by Nathan Lowel
Chapter 8
ST. CLOUD ORBITAL
2352-FEBRUARY-21
I woke with a start and tried to figure out why. Then I remembered that I did not work on the mess deck any more. The watch stander had not come for me. I did not really need to get up, but after six months of rising at 04:30, my bladder told me that it was still working on the mess attendant schedule. I crawled quietly out of the rack and padded into the san. After my shower, I climbed into a fresh shipsuit and headed up to the galley to see if breakfast was ready.
When I stuck my head through the galley entry, I found Pip and Cookie being schooled in biscuit making by Sarah. “Look,” she was saying, “just because you have to make a lot of them, that’s no reason to make them so roughly.” She came only up to Pip’s shoulder but she could see eye to eye with Cookie, who gave every appearance of paying very close attention. “If you use the soft flour and cut in the shortening before you add the leavening agents, you’ll wind up with a much lighter biscuit.” She had the sleeves of her shipsuit pushed up and worked the biscuit dough with her hands deep in the bowl. The most dramatic change was that she had her hair pulled back in a pony tail. The left side of her face did indeed have several layers of bruising along the jaw line and around her eye. Neither Cookie nor Pip seemed to notice. She held the bowl at an angle so they could get a good look. “See? This is cut in nicely, and we haven’t bothered the structure of the flour terribly. If I just sprinkle the baking powder, baking soda, and a little sugar on here…” She matched actions to words. “I can use my hand to turn it like a garden spade tilling the soil.” Sarah proceeded to scoop and fold, scoop and fold, spinning the bowl on the counter a bit with each motion. “Now, this…” she stopped to show them the inside of the bowl again, “is ready for adding the liquid.”
Pip waved to me and Cookie nodded in my direction, but Sarah was so absorbed in her biscuit prep that she did not notice me there. I quietly withdrew to the mess deck and helped myself to a mug of coffee. I took a seat at a corner table, pulled out my tablet, and started reviewing the environmental section of the ship’s schematic. Hearing Sarah’s voice from the galley I found it difficult to concentrate on the tablet. I was trying to reconcile this Sarah with the fearful, wounded woman from the day before. The change was not simply dramatic—it was frightening.
I glanced up at the chrono and realize that there was still half a stan before the mess officially opened, so I holstered my tablet again, topped off the coffee, and headed down to environmental. Since it was going to be my new home, I thought I might as well get used to hanging out there.
Brill sat at the watch stander’s station, leaning back in the chair with her long legs propped up on the desk. She had her tablet out and was editing something on it with a stylus. “Good morning, boss!” I called.
She looked up and smiled. “Hey!” She glanced at the chrono. “What are you doing up so early? Don’t you know you’re supposed to sleep in when we’re in port?”
“My mind knows, but my bladder has a six month habit to break.”
She chuckled at that. “I can see where that might be a problem. So? You’re officially assigned to me now?”
“Yup, Engineman Wang reporting for duty. I think.”
She pointed to the coffee. “Is that for me?”
“You can have it if you want, but I already drank some. It has Ish-cooties on it.”
“Mercy, I haven’t heard that since grade school.”
“I don’t think I’ve said it since back then. You want a coffee? I’ll go grab you one if you like.”
She swung her legs down and stood up from the chair. “I do, but I’ll go get it. You sit and I’ll give you your first lesson in environmental watch standing.”
I took the chair which was still warm from her body, and she showed me the various displays on the station. They were basically real-time representations of the air and water systems. The center monitor showed a diagram of the ship similar to the schematic I was familiar with from my tablet. “Air is in green and water is in blue,” Bev pointed out. “You can use the stylus on the screen to isolate one or another system, rotate, zoom, and so on. Just like on your tablet. Try it.”
It did indeed work just like she said, but with the larger screen it was pretty dramatic.
Bev pointed out the displays to the left and right of the center. “Over there are the air readouts and over here is water. They are updated every few seconds and show you the pressures, chemical compositions, and system status. If any of them get out of whack, they change color and the location of the sensor that’s giving the reading will blink on the schematic.”
“That seems simple enough,” I told her.
“It is. Now, you sit there and watch for a bit. I’m going to run up for coffee. I’ll be right back.”
“What do I do if something changes?”
“Bip my tablet and I’ll come running,” she said seriously. “But it’s not terribly likely. We almost never get any problems here because we stay on top of system maintenance. Lemme go get my coffee and I’ll explain more when I get back.”
“Okay, sure,” I told her, although I was a bit nervous about being left alone with so little introduction.
“Good man,” she said and headed for the hatch. “Back in a flash.”
I sat there watching intently, my eyes flicking from screen to screen. I tried to figure out what the various graphs, charts, and tables were telling me. The air system had a tick-by-tick graph showing the incoming and outgoing air compositions. There were colored regions indicating oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and trace. It took me a tick or so to realize they were actually moving because they looked like just straight bars on the screen, but then I saw the time ticks scrolling across the bottom axis and realized the graph was being refreshed but the values were constant.
Just then, a small box opened up on the ship schematic display with the words: Automated System Integrity Check. Below that blinked the word: Running. It flashed for less than a tick before changing to: Air Systems Nominal and under that Water Systems Nominal—both in green text. A little acknowledge button flashed below it. I wondered what to do and just then Brill came back with her coffee and a plate of Cookie’s pastries. Seeing the display she said, “Oh, just acknowledge. Those happen randomly every stan.”
I used my stylus to press the acknowledge button and the little box disappeared.
“They get logged along with the length of time it takes for the watch stander to respond. Anything up to five ticks is fine. After that, it starts blinking. At fifteen ticks it will beep. At half a stan it automatically notifies the section supervisor and puts up a warning on the ship’s status display on the bridge. If it goes a full stan, it throws an alarm on the bridge and supervisor’s tablet.”
I considered that. “Got it. Moral of the story is, help won’t come for at least half a stan.”
“Exactly! Of course, the reality of the automated system checks is that they stave off the very real danger of falling asleep from the stultifying boredom of routine watch. Anything that might really be a problem with air or water supply will trigger a different set of warnings and alarms.”
“You make this sound a little scary.”
“Scary is good. It means you treat the system seriously. Remember that danger to you isn’t really the issue, but rather you’re the first line of defense against a failure that would leave the crew suffocating where they stand.”
“Okay, is it too late to go back to galley duty?” I asked and tried to add a little chuckle but there was some very real trepidation in my voice.
She smiled warmly back. “Yeah, sorry. We didn’t tell you this before because we needed to get you into our evil clutches first.” She made a comical muahahaha laugh that was totally at odds with the Brill I knew and the joke ended up putting me more at ease.
“So, why does it say nominal? Doesn’t that mean really small?”
She gave a little shrug. “Yeah, in common use it does
, but what that’s really saying is that the discrepancy between what the reading should be and what actually came in is too small to matter. If something was out of range, the message would have been more detailed.”
“Out of range?”
“Sure. If the air mixture was off, or the water pressure too low, or anything like that, the ASIC would show you what subsystem threw the error and what the actual reading was. This is just the short version that says the ninety-eleven things we checked aren’t really different from what they should be.” Brill gestured with a toss of her head and I got up from the chair so she could settle in with her coffee and a pastry. “Help yourself.” She pointed to the plate with her mug. “I brought extra.”
For the next half stan, she explained the watch stander’s console and answered questions about of my job. She showed me how to slave my tablet to the various displays so I could monitor the screens even when I was not sitting in the hot seat. “That’s handy when you have to make your rounds, or go change a filter or something.” She must have seen the concern on my face, because she grinned sympathetically. “Don’t worry. We’ll have you standing watch with somebody else for the first couple of weeks. You’ll get used to it pretty quickly.”
