The Serrano Connection

by Elizabeth Moon

  She put her fork down; her appetite had disappeared. "Admiral Serrano's a very interesting person," she said. That was always safe . . . she hoped. From the startled looks of the two jigs, perhaps it wasn't. "Not that it wasn't an alarming situation." Now everyone was looking at her. A year ago, she might have felt her face flushing, but the publicity around the court-martial had taken care of that. She smiled around the table. "Any of you ever serve with Admiral Serrano?"

  "No, sir," said the senior jig. "But she's a Serrano, and they're all pretty much alike." His tone tried for superior, that of the one with secret knowledge, but its very smugness defeated its intent. Esmay knew exactly what he didn't know. For the first time she realized she could enjoy this.

  "I don't think I'd put it that way," she said, leaning forward a little. "Frankly, having served under both of them—" She had served under Admiral Serrano only remotely, and briefly, but this was no time for precision on that point. "Admiral Vida Serrano, that is, and Commander Heris Serrano . . ." Thus reminding everyone that a lineup of all the admirals and commanders Serrano would take up a fair length of deck. "I thought them quite individual. Nor is the difference all seniority." Let them make what they could of that.

  "But isn't Commander Serrano—Heris Serrano that is—the admiral's niece?"

  Esmay let her eyebrows go up at this appalling lack of manners. "What, precisely, are you suggesting?"

  "Well . . . you know, they all stick together. Being related so close, I mean."

  Esmay had not imagined that kind of prejudice aimed at anyone but Fleet outsiders like herself, those who had enlisted from some planet. The Serranos were Fleet royalty, one of the fourteen private military forces that had combined into the Regular Space Service of the Familias Regnant. Through the white rage she felt, her mind reacted as if pricked, correlating remarks made months ago, even years ago, as early as her second term in the Fleet prep school. She had always ignored them, labeled them pique or envy or momentary annoyance. If those people had been serious . . . if there were serious resentment of the Serranos—and possibly some of the other First Fourteen—someone should know. She should know, and she should not lose her temper and shove this brash youngster's face in the stew.

  Her temper bucked, like one of the green colts in training, and she rode it down, hoping her eyes showed none of the strain.

  "I think with a little more experience you won't either think or say things like that, Jig Callison," Esmay said in the mildest tone she could manage. Callison turned red, and looked down. Someone snickered; she didn't spot who.

  Conversation, naturally, died, and she pretended to eat the rest of her dinner. When the senior lieutenant tapped on his glass for attention, Esmay felt more relief than curiosity. She found it hard to keep her attention on the announcements of who had the duty, and almost missed her introduction. She stood, off-balance mentally if not physically, and nodded to the faces that seemed only pale and dark blurs.

  After the meal, she left for her quarters as soon as she could. She was annoyed with herself for her immediate prickly response to the mention of the Serrano name. And why was she so blurry? Usually she could focus on new people without much trouble.

  When she thought about it, she realized that she had actually run about thirty standard hours without sleep. Her transport ship had come in on its own schedule, skewed a full shift and a half from the Koskiusko. Shiplag . . . luckily she never had much trouble with it. One night's sleep seemed to rearrange her internal timer . . . but right now she wanted that sleep badly. She wasn't on the watch schedule yet, so she set her personal timer to allow ten hours.

  Her compartment filtered out most of the noises . . . she could just hear the bass thump of someone's music cube, DUM-da-DUM-DUM, over and over. She didn't like it, but it wouldn't keep her awake. She logged off the status board, and stretched out on her bunk. She had just time to wonder if she would have nightmares when she fell asleep.

  Beside her, Peli leaned out to toss a gasser into the passage. A blue line traced the air just above his head and he jerked back. Esmay pressed the filters snugly into her nostrils and peered through the helmet visor. When the smoke obscured normal vision, her helmet sensors gave her a wiggly false-color view of the corridor. She snaked out into it, hoping that whoever'd been shooting at them didn't have a similar helmet. They thought they'd gotten to the locker before the traitors, but none of the juniors knew how many helmets were supposed to be in that locker.

