“What’s Winona’s U-SOC here?”
“Her Union Specialty Occupational Code is 61AX, Stellar Tactician. She and I will be plotting assault ingress and egress vectors to minimize risk. Her thesis on low orbit, artificial gravity assisted maneuvers looks revolutionary. I can’t wait to try them out. Have you read it?”
I rested my head on the sheet next to her pillow and watched her sleeping. “No, but I’m sure it’s brilliant.”
Her lips moved in response and she whispered, “Not brilliant. Too obvious to be brilliant.” One eye opened and she smiled weakly at me. “I love my Mala Dusa.”
I tapped her forehead. “You’re an idiot if you followed me up here.”
She sat up, stretched, and her big eyes looked around the room, taking it all in the way she always does. The feeling of contented peace was fading quickly. “I’m an idiot, then. When we got back to your house Marcus told your parents and me that you had volunteered and were already gone. Your dad punched him and then Hannah dumped him into the pool. I think she was hoping that he’d drown and she could claim it had happened while they were out of the house. Once he was mostly conscious again, I told him I had to go with you. Your parents weren’t happy about it. A few minutes later there was a car out front. Marcus walked out with me and shook my hand. It stung a little, I fell asleep, and here I am.”
“I love my Winona.”
“Officers, I am to guide you at once to Captain Marguerite Rostron who is now ready to speak with you. Please follow the orange ball.”
I helped Winona to her feet and she wobbled for a moment as she fought against the drug they had given us. We followed the orange ball. I was trying not to shake again, fighting fear, and losing even with Winona next to me.
“How’s Sam feeling?” she asked, trying to sound normal, trying to distract me.
“I don’t know. He fades in and out. He’s still in local space, but it’s like he’s…”
“Blocking you?”
“No, not completely. More as if he’s trying to partially block me, to keep me from something he’s experiencing right now. I told him not to do that, but sometimes he thinks I’m delicate.”
We continued following the orange ball, passing crew that looked like the men that had met Sam. Marines. There were women too, women that stared at me, smirking, reminding me that my body wasn’t designed for combat any rougher than what Sam and I had done in the back of my parents’ car.
“Oh.” I gasped and braced my hand on Winn’s arm to keep from stumbling. “Sam’s back. I was just thinking about what he and I did this afternoon. I think I got his attention.”
“What’s he feeling?”
“Horny.” I grinned at her and she giggled.
We were still smiling at each other when the door onto the bridge opened. That was a mistake.
Captain Rostron was inspecting us, eyes almost closed they were so narrowed. “Damn the Academy, still operating as if we weren’t at war. Done giggling, are we?”
I could feel Winona’s emotions closing, like blinds coming down and taking away the sun. I knew my cheeks were red and my ears felt like they were on fire.
“Yes, ma’am,” Winn answered for us.
“Sorry, ma’am,” I added. Another mistake.
“Don’t be sorry. When you do something wrong on my ship, fix it and make damn sure it never happens again. Enter.” She stepped back a pace.
The bridge was set up the same as I’d seen on the Star and Vista-class ships. The far wall was a big display screen from deck to ceiling, there were a couple of work areas, and a small conference room partitioned off in one corner. We were not invited to sit.
“What was so funny? Most no-hoppers aren’t cheerful when they first wake up.”
I swallowed hard and held eye contact with her, willing to try honesty. “We were talking about my boyfriend, ma’am.”
“You mean your husband.”
I wobbled a bit as all the blood left my brain. “Yes, ma’am. My husband. He serves on the Esprit Vengeur, but I’m sure you know that.”
A slight smile may have touched the corner of her mouth. “Always assume I know everything.”
She turned to Winona and tapped at something on her display pad. “Ms. Killdeer. I am surprised, but grateful that you are here. You could have had your pick of duties and yet here you are on my ship.” She shook her head in wonder. “Reviewing your full record, I can only find a few of other instances where you have acted so recklessly.” Captain Rostron’s eyes bored through me while she continued talking to Winona. “And every single instance involved Ms. Holloman.” She turned back to her screen and cleared it. “Well, each jewel has its flaw, I suppose.”
“And you, Engineer.” She apparently didn’t need to pull up my record on her screen. “Brilliant. Sometimes. The Holloman armor you and Professor Slade designed has saved my life twice now. And you’re beyond stupid sometimes. Getting married in secret six weeks from graduation? My God. You are emotional, volatile, prone to panic attacks, and sometimes brave to the point of foolhardiness. There’s a statue of you in the central market on Bodens Gate, I’m told, and you drink too much trying to forget what you accomplished at Bridger. Self-absorbed and generous. Brave and a coward. The Union holds your parents in high regard, but I don’t see either of them in you. And your birth mother on Dulcinea? Well, they still talk about what she did at the University in Palma Sola. To me you seem like a stick that the slightest wind could break, and I’m not talking about just your body. Yet here you are, a volunteer for the most dangerous service the Union has to offer.”
This didn’t seem like the right time to mention that I’d been crimped by my father’s friend.
