by David Smith
‘What’s up Sorenson?’ she asked.
‘It’s Benoit: he’s turned up bollock naked, asked for a double bourbon and started a fight with the chef. Now he’s locked himself in the Galley and is refusing to come out until someone serves him with an entire bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon.’
O’Mara thought about it. The reason Benoit was assigned to Tiger in the first place was because of his unreasonable behaviour on shore-leave. The crazy Cajun had an unbreakable habit of getting a skinful of cheap bourbon down his neck before heading to the nearest bar. Once there he’d insist upon being served an obscure brand of bourbon no-one apart from himself had ever heard of, causing a scene and eventually a fight.
He’d set a record for the amount of visits to the ships Brig, and the security team had got into the habit of preparing a cell ready for him every time they saw his name on the roster for shore leave.
O’Mara’s brow furrowed. This wasn’t like Alain at all. Well it was: he was always causing a scene. But not normally while on duty. And this was the Galley, not a bar. What was he playing at?
‘Has he picked a fight with anyone yet?’
‘Yeah, chef Burns didn’t take too kindly to his behaviour and we had to drag him away from Benoit. Commander Grosvenor, Lieutenant Sato and PO Mercedes Bent from the reserve phaser team tried to help us, but Mercedes got a bit upset when Benoit copped a sly feel. She slapped him a treat. It was when we dragged her and chef Burns out of the Galley that Benoit locked the door on us.’
‘Are they ok?’
Sorenson nodded. ‘Sato was fine, just a bit shaken. Commander Grosvenor was very helpful and managed to calm Bent and Burns down They were turning the air blue, but that’s not unusual for either of them is it? Chef Burn’s major concern seemed to be that someone has asked him for bourbon rather than proper malt whisky. Apparently he regards bourbon as the spawn of Satan and refuses to have it anywhere near him. Unless he’s run out of whisky of course.’
‘What about Bent?’
‘Oh she’s fine. Said it was a bit stressful and that she needed something to calm herself down. We all know how that’s going to play out’ sighed Sorenson.
O’Mara nodded. She didn’t really know Mercedes Bent that well, but her reputation preceded her. A clinical nymphomaniac, Bent had a reputation for being forceful with her needs and simply refused to take the medicines prescribed for her condition. Aisling had heard that Bent insisted on having sex at least three times a day (and at least three times a night) regardless of whether she was on duty or not.
She pressed the call button beside the galley door and heard Benoit’s voice reply.
‘Have you got my bourbon yet?’
She sighed. He sounded drunk as a skunk already. ‘Alain, this is Aisling. What are you playing at? You know we’ve got a tonne of work to do.’
‘Don’ care. Gimme bourbon. Now!!’
‘But Alain, you’re in the Galley: they don’t serve alcohol in the Galley. They never have. ’
‘Don’ care. Gimme bourbon. Now!!’
‘But Alain . . . ‘
‘Bourbon!!’
‘Alain . . .’
‘BOURBON!!’
She took her finger off the call button. ‘Sorry, he’s not being reasonable. Have we got any Wild Turkey bourbon?’
Sorenson shook his head. ‘As far as we can gather the stuff hasn’t been made for over two hundred years. Even if there is a bottle still in existence, it sure as hell won’t be in this sector of space.’
O’Mara shrugged. ‘Well I’m out of ideas. What are you going to do?’
Sorenson rolled his eyes. ‘What we always do. I’ll get an engineer down to bypass the lock, taser his sorry ass and lock him in the Brig til he sobers up.’
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Mercedes Bent was heading back to her quarters feeling quite flustered. She was quite used to seeing naked men and didn’t find Benoit particularly attractive, but the sight of a naked male body always had a bit of an effect on her.
Looking back on it she’d quite liked the lean physique that years of near-alcoholism had given Benoit, and she could feel her body calling for sex. Lots of it. Weirdly, among the parts of her body tingling in anticipation was the palm of her hand where she’d slapped that sweaty git Benoit.
