Blitz

I wrote this while I was reading Erik Larson's

The Splendid and the Vile

, during which I wondered how a person like Pixy Pfeiffer would react if she was huddling powerless beneath a bomber.

Poor thing.

* * *

Pull on a pair of underwear.

Tuck yourself in nice and tight. Adjust it so that your penis is lying to the correct side, or so that it frames your labia just so; arrange it so that it doesn't tug at your pubes. If you're a certain kind of male mutant, go ahead and tuck your four balls comfortably into the pouch.

Now. Pull your pants up.

Fix your staytab, fasten your belt. Pause, shifting your weight from foot to foot, then smile because everything fits perfectly.

Now? Go on into the bathroom and push everything down. Go on. Everything: pants and undies, all the way down to the ankle. Shift your feet around with your pants and underwear all intertwined; get them nice and mingled. Then, bend quickly and pull everything back up in one disheveled mass, no adjusting. Let all your bits and pieces tuck themselves away wherever they want. Let your underwear bunch up under your trousers. Let them get misaligned, the two waistbands not

quite

lined up.

Fasten that staytab! And now? Go on with your day, coping with the fact that everything is just slightly fucked up. But not fucked up enough to keep you from getting your work done.

That was similar to the feeling of discomfort racing through Subcommander Pixy Pfeiffer's mind as she stood in the main bay of the frigate

Desperado

, frowning up at where the Line Chief had fastened the netting... well, not wrong, per se. The netting would get the job done. But not right, either. She cleared her throat, as always fighting the Aries accent that threatened to emerge.

"Um. Chief. Is there a reason the stays aren't clasped left to right, the way I like them?"

The chief, obviously still on a residual high from the dose of bump he'd just sniffed, blinked. "Ma'am?"

"Yeah," Pixy said slowly, "I'm certain, absolutely certain, I told you last time that I liked the stays fastened toward the right. Fleet-fashion, not like some fucking merchant ship." She nodded to herself, then glanced aside at the carefully blank-faced sailor. "What do you think, Chief? Do you remember me telling you that?"

Or are you too wasted to care,

she left unsaid.

"Ma'am," he replied noncommittally. The big man frowned, looking doubtfully up at the netting. "Well. I guess I can send someone up there to reconfigure them." He sighed, that long-suffering sigh chiefs give when officers are bothering them needlessly. "Might mean I need to flush the gravity in the whole hold, ma'am, to get a guy up there."

Pixy's mind churned as she made some notes on her tabslate, her implant feeding her data. The ship was hurtling through sublight space out past the Lesser Bight, fleeting along with 744 souls aboard, weapons status amber. They were crabbed at three degrees to port, which was placing stress on the starboard vanes; not nearly enough to worry about, given the stresses to which combat starships were designed, but still. A gravity dump in the main bay, at these speeds... "No. Do it the old-fashioned way. Get a ladder."

He nodded, mournful, completely unsurprised. His was not a world where officers acted reasonably at any time, and certainly not out here on the Outer Parabola. They only sent fuckups out here, he knew: officers with

pasts

, like court-martials or, in Pixy's case, a former career in Service Command instead of Combat.

But, for all that, she wasn't that bad an officer. "Most XOs," he allowed grudgingly, "wouldn't even come down here to inspect."

Pixy nodded absently, her fingers still flying across her 'slate. "I'm not most XOs," she grated. "I've been here seven months. You should know that by now."

"Still." The chief was rattling at his own 'slate, summoning a sailor to square away the nettings.

Pixy had no desire to chat with this oaf, but she also had no intention of leaving before she watched with her own eyes as someone set up a ladder to fix the clasps. "This isn't my first time," she said shortly. "I've done the job before. On a GP Service ship."

"No shit?" He glanced over at the diminutive women with the fierce glare and the combat medals. "I didn't think Service Branch used XOs."

"They don't," Pixy admitted. "My captain was... well, an outside-the-box thinker."

The chief gave a knowing nod, brown-nosing shamelessly. "He saw something in you, ma'am."

"No," she snapped, "he got tired of my whining. I was a promotable lieutenant, I was sick of being a supply officer, and there were no other good billets for me. He made me XO while I cooled my heels waiting for a school slot."

"Oh!" He sounded surprised, the two of them watching dully as a pair of soldiers sauntered over with an inflatable ladder. "That, uh, sounds like the kind of thing they'd do in Combat, too."

