Fleet of the Damned by Chris Bunch; Allan Cole Read Free Book Online

door at midnight. He'd opened the door to get a plas container of water in the face.
    Sten, once he'd figured out who the culprit was, had retaliated by sealing Lotor in his shower with the drain plugged. He'd relented before the water level hit the ceiling.
    Lotor, after drying his fur, had escalated. He had decided that Sten had allies, Sh'aarl't being one. So he'd tucked the floor fire hose under Sh'aarl't's door and turned it on.
    Sh'aarl't, awakened when her room got half-full, had sensibly opened the door and gone back to sleep.
    Lotor had not considered that making a spider an enemy was a bad thing to do.
    The next night, Sh'aarl't had spun her web out from her window up a floor to Lotor's room and gently replaced his pillow with a water bag.
    Lotor, again looking for a new target, went after Grunt. He tied an explosive charge to a huge water bag, rolled it down the corridor, knocked on Bishop's door, and then scurried.
    Grunt opened his door just as the water bag blew.
    His revenge required filling Lotor's room with a huge weather balloon filled with water. Bishop, being the combat type he was, didn't bother to figure out whether Lotor was present when he set the trap.
    It took most of the barracks staff to free Lotor.
    At that point, through mutual exhaustion and because no one could come up with a more clever escalation, the watersack war ended.
    The only good effect it produced was the linking of Lotor, Bishop, Sten, and Sh'aarl't into a vague team.
    The team adopted Victoria as their mascot. She wasn't sure why but was grateful for the company. The four never explained, but it was just what Sten had felt on the map exercise: One of them had to make it. And Victoria was the most likely candidate.
    The five had discussed their options—which all agreed were slim—and also what those IPs really would turn out to be if they were required to wear uniforms instead of the blank coveralls.
    Victoria had the best slander on Ferrari. She said the sloppy man must have been a Warrant-1, who probably blackmailed his commanding officer while stealing every piece of Imperial property that wasn't bonded in place.
    They had laughed, shared a cup of the guaranteed-no-side-effects herbal tea, and headed for their rooms and the omnipresent studying.
    At least most of them did.
    Possibly the herbal tea had no reported effects.
    Sten and Victoria bade Sh'aarl't good night at her door. Sten meant to walk Victoria to her room but found himself asking her into his own room.
    Victoria accepted.
    Inside, Sten gloried and dismayed. Victoria pressured the bed and plumped the pillows. She touched a finger to her flight suit zip, and the coverall dropped away from her tiny, absolutely perfect body.
    Sten had fantasized about making love to a ballerina—specifically Victoria. He hadn't suggested it because he had the rough idea that if he suggested and she accepted, his capabilities would be exactly as impotent as Mason daily suggested.
    Tension and all that.
    Sten may have been accurate about his own potential. But he had no idea how creative an ex-professional dancer could be.
    The next day both Victoria and Sten tested very, very low on the various challenges.
    They'd had less than an hour's sleep.

    CHAPTER EIGHT
    S election moved on from written or livie tests to live problems, giving Ferrari and Mason a chance for real hands-on harassment.
    Sten had the idea that the particular situation he was facing would be a real piece, since Ferrari was beaming and even Mason had allowed his slash of a mouth to creep up on one side.
    "This is what we call a Groupstacle," Ferrari explained genially.
    Group. Obstacle.
    The group was Bishop, Victoria, Lotor, Sten, and six others.
    The obstacle was:
    "We're standing here," Ferrari said, "in the control room of a destroyer. Flower class, in case you're curious. It looks terrible, does it not?"
    He waited for the chorus of agreement from the candidates.
    "The reason it looks so bad is because it has