The Merrimack Event (Shieldclads Book 1)

by David Tatum

  Rachel nodded. “There’s something of a victory party for your ‘raid’ going on, as far as I understand things. I was invited, but I didn’t want to go. Do you want to pick up some food and take this to one of our cabins? It’s getting a bit too loud to talk in here.”

  “Good idea,” Chris said. “I’ll get it. What do you want?”

  “Well, considering we’re running out of the fresh food we collected from the Gnat when we got gravity up,” Rachel said, “I’ll take anything that hasn’t been reconstituted or freeze-dried.”

  Chris’ lips twitched with restrained laughter. “I’ll see what they’ve got. We won’t have to wait too long to get away from the freeze-dried stuff, though. We’re due for a shipment of fresh food from the planet in about three hours. As I understand it, it’s the first time this colony has ever sent food outside of their own hydroponics gardens.”

  “How is the planet’s food? Do you know?”

  “Better then what we’re using right now, but I doubt anything they’ve got will ever be listed as a top quality ingredient by the Interstellar Gourmand’s Society. At least, not for many years to come.”

  Rachel shrugged. “As long as it isn’t this reconstituted crap we’ve been living on recently. I wonder if our own hydroponics bay will grow anything edible before the war games are over.”

  Chris shrugged. “I doubt it. Jonathan Rosebaugh was pulled from the rail gun project to work on it.”

  Weapons techs usually had no technical duties when they weren’t engaged in the service or operation of the weapons, yet they took up a large portion of any ship’s crew. For that reason, they were often given the day-to-day assignments that didn’t require a specialist – things like maintaining the food supply, cooking, janitorial work, and so on.

  Rosebaugh had proven himself to be a hazard to himself and others in the massive reconstruction projects that were taking place. He was competently skilled, but clumsy, leading to several instances where dropped tools or similar accidents had created safety hazards. For that reason, when Captain Burkhard had taken Chris and Rappaport aside to ask for someone who could be spared to set up a hydroponics bay, the first name out of both of their lips was the errant weapons tech.

  “Hey, maybe he’ll be able to actually manage,” Rachel said doubtfully.

  “Maybe,” Chris said. “We’ll see. Be right back.”

  Rachel waited impatiently for his return with their meals. She’d missed lunch and was fairly close to starving. She wondered vaguely if it really would matter to her if Chris could get ‘real’ food or not.

  “Hey, Rachel,” Weber said, walking over to her out of the throng of party-goers. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I’m not here for the party,” she replied. “I’m waiting for Chris to get back here with our dinner.”

  “‘Our’ dinner?” Weber asked, smirking. “You guys have been eating together pretty much every night. I know you mentioned you two are kinda dating, now, but it’s starting to sound serious.”

  “Perhaps,” Rachel admitted. “At least, it’s more serious than I thought it’d get before the Wargame was over. I’ve been trying to keep him from overworking himself by getting him to have dinner with me each night, and it’s been working, but it’s helped our relationship tremendously. It’s not a hot-and-heavy romance, yet, but... well, it’s nice.” She forced a grin, hoping to change the topic. Babbling on about her love life was not how she intended to spend that evening. “By the way, how’re you and ‘Wolfie’ coming along?”

  “We’ve talked through some things,” Weber sighed, not sounding all that happy about it. “I think he’s still scared of me, but it’s hard to say. There isn’t much chance to explore things with him – when I’m here, he’s flying the shuttle. When he’s here, I’m flying the shuttle. Thanks to that damned shuttle, we’ve barely been able to see each other. Rappaport tells me the number of flights we have are going to be tapering off soon, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Chris told me that the last of the shuttle work we need will be completed tonight. At least, until they start putting in the quantum wheel, which won’t be until everything else is finished. You’ll have a plenty of time together after that.”

  Weber beamed at her. “Is that so? Well, then, I suppose I’d better start getting ready to go Wolf-hunting tomorrow.”

  Rachel laughed. “Lucky you. I’ve only got my horrible job in ‘Waste Recycling’ to look forward to, tomorrow.”

