TNE 02 To Dream of Chaos Page 8

"Oh shit," she saia.

  "Physic, "Coeur spoke Into her headset, with a strange, uneasy calm, "get down to engineering immediately. Newton, takeover engineering,"

  "If only he'd got the armor In place," Gyro said, Coeur nodded. The ship's armor was thinner than the heavy battle dress shell, but It had one thing the personal armor did not: Intricately crofted polyurethane mesh laden with hydrogen atoms to trap fast neutrons. Well-designed for that special role, it was nevertheless fairly thick and expensive, and the negligible protection it offered against direct enemy lire discouraged battle dress designers from seeing It as a necessity.

  "Sir," Deep Six said softly, "I think I've discovered what caused the burst Some kind of object—probably an asteroid—crashed into the planet and shot a plume of particles Into the magneto sphere. Quite possibly the same object that shed the meteoroid we ran into."

  "Thank you. Sixer. That's useful to know."

  But Coeur's attention, like Gyro's and Snapshot's, was less on why It had happened than on that it had happened—that, and the strangely peaceful face of Badger that looked up at them whenGaffer got his private onto thelower deck and Physic rushed into the repressurized engine room with Newton.

  Strangely peaceful, and dead.

  Chapter Five

  Although Homet had a modern dispensary, and Physic was familiar with procedures to reduce theeff ects of Ionizing radiation in the body, one look at Badger was enough to tell her they were too late. With the enhanced strength of his own battle dress. Cafferpried open the private's suit to get Its Irradiated metal away from him, but Physic's pocket medical scanner confirmed the worst.

  "It looks bad. All his internal organs were cooked by radiation."

  "There must be something you can do," Caffer said, "he was only out there a few minutes."

  "I'm sorry," Physic said, standing and pocketing her diagnostic computer. "He's dead already, But that suit of his Is pretty hot; I wouldn't leave It in the ship "

  "What about Badger?" Caffer said. "Is he radioactive?"

  "No, not too bad—It's the metal In his suit we have to worry about. You rs is fine, as long as you changeit for a vac suit and stow It in an empty compartment. His, I'd just as soon throw overboard."

  "Understood," Caffer said, his face unreadable behind the lowered visor of his armor, but his voice stiff and deliberately controlled. "I'll space the suit." Which he did. After he emerged from the starboard airlock, he found Red Eye and the remainder of the drop troops.

  "How's he doing?" the gunnery sergeant asked.

  "He didn't make It"

  "Oh Cod," Widget murmured, "Look,"Caffersald, "liookmyllmltfortheday, but there's still a piece of hull plate that needs securing topside. Red Eye, take a detail and fix It"

  "Understood," Red Eye said, raising a ponderous armored arm to salute, "Maybe I should took after the sergeant," Widget suggested.

  "I'm all right," Caffer protested.

  "I think she should be the judge of that," Red Eye countered, "Realty, sergeant," Widget said, "radialion sickness is nothing to mess around with."

  "fine—Tine—" Gaffer said, "just gel up there and fix that hull! Badger...Badger gave his life for if."

  "Don't worry," Red tye said, "we'll be done befote you know It."

  With maneuver power restored, Coeur made promptly away from the worst zone of Induced radiation and down toward Novo I en's south pole, where supersonic winds prevalent elsewhere on the planet (ell to a speed the tittle ship could manage for skimming. True to their pledge, Red Eye's work gang secured a hull patch within minutes of beginning their work, and the once-again-streamlined Hornet raced on into the dark bowels of the gas giant below.

  Along the way, flCN fougade, one of Zloga's two system defense boats, began powering toward Hornet from the nearest orbit to offer assistance, but Coeur waved her off.

  "Thanks for the offer, guys, but no need to tie you down here. We're in good order and maneuvering under our own power."

  From 20 million kilometers away, Fougade reply took two-and-3-half minutes to come back.

  "Roger, Hornet, understood. We'll monitor your channel until you jump, though, all the same," "We appreciate it, Hornet out."

  Her positive comments to the SDB notwithstanding, Coeur was tempted to turn the ship away and make her best speed for Zk>ga on the fractional fuel temaining after jump. She did not need Deep Six, however, to calculate the time to a planetary intercept with the fuel remaining—weeks at best, "Everybody dies sometime," Coeur told the navigator later, as their ship raced through the lightning-riddled methane-ammonia murk at Novolen's pole. "It just shouldn't be tike that."