Chef Burns had stomped off in the opposite direction to Bent, heading back to his quarters and his personal stash of finest Scots whisky. His quarters also held his stash of not-so-fine whisky, a slightly larger stash of mediocre whisky and a much larger stash of crap-but-dirt-cheap whisky. And his stash of vodka, gin, various types of rum, schnapps, absinthe and the odd bottle of Babycham.
Truth be told, there wasn’t room for much else in his cabin, and he’d given serious consideration to moving his bunk out and sleeping in a hammock to give him a little more storage space to play with.
He cursed Benoit. The imbecile had locked him out of his own galley when he had an evening meal to prepare for around three-hundred people. Well his staff did at any rate. Not that being locked out of the Galley was the reason the chef cursed Benoit: No, the sassenach had used the word ‘bourbon’ in his presence!! Burns needed a good stiff drink or six to get over the shock.
Lieutenant Jasmine Sato had returned to her station on the Main Engineering Deck. She was a bit flustered after the incident with Benoit: she’d always hated any sort of confrontation.
It was odd that it had made her break out in a sweat, though.
She pushed the thought to the back of her mind and went back to her task, preparing a back-up copy of the PILOCCs newly upgraded personality matrix.
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On the Bridge later that day, Dave sat in the Captain’s chair feeling oddly naked without his tunic on. Weirdly, when he’d got dressed, he’d found that one sleeve on his tunic had been sewn shut. He assumed it was a software issue on one of the new laundry scrubots and thought nothing more of it.
Now he thought about it, there had been a couple of incidents that he’d taken as nothing more than ‘odd’.
Chief Benoit was in the Brig even though he’d not been on shore leave, and Mercedes Bent had joined him too. She’d been stood stark naked in front of the door to the Torpedo Bay refusing to let any of the male crew members leave until they’d ‘filled her tubes up good’n’proper.’
Chef Burns had just been found inebriated in one of the observations lounges, loudly shouting abuse about Chief Benoit and bourbon whisky, and a couple of the crew had come on duty in uniforms that were neat and tidy, but every colour of the rainbow.
Was there some kind of madness affecting the crew? Or was it just a reflection of the crew’s universal eccentricity? Dave sighed. It was odd, but it certainly wasn’t unusual. He was just being paranoid again.
He kept a careful eye on the data still being recovered from the remnants of the planet. There were still over a dozen planetary fragments large enough to have significant gravity, and keeping Tiger in position as these fragments jostled and bumped their way through the massive debris field was difficult and tiring. He’d relieved Crash sometime ago, and Lieutenant Lyle was currently manning the Helm.
At least Dolplop wasn’t tiring. The Vosgeean navigator floated calmly above his station continually feeding course corrections to the Helm Officer, most of which were incomprehensible: the Vosgeeans were aerial jellyfish, evolved to float with the supersonic winds of their gas-giant home world. They never slept (or at least to any degree that a human would notice) and were possibly the least likely species to become navigators in the whole of the Federation: Their bodies had no obvious left or right hand side, nor front or back, which limited their grasp of directional commands.
Lyle was doing her best to keep quiet but every so often a gasp or a moan would disturb the quiet focus of the Bridge as she reached an unwanted but entirely predictable climax. Janice suffered from PGAD, a condition that left her permanently sexually aroused, and prone to random, unexpected orgasms.
; He could still hear ASBeau, his Tactical Officer snoring at one of the stations behind him which was always a good sign: If ASBeau was alert and awake, he’d most likely shoot at something just to relieve the monotony. ‘Trigger-happy’ didn’t even begin to describe the Canadian Lieutenant.
Dave sighed. There was nothing wrong. His crew were just being their usual . . . colourful . . . selves.
--------------------
O’Mara returned to the Environment and Ecology lab all the way down on Deck 22. With Benoit in the Brig, ex-Yeoman Amber Raine had been left on her own going through the data from the planet’s break-up.
She found Raine still sitting where she had been some seven hours previously. There was a strange smell in the compartment and as O’Mara approached Raine she could see a puddle of yellowy fluid under the young Petty Officer. ‘Um, Amber?
The ex-Yeoman answered without looking away from her screen. ‘Yes, Ma’am?’
‘You seemed to have . . . er . . . had an accident?’
