feet, standing toe to toe with their adversaries. The bar became a shambles of swinging arms, bodies crashing to the ground, tables, chairs, and glasses going in all directions. Michael stepped back, one hand firmly locked onto Ferreira’s collar, her restraint visibly crumbling in the face of the enormous temptation to give one of the dwarves a damn good kicking, the other signaling Sedova to stay seated. Spacer attacking spacer was bad enough; spacer attacking officer was a hundred times worse, an offense guaranteed to bring a long stretch in a Fleet prison, capped off by a dishonorable discharge. A well-deserved punishment, true, but better avoided if humanly possible, a lesson ground into Michael and every other cadet at Space Fleet College; spacers were expensive commodities, after all.
Egged on by raucous shouts of encouragement from the ring of bystanders, the fight ebbed and flowed across the bar, but the dwarves’ greater mass proved no match for the raw fury of
The shore patrol arrived in force. With ruthless, practiced efficiency, they waded in and transformed the melee into a neat row of plasticuffed, stun-shot bodies in an impressively short span of time. Michael chuckled when Bienefelt twisted her head to one side to shoot him a triumphant smile, seemingly untroubled by the blood-streaked damage to her face.
The young lieutenant in charge of the patrol waved him over. “This lot yours?” he said.
“Some of them. Not all. Don’t know who they were, but they wanted a fight, they started a fight, so it’s a fight we gave them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the patrol officer said wearily.
“Luckily, that’s what my neuronics recordings will show.”
“They all say that. One of my guys will take your statement. Who’s this?”
“Junior Lieutenant Ferreira, my XO. Sorry, my ex-XO.”
The patrol officer shook his head despairingly. “A joker. That’s all I want. I’ll need your statement, too, Ferreira. And you are?”
“Junior Lieutenant Sedova.”
“Ditto.” The patrol officer turned to survey the wreckage. “At least the officers had the common sense not to join in, which is more than I can say for this lot.”
“My guys were provoked,” Michael said, “and they sure as hell did not start it.”
“That’s mitigation,” the patrol officer said, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s not justification, and you know it.”
Michael nodded. The man was right; he did know it, but it was hard not to feel proud of the fierce loyalty and commitment the
Giving his statement to the shore patrol, along with the records his neuronics had made of the incident, took an age, and it was almost midnight before Michael made it back to his cabin. The impersonal box-one of hundreds of identical cabins making up the transit officers’ quarters-was as uninviting as ever. With a groan, he toppled onto his bunk, doing his best to ignore the anger and resentment that still simmered inside him. He knew one thing for sure. Whatever humanspace lacked, it was not assholes, something Snow White and his seven pea-brained sidekicks proved. Sons of bitches, he swore silently. He hoped the provost marshal would throw the book at them; they deserved it.
Out of habit, he flicked on the holovid. When it lit up, he wished he had not; World News was running its breaking news segment, the ticker tape scrolling across the bottom of the screen with the words “Fleet Hero in Bar Brawl-Provost Marshal to Lay Charges.”
“For chrissakes,” Michael shouted, frustrated beyond belief. “The fucking bastards.”
He did not have to watch the story to know how World News would spin it. He had been on the receiving end often enough to know exactly how they would lay it out: heavy on the fight-no doubt using recordings helpfully provided by one or more of the bar’s patrons-but light on who had started it. With careful editing and without ever saying so, they would leave the viewer with two impressions: first, that he had been in the thick of the fight, fists swinging with the best of them, and second-picking up the idea sown by the ticker tape-that he had been charged. If they were feeling creative, they probably would find a way to blame him for starting it.
World News did that sort of thing all the time, and they were extremely good at it, which was why they were so popular and profitable. Worse, any corrections his lawyers forced out of them would be buried in a quick one-liner at the end of the news a week later, by which time millions of Feds would know-as certain fact-that he had been charged with brawling, their opinions immune to any evidence to the contrary.
Michael understood none of it. For some reason, he was well and truly in their sights, and presumably, he would stay there until they got bored with him or a bigger sucker came along. He would talk to Mitesh in the morning. Despite the fact that his agent was just another AI-generated avatar, he had a way of getting things into perspective.
Too demoralized even to get undressed, Michael lay there until sleep overtook him.
Wednesday, May 9, 2401, UD
“For God’s sake,” Michael muttered, “how much longer do we have to wait?”
“As long as it takes, sir,” Ferreira said. “The staff captain is extremely pissed, and I imagine she’s had a lot to say. Not that I blame her. It’s not every day she has to deal with a heavy cruiser’s entire complement of senior spacers.”
Michael laughed out loud. The crew of a conventional heavy cruiser included hundreds of senior spacers; he loved the idea of all of them lined up in front of some long-suffering staff captain, though he knew the staff captain would not see anything even remotely funny about the whole business.
Finally, the doors opened, and Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt emerged, leading a line of spacers out of the Fleet provost marshal’s offices. Michael could not help noticing that not one of them showed the smallest sign of remorse.
“All right, chief,” Michael said, shaking his head. “Tell me how it went.”
Bienefelt smiled, a smile of smug self-satisfaction. “Justice prevailed, sir, as it should. Charges of common assault were dismissed, though sadly we were all found guilty of a breach of the peace.” Bienefelt even managed to sound hurt.
“Well,” Michael snorted, “what a surprise, considering the patrol used a stun gun to stop you from beating the crap out of … what the hell was the useless jerk’s name?”
“Leading Spacer Rasmussen, sir. Off
“Yeah, him. And the damage?”
“Fine, stoppage of leave, loss of seniority, and we’ve had to kick the tin to pay for the damage to the bar.”
“Oh,” Michael said, “so you’re still a chief petty officer?” He shook his head despairingly. “That’s a fucking miracle. I think you got off lightly.”
“Maybe so, sir,” Bienefelt said, looking not in the least apologetic, “but let me tell you this. It was well worth it, not that Rasmussen would agree. The provost marshal threw the book at him, big-time. He’s screwed, and his mates, too. My spies inside the provost marshal’s office tell me they are on their way to Fleet Prison 8 as we speak.”
“Good.” Michael paused to look at
