Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel
Page 9
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
I can’t afford to kid.
Who said anything about sending the Burlingame into battle? I want it for the milk run patrols in DV sector. That will free at least one good D-class ship for transfer to GY.
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephen,
ITEM: the Burlingame’s system analysis network is no longer fully operational. So many new pieces of equipment have been added to that ship since she was commissioned that the network has completely broken down. If something were to go wrong, they’d have to depend on their secondary analysis system and perform on-the-spot checks.
ITEM: the guide rods for the power and control cables to the stasis generators have been removed. That ship cannot change heading in warp without her cables fouling. We have no replacements for the guide rods because the F-class generator configuration has been obsolete for twenty years.
ITEM: the phase reflex system is partially deranged.
ITEM: the phase adaptive system is totally deranged.
ITEM: the injective compensators would have to be replaced before that ship could pass her safety checks. Where are we going to find F-class compensators here?
ITEM: do you want me to go on? I can—the list is endless. The Burlingame? Uh, uh, not even for a milk run.
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
We have no choice. We need that ship. We need any ship that holds air and moves.
I have the Burlingame’s log tapes in front of me. That ship has operated for six years without a full systems analysis network. The longest breakdown they ever had stranded them for only ninety-three hours.
The stasis generator guide rods were removed four months before the ship was decommissioned here. They were removed by the ship’s chief engineer because they weren’t working. According to the log, he put a “monkey crew” in the webs and they guided the cables manually. Apparently it worked; it says here that the ship operated more efficiently without the guide rods.
The phase reflex and phase adaptive systems are not considered “life-or-death” systems. A ship can survive without them, if necessary; the crew can do those operations manually. The Burlingame proved that.
Have the injective compensators rebuilt. (I don’t care where or how, just do it.) They’ve been rebuilt twice before; find out how they did it and do it again.
And so on.
Listen, our ships are built in triplicate, with fail-safe devices for every functions and activity. Stop worrying. The ship will work. We need her. It’s as simple as that.
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephen,
All right, but you sign her papers, not me.
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
Relax. It’s not as bad as you think. But I promise you that we’ll decommission her again as soon as we can.
Now, who have you got to crew her?
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephen,
Attached is a list of available captains and first officers. Pretty skimpy, isn’t it?
Of the three captains, Weberly is holding out for a battle command. And I agree. I want him to take the new Roosevelt when it’s commissioned next month. Also available is Yu. He’s a good man, but he’s really not a space-going captain. He’s a—well, he’s a paperwork man. He’s at his best where he is right now, on Base K-7.
I think our best bet is to promote one of these first officers to captaincy, let him get his legs on an easy run. How about Korie, Perren, Freeman, Yang, or Colen?
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
How about Brandt? You skipped him. He’s an available captain.
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephen,
I wouldn’t put Georj Brandt in command of a floating outhouse.
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
Yes, but how about the Burlingame?
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephen,
That’s what I was talking about.
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
I repeat: yes, but how about the Burlingame?
What I’m getting at is that Brandt is starting to be an embarrassment to us. We’ve got to get him out of the way somewhere. He can’t stay at Threebase much longer. It’s starting to be a source of gossip.
Put him on the Burlingame. He won’t be any trouble there. Trust me.
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephens
Okay, but I’d prefer to put one of these first officers in there instead.
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
Sorry, but I’m saving those men for better things. They’re trained for battle and that’s where I want to use them.
On second thought, though, you could assign one of them to the Burlingame as a first officer—kind of a backstop for Brandt. (That way, we’ll be sure there’s at least one man on the ship qualified to command her.)
See what the psych boys have to say. They’ll know which one will work out best.
Stephen
MEMO
FROM: Vice Admiral Harshlie
TO:Base Admiral Farrel
Stephen,
Attached is the report from the psych section on the command of the Burlingame. Best choice for first officer would be Colen—but he’s already tapped to go out with Weberly on the Roosevelt. Freeman’s death and Yang’s transfer leaves only Korie and Perren. Psych recommends Korie. Attached is his file.
Joe
MEMO
FROM: Base Admiral Farrel
TO:Vice Admiral Harshlie
Joe,
I approve of Korie. He has an interesting file; he shows promise of becoming a good battle commander when he grows up. Let’s keep our eye on him.
At the very worst, we won’t need the Burlingame for more than six or eight months. When and if we finally do get around to decommissioning her, please check Korie’s record again. I’ll want to see how he did.
After serving under Brandt, he’ll have earned a ship of his own.
Stephen
NINE
An army travels on its stomach.
