Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata Read online

  Chapter 3

  To call White Caps a bar would be doing her a grave injustice. White Caps was the bar for Legionnaires. She had originally started out as a small shack next door to the recruiting desk back when Luna City was a couple imperial centuries old. The recruiters would put the new guys up for the night there before shipping them off to basic at Peary Basecamp near the northern pole of Luna. A few years deeper into its history, one of the bartenders got smart though and started offering extra services. Little things at first, like long-term storage lockers, and basic kit issues. He used that idea to expand the footprint, building up to the dome, and down further than anyone knew.

  Then a guy named Clemmons came up with an inventive idea. He made us shareholders. We all own a piece. We all benefit. When a Legionnaire gets out of basic, they're shipped back to Luna city for a little R&R before heading off to their unit. Of course, we all end up at White Caps, with half a years’ back pay in our pockets, and itching to go crazy. Clemmons started selling stock in the bar. A single share would cover room and board anytime a Legionnaire was in Luna City and that happened a lot back in those days. The share didn't pay for booze, but it made sure Legionnaires had a place to stay for the night, and people to guard their backs. It also paid the locker fee for the Vault. Somewhere to store the stuff from before joining or collecting along the way. White Caps had been around over a hundred years at this point. She wasn't going anywhere, and after the first batch of guys signed up, the rest followed in droves.

  They used the share money to cover operating expenses, expand as needed, and turn the place into a home. The old pensioners are taken care of, and the new guys see they never truly leave the Legion. Make it out of the Legion alive, and there was a place to live forever.

  But I digress. I had been walking from the Luna City Administration Center towards White Caps for almost an hour when she finally came into view. Most of LC is under the large central dome, and there are a few smaller underground caves linked via tunnels and access ports. The thing about domes is they have defined limits. The sky is essentially a large white painted ceiling, and there is no real horizon because so many buildings butt into the inner wall. White Caps was one of those buildings. Originally, she started several hundred meters away from the closest wall, but over time expanded to the point where she touched the dome itself. She took up about five percent of the wall in total. In essence, she was a monster. I could see her, and I was still several clicks away. A landmark of the city.

  When I finally got to the entrance and palmed my way through the secondary door, I took the lift to the Legion section. The main door is for tourists and recruits. It's their last chance to bow out before joining, but most can't. Not after seeing the shrine this place is. Old banners, trophies, and photos of our fallen brethren. White Caps has more memorabilia than Legion HQ by several orders of magnitude, and that's not including the personal items in the Vault. Every so often, we get word of a Fallen, and a bequeathment and find some new item for the collection. We have an active custodian who tries to keep things in rotation, both above and below decks, but the last word I heard she and her team only has a small fraction even categorized.

  The Legion section is built more like a hotel than anything. Once on the main level, head towards a reception area, towards housing, recreation, or dining. Since it had been several years since I had last been in LC, I headed to the reception. Checking in is never a problem, flash idents, and a clerk issues a room key. For pensioners, we can let them know they'll be staying permanently, and arrangements for a permanent room are made as soon as one opens up. Although I'm technically a pensioner, I wasn't planning on being on Luna very long so I checked in with an indef key, which is basically a weekly key that can be renewed. If the key isn’t extended, at the end of the week the staff move any personals they find into the private vault for pick up later. After stowing my duffel, I headed down to the vault to dump a few items and get a couple others out.

  The vault comes with the share. Each share gets a one-meter cube as part of the default, but the Legionnaire can upgrade as needed. Every chance I've gotten, I've bumped mine up, because I'm a bit of pack-rat. My vault was sitting at twenty-seven cube, or a three by three by three meter, which is about the same size as a personal stateroom on ship. Funny considering, I shared my last one with three other guys. It's not the biggest vault size available, but the next one up is hangar size and I wasn’t sure I could quite justify that yet. I tend to keep mine about eighty percent full, but it's mostly mementos. One nice thing is vaults have their own addresses, meaning they can receive mail. Whenever I get back, the items are waiting inside almost like having an extra birthday finding the stuff I mailed previously. The last time I had cracked the door, I had the pleasant surprise of finding a case of cryo-sealed plums from my grandad.

