“‘Not further disturbed’?”
Dursley shrugged. “Well, you know … disturbed.” He swallowed. “Not broken up no more after it’s cooked. You have to just … let it be, like.”
Alexis glanced at the half kilo chunk of beef on the plate.
“‘Broken up’? Do you mean …” She frowned. “Cut, you mean, or possibly chewed?”
“Eaten.” Villar said. “You mean it’s fine once it’s cooked so long as it’s not actually eaten?”
“I spoke to Cook,” Dursley said, “and he was to make the pieces smaller before cooking it, sort of a stew, like? So one could just … well … swallow it?”
“Are you mad?” Villar asked. “Tell the crew to just swallow their beef whole so it’ll not … what is it that it does besides the color?”
Alexis picked up the knife and fork to apply them to the hunk of beef.
Dursley held up a hand.
“I’d not —”
Alexis sliced off a bit of the beef and held the fork up to examine it.
“The insides are no different,” she observed. “Still that odd shifting of color in the light and it —”
With an almost living quiver, the hunk of beef on the fork dissolved, turning into a liquid that ran down the fork and over Alexis’ hand. With a muttered curse she flung it away.
“I warned you,” Dursley said. “Next comes the sm —”
Alexis, Villar, and Isom stepped back from the table, hands to their faces, gagging, as the remaining half kilo of beef on the plate dissolved as well, and the cabin was filled with the horrible, overpowering odor of decayed flesh.
To Alexis’ dismay, the hand she raised was the same one which had held the fork and which was now covered in similarly odoriferous goo.
She flung her hand out to the length of her arm, suddenly wishing she was taller so she’d have a bit more distance from her hand.
Dursley’s shoulders slumped. “Damned hard to get a man to eat once it does that.”
An hour later, having inspected the vats and told the crew that their supper would be as a Naval banyan day, with no beef and mostly porridge and cheese — an announcement met with surprisingly little in the way of grumbling from the crew — Alexis reconvened her officers in her cabin.
“So,” Alexis said, “we have only two containers of nutrient solution that weren’t topped off with some vile stuff at Enclave.”
Villar nodded. “I inspected all of them with Mister Dursley, and the other six containers are … well, contaminated, I suppose we must say.”
“And worse, the vats themselves?”
“Yes, sir.” Villar shrugged. “The two containers of good solution will grow nearly two months of beef, so we’re in no danger of starving.”
Alexis grimaced. “That’s far from the margin I’d prefer.” Poor winds could add weeks to a transit time already long in the sparsely populated Barbary. She’d never yet had to put a ship on short rations, and didn’t relish the prospect.
“The true difficulty, though,” Hacking said, “is what’s already in the vats.”
Alexis nodded. Dursley, as most ship’s pursers would do, had topped off all of the growing vats when in port — with the very solution now posing them the problem. With all of the growth vats contaminated with — whatever it was — adding fresh solution wouldn’t solve the problem. They’d have to be emptied and sterilized, a process best done outside the ship.
“The crew’ll not like doing that in darkspace,” Isom noted, filling their glasses.
“I’m aware,” Alexis said. She ran a finger idly over her table’s surface, bringing up information about the nearest systems. “No matter there’s no evidence of harm, they’ll not want to eat anything grown in a vat exposed to the Dark.”
Villar grinned. “Perhaps we could have Boots give them a run-around and declare them safe?”
“I’ll thank you to not encourage that sort of thing, Mister Villar,” Alexis said, ignoring the fact that she’d suggested the very thing about the contaminated beef to begin with. She thought that was certainly different, as it had the possibility of ridding her of the vile creature as well.
She sat back and drained her glass at one go. She set it back on table with a sharp click, then caught the expressions on the faces of Isom and Villar.
“What?” Villar and Isom looked away, but not before giving her glass a guilty glance. “Oh, for — look, you two, I had enough of my every glass being measured back on Dalthus. If I wanted a mother hen aboard, I’d have brought one.”
