Cally's War lota-6

by John Ringo

“Outside? About minus one-forty C. In the tube to the dome, a handful of degrees below zero.” He unbuckled his seat belt and stood.

  “Brrrr.” She shuddered. “They can’t get it warmer?”

  “Won’t.” He shrugged. “It’s a safety issue. The whole base is built on various ices. One of our biggest engineering challenges, besides the overpressure, is minimizing heat leakages that could destabilize the ground underneath us.”

  “Couldn’t they insulate? Or float?” As she stood, she had to reach back and rub the achey place at the base of her spine.

  “Oh, they do insulate, ma’am. Believe me they do. This platform and the base itself are actually about fifty feet off the ground, to let air circulate underneath. Short term, you can build on the ground, and it’s not as much of a problem with ground research vehicles because they move. But you just don’t want to put a big hot spot on top of ice for a few centuries. Flotation was one of the designs considered, but ultimately discarded. Something about gravitational effects and stability issues.”

  “It’s all ice? There isn’t, well, rock underneath it?” She looked as if she couldn’t quite grasp the concept.

  “Some. Not enough,” he said.

  “And can’t the Crabs do gravity?”

  “Sure, and they did, for the base itself. I think cost considerations counted a lot in the choice of the final design.” He motioned her out into the aisle in front of him.

  The chill bit at her cheeks and nose and she could see her breath as they made the short walk, with the other passengers, through the tube into the main dome of Titan Base. The air smelled vaguely like a gas station.

  “What’s the smell?” She wrinkled her nose and waved a hand at the air.

  “Leakage. With this much overpressure, there’s bound to be some. It’s a trade-off. They could have made the place more leak proof, but it would have cost a lot more. Or so I’m told.” He gripped her elbow as they crossed a red line on the floor and full gravity returned abruptly.

  She’d been expecting it and hadn’t expected to fall at all, but suddenly she stumbled against him as her elbow tingled where he’d touched it as though she’d just touched a live wire. She was suddenly short of breath and she actually blushed as he steadied her back on her feet. What the hell? He’s not that attractive. Okay, he smells pretty nice. Check that. Real good. But so what. My God, what is wrong with me? Must be the excitement of my first trip off-planet. Who’da thunk?

  As they moved from the tube through the doors into the shuttle port, and then through the double-glass doors out of the arrival area, the temperature warmed quite a bit, but she could still see her breath. The air felt heavy, cold and heavy.

  A line of reproduction analog clocks across the wall gave the local time and the time in various time zones on Earth. She noted with a start that local time and the local “day” was set to be synchronized with Chicago, as ship’s time on the courier had been. Wow, she didn’t even have to change her watch.

  Small, potted evergreen trees were tucked along the walls. The lieutenant must have noticed her puzzled expression as he turned and led her through double doors into a room that was obviously the shuttle port bar.

  “It’s not just to look nice. That’s part of it, but they’re also a cheap way of scrubbing some of the hydrocarbon volatiles out of the air. The small-scale oxygen release is just a bonus,” he said.

  The bar was warm enough to take off their gloves, and she began looking around for someplace to set her laptop case down for a minute. He pulled out one of the tall, backed barstools for her, folding his thin but warm gloves and tucking them into the pocket in the lining of his beret.

  It was about three in the afternoon Greenwich, and the bar was empty but for the Asian bartender who was busying himself washing glassware and watching a vid. As the lieutenant put her coat aside and she climbed onto the stool, he hung the glass he’d just rinsed on the rack and walked on over.

  “What can I get for you Pryce, Captain?” He took a towel and absentmindedly rubbed at a small water-spot on his bar.

  “Two Irish coffees, Sam, short on the Irish.” He turned to her. “Would it surprise you, ma’am, to find out hot drinks are popular here?” he asked.

  “Oh, terribly.” She laughed. “Why is it chilly on the base itself?”

  “I’ve heard two theories. The first is the conventional one of controlling heat pollution. The second is that someone in the design team saw that the average temperature on Earth was fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit and decided that was the optimum setting.” He quirked an eyebrow at her and waited.

  “The second makes a nice story.” She laughed and took a sip of the coffee when it arrived, then set it down.

  “You know, when I went through officer basic, I don’t think they recommended reporting to your new CO with alcohol on your breath,” she said.

  “Ma’am, Beed’s a real vintage sort, but he’s from before that late twentieth century PC craze. As long as we don’t show up drunk and unfit for duty, and we won’t, he won’t care.”

  “Well, that’s one good thing about this assignment.” She cupped her hands around the mug and took a long, appreciative sip. Sam made one hell of a cup of coffee.

  * * *

  After picking up their luggage from baggage claim, they had boarded one of the transit cars that ran on horizontal and vertical tracks, in singles or chains, throughout the base. Stewart carried the captain’s bag in addition to his own as he guided them to a departing car with empty seats. The car was one of a line that appeared grouped together, though not physically connected. The light bar across the top of the front car spelled out the destination: Fleet Strike Quadrant. Judging from the volume of traffic, the shuttle from Earth had not been the only one coming in at roughly the same time. The light blue berets of the infantry surrounded their own gray ones, and Sinda looked around curiously. He supposed she hadn’t seen many troops who were actually on deployment, having been immured in Personnel for most of her short career.

  “The base is divided into four roughly equal sections, ma’am,” he explained. “Fleet and Transient quadrants are on either side of us, Engineering and Fleet Strike on the other side.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the shuttle port next to engineering for incoming supplies?” she asked.

  “There is one. This is the passenger port.”

  “So,” she gestured with her PDA, “is there a map of this place that I can download, or something?”

  “Sure. Hang on and I’ll beam it to you, ma’am.” He tapped a few keys and pointed his PDA at hers so she could download. “The BOQ is highlighted. Your quarters are marked in red, mine in blue, the office in green.”

  “You have my quarters marked on your map?” she teased. “What, is the red for stop?”

  “For danger, at least, ma’am.”

  “And work is safe? You’re an interesting person, Lieutenant,” she said. “So, it looks like the BOQ is on the way. It’s probably best to drop off our bags before reporting in.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I’ll carry my own bag in. No need for you to enter the danger zone.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He turned his head and looked out the transit car window so she wouldn’t see his eyes narrow. Minx. That does it. Just you wait, Sinda Makepeace.

  Chapter Eleven

  Monday, June 3

  The general’s office, and her office, were on an upper, outer level of the dome, so that instead of looking up to more ceilings, the hallways on that level extended upward to an imperceptibly curving stretch of dome. For all the good it did. Right now it was near high noon on Titan, and the sky outside the dome was a uniformly muddy, dark, orange-brown. The glow paint, of course, had to be along the top two feet of the walls, but to compensate for the reduced lighting surface area caused by the lack of space on the ceiling it was set brighter than was normal in the rest of the base.

  The walls of institutional green Galpla
s with battleship gray doors gave the impression that if anyone on the design or maintenance teams had had an ounce of interior decorating talent, he had been taking great care to conceal it. There was a sign next to the door as they approached, identifying the door as leading to Headquarters, Third MP Brigade. The lieutenant was reporting in to the general, too, and got to the door slightly ahead of her, presenting his ID to the door which automatically checked his IR profile against the records on the ID and in the database, and, finding a match, admitted them.

  Inside, there was a reception desk and signs that pointed to CID leading away to the right, and Office of the Commanding General, to the left. Behind the desk, the corporal’s nametag identified her as Anders. Behind the corporal, on the back wall, was a large holoscreen of a waterfall — on Earth, judging by the vegetation on the banks.

  “Captain Makepeace and Lieutenant Pryce, Corporal… Anders, is it? We’re here to report in and pay our respects to the CO. I believe he’s expecting us.” Cally returned the corporal’s salute smoothly and waited.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll let him know you’re here.” The corporal picked up her PDA and told it to get her the general.