  “And dinners,” Weber reminded her.

  “And dinners.” Rachel grinned self consciously.

  “How interesting are those dinners?” Weber asked. “You say this relationship hasn’t gotten hot-and-heavy, yet, but how it is really?”

  Rachel shrugged. “We haven’t had a moment alone since the party. Not really, anyway. We eat here, in the cafeteria, and work in completely different places.

  “So, you’re waiting until you can get him alone before you test his prowess in the sack, huh?” Weber smirked crudely.

  “What!?” Rachel sputtered. “I... I’d never... We’d never....”

  Just then, Chris strode up carrying two trays of food. They both were covered, but he seemed to know whose was whose.

  “Hey, Rache. Here’s your dinner,” he said, handing her one of the trays. Noticing her expression, he frowned. “Something wrong?”

  “No, nothing, thanks,” she replied, taking it with a smile. She mustered up enough composure to turn one last glare at Weber before returning her attention to Chris. “Well, I guess we’ll be eating in my cabin. Since Weber’s about to go on duty, Wolf will want yours to sleep in.”

  Weber leered. “I don’t expect to be back for a while. You two can have it all night, if you want.”

  Chris missed the comment, but Rachel certainly didn’t. “Come on, Chris,” she ordered, blushing furiously as she stormed away.

  He blinked at her retreating back. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  Weber just laughed. “Well, don’t just stand there – go after her and maybe you’ll find out.”

  ——————————

  “I haven’t had a chance to ask about the raid, yet,” Rachel noted as they entered her cabin. “I know it was successful, but I haven’t heard anything else, yet.”

  “To be honest, it was mostly a blur to me,” Chris admitted, setting a tray down on a small end-table by Rachel’s bed. They’d eaten in the cabin before, and Rachel had always insisted on using the desk, leaving Chris to fend for himself. Weber’s desk was occupied, so he chose to sit on one of the beds.

  Rachel frowned slightly, Weber’s earlier comments about “testing his prowess in the sack” made the sight of him sitting on her bed feel somewhat awkward. She might really like Chris – though she still couldn’t quite believe it, sometimes, when they got into one of their (increasingly infrequent) arguments – but she wasn’t the sort of girl to leap into bed with a man just because they were starting to get along.

  “I think it’s about time I relinquish my desk to your dining,” Rachel noted, trying to quiet the memory of Weber’s words. “You get too many crumbs on my bed.”

  “I do not!” Chris protested, though he looked amused. “Then again, it’s a lot more comfortable to eat at your desk, I believe, so maybe I’ll accept my punishment for a crime I didn’t commit, and count my lucky stars.”

  “If you say so,” Rachel said, not meeting his eyes. To be honest, Chris was telling the truth. She made her own way to the bed and realized she didn’t really feel much better taking his place. One of them was still on the soft, warm sheets that might just be big enough for two, if they held each other pretty close.

  Deciding to distract herself from those thoughts, Rachel decided to bring back the original topic. “You aren’t dodging my questions that easily, Mr. Desaix,” she teased. “What happened on the Don Quixote?”

  Chris shrugged. “Things went by so quickly, it was pretty conf
using. I dunno how to describe it.”

  “Try,” Rachel said. “I’ve heard you actually got into a sword battle at one point.”

  “Towards the end, yeah. But only very briefly,” Chris noted. “I surprised someone and stopped them from striking Beccera in the back, using the distraction to cut him down. But I couldn’t have stood up to them in a real fight – trust me. I’m terrible with a sword.”

  Rachel smiled. “So what? That just makes your achievement that much greater. An unskilled, barely trained engineer defeating a promising Marine cadet. You should be proud.”

  “I’m not exactly upset about my performance,” Chris reminded her. “I’m just saying it wasn’t really a big deal. Actually, I’m just glad that I didn’t freeze up when the action started. I had a serious attack of nerves on the flight over.”