  Ahead, someone braced into an angle of a hatch, weapon at ready. Esmay couldn't see the features, but she could hear, with the clarity provided by the helmet external pickups, the words "Get this bunch of little fuckers, and we'll have only Dovir to worry about—"

  She braced her own weapon and fired. The wiggly pink-and-green image blew apart; something wet and warm splashed her arm. She ignored it. Through the dense stinging fog, she slithered on, attention focussed on the helmet's input . . . aware that behind her Peli and the others followed, that somewhere Major Dovir still led the few other loyalist officers . . . .

  The fog lifted in ragged wisps . . . ahead she could see the scorched lines on the bulkheads . . . she did not look at the deck except when she had to, when she would have fallen over the obstructions . . . but even so she saw them. Heaps of old clothes, dirty and stained, scattered here and there . . . she would not think of it now, she would not, later was soon enough . . . .

  She woke in a sweat, heart pounding. Later. Later was now, when she was safe. She turned on her bed light, and lay staring at the overhead. They had not been heaps of clothes; she had known it even then. Her father had been all too right—warfare was ugly, no matter where. Guts and blood and flesh stank the same in a spaceship as in the aftermath of a street riot. And she herself had added to that stench, that ugliness. She and the other juniors had fought their way up the ship, onto the bridge, where Dovir, mortally wounded, held the command chair after Hearne was dead. Dovir, his guts slipping out of his hands, had given her that one glazed look . . . his voice, struggling for control, as he gave his last orders . . . .

  She blinked, trying not to cry. She had cried; it didn't do any good. She felt slimy all over, the sweat cold and slick now, the bedclothes damp and tangled around her. It reminded her of her aunt's description of menopause, waking up sweaty and then having cold chills. Or something like that. She forced her mind back to this place and time. Thinking about home wouldn't help her at all.

  According to the chronometer, she had slept a solid seven hours. She could try for another short nap . . . but experience suggested that she wouldn't really sleep. Better would be a shower—it was late third shift on this ship—and an early start on the working day.

  No one was in the big shower room; she let the hot water warm her and wash away the fear-stink. As she came back down the passage, she heard someone's alarm go off. Not hers—she had carefully shut hers off. Then, from down the passage, another alarm. She made it into her compartment before those alarms stopped, and when she emerged, it was to find two bleary-eyed ensigns on their way to the showers, and a jig leaning on the bulkhead folding down the top flap of his uniform boot.

  "Sir!" they all said, coming to more or less upright posture. Esmay nodded, feeling the momentary glow of virtue that accompanies an early rising, clean teeth, and the evidence that one's associates are still half-asleep.

  She did not let herself dwell on that. She had work to do—not only learning the ship, as Major Pitak had said, but figuring out why the major's data cube and the ship's records were so different. All that day, except for hurried meals, Esmay mapped the real ship against two dissimilar records. Major Pitak's data cube was right except once, far in the bow end of T-1, Deck Thirteen, when neither fit the reality. A hatch had disappeared completely, replaced by a bulkhead painted in garish stripes. As Esmay stood there, wondering what the pattern meant, a bald senior chief bustled out of the nearest cross-passage, and hurried toward her.

  "What are you—oh, excuse me,
sir. Can I help you find something?"

  Esmay had not missed the tension . . . something was clearly going on. But it was not yet her job to find it. She smiled instead. "I'm Lieutenant Suiza," she said. "Major Pitak told me to familiarize myself with the entire ship by 0800 on the 27th, and I thought there was a hatch up here to the electronics warehouse facility."

  "Oh . . . Major Pitak," the man said. Evidently Major Pitak was well known outside her own bailiwick. "Well, sir, the ship's database hasn't caught up to renovations. The electronics warehouse access is up that way." He pointed. "I'll be glad to show you."

  "Thanks," Esmay said. As they turned away, she said "This bulkhead pattern—is it something they didn't teach us, or—?"

  A red flush went up the back of his neck. "It's—probably unique to DSR ships, Lieutenant. They're so big, you see . . . the captain's permitted some nonreg markings to keep newbies oriented."