—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
The galley smells of coffee and ketchup. It is a bright room, but a small one. Divided by narrow tables and benches, it can serve a maximum of only twelve men at a time. Garish-colored condiment containers dot the tables. Three crewmen are brooding over their plates in a corner. In the opposite corner, with only a cup of coffee, is Korie.
As always, his appearance is impeccable. His light-colored hair has been parted with a ruler, his cheeks are plastic-clean, pink and shiny, no trace of razor stubble; his eyes are steely cold. He sips at his coffee thoughtfully. He stares at the table in front of him and at the opposite wall. The wall is pales green plastic, devoid of decoration; whatever Korie sees there remains his own
private vision.
“This seat taken?”
Korie glances up. The speaker is Medical Officer Panyovsky; a thick man, wide Slavic face, broad chin, easy smile, clear eyes, thin brown hair.
“It is now,” says the first officer, a hint of a smile on his face. “Sit down.”
“I will. Just let me get something to eat first.” He steps over to the counter, draws himself a tumbler of orange juice, some toast, and coffee. “Hey, Cookie—how about flashing me an eggpack?”
“Right,” comes the answer. “Scrambled?”
“Yes, thanks.” Panyovsky comes back to the table and sets down his tray.
“You always eat such a big breakfast?” asks Korie.
“Breakfast?” This is a midnight snack for me. I haven’t been to sleep yet.”
“Oh. I just got up.”
The other widens his eyes in mock surprise. “You mean you do sleep? The crew doesn’t think you do.”
Korie allows himself a grin. “Well, I don’t do it much. It might be habit forming.”
Over a mouthful of toast, Panyovsky mumbles, “If I were you, I wouldn’t even admit an occasional nap—it’d spoil the image.”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“That’s going to make it awfully hard to eat.”
“For that I’ll unseal them.” The medical officer gulps his coffee noisily. “So, how’s the first-officering business?”
A shrug. “About the same as always.”
“Not really,” he says. “I hear we’ve been having some excitement the past few days.”
“Just an old bogie. Hardly anything.” Korie says it sardonically.
“Well. . . .” Panyovsky is expansive. “At least it’s a break in the routine.”
“After a year and a half,” notes Korie, “anything would be a break in the routine.”
“A year and a half? Has it been that long?”
Korie nods. “Actually, it’s closer to two years. Two and a half more months and it will be.”
Panyovsky grunts; he sucks at his teeth. “You’re overdue for a ship of your own, aren’t you?”
Korie shrugs again. “I suppose so, but I have a feeling they’ve stuck me on this tub to get me out of the way.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know—maybe I stepped on somebody’s toes at Threebase without realizing it. I think the only way I’m ever going to get off is to prove myself in combat and make them notice me.”
“The Burlingame is not a combat vessel, my friend—”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“—and we are not in a combat area.”
“I’ve noticed that too. We’re here so that Calister Mines can’t claim they’re underdefended. Hmph. A fat lot of good we can do.”
“It doesn’t seem to me we’ve been doing that badly.”
“We haven’t had anyone to defend them against—how could we do badly?”
“I meant this bogie. You haven’t been doing too badly with that.”
Korie shrugs. “I have to prove myself to the top brass if I want to get off this ship. And I want to get off this ship.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Who else—besides the rest of the crew?”
Panyovsky grins. “Me. Barak. The captain. This ship is as popular as Gristler’s Planet during plague season.”
“Hmph,” says Korie. “I already knew the captain wanted off. It’s no secret. He takes no interest in running the ship.”
“There you see! You’ve got a ship of your own already. This one.”
Korie’s voice is like ice. “It’s. Not. The. Same.”
“Relax. I was only kidding.”
They are interrupted by a bellow from Cookie. “Hey, Panyovsky! Come and get it—or I’ll feed it to the hogs!”
The medical officer grins. “‘Scuse me a sec.” He crosses to the other side of the galley, where a plastipak of scrambled eggs waits for him, steaming on the counter. Korie forces himself to relax is even grinning when the big medical officer returns and slides into his seat. There is an antiseptic cleanliness about him that Korie finds refreshing.
“Y’know,” Panyovsky says. “Sometimes I think the real captain of this ship is Cookie. Other times, I know it.” He cracks open the pack, begins pouring ketchup over the eggs.
“The whole galley is an anachronism,” says Korie. “I’d give a nickel for an honest ‘mat unit.”
“Well, this is a second-generation cruiser,” explains the other. “And they weren’t building them that way then. They thought that with artificial gravity, they could get away from the free-fall packs and return to a more traditional kind of food preparation—allowing, of course, for all the modern technical advances that have since come to the art and science of cooking.” He cocks an eye at Korie. “So you see, my friend, what we have is something that is neither this nor that—but a little bit of each. We have a cook—whose main duty is to flash plastipaks. However,” he adds thoughtfully, “I will admit his shish kebab isn’t bad.” He shovels a forkful of ketchup-covered eggs into his mouth.
