There are moments in a person’s life when you just have to believe that there is a beneficent God no matter how doubting you profess to be. It can be well said of Lieutenant Josiah West that he resisted the urge to hold Nora’s hand until they had turned down the hallway leading to his quarters.
Barney was smiling as she watched them leave.
#
By 0800 the next morning--after a night of no disappointments--they were back in the dining hall having breakfast at their ‘usual’ table with Barney, again, engineering a privacy shield around them. As they finished the last of their coffee, Nora stroked a finger across the back of his unoccupied left hand, “Josey, where are we going from here?”
Now, Josiah West is far from ignorant of how the female of his species functions at the physical, intellectual, or emotional levels, so he understood exactly what she meant. However, Josiah West is, also, well possessed of a perverse streak that tends to surface when the need arises, “Well, I guess it’s about time to go to work.” That got him several deep dents in the back of his left hand that would not, entirely, disappear for a couple of hours, “OUCH!”
“LIEUTENANT JOSIAH WEST, you know exactly what I mean. I want to know if you’re thinking of me as stand-by equipment or...or something a bit more...permanent?” Her voice had trailed off and had acquired a tone of uncertain anxiety.
He pushed his empty cup to join the rest of the dishes at the edge of the table and held out a hand toward Nora, “Give me your pad and open up the memo section.”
That confused look returned to her face but she opened the pad and the memo file as requested. Josiah took it and started writing with the stylus, “Do you have a formal dress uniform?”
“Ahh...I have a dress uniform but not a formal. Why?”
Josiah finished writing and turned the pad back to Nora so she could read the list of uniforms and accessories that he had entered, “When you get a break today, I want you to go over to the base store’s uniform department. You should find Master Chief Elizabeth Warner there. Tell her I sent you and to scan you and deliver this list of items to my quarters at the BOQ. He pulled out his own pad and began working on it. After a few seconds he stopped and looked over at Nora who was staring wide-eyed at the list on her pad, “You did say you didn’t have a vehicle, didn’t you?”
She realized he was talking to her and looked up, “Huh...yes, no, I don’t have a vehicle.” She pointed at the list and shook her head, “I can’t afford this stuff. I...”
Josiah held up his hand to cut off her protest, “How do you get to work every day if you live off base?”
“I...what? Ahh...well, Ally has an old van, and I chip in to keep it running.”
“Ok, open up your personal bank account for a deposit.”
She looked at him like he had fallen out of a tree.
He pointed a finger at her confused expression, “Yesterday you said that knowing me was crazy and you asked what else I had. Well, you are about to find out. Now, open your personal bank account for a deposit.”
She managed to open her account with a feeling that she was about to cut the red wire on a bomb.
Josiah touched the local com touch points together on their pads and did a bit more tapping on his pad, “There, finished!”
Nora looked down at her pad and closed the account access before really looking at what he had done. When she did, her eyes got wider than ever, “WHAT!” She slammed the pad shut, snapped her head around to see if anyone was near them, and then leaned across the table to talk in a panicked whisper, “50,000 credits? Are you out of your mind? Where did you get that kind of money? Are you running some sort of operation selling Navy equipment on the black market? Now they’ll be after me and we’ll both be in the slam.” She jerked around to see if a security team was coming through the door and started to get up, “Let’s get out of here.”
Josiah had to get a firm grip on her arm to keep her from taking off, “Whoa, sit, sit!”
The grin on his face finally reduced her state of panic to a more normal state of confusion, “Remember that I told you that my family has a business repairing anti-grav and drive systems?”
Nora managed a shaky nod.
“Well, my sister and I are the third generation of the family involved in the business. My sister is at home and handles a lot of the daily operations. Because of my position here on the Caldwell, I managed to keep my sister and father advised on any problems the Navy is having. Our company has the highest reputation in the industry and has done very, very well over the years. The result is that my personal net worth is somewhere approaching 300 million credits. Almost all of it is tied up in a string of investments, but a liquid account of 200,000 credits is maintained for my use without my having to make any special arrangements. I just transferred 50,000 credits from that account.” Josiah gripped her hands a little tighter and pulled her closer so he could look into those dark, dark eyes, “Now, today, sometime, I want you to get the items on that list and have them delivered to my quarters. Feel free to get anything else you might need...and”, he kissed both of her hands, “feel even freer to get some of that really nice lingerie, you know, the kind with absolutely no practical use.”
He sat back and just looked at the stunned look on her face, “So, how’s that for what else I got? Oh, and, also, some time today go out to the GM dealer and get yourself a set of wheels.” He looked at the clock, “I guess we should be getting on to work.”
He picked up his pad, Nora retrieved hers in a purely mechanical sort of way, and they headed for the door. Barney was smiling as she watched them leave.
As they walked by above the main lobby, Josiah saw Jesse at the front desk and called down to him.
“Lieutenant West, what can I do for you, sir?”
Josiah leaned his elbows on the rail and pointed a surreptitious index finger in the direction of Nora, “About that matter we discussed yesterday, go ahead and set it up.”
Jesse gave a big smile, “Sir, it will be done before you hit the back door.” He turned to his terminal and began tapping.
“Oh, Jesse, one more thing…well, two more things, really.”
Jesse stopped and looked up, “What’s that, sir?”
“There will, probably, be another uniform delivery today. Would you see that they get delivered to my quarters?”
Jesse smiled, “Of course, sir.”
“And, would it be possible to have another parking space reserved for a private vehicle?” This question was, also, asked with the index finger supplying unstated information.
“An electric, sir?”
“Yes!”
“Do you have the registration information, sir?”
“No, not yet.”
Jesse went back to his terminal, “How about slot five, sir, right next to your assigned vehicle?”
“That would be perfect.”
“Very well, sir, I have set up slot five for general use and that access situation is operational.” Jesse turned to look at Josiah, “If you would just get me that vehicle registration data when you can.”
“Thank you, Jesse.”
Nora had her arms crossed with her pad tightly pressed to her chest as they walked down the hallway toward the back door, “What was that all about, the access stuff?”
Josiah stopped at the door to his quarters, “Go ahead, open the door.”
The confused look was becoming Nora’s normal expression; at least when she was around Josiah, but she waved her left arm across the reader plate and jumped when the door swung open.
Josiah turned her to face him, “You now have access to the back door and my quarters. You have a reserved parking place next to mine. An expanded set of uniforms and accessories will be here for your use. All of this is to make things more convenient when our schedules do not conflict. Do you still feel like stand-by equipment?”
It was lucky that he had his back to a wall. Nora dropped her pad and jumped him. Josiah was unable to protest the unseem
ly assault on a staff officer due to a non-standard number of tongues in his mouth.
KALEIDOSCOPE
Josiah pulled into a parking spot near the office door of hanger 4; he was yawning as he stepped out of the ground vehicle he had been assigned. Coincidentally, Nora had also been yawning when he dropped her off at the terminal building. Yesterday had been a tough day for both of them.
There was a heavy-set dark skinned Chief Petty Officer behind the counter in the small office when he entered, “I’m Josiah West, Chief; I’m supposed to meet Commander Phelps.”
The Chief broke into a big, white toothed grin and reached across the counter, “Lieutenant West, I’m Edward Jefferson, just call me Eddie.” His grip told Josiah that the bulk under those greens had little to do with fat. He pumped Josiah’s hand like he was operating a bilge pump on a sinking ship, “We have been hearing so much about you these last couple of months that we were considering naming the hanger after you. Commander Phelps isn’t here yet but come on out into the hanger and meet your ground crew.” He had to let go of Josiah’s hand to get out from around the counter and open the inner door; Josiah used the opportunity to check for damage.
It was a huge hanger with access doors at both ends; the front door--the one facing the main apron area--was open. Josiah came to a stop two steps into the hanger and, literally, gawked at the sight of a model D Panther assault boat taking up over half the space, “I haven’t seen one of those in... twelve years.”
Eddie was grinning hugely at Josiah’s surprise, “Commander Phelps was by yesterday afternoon and told us you actually had a civilian rating in one of these at sixteen. Man, you must be one kind of a pilot!” He then stepped past Josiah and let out an ear-splitting whistle to attract the attention of three people working on a Falcon shuttle on the far side of the hanger. As Eddie waved them over, the door to the office opened and Commander Phelps stepped through, “Ahh, West, there you are.” He came up beside Josiah and waved at the Panther, “How do you like our little barge?”
Josiah looked a little sideways at him, “Little? You actually use a D model Panther as personal transportation? If this is the result of some sort of Admiralty level pissing contest, I think you’ve won.” Eddie and Phelps both grinned at that. By then the other three members of the ground crew had arrived; they all had Petty Officer First-Class ratings.
Eddie presented them to Josiah. The first was a very petite blonde, “This is Francis Woleneski. She gets mad if you call her Francis so it’s just Fran or Shorty. We use her to repair the stuff in the tight corners.”
She gave Eddie an annoyed look and Josiah a big smile as she saluted him, “Just Fran, sir, I handle logic systems and integration problems.” As Josiah shook her hand he couldn’t help thinking, she really has small hands; I’ll bet she could repair a micro circuit without tools.
Eddie pointed to the next in line; a slim, Hispanic looking man of medium height. “This is Jeremiah Cruz; he’s our environmental and life support systems tech. If your waste disposal unit backs up, blame him.” Cruz saluted, stuck out his hand, and also gave Eddie an annoyed look, “My waste disposal units do not back up under normal circumstances, sir. If one does, I would determine who used it last.” He said that with a twitch of the eyes and a slight nod of the head in the general direction of Eddie, “Just holler for Cruz, sir.”
“And the last member of our group is Andrew Fremantle; he does power and drive systems. He’s a Brit that decided to go Yank, so he’s in the Navy to cut the citizenship path down to a quick walk. We call him ‘sticks’.”
Fremantle was as tall as Josiah with dark blond wavy hair and was as thin as a broom. He saluted with perfect precision and Josiah couldn’t help but notice the perfect fit and sharp creases of his work greens. As they shook hands he waved his free left hand at the others and said in a perfect upper-class British accent, “Sir, I regret that our first meeting had to occur in such a low-class environment. I am, however, looking forward to the possibility of a sit-down with you over a pint of stout and hearing about your adventure on Mars. As for here, I require that the rest of these uncouth creatures call me Andrew; you may call me Andy.”
The huge grins and barely contained laughter from the rest of the group gave Josiah a hint that playing the stiff-upper-lipped Brit was some sort of affectation. He put on a questioning look and asked, generally, of them, “Do they sell stout around here?” It took a minute to recover from the laughter and everyone, finally, returned to their normal duties.
Josiah and Phelps walked toward the Panther. “Just wait until you hear Andy do his Liverpool and Cockney routines. He does a stand-up bit at the NCO club and the Officers club occasionally. It’s a scream. There is nothing like seeing yourself through the eyes of a foreigner.”
Josiah stopped a few meters in front of the Panther; he started noting the differences between his memories and what he was looking at. He waved a hand across the entire ship, “You’ve made some changes.”
The D model Panther was the biggest assault boat ever built at 45 meters in length and 8 meters across the fuselage. It had carried forty armored Marines that were ejected from rotating ports--twenty down each side--and a variety of ground and air vehicles that launched out of the rear hatch. The boat itself normally bristled with offensive and defensive weaponry. All of that was gone. The sides of the hull were glass smooth without the slightest trace of the eject ports; the stutter-gun housing above and behind the command deck as well as the rows of missile attach points along the top of the stub wings no longer existed. Even the nose had a different shape and the drive coils were….
