by Ginger Booth
The group winced as Abel hit the deck with a thunk. Kassidy continued to orbit a guyline, drawing herself in to spin faster. The foursome battled mightily to keep their attention on the captain instead of the air show.
“Rainer Seitz is an engineering tech,” Wilder finished. The last of the company, a small man bearing toolbox instead of weapons load, looked startled at his name. Showing no trace of athletic inclination, he bore the warm complexion typical among urbs. He bobbed his head toward Sass and hoped for the best.
“Good to meet you,” Sass assured them. She scratched her nose ruefully. “Um, are you called guards? Soldiers, sailors?”
“Security, sar,” sarge supplied for the group. “Guardsmen.”
“Tech 2,” Seitz differed. He hazarded to add, “I have a squad of dead star drives out on the dock. Where do they go?”
“In a container clamped under the ship,” Abel replied. “Not in here.”
The discouraged tech gave a nod.
Sass sized up their loads. “Rack your suits here. Weapons cabinet there. Might need another. And how about we leave the bags here for a moment. I’ll give you the grand tour. Then you can settle in. I believe we’re laying on a welcome dinner tonight. Right, Abel?”
Abel nodded, still out of breath from his playtime. “At 18:00 hours. My wife, Jules, does the cooking. Ah, she’s a bit overwhelmed.”
“Let’s wait on that,” Sass suggested. The plan was for the guards to supply scullery maids and housekeeping services when they had no guarding to do. But she could let them settle in first.
“The med bay. Auto-doc,” she began, when they finished dropping their gear.
“Are we allowed to use this?” Seitz interrupted hopefully.
“Of course,” Sass replied, at a loss. “You’re not free to use them on the station?”
“Rationed. Injuries and end of life care,” Sergeant Wilder supplied.
“By all means,” Sass invited. “Sergeant, if you could organize a schedule? Maybe everyone would enjoy one hour for a checkup and an injection of fresh scrubber nanites, then followup. I have no problem if you want to take turns sleeping in the auto-doc to clear existing issues. Treatment for injury preempts your schedule, of course.”
“Thank you, sar.”
All four of Sass’s temporary crew looked cheered by the prospect. Good.
She drew them next door to the engine room and explained the goggles. After the unfortunate incident with Dr. Bertram, she ordered them not to graze for snacks in her garden unless a member of the crew supervised. “There’s always fruit in the galley if you need a snack.”
“Whenever we want?” Griffith blurted.
“Don’t annoy my wife,” Abel said. “Other than that.” He shrugged.
“You won’t go hungry,” Sass promised. “The rest of the cargo hold is basically central park and playground. These trees freshen the air. The planters need to be stowed somewhere else when we’re underway.”
Jules had busied herself lately extruding flower pots. They didn’t have any actual plants in them yet. Sass and Copeland pointed out repeatedly that plants needed light and watering, and couldn’t withstand pressure loss. Jules couldn’t just pave the whole ship with planters. So far she wasn’t receptive to that argument. The girl was still off balance emotionally from her ordeal on the station, so Sass hadn’t pressed the issue yet. Eli promised monkey flowers and marigolds that could bloom within a few weeks. The plans sounded pretty, if exasperating from a ship handling perspective.
Sass completed the tour, not inviting them into the bridge or business office and cabins. “And here’s your berthing. Four bunks, wardrobe cabinets. Shared bath with Copeland and Benjy next door.” She crossed through the showers and knocked on their door before opening it. Benjy was oblivious in VR. He’d nearly stopped that before they left Mahina, but seemed to be falling into the bad habit again. Copeland seemed to be off-ship at the moment. They hadn’t run into him.
“Cortez, I hope you’re alright sharing with the men?” Sass asked. She’d better be alright with it. If she wasn’t, Alohan would have to supply a man instead.
“Yes, sar!” Cortez barked.
“Sergeant, I trust you will ensure a respectful and pleasant bunk environment in here?” Sass worded her hope politely. But it was an order.
“Sar, yes, sar. Question.”
“Yes?”
