“This is enough of an injustice,” Ciler said. “They didn’t need to add pointless brutality. I—all of us—appreciate it very much.”
“If they want to knock somebody around so bad,” Flea said, “there’s plenty of Spooks out there they can go after before they get down to old ladies.”
“Can I ask you about the place we’re going?” Ciler said. “BZ 459. Do you know of any military reason a colony should be sent there?”
Children at the top of the slide started pushing their fellows in front of them. Parents called nervously and stepped over to intervene.
Abbado looked at Ciler. He wondered if “doctor” meant Ciler was a medic. Seemed like half the adults on this ship were a doctor of one kind or another, though not many were the sort you’d want around to sew up the after-action damage.
“Look, doc,” he said, “we’re just strikers. You probably know more about this business than we do. Even the major, he just does what he’s told. We stopped being subject to the Pop Authority when we enlisted.”
“I thought as much,” Ciler said. “Still, I hoped someone might have some insight. Manager al-Ibrahimi merely says that it’s his duty to set up a viable colony, and the reasons behind the decision are no proper concern for him or us.”
The doctor shook his head. “There are eighty-four children under the age of twelve on this vessel,” he said. “I’m a pediatrician, you see. And that pig on Deck 25 tells me that I shouldn’t be concerned about why those children are being sent to Hell.”
Ciler glared at the strikers, his dark eyes full of grim fury. “This is not a normal Population Authority initiative. The team that surveyed the planet listed it as WHOLLY UNSUITED FOR COLONIZATION, did you know? Officially it’s BZ 459, but if you look into the Survey Team’s notes you’ll find that among themselves they called it Hell. And that’s where these children are going!”
“Now, doc,” Abbado said. He’d had the same thought, but it wouldn’t do any good to say so. “Don’t let what some jerk-off who never got out of orbit says get to you.”
“Yeah, I figure the sarge is right,” Glasebrook said. “I mean, they wouldn’t really put civilians on a place that bad.”
Abbado nodded with false enthusiasm. “I guess there’s about a hundred planets somebody or other called Hell,” he said. “It’s about as common as Paradise and I tell you, I’ve been on some of both. There’s not that much to choose between them once you been there a while. It’s not going to be Hell.”
Caius Blohm was standing a few feet away from the other strikers, apparently watching the playing children. He turned to Abbado and said, “You got that right, sarge. Hell isn’t a planet.”
Blohm saluted with a wry smile and walked off toward the lifts.
Sergeant Gabrilovitch got up from the poker game with Second Platoon strikers when Blohm reentered the compartment. “I’m out,” he said, putting the remainder of his stake in his pocket. “Maybe I ought to check out the civvie decks and see if I’m lucky in love.”
They were playing for military scrip. Since C41 wouldn’t be near a place where scrip (or for that matter, Unity Credit Chips) bought anything for at least six months, the plastic bills were just easier to count than toothpicks or beans.
“Want to sit in, Blohm?” a striker asked.
“Naw,” Blohm said. “Maybe tonight. You’ll still be playing.”
“Hey, you got something better to do?” said the striker who was shuffling the deck.
“You been below?” Gabrilovitch asked. “Have any luck?”
Blohm shrugged. “I was just looking around,” he said. His helmet hung from the end of his bunk. He held it, working the visor up and down a couple times.
He looked at his sergeant. “It’s funny being around civilians like this, you know?”
Gabrilovitch nodded. The poker game resumed behind the two scouts. It would continue until the ship was in the final stages of landing.
The game didn’t keep the others in the compartment awake. If anybody cared he could crawl into his null sack and cut himself off completely from the outside world, card games and all. That wasn’t really necessary, though, because for a striker in the field sleeping was something you did when you got a chance. “The right conditions” might include shellfire, four inches of water where you lay, and drenching rain—all at the same time.