Well-Traveled Rhodes (Kinsella Universe Book 6) Read online

  A man and a woman were there, wearing midnight black fighter pilot shipsuits. “Hear yer holdin’ our ops officer hostage,” the man said to the Ensign Moon, standing at the compartment door. “We come t’ rescue her.”

  “A party,” explained the woman.

  Cindy contemplated the odds. Odds were, she was about to get hazed. Get it over with or be stuffy? If the latter, she thought, she could expect it to be worse later.

  “I need to get dressed,” she told them, getting up from the bed.

  The man who’d spoken first looked her up and down. “If there was a way to get ya down to the bay dressed like that, I’d give it a shot!”

  “Zodiac!” the woman said, with mock outrage. “She’s not wearing anything... on her feet! Some dirty-foot would tee off on her for going bare... foot.” There was a considerable delay between the last two words and the woman all but leered at Cindy.

  “A second,” Cindy told them.

  She went over to her locker, pulling off the shirt and tossing it inside, pulled on her shipsuit, not bothering with underwear.

  There was silence from the door, until she turned around.

  “Yer how old, girl?” the man asked.

  “Fifteen. Is that important?”

  “Stick your joy stick in there, Zodiac,” the woman said, turning to her companion, “and what Commander Shapiro would shove in you wouldn’t be a joy stick. It would hurt. It would hurt a lot.”

  The man sighed. “Might be worth it.”

  Cindy walked up to them. “Party?”

  The woman laughed, “Okay, girl! We were yanking your chain, you know?”

  “I hear,” Zodiac told Cindy, “you sassed Nagoya to his face. Told him you didn’t like how he was runnin’ the war.”

  “And he told me I could enlist or go before a Special Board.”

  “But you did it?” he insisted, “you told off the bastard to his face?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool! I had a friend once who did the same thing to the same fella. Cussed the man, she did,” he told her, laughing.

  He leaned close to Cindy, linking his arm with hers. “Once ‘pon a time, I went down the rail, off t’ do me wee part in the war.”

  He started walking and Cindy went along with him. The woman linked her arm with Cindy’s on the other side; they filled the corridor from wall to wall.

  After a few steps, he started up talking again. “I’m alive, missy ops officer, ‘cause of Hannah Sawyer. She’d gone down the rail during workup. She had the same malf I had; damn anti-torque turbine failed. Twelve g’s, I took. Broke both my arms. The automatics killed the spin, but I was out of it. Hannah Sawyer, missy, she took those twelve g’s for three seconds, before she turned off her fan manually. No bleepin’ automatics. She didn’t even break a fingernail.

  “We all know what she through, missy ops officer. Ain’t none of us who didn’t know what Hannah thought about things. ‘Bout time someone spoke up!”

  They passed a lieutenant in the corridor. Seeing them approaching, the lieutenant pasted himself against the wall until they were past. They met several others, officers and enlisted, in the corridors who did the same thing. Just one more mystery, Cindy thought.

  Then they were in an elevator, descending. A minute later, they were in a large compartment, with fifty or sixty people in it. Everyone was talking; a few couples were dancing, and there were a couple of tables in a corner where people were playing cards.

  The compartment was filled to overflowing with loud music -- a lot of drums and not much else. When they came in, Cindy could see Commander Shapiro across the room, talking to someone. Commander Shapiro saw her, said something to the woman she’d been talking with and started across the compartment.

  “Lookie, Commander,” Zodiac said brightly, “we found an ops officer! She was sleeping without any knickers! She isn’t wearing any now!”

  Commander Shapiro looked at Cindy, who looked stolidly back at her.

  “My choice, Commander,” Cindy said before the other could open her mouth.

  “Damn right!” Zodiac said. “She got nekkid, Commander! In her altogether! I thought you said she was a dirty-foot? Dirty-feet don’t get nekkid!”

  “One hears tales, Ensign,” Commander Shapiro said, “about what some secondary schools are like these days.”

  “Not mine,” Cindy told her. “Rich kids and Fleet brats. Very conservative.”

