubes!"
"You're right there. So," and Jay Gruen glanced around at the others, "we've got approximately twenty hours to come up with a way to restore morale - which news of fighting a brand-new war is not going to do - before leaving orbit."
"But we won't be making the rendezvous for two weeks…" Badeley began.
"If someone," Loftus said, pinning Badeley with a hard glare, "isn't smart enough to figure out that we're not heading back to Alliance territory, there's nothing we could do to resurrect our once-proud regiment. And I'll just bite the bad tooth and get my discharge."
Badeley looked even more shocked but he shut his mouth.
"I'd sleep on that notion, were I you. Lofty," Damia Pharr said kindly. "Oh, Great Gods and Other Lesser Deities!" She slapped her forehead and expressions of amazement, anxiety, incredulity, and dawning hope flitted across her broad homely face. "Why didn't I think of that before!"
"Think of what?" Gruen asked with acid impatience.
"Sleep therapy! We could all use a really good sleep. I read about the therapy in the Space Medicine Journal. The Surgeon General… someone named Haldeman… recommended dream sleep therapy for troops being transported from one theater of war to another. I don't see that much difference in this application. It could work. It should work. It sure won't hurt and it'll cut out all the brawling, that is… Arvid." She spoke sharply because the supply officer was quietly napping in his comer. "You still have all those barrels of hibernation gas, don't you?"