by Joe Pace
Her grandfather would have none of it. “Girls,” he would tell Fletcher and her sister, “the day you think a shred of land and an old piece of paper from a long-dead king make you a better person than this man or that woman, you make sure to tell me so I can knock that fool idea out of your head.” Papi doesn’t act noble, thought Fletcher, he is noble, and there was a difference.
When she arrived at Pier 12B, it was quieter than she expected. In her years working with Bill – Captain Pearce – the week before launch was always a riot of activity and bustle, last-minute loading and repairs. But now, only five days before launch, in the heart of the afternoon watch, the warehouse adjacent to the Harvest gangway was virtually empty, with neither hurrying crew nor gear awaiting their hands. One solitary figure, eyