“Nossir,” the corporal said, and shoved the beer into his hand, “We can, any evening, and you guys can’t, and, damn, you guys earn it.”
Misted him up, he’d had no expectation of that, and he hid it in a sip of beer. Guy he didn’t know. Young kid who was going to ride that carrier out there with two thousand other guys and get blown to hell if he made a mistake.
Guy’s name was Bioomfield, T.
And if Graff could have done anything personal for him—he was grateful to the lieutenant for Cpl. Bioomfield, who didn’t know him, had no personal questions, didn’t chatter at him, just let him sip his beer. He felt the alcohol go straight for his bloodstream and his head: after months of abstinence he was going to be a serious soft hit. He thought about going back to barracks and catching some sleep, he thought about his crew and Jamil and the guys he knew; and he wanted quiet around him, just quiet, no one to deal with, and when they got to the changes they were going to make in assignments—that wasn’t going to happen.
He wondered where Meg was, most of all, finally said to Bioomfield, “You have a com with you. You think you guys could locate a female about my height, red hair, shave job, Reel uniform…?”
“That one,” Bioomfield said reverently. And kept any remark he might have to himself. “Yessir.” And got on the com and said, “This is Bioomfield. Anybody on the com know where the redhead is?”
Remarks came back, evidently. Bioomfield listened to something on the earplug, struggled for a sober face, and asked, looking at him: “You want her here, sir?”
He managed a laugh. “Tell her it’s Paul Dekker asking. Cuts down on casualties.”
Chapter 16
YOU knew it was bad, Mitch put it, and trez correctly so, Meg thought—when they gave the whole barracks a beer pass, and brought cans and chips into the sacred barracks to boot. Pod sims were severely crashed, mags could be down a week, if sabotage wasn’t the cause, as was the running speculation in the barracks: in which case, plan on longer.
Beer helped the mood, though: the ping-pong game got highly rowdy, a couple of armscompers not quite in their best form, but at least everybody was laughing. Word from hospital was guardedly optimistic—the meds weren’t talking about life and death with Jamil and the guys now, but how long they’d be in hospital, about the percentage they could expect to come back and how soon. Jamil was conscious, Trace was. In the ruckus around the table, nobody questioned Ben and Sal slipping late into barracks. Ben just settled down soberly on Dek’s other side with: “Heard the news. Bad stuff,” while Sal went for beers. “Meg pulled them out,” Dek said, “Got to them fast as anybody alive could. And the sim chief was on fuckin’ duty this time, didn’t have to stop to get fuckin’ Tanzer’s fuckin’ authorization, he just braked the other mags and cut the power, was all. The worst part’s the stop. I can tell you that. —They go on and switch you guys, or is somebody going to tell me what they did, or what?”
Dek had had considerably more than one beer, not a happy drunk, but direct.
“Yeah, they switched us. Damned right they did.”
At which Dek looked at Ben and Meg recognized it was a good thing Sal came back with the beers.
Dek asked: “Why in hell didn’t you tell me?”
Ben took his beer and Meg held her bream. Ben said: “Because they could’ve said no deal. And you already knew.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yes, you did. Give me armscomp, hell, I don’t want the guns … why’d they give me the guns? I’m a numbers man. So Sal said, ‘Want to trade?’ and I said, ‘You friggin’ got it, give me the comp and I’ll get you the fire-tracks …’’’
“Bully, Ben.” Dek’s voice wobbled of a sudden. “What are they going to do about it, then?”
Like he didn’t know. Like he hadn’t told her, in a couple of minutes during which Cpl. Bloomfield had been calling the hospital, checking on Jamil.