ECV Full House
Outbound from Campoleone
Mess Deck
020929NOV53
Mattis
“Can we smoke in here?” one of the infantrymen lounging at one of the tables nearer the door asked loudly enough to make it a general question.
“Shit, snake, spark it up,” another trooper at a table off to Mattis’s right replied.
Steven exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling of the mess hall and pushed the pack towards Parker kitty-corner to him across the table. The gunner pulled one of the cigarettes out and brought it to lips already quirked into a grin. The momentary flash of his lighter reflected off his left eye—he had instinctively closed his right one against the glare.
Mattis flicked a bit of ash into an upended lid of a coffee cup.
Old habits die hard.
“So, who do you think is going to walk through that door next?” Parker asked.
“Probably the captain of the damn ship, knowing our luck,” Mattis groused, but he was still going to smoke his damn cigarette all the same.
“Or Hops maybe,” Parker replied.
He’d angled himself so that he could see the hatchway into the mess out of his peripheral vision after Mattis had pointedly taken the corner seat facing the portal. A heavy handful of other personnel were sitting in various-sized clots at the other tables, their conversations making a gentle burble in the moderately sized compartment.
They probably shouldn’t have been smoking on the mess deck, but even under the best of times that would have been but a mere suggestion to Steven Mattis. After what had happened in the hour-plus since he’d awakened…
Well, it was better than the alternative. If a noticeable fraction of the other dirt feet within earshot of him decided to follow his lead, that was their own lookout.
The sound of voices in the corridor caused a few of the junior enlisted men to drop their cigarettes down to their sides, out of direct sight of the entranceway, though what good that would have done was beyond the crew of 006. Parker chuckled even as the quartet of infantrymen forced their way through the opening and sat down roughly at a table that had been—up until that moment—populated by a pair of the unit’s techs waiting to go on duty. They got up with a grimace, but otherwise didn’t deign to notice the ground pounders who had so rudely disturbed them.
The short, sturdy non-com leading them gave Parker and Mattis a nod before ducking his head to listen to a question from one of his troopers. Mattis recognized him as Acolyte Avram, one of the infantry squad leaders in the Jump Platoon. He wondered where the rest of the infantrymen were at the moment.
“Eh?” Parker asked suddenly.
Mattis looked over at him quizzically. “I didn’t say anything.”
The gunner blinked, nonplussed. “Didn’t say you did, buddy…but you had that look on your face again.”
Mattis pursed his lips and took a drag of his cigarette, wondering how to put into words the feeling of being alone in a room full of people—and not wanting to compound the feeling by filling the room with even more bodies. He decided to say nothing and leave it at that. If Parker wanted to press further… he let it pass when yet another trooper scurried through the doorway. This time it was one of the newbies, the kid named Paley.
He stopped in the doorway, looking around with short, choppy, birdlike movements until he say the two veterans nestled comfortably in the corner.
“Well, here comes trouble,” Parker murmured out of the corner of his mouth. “Damn it all…”
“No rest for the wicked,” Mattis deadpanned, taking a last drag off his cigarette before wrinkling out the remaining bits of tobacco in the impromptu ashtray. He looked up at the seemingly-permanent staff-duty runner when the kid approached.
“What can we do for you, troop?” Parker asked when it was clear beyond doubt Paley was headed towards them.
“A-Acolytes, the commander requires your i-immediate presence in his stateroom,” Paley said in his perennially breathless state. He was visibly shaking and the crack in his voice had drawn more than a few looks from the crowd of troops now filtering into the compartment from wherever it was they had been hiding out.
Parker took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. Mattis ran his tongue across the inside of his lower lip while he studied the youthful trooper. The gunner got up and crushed his cigarette out, waiting a few beats before turning to look down at the driver.
“You coming, then?”
Mattis blinked at Paley, who looked more agitated now than he had when he’d come in a moment before. After a moment, Steven stood and gestured the runner closer to him.
“You need to relax, kid,” he breathed. “You’re making everydamnbody nervous, right?”
“A-Acolyte?” Paley stammered.
“C’mon,” Parker pressed, spearing Mattis with a glance that told the driver that enough was enough.