Pixy shrugged. "Actually," she smirked, "I'm continually shocked at how similar Service and Combat often are." She watched with approval as the sailors began setting up the ladder. "Okay. Good enough. I'll be back to check later, Chief, and if all the clasps aren't done correctly, I'll kick your mouth in."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He'd heard about the XO's feet. The whole ship was talking about the kicking she'd given old Francisco in the machine shop last week when he'd moved insufficiently fast in response to her orders. They'd still been finding his teeth three days later. "I'll get it done."

"See that you do." A thought struck her, something she'd been meaning to bring up. "Oh! And do me a favor?" The Line Chief arched a doubtful eyebrow. "I'll be out in the shuttle next week doing the hull inspection. It'll take awhile. Can you find a hotplate and bolt it into the crew compartment? So I can have some tea?"

His face cleared. "Shit, ma'am," he nodded, "that's not a favor. That's barely even a chore. I'll do it myself."

"Thanks," she nodded, but she was already on to the next item in the endless chain of shit that needed the XO's attention. The hatch rattled behind her as she swept from the bay, brooding, her 'slate still chirping. It had yelled at her while she was taking her inspection notes, nagging, reminding her that she still hadn't approved the personnel transfers from after the mutiny near Plastic Nebula.

And she knew she'd better, because the Captain had come back.

Captain Ledecki had arrived on local Tuesday, hauling along her runner-up trophy from the Celestial Cup, the triumphant PR warrior returning to the backwater station to which Fleet had assigned her, where she could get plenty of practice time while still being One Of Our Bravest Starship Captains. Pixy was walking around these days with her fingers crossed, hoping the Captain's new intergalactic Parcheesi ranking would rise, getting her reassigned to the Core. Getting her off this ship.

Not that Ledecki was a bad Captain. In fact, she was generally quite good: she stayed out of the way and let Pixy do whatever the fuck she pleased. She'd arrived back at the main hatch, ordered grog for all hands, and then disappeared back into her cabin astern with her weird little steward. "Thanks for looking after the ship, Pixy." She'd smiled so sweetly. "I'm a little worn out from traveling. Why don't we meet for dinner and go over your inventories in, say, three days?"

"Um." Pixy had all her inventories, inspections, damage bills, and roster shifts ready to go right then. Three days? This was Fleet! "You don't want to hear about all that right now?"

"No." The reply had been simple, her steward hovering behind her in the doorway to her quarters, and Pixy had watched speechless as her Captain disappeared back into her cave.

Leaving only Chonny Delmer, the Captain's "aide" during her Parcheesi tournament. And an asshole. "Miss me?" he'd asked Pixy with a supercilious curl of his lip, and Pixy had decided then and there that she needed to get him off the ship for good.

"No," she'd snapped curtly, and then it had been off to make sure the ship was ready to fight.

That had been three days ago, and now the 'slate was mad at her for another reason too. Pixy's steward Wrae Juno had picked up on it just the other day as she made them lunch. "Ma'am?"

"Yeah?" Pixy had been going over the ship's pelding status for tonight's dinner with Captain Ledecki. The pelding was always in bad shape. She'd glanced up to see Juno studying the mail.

Her

mail. "Put that shit down."

"What?" Juno doubled as the ship's legal tech, and it was her duty to shuffle through the official mail. "It was in with the legal stuff. It's a letter from your mom?"

"Of course it is," Pixy growled, in no mood for it. "She always writes when my father dies. I'm sure he's done it again."

"When your father... I mean... what?" Juno was seldom speechless. "Uh, what the fuck, ma'am? Did you misspeak?"

"Am I some stuttering little bitch, Juno? No, I didn't fucking misspeak." Pixy pushed her paperwork aside and sniffed. "I never misspeak. He dies. It's what he does. It's not as impressive as it sounds."

"Oh, it's not the dying I'm wondering about." The little steward flipped a grilled cheese with kale. "It's that other word you used. 'Again.' That's not something I'm used to hearing in conjunction with 'died.'" She reached out and tossed the letter on Pixy's worktable.

"No," Pixy muttered, "when you kill people, they tend to stay dead." When she met the younger woman's eyes this time, they blazed back darkly. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" She arched a precise eyebrow and then went coolly back to her sautee pan, leaving Pixy to shudder a bit. Cold little murderous bitch. She could cook beautifully, take exquisite care of Pixy's uniforms, and handle all the legal work with more expertise than any High Court justice. She was also a sexually frustrated little murderess with, as far as Pixy knew, at least five victims to her credit, ranging from a couple of sublieutenants all the way up to an admiral. "I'm just thinking of how I should deal with your sudden attitude. Ma'am."