“Are we required to remain in here when not on duty?”
“Not at all,” Sass replied. “You have free run of the ship.”
Abel quibbled, “To the extent you aren’t a nuisance. If we ask you to stop doing something, you stop or go to your room for time out.”
Sass snickered. “Any other questions?”
“Shower rations?” Cortez asked.
“Huh,” Sass replied. “We’ve never had so many people aboard. If there’s a problem, we’ll address it with scheduling. Morning versus evening showers or something. For now, feel free.”
But though the linens and blankets on the beds were fresh, Sass didn’t see any towels. “Jules?” she asked over the intercom. “Do we have towels for our new crew?”
“No,” the teen replied shortly. She clicked off before Sass could say another word.
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Abel, perhaps you could follow up.”
The first mate looked pained. “Yeah.” He made a note.
No further questions seemed forthcoming. “Well, enjoy yourselves settling in until supper. Sergeant, let’s discuss your schedule tomorrow morning. Have your recommendations ready after breakfast. And Seitz, contact Pollan about containerizing those star drives and securing them to the hull.”
She and Abel left them to it.
“It won’t be that easy,” the first mate warned darkly en route to the office.
“Keep a happy thought.”
He waited until the office door was closed before adding, “If one of those degenerates touches Jules, I’ll…”
Sass blinked. “Degenerates?” He didn’t respond, merely taking his seat. “Everyone deserves a chance, Abel. But they’re along for our safety. If they’re a danger, we need to boot them before we leave MO.”
He nodded curtly. “Sass? I’m sorry that Jules is… I’ll take care of it. Somehow.”
“Abel? She’s a scared kid. I’m not entitled to a housekeeper. I just enjoy it. Support your wife. Don’t discipline her as crew.”
“Point. I just don’t know how to help her.”
And you miss her happy hero worship, Sass mourned. Yeah, that honeymoon is over. Sure was nice while it lasted.
16
Mahina’s early records tell us what crimes were committed. Most consequences appear to be job reassignment. Was this a punishment?
“Rocha. Progress on analyzing data?” Guy Fairweather demanded.
Clay held a tight-beam video conference with Mahina Actual. The city’s bland-looking new security chief – successor to Kendra Oliver – was always curt. In this case, it was justified. MO’s orbit only permitted 20 minute sessions on video before the moon’s bulk got in the way of a fast connection.
“It’s a century’s worth of data, chief,” Clay Rocha supplied. “I acquired it. Analysis will take time.”
“Noted,” Fairweather allowed. “Anything interesting yet?”
“I found the collected diaries of the Ganymede crew from the Vitality. And Yang and Carruthers’ logbooks, deleted. They thought they’d erased their tracks. But they only seem to cover experiments here on the station. Nothing about what they did on Mahina.”
“Send those. We’ll analyze here.” When Clay pursed his lips rather than promptly comply, Fairweather added, “We have analysts. We can help. You’re not giving up the data, Rocha. Merely forward us a courtesy copy.”
“Fine,” Clay allowed. Tempting, but he didn’t bother to tell Fairweather to stick it up his butt, because Clay didn’t work for him. The man was simply prone to barking orders. “How are projects progressing down there?
”
“Fine,” Fairweather echoed wryly. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with. You break orbit in three days?”
“Tomorrow. Departure pulled forward after consulting with Gossamer. The Sagamore skyship we plan to rendezvous with.”
After Eli and Bertram reached substantially different answers than Sass and Benjy, with a new list of concerns they hadn’t considered, Sass asked Gossamer to advise on a flight plan. The other captain promised to supply calculator software when they arrived. In the meantime Gossamer ran them a spreadsheet of 5 days worth of trajectories all starting at 13:00 hours, ending on the day Sass chose. Tomorrow offered the shortest transit time, and thus the lowest risk. Their navigation took six days to Sass’s proposed four.
Clay preferred not to dwell on how exactly Sass’s calculations went wrong. He was just glad they got a qualified second opinion.