  "Our greatest ooeU often speak of tragedy like this," Deep Six said, "attempting to find meaning in the lives of beings destroyed by circumstance"

  "What meaning is that?"

  "Mostly that life is meaningless—at least on an individual level."

  "That helps."

  Deep Six paused a moment before bringing up a sensitive issue that custom demanded addressing, "Sir, it occurs to me that the private had no famiSy, and requested burial in space if the circumstance arose. May) assume that we will hold such a ceremony on the way to jump point?"

  "Yes. It's eight hours to jump poinl from here, so we'll do it at the start of the morning watch,"

  "If it will help, sir, I could look up an appropriate theological observation for you to deliver."

  Coeur smiled, for the first time in hours, "That's okay, Sixer. I'm sure I'll think of something to say."

  When Vega Tom—then, as now, wanted by the Coalition— had returned Coeur and Drop Kick to the Coalition fleet at Ra two months earlier, she was disinclined to stay and chat. Instead, she put the Arse and Marine in the emergency low berth of a three-ton life-raft an.d stayed in-system just long enough to dump them overboard and hurry back to jump space on her fuei reserve.

  Fortunately for Coeur and Drop Kick, Hornet herself was on hand to rescue and revive them, giving Crowbar an unexpected toy to play with—the life raft's low berth. Unsafe to carry regular passengers in, it nevertheless gave Hornet the useful ability to put future casualties "on ice" for later treatment, and the engineer eventually Installed it in a starboard compartment once set aside for the transport of live—but frozen—livestock.

  Given the suddenness of Badger's dealh, many of his mates— led by Snapshot—advocated taking his body homeon ice. Physic, however, was adamant that his body was irrevocably dead, and 31 any raie his organs were useless /or transplantation. As per his will, he would be spaced with full honors.

  Among the crew, only Crowbar (in sick bay), Deep Six and Newton (at watch on the bridge and engine room) were not in attendance when the corpse, dressed in parade uniform and sealed in sturdy plastic, was laid in the port airlock, just ahead of Snapshot's turret. Using Dawn League custom as their precedent, they lined the corridor abalt the lock in order of rank: Coeur and Physic first then the gunners, then the sergeants Drop Kick, Gaffer and Red Eye, and finally the rest of the Marines. By accident or design, this mixed the three cavalry corporals in among their infantry counterparts for the first time as a group, and the two women Mercy and Widget found themselves discussing how little either of them really knew about Badger while the sergeants and Coeur went over last-minute details together.

  "I didn't know him very well," Mercy said in a whisper, "but he seemed like a nice guy. Weren't you two in the same unit?"

  "The same training section, yes, led by Red Eye. Fubar and Gremlin were In Gaffer's section."

  Mercy gave a glance at the muscular Fubar and balding Gremlin. Through overheard comments between Snapshot and her own sergeant, Drop Kick, Mercy suspected these two had enjoyed their Sergeant Gaffer's riding of Badger—though joy was presently far-removed from the grim aspect of their faces.

  Snapshot, meanwhile, showed no obvious emotion of any kind. Whereas Gyro stood at relaxed parade rest, legs apart and hands crossed behind her back, Snapshot stayed at full attention, hands at her sides and
eyes turned right to the open inner door of the adjacent airlock. Yet, to a person familiar with the Oriflammen—that singular people who survived near-global extinction through sheer grit and were beholden to no man or creature for that survival—there was a deeper emotion than grief or sorrow in Snapshot's demeanor.

  Respect.

  "Actually," Widget said, "none of us knew him that well. The skipper asked me what I remembered about him since we were In boot camp together, but I couldn't think of much."

  "Loner?"

  "No, not really. It's juit that...well...he didn't seem to care much about making friends, or showing off, or bitching about the Dl."

  "What's left?"

  "Training, I guess. He did like the technical stuff."

  "So what was he doing in the infantry?" Whiz Bang asked, bending past Bongo and Mercy to address Widget while remaining in line. "Why didn't he join the Navy?"