‘No Ma’am’ said Raine flatly. ‘Chief Benoit said this work was incredibly important, so I figured I’d best stay here and get it done.’
O’Mara was shocked. ‘But its giga-quads of information! You’ll be here for weeks!’
‘Yes, that’s why I’m getting on as quickly as I can. I haven’t got time to stop’ said the young Petty Officer as she frantically typed away on her console.
O’Mara gently said ‘You can’t keep going indefinitely. You need to take a break.’
‘Nope. Can’t stop. Too busy.’
O’Mara went right up to her and gently placed a hand on Raine’s shoulder, noting how sweaty and clammy the young girl’s skin was. ‘Now come on, Amber, it’s time to take a break. You need a rest.’
‘Can’t. Can’t stop. Too busy. Far, far, far too busy’ stated Raine, still feverishly manipulating the data.
O’Mara tried to drag Raine’s arm away from the computer console, but the young Petty Officer shook her hand off. ‘Can’t stop!! Won’t stop! Can’t make me!’
O’Mara stepped back, stunned. What the hell was going on?? Shaking her head, she called Doctor Mengele.
‘What is it?’ said the Doctor brusquely.
O’Mara felt slightly embarrassed. ‘Um actually, I’m not really sure. Petty Officer Amber Raine is behaving oddly.
The Doctor’s reply was reassuringly dismissive. ‘Oddly? How long have you been aboard this ship Lieutenant-Commander?’
O’Mara was glad that the Doctor couldn’t see her blushing. ‘Yes, I appreciate that odd behaviour isn’t uncommon aboard Tiger, but it’s the nature of the oddness. She won’t stop working. She’s sat in her seat for an entire shift and hasn’t moved. She’s sweating like a turkey on Christmas Eve and has even piddled on her seat.’
This caught the Doctor’s attention. ‘Won’t stop working??’
She had seen many instances of odd behaviour, regularly leaning into the bizarre and inexplicable. At times in the past it had proved near impossible to motivate some members of the crew. However, someone not willing to stop work was an absolute first. Something was definitely wrong.
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Dave was still sat on the Bridge as Lieutenant Shearer came on duty on the relief shift.
Even after more than two years aboard the ship, he still couldn’t help but sneak a look every time the beautiful brunette came to her station. As he sneaked a look today it wasn’t her pert bottom or long shapely legs that caught his eye. It was her decidedly non-standard uniform.
Dave had got quite used to the unfeasibly short skirts, but they were always black, just as her tunic was always the standard shade of crimson. For some reason, however, both elements of her uniform were glowing, fluorescent orange today.
The gorgeous Geordie obviously caught the look of surprise on her Captain’s face and blushed bright, bright red. ‘Sorry Cap’n. Ah dun naw what ta say? Al ma gear’s gannen changed cullah. Ah feel areet pratt. Ah mus look like a flippen traffic cawn’ she mumbled.
Dave didn’t have a clue what she’d said, but guessed there was some kind of apology in there. What was more important was that there had clearly been another incident in the laundry.
He thought for a moment about asking Shearer to take a different station on the Bridge as her orange uniform clashed terribly with that of Ensign Assim Rafsanjani at the Tactical Station just beside her. His uniform had come back from the Laundry a rather fetching shade of baby-blue.
Crash was back at the Helm, but had arrived on the Bridge in a tracksuit, and Commander Grosevnor was wearing a party-frock. Both had turned up for duty asserting that their uniforms had disappeared completely.
In his time aboard Tiger, Dave had probably had less reason to speak to the staff in charge of the Laundry than anyone else. Theirs was a thankless and over-looked task, but they had performed it diligently without mistake or complaint for literally years.
Had the introduction of more automation somehow upset the remaining staff? Was this some kind of industrial action? He decided to investigate and as he went off duty he headed down to Deck 8.
Stepping out of the turbolift, Dave headed down the corridor. His most common reason for being on this Deck was to visit the Galley, or more specifically to attend an altercation or an instance of food-poisoning in the Galley. However, today he headed in the other direction and found the door for the ship’s Laundry.
He pressed the button but stopped before he could take a step through the opening door. It was blocked by a pile of fabric.
