Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Read online

“I learned this song in 25th FIST,” Pasquin said. “It’s called ‘Erika.’ ” He nodded at Dean’s companion, whose name just happened to be Erika. “No offense to the beautiful lady here.” Erika, who’d been leaning her head on Dean’s shoulder, smiled and blushed. “It’s just coincidence, Erika, and the song’s not dirty or insulting.” Several men loudly groaned their disappointment. Pasquin gave them the finger. “It was the unofficial marching song of 25th FIST,” he continued. “It’s an old song that’s come down from the twentieth century or earlier. It’s in a good march tempo. Here, listen . . .” He hummed a few bars. “Get it? Here . . .” He sang the first verse: “In the meadow blooms a tiny flower.” Boom-boom-boom-boom, he stamped the floor with his foot to get the cadence. “And we call her Erika! Get it?” He took a deep breath and sang:

  “In the meadow blooms a tiny flower / And we call her Erika.

  The bees cannot resist her power / Little Erika,

  ’Cause her heart is soft and sweet

  Her petals trim and neat / Dainty little Erika!

  In the village lives a tiny maid / And we call her Erika.

  She’s prim and sweet and oh, so staid / Little Erika!

  Yet she lets us kiss her, but not too long

  And when we’re done we sing this song:

  ‘In the meadow blooms a tiny flower / And we call her Erika . . .’ ”

  Pasquin’s singing voice was not the best, but the tune was catchy, and as Pasquin warmed to his singing, he got better. Soon others began to join in, hesitantly at first and then with more confidence as they learned the words. Everyone at the table began to sing, and as they sang they stamped their feet at the appropriate place in the music—boom-boom-boom-boom!—like a bass drum beating out the cadence. When they got to the name Erika, they shouted it out at the top of their voices so it rang in the rafters far above them. The real Erika’s face turned brick red with pleased embarrassment, and Owen the woo actually began to sway in time to the music.

  It was a soldier’s song, the kind men far from home have sung since the dawn of warfare to keep up morale. But even if hearing it for the first time—as the men of third platoon were—its subject was familiar and dear to all men who’ve ever worn a uniform. Each man had known an Erika back home, or in a foreign town somewhere, or hoped he would someday meet an Erika. Young men need young women as much to comfort their souls as to relieve their hormonal urges, and “Erika” emphasized the gentler side of sexual relations. It made Claypoole think of Katie, back on Havanagas; and despite the real Erika snug against his side, Dean was reminded of Hway back on Wanderjahr. Every man at the table cast his thoughts back to some Erika, not thinking about sex with her, just wanting to relive the experience for a few moments.

  But they were young men, and young Marines at that, and ten seconds after the music was done they’d all be thinking about the women around them again.

  Pasquin jumped up on the table and led them in chorus after chorus. Between the Marines’ singing and stamping their feet in the banquet hall and the sailors’ dancing in the bar, the whole building shook.

  A crash echoed through the building as the door to Big Barb’s private office suddenly slammed open and she sallied forth, her vast bulk bouncing startled men out of the way. But the music and dancing did not slow a beat. She headed straight to the banquet hall. Big though she was, none of the Marines noticed her rolling down on them. Pasquin squawked in mid-verse as she grabbed him, one hand on the seat of his pants, the other by his shirt collar. She picked him up bodily and dropped him heavily into an empty chair.

  Huffing and puffing with the effort, she waggled a massive finger at Gunnery Sergeant Bass. “Charlie!” she gasped, “vat you doing? Ve haf der erdquake, mine whole place comin’ crashin’ down!”

  Everyone went silent for a moment. Several patrons from the bar, expecting the fight of the century, stuck their heads cautiously through the door to watch. And then Bass began to laugh. Big Barb couldn’t help herself. She smiled. She was soft on Gunny Bass. “Siddown with me, Barb, and have a goddamned beer,” he said.