  "Sea Gypsies are usually blackballed from the Navy," Widget answered. "He probably figured ship's troops was the route to honors and OCS."

  Seeing the sergeants breaking away from Coeur and returning to their places, Mercy stilled further comment. Since Badger had not enlisted in the Arses (who. Marines joked, would take anyone with a pulse—and weren't that picky about the pulse), Mercy suspected that space duty alone was not his objective.

  Sad, Mercy thought, that a kid like that has to die to be treated with some dignity.

  'Tallin!" Gyro suddenly snapped, and all hands came to sharp attention in a single tine. A moment later—a moment weighted with heavy silence—Coeur took a step away from the line and turned 130 degrees to face the crew.

  Unlike Snapshot, who betrayed no emotion, or Caffer, whose jaw was set in a cast of hypercontrol, Coeur wore a thoughtful and introspective expression, as if she were still considering what to say. She did not, at any rate, have any notes to read from.

  "Dear comrades," she said finally, lifting her eyes, "we are gathered here to pay our last respects to Private First Class Kelly Reyes—Badger—who gave his life in defense of his ship and her crew.

  "To be perfectly frank, no one on this ship seems to have known Badger very well. He pretty much did his job and left everyone else alone to do theirs, It is not my belief, however, that Badger lived an empty or meaningless life. Those who knew him best attest that his abiding ambition was success as a ship's trooper, apparently with the ultimate objective of earning a commission. It was not an obvious goal—he didn't proclaim it loudly or advertise it to everyone he met—but I believe it defines the life and character of this man, "Badger was only 20. He had no family to speak of, and his home was pretty bleak. Badger's eyes, therefore, were on the future, and indeed, I have never met a man who was so perfect a metaphor for all of us. Our past—the world my generation left us—is a barren wasteland, and therefore, like Badger, we turn away from the past and look forward to the future, with the faith that our work will build a better age, "Since Badger did not express a religious preference, It is not our place to commend his soul to any paradise or heaven of human conception. K'evenheless, it is entirely fitting that we sustain his memory in our thoughts and commend his body to the boundless depths of space, as was his desire.

  "Let us bow our heads a moment, then, to formulate our thoughts in silence."

  Led by Coeur's example, the Arses and Marines then bowed their heads, looking up only after Coeur raised her own head and spoke to Gyro, "Order,"

  "Company," the executive officer boomed, "hand salute!"

  The assembled crewcomplied with crisp precision, and Coeur turned again to face the airlock and close the Inner hatch. A second keypad instruction then cycled tine airlock to one-quarter pressure and shut off gravity in the chamber so that Badger's body would float out gently on the gush of air drawn by vacuum through the opened outer iris valve.

  Though It was not spoken, all understood that Badger's body would not drift forever in the boundless depths of space. Instead, it would eventually spiral into the atmosphere of Novolen, where friction would incinerate the body more completely than any terrestrial cremation furnace.

  "Ready, front," Gyro said after a decent Interval, "stand at ease," when the outer iris valve was heard to shut and the airlock began to repressurize. Still at the airlock controls, however, Coeur did not yet dismiss the company, and Mercy caught a curious movement to her right. Shifting her eyes right, she caught the end of a silent statement from Snapshot to the dead Marine, expressed in the Anslan gestural language learned by many Arses and Marines for silent iine-of-sight communication. "Farewell. I hope it's better on the other side " "Amen," Red Eye seconded. "Company dismissed," Coeur sakl After the assembly broke up, most of the Marines and Arses returned promptly to their duty stations—the ship was, after all, still within the gravity well of a dangerous gas giant. A (ew were later than others to leave, offering last minute condolences to the surviving drop troops. Being Homer's captain, Coeur remained on hand after everyone else left. In a gesture of respect for Badger, eventually finding herself alone with the only other person compelled by courtesy to remain on hand.

  "I heard you talking to Physic," Gaffer said. "It sounds like Crowbar's going to make it."

  "Yeah, but he always was a lucky cuss. I'm almost tempted to think she's keeping him in bed to keep him from looking over her shoulder when she stands the jump watch."

  "Are all the jump watches covered?"

  "Yeah. Physic, Gyro and Newton can cover it. Physic did want to know if you could let Widget go, though, to keep an eye on Crowbar for a couple of days."