"Fuck you," Pixy groused. "Go ahead. Poison my food or something. Some days, I'd embrace that." She brooded, staring at her mom's letter. "Yes," she sighed at last as Juno produced that awesome chef's knife of hers and ran it neatly across Pixy's sandwich. "Again. He dies periodically, then someone fixes him up." She hesitated, not wanting Juno to know, but fuckit; the little steward would find a way to figure it out anyhow. "He's got a hobby clone farm."

"A what?"

"A clone farm. But, like, a hobby version." She watched, her mouth watering, as their sandwiches made their way to the desk. "Smells good."

"Of course it does. Focus, ma'am."

"He sent away for a kit. Like, a mini-cloning kit. For making your own fruit flies and macaques and shit."

"Cocks?"

"Ma

cacques

," Pixy gritted. "Like, monkeys." She shrugged. "He eventually got tired of cloning little things and... well, he upscaled."

"Jesus H Buddha."

"Yeah. It's only borderline legal on my world, but what the fuck. It beats drug abuse or autoerotic asphyxiation. My mom got mad one day when he tried to clone my sister, and made him put it away. But since he's retired... well. He's experimenting on himself now." She shrugged and picked up the crisp, buttery sandwich. "He dies sometimes, just to see if the cloned parts work. I guess they usually do."

Wrae was smiling oddly. "You guess?"

Pixy chewed deliberately. "I've not been home in over ten years." She tossed the letter abruptly aside and pushed the whole fucking mess from her mind, and now as she strode up from the main bay and the Line Chief's ridiculous ladder she thought about what that letter represented. Home. Leave. Vacation, a foreign concept to a woman who'd pulled every trick in the Fleet book to stay on active shipboard service whenever possible.

But the 'slate had started alerting her a week ago: she had shore leave due soon. And she might just have to take it; Fleet allowed officers to bank their leave, and Pixy always had. But by now, at fourteen years' service, Fleet was starting to get pissy about banking so many days. Pixy knew the drill: the tabslate would beep. She'd ignore it. So then her implant would beep. She'd ignore that too. So then, at last, they'd call Captain Ledecki, who'd call her down to the great cabin and, in her weird fluffy slippers,

order

her to go home for a break.

The concept galled Pixy.

She tramped along the corridors, by now the sprawling frigate almost as familiar to her as the tiny old Service GPs she'd spent most of her career riding around in. No, she told herself; she wasn't going anywhere. She'd fought for this, for a transfer to Combat and a chance to take warships into battle. Why leave now?

So, with a brutal jab at the tabslate, she silenced the calendar reminder that told her she had to take leave. But the other message was there, the one that glared reproachfully up at her from the glowing screen, and with a sudden choppy curse she strode to an intertube on the wall. "Wrae Juno," she told the box, the message making its way through the ship until her steward answered scratchily.

"Ma'am."

Pixy studied her 'slate. It was time to move on from the mutiny. The new Admiral was shuffling officers around, and as acting captain, Pixy had to sign off. "Juno. Those three officers I have to send off for reassignment."

"Yes ma'am." The steward's voice was carefully neutral. "The ones you've been delaying."

"Whatever. Pass the word for Mr Delmer and Mr Vecque. My office."

"Aye aye, ma'am. And the other officer?"

Fuck. "Pick a Marine lieutenant." Pixy glanced up and down the corridor to make sure nobody was listening, not that it mattered; information on Fleet ships had a way of being known to everyone right away. "The least useful one. Summon them, too."

"Lieutenant Tatuu," Juno shot right back. "He's a shitty seller, ma'am."

"Do it." Pixy sometimes wondered whether it had been wise, the ship's XO going into business with her own steward to control the drug trade aboard her own ship... but whatever. It was too late to worry about it now. "Get them in as soon as you can. I'll be right up."

* * *

"So, gentlemen, that's about the size of it." Pixy made herself smile. "The rest of the squadron is so short, that they've selected you three to get reassigned."

"Selected." Delmer was not taking this well. "

They've

selected."

"Well." Pixy let him see her triumphant smirk. "With input from senior leadership. Like, me." She leaned back in her chair. "Think of it as an opportunity, if you can. Mr Vecque, I'm sending you off with a really good letter of commendation for your outstanding duty performance," she lied. He'd never been more than adequate at anything, and when it came to supply swaps with other ships... well. That's why they used his assistant for that. "It's waiting on the Captain's desk, but your transport is coming in about three hours."