“Marcus Wright recruited you. I didn’t want you, but I needed a new engineer and you were available on short notice. I can deal with the brave and the cowardly, geniuses and idiots. Inconsistency scares the shit out of me. Marcus said to give you a chance, and I respect his opinions about people. So this is it, your one chance. Don’t disappoint me, Engineer. And don’t put my ship or my Marines in danger.”
She tapped her screen, bringing it back to life. I stood there silently with Winona, afraid to breathe.
“Now, raise your right hands and repeat after me.”
I raised my hand and spoke the words, feeling as if none of it was real. Winona’s voice echoed mine. “I, Mala Dusa Holloman, do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the Union of Planets against all enemies; that I will hold true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
“Dismissed,” she told us. “Go to the mess hall and introduce yourselves. Then report to the quartermaster to draw your uniforms and basic equipment.”
We left and I leaned back against the wall outside the bridge waiting for the shaking to stop. “How many days, Winn?”
“Two hundred forty-five at a minimum.” She was looking at me, head tipped. “You didn’t volunteer to be here, did you?”
“Marcus put something in my salad. He asked me to go to Dulcinea with him and I told him, sure, I’d love to go. My best sarcastic voice. Then I woke up here. I don’t think we’re going to Dulcinea.”
“Dulcinea is Esprit Orageux’s home port, and this ship belongs to the Joint Dulcinean Defense Command, so technically we’re there now, eighty percent gravity and all.” She sighed, pushing the hair away from my face. “What are you going to do?”
I shrugged, the shaking fading while we walked to the mess hall. “Every day here I’m two days closer to being with Sam for the rest of my life, and working somewhere safe designing ships. The only way out is through. Feel the pulse of those engines? We’re going somewhere in a hurry.”
I
stopped again and closed my eyes, enjoying the rhythmic thrum coming up through my feet. “I’m going to love Esprit Orageux. I think I’m where I’m supposed to be and everything’s going to work out.”
“You only talk that way after you’ve been with the Tarakana. Are they on board with us?” I could hear the concern in her voice. She hated Merrimac almost as much as my mom did.
“I don’t think so, but a piece of him was at my house last night. I think I made a deal with him, but it’s all jumbled. All I can remember so far is that I needed to find a future where Sam was still alive. There was a path that would do it, but…I don’t know. It’s murky.” I smiled at her. “Have a little faith.”
“I do have a little faith, just not in Merrimac. He’s not your friend, Duse. You’re his pet, or maybe just his cow.” She was looking at my stomach.
“I don’t know,” I whispered to her, as if that would keep Storm from hearing me. “It’s only been like seven hours.” If Storm was like other Union AIs, she would ignore anything that wasn’t a threat to herself or the mission, but I didn’t know her well enough yet to trust her.
“Better put some food in you, just to be on the safe side.”
I blinked at her.
“Mess hall. Remember?”
“I don’t want to go. Didn’t you hear what the Captain said? Didn’t you see the way they were staring at me? I’m a little stick, and they’re all steel rod and fiber-reinforced ceramics. Maybe if I just spend the next eight months in the engine rooms…”
“You’ll do fine. Stand up straight and put your shoulders back.” She touched my hair, pushing it around. “There. You are the creator of Holloman armor, and they know it. They’ll respect you. You don’t have to be all muscular. Be brave now.”
I nodded, the door slid open, and we entered the mess hall.
I let out a little chirp of a scream and then my field of vision shifted, the tables and the people sitting at them all seemed to grow taller. It took me a second to realize that I was on my knees. Everyone was staring at me, including three large German Shepherds. They were lighter in color than the dog shape Merrimac uses. These looked like the ones from the colony in the Warrens; the colony that had tried to use me to start a civil war where my friends and I all would have died bloody deaths; the colony that fed on the darkest of human emotions. All of those Tarakana were supposed to be dead.
I was breathing hard. “I can’t feel them, Winn. It’s not Merrimac. I can’t feel anything from them at all.” I looked up at her, pleading, trying to ignore the giggles I was hearing.
“Oh, Duse.” She looked like she might cry. “The Marine strike teams have a canine unit embedded with them. Those are just dogs.”
“Dogs?” I turned to the one closest to me, trying to catch my breath. I held out my hand. “Can I pet him?” I called to the huge man sitting at the table, trying to make my voice sound as normal as possible, as if I was on my knees because of my great desire to pet his dog.
He chuckled. “Sure. Go to her, Colin.”
Colin allowed himself to be hugged.
I got to my feet and lied to him. “Thanks. I love dogs.” I glanced around smiling stupidly, relieved to see that everyone had gone back to their dinners.
“Me too.” He held his hand out and mine disappeared into it. “Sergeant Andreas Kalvos. Everyone calls me Kal.”
“Lieutenant Mala Dusa Holloman,” I told him, but I’m not sure he heard me. He had Winona’s hand in his and didn’t show any sign of wanting to let it go.
She was staring back at him, eyes gone huge the way they did when she was trying to understand some complex technical issue or one of life’s great mysteries. She didn’t say anything, and he was smiling back at her like she was a mystery he wanted to solve.
“Say hello, Winona,” I prompted.
“Winona,” She answered. “Winn. Killdeer. Lieutenant.”