  "Oh, sure. No problem."

  By Gaffer's pensive expression, Coeur suspected he wanted to say something more, but wasn't quite ready tocome to the point, "You know, skipper, that was a nice eulogy you said for Badger, short and to the point. I think he would have appreciated it."

  "Maybe he did appreciate it "

  "His soul, you mean?'

  Coeur nodded once.

  "I wasn't much on church myself, as a kid," Gaffer said, "but I got religion the first time we had live fire over our heads at boot camp."

  "We got to skip that at Scout school," Coeur said, "but I know what you mean."

  "I've heard that a iot of Remnants have trouble with the Idea of God," Gaffer went on, "what with Vitus killing practically everyone alike—you know, good and bad."

  Thai doesn't seem fair to Cod," Coeur suggested. "It was humans who programmed Virus to kill, alter all."

  Gaffer shrugged. True. Say, skipper," Carter said, as if just remembering something, "I've been thinking about the mess arrangements. If you don't mind, I'd like tost art having my troops take their mess with the crew and cavalry sections—for the sake of morale."

  "Sounds fine. Thought about having your people drill with Drop Kick's, too?"

  "I was going to delay that until we got closer to Mexit, but Ifs probably a good Idea to get them used to working together. You never know when something unexpected's going to happen."

  "No, you don't."

  "By the way," Gaffer said, "would you like me to modify the roster for cleanup duty in the galley? You know, to include my troopers?"

  "Actually, we don't realty have a roster. We just use reverse alphabetical order, so the person closest to the end of the alphabet cleans up the galley first."

  "Hm. Sounds simple enough."

  "It started on our last voyage, when Whiz Sang suggested alphabetical order with Bonzo first."

  Gaffer grinned.

  "Funny, I suppose Badger would have had the duty last If he'd lived."

  "Yeah, I suppose he would."

  Chapter Six

  Since Ho/wfhad a full complement of 16 with Gaffer's troops included, the need to break mess Into sections was even more paramount after Gaffer's troops stopped taking their mess separately In the loft. In the end, Red Eye and Gremlin ate with Coeur and Drop Kick's group, while Gaffer, Fubar and Widget Joined a second group four hours later.

  Early In the seven-day transit to Orlflamme
, that second group was reinforced by a new member—Crowbar, back on his feet after a mere two days In sick bay, accompanied by Widget.

  "How're you doing, Crowbar?" Gyro asked, standing up along with her four human mates in the lounge for breakfast. Deep Six and Newton, also there, were less certain about the human custom of showing respect by standing and simply refrained from starting In on the meais on their trays.

  "I'm doing fine," the gangly engineer said, shooing away Widget as she attempted to keep a supporting hand on his elbow. "Jeei, It's not like an engineer's not going totake a litUe Juice now and then."

  "A little?" Widget said. 'That was 30,000 volts!"

  "Yeah, but at low amperage," Crowbar said, making for the autogailey to secure a meal tray. "Believe me, if the main power line surged, all you would've found was a black spot on the deck."

  "Crazy old fart," Widget mumbled, falling in behind Crowbar to get her own tray and join him at the table, "Well, I'm just glad to see you'te well," Caffer said, sitting down along with the others and raising his mug. "To absent friends,"

  "To absent friends," the lounge echoed.

  "Indeed, It is good to see you are fully functional," Deep Six said, pausing a further moment before starting In on his bowi of krill pudding.

  "Oh, I'm fine. I can't wait to see what Newton and Gyro here have done to my engine room."

  "You may rest secure In the knowledge that It is Intact and secure," Newton replied, eerily typing textinto its jranslatorwlth onearrnasltfed fermented shellfish Into Its cloaca under the table with another. The cloaca, a single orifice In the bottom of the Hiver's body, served many functions—among them Ingesting food, laying larvae and eliminating waste—but speech was not among its functions. Thus, a Hiver could talk and eat simultaneously, feeding itself with one arm and operating its translator with another, which was just one small reason why humans viewed their Hlver comrades as being extremely weird-

  "Don't forget about Physic," Gyro said. "She took over the third watch,"

  "Yeah, I heard."

  "Don't get me wrong," Gaffer Interjected, "but personally, I'll feel a lot better when we don't have to have our doctor watch the jump drive."