  “Vell . . .” Big Barb frowned at the Marines. “Okay! Bud only one.” She eagerly slid into a chair beside Bass, snatched a nearby stein and drank. She made a terrible noise, spit the beer out in a spray and threw the stein across the room. “Goddamn! Somebuddy, he puts oud his segar in dat one!” A barmaid quickly offered her mistress a fresh stein, and she drank thirstily. “Aaah.” She wiped foam off her upper lip and belched. “Pasquin! Dat song, is gut one, ya! You sings gut too. Owen, he likes it too, dat liddle woo! But you gotta stop pounding wit der feets! You crazy Marines, you gonna wreck my place!” She laughed and drained the rest of the beer in one vast gulp. Someone thrust a full stein into her massive hand and she drank again, one arm draped affectionately across Bass’s shoulders.

  “Charlie, ven ve gettink married?” Barb roared, her chins jiggling with merriment. Although she was huge, Barb—whose real name was Freya Banak—carried her massive weight well. She was more a solid woman than a fat one.

  “Tonight! Right goddamn now!” Bass shouted, pounding the table enthusiastically. The Marines roared approval. Bass winked clandestinely at Barb and her face turned a bit redder. She was reminded of that time Bass was alone with her in her office . . . that had been a sweet moment, but that was all it had been, just a moment. Big Barb and Charlie Bass were the kind of man and woman who could be good friends but never man and wife. Bass grinned fiercely at Barb over the rim of his stein as a thought struck him: on a cold night, what did a man need most, another blanket or an ample woman? And a girl, even a girl like Big Barb, could dream.

  The onlookers at the door, realizing it would be just another night of drinking and bonhomie, returned to the dancers in the bar, and Big Barb’s establishment settled down once again into the dull roar of drunken camaraderie.

  Ten kilometers from Camp Ellis lay Mainside, the fleet naval base that was the hub of Confederation military operations for that quadrant of Human Space where Thorsfinni’s World was located. Ten kilometers from Mainside was the dependent housing area where the men who were authorized to have their families with them lived. Marines in the grade of staff sergeant and up and equivalent naval ratings were allowed to marry, but only those men occupying “key” command and staff positions could have their families with them on hardship tours. And if a man was authorized to have his family with him, his tour was automatically extended. The Confederation Navy was not about to ship dependents to far-off worlds and then let their sponsors return to civilization on a normal two year rotation. Not that that meant much to the men of 34th FIST just then; they’d found out that somebody had secretly slapped them with involuntary extensions.

  The dependent housing on Thorsfinni’s World was known as Safe Harbor and consisted of two separate areas—one for the enlisted’s families and one for the officers’. Everything the residents needed was provided for at Safe Harbor—a commissary, an exchange, medical facilities, a school for the children, recreational facilities. Regular transportation between Safe Harbor, Mainside, and Camp Ellis was also provided. For most of the family members a trip to Mainside was a regular outing; dependents were not normally allowed on Camp Ellis. But trips to New Oslo and other cities were a regular feature of the recreational programs available to them.

  Senior field-grade officers—commanders, lieutenants colonel, colonels, and navy captains—occupied single-family dwellings; all others lived in apartment-style buildings. The grade of the sponsor and the number of dependents in his family determined the size of individual quarters. All furnishings were provided by the navy and were passed from family to family until they wore out. The Confederation was not about to bear the expense of shipping anyone’s furniture from one side of Human Space to another. Permanent personal possessions were generally limited to the family’s personal transportation mass allowance, and when a family rotated out of Thorsfinni’s World, the things it had acquired while there were either given away or so
ld to those who were staying, or to new families just coming in.

  Life could be dull at Safe Harbor, but it was better than living years away from husbands and fathers.

  Unmarried men called navy wives “camp followers” (or worse) and their children “navy brats” (and much, much, worse), and at Camp Ellis the enlisted Marines referred to Safe Harbor disparagingly as the “Bay of Pigs.”

  In general, the Confederation military policy was that if it wanted its men to have wives, they’d have been issued one.

  Captain Lewis Conorado trudged wearily up the sidewalk into Tarawa Terrace, the apartment building housing the families of company-grade officers. The Conorados had not been living there long. Because of the shortage of family quarters when he was assigned to 34th FIST, his family had originally been placed in spare housing operated by the Confederation’s embassy in New Oslo. Their apartment in Tarawa Terrace had only recently been vacated by a navy family.

  In the lobby, the children of a naval lieutenant in the supply corps were screaming shrilly at their play. The shrieks reverberated painfully off the bare walls and floor. “Shaddup!” Conorado bellowed. The children went silent instantly; Conorado was known in the community as a man who tolerated no insubordination.

