Alarm of War

gnawing longing. Would she ever see Hiram again?

Nearby, the sound of a sob. Reflexively Cookie spun to the sound, Bull Pup coming up. “Identify yourself fast or get shot,” she barked.

Another sob, followed by an audible hiccup. “It’s me, Romano.”

Cookie let out her breath. Specialist 4 Lori Romano was one of the tech weenies, the invisible people who scurried around keeping the ship running so that the warriors could make war on the enemy. She was a petit, mousy girl who was supposed to be smart as a whip, but had pretty much gone to pieces in the repeated Savak attacks. While Cookie could hardly blame her for that, it did nothing to endear her, either.

“You okay, Romano?” she asked, pushing aside her irritation at being scared half to death.

“I…I just needed a little time by myself,” the young woman said, her voice thick with tears.

“You could get something in sick bay to help you,” Cookie suggested. A lot of the crew were on anti-anxiety pills, so many that the medic referred to himself as the ship’s “Morale Officer.”

“No, I don’t want any more pills. I just-” she rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, looking even more like a little kid. “I just want to stop thinking…”

She looked imploringly at Cookie. “I keep seeing Peter when they took a sword and …” She covered her face again. “Oh, God, I just want to stop thinking about it. All that blood.”

Then Cookie remembered. Linda Romano had been standing next to Specialist Peter Tillinghast when the poor bastard had been beheaded by one of the goddamned Savak. His body had stood for several seconds, wildly pumping blood until his heart finally got the message that it was all over. Romano, drenched in his blood, had screamed hysterically and torn at her bloody clothes until the medic finally knocked her out with a sedative.

Cookie tried to think of something to say, something comforting. Nothing seemed adequate.

“What do you do, Romano?”

Romano frowned, then hiccupped. “Corporal?”

“What do you do on the Yorkshire?”

“Oh.” She wiped her eyes again. “I’m an Artificial Intelligence Interface Systems Specialist.”

“I’m afraid I don’t really know what that is,” Cookie confessed, a little embarrassed.

“S’ok,” Romano said matter of factly. “You’re just a Marine. Nobody expects you to know any of this stuff.” Then her eyes widened in dismay as she heard her own words. “Oh! I didn’t mean that you couldn’t-”

Cookie waved dismissively. “Relax, Romano. I’m the first to acknowledge that the Marine Corp is not exactly a hot bed of intellectualism. The only degree we all have is-”

“Expert Marksman,” Linda Romano finished. “Yeah, I heard that one before.” Then Romano stared at Cookie, her brow furrowed. “Corporal — ”

“You don’t report to me, Romano, you can call me ‘Sanchez’ or even ‘Cookie’ if you want.”

“Cookie can’t be your first name,” Romano replied, her eyes crinkling in amusement.

Cookie sighed. “My first name is ‘Maria,” but only my mother calls me that.”

Romano nodded. “Okay, I just noticed that you’re not speaking like-” she stopped, flustered.

“Like a Marine?” Cookie prodded.

“Yes, exactly,” Romano blurted. “You’re speaking in full sentences, and your vocabulary…” she trailed off again, her face flushing.

Cookie grinned crookedly. “I made a friend in basic training. Smart and educated. She introduced me to books, and I’ve spent the last three years reading every chance I get.” She shrugged. “What can I say, it rubs off.”

“But when I see you with other Marines, you sound…you sound-” Romano groped for the right words.

“When I talk to my fellow Marines,” Cookie said patiently, “I sound tough. I’m a corporal, remember? I need to be tough and my men need to know I’m tough. Sounding too educated would not help, trust me on that.”

Romano looked at her, clearly not understanding.

“So tell me, in tiny little words, Artificial Intelligence Interface Specialist, just what it is you do,” Cookie pressed.

Romano sighed and shrugged, but Cookie saw that there was a little more color in her cheeks. “I make things work. You know most of the ship is driven by computers, right?” Cookie nodded. “People push buttons and stuff, but that only sends a signal to Gandalf, who makes it happen. But have you ever wondered how Gandalf makes things happen? That’s where we come in. Everything Gandalf does, it does through an elaborate interface with the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems. That’s what we do: we make sure it all works together.”

Cookie shook her head. She’d never really thought about this side of operations. She just thought that when the captain gave an order, it got carried out. She’d never spent much time wondering how. “How’d you learn all this stuff?” she asked, genuinely curious.

Romano shrugged again. “Lots of school. I had a master’s degree in AI before I joined the Fleet, and they put me through a bunch of specialist schools. But I think the real answer is that you’ve got to have a real aptitude for it, you know?”

Cookie nodded. She’d seen more than one Marine who had the training but not the aptitude — what you ended up with was a lousy Marine.

Romano smiled. “And you’ve got to be smart, I guess. We even have a joke about it: What’s an Artificial Intelligence Interface Systems Specialist without the ‘Intelligence?’” Cookie looked blank.

“He’s nothing more than an ‘ass’ that can’t spell right!” Romano finished, then laughed. “Sorry,” she giggled. “Just a little Interface Systems humor.”

“Gods of Our Mothers!” Cookie said in mock horror. “Do we need to do, like, electroshock therapy or something on you? Or quarantine? Is this sense of humor contagious?”

Cookie’s attempt at humor didn’t work. Romano’s face grew dark. “I don’t think I can take another attack. I don’t think-”

Cookie had an idea. “Come on, Romano. I’ve got a job for you.” She turned and walked down the corridor, Romano in tow, until they reached the entrance to Shuttle Bay 3. Two armed Marines stood at the doorway. One had his arm in a sling, the other’s head was bandaged.

“Open up, Billy,” Cookie ordered the one with the head bandage. The Marine looked curiously at Romano, but said nothing as he punched in the code to open the hatchway. Cookie and Romano walked onto a catwalk about twenty feet over the deck of the shuttle bay. There were three more armed Marines inside. They all turned towards the newcomers, blasters swinging up, then stopped when they recognized Cookie.

“Corporal, Sergeant Zamir said no one is allowed down here,” one of the Marines said, eyeing Romano suspiciously.

“It’s okay, Specialist Romano is going to help us with our little problem,” Cookie said.

“Corporal, I’d be a lot happier if Sergeant Zamir-”

“And I’d be a lot happier if I tore your head off and played soccer with it,” Cookie snapped. “And since I’m the corporal and you’re the private, which one of us do you think is going to be smiling one minute from now and which one is going to be sorry he was gave me some lip? Now move!”

Romano waited until the guard had stepped away before turning to Cookie. “You said I’m going to help you with a problem?” she asked apprehensively.

In reply, Cookie led her to the edge of the catwalk. She waved her hand to the deck. “See these?”

There, nestled side by side on the deck, were three black cylindrical tubes, each about three hundred feet long and twenty feet in diameter. They were matt black and made of something that so effectively absorbed light that Romano had to squint to keep them in focus.

“Know what they are?”

Romano nodded. “The ships the commandos used, the Savak.”

“Yep, that’s right. Supposed to be top secret and all that happy horseshit, but I suppose you know damn near everything Gandalf knows. And you know how the Savak got on board the Yorkshire?”

Romano pursed her lips. “W-e-l-l-l-l, they didn’t cut a hole in the hull, and they didn’t come through an air lock, so it’s got to be something our big brains back on Cornwall say is impossible.”

Cookie blinked, a bit taken back at how easily Romano figured out that the Savak had transported onto the ship. “We found these ships after each of the Savak attacks. We tractored them in here and opened ‘em up. One of