We hit a lull then and I sipped my now-cold coffee and nibbled a pastry.
“So, how’s the greenie?” Brill asked.
“I have no idea. When she came aboard yesterday, she was a real mess. Very timid—like a whipped dog. This morning, I found her teaching Cookie and Pip how to make biscuits properly.”
Brill almost choked on her coffee. “She was trying to teach Cookie?”
“I don’t know if he was just going along, or if he was actually getting pointers. I’ve helped Cookie make biscuits plenty of times before. She wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t heard from him.” I shrugged. “Pip was learning, though, so maybe Cookie was just playing along for Pip’s benefit.”
“What’s with the bruises?”
“I don’t know. Might have been in a flitter crash. She’s dinged up enough.”
Brill gave me a glare. “You don’t believe that, though, do you?”
I shook my head. “No. Yesterday she kept her hair down and was trying to hide the bruising. Today, it’s like it doesn’t matter.”
“What happened overnight?”
“I have no idea. She had some kind of crisis when she bumped into Bev in her ship-tee and boxers down in the berthing area—”
“Well, that’s pretty scary, right there,” Brill teased.
I chuckled. “True. Between the tattoos and the piercings she can be pretty intimidating. But Sarah seemed more concerned that she found Bev undressed.”
“Ah, the walking around in her underwear thing?”
“Yeah, something like that, I guess. Bev kicked Pip and me out of berthing and by the time we got back, Sarah was wrapped in her blankets and asleep.”
Brill swung her feet up onto the desk and cupped her coffee close to her face, inhaling the warm smell for a few heartbeats, obviously pondering. Eventually, she shrugged. “Never underestimate the value of a good night’s sleep, I guess.”
“Maybe.”
“How’s the co-op going?” she asked, her eyes flickering across the displays.
“It went really well the first day and then I kinda lost track. It seemed to be going good the other day when we were up there. Francis said they’d sold a ton. Pip came back last night and I got some sketchy information, but we didn’t get much of an opportunity to talk in any detail. He said it went well and that we should get a settlement today.”
“Are you rich yet?” she asked with a grin.
“I don’t think so, but we’re gaining ground. Considering we started at basically zero after Pip’s little escapade in Darbat, I’m pretty pleased.”
“You’ve got a good eye, Ish. Pip can run the numbers until the bovines return to the barn, but you have the eye. You’ll always pick better than him. You two make an amazing team, though.”
I did my best aw, shucks routine. That kind of conversation always made me uncomfortable.
“I’m serious,” she said, refusing to let me off the hook. “You know share has gone up by almost twenty percent in the last two legs? And even people who weren’t that into private cargo are getting excited about the co-op.”
I smiled then. “I knew share had gone up, but I didn’t know by how much. That’s all Pip’s doing.”
“Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “A lot of it was the reduction in stores expenses. Having a cost center flip into generating revenue is unheard of.”
“Well, that’s all Pip and Cookie!”
“Ish,” she said seriously, “Pip and Cookie were here together for months before you came aboard. Do you really expect me to believe that Pip came up with this idea? On his own?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow in my direction as she sipped her coffee.
I sighed. “Well, I mighta suggested it, but he and Cookie made it work.”
“Save it, mister!” she said with a grin. “I ain’t buyin’ this lil-ole-me act. Leave that to Diane. She has the cleavage for it.”
I almost blew coffee out of my nose at that.
“Okay, enough folderol. Go get some real breakfast, and come back here at 08:00 ready to spend the day. We’re getting underway this afternoon, so I want you ready to rumble. I’m putting you and Francis together for the first week, then I’ll shift you to Diane, and then I’ll take you for a week. After that we’ll see where we are, okay?”
“Sounds good. What’s the watch schedule going to be?”
