LITMIR.BIZ

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having dinner with a friend and I will not have it spoiled by the likes of you!”

      “Now, don’t be like that, Elliot! If the Central Asian Caliphate was behind the hijacking of that asteroid, the public has a right to know! And after all, the Hero of Bloodworld will have a unique perspective on the attack! You might not know it, but Elliot Carlyle is big news right now! First Bloodworld and the Qesh, and now you’re charging a terrorist stronghold with the U.S. Marines! Great stuff!”

      “Oh … you want a … what did you say? A unique perspective?”

      “Absolutely! If you could just—­”

      “Here you go,” I told him, reaching out with both hands and grabbing the lapels of his stylish maroon tunic. Bending my knees, I shoved upward … hard.

      As noted, the spin gravity at the Free Fall’s equator was around four-­tenths of a G. Three-­quarters of the way to the sphere’s pole, which was at zero-­G, the gravity was a lot lower … maybe a tenth of a G, or even a bit less. The GNN reporter probably massed eighty kilos, but he only weighed about eight here … about as much as a large cat, so once I got him moving he kept moving, moving hard. My shove sent him sailing up into the air, arms and legs thrashing … and he yelled bloody murder when he realized he wasn’t coming down again.

      Gravity inside rotating systems like the Free Fall is tricky. Ignoring things like air resistance, he technically was in zero-­gravity as soon as he left the deck, but the Coriolis effect caused his straight-­line path to curve alarmingly against the hab module’s spin. For a moment I thought I’d misjudged, that he was going to miss.

      Then one thrashing arm snagged the safety net surrounding the central sphere of water thirty meters above the restaurant’s deck. He screamed again and grabbed hold with both arms and both legs, dangling far overhead.

      Of course, the net was turning with the rest of the module, so hanging on up there he probably felt a spin gravity of something like fifteen hundredths of a gravity … maybe twelve kilos. If he let go, he’d drift back to the sphere’s inner surface with a tangential velocity of, oh, a few meters per second, and if he didn’t fall into some diner’s salad, he’d be just fine.

      But for someone born and raised on Earth, the possibility of that thirty-­meter drop between the outside of the safety net and the restaurant floor was terrifying. The net enclosed the water sphere from pole to pole; it was designed to catch ­people falling out of the water and keep them from dropping onto the restaurant clientele. Ivarson only needed to clamber along the outside of the net until he reached one of the access tubes at the sphere’s axis.

      But panic had set in, and all he could do was cling to the outside of the net and howl.

      I returned to Joy, who was watching the spectacle overhead. “What in the world …?”

      “Out of the world, I’m afraid.”

      “Why did you—­”

      “Reporter,” I told her. “The bastards have been dogging me electronically ever since Zeta Capricorn, and now it looks like they’re siccing humans on me.”

      “Excuse me, Petty Officer Carlyle?”

      I turned and found myself facing a polite but stern Free Fall employee. I didn’t know they had bouncers in places like that.

      “Yes?”

      “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

      I looked up at Ivarson, whose shouts and screams by now had become the focus of attention for every patron in the Free Fall. A ­couple of men in work utilities were making their way across the net to reach him.

      “He’s a reporter,” I said. “Gross invasion of privacy.”

      “I quite understand, sir. Still, our guests have a right to enjoy their meals without … spectacles of this nature. I can ask you to leave, or I can summon the shore patrol.”

      “No need,” I said. “Joy? You can stay and enjoy your meal, if you like… .”

      “What, and miss a date with a man who can throw an asshole thirty meters? You’ve got to be kidding!”

      So we left. We never did get our homegrown steak and lobster.

      But it turned out to be a spectacular evening nonetheless.

      Chapter Five

      I got the call next morning to report to Second Lieutenant Singer’s office on board the Clymer, up-­El at Starport.

      The Commonwealth’s Starport One Naval Base occupies the five-­kilometer asteroid suspended at the high end of the space elevator, the stone spun at the end of a whirling string that keeps the string nice and taut. The docking facility is on the asteroid’s far side; centrifugal force at that distance, 70,000 kilometers from Earth, amounts to just about one six-­hundredth of a gravity. Ships departing the docks get a small but measurable nudge of delta-­V when they release.

      As her designation “APA” declared, the George Clymer was an attack transport, and she carried on board a battalion-­strength MEU, a Marine Expeditionary Unit, consisting of 1,200 Marines, an aerospace strike force, heavy weapons, and vehicles, plus logistics and command elements. The Clymer’s habitation module was a fifty-­meter rotating ring amidships, spinning two and a half times per minute to provide four-­tenths of a gravity, roughly the same as on Mars. Singer’s office was in the ring’s outer level, right under the skin.

      “HM2 Carlyle, reporting as ordered, sir.”

      Singer glanced up from his holographic computer display. “Stand at ease, Doc. Hang on a sec.”

      I waited as he completed whatever holowork he was doing—­reports, probably, that were easier to read on an external screen than in-­head. Fred Singer had come aboard just four months ago, after our last CO, Earnest Baumgartner, had gotten himself bumped up the pole to full lieutenant and transferred to Mars. I hadn’t formed any real opinions of the new CO yet, beyond his essential assholitude. He was meticulous, a bit on the prissy side, and, like all second lieutenants fresh out of the Academy, he was inexperienced. Capricorn Zeta, I’d heard, had been his first time in combat.

      That by itself is no crime, of course. The fact that he’d been tasked with taking his platoon in on a direct assault against Capricorn Zeta suggested that his superiors thought he could do the job. But for the enlisted pukes under him, both Marine and Navy, there was going to be a trial period when we were all keeping a wary eye on the guy. Would he be a prima donna? A perfectionist? A martinet? Or a decent Marine who listened to his NCOs and looked after his ­people?

      “Okay, Doc,” Singer said after a moment, switching off the holographic screen. “Thanks for coming.”

      “You wanted to see me, sir.” Any maybe ream me a brand-­new asshole.

      “Thought you’d like to hear,” he said. “You are officially off the hook.”

      I blinked. “Sir?”

      “Headquarters has chosen to see your actions at Capricorn Zeta—­in particular your unauthorized sampling of the prisoners’ DNA—­as ‘an appropriate display of initiative in a combat situation.’ ”

      “That’s … uh … good news, sir.” Singer seemed a little too cheerful, and I was waiting for the other combat boot to land.

      “We will ignore the fact that you went over my head and failed to ask my permission to take those samples … and your failure to observe established protocol in the handling of prisoners … and your use of a comm channel compromised by newsbots. This time!”

      The sheer threat wrapped into those last two words was like a blow. “Yes, sir.”

      “There’s also the small matter of your assaulting a civilian at the Free Fall last night. I can not overlook that.”

      “It was a reporter, sir.

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