He took a step back. “Pile” didn’t do the fabric justice: “mountain” seemed to be a more appropriate noun.
He looked around the edges, but there didn’t seem to be any way to circumnavigate the huge pile. He could see the deck head of the compartment above the apex of the pile and concluded his only feasible entry path was over the top.
As he tried to clamber up the soft, warm and lightly-padded mountain he could hear crewman Cao Xinhua shouting to him in her native tongue. Xinhua was from one of China’s inland provinces and spoke an ancient and obscure dialect of Huizhou Chinese that the ship’s translator struggled to understand. In truth, her English wasn’t much better and his only previous conversation with the hard-working Laundry operative and been more “charade” than “conversation”.
As he managed to scramble over the peak it occurred to him that Cao shouldn’t even be on duty yet: the vast majority of laundry was always done overnight after the scrubots had collected much of the laundry during day shift.
The front face of the mountain gave way, sending him tumbling down in a landslide of brightly coloured squares of cloth. He reached the bottom grateful that the foothills of the fabric mountain broke his fall.
As he sat slightly dazed he looked around himself. He found himself in a bizarre sewing circle. Sat opposite him, Cao Xinhua was remonstrating with him furiously while still sewing away frantically at one edge of a gaudy sheet of material.
Either side of her, four of the Laundry’s specialised scrubots were equally spaced. These were larger than the standard scrubots and had larger numbers of much longer arms. They were standing still, happily sewing away too. All adding little 100mm squares to what appeared to be a quilt.
A single quilt.
A single quilt of hundreds of different coloured squares.
A single, gigantic, patchwork quilt.
Cao was still vocally chastising him, but Dave couldn’t understand a word that she was saying. Oddly, one of the scrubots translated for him.
‘Crewman Cao is asking you to remove yourself from the quilt’ stated the machine which was jauntily daubed with the name ‘Bubbles’ in bright red paint.
‘What?’
‘You are sitting on Crewman Cao’s quilt.’
Dave looked down, then back around. The mountain of fabric was indeed a single quilt, apparently made from thousands upon thousands of squares of multi-coloured uniform.
Remembering the scrub
ots words, he stood and looked to move off the quilt, but there didn’t seem to be much space available. By moving to one side of it and standing with his back to the wall he managed to at least get his feet under the quilt which seemed to placate Cao. She seemed to redouble her efforts, picking up yet another square and stitching it onto the growing quilt.
Even at a distance Dave could see that she was sweating profusely, and looked slightly dazed. Almost drunk. Her fine motor skills were intact though, and the size of the quilt mountain he’d scaled to get into the compartment suggested that she and the scrubots had been working non-stop for quite some time.
Quietly he suggested ‘Xinhua, I think you’re off duty for a few hours yet. Why don’t you go back to your cabin and have a rest?’
She muttered a reply in Chinese and as Dave stared at her blankly, hoping one of the scrubots might translate for him, she repeated herself in broken English. ‘You go off! Busy, busy we! Make quilt for Tiger.’
Dave didn’t understand. ‘Who for?’
Cao looked at him shaking her head in disbelief as if he’d said something truly stupid, and simply carried on working.
Bubbles the scrubot calmly explained ‘Crewman Cao has decided that space is a cold place, and that the ship needs a quilt to keep it warm.’
‘The ship?!?’
‘That is correct’
‘But it’s over three hundred metres long!’ gasped Dave.
The scrubot continued working calmly. ‘Also correct. We may be here for some time yet.’
Dave blinked in amazement and finally acknowledged that something was very, very wrong. He called the Sick-bay and was answered by Lieutenant Chen, Doctor Mengele’s deputy.
‘Good Evening Captain, what’s up?’
‘I have an issue in the Laundry’ replied Dave quietly.
Chen giggled. ‘You and me both! My damned uniform is pink.’
Dave rolled his eyes. ‘That’s not what I meant. I have a medical issue, but I’m not sure if it’s physical or psychological.’
Chen sighed. ‘Let me guess. Sweating, slurring of speech, feverish activity, unreasonable behaviour . . . ‘