“Standard underway rotation. It’s six stan watches, but only two people will be on in any given day so you get one day in three off. We’ll post the schedule because it’s confusing as hell when you start, but you’ll figure it out quickly. In port, we do twelves and twenty-fours. With three of us, that works well.”
“Okay, that made only marginal sense to me, but I guess I’ll figure it out. You want me to relieve you for breakfast or anything?”
She shook her head. “I’ll slave my tablet and come up to grab a bite in a few ticks. I want to finish up the paperwork to make sure we’ve got you firmly ensnared in our evil clutches,” she said with a grin.
I chuckled and slaved my tablet to the watch stander console as well. “Might as well get into the habit,” I told her. I headed for the mess deck. Pastry aside, I was ready for one of Cookie’s omelets.
Chapter 9
ST. CLOUD ORBITAL
2352-FEBRUARY-21
The mess deck was in full swing when I got back there, or at least as full as it gets while docked. The first day in port only a few of the crew eat on the ship, but as the stay wears on, more and more of them come back aboard as money and the novelty runs out. Liberty expires three stans before departure, and while that was still a couple stans off, a lot of the crew was back aboard and getting ready to get underway.
I grabbed a plate and stood in Pip’s omelet line. Looking past his shoulder I could see Cookie and Sarah working on the yeast breads that they would be baking later in the day. “How’s it going?” I asked softly with a nod in their general direction.
“I’m not sure,” Pip answered. “Rhon Scham had the messenger watch this morning, and when I rolled over, Sarah was already headed for the san. Whatever she and Bev talked about last night seems to have made a difference, though. When I got out of the shower, she was suited up and waiting for me pretty much as you see her there.”
“And the biscuit lesson?” I asked as he slid the omelet onto my plate.
Pip grinned then. “I don’t know if that was some test of Cookie’s or what. I’ve seen Cookie make biscuits hundreds of times, and they are always good.”
I had to agree with that.
He slipped a couple of hot biscuits onto my plate beside the omelet. “I didn’t really see her do anything drastically different, but try them. Tell me what you think.”
Rebecca Salzman was waiting behind me, so I did not want to t
ake up any more of Pip’s time. Rebecca and I smiled greetings, and I got out of her way. As I stepped away from the serving window, I felt disoriented. I could count the number of times I ate with the crew on the toes of one foot, without taking off my shoes. As I stood there surveying the crowded mess deck, I did not know where to sit. Beverly saved me with a nod toward a chair across from her.
“Good morning, are you having a strange day, too?” I asked her with a nod toward the galley.
She rolled her eyes and snorted. “I don’t know what to think. She barely moved all night. I was so worried about her. Then this morning, I wanted to walk up to her and ask, ‘Who are you and what did you do with Sarah?’” she joked softly.
I dug into my omelet and split open a biscuit. The omelet was good, but the biscuit was unlike anything Cookie had ever made. I like Cookie’s biscuits, always have, but this was something else entirely. The texture was light and flaky whereas Cookie’s were more cake-like. I put a dab of margarine on it and tasted it again. The old saying about ‘melting in your mouth’ came back to me.
Bev was looking at me strangely. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said after I swallowed. “Try this, though.” I handed her a chunk of biscuit.
She looked at it closely, shrugged, and then popped it into her mouth. I could see it register on her face. “Where’d that come from? And are there any more?”
“Pip’s got a whole basket full over there.” I motioned toward the window.
Then the cred dropped for Bev. “Sarah?”
“Yup, I came up earlier for coffee. She was giving biscuit lessons to Cookie and Pip. Apparently, this is the result. The thing is, when I saw them, I didn’t see her doing anything really terribly different than Cookie taught me. Of course, I didn’t see the whole thing, but Cookie was paying very close attention.”
“Well, whatever it is. I hope she doesn’t stop.”
She started to reach for my other biscuit, but I playfully spanked her hand. “Mine!” I said with a mischievous smile. “Go get your own.” She got up to do just that, and I added, “And bring back a couple for me since you’re up.”
