Orphan's Triumph

TWENTY-TWO

EVEN IN NEW YORK, a stormtrooper outfit draws stares in a deli at one a.m.

I sipped coffee. “You transshipped from the Powell to the Ganymede out at Luna?”

Jude bit a dill pickle spear that he held between thumb and forefinger, then smiled. Tressel’s plant life was mired back in the pre-angiosperm mid-Paleozoic. “You always liked pickles. Been a long time?”

He nodded. “I’m staying at the Tressen consulate. The rest of the delegation’s bunking aboard Ganymede. Captain’s guests.”

Ganymede wouldn’t be in service for months, but her captain had been assigned to watch over her, and get to know her, since her keel was laid. He would know every rivet and plate in her, know her better than a father knew his daughter.

“Your father didn’t get command of Hope until two weeks before we embarked for Ganymede.”

“Poor war planning.”

“We didn’t plan on this war.”

“It’s been thirty years. Does anyone have a plan to end it?”

I bit my corned beef on rye, chewed, then swallowed. Jude was my godson. He was also an officer in the armed services of a nation that was not precisely an ally. “Maybe.” I changed the subject. “I hear you’re building an air force.”

He grinned. “Someday. Tressel’s materials technology is still stretching canvas across wood fuselages to make air mail carriers. It’s amazing how far we’ve come, so fast. I feel like a Wright brother.”

Maybe he really didn’t know how efficiently the bastards for whom he was speeding up the mail were quietly exterminating half of Tressel. Or maybe the rumors I had heard about the camps were false. But I couldn’t force myself to begin the debate.

We talked sports, and about our common acquaintances, and about New York, until the deli closed. Then I walked with him to his billet at the Tressen consulate, which was near my hotel, according to Navex.

The moon had set while sparse traffic trickled down the deserted streets.

Jude turned his collar up against the chill as our footsteps echoed off the brownstones that flanked us. “You think I blame you, don’t you, Jason?”

Like his mother, he said what he thought. “Do you?” I asked.

“Nobody told me! I was right there, and nobody even told me she was still alive.”

“Jude, you know the Slugs were jamming the radios. And there was nothing you could have done.”

He stuffed his hands in his uniform jacket pockets as we walked. “I was mad at the world. And you were part of the world.”

“I was doped up for weeks,” I said.

He eyed my regrown arm. “I’m sorry that you lost your arm. But they did a nice job on this one.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t even know about the blockade for months.”

“I should’ve gotten in touch with you. I could’ve snuck a chip offworld through the consulate.”

I stopped and faced him beside trash cans lined up beside a front stoop. We could talk past each other for another ten blocks, or we could communicate. “The last thing she said-” My throat constricted as the moment flooded back. I blinked, took a breath. “The last thing she asked was that I take care of you. Take care of her baby, she said.”

Jude blinked back tears, nodded. “You always have.”

I shook my head.

“Jason, just because we didn’t walk down to the fishing hole together every afternoon doesn’t mean you weren’t there for me.”

Bong.

A guy sat up between two trash cans, grimy and smelling like old wine. “You two wanna keep it down?” Then he cocked his head. “Spare any change?”

Jude shifted his feet, and the man’s eyes widened at Jude’s uniformed silhouette. The man extended his arms, palms waving. “Not for booze! A loan. To get me home.”

I fished in my trouser pockets until I assembled a wad of bills, and I tucked them into his breast pocket and patted it. “Don’t decline the mobile recharge coverage.”

He wrinkled his face, then smiled at Jude while pointing at me. “This here’s a good fella.”

Jude said, “I know.”

SleepExpress was the only alternative in midtown Manhattan that flashed up when I had narrowed my booking search to government per diem or less. It turned out to be a century-old parking structure redivided into cubicles the size of an embarked division commander’s cruiser stateroom, meaning a bed, Sanolet, and desk, with room left over to stand a frozen pizza on edge. At SleepExpress the stateroom desk was replaced by a pay-per-view porn hologen, a bonus I was too tired and too old to appreciate. But I’ve slept in places that made SleepExpress feel like the Waldorf Astoria. I suppose I could have withdrawn cash and supplemented my per diem card out of pocket, but Nat Cobb had taught me by example that a commander shouldn’t live better than he expects his kids to live.

Morning dawned clear and cool. After years in places where pork and maple trees lay in the evolutionary future, I went looking to sit down and breakfast on pancakes, real maple syrup, and bacon. After six blocks of menu reading, I realized that the balance remaining on my per diem chip would cover only coffee in a therm cup and a doughnut eaten standing up at a counter.

At Ganymede’s christening I greeted old comrades, all of whom, unlike me, of course, had turned older, fatter, and grayer. Jude’s speech would have made his mother and father proud. Then the starship circled above Manhattan like a thunderhead, or more accurately, like an advertising dirigible, for the rest of the morning, while pedestrians craned their necks.

After the ceremony, I caught a cab to 100 East Fiftieth Street, the address where I was to meet my new boss, who had traveled up from Washington to meet me. Despite Nat Cobb’s advice, I didn’t take along a sword.