Phelps turned to Josiah with a strange look on his face, “You know, I really envy you. You got to fly a D in its original form and there aren’t too many people left that can say that.” His expression relaxed into a smile, “Still, I think you are going to be impressed with what we’ve done with this old dog.”
It was then that Josiah noticed the word painted at eye level just forward of the command deck - “Kaleidoscope.” He pointed, “What’s that about?”
This time, it was a definite grin that covered Phelps’ face, “It was the only thing that adequately described the ever-changing nature of the boat.”
#
The day was spent crawling through the highly modified systems of the Panther. Several exclamations of “Holy Crap” were heard coming out of open hatches that led into the machine area bowels. Josiah requested a group lunch session and used it to question the ground crew members.
“Andy, what was the idea of hanging those,” he waved a shaking finger toward the Panther, “ridiculous drive coils on that boat. You can’t even walk under them and they could lift the entire headquarters building into orbit if they didn’t pull the boat apart first.”
Andy was matter-of-fact about it, “Well, sir, they were installed before I got here but you have to remember that there are no specific replacement parts for a D model available and there have been none for a very long time. The original coils needed replacing and these were available. The same situation holds for most everything in the machine section.” He waved a hand toward Fran who was sitting next to him, “Fran has fine-tuned every limiter and guard routine to make sure that it is not possible to accidentally destroy the boat.”
Fran picked up the conversation there, “I have programmed the master control system with limiters specifically matched to any new equipment that could exceed design and structural limits if operated to their full potential. The drive coils are the primary example of that possibility. Even with the structural improvements made to the hull and stubs,” she got a tight, almost worried look around her eyes, “those coils are capable of ripping Kaleidoscope to bits if they are operated beyond limiter boundaries and there is the slightest synchronization failure.” Something was bothering her and she looked down at her half-eaten sandwich for a moment before looking back at him, “I guess I have to tell you that you can order the master control system to override the limiters, and I w
ish I didn’t have to include that capability, but I was ordered to do it.”
There was real worry on her face, and Josiah tried to lighten her mood with a smile and sincere assurances, “Fran, I believe Kaleidoscope’s combat days are over and that incident on Mars still gives me bad dreams. I have no intention or desire to look over that cliff again. My impression today is that I now have power, strength and a margin of safety wider than anything I have ever had before. I get a vibe from all of you that I will be safe and well taken care of when I fly in what you have given me. Your limiters are safe with me.”
That helped a lot; she relaxed and smiled. Phelps grinned broadly, “West, you really know how to stroke your ground crew. I just send them a card on their birthdays.”
When the laughter had died down, Josiah waved a hand at Kaleidoscope, “No, I mean it, that thing is impressive; I have never seen such…such…rightness. Crazy as that thing is, it looks and feels right. I am itching to fly it.” Turning to Phelps, he asked, “When will that be?”
“Well, we’ll spend the rest of the day going over systems and procedures and take it up tomorrow; how’s that?”
“Great!” And then Josiah remembered something, “Oops, I’m supposed to check in about now. Excuse me.”
He walked toward the back of the hanger as he got out his pad and called Molly.
“Ah, there you are, I was beginning to think you had forgotten.”
He smiled a bit, “I would never forget to call you, especially after making such a cryptic request. So, what is it today?”
She looked away from the pickup, checking her immediate surroundings before looking back at Josiah. That smile was back, “How did things go with the Lady Parente last night?”
A sudden urge to check his immediate vicinity swept through him, but he managed, just barely, to suppress it, “What?”
She leaned a bit closer to her pickup--with that smile, “Come now, Lieutenant, even over a vid channel it was obvious that she was interested in you. I really hope that you had what it takes to do something about it. I checked; Bax did not drive her to her quarters after dropping the two of you off at the BOQ. And…,” she pointed a finger to the side of his field of view. He knew she was looking at another display on her screen, “here it shows that your assigned vehicle did not leave its charging station until 0837 this morning.” Her smile filled his stunned mind. “Tell Mom all about it.”
Josiah West 1: Kaleidoscope Page 9