The two had the grace to look uncomfortable, but Villar looked about to say more.
Hacking and Parrill merely looked puzzled, while Dursley continued to look as if he’d like to melt into the bulkhead and disappear. The man had been muttering, “It weren’t my fault,” the entire time they’d inspected the vats and Alexis was beginning to fear for his strength of mind.
Alexis eyed her empty glass and the state of the others’. Perhaps she had downed a bit more than usual during this meeting. She sighed and pursed her lips.
Will that be forever second-guessed now?
A quick tug at her pant leg took half her attention as the vile creature chose that moment to crawl to her lap. Much as she might wish it gone most of the time, it was a bit of a comfort at stressful times and she absently made to stroke its fur.
“Ow!”
A sharp pain in her finger, and more in her thigh, as the creature launched itself away made her rise from her seat.
“The little bugger bit me!”
Isom frowned.
“He’s never done that before, has he, sir?”
“No, and I’ll not have it. I —” She raised her hand to her lips to suck at the bite — two drops of blood showing where the thing had caught her — then winced and extended her arm away from her.
Despite her best attempts at washing and the use, she was certain, of nearly a quarter of her water ration and nearly every sort of cleaning solution aboard, the smell of the deconstituted beef still clung to her hand. She sighed. “I suppose I can’t blame it for not wanting to be petted with that odor about me.”
Isom was hiding a grin, while Villar, at least, seemed to be sympathetic to her plight.
And the distraction had ended what certainly would have been an uncomfortable exchange between the three of them. Alexis eyed her empty glass. She’d kept her own measure of her drinking, both at home and now aboard Mongoose, and was satisfied that there was no problem such as she’d had aboard Nightingale. Neither was she using it to numb herself or deaden her sleep, as she had during that commission.
To be honest and fair, the creature’s presence did help with that somehow. Vile as it might be, and its penchant for her boots notwithstanding, she had to admit that it was a relief when she woke rested and dreamless with its warm body curled next to her on her cot. Still, she’d never admit that to Isom — there was a certain decorum she must maintain as captain, after all.
“Even so, if it does that again I’ll see it spaced, do you hear me?”
Isom nodded, still with a hand over his mouth. “Aye, sir. Of course.”
Alexis tapped her tabletop, indicating one of the systems between them and the rendezvous point and not too far away from their path. If the winds stayed as predicted, it would be the least impact on their travel time and they might still make the window for meeting any of the other private ships.
“Here, the Deluvia system,” she said. “We’ll drain and sterilize the vats in normal-space, then be off to Carina and our meeting.”
Thirty-One
The decision was easier than the act.
They made Deluvia without further mishap, though the crew’s initial acceptance of a banyan day grew less so as it became two, four, and then a full week of them. Alexis finally made the decision to share out her own stores, and those of her officers, with the crew, something Villar and Parrill accepted readily enough, but Hacking balked at.
“It’s not the cost, sir
,” Hacking said, “but what good can my few kilos of frozen meat do for so many?”
“It’s the principle, Mister Hacking,” Alexis said. “A bit of shared sacrifice, if you will — and your cost will be made whole from Mongoose’s funds when next we take on stores. Mister Dursley will compile a list of all you donate and replace it then.”
Hacking huffed.
“Still don’t see what good a few shreds in their porridge will do, sir.”
“It will show them that Mongoose’s officers face the same deprivation they do in the coming weeks — all the more important on this ship, as we’re not under Naval regulations.”
Hacking agreed, but didn’t look happy about it.
Mongoose transitioned to normal-space at a Lagrangian point deemed near enough to Deluvia’s primary to have enough heat and radiation from the system’s sun to do a proper job sterilizing the vats.
It was an uninhabited system with no habitable planets and nothing at all of interest. Once in a stable orbit around the chosen planet, though, they were able to be about setting the vats to rights.
