Steel Walls and Dirt Drops (3 page)

Misha turned to the restless queue seeking entry. “All right,
ladies and gentlemen. APES form a single line to your left. Spacers form a line to your right. Anyone who is from the Marshal Service or a civilian on official business kindly step to the holding area on your right. We will not hold you there for long and the lieutenant will personally see to your entrance.”

She turned to
Beaudry, “Trooper, you will take your place in the gauntlet. Admit anyone from the 1392nd, but you will instruct him or her not to leave this area. Move!”

The queue dissolved and as if by magic
, coalescing into two ragged lines and a cluster of individuals in the holding area.

“Everyone is to expedite entrance
,” she shouted loud over the crowd noise. “Please have your glass-pack out and ready if you require documents to prove admittance. Once you have gained entrance, please move out of the area to make room for those behind you. All you APES, no yakking. Just clear the gates. Do it now!”

Misha
stepped to the side and watched the lines surge forward as if a dam had broken open. The APES line was moving at double time. She nodded approval as a trooper motioned another APE to stand behind him. The man’s glass-pack was in his hand waiting for review. He was obviously checking into a new command, just as she was. A trooper from his unit set him aside to get the line clear. Even seconds and thirds were getting into the act, moving quickly and encouraging the others around them. She almost winced when she saw a fourth caught up in the rush move through the line. The man smiled in approval as he went past.

T
he AMSF lieutenant was staring google-eyed at the rush of people. Misha tapped him on the shoulder and gestured pointedly toward the holding area at the small knot of people waiting patiently for his attention. The man rushed forward like a fish moving upstream now that he had a purpose he could grasp.

Misha felt a presence behind her and turned to face an older woman in the red utility
APES work uniform with a second-level commander's X on her collar. The woman was out of breath, a true indication she had given up on her daily exercise routine some time ago. She looked old for APES service with gray streaks in her hair, GerinAid notwithstanding.

“Second Moraft,
sir, reporting as ordered.”

Misha said, “Mister Moraft, are you the
second in charge of details today?”

“No,
sir, that would be Second Aardmricksdottir, but she got jammed up. I volunteered to come down in her place. I brought Spakney to cover for Beaudry,” Moraft said.

“Thank you, Mr. Moraft. I appreciate your efforts, but it doesn’t look like
Beaudry has had anything to do.” Misha pointed to where Beaudry stood alone. No other member of her command stood near him. “It appears we had a trooper on gate duty when there were no members of our unit off ship. My comm unit is not channeled to the 1392nd, so if you would please call Second Aardmricksdottir to do a roster count and if necessary issue an immediate recall signal. We will not need Beaudry or Spakney on the gate if we don’t have anyone unaccounted for.”

Misha left Moraft and Trooper Spakney on gate duty waiting for any stragglers. She herded Beaudry along the corridor passing by half a dozen ramps leading to various military spacecraft. The space around most ramps was liberally littered with crew lounging around, laughing, talking and just breathing station air. The Kiirkegaard ramp space was empty except for four armed AMSF security guards standing duty. The AMSF required a ship’s guard on duty at the main hatch when in a port other than a military installation, but most captains ignored the rule on Heaven’s Gate as it was about half military. Having armed guards was a bit much, but at least the Kiirkegaard’s captain had not requested APES in a combat suit as back up to the guards as he might have done in some backwater civilian ports.

She slowed her march into the ship to report in, but
Beaudry skittered around her and past the guards without a glance in their direction. She shrugged and followed. It was the ship captain’s business if he did not need or want people reporting in and out. The glass pack in her pocket would automatically report and timestamp her entry onto the ship without any human contact.

She expect
ed Beaudry to continue leading her to APES country aboard the Kiirkegaard. She knew from her orders the ship was a huge mothership with massive flight decks for numerous squadrons of FACs, their fighter craft. Any newbie could get lost in two turns along its twisting corridors. Beaudry seemed to slow down with each passing step. He did not appear to be lost or deliberately dragging his feet. The man just did not seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere.

Misha was not concerned about getting lost. She had been aboard dozens of AMSF spacecraft and they always warehoused their APES in
approximately the same area. Besides, if she even thought about getting lost, she could pull up the basic ship’s schematics on her glass pack. Specific schematics would be classified, but she would be able to get enough of a rendering to find her way to APES country. She scooted around Beaudry and picked up the pace. She could feel him struggling to keep up with her without running, but she refused to look behind her.

She found the hatch into APES country
exactly where she knew it would be. The entry was a huge heavy garage style hatch that was rolled up out of the way, giving any combat suited APE access through the tall double wide hatches leading to their dirt drop chutes, to their equipment warehouse or to their special training bay. The surprise on her face turned to glaring anger as she looked at the command buildings. The prefab, mobile buildings were dropped into the area without regard to traditional order and certainly not neatly lined up. There were jagged gaps and odd angles between each of structures.

APES rental
space on a ship of this size should be able to hold all of their equipment and gear if the prefab units were aligned properly. With this jumbled mess, their extra gear and supplies must be stored in another warehouse space somewhere on the ship. She hoped their secondary space was close by and had external hatches to dump their equipment with them on a dirt drop. She would hate to have to either get by without their gear or hump it into place prior to the drop.

The first room inside the
hatch was the unit commander’s office and day room. It was slightly off kilter and she had to slide between the ship’s bulkhead and the office’s steel wall to get to the hatch. Beaudry tried to beat her to the hatch switch, but she slapped it open before he could reach around her.