“How is Hunter working out as city-settler liaison?” Clay asked. His son Hunter Burke was a leader in the settler resistance movement, newly entrusted as go-between with the authorities in Mahina Actual.
“He asks too many questions,” Fairweather replied. “As do you. Rocha, I remind you that you have no authority. You retired. To pursue your hobby in the stars.”
Clay countered, “Where I am investigating issues of deep interest to MA.”
“Middling interest,” Fairweather differed. “Remember we had a conversation about this? Enshrined in a memo? No further demands. Five years.”
Clay spread hands in exasperation. “I still want to know how it’s going. Hunter is my son. Atlas Pratt is my friend –”
“We have a 5-year plan to build satellite creches for settler children. Correction – the prototype satellite creche. You’ve been gone a week. I have no idea what Pratt accomplished this week. Stuck in meetings, probably.”
Fairweather was on a roll. “And you can remind your girlfriend that she is not an ambassador of Mahina. Merely a pain in the ass. Collier does not make trade deals for us. She is not authorized to make promises to MO on our behalf.”
“She is not my girlfriend,” Clay said, as neutrally as he could manage. Growling at Fairweather didn’t help.
The timer showed they went offline in 5 minutes. The video quality already grew scratchy.
“Our engineer needs to say good-bye to his child.”
“I’ll transfer you.” Fairweather vanished from Clay’s screen. In his place, a cutesy cartoon played of barnyard animals being nice to each other, passing a gift balloon. No dialogue or sound effects. This animation was geared toward the pre-verbal mentality. A placard explained he was on hold for Pediatrics.
And the countdown timer passed the 2 minute mark.
“Sorry for the wait,” a perky nurse replied cheerily. “I don’t see your caller ID. Are you a –”
“I have one minute before this call terminates.”
The nurse looked affronted by his interruption. No one called MA Pediatrics from outside the city. She had no idea what he was talking about.
Clay persevered. “Please tell Dr. Agassiz that Nico’s father will call at 15:32. He wants to speak with Nico.”
“I don’t under –” The nurse’s button nose shattered into confetti first, which spread into the audio like a bad rash. Then the video screen completed its evolution into a splash of particolored chaos, then went black with static accompaniment.
Clay sighed and sat back from his display.
“Copeland?” he reported over his intercom. “I tried. You need to be ready for 15:32 just in case. More likely we’ll use up the next window to make an appointment for the one after that.”
He stood from his in-cabin desk and went to hunt for Sass.
Passing her cabin, he noticed she was in there, sitting on her bed and staring with a slight frown. He rapped on the door and conveyed Fairweather’s attitude.
“I recommend text messages,” he added. “Video calls are frustrating. And short.”
Sass wobbled her head so-so. “But you get so much more bandwidth on their reaction by video.”
“That’s why I call him,” Clay agreed.
“And we won’t have video much longer. I begin to see why we have no comms between colonies. Table of organization,” Sass said, pointing at the bulkhead beside him.
He frowned a moment before catching the change of subject. He poked his head in and saw she’d created a collage of sticky notes and marker lines on the wall facing her bed. Judging from the smears, a wet rag sufficed for clearing her scribbles from the fresh paint.
There wasn’t really enough room to stand back from this display to view it. “Do you mind?” he asked, indicating her bed.
“Not at all.” She shifted a few inches to leave him more room to sit beside her. An unfortunately placed support pole limited her to a twin daybed in this cabin. She’d prefer a double bed like the captain’s cabin, but this was less claustrophobic. And the newlyweds Abel and Jules needed a bed for two more than Sass did.
Clay sat back against the bolster and studied the organization chart on the wall. “I thought you hadn’t done anything yet,” he murmured. “This is a lot.”
“Got in early last night,” Sass explained. “Decided to catch up.”
“Date wasn’t who you hoped?” Clay asked sourly.
Her glower plainly said, No, and don’t be obnoxious. Her words said, “Question. Is a nanite engineer in engineering, science, or medicine? I lined them up in that column between departments.”
“Useful question,” he allowed. “Also, we’re talking years. How much career mobility between departments?”