  One of the children had urinated in the corner by the elevators, and the acrid odor was heavy in the still air of the lobby. Conorado wrinkled his nose. “Who did that?” he demanded, pointing a rigid finger at the large puddle. There were three of them, ranging in age from six to nine. None answered. Conorado addressed the eldest child: “Brian, you are in charge of your brother and sister. You let it happen, you clean it up. If it’s still here when I come down, I’m coming after you.” He pressed his palm into the entry pad and the elevator door hissed open. He turned and smiled fiercely at Brian as the doors closed.

  The Conorados’ one-bedroom apartment was on the top floor of the building. As the building’s senior occupant, Captain Conorado could have squeezed a two-bedroom apartment out of the billeting officer, but he felt that he and his wife, Marta, should give up the larger quarters for some officer whose family was larger.

  Two hours later, when the Conorados descended to the lobby on their way to the commissary, the noisy children were gone. But the puddle was still there.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  TWO

  Colonel Israel Ramadan, deputy commander of 34th FIST, believed firmly that a Marine officer should at all times demonstrate austerity in his personal lifestyle and official conduct. He made it a point to eat in the enlisted messes several times each week, and when a unit went on a field problem he would often accompany it and share living conditions with the men. In this regard he was a carbon copy of Brigadier Sturgeon, the FIST commander. The two officers complemented each other perfectly.

  Ramadan’s bachelor living quarters were spartan, enlivened only by a wall of bookshelves containing volumes of military classics bound in the old-fashioned way. While almost everyone else was satisfied to get his reading material from vids and trids, Colonel Ramadan had spent a fortune collecting his books, and he had read them all many times. Books were his greatest indulgence.

  But Colonel Ramadan had one other weakness, if you could call it that. He loved fine cigars. Oh, there were the Clintons and the Fidels and they satisfied most smokers. But for the real connoisseur, the Clintons left a lingering and slightly unpleasant aftertaste, and the Fidels, although an excellent smoke, were too big, too “long-winded”—at 400mm, they just seemed to go on and on. His favorites were Davidoffs, particularly the Anniversario No. 2 brand. The cigars were grown and produced on New Geneve according to the centuries-old traditions of the Davidoff family. Rumor had it they were rolled on the thighs of nubile native maidens just out of puberty. A box of twenty-five cost the colonel a month’s pay. They were his only indulgence other than his books. He husbanded his supply carefully because it took months to get a reorder. He owned three state-of-the-art humidors, one for the cigars in his quarters, one for those he kept in his office, and the third a portable unit he kept filled when traveling.

  That morning, as he sat at his desk reviewing the incoming message traffic from Fleet, he decided to have an Anniversario. He pressed a button on the office humidor and its lid hissed open, releasing the rich aromatic fragrance of the cigars stored inside. He picked one carefully and ran it under his nose. Ah, delicious! He noted there were only ten left. Hmm. Must bring some more from my quarters, he thought, and then: Better put in a reorder! It could take up to eight months for a new shipment to reach him. He calculated: 240 days, and he had about six boxes left. That’d be one cigar every other day with a few left over for special occasions. In a pinch he could get some Fidels from New Oslo. Perhaps the tobacconist he dealt with there might even have an Anniversario or two in his private stock. A man could never have enough ammo or enough good cigars!

  Carefully, the colonel clipped the end off his cigar and struck an old-fashioned sulfur match. He drew slowly as he rolled the cigar over the flame, drawing in the rich, aromatic smoke and exhaling luxuriously. Sulfur matches were also an indulgence, but a real connoisseur never lighted a good cigar with one of those mechanical devices! Thank God the ’Finnis were traditionalists who appreciated their cigars. Sulfur matches were hard to get anywhere else.

  Wreathed in cigar smoke, Colonel Ramadan briefly reviewed the incoming message traffic on his screen. He could have delegated the chore, but as Brigadier Sturgeon’s deputy he felt it his responsibility to check everything personally to be absolutely certain the action and information assignments were correct. He was careful to forward to the brigadier a copy of every message he thought would interest him, but he directed routine traffic to the appropriate staff office, with terse comments where necessary. He and Brigadier Sturgeon had worked together for so long, Ramadan knew precisely what the FIST commander would want to see.