  I could spend all day going through decades’ worth of memories, but my goal was to pull out a couple specific things. I kept a bag prepped at the door, as well as a table so I got to work. LC is a nice place, but most of the rest of Sol proper can be less hospitable. If I ended up on Ganymede, I likely wouldn't need what I was pulling out, but on Titan or Mars, I'd be a fool not to have it.

  An ancient slug-thrower covered in protective oil, waiting for me to pull it out of storage. It was a simple steel model I found years before as part of an auction and worked diligently to get operational Not as nice or as fancy as the energy weapons we used in the Legion, but it was just as effective. The slugs were a centimeter in diameter, and the thing kicked something fierce, but it was effective. The goal being to poke enough holes in a smart suit to just end a fight through pure catastrophic damage.

  The worst battle footage I ever saw, if it could even be called a battle, was a Legion platoon who went up against what we thought was an abandoned outpost using weapons similar to these things. Lost six guys in as many seconds because they were overconfident and didn't anticipate energy displacers not working on kinetic energy transfer. Our suits are great, but massive blood loss inside a suit that’s sealed is as dangerous as getting a hole burned through. What works for modern doesn't work for ancient. Hard lesson.

  Another nice part about these old school weapons is most scanners won't pick them up. That's not to say all, but much of the new stuff ignores them as mechanical devices. I placed the gun and holster beneath my left armpit, thinking my arm should mask it enough to where I wouldn't have any too many issues. I grabbed a couple other minor pieces of equipment, secreted them about my person, and then headed down to the bar proper.

  Schmiddy was staffing the bar. Schmiddy was ancient when I joined, and he was still ancient when I came in. When I said we don't age normally, I meant it. Between the nanites repairing any incidental damage, the genemod therapy the Legion subjects us to when we join, and spending so much time in zero-g our clocks slow down. We have Legionnaires pushing triple centuries, and to the best of my knowledge no one knows how old Schmiddy is, but old timers have heard him mention others who were old timers to them.

  As I said, I'm good at math. Part of the training while in deep-sleep. From what I've been able to gather, Schmiddy was a payroll clerk, a long long time ago, and he got the same kind of treatment. He just knows Legionnaires. Remembers us all. Not just our names, but little things as well.

  He greeted me with a "Hey Rattlesnake," and poured me an Arnold Palmer. Lemons! I hadn't had lemons in years. Trees take up so much physical space we don't generally grow them in the hydro labs on ships. It's easier to grow vine plants, so we juggle nutrition around the use of space. Luna had a lot more space and with it, the luxuries of things like citrus fruit, and even apples. I'd have to be careful, I could eat myself broke if I didn’t watch myself.

  I drained the drink, and Schmiddy got me a second before I realized what I was doing. He gave me a look and then slowly said "Hell of a thing." Word travels fast. If had I come to White Caps first instead of straight to the ticketing center, someone like Schmiddy would have warned me and I probab
ly wouldn’t have spent the last few hours traipsing around LC.

  I nodded and left it at that. I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea myself. The old saying regarding never really leaving the Legion is true, but I couldn't hang my hat up in Luna City either. I'm young by pensioner standards. Most of the old timers have me beat by triple digits. That's not to say I wouldn't be welcome, but I wasn’t the right age group yet. Most guys don't settle in until they're near bicentennials. Sort of an unwritten rule, to keep the space available for those who need it. The guys who couldn't work any longer. I was barely a quarter of that, and with deep-sleep excluded, closer to a fifth.

  I needed to find other employment, and other pastures. LC would remind me I couldn't head back to Terra, at least for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t even sure what I was qualified to do on Luna. At least on Terra I could turn my Legion skills into something marketable.