“Not very,” Sass answered. “I thought of that one. Zero turnover except for death. No new hires. Personality conflict happens. But engineering, medical, science, deck crew – they’re big departments. Except at the top, you can change shift, switch specialties. Above is the boss types. I don’t have much chain of command detail for the ones at the bottom.”
“The green circles?” Some of her post-it notes had halos.
“I remember them. Feel free to circle any you recall. You dealt with them more than I did.”
“Easier if we captured this in a flow gram instead a wall.”
“Sue me. I think better this way.”
Another rap on the door interrupted. Sarge stood ramrod-straight. “Sorry to interrupt, sar!”
“Yeah, what is it?”
Clay shot her a look. Sass wasn’t usually rude. But he deemed she was just slow switching gears, returning to present reality from contemplating the inscrutable Ganymede crew of the Vitality.
Sarge yanked Benjy into the doorway by the scruff of his coverall. “Fraternization, sar!”
Sass’s eyes narrowed into a dangerous glower. Sergeant Wilder hastily withdrew his hand.
“I should go,” Clay offered.
“No, stay,” Sass invited. “You two, my office. Wilder, don’t touch my crewman again.”
“Sar!”
“Bound to happen,” Clay offered.
Sass rolled her eyes and departed.
Clay regretted the interruption. He should leave this diagram on her wall and invite himself in to confer again. They’d soon be hurtling through space for a few days.
He firmly reminded himself that didn’t matter. He leaned forward, arms on his knees to study the diagram. Sass had good ideas, and her approach nicely dovetailed with his own.
The context of the Ganymede crew relationships helped him retrieve long-unused memories of these people. He did know them. He rose to circle a couple more, and a third who Sass knew better than he did. He jotted ‘port mess’ beneath to remind her. He huffed a laugh. Sass crossed swords with that mess officer more times than he could count. Clay refereed twice to keep Sass out of the brig. Selective memory, Sass.
Sass strode behind her miscreants along the catwalk to the office, only a few steps away. She hardly expected interruption en route.
THUNK! “Ow!” drifted up from the cargo hold. A massive object hit the wall ha
rd. Or the deck, she realized, as she backtracked to glance over the railing. Guardsman Griffith lay splat in the middle of the deck. She’d expected to see someone crumpled at the base of the slide as usual. But no, he’d found some other way to fall hard.
Before she could inquire, Jules marched out of the galley and dumped a load of towels onto the man. Yes, they were only towels. But even a towel is an unfriendly thing to drop 8 meters down onto a man’s face.
“Jules? Was that nice?” Sass asked.
Whereupon the girl’s face crumpled. She burst into tears and ran past Sass to take refuge in her cabin. She slammed the door.
Sass glanced back down at Griffith. She decided whatever his problem was, it took third place.
She continued to the office and took her seat. She did not invite Wilder or Benjy to sit. “Discussion. Fraternization?”
“Sar! I returned to berthing and found this crewman in a bunk with two of mine. Doing…the hinky.”
“Hinky,” Sass echoed. She wasn’t sure what that meant. But she caught the gist. “Was my crewman, ah. Was there indication that anyone’s participation wasn’t voluntary?”
Sarge scowled. “Sar. I don’t want him in my bunkroom again.”
“Noted. You may go. Oh, sergeant?”
“Sar.”
“Don’t touch a member of my crew again. Use your words. Mr. Acosta does not require manhandling. In my experience.”
“Sar.” Clearly the man was thrown by the fact he wasn’t supposed to salute her. He came close to clicking his heels at attention, and withdrew.
Benjy studied his toes, his face beet red.
“Voluntary?” Sass inquired sweetly.
“Yes, ma’am. All of us. Sar.”
“That’s good. Because if there’s ever a hint of force, I’ll flay you alive, geld you, and boil you in oil. Then toss you out an airlock. Clear?”
“Clear.” His voice squeaked a bit. He swallowed.
“Abel?” Sass hailed on her intercom. “You’re needed in the office.”
Sass let Benjy stand there under her gaze until the first mate appeared.
“Yes, Sass?”