  “General Beed, sir?”

  Cally’s enhanced hearing picked up both ends of the conversation easily, and she listened in with a polite, still, waiting expression on her face.

  “They here, Corporal? Thank God. About to drown in paperwork back here without a decent secretary. Send them on back.”

  “Yes, sir. End call.” She set the PDA back down.

  “You can go on back ma’am, sir.” She inclined her head in the direction of the general’s office.

  Cally passed the corporal and made her way past several closed gray doors and down the corridor to the general’s office, Pryce trailing in her wake. The light on the panel under his nameplate indicated an unlocked door, so a wave of her hand in front of it and the door slid aside. She stepped in, and walked to the front of the desk, coming to attention and saluting. With her eyes focused six inches above the general’s head, she had to study him and the room with only her peripheral vision. Child’s play.

  Beed was certainly handsome for an officer his age. The dark blond hair and deep blue eyes were focused a bit below her face. But after the voyage out, she was becoming used to it. His handlebar mustache was perhaps a bit affected, but he was trim, and muscular. For all their warmth and durability, silks weren’t the type of fabric to conceal much. Without rejuv she would have taken him for maybe thirty-four. With it, he had to be well into his second century. Still young by Galactic standards. Not as hot as Pryce, but no hardship on the eyes, either. If he decided to chase her around the desk, at least she wouldn’t be fighting not to puke or anything. Bit of a weak chin, but it could have been worse.

  “Captain, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He swept a hand across in a gesture indicating the desk, which was stacked at least six inches deep in paper all the way across, and that was only in the valleys between the piles. Cally restrained herself from goggling with an effort. “Welcome to Titan Base. Your office is just outside and to the left. You should be basically familiar with what we do now, and I’ve taken the liberty of having the corporal bring in file cabinets and folders and such. I have a few things to discuss with the lieutenant, but I think the best way to do that is for us to get out of the way while you take charge and organize some sort of filing system. I don’t care how you handle it so long as you can explain it simply and we can both find any of this stuff at need. We should be gone at least a couple of hours, plenty of time for you to get me a desk surface I can see.” He looked at her expectantly.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered crisply.

  “Great, honey. Take care of that, and you and I will be on our way to getting along just fine.” He winked at her, of all things, and turned to the lieutenant. “Lieutenant, I understand aides de camp for general officers are authorized to wear two gold braid loops over the shoulder. A good officer always pays precise attention to presenting himself with the right appearance, understood?”

  “Yes, sir. No excuse, sir.” If anything, his already perfect attention position got a little straighter.

  “At ease. Let’s get out of here and leave Sinda to it, then.” He paused, looking her up and down slowly on the way out the door. “Fine attention to detail, Captain Makepeace. Good job.” Then they were gone.

  * * *

  Cally stared at the door as it slid closed behind them, fighting the impulse to laugh in disbelief. And I had been going over ploys to get the man out of his office and me free rein to run a search. She turned the personality overlay off and the AI up to eight on the PDA.

  “Something’s about to kill us, isn’t it, Captain?” it said.

  “Listen to the surroundings, buckley. If someone other than me approaches within six meters of the door, beep once, medium volume.”

  “Okay. Not that it’ll do any good.”

  She put the PDA down in the middle of the desk and snorted as a small stack of paper fell, scattering itself across the floor. She made quick work of searching the desk drawers. It was especially quick because there was nothing to find. A few legal pads and ball point pens that she dissected without finding anything useful about them, then reassembled and replaced them. That done, she put the PDA back in order and got to work sorting and organizing the mountain of paper, which she would have needed to search through, anyway.

  In the end, she wasn’t finished in the two hours it took Beed to get back to the office. Pryce was not with him.

