Cities of the Red Night

The doctor minces in. 'Hello there, young guys. Come along for an examination.'

'Who's that?'

'That's the new doctor.'

'Well, I don't like the look of him.'

'He's supposed to be an expert on space medicine.'

'So what?'

'So long as I'm C.O. this is Naval Station 123 Communications.'

Back in his cabin, the C.O. found a full-length naked effigy of himself dangling with a hard-on from a lantern hook in the ceiling. Then a powder charge went off in its nuts and a roll of paper popped out the cock in a puff of smoke. The paper landed on his desk and unrolled: his resignation just waiting for his signature.

The resignation of the old C.O. after a nervous breakdown did not end the conflict. The old navy was still in occupation. But Krup was winning. Smoothly Krup moved in his Hitler Jungen boys, one looking just like another, all with rosy cheeks and yellow hair. These boys were clean, efficient, exemplary sailors and the old navy could find no fault with them. And Krup removed the off limits on Tamaghis. This made him popular with the men. All the swishes in camouflage openly wore Krup buttons: Billy Budd with a rope around his neck saying, 'God Bless Captain Krup.'

And the croaker was a Krup man. He served on a Krup metal junk runner when the crew broke into the cargo and got hooked on M.J. Krup found it out and cut them off cold. 'This is not a charitable institution,' he told the ward full of M.J. addicts shitting, screaming, puking, ejaculating phosphorescent sperm. 'I leave you in good hands.'

Anyone reporting sick to that croaker walked out a Krup man or he went out feet-first. And the fence sitters, seeing the way the navies were crumbling, began coming over to Krup, and since many of these were the technical sergeants, that just about sewed it up as a Krup shop.

Then one night, the Krup men in every dorm got up before dawn and took down all the pinup girls. Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light forty-eight naked boys fucking, sucking, rimming on a red, white, and blue gallows and some awful Nordic shit Krup laps up like a cat, the boy singing his swan song in a mountain lake full of swans who convoy him reverently to the gallows. You don't have to be a space expert, just a tech sergeant, to see the old navy game in operation—how one faction gets another out to slide in their own boys.

Morning sun on morning hard-ons as the tars climb out of their bunks and stare at the walls.

'Where's my sexpot?' a boy moans stolidly.

'I can't stand these kids on my walls.'

'They're not your walls any longer.'

'Hans, Rudi, Heinrich, Willi—herein!'

Come in with Krup or else. A Krup takeover of the crew and the ship, or so it seemed. He changed his the name of the ship from The Enterprise to The Billy Celeste, after a nineteenth-century English man-of-war. Now all Krup had to worry about were his own men, who had used him to get rid of the old C.O., and the old navy with its loathsome pinups and pro stations.

But few of us had any confidence in Krup. We'd seen this character operate, how smoothly he'd hoaxed us into his hanging universe... Tamaghis ... the Double G. But the shore leave was one hell of a lot better. We never had it so good. We could go to a licensed Siren cathouse where they have these deactivated Sirens just give you the sex trill.

The boys are getting dressed to go ashore, adjusting hangman-know ties.

'Might pop myself a month's pay tonight.'

'More likely