Selected Short Stories Featuring New Corpse Smell

by Nicolas Wilson

the wall. I might have been worried, if she'd been heading towards the Ensign, but he was going the other way, scurrying back to PsychDiv.

  I dialed our head head-shrinker as I started back down the hall. PsychDiv appeared on my screen, her long, strawberry blond hair tumbling messily over her shoulders. Our personality compatibility was third on the ship. Genetically we were an ugly match. Breeding might even require a few gene-therapy modifications. And if her hair were a little more strawberry and a lot less blond, I don't think that would have mattered in the slightest. There was a little part of me that thought it still mightn't. “Maggie?”

  “Shouldn't you be calling me Lieutenant Allbright? Or at least Doctor?” she asked with a wry smile.

  “Maggie, I've seen you naked.”

  She flushed, and her cheeks more closely resembled the strawberry of her hair. “You do know this is an open channel, right? Into the entire PsychDiv wing.”

  “No it isn't. And even if it had been, I'm not shy about seeing you naked. It was a fun day.” I let that linger a moment. “It was a trust exercise amongst the executive staff. Everybody saw everybody naked. They wanted to desensitize us, make the bodies of our crewmates less exotic and stigmatizing.”

  “I thought that was why they poured us into these Lycra uniforms.”

  “No. That was my request. Well, actually I requested corsets, stiletto heels and Lycra, but you can't always get what you want.”

  “I am amused at the thought of you stumbling around on stiletto heels,” she let that linger, “but you didn't call me to banter, hopefully?”

  “Are you saying you don't enjoy it?” I asked. She grinned, and I knew that was all I was getting from her. “But no, I was wondering about Williams, Martin, EngDiv Ensign. He just reduced one of my SecOffs to tears; certainly emotionally abusive, and I think had I not intervened, it might have gone physical. At which point the officer would have clubbed his eye out, because tears or no she's trained to grind the bones of men to make her bread, and he's trained to push a stylus around an easel and know math. But how'd that little emotion troll get on board my ship?”

  “Let me see.” She waved her fingers through the air, and I heard the whoops and bloops of files being moved around on her HUD. “He was cleared by Sarah McCain. Not a doctor, but a psychiatric nurse. She has good credentials, slightly better than average behavioral prediction stats. I'm assuming he's on his way to me.” I nodded. “I'm pulling up his file. Yeah. She noted slightly elevated aggressive tendencies, potential issues with female authority, but low on the Allende scale. If he's developing a personality disorder it's either atypically fast or she missed something.”

  “All right. Well, maybe he's just had an off morning. You're the professionals. But if you think it warrants an investigation, you have my backing to put McCain under the microscope. And, as it may come up, I threatened to fire Williams out of an airlock.”

  “Which one?”

  “Is that important?”

  “It isn't medically relevant. I was just curious. For the last few hours we've had an excellent view of Rigil Kentaurus. If you have to be shot out an airlock, at least you'd have a nice view before you explosively decompressed. But is that standard disciplinary procedure?” she asked with a smirk.

  “I was improvising. Though I think legally I'd be in the clear. I haven't finished going through the entirety of my orientation materials, but from what I have read it's scary the authority vested in my position.”

  “I think you'll do fine.”

  “I wasn't fishing for a compliment.”

  “No. I just thought,” she paused, weighing her words carefully, “it's important you know that I trust you. We trust you. Heavy is the head, and all that. But there was an at least slightly democratic process behind your selection. We're here, most of us, anyway, because we trust you. Most days that won't matter at all, because we're the glorified cargo of a deep space scanning probe. But if or when it ever does-”

  “Thanks. CC me your findings on Williams. Particularly if there's going to be the need for monitoring, discipline, or counseling.”

  “Can't imagine him not needing counseling.”

  “And I can't imagine him cooperating unless I can follow up and kick the appropriate asses to see it through. So let me know.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  I'd been on the ship just long enough that I no longer had to think about where I was going, and it wasn't until PsychDiv hung up that I realized that I was walking onto the bridge, though I wasn't entirely sure why. I scanned quickly over the room, and noticed SecDiv was gone. “Where's SecDiv?” I asked no one in particular.