He'd nodded lugubriously. "What ship, ma'am?"

"Well, see, that's the really good news." Pixy knew she was laying it on. There was no way any of these guys would see this as anything but a demotion. "You're off to the

Conqueror

. Captain Pratt, flying the pennant for the whole Lesser Bight Squadron! That's a great opportunity to excel, plus it's a cruiser." She was searching for things to say now. "Bigger quarters."

Poor Vecque. He'd been enlisted, then promoted for bravery, and it had been far more than his abilities could stand. But he'd been an ally at a time that Pixy had needed allies, just after she'd arrived, so the commendation she'd written had been a strong one. "Ma'am."

"And you, Lieutenant Tatuu!" Tatuu had been the officer she'd reported to when she first came aboard, a Tygon of indifferent talent. "You're heading off to command your own detachment! On a sweeper, no less!"

"Thank you, ma'am." He'd heard, of course: the Marines had their own grapevine. He'd be commanding the

Corsair's

Marines, mostly because every other Marine officer in the Inner Sector had been hanged. All their ships had mutinied, and there could be only one price for a Marine officer who let

that

happen. "I'll do my best."

Delmer stirred, glancing at Tatuu. "You can go, Lieutenant. I'm sure Commander Pfeiffer has other things to say to me."

Pixy watched the Marine glance at them both, the apprehension clear in his green Tygon eyes, before he did a right-face and without another word went for the door. "Standby, Lieutenant," Pixy called after him. "I'll let you know when I've got a ship date for you."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He didn't look back as the hatch slid shut, and when Pixy swiveled her chair back to face Delmer he was already sitting down across from her, unasked.

"Don't get comfortable," Pixy told him as he sank into her guest chair. "You're not going to be here long. In more ways than one."

"You win, I guess." He glared over at her with an odd, cold smile.

Pixy felt her temper, always primed around Delmer, start to flare. She knew she needed to keep it down, though. There was no point in letting him push her buttons. He was leaving. "I don't much think of any of this is a win for anyone." She made sure to keep her voice neutral. "You filled in as XO for a few months. You know how hard it is to keep this ship running shorthanded."

"Fuck you, ma'am." He was angry now. "This isn't about anything but you wanting me off this ship."

Pixy let the words hit her and then roll past, leaning slowly back. She could feel a chilly grin of her own, and bit it back.

Be professional

. She was very aware of how badly she'd mishandled this man. She'd gone in guns blazing from the start, like she always did, and it was occurring to her that that might have been unwise. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr Delmer. We've misunderstood each other, I think. Probably best that you get a fresh start someplace else."

He gave a contemptuous snort. "Misunderstood. That's nice."

"There's a limit, even now, to the level of disrespect I'll take from you before I..." She stopped herself, her tone growing more clipped. This hadn't ever worked with Delmer, the threats and intimidation.

Be fucking professional!

she raged in her mind. "Well. It doesn't matter. Stand by," she repeated, taking refuge in Fleet formula. "I'll let you know when I've got a ship date for you."

He was nodding slowly, like a cornered beast, still disdainful. "Uh huh. So, I guess I'm relieved in the meantime? I should spend my time chilling in my cabin and let McZylenko take over as Weapons Officer? Maybe think about the bigger quarters on cruisers?" he sneered.

Pixy nodded, regal. "I think that would be wise."

"He's a shit. You're making a mistake."

"This is Fleet, Mr Delmer," she shot back evenly. "We all make mistakes. Sometimes

all

the choices are bad. And we sometimes have to suck it up, bend over, and take it dry. You know that; you've served for awhile. You don't have to get bitchy about it, no matter how you feel about me, but you

do

have to follow orders."

"You should be getting rid of Paulus, not me," he went on doggedly. Pixy had a hard time believing he honestly thought she'd change her mind. "I'm just an asshole. Him? He's inept."

"We're done here, Mr Delmer."

The man's eyes narrowed in that broad face of his, his clipped beard bristling. "Pathetic," he muttered, turning carefully on his heel. "This is a bad decision."

"You already said that." Pixy made a point of glancing back down at her tabslate. "Or something just like it. Now shoo. I'm busy."

He shook his head. "If you didn't want to hear people tell you you're wrong," he hissed, "you should have stayed in Service."