  "I see," Esmay said. "Very sensible—I've gotten lost several times already."

  The red flush receded; she could hear relaxation in his voice. "Most people do, Lieutenant. That pattern just lets people know that what the ship's schematics show isn't there any more—they haven't gone the wrong way, exactly, but the way's changed."

  Something about the intonation of that almost put a capital letter on "way." Esmay stowed that slight emphasis for later consideration, and followed the chief outboard, then forward again, to a hatch clearly labeled Electronics Warehouse Facility. Under that official label was another.

  * * *

  Esmay thanked her guide, and went in. It looked like any storage facility she'd seen, as large as most on major bases. Racks of containers labeled with part numbers; bins with the most commonly needed parts piled loosely. A jig she had not met yet came out from a warren of racks.

  "Sher, is that you—oh, sorry, sir." Esmay went through her explanation again, introducing herself to Jig Forrest. He seemed eager enough to show her the whole warehouse.

  "I just wondered—my ship schematic showed a different entrance."

  "Before my time," he said. "I know—I got lost trying to find this place when they sent me up from the 14th. We share this warehouse with Training—those technical schools people are always needing more parts in the lab. That's why they moved this warehouse. I don't think they update the ship's schematics often enough, especially since this is a DSR—it's important for us to know where we are. But you know how it is, Lieutenant: no one asks jigs for their opinion."

  Esmay grinned. "I do indeed. And I suspect, new as my extra bar is, that no one asks lieutenants their opinion either." At least not until the middle of a mutiny, when everyone else was dead. But this fresh-faced young man with the coppery hair hadn't been through that.

  "You must be with Major Pitak," he said now, and at her expression laughed again. "She always sends her new juniors out to find impossible corners of the ship. I've never been in H&A, for which I thank whatever gods govern the assignments."

  "At least I know where this is now," Esmay said. "And I'd better get back to my list."

  She was glad for the years of open-country navigation on the estancia . . . she had no problem retracing her route down and aft, and arrived in the junior officers' section in plenty of time to freshen up before taking her assigned table at mess. Now that she was wide awake, she found it easier to engage them in conversation.

  Callison, the senior jig, had a graduate degree in environmental engineering. Partrade, the junior jig, worked in administration—a specialty still called paper-pushing, though relatively little of it was on paper. The five ensigns at her table included one in Hull and Architecture, two in Weapons Systems, and one each in Medical Support and Data Systems.

  Esmay wondered if any of them had served aboard a ship in combat, but didn't like to ask. She had spooked them enough the previous night. Partrade brought the topic up without her having to ask.

  "Was the Xavier action your only experience in combat, Lieutenant Suiza?"

  Esmay managed not to choke on her peas. "Yes, it was." End of sentence.

  "I've never even served on a warship," Partrade went on, with a glance around. "I don't think anyone at this table has. They put me in Maintenance Administration right away, and I've been on the Kos for five solid years."

  "I was on Checkmate," one of the ensigns said. "But we never did anything but patrol."

  "Be grateful," said Esmay, before she could stop herself. Now they all stared at her. She hated this. She felt too young and too old at the same time.

  "If the lieutenant doesn't want to talk about it, don't push her." That from the lieutenant at the next table, whom Esmay now remembered was the one she'd met outside the lift tube. "Dinner's not the time for gory stories anyway." He winked at Esmay. She grinned in spite of herself.

  "He's right," she said to her table. "It's not a fit topic at the table." Or among strangers, she realized. Now she understood why the veterans tended to cluster apart to tell their tales, why they had fallen silent when she and other juniors had tried to overhear them. "Any of the rest of you have any experience?" She was surprised to hear in her own voice the same slight emphasis to the word which she had heard from more senior, and experienced officers. Their heads shook. "Well," she said. "Then we won't be tempted to bring up things like that at dinner." Her smile would, she hoped, take the sting out of that. "Now . . . Zintner, you're in H&A. Was that your intent at the Academy?"