“Besides,” Panyovsky adds, “there are certain advantages to having a cook instead of a ‘mat unit. For one thing you have more flexibility in your choice of meals. Look, no matter what kind of a galley you’ve got, the food is kept in stasis boxes and flashed by microwave. All you’ve got with a ‘mat unit is portion control; big deal, nobody complains about getting more or less than anybody else—but on the other hand, there’s no second helpings. At least not without heating up a whole new pack. Now, with a cook, you know there’s always something cooking, and you have the backstop of the plastipaks anyway.”
Korie is grinning. “Don’t you ever think about anything but your stomach?”
“Huh?” Panyovsky looks at his belly, the slight bulge of a beginning paunch. “What else have I got to think about?”
“Doesn’t anything ever happen in sick bay?”
The medical officer makes a face, a quizzical expression. “About as often as it does on the bridge. Today, I had to set a broken collarbone; it’s the first real doctoring I’ve done in a month. I was getting so I’d almost forgotten how. Fortunately, there was a book in the ship’s library—”
Korie ignores the other’s glib manner. “Broken collarbone? Who?”
“Earlier today. A radec technician, kid named Rogers.”
“Rogers—?” Korie is suddenly alert. “How did it happen?”
Panyovsky’s manner is casual, but he glances both ways and waits until a passing crewman is out of earshot. “They said he fell against a bulkhead. I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
Panyovsky narrows his eyes meaningfully. “Do you know the kid?”
Korie is noncommittal. “I’ve had him on the bridge.”
Panyovsky nods. “Then you know how the crew treats him.”
“Yeah—like the neo he is.”
“Then you know how he got a broken collarbone. Somebody roughed him up.”
“A broken collarbone is quite a ‘roughing up.’ Where’d it happen?”
“K Quarters on the afterdeck.”
“That’s a bunkroom,” says Korie. He frowns. “Now, wait a minute—Rogers has no business there. He’s assigned forward.”
“Be that as it may, that’s the story. Erlich and MacHeath brought him in and that’s what they said. He fell against a bulkhead in K Quarters.” He pauses to gulp at his coffee. “But it doesn’t take a doctor to see that the boy’s been beaten pretty badly.”
Korie looks troubled. “I don’t like that.”
Panyovsky shrugs. “What can you do? These things happen. The crew has to settle their differences among themselves.”
“Not like this, they don’t—not if they’re going to incapacitate each other.”
“Oh, now I don’t think it’s that bad. He’ll be wearing a brace for a while, but he’ll be able to work.”
The doctor fixes the first officer with a careful glance. “My job, Mr. Korie, is only to patch them up, not to run their lives. You should remember that yourself. What they do outside of sick bay is their own business. I try not to get involved because I’m caught in the middle already before I start.”
“You know who did it?”
“I’ve heard the rumors—”
“Who?”
“Let me tell you something. You may not have realized this, but it’s not easy to be a doctor—at least, not on an F-class starcruiser. I probably know more about what’s happening on this ship than any other two men aboard her, including you and the captain—or even you and the union representative. The crew tells me things; you tell me things—and everybody thinks I’m on his side. I’m not allowed to have a side of my own; so it’s safest for me to just stick to business—keeping the rest of you fixed up so you can have your various sides.”
“Uh huh,” says Korie. “Now that you’ve issued the standard I-must-remain-aloof medical disclaimer, who did it?”
“My spies say that it was a fellow named Wolfe. You know him?”
“Yes. I know him.” Korie starts to rise. Panyovsky pushes him back down.
“Wait a minute, my friend. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“What wouldn’t be a good idea? You don’t know what I was going to do.”
“Whatever you were going to do,” smiles Panyovsky, “it wouldn’t have been a good idea.”
Korie sits. “Why not?”
“Because,” the doctor says slowly, “even Rogers says he fell against a bulkhead.”
“Even though it was Wolfe that made him fall—?”
“Probably; but you won’t get him to admit it. He’s scared of retaliation. In any case, you have no way to prove there’s been a fight. Nobody will admit to being a witness.”
“What about the men who brought him in?”
“Erlich and MacHeath? Are you kidding? They’re strictly crew, all the way.”
“And you’re sure Rogers won’t talk?”
“Not to me, he wouldn’t.”
“I’ll go see him myself.” He starts to rise.
“No, you won’t. He’s asleep.” Panyovsky looks casually at his watch. “Besides, you’ve scheduled another drill for the engine room, remember?—and you’re already ten minutes late.”