  “Well, you made good progress, Captain.” He moved around behind her and stood just a little too close to where she was bending over the desk to pick up yet another sheaf of papers. The maneuver coincidentally drew the gray fabric against her buttocks, giving him an excellent view of the contours of her behind.

  “Do you mind if I ask you to work late? We usually do knock off around five but… if you’d like, I’ll buy you dinner. Since I’m asking you to work late.” He was almost breathing on her neck.

  She stood and turned, bringing the papers in close and looking up at him. He was definitely in her personal space.

  “Why bless your heart, sir, you don’t have to do that.” Her blue eyes widened ingenuously.

  “Of course I don’t, Captain. Still, it would give you a chance to brief me about where you’re putting everything. I’d take it as a personal favor if you would, Sinda. You don’t mind if I call you Sinda, do you?” His smile was charming. He was quite good at it, the charm thing. She could appreciate that.

  “Not at all, sir.” She smiled, “And dinner would be just fine.”

  * * *

  He took her to a rather elaborate Cantonese place down on the Corridor. Cally tried not to gawk like a tourist. Not too much, anyway. Calling it the corridor was something of a misnomer. Actually, the main commercial zone in Titan Base was a ground plate floor-to-dome stack of corridors, with spaces cut through the layers so you could stand at the railing on one level and look all the way up and all the way down. It was one of the few places that it was possible to visually appreciate the immenseness of the base. Okay, so it wasn’t so big compared to the holograms she’d seen of Indowy skyscrapers, but she was actually here, and Titan felt so real. She supposed it was probably the presence of so much Earthtech. Well, there was a lot of assimilated Galtech, too, but when it came from human labor in Earth companies, it didn’t really seem to count.

  According to Beed, the Corridor bisected the base from east to west — directions had been assigned based on the moon’s axis of rotation, there being no geomagnetic activity to speak of. To the north, the Fleet Strike MP’s supervised their own quadrant, the spares, fabrication, and galactic races’ quadrant, and the Corridor itself. To the south, Fleet’s SP’s supervised their own quadrant, the colonist, transient, and civilians’ quadrant, and the passenger shuttle port. To someone without an appreciation of the Darhel’s ultra-Machiavellian tendencies it might seem strange that Fleet St
rike was in charge of guarding spares and supplies mostly used by Fleet. To Cally, it was just one more example of things being made more complex to make them easier to manipulate.

  The restaurant had obviously spent a fair bit on the décor to impart an Eastern feel, covering the Galplas walls in red and gold wallpaper that carried a dragon motif. The glow paint of the sign had been adjusted in a reasonable imitation of neon and proclaimed the name of the establishment, in English, “The Golden Dragon.” It appeared to be one of the more upscale of the places catering to officers, well-heeled businessmen and the occasional colonist willing and able to blow some hard currency on one good meal out on the outbound leg of the trip.

  Still, it wasn’t even nearly full on a Monday evening, and they were quickly shown to a table in a corner, lit by a small globe that flickered almost, but not quite, like candlelight. Beside the plates there was a folded cloth napkin, a fork, and a pair of plastic chopsticks. She ordered the sweet and sour chicken and an egg roll. The place had a carefully cultivated ambience, but looked very touristy to her experienced eyes. Best to pick something hard to screw up.

  “Conservative tastes?” he asked, after ordering the phoenix and dragon.

  “Why, did I choose something I shouldn’t have, sir?” She looked down and to the side, embarrassed. “I just thought it looked interesting. Would you think I was too… well, rural, if I admitted that I could count my visits to a restaurant like this on the fingers of one hand?”

  “No, Captain — Sinda — sweet and sour chicken is fine.” He smiled, almost gently. “I sometimes forget how young some of our officers are.” Her hand was resting on the table and he reached across and stroked the back of it. She licked her lips, nervously, left hand brushing a stray wisp of hair out of her face.

  “Young, but very much a grown woman. From what I’ve seen so far, you’re a fine young officer, Sinda,” he said.