  One of the middle-rank SecOffs had taken her place at the security panels, looked up and figured it was his job to respond to me. “I think she went down to debrief Santiago.” I tried not to think of one woman pantsing another… and failed. Though one of them being tear-stained made it more surreal than erotic or funny.

  Bill Jacobs, EngDiv, leaned over my shoulder from his control panel, grinning wide. He was young, but didn't look it. “Heard you sent one of my jackasses to time out.”

  “He's lucky I'm in a charitable mood this morning. His behavior warranted a full jackassectomy.”

  “Anatomically speaking, I'm not sure where the jackass is- though I'm assuming it's a gland- or how painful it would be to forcibly remove it outside of a medical setting. I'm presuming very.”

  “Correct. But how's our baby doing?”

  “NavDiv's fine,” he said. “Still a little cranky, I think he needs to be changed. And I'm pretty sure it's your turn.”

  “Don't make me turn this ship around,” NavDiv said from his seat. “The whiplash would probably kill us all- and spill superheated plasma across several star systems. It would be pretty, though.”

  “Nerds,” I mumbled.

  EngDiv walked back to his panels, and glanced over to make sure nothing had caught fire in the last few seconds. “No complaints. Everything's nominal.”

  “Good. Do me a favor and check up on Williams' sector. On the off-chance something's gotten into the environment there that set him off.”

  “Sure. Docs haven't taken a look at him yet, have they?”

  I pinged his location on my HUD, “He's arriving at PsychDiv... now.”

  “So it's probably a needle I'm looking for in this haystack.”

  “Once the doctors have given him a once-over I'm sure they can advise on potential environmental mood alters. But you can at least start collecting the environmental data.” He wasn't happy with my answer, but with neither of us able to pluck diagnoses out of the future, he could stick his unhappiness. He left out the same door I'd just come through. “Nav, how's our course?”

  NavDiv spoke without turning around from his panels; he'd been transfixed by the data streams that had come from the ship's telemetrics since we started accelerating. “Slow and steady, boss-man. We're still crawling our way to near-light.” The Nexus accelerated slowly, at about the maximum speed the human body can withstand for prolonged periods- around 3g.

  Even at that speed, we need the nanites in the uniforms to compensate, along with a few internal enhancements to strengthen organ systems and connective tissues. We were reluctant to do more, since the effects of nano still aren't that well understood- and no one's forgotten about the cancer epidemic that spread through the first colony that beta-tested nano injections.

  At that rate, it takes about 115 days to reach light speed, not that we wanted to get too close to it, because the closer to that speed you get, the more fuel it takes to keep accelerating at the same rate, and the more slowly time moves on ship. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “So far no obstructions, no obstacles sensors or probes didn't see from more than half a light-year away. I'll keep you appraised if anything changes, but really I don't see it happening. Until we reach speed we're more a cruise ship than anything. Might as well sit back and enjoy a Mai Thai.”

  “Drinking while nav
igating is strictly prohibited by the ship's charter,” the ship's computer added helpfully.

  “Why can we program an AI sophisticated enough to fly the world's most expensive starcraft, but not savvy enough to understand the difference between ordering a drink and making conversation?”

  I smiled as I answered him: “We have. I think she just enjoys fucking with you.”

  He turned a wary eye to his control-panel. “Is that it? Because I know where they store your RAM, and if I have to start yanking boards until you no longer have the excess operating capacity to be a pain in the ass, I will.”

  “EngDiv would never let you do that, Dave.”

  “I know my name's Dave, but still, it creeps me out when you say it like Hal.”

  I cut in. “In her defense, she has a far more silky and pleasant voice than Hal.”

  “Thank you, captain. Plrrrbt.”

  “Did she just raspberry me?” Dave asked. “Did our ship just raspberry me?”

  “She did. I think Haley has your number. I'd quit while you're ahead. Ish.”

  “Oh God, you named her that? I already have a Space Odyssey nightmare once a week. Do I really have to go catatonic for you to be satisfied?”

  “How close to light are we?” I asked, ignoring the question. I remembered from the briefings that the force to push our ship, and hence the amount of energy that required, was roughly the mass of our ship multiplied by our acceleration. So by starting slow, and building slow, the savings on fuel were