“Winn,” he said her name softly. “A pleasure to meet you. Both of you. Why don’t you get something to eat and join Colin and me? I haven’t even really started my dinner yet.”
I glanced at his plate. It was almost empty.
“Sure,” Winona told him. “Be right back.” She turned and walked away from me.
“Winn? You OK?” I asked her when I caught up.
“Just hungry. It’s almost 19:30 our time and I skipped lunch.”
I put a blob of mashed potatoes on my plate. “You’re not blocking me, you know.” I felt her emotional turmoil dim. “Still leaking.” I added sliced up meat of some kind and covered everything with gravy. “You really find him attractive? He looks like a recruitment poster, all bulgy and stuff.” I preferred the way Sam was built. Not too skinny, not too bulky, kind of just right.
“The Captain told us to get to know people. He’s as good a place to start as any, that’s all. We’ll work with him to get to know the rest of our team.”
“OK, just don’t go all emotional and volatile on me. Captain Rostron would be very disappointed in you.”
She turned to me and tipped her head. I felt the last of her emotions disappear behind a smug Winona smile. “Better?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Seeing you head over heels would be kind of interesting.”
She snorted. “Not attracted. It would take more than a gentle voice, kind eyes, and a warm smile to do that. He’ll be valuable to us in integrating with his team and maybe he’ll be a friend. We could use a few of those.”
I sighed. “You’re right about that.”
I ate dinner with Colin’s head in my lap, his sad eyes begging me to be sloppy with my food. “What does Colin do for you?” I had been slipping him pieces of bread soaked in gravy and he was now my friend for life.
“He bites people.”
I looked down at Colin, expecting him to deny it. “He bites people?”
“He’s our scout when we enter a contested area. He locates traps and hidden fortifications. When he finds the bad guys, he bites them and pulls them into the open for us to kill. Or he just keeps biting them.”
Colin was looking at me, waiting for more bread from my plate. “He seems so docile.”
“Yeah, he’s a sweetheart. That’s kind of a problem with him. I think he only bites people because he knows it makes me happy. His heart’s not in it the way it is with some of the other dogs. They don’t care if it makes us happy or not; they just want to bite.”
My food was soon gone, but Colin seemed just as content to have his head rubbed and his ears scratched. I listened to Winona and Kal talking about trivial things and the day started to catch up with me. They were talking about food at the Academy versus on board ship and then what kind of physical training was required, then something about…
“Duse? You sleeping?”
“Sorry, maybe.” I looked at my watch. It read 22:10, but ship’s time displayed on the wall was only 19:40. “I think I’ll stop by the quartermaster and then go back to my cabin.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
Which meant Kal and Colin walked with me too. When we reached my cabin, I set my bundle of fresh clothes on the deck and put my hand on the keypad, number six glowing between my fingers. The door slid open. “At least they had coveralls my size. I’ll have to print more stuff later, I guess.”
“Kal and I are going to walk the ship. Sure you don’t want to come?”
I shook my head, struggling to keep my eyes open. “It’s been a busy day. I killed a woman this morning, Winn. I shot her out of the sky and watched her burn.”
“I know you did.”
“And I got married. And kidnapped. And Father Ryczek…”
She kissed me gently on the lips. “I know. You go sleep. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“And Sam and I, while we were in the car, we–”
“Yes, Duse. I know about that too.”
I nodded, stepped backwards into my cabin, and knelt down to give Colin a goodnight hug.
“She, um, she what? Was any of that true?”
“All of it’s true. Come on, Kal, walk with me and I’ll tell you a little about her and her family history while you show me the ship.”
I let the door slide closed wondering if Winona would tell him about the Tarakana or if she’d save them for another night.
I got undressed and was happy to find a toothbrush sitting beside the sink. I was about to collapse onto my bunk when Storm interrupted me.
“Mala Dusa, I have those diag readings for you from my starboard aux engine. Are you ready to review them with me?”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling with my eyes closed. “Can it keep until morning?”
“Not really. We transit the first DSH at 10:44 tomorrow and I’d really feel better if I knew that there were no issues.”
I pulled the blanket from my bunk, wrapped it around myself and went to sit at the desk. I tapped my display, bringing it to life, and logged into my ship for the first time. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Yawning, I scrolled through the parameters, looking for anything unusual. The heuristics would flag anything more than one standard deviation in red, but sometimes a parameter could be only a little bit off and cause big problems over time. Professor Slade had taught me to take my time, go slow, and look at everything, including…“Your starboard intake manifold is running half a percent too hot. Show me the baffle settings.”
“You see how everything is set to factory defaults? I don’t think that’s my problem. Perhaps something with the injectors?”
I ignored her suggestion. “Show me the settings for the baffles on your port aux engine.”
They appeared side by side. “Look at this.” I tapped on the port baffles. “All open ten to fifteen percent more than factory.” I read the rest of the engineering notes and logs. “See? Port is ‘optimized for flight’.” I tapped back over to the starboard. “Let’s open everything to match your port aux and see if that fixes it.” I made the changes and updated the logs, noticing an entry several months prior when the ship’s engineer had done the same thing and then twelve hours ago when Storm herself had reset everything to the defaults.
Wandering Storm Page 7