  That rung a small alarm in Rachel’s mind. “You mean, like you sometimes do in your nightmares?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Yeah, kinda,” Chris answered, fidgeting. “Normally, in my dreams, it’s a lot worse... and so is the situation my nightmares place me in. No-one’s life was really at risk in this one. I still fear I could freeze, one day, in more dangerous circumstances.”

  Rachel frowned. “Chris, this may sound like an odd question, but do your nightmares ever include your freezing during an engineering crisis?”

  Chris considered that question briefly. “Hm... not that I can recall. I don’t always remember my dreams.”

  Rachel nodded. “I thought so. Chris, I want you to answer me honestly about this... do you honestly believe you’re a better engineer than a tactician? Now, before you answer, I’m not asking which one you’d rather do. I’m asking which one you’d be better at, ignoring things like your personal enjoyment or your nerves.”

  Chris paused. “I’m not sure. I’ve been told I was good at tactics since my days fighting war games with the SCA, but....” He shrugged. “It doesn’t really interest me. Um, hey, shouldn’t you start eating before your food spoils? I went to a lot of trouble finding you things that I thought you would like.”

  Rachel hesitated. It was an obvious attempt to change the subject, but he was right – she was letting her meal go to waste. She wanted to get her point out, first, though. “Chris, what is it about tactics that gives you nightmares, anyway? If you make a mistake or freeze up when we have a major reactor breech, we’re all dead, so that’s not all that different from making a tactical mistake. What is it with your tactics classes that gives you all these nightmares that you don’t feel when you’re practicing your engineering?”

  Chris didn’t have an answer to that. “Rachel, what do you expect me to say? I like engineering. I suppose I like some aspects of tactical training, too, but... I just don’t know. All I know is that I enjoy engineering, and it doesn’t give me nightmares.”

  “I wish I knew how to stop your nightmares. If we could, I think you’d be better off leaving Engineering as your hobby and working primarily as a tactician in the Navy,” Rachel sighed, starting to take the cover off her tray of food. She was going to say more before she finally saw what was on her plate. “Dear God, how in the world did you manage to find that?”

  There, on her plate, was real sushi – fresh sushi, including what looked like real crab rolls, fresh tuna nigiri, and smoked salmon in a hand-roll. In addition to that, there was an avocado salad and a soup of some sort.

  Chris grinned broadly. “When we were hiding our tracks for the raid, we had to head over to the station orbiting the planet. I was able to buy a small box of supplies while we were there, and kept it all on ice for the trip. I took it to our chef and asked him to make it as a surprise for you. The crab and the tuna are real, the salmon is actually a similar native fish found on this planet’s surface, and the avocado... well, I don’t really know where that came from. The soup is, unfortunately, just an ordinary dried variety, but I figured you wouldn’t mind that with the other things I got.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Rachel said, completely forgetting her prior train of thought. “I can’t believe you managed to do this.”

  “Well, I was curious about this planet’s food supplies, myself,” Chris noted. “Rice has taken to the surface of it fairly well, and both native and Earth-based fish thrive in the oceans. Vegetables have kind of struggled, as I understand it, which is why I’m so surprised by the avocado, but it seems to be pretty decent from what I can tell. Like I said, it isn’t prize-winning yet, but I’ve tried it and it ain’t bad.”

  Rachel selected a pair of chopsticks from the various utensils she had been given and immediately delved into the sushi. “Oh, this is good. Who is the chef? They should be on the job full-time, if this is any sample of what they can do.”

  Chris laughed. “Dr. June Ehrlich, believe it or not. She’ll likely be too busy as our doctor to be a full-time cook, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she winds up getting the job part-time, since everyone seems to be working two jobs on this boat. While she was in the Academy’s medical school, she earned a bit of spending money as a cook in the reserves. She even won some armed forces competition about a dozen years or so ago before retiring to private practice and the civilian auxiliary.”

  Rachel took another bite and sighed. “Oh, this is so good. Where did you get the soy sauce and the wasabi?”

