Passage at Arms Read Free Page A

people down here. They can’t get them to move to the country.”
    Half a hundred production and packaging lines chug along below us. Their operators work on a dozen tiers of steel grate. The cavern is one vast, insanely huge jungle gym, or perhaps the nest of a species of technological ant. The rattle, clatter, and clang are as dense as the ringing round the anvils of hell. Maybe it was in a place like this that the dwarfs of Norse mythology hammered out their magical weapons and armor.
    Jury-rigged from salvaged machinery, ages obsolete, the plant is the least sophisticated one I’ve ever seen. Canaan became a fortress world by circumstance, not design. It suffered from a malady known as strategic location. It still hasn’t gotten the hang of the stronghold business.
    “They make small metal and plastic parts here,” Westhause explains. “Machined parts, extrusion moldings, castings. Some microchip assemblies. Stuff that can’t be manufactured on TerVeen.”
    “This way,” the Commander says. “We’re running late. No time for sight-seeing.”
    The balcony enters a tunnel. The tunnel leads toward the sea, if I have my bearings. It debouches in a smaller, quieter cavern. “Red tape city,” Westhause says. The natives apparently don’t mind the epithet. There’s a big new sign proclaiming:
    WELCOME TO
    REDTAPECITY
    PLEASE DO NOT
    EAT THE NATIVES
    There’s a list of department titles, each with its pointing arrow. The Commander heads toward Outbound Personnel Processing.
    Westhause says, “The caverns you didn’t see are mainly warehouses, or lifter repair and assembly, or loading facilities. Have to replace our losses.” He grins. Why do I get the feeling he’s setting me up? “The next phase is the dangerous one. No defenses on a lifter but energy screens. Can’t even dodge. Shoots out of the silo like a bullet, right to TerVeen. The other firm always takes a couple potshots.”
    “Then why have planetside leave? Why not stay on TerVeen?” The shuttling to and fro claims lives. It makes no military sense.
    “Remember how crazy the Pregnant Dragon was? And that place was just for officers. TerVeen isn’t big enough to take that from three or four squadrons. It’s psychological. After a patrol people need room to wind down.”
    ‘To get rid of soul pollution?”
    “You religious? You’ll get along with Fisherman, sure.”
    “No, I’m not.” Who is, these days?
    The check-in procedure is pleasantly abbreviated. The woman in charge is puzzled by me. She putzes through my orders, points with her pen. I follow the others toward our launch silo where a crowd of men and women are waiting to board the lifter. The presence of officers does nothing to soften the exchange of insults and frank propositions.
    The lifter is a dismal thing. One of the old, small ones. The Citron Four type Westhause wants scrubbed. The passenger compartment is starkly functional. It contains nothing but a bio-support system and a hundred acceleration cocoons, each hanging like a sausage in some weird smoking frame, or a new variety of banana that loops between stalks. I prefer couches myself, but that luxury is not to be found aboard a troop transport.
    “Go-powered coffin,” the Commander says. “That’s what ground people call the Citron Four.”
    “Shitron Four,” Yanevich says.
    Westhause explains. Explaining seems to be his purpose in life. Or maybe I’m the only man he knows who listens, and he’s cashing in while his chips are hot. “Planetary Defense gives all the cover they can, but losses still run one percent. They get their share of personnel lifters. Some months we lose more people here than on patrol.”
    I consider the obsolete bio-support system, glance at the fitting they implanted in my forearm back in Academy, a thousand years ago. Can this antique really keep my system cleansed and healthy?
    “You and the support system make prayer look attractive.”
    The Commander chuckles. “The Big Man