Orphan's Triumph

overweight, overworked, pug-nosed second lieutenant who was sufficiently junior that she was saddled with all administrative matters for the post.

I sat in front of her desk, leaning forward in my chair.

She ran her finger across a line on a flatscreen, then nodded. “Yes, Mr. Wander. Your paperwork came through from the Human Union Consulate on Tressel and was processed. Your initial pension check was direct deposited on the first, just before we locked down.”

“It’s General Wander. I want to unretire. It was a mistake.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“What I mean is I just needed some time off to attend to something I couldn’t accomplish as an army officer.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what your file says.”

I squirmed. “I know what I intended.”

“If you intended to abandon your post in the field during wartime, you intended to desert. Says here the judge advocate general’s office declined to prosecute only because Consul Muscovy included his sworn affidavit with your papers. The consul swore that he forced you to retire to avoid an interplanetary incident detrimental to diplomatic relations with the government of Tressen. You’re lucky you kept your pension.”

“What do I have to do to unretire?”

She cocked her head. “You’re too old to enlist again.” Then she brightened. “File a two-oh-two stroke seven. You might be reinstated at a reduced rank.”

I exhaled and closed my eyes. “Yes! Print me one.”

She shrugged again. “Sure. But it’s gotta be approved in Washington. And we’re on indefinite lockdown, so it can’t be transmitted off Mousetrap.”

I leaned forward with my elbows on the desk. “What am I in the meantime?”

She sighed, and swiveled her chair to face a different screen. “A ward of the Veterans Administration, Mr. Wander.”

I stood, planted my fists on her desk, and leaned forward. “I’ve been in this war from the beginning. I’m going to be in it at the end. Even as a spectator. Can you get me on a ship? Any ship. As a dishwasher or something?”

“Ships are classified areas. You aren’t cleared to enter a classified area. You can’t get cleared because-”

I exhaled so my lips flapped and made a motorboat noise. “Clearances have to be approved through Washington, but we’re on indefinite lockdown.”

She smiled. “I knew you’d understand. But as a retiree lawfully on a military post, you can access all unclassified areas.”

“Being?”

She rolled her eyes to the compartment ceiling and ticked off on her fingers. “This office. The post office. Bachelor Officers’ Quarters-you’re entitled to lodging there on a space-available basis. You have Officers’ Mess privileges. You can make purchases at the post exchange, including the package store if you’re of age.”

“What can I do besides sleep, eat, shop, and buy booze?”

“There’s the Mousetrap Library.”

“Is it any good?”

“It will be when I get time to start it.” She shrugged for the last time as she snatched a paper file off a stack. “Oh. And you can use the Officers’ Club.”

I smiled. “Perfect!”

SIXTY-SEVEN

TWO HOURS AFTER I LEFT AOPD, I stepped through the hatch into Mousetrap’s consolidated Officers’ Club, with a brown paper bag under one arm. Mousetrap’s O Club served all branches of the Human Union Forces, which looked suspiciously like the U.S. Army and the U.S. Space Force, with a sprinkling of Brits of all stripes, Euros, Asians, Afros, and Outworlders.

The O Club’s decor was early Neon Beer Sign, with a pool table and bowls of plausibly nonhydroponic cocktail peanuts on the tables, and the place was half-full of the swabbies who had flooded Mousetrap like a tsunami.

My quarry, alone at a table with a neat whiskey and a paperbook history of the Boston Red Sox, looked up and smiled. “Jason!”

He waved me over, and I sat.

He pointed at the bag I held. “Whazzat?”

“A congratulations present on the occasion of your new command, Eddie. And I owe you for Tressel.”

“Nothing happened on Tressel.”

“Of course not.” If there was a rule bender to be found on Mousetrap, it was Eddie Duffy.

Eddie’s cheeks glowed redder than usual. “The Abraham Lincoln’s a great ship. But I’ll miss the Tehran .” Then he frowned. “Not as much as I suppose you miss things. I heard about the retirement.”

I shrugged. “I miss not getting a ticket to the finale. I’ve earned my seat. I don’t miss the responsibility. I just want to see it, not be it.”

“After what you’ve been through, I don’t blame you. If there was anything I could do…” He reached across the table, tugged at my brown paper bag, then raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Hewitt’s! How did you know?”

“We killed the last bottle I bought you six years ago.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You needed a favor then.”

I stiffened and widened my eyes. “Surely you don’t think I-”

“As long as it’s a small one.”

I held my hand up between us, with the thumb and fore-finger so close together that a cocktail peanut wouldn’t fit between them. “Tiny.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

SIX WEEKS LATER, Eddie and I were still together, chasing a six-legged mechanical cockroach through intragalactic space, or at least through that part of space that hurtled along just forward of the Abraham Lincoln’s Bulkhead One Twenty.

Whenever we had shipped together in the past, as admiral and embarked-division commander, Eddie Duffy and I jogged together every day. On this voyage, as admiral and his stowaway, we continued the routine because Eddie was my shipboard protector, because we were friends, and because we were the only people on this ship who either of us could keep up with.

“Gimmee a minute.” Eddie raised his palm, panting in silence broken only by the metallic skitter of Jeeb’s six legs against the deck plates.

The Abraham Lincoln was deserted from forward of Bulkhead One Twenty on forward to Bulkhead Ninety. Normally, Bulkhead Ninety back to Bulkhead One Twenty was overcrowded with the infantry division that a cruiser packed, in addition to the cruiser’s Space Force crew of twenty-two hundred.

But the people back on Earth like my former boss General Pinchon had invited no infantry to the party that would, they were sure, win the Pseudocephalopod War.

Just aft of Bulkhead One Twenty the launch bays made a belt around the ship.

As a stowaway, albeit one vouched for by the skipper if anyone asked, I stayed between Bulkhead Ninety and Bulkhead One Twenty, except for meals. I puttered with equipment leftovers in the infantry armory, wrote letters to Mimi and to Jude, which weren’t going to be delivered for a long while, and played with Jeeb by the hour.

Unlike Mousetrap, the Abraham Lincoln had an excellent library. Eddie had routed me through his own ’Puter via the ship’s net, so I could read from my stateroom and, for that matter, see what he