  "Yes, sir." Zintner, who must have stood on tiptoe to make the minimum height requirement, almost sparkled in her seat. "My family's been in shipbuilding forever—a long time anyway. I wanted to work on military hulls . . . that's where the good new stuff is."

  "And this is your first assignment?"

  "Yes, sir. It's great. You've met Major Pitak—she knows so much—and we get to work on everything, once we're out with the wave."

  "Mmm. My background's scan technology, so I don't know much about H&A. I expect you'll be teaching me a lot."

  "Me, sir? I doubt it—the major's got me working on a technical manual right now. She'll probably tell Master Chief Sivars to take you on."

  Direct contradiction was rude, but the ensign looked too bouncy to have intended any rudeness. She was simply full of what she was doing. Esmay understood that. She turned to the jigs. Callison was pleasantly willing to discuss the less disgusting processes that kept the ship's crew alive, and had amusing anecdotes of the sorts of things that went wrong. It had not occurred to Esmay that a few insect egg cases caught in the mud in someone's hiking boots could hatch and cause serious problems, but apparently they had, on another ship. That story led Partrade to regale them with a story about the time an unnamed junior lieutenant transposed a few numbers and caused a massive overdraft of his ship's account . . . everyone had been bumped up ten grades, so the whole ship was crewed—according to the computer—by officers, and the captain outranked the sector commander.

  One of the many differences from home that Esmay savored was this . . . that they could talk about their assignments at dinner. On Altiplano, nothing related to one's work could be discussed at dinner, even if all at the table were working together. She found that unnatural . . . here, a flurry of shop talk would unwind naturally into other topics.

  "Are you ready for my exam?" Major Pitak asked when she reported.

  "Yes, sir," Esmay said. "But I do have a question."

  "Go ahead."

  "Why doesn't the ship's schematics agree with reality—or with the schematics on your cube?"

  "Excellent. How many discrepancies did you find?"

  Esmay blinked. She hadn't expected that reaction. She began to describe the discrepancies, starting at the bow and working aft. Pitak listened without comment. When she had finished, Pitak made a note on her pad.

  "I believe you found them all. Good work. You asked why we have discrepancies, and that's not a question I can answer. I suspect it's the new AI subroutines, which actively protect data considered especially important. A software glitc
h, in other words, though we can't seem to convince the Fleet systems designers that it's a problem. They take the view that architecture, once launched, shouldn't change . . . which is probably true for most hulls."

  Esmay thought that over. "So you create new data cubes individually when you change architecture."

  "Right. We can actually change the main system for a time—usually an hour or so before it 'heals' itself and repairs what it thinks is a data injury."

  "But there were two places where your data cube didn't match the reality."

  Pitak grinned at her. "I gave you an old data cube, Lieutenant—to see if you'd really check things out. The stupid ones come back all confused, complaining that they can't find their way by ship schematics. The clever ones check out one or two locations, then come back with a list of discrepancies between my cube and the ship schematics. Good, honest officers who aren't afraid of work do what you did—they check everything. That's what I want in my section . . . people who skip the details in H&A kill ships, and we're here to save them."

  "Yes . . . sir." Esmay thought about that. It was an efficient way of separating lazy and careless from diligent and careful, but she wondered what other tricks Major Pitak had waiting. It would, she thought, be some exam. "Thank you, sir, for explaining."

  Pitak looked at her oddly. "Thank you for passing the test, Lieutenant—or hadn't you figured that out yet?"

  She hadn't, and now she felt stupid. "No, sir." Stupid, gauche . . . she felt her ears burning and hoped the glow didn't come through her hair.

  "A one-track mind, I wonder, or . . . of course you are a dropsquirt." That in a thoughtful voice with no edge to it.

  "Dropsquirt?" Esmay hadn't heard that before, though it sounded pejorative.

  "Sorry. DSR vessels develop their own local slang . . . almost a local dialect, though we try not to be too impenetrable. It means Personnel of Planetary Origin, the official term . . . someone squirted into deepspace work from a drop—a gravity well. And someone junior, which is when you can really tell the difference. One doesn't expect dropsquirts to get all the nuances of Fleet social structure right away . . . when did you join, Suiza?"