To get rid of — whatever it was causing the issues with the beef — they’d have to sterilize the tanks, but doing so with chemicals would leave a residue to interfere with the new growth solution. Getting rid of the residue with a good rinse, as might be done on a station or planet’s surface, wasn’t an option as the ship didn’t carry nearly enough water to do the job properly. Even leaving aside the need for the water to run through the recyclers, which were nowhere near efficient enough to keep up.
Instead, the vats would be sealed, moved outside the ship, and their contents expelled. Then the empty vats left to bake in view of the primary for a time, until vacuum, heat, and radiation sterilized them.
It was hot, heavy work in the hold, even with the ship’s lowermost gravity generators off. They opened the hold’s loading hatch and carefully worked the massy vats out into open space, then unsealed them to void the contents. That was a tricky task, as the stuff would turn to either ice or vapor, depending on its exposure to the sun, and a vat of expanding nutrient solution could act very much like a conventional rocket as its contents vaporized.
To be safe, they had to brace the sealed vats against a ship’s boat and counteract the solution’s thrust as necessary. Then, once all the solution was emptied, they opened the full top of the vat and left it to bake in the primary’s rays for a day, until they could be sure that every drop was gone and every bit of the surface was as lifeless as may be.
Even with that, many of the crew watched the vats come back inboard with a chary eye.
The vats cleaned, all of the containers of tainted solution given the same treatment, and the ship put back to rights, they were ready to sail on. Still, no one breathed easy until they were nearly four days out from Deluvia and the first vat produced enough beef to cook up and see the results.
There was a bit of a ceremony about it, as Cook set the first serving before Dursley, nearly the full crew crowded around him on the mess deck, and Dursley took up knife and fork. The slab before him looked as fine as vat-grown beef ever might, with, at least, a consistent grey color to it and no more than the usual sheen of grease.
The purser looked about at the watching crowd, swallowed heavily, and cut his eyes to Alexis and her officers, but there was no mercy to be found there. If the newly grown beef were found to have the same issues as before the cleansing, then the whole crew would be on short commons until they could find a system in which to fully replace the vats — which might mean sailing right out of the Barbary altogether. It might not be his fault in truth, but the crew would never trust the purser again thereafter, so he’d be out of a position, at the least, and walking small about the ship until set in-atmosphere to avoid a beating.
Dursley set his fork to the slab of beef and raised his knife in a trembling hand.
“Such a production,” Hacking muttered, though Alexis noted that his own eyes never strayed from the little drama unfolding at the crowd’s center.
“For Dursley, I imagine it is,” Alexis said. “If we’re on short commons and with no beef at all while we leave the Barbary, that’s weeks of sailing — and weeks with no prizes, mind you. We’ll likely have to seal him up in a wardroom cabin to keep him safe until we reach some system.”
“And would any Navy ship take him on after?” Villar mused.
“Not even a merchantman,” Parrill said. “Not with the reputation he’ll have.”
“Carve the bloody roast, Mister Nipcheese!” someone in the crowd bellowed.
“Belay that!” Dockett yelled.
Dursley closed his eyes, his lips moved in a mutter Alexis would swear must be, “It’s not my fault,” and he sawed at the hunk of meat.
The watching crowd seemed to sway forward as one to hover over Dursley and the plate. The deck went silent without the sound even of a breath.
The low, scraping grind of the knife making it through to the plate came a moment later.
“Eat it!”
“In yer mouth, you!”
Dockett and his mates tried, though half-heartedly, to calm the crew, but they still shouted.
The purser, eyes still closed as though he didn’t wish to see what was coming, slowly raised the fork, which showed a goodly hunk of beef, still grey and in one piece, so there was that.
He opened his mouth.
“In or we’ll do it fer ya!”
Dursley shoved the beef into his mouth and tossed the fork to the table.
“Chew it! No, bloody swallowing whole, you thievin’ bastard!”