  “Well, good. You are, Ensign Rhodes, cut off from booze. If I find you have partaken of even a sip, I’ll fry your bottom. You will not proposition anyone or allow yourself to be propositioned.” She raised her voice, “Ensign Rhodes needs my permission to get friendly with anyone. Push and you’re so busted, they won’t ever find all the pieces!”

  Commander Shapiro turned to Cindy. “You get my meaning?”

  Cindy sniffed in derision. “My mother cried, when they took me away. She expected me to cry. My father kept talking about he was going to get my sentence overturned. Admiral Nagoya laughed at my father, a Federation senator, just like he laughed at me. What sentence? I’d accepted enlistment; there had been no Special Board. Now I’m here.” She waved at the man who was almost certainly the squadron Exec. “He asked me to a party. I pretty much expect to be hazed, Commander. Let’s just get it over with.”

  “Hazing?” Commander Shapiro said, laughing. “Oh, we have a variety of ways we torture new people. Do you dance?”

  “Yeah,” Cindy said, not sure what the commander meant.

  “Then, Charon’s ferry fee is three dances with Lieutenant Mongo Zodiac followed by three dances with me. Survive those, Ensign and I’ll think of something else. But that will be tomorrow and will be duty.”

  “Ya play poker, missy?” Lieutenant Zodiac asked.

  “I know the rules,”

  He laughed. “Ah! Good! We’ll teach ya to play poker right proper!” He put a lot of emphasis on the word play.

  “Music!” Commander Shapiro called out loudly, “Ballroom, six reps! Now!”

  There were a few rumbles of complaint, but not many. Lieutenant Zodiac took Cindy’s arm and they swept off.

  It was a whirl of light and sound, a world of abandon like none Cindy had ever known. After three dances with the tall lieutenant she was reduced to agonized gasping for breath.

  She’d expected waltzes; they’d done that once. They’d tangoed and fox-trotted for the others. She'd had to learn them all growing up, but she'd never danced with anyone before who had quite the -- enthusiasm and abandon -- of Mongo Zodiac.

  Lieutenant Zodiac lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of her hand. He smiled at her, and then leaned close and whispered, “Yer really pretty nekkid, Ensign. Don’t listen t’ any of us, partikulerly me!” Cindy could hear the misspelling in his voice. How odd!

  Commander Shapiro appeared and Lieutenant Zodiac bowed formally to her and then turned and grabbed the hand of a woman wearing the stripes of an enlisted technician. It was a salsa beat this time.

  “I don’t think I can dance just yet, Commander,” Cindy told her.

  “I don’t expect so. Zodiac makes up for his lack of technique with exuberance. Come, walk with me.”

  They walked towards a large table at one end of the compartment, where you had but to ask and whatever you wanted to drink was delivered up. It was doing brisk business and there were a considerable variety of requests.

  “A Coke, Chief,” Cindy told the older woman serving.

  A second later, she held a can so cold it hurt her hand. The commander took a beer and they walked a few feet further.

  “You did the right thing, coming here,” Commander Shapiro told her. “There is no hazing, though. Not really. Ballroom dancing -- that’s about it. Poker, if you’ve a mind for that, but that’s not hazing: it’s about taking your money away from you. Play only with what you can afford to lose. You will.”

  Cindy didn’t say anything; she just took short sips from her drink. It was cold enough to m
ake the inside of her mouth hurt. It tasted fine, very fine.

  “I told you the numbers.”

  Cindy nodded.

  Commander Shapiro waved around the compartment. “They all know the numbers. In six months, maybe less, maybe a lot less, half or more of the pilots in this compartment will be dead. Maybe all of them. We lost full squadrons on First Rome, every last single pilot. Once, all twenty-one in less than a second.

  “The techs don’t go out. They’re loyal though, and they do whatever they can to take care of us. They know that if the pilots fail, like as not they’ll die too. You could put a fifty ships the size of Rome, lined up end to end, in the fireball of a single gigaton burst. We screw up and they will die just as surely as we will.

  “We party hard before we go out. We party really hard after we’re back. Once we settle down and start working up, it gets serious fast. They think they have another week. Today is their last day. Tomorrow, the final work up starts. You have exactly one day to learn your job.”

  “Commander, I’ll do my best.”

  “Ensign, you will do your duty!”