Steven let it ride, but he hadn’t been joking, either. His right hand brushed the small of his back in an unconscious movement that might have been—to the uninitiated onlooker—a concession to the torqueing his body had received last night.
“Well, lead on, then,” Parker said to the younger acolyte, looking more and more flustered with each passing moment.
“Make a hole, boys!” Parker intoned over the runner’s shoulder while they made their way across the quarterdeck to the commander’s cubicle.
“Ah, here we, ah…are,” Paley said when they’d reached their destination; Mattis didn’t bother reminding the kid he at least had been here only a half-hour before.
He wanted to, though, wanted to beat the kid down mentally and watch the wreckage self-destruct, wanted to watch him crumble and fall apart…but he wouldn’t. Steven Mattis wasn’t a bully, but he had a lot of pent-up frustration at the moment—and it didn’t seem like he was going to find a way to release it in the next few moments.
Piss on it, he thought. None of it mattered, anyway…
The panel was already open and a Double Deucer in a mechanic’s coverall was waiting inside the room. Parker reached inside to knock and Adept Hopschnur barked his assent before the gunner’s knuckles had even made contact with the thin panel. Mattis let the other trooper go in first and turned to look at Paley standing off to the side.
“Kid, you should find yourself a bloody desk at least to sit behind so you can look official.”
Paley looked back at him and blinked, conflicting emotions crossing behind his eyes. Steven wondered idly if the trooper hated him, thought he was the King ******.
Not that it mattered.
Mattis kept his face blank as he crowded into Parker momentarily so Paley could close the door behind him. He nodded to the other man but made no other effort to greet him; this was the Adept’s turf, and Steven didn’t yet know the rules…
His nametape read ‘BZERZINSKI’, but Mattis knew him as “Zink”. He was shorter and more sparely-framed than the driver of even the lanky Parker, but no one who had ever seen him boss his team of vehicle mechanics would mistake him for frail. Mattis and he had gotten along well in their time in the motor-hole, but Steven didn’t suppose either of them considered the other a friend in an absolute sense.
“Go ahead, Vaclav. One more time,” Hopschnur stated without preamble.
The older acolyte cleared his throat and compulsively wiped his hands on a rag hanging from his coveralls’ back pocket; he smelled of lube-oil and too many hours on duty. None of that bothered Mattis or Parker, both of whom knew they’d all be smelling like that within the next few days.
DropShip transits were rarely pleasure cruises, and that was without the extra civvies on-board.
“Uh, well, it seems the doors and back hatch of 006 were tack welded shut,” the lead wrench started. “That is, two tacks at the lower corners of the doors, and two on each corner of the hatch, you see. After the frame was torqued by the crash, you understand, yes? Did either of you hear anything while you were inside? The commander did not.”
He gestured toward Adept Hopschnur, who was sitting with his arms on his desk and his fingers tented before him. He looked over the tips at each of his crewmen in turn as if the digits formed the V-notch of a weapon’s sight.
Parker stirred uncomfortably. “Er, you mean to tell me someone bloody welded the doors shut after we rolled over? Sir?”
Hopschnur nodded his chin towards Bzersinski. “That’s what I am being told, gentlemen. Now, what do you both recollect about the incident? Mattis, you first.”
Steven chewed on his upper lip for a brief moment to resettle himself from the cold funk where he’d been while his mind contemplated a universe where—potentially—his enemies had stood over him as he lay unconscious and helpless—help less—watching, waiting, chuckling, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Blazes, sir. We were headed out from headquarters and came around that last curve—bloody Hell, I mighta been going too fast, but I never saw the spike strip ‘til were already bloody on top of it…the tires blew and then we were, we were…spinning, sliding. Rolling, sir.”
He paused for a moment, his hands at his sides but nonetheless gripping the steering wheel that hadn’t been able to return control of his vehicle to him when it had happened for real, either. He looked over at his friend and snorted. “Thought it was curtains for Parker, here, too, up in the turret and all—but he’s the one that got me outta my seat afterwards. Then I went t’check on you, sir. I suppose you know the rest after that.”
Hopschnur nodded, then turned back to Parker.
“Ah, yes, sir. I was up in the turret, manning the gun. I thought I saw something in the road when we came around the turn so I said something over the intercom—I think. I mean, I thought I did at any rate…”
The infantry officer gestured the gunner to continue with his tale; both men knew it wouldn’t have mattered if he had or hadn’t called out a warning. The trap had been too expertly laid.
“Right. The minute we ran over it, I was already inside the vehicle. I just remember screaming, is all. Tires blowing and skidding, maybe us—probably me, heh, right, sir?—whatever. I remember hitting the roof, that musta been on the first rollover, and after that I don’t remember a damn thing. Not until I woke up, upside down and crumpled like an accordion…”
Parker looked over at Bzerzinski who was engrossed with the story, hearing it for the first time, or rather, hearing the version from those who were there and who had lived through it.
“We were way off the road you see, and since the turret hatch was open and we were upside down, well, you can get a pretty good idea…right, sir, sorry. Just by chance I happened to have my electric torch on me, so I used that to get Matty here outta his seat. Then we went right t’work on you, sir.”
Hopschnur blinked and licked his lips slightly before dropping his hands to the desk in preparation to speak. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’m not sure how they did it…or even who ‘they’ are. The net control station—that would be our very own Acolyte Paley out there—says we lost contact at approximately 2340 hours based on when we left the headquarters building and our, ah, approximate speed.” He flashed tight, humorless smile to Mattis who replied in turn. “Top Heravy and the convoy got to us at approximately 0020. Unless one of you can give me an exact time about when you woke up, we might never know exactly how long we were out—or awake, as it were.
“Just for the record, you two did your usual pre-op PMCS, correct? Which, presumably, included checking all the doors and hatches?”
Mattis felt his stomach tighten; not because he hadn’t done his job, but at the reasonable irritation when a professional’s performance of his duty was called into question. “Roger that, sir. I believe you can correlate that with Zink here’s copy of the CG4828 form…?”
He turned to the mechanic who nodded his assent. “Matty is right, sir. Everything is in order, right up until the time he drove through the motor-pool gate.”
“Long story, short, Vaclav, I’m not sure even I understand how it happened, then,” Hopschnur admitted. He shivered and added, “And I can’t say I’m enthused with the notion of some dirty bastard sealing us into an overturned truck, either—and the three of us not waking up in the time it took them to do it, more to the point.”
“Well, they did it from the outside, sir, if it’s any consolation,” the mechanic offered. “After a wreck like the one 006 went through, well, I’m sure you all had other things on your mind, even if you hadn’t all been unconscious.”
Hopschnur nodded, but his mind was clearly focused on something else, so the gesture was a distant one. Mattis inhaled through his nose and out through pursed lips.
“One thing, sir,” he said.
“Spit it out, trooper.”
“I think what we have to think about now is: why is the Word of Blake playing us with kid gloves—such as it is? Why go through the trouble of assassination—a double assassination at that—and leave us sleeping peacefully in the middle of nowhere with no witnesses instead of killing us when they had the chance…and it was just as easy as not to do it?”
“Well, not everybody is as willing to kick a guy when they are down, Matty,” Parker interjected. “’Course, I am too.” He smiled thinly.
Hopschnur regarded both of the enlisted men carefully. “I wouldn’t say that the BattleMechs rushing towards the flight-line were being operated with kid gloves, Mattis. Would you?”
“The point still stands, sir.”
Bzerzinski shifted uneasily as the mood in the room had shifted its lines from a maintenance puzzle into a reality shaped by the killers in uniform that dominated it now even more than they had a moment before.
“In that much you’re correct,” Hopschnur allowed. He tapped on the desk as if to bring a halt to the interview. “Well, Vaclav, let me know immediately if you find anything else. As for you two, stand easy, but stay ready. I presume you’ve already heard about the damaged parts ? We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The three enlisted men nodded as one and made ready to vacate the compartment.
Hopschnur’s next words forestalled them. “Oh, and Mattis,” he sniffed. “For the moment, this is a no-smoking flight, I think you’ll find—at least on the mess deck. Keep it in mind until we get it settled.”
“Roger, sir,” Mattis replied, slipping through the door ahead of his companions.
He instinctively checked the companionway, left-right-left, before stepping out into it, ignoring Paley’s stiffening to attention. His hand again brushed the small of his back, making sure the hold-out pistol was still seated there against need.
He had a feeling he would need it very shortly.