  The thing stuck in my mind was the one on one the Kellinger woman. I couldn't quite shake it, so I asked Schmiddy. “Ah, she's a hands-on type. Delegate the good, but handle the bad herself. Remember Bris?” I nodded. “Like him. She's come down here a couple times when the corp messed up a shipment to figure out where their process failed. A bit of a looker.”

  Brigadier Brisendine was one of the slickest combat commanders I had ever seen. A tactical genius who made sure his guys, guys like me, knew and believed in the plan. Not only did he empower his troops in case things changed on the fly but when things spun out, he liked to take the wheel. Not a bad thing, just gave him a chance to make instant decisions and coordinate top down. Matched his leadership style and worked for him.

  If Schmiddy was comparing this Kellinger to Bris, then she deserved respect by proxy. A nod from him was enough to convince me she was worth following into battle.

  Schmiddy and I talked trash and war stories for a bit while I drank and ate. He got me caught up on where some old buddies were hanging their suits at the time, which was his way of pointing out employment leads. He's super old school. Big on making sure no one loses face. Lots of Legionnaires are prideful sons of bitches, myself included.

  Eventually, my internal clock caught up with me and I excused myself. That's the thing about living in space, is I set my clock based on local time, or the ship itself. When patrolling a specific sector, adjusting to the local government became a matter of course making communication easier. The Compass's clock was set to LC so adjusting wasn't a big deal, but that didn't mean anything since Luna runs all day and night. Having a big dome above and no actual sunlight, there isn't any real night or day, so it's a matter of what I was used to and the other people on the same schedule. My personal schedule was about a quarter day of sleep right after midnight. I could survive on as little as half that, but retirement had its perks. I ducked up to my room and crashed for the evening.

  Morning came with all its normal routine. Quick hygiene in the included pod followed and breakfast down in the canteen. It had been a few years since I'd been back, so rather than dedicating real though to my problem, I played tourist and grabbed some basics from out in town. Luna is a major hub, making it easy to get the most recent tech, and replace old gear on the cheap. It's not that I couldn’t get items elsewhere, only I didn’t want to pay an arm and leg for it, and the old stuff worked well enough while I was still in. I picked up some replacement jumpsuits, a new set of dampers, and more books. I can never have too many books.

  I have an extensive library already but always on the lookout for more. Some folks like paper claiming to love the feel of a real book in their hands. I’ve always looked at the space issues, though. My vault is only so large and it gets hard to justify shipping at a certain point. Don’t get me wrong I'll take whatever I can get but generally prefer data, whether aud, vid, data-stream, simply because I can take those wherever I go. The vault is for memories, touchstones, and things I did. Reminders of friends who have somehow slipped away for a little bit. Irreplaceable things.

  My trip through Luna city that day was about replacing items, though. It’s amazing what gets lost each time a person moves. Little things that don’t seem important until you need them. When I had gone through my duffel in the morning, I found I was missing one left shoe. I hadn’t needed it up until then but it’s always fun to find out what gets forgotten in the shuffle. This led to me spending a couple hours wandering around wasting creds before getting back to White Caps to find I had a message waiting for me.

  Chapter 4

  Messages themselves are not very strange. A lot of time what happens is we check in and admin sort of catches up over the next few days. People expect our arrival and they send messages in advance but mail can't be delivered until we get there. I figured mine was one of those. More than likely someone back home, like family or a buddy, reiterating what I had discovered the previous day, rubbing salt in the wound.

  It wasn't one of those types of messages. This message was from Luna Corp. I waved the comm chip at the screen expecting a recording to begin playing the message. Instead, I got a connecting call prompt followed by "Kellinger, here. Oh hi, Ari! You got my message. Thanks for ringing me back." She was in workout clothes in what looked like a higrav gym. I had obviously caught her mid training. I upgraded my assessment from striking to very attractive, at least as displayed on the screen in my room.