  Suddenly the computer bleeped and a yellow warning flashed across the screen: SPECAT! EYES ONLY, CO 34TH FIST.

  “Oh, shit!” Ramadan muttered. A deployment order. The colonel was both excited and disappointed. Excited because any Marine worth his salt wants action; disappointed because he knew he would not deploy; he was still on a light-duty profile after being severely injured in a Dragon accident.

  He set the cigar in an ashtray and typed in his password. Only he, the F2, and F3—intelligence and operations officers—and Brigadier Sturgeon were authorized to read “special category” messages. And the F2 only got them if he and the brigadier agreed he should see them. The message flashed on his screen. It was very short but he had to read it twice. “Print!” he said to the system.

  Then: “Delete!” The hardcopy would suffice to execute the order.

  “Get me the brigadier!” he ordered the computer system. The screen went blank for an instant, and then Brigadier Ted Sturgeon’s face appeared. “Sir, I’ve got to see you right away. Message from Fleet.”

  “Come,” Sturgeon replied.

  Colonel Ramadan limped from his office so quickly he left the Anniversario smoldering in the ashtray.

  Stor Evdal, mayor of Bronnysund, sat contentedly in a comfortable chair at the coffee table in Brigadier Sturgeon’s office. Mayor Evdal visited the brigadier regularly to coordinate and discuss events of mutual interest with the commander of 34th FIST, usually some terrific fight the night before between his townspeople and 34th FIST’s Marines. But far from complaining about the incidents, Evdal enjoyed Monday-morning quarterbacking the fights. The citizens of Bronnys liked fighting second only to drinking, and often Evdal thought that without the fights, he might not be reelected when his term of office was finally up.

  In his eighties, Stor Evdal was still as rugged as the fjords that ringed the seacoast he had fished for most of his life. He was a big, hardy man with a deep voice, rugged, hamlike fists scarred by years of deckwork, and huge mustaches that drooped down the sides of his face. He was smoking a Fidel, courtesy of Brigadier Sturgeon’s private su
pply. The purpose of his visit was to discuss the Marines’ “Toys for Tots,” the annual Christmas drive to collect toys for the children of Bronnysund. Privately, some enlisted men referred to the program as “Toys for Snots,” but generally the Marines derived a lot of satisfaction from participation in the program.

  “You know,” Mayor Evdal said as he regarded his cigar appreciatively, “the worse times for us here is when da Marines is on deployment. Yah. Tings too quiet den for us in Bronnys!” They both laughed.

  “Those are usually bad times for us too, Your Honor,” Sturgeon replied.

  “Huh? Oh,” Evdal nodded, “yah, you lose some gud fellows on dose deployments. Gud fellows.” He nodded seriously. “Well,” he prepared to get up, “den we is set for der toys raising program dis year! By golly, Brigadier, I can’t tell you how much we appreciated vat you does for us!”

  Brigadier Sturgeon’s computer bleeped. “Sir, I’ve got to see you right away. Message from Fleet,” Colonel Ramadan said.

  “Come,” he told the machine. Then: “Well, Your Honor, business intrudes.” He smiled apologetically and extended his hand as he rose. They shook.

  “Anodder of dem goddamn ‘deployments’ maybe?” Evdal asked. He held up his hand. “I knows, business iss business but schnapps is schnapps, and we done talkin’ about da schnapps. Tank you agin, Brigadier, and God bless.” He turned to go.

  “Your Honor, even if it is another deployment, the stay-behinds will take care of the toy program. My Marines have never left anyone in the lurch and we aren’t going to start now, especially not your kids.”

  Evdal paused and drew deeply on his cigar. “Yah,” he said gravely, “we all knows dat too.” He nodded amiably at Colonel Ramadan as he left.

  “Look at this goddamned thing!” Ramadan raged.

  Sturgeon glanced briefly at the paper. It ordered Captain Lewis Conorado to report to Headquarters Marine Corps in Fargo on Earth by the quickest possible method of transportation. Nothing else, just a fund citation to pay for his transportation. Sturgeon sighed. “I know what this is, Ram. Please sit down.”