I’d like you to meet Star-Captain Susarma Lear.”
“Bastard!” said Finn. I charitably assumed that he was referring to Ayub Khan. I saw him reach out to open the valve, to flood the docking bay with vile Uranian bugs. He didn’t even bother to seal his helmet.
There was only one thing I could do.
I shot him in the face. He must have got a mouthful of the stuff, because he folded up with hardly a moment’s delay. The tank remained inviolate. As he collapsed, the expression of shocked surprise on his face turned gradually to a look of venomous hatred. There was no mistaking the fact that it was aimed at me.
Susarma Lear turned round and relieved me of the gun.
“That’s what I like about you, Rousseau,” she said. “When the chips are down, you always come through.”
CHAPTER SIX
I followed Susarma Lear down the spur to the corridor “below”, where three members of the local garrison, headed by Lieutenant Kramin, were waiting. I was relieved to observe that Blackledge wasn’t with them. Kramin saluted with enthusiasm. He looked obscenely self-satisfied, and he was wearing a very broad smile.
The smile didn’t last long.
Susarma Lear looked me up and down, then gave the lieutenant one of her best gorgon stares.
“Who hit this man?” she demanded.
Kramin looked startled. “One of my men got a little carried away, sir, while we were making the arrest.”
“You were told to apprehend him,” she said, silkily. “You were specifically told that he was not to be harmed.”
That was news to me. I was puzzled, but glad to hear it.
She turned her Medusan expression upon me, then. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Rousseau?”
“I was trying to escape,” I told her, meeting her gaze as steadily as I could. “We’d have got away with it, too, if some bastard hadn’t stolen my starship.”
“Lieutenant Kramin,” she said, in that same ominously smooth tone. “What happened to Rousseau’s spaceship?”
“We put grabs on it and hauled it into the belly of a scavenger,” said Kramin, not quite certain whether it was safe to be proud of his initiative. “It’s on its way to Oberon. Major Kar Ping wanted to...investigate it.”
“Are you aware, Lieutenant Kramin, of the regulations concerning looting?” she said.
“Looting! This man’s a Star Force....” He bit off the rest of the sentence, remembering who he was talking to. He began again: “Major Kar Ping....” He put just a slight stress on the word ‘Major’, and this time he deliberately let the rest of the sentence hang.
When in doubt, pass the buck. Quickly.
Susarma Lear pulled some kind of printout flimsy from her pants pocket, and handed it to Kramin. “Your orders, lieutenant,” she said. “But first—there’s a man floating around in the docking bay. We don’t want him bumping into anything, do we?” She jerked a thumb in the direction of the hatchway through which we’d come. Then she reached out to put her hand on my shoulder, and said: “I’ll take care of Trooper Rousseau.”
I expected to be taken back to my makeshift cell, but this turned out to be undue pessimism on my part. Instead, we were shown by one of Kramin’s men to a guest cabin. It wasn’t so very different from the one where I’d been imprisoned, but it was bigger, with a side-door that connected to a sitting-room. On a microworld, this was what passed for the height of luxury. Star-Captain Lear was clearly an honored guest. She looked around, then told the trooper to get the spare room ready.
“We’re having a little dinner party,” she told me. “I suppose it’s nearer breakfast time, for you, but the microworlders will be pleased to fall in with ship’s time. They haven’t had this much fun in years. Ayub Khan will be along, and a diplomat named Valdavia. Also a Tetron bioscientist named 673-Nisreen. You do know enough about protocol to handle yourself, don’t you?”
By now, I was beginning to realize that things were not quite as they had seemed. Deserters are not often invited to dine at the high table.
“What the hell’s going on?” I asked her. “You pull a filthy trick like listing me as a deserter, but now I’m on your guest list. You put the entire outer system on alert to have me arrested, and now you’re treating me like a long-lost friend—why?”
“Technically,” she said, with affected weariness, “you are a deserter.” As she spoke she went back into the cabin and sat down on the bunk. She didn’t invite me to sit, so I didn’t. “I had the power to sign you on, but I didn’t have the authority to discharge you. Technically. Despite what you might think, though, the Star Force is reasonably protective of its honor, and if circumstances hadn’t been what they are, the discharge would have been allowed to stand.
“I really am sorry about the alert—it wasn’t my idea. If it had been up to me, I’d have waited for your ship to turn up, and asked you nicely for your co-operation, but my superiors weren’t convinced that you were the volunteering kind, and in the last few years they’ve got out of the habit of asking nicely. They just decide what they want done, and then hand down orders. You were needed, so they decided to fish you out of the pond quickly and unceremoniously, using the first excuse that came to mind. By ‘they’ I mean Star Force Command—and the politicians on Earth. You’ve become an important man, Rousseau.”
She pulled out another batch of flimsies from her pants, and smoothed them out on the bunk. She put aside a sheet for herself, and gave three to me.
“The top one drops all outstanding charges against you,” she said. “It restores your clean record with the Force. The second one confirms your reconscription and your assignment to special duties. The third one is your commission.”
I shuffled aside the first two to reach the most interesting one. I read it through quickly, and then again, more slowly. I couldn’t believe what it seemed to be telling me.
“Is this a joke?” I asked. It was a stupid question. She wasn’t given to joking. She shook her head.
“If I’m reading this right,” I said, “I’m a Star-Captain.”
“As of this moment,” she confirmed. “That’s the fastest rise through the ranks any member of the Star Force ever had. Faster than any battlefield commission. When I drafted you before, you were just some slob in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, you’re an expert, and the Star Force intends to look after you—after its fashion.”
There’d be time to ask what kind of an expert I was at a later time. For the moment, there were more appealing aspects of the situation.
“It means,” I said, with a little grin, “that you don’t outrank me.”
She shook her head again, and waved the flimsy that she’d kept. “As of now,” she said, “I’m a lieutenant-colonel. I’m having our new uniforms sent out from the ship, so we can be properly dressed for dinner.”
I shook my head, helplessly. “Why?” I demanded.
“Mother Earth needs us,” she said. “Very badly, it seems. I’ve been told that the political future of the human race may depend on us. Even allowing for military hyperbole, it signifies that our political masters are anxious for us to play ball. We aren’t pawns any more, Star-Captain Rousseau—we’ve been promoted to pieces.”
I could tell that she wasn’t trying to be infuriating. She didn’t have John Finn’s personality defects, though she had a fine collection of her own. I didn’t want to stand there repeating the word ‘why?’ like a parrot, so I just waited for her to get around to giving me the news. She obviously approved of my sense of discipline, because she got straight to the point.
“A matter of days after you left