  Cindy nodded at that.

  “Oh, for your information, the Fleet actually has regs for minor officers. As your CO, I stand in loco parentis. That makes me responsible for you. You will restrain your urges. No booze, no sex without my authorization, no chits for poker -- cash on the barrelhead, only. The first time I see you crapping out in the middle of the duty day because you had too much of a good time the night before, even within my general parameters, it will be the last time it happens while you’re under my command.”

  “Not me, Commander. I just thought I was going to be hazed. I wanted to get it over with.”

  “Yeah, well I hope you understood what I just told you.”

  “I understood just fine, Commander. Stay sober, chaste and attentive to my duty. Commander, I want to have a say in what’s happening. I’m not going to throw away that chance on anything like booze or a guy.”

  “Or gal,” the commander told her. “I told you, I lean that way myself. I’m not alone.”

  “Well, don’t wait up for me.”

  Commander Shapiro grinned, reached into her pocket and pulled out the two brass balls, rolling them between her fingers. “Does your knowledge extend to what these are?”

  Cindy shook her head.

  “Think of their shape, then their composition, which is brass. I have no idea who makes them. I do know that receiving a set is the highest accolade a fighter pilot can get. After someone hands you a set of these, you have nothing left to prove, to anyone, ever.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be getting any.”

  The commander grinned. “Maybe. You never know. Ensign, tomorrow we start work on your certificates and a bunch of other things. You have about six months of work that you have to do tomorrow. If I were you, I wouldn’t party late. Or hard.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Commander Shapiro tugged on her arm and a moment later, Cindy was dancing again. She’d thought Lieutenant Zodiac was good, but Commander Shapiro was in a class by herself. Sweeps and whirls, twirls and graceful gliding. Cindy was breathless again in no time, and she finally ended sitting on a table, talking to half a dozen people about just about everything imaginable -- except the war.

  There seemed to be no social distinction between officers or enlisted, pilots or techs. It was as likely one of the pilots would go off to get drinks for the table as a tech or a chief. When someone talked, people paid attention; they might start laughing the second you got done talking, but they paid attention until then and didn't interrupt.

  A while later, Lieutenant Zodiac presented himself in front of her, reaching for her hand and then once again kissing the back of her wrist. “I have been directed, missy ops officer, to escort you back to yer quarters.”

  Cindy nodded and got up. There were a chorus of goodbyes and a moment later they were walking down a corridor. Zodiac kept up a bright patter about a thousand things, trivial things. Twice they passed people in the corridors; both times those people pressed themselves against the walls as they went by.

  “Why do they do that?” Cindy asked.

  Zodiac laughed. “We’re always short pilots. Those are old Romans. They know the score. We’re nice folks -- unless or until you upset one of us. Then you end up drafted for pilot training. Aboard, of course. A sixty-day really quickie transition course, then you go down the rails for real. Unless we step in it, like we did for First Rome. Some of them went down the rails after six weeks.”

  “That could happen to me,” Cindy said without thinking.

  Zodiac stopped and turned to her. Cindy stopped as well and faced him. She was pretty sure she’d said something that had upset him.

  Evidently, she had that wrong, because Zodiac leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Missy ops officer, you have a white shipsuit. Pilots are mean bastards when we have to be, competitive as all get out. But we know we need a ship to come back to. Cocky, yeah, we’re cocky. Meaner ‘n snake shit! Even so, we don’t mess with white suits, missy. No, sir! The onliest way you go down a rail is if you ask for it -- one way or 'tother.

  “Missy ops officer, what you are doin’, if ya can, is important. This is a good idea, not having a pilot for ops officer; puttin' a line officer in the slot instead.

  “But we still desperately need pilots, missy. You volunteer and they’ll take you. You do that anytime soon and ya’s certified bonkers. Three, four months from now, maybe, if ya’s just a little bonkers. Do it after we start to egress our deployment, we’ll get you in one of our transition classes.

  “Ya’s got dreams, missy! You listen to me! Don’t go doin’ something stupid, thinkin’ you gotta earn a pair of brass balls! Don’t do it!” He laughed then, because a female senior lieutenant in a ship’s administration off-white shipsuit was approaching, “Ya’s altogether too pretty nekkid to go do something stupit!”