“
Frakking crap on a crutch,” she sputtered. The stench of the toilet in the back wafted out the open hatchway wrapping her in its foul cloak. The odor was unmistakable, yet it was mixed with touches of alcoholic vomit and stale month-old sweat socks. Litter, half-empty meal packs and assorted refuse was scattered about the office reaching knee high in the corners allowing only for a small path to what might have been a desk under a pile of rubbish where the path forked. One path led to the toilet area and one path blazed a trail to the sofa where a cushion lay bare. It was adorned with a small pile of human excrement in the middle.

Safely stacked in a small hastily cleared area near the hatch was her baggage.
It weighted as much as she did, yet she hefted it easily with one hand. She pointed her other hand at Beaudry and then back at the commander’s day office. “Clean it and don’t come out until it is done. You may call for volunteers to help you as necessary and good luck with that.”

She spun on her heel leaving the distraught trooper behind her. Fortunately,
Alpha Squad’s bay was right next to the office. It was not fortunate because of the heavy luggage as that was easy for her to manage. It was fortunate because Misha’s rage was rising to a boil. She knew if she ran into any mess as nasty as her new office, she would slide into combat mode and someone or something would get broken. There was little chance of finding such a mess in the short distance between the office and her squad bay.

Misha
slapped open the hatch to Alpha Squad’s bay. It was a combination barracks, classroom, weapons locker, combat suit storage area, dining area, shower facility and when grounded on a planet during a dirt drop, it became a combination bunker and tank.

She sighed. It was clean and the air smelled fresh. No one noticed her entrance
, they were all busy cleaning, scrubbing and making bunks. It was obvious they had heard she was on the way and were frantically cleaning before the arrival of their new commander.

Tossing her bags on the first bunk in
side the hatch, she gave a low whistle to get everyone’s attention. A large trooper moved from the back towards her as everyone else stopped working and turned in her direction. She did not expect or even want anyone to call the squad to attention. That was just not the way APES did things.

She held up her hand to stall the trooper before he spoke. She knew who he was, just as she knew every
APE in her squad. Their files had been required and interesting reading since she received her assignment orders. Misha kept her voice quiet and well modulated. It was the inside voice her mother taught her to use as a child. Still, it echoed from the steel walls of the huge room. “Mr. Singletary, I am sorry if my baggage is crowding whoever’s gear is on this bunk. I expect to maintain traditional bunk spacing, so the existing gear will need to be shuffled to the appropriate owner’s bunk.” She could feel her anger at Beaudry and the state of her office beginning to cause her muscles to clench, so she took a deep breath and told herself to remain calm. Using her best after Sunday School voice she said, “Mr. Singletary, as you know, by tradition the squad leader regardless of rank is first out the hatch, first in combat, first to fight, and logically takes the first bunk. And you, as Trooper One by tradition ride drag bringing up the rear to watch over any new troopers, stragglers or walking wounded. Is that clear?”

She did a quick turn w
ithout waiting for an answer. A few steps brought her to a large wall locker that should have been hers. It was unlocked, so she slapped the panel and opened the door. She did not expect anything to be in the locker, since it was traditionally the one used by the squad commander. She did not expect it to be spotless considering the state the last commander had left his office. However, she certainly did not expect to see it stuffed full of drugs, alcohol and pornography.

S
lamming the locker door closed with a bang, turning her back to the locker, she leaned against it. She could feel the heat rising in her face and spreading down her neck to disappear under her collar. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. She believed that what an APE did off duty was nobody’s business but theirs as long as it did not affect their combat readiness. She was fuming. This was illegal and illicit contraband. It was not just on board ship and not just in APE country, but in her locker. Someone brought this crap into her house, right in the middle of her bedroom. She bellowed, spun on her heels, locked her arms around the locker and heaved.

A screech of metal wailed through the bay as she ripped the locker from the
steel wall. Without consideration of who was nearby, she slammed the locker onto the deck. The unlocked door flew open and the contents spilled across the deck. She shook the locker dumping all of the remaining contents onto the deck. Heaving the locker over her head, she slammed it down repeatedly on the jumbled pile. Tossing the locker to the side, she stomped through the broken bottles and vials to what should have been her bunk. The bunk was snuggled into a box-type arrangement. When the blast shutters were in place, the bunk became a self-contained escape pod. A bunk with the shutters dropped gave its occupant a modicum of privacy and afforded a number of small spaces for an APE to store a few special personal items.

Misha pounded
open the first small storage space inside the hatch. She reached a meaty hand in, dragged out and crushed what appeared to be someone’s personal pornography stash. She yanked the blanket and sheets off the bed, realizing the sheets underneath were filthy and had not been changed in weeks. She wanted to gag, but it only made her angrier.

Troopers scattered as she tore through the bay, tossing out this
and that, throwing gambling paraphernalia, boxes of tobacco, bags of drugs and even old-fashioned nudie photos on the deck. She yanked open lockers, locked or not, stripped bedding from bunks, and threw unopened bottles of tile cleaner into the shower area, splashing odd colored liquids into places that were previously virgin to their touch.

Without seeing who belonged to what
, she yanked open a locker and grabbed a double handful of contents. She squeezed and shook the contents, feeling something delicate snap between her fingers. She threw the contents onto a pile on the deck with everything else.

She stopped.
Misha realized the locker she had just torn into had been neat and orderly. An eye for care and precision arranged everything. Glancing at the pile on the deck, she saw a silver-colored flute twisted and broken in the mangled mess. The name Ottiamig was neatly stenciled on the locker hatch along with the number 8.

She looked around and spotted Trooper One Singletary. “Get this place cleaned up. Do it beyond inspection standard. Dot the
I’s and cross the T’s, Trooper. Do it now and do it fast.”