  "The reason I called. I had a dinner companion bail on me last second for a State event. I could use a friendly face who doesn't work for me. Those are hard to come by around these parts, and I was hoping you'd be willing to help me out?" I could hear the disdain in her voice when she said State event, but something else when she said friendly face.

  I’m not terribly fond of groups but there wasn’t really a polite way to address my social anxiety issues with someone I just met, let alone a person who had tried to do me a favor and was asking me for an exceptionally minor one not costing cost me anything. I told her I didn't have anything for formal wear, and she said that wouldn't be a problem, as long as I didn't mind someone delivering a suit. As that was the only reasonable objection I could come up with, I agreed and she said she would have her driver stop by this evening to pick me up.

  A few minutes later, a new incoming call rang up. The assistant I met the previous day, Terry, I recalled. She wanted to know if I wanted suits delivered for fitting or the driver, Robert, to pick me up a couple hours early and run me by the tailor. I'd like to believe I'm hard to catch off guard, but a tailored suit was completely unexpected so I responded with whatever is easier and found myself being picked up earlier than originally anticipated.

  Robert was waiting for me when I stepped outside. He was everything I'm not. Or everything I was when I was much younger. Clean cut, dark hair, bright eyes. I found it hard not to hate him just for spite. I’m sure my mood was feeding into the first impression. Then I saw him move. He moved like a cat. I would have guessed Legion, but not the right kind of movement. Some other kind of training and lots of it. But he didn't size me up. He didn't need to.

  I'd like to believe I’m fairly alpha and can roll with the best of them mainly because I’ve managed to survive a lot of scraps, but Robert would have torn me apart. I’m relatively tough because of lots of seasoning and years of mistakes and learning from them. Robert, on the other hand, was good because he trained not to make mistakes in advance. Approaching the same end goal from different directions. The major contrast was he wouldn’t end up losing an arm through his own fault. Probably wouldn’t be stuck staring at home from the moon either. There's a reason he drove for Lysha.

  Shortly after he had me in the back of the runabout, we were moving fast through the dome. Based on his driving I could tell he’d done this hundreds of times. The level of mastery had passed outside conscious thought into the intuitive level. That’s not the flavor of patience I was blessed with.

  It had been years since I’d driven myself, but giving up control is a hard habit to develop. For whatever reason there’s an urge to second gues
s the person next to you and assume a higher level of proficiency. None of those issues were present with Robert though. He was able to be social without me worrying about his driving. Unlike the assistant, he didn’t go for small talk. When he spoke, it seemed like genuine interest.

  It wasn't long before we were on the other side of the Old Dome, in what could best be described as the merchants' district. Robert parked us on a side street and escorted us to what was possibly the most nondescript building I had seen since leaving Terra. The only thing separating the spot from any of the surrounding buildings was the cornerstone, reading Mason & Redback Est. 2076. No windows, no signage, only a simple stone front from actual lunar rock, with what appeared to be a real wooden door.

  Robert knocked briskly, and we were ushered into the building by one of the most distinguished-looking people I have ever seen. Something about his bearing. He exuded it, like a fog. Not only dressed better than I had ever been, but absolutely comfortable in his skin, something I have never been able to accomplish in public. If pressed for details though the only thing I could actually describe after the encounter would be the mauve necktie he wore and his intense brown eyes. Robert gave a quick introduction, “Master Redback, this is Ari Gadsden. The gentlemen we spoke of earlier.” After a few seconds of shock, he had me at ease, and we were discussing what I needed for the evening. Luckily, Robert was there and knew the particulars.

  Including what I had on, I owned perhaps five sets of clothes. The Legion gives, and by gives I mean sells, everything needed for daily wear. I hadn't worn civilian attire in over half my life. Excluding my jacket, boots, and a few jumpsuits, arguably military themed, the only clothing I owned was underwear. All the kit I had stayed with my old unit. Who needs two dozen drab ship-suits?