  The other lieutenant scowled, stopped and spoke to Zodiac. “You’re blocking the corridor, Lieutenant.”

  Zodiac’s eyes gleamed. “Don’t suppose ya’s has a flight certificate, eh, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m BuShips; it’s part of my duties to fly small craft.”

  “I’ll need your name, Lieutenant,” Zodiac said, his accent falling away. “For our records. If things get toasty, we’ll need all the qualified pilots we can get.” Zodiac laughed, waving at his black shipsuit. “You too can wear the unadorned black of a fighter pilot! Think what a hit you’ll be with the gents!”

  “Don’t be absurd!”

  “Anyone tell you, Lieutenant, why you don’t sass fighter pilots? Why if you see one or more of us coming, you get out of the fucking way?”

  “Language, Lieutenant! Watch your language!”

  “You’re fucking complaining about my fucking language? Do you think Captain Sanchez or Admiral Kinney care what the fuck I tell some dirty-foot snot from BuShips?”

  “You’re insubordinate!”

  Zodiac laughed. “You need to get the certificate in ship’s law!”

  “You need to know that permitting children aboard a warship, dressing them up in a Fleet shipsuit, is against regulations,” the lieutenant blustered.

  Up until that point, Cindy had thought that Zodiac was just messing with the woman, making it emphatically clear what he’d been talking to her about.

  Zodiac stepped back; his voice went from mocking, to coldly formal. “This officer is Two Squadron’s operations officer. As such, it’s her task to put our fighters in the right place at the right time to do our duty. Our lives depend on her. Your life depends on her and her peers, as do the lives of every other man and woman aboard Rome!”

  “Who are you trying to kid? She isn’t old enough to have boobs!”

  She’d seen Zodiac dance; it shouldn’t been a surprise to see how fast he could move. Lord! Was he fast! One second he was standing still, the next he had the lieutenant pressed against the corridor wall, h
is arm across the woman’s throat, pressing down.

  “Ensign Rhodes, use your phone,” Zodiac told her. “Push Star 9, tell the sergeant of the guard that Lieutenant Mongo Zodiac is about t’ kill him some dirty-foot pond scum!”

  “You’ll get in trouble!” Cindy said, appalled.

  “Ya don’t make that there call, thisy girl dies here and now, missy ops officer! Make the call!”

  Cindy reached for her phone and dialed the number.

  A gruff voice said, “Sergeant of the Guard!”

  Cindy repeated Zodiac’s message.

  The voice on the other end laughed. “Is he talking Ozark or polite?”

  Cindy thought, and then realized that Zodiac had switched accents again. “Well, he’s not being polite and his language isn’t what it could be.”

  “I’ll have a man right there, forthwith. Do try to restrain Lieutenant Zodiac, Ensign Rhodes.”

  She blinked in surprise, and then realized she’d called them; they would know whose phone it was.

  “I don’t care who you are,” the lieutenant with her back to the wall said. “You’re finished, done, through! I’ll see you court-martialed!”

  “Ya silly git! Yer a lieutenant! T’ only thing you get to decide is ya gets to pick one of a dozen wardroom tables ya sit at -- the rest ya can’t sit at! Read between the lines, fool!”

  There was a drumming of running footsteps and a Marine in tiger stripe fatigues appeared, pistol drawn. “Stand away, Lieutenant Zodiac!”

  “She bad-mouthed Second Squadron’s ops officer!”

  “Zodiac, I said stand aside!”

  The lieutenant against the wall spoke again, “He’s insane! He’s got a teenage girl he’s trying to sneak into his quarters! If she is a teenager! She doesn’t even have boobs!”

  Zodiac had moved next to Cindy, breathing hard, his eyes angry. If there was ever a visual example of the metaphor “spitting fire,” it had to be Zodiac just then, she thought. Still, she was a little surprised when he didn’t say anything. It turned out he didn’t have to.

  The Marine, a corporal, stepped close to the lieutenant against the wall and shoved his pistol, hard, against the woman’s throat, aiming upwards. There was an obvious dimple in her skin from the barrel.