“Do you suppose we should have done this first test in secret?” Villar whispered.
Alexis shook her head. “There’re no secrets aboard ship, and they’d want to see regardless, not trust anyone’s word for it.”
“Open! And show us it’s chewed good!”
“You see?”
Dursley chomped loudly, mouth open but eyes still closed. Alexis thought she caught sight of a small tear on the man’s cheek and hoped it was from relief and not some sign that the beef’s taste was off … more than to be expected.
Finally, the men nearest him became satisfied that the meat was sound and the crowd’s grumbles changed to cheers. They seemed to all want to clap Dursley on the back, which nearly made the man choke on the unswallowed beef.
Alexis breathed her own sigh of relief, as this meant Mongoose would not have to turn aside and seek aid from a planetary base.
Mongoose made Carina and the rendezvous time with mere days to spare.
Alexis eased into the system slowly — Dansby had not been exaggerating when he said the system shoals in the Barbary were more pronounced and shallow than elsewhere. Enclave had been a difficult system to approach, but it was near enough several others that even the larger merchant craft on their way to and from Hso-hsi were able to make it through. Carina, though, was more remote, allowing more dark matter to accumulate in one place instead of being spread over multiple systems.
It was a binary system, as well, doubling the accumulation and with a dozen gas giants and no habitable planets. The sheer amount of mass in the system’s normal-space attracted a like amount of dark matter, which formed a dense halo around the system in darkspace. Too much of it would react with the ship’s mass, overcoming the charged gallenium of the ship’s hull and trapping Mongoose until she could work herself free.
Much like an electrostatic field or a planet’s magnetic field may affect water or a star’s radiation, the charged gallenium in the hull was particularly effective at repelling both dark matter and the radiations of dark energy that permeated darkspace. Too much of either, though, could overcome that field and interact with the ship directly.
With so much dark matter, too much and too long and the hull itself might be breached or crushed.
Mongoose had a shallow draft, being not too massy herself, but even with that Alexis kept a close eye on her course toward the nearest Lagrangian point. Aside
from the shoals at the system’s edges, the dark matter collected around the corresponding planets as well, creating shifting bars of the stuff which moved along with the planets’ orbits, and as those masses became more than the planet could carry along with it, they broke off and moved about the system until they dispersed.
“There’s nothing from either Eades or Malcomson about where in the system we might rendezvous with the others, so we’ll transition as first we’re able and get out of this mess.”
“Aye, sir,” Villar said, nodding, his eyes on the navigation plot, as well.
The ship’s computer could predict, as best it was able, where some of the shoals and bars would be, based on what it knew of the system’s planets and their orbits, but it was always possible for a storm or some other effect to break a bit off and leave it behind in the orbital plane. Carina had so much mass, in any case, that the trails of dark matter behind some of the larger planets ran fully half their orbits.
The only ways to detect the stuff were visually, looking for a darker mass against the blackness of darkspace itself or firing off a laser ahead of the ship and observing how the masses of dark matter might twist and deform its bolt.
“I believe I’ll have a man on the bow, firing the lead, if you will, Mister Villar.”
Villar nodded, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. “That might be best, sir.”
Within a few minutes, there was a vacsuited figure on Mongoose’s bow, and a moment later a short, bright bolt of light leapt forward from the ship. Smaller than one of the guns, the “lead” was a handheld laser and gallenium-encased capacitors which shot a small bolt into darkspace ahead of the ship.
The typical amount of dark matter, present everywhere in darkspace, effected even the laser’s light, compressing and foreshortening it as it did the guns’ shot. More of the stuff, though, would affect the light to an even greater degree, curving and warping it away from its straight path and shifting even its color.
This was what Alexis and Villar were looking for, using the bolt’s path and color to gauge how much dark matter might be built up ahead of Mongoose and avoid the worst of it.
Privateer (Alexis Carew Book 5) Page 20