  “Well, it’s not real wasabi, but it comes from the local gardens and seems close enough,” Chris noted. “As far as the soy sauce goes, I have a personal supply. I prefer it to salt in most cases.”

  Rachel nodded. “I think I remember that from the few times we’ve eaten together at the Academy. This is the first time I’ve seen it out since we left for the ship, though.”

  “Well, we never had anything worth using soy sauce on,” Chris said.

  “Yes, the food we’ve had has definitely been too poor to waste a resource as precious as that on,” Rachel admitted.

  “Agreed,” Chris said. “I don’t waste good resources on trash. Which reminds me...”

  “Yes?” Rachel asked, wondering why he’d just drifted off like that.

  “Remember how we were discussing your problems with your coworkers in that ‘Waste Recycling’ job,” Chris said.

  “Yes?” Rachel wasn’t sure if this was yet another attempt to change the subject or what.

  “Like I just said, I don’t waste good resources on trash, and you’re definitely a good resource,” he grinned. “You’re wasted collecting trash, so—”

  Rachel had her problems with her current job, but she didn’t want him doing anything that might get him in trouble. Visions of him launching an operation similar to the Don Quixote heist danced in her head. She had to stop him before he tried something dangerous. “Chris, I know I’ve had my complaints, but I’m okay with it. Really.”

  “Relax, I’m not about to get Langer to hack your personnel file and get you transferred or anything like that,” Chris said. Was he reading her mind? He gave her a cheeky grin before continuing. “I have more legitimate ways of helping you out. Remember me saying I needed an assistant?”

  Rachel nodded slowly. “Yes, I remember something like that.”

  “Well, I talked with Rappaport. If you check your messages, I think you’ll find a change of assignment notice.”

  Rachel spun to the wall-mounted computer by her bed and directed it to open her e-mail. Sure enough, there was a message addressed from Lt. Jacques Rappaport, Chief Engineer, directing and requiring her to accept a new assignment as Cadet Lieutenant Christopher Desaix’s new personal assistant.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’m your personal assistant, now, am I? You realize this gives me an even better opportunity to keep an eye on you? You aren’t going to be working even two straight shifts if I have anything to say about it.”

  Chris smiled. “Well, we’ll just have to see about that...”

  ——————————

  Rachel sighed. It might have been uncomfortable working on the Waste Recycling Team, but at least it wa
s better than being bored all the time... as she was, now, since Chris never involved her in anything. True, this was just her first day and they were both just getting used to the adjustment, and he did think to chat with her from time to time as they were moving between one assignment and another, but he didn’t seem to really need her.

  “Hey, Rache,” he called. “Come here a minute.”

  Rachel started in surprise. That was the first time he’d spoken in the twenty minutes since they arrived in the heart of this mechanical section that she couldn’t decipher the function of.

  “Coming,” she said, leaping up from her seat and rushing over to where he had his head buried under some computer component.

  “You know how to use a circuit tester, right?” his still-headless voice asked.

  “Uh, well, not really,” Rachel said.

  That got him to shove his way out from under the circuitry and look up at her in disbelief. “You’re kidding me. It’s one of the first things they teach you in the basic maintenance course everyone at the academy is required to take!”

  Rachel laughed nervously. “I was planning to complete that requirement next semester.”

  Chris shook his head, sighing. “I guess I’ll have to see if I can get you up to speed, okay?”

  “Uh,” Rachel hesitated. “I might be a hopeless case. There was a reason I’ve been putting off taking that course.”

  “Well, I can try,” Chris said, shrugging. “After this shift, though. In the meantime, let me show you how a circuit tester works, so you can work while I finish up here.”

  “If you really want to risk giving me this kind of job,” Rachel said. She did want something to do, but she wasn’t sure she should be entrusted with anything important... and she definitely remembered Chris mentioning that it was important.

  “Unless you’ve got the klutz factor of Mr. Rosebaugh to go along with your lack of knowledge, you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

  “Well, I’m not that bad, at least,” Rachel admitted with a smile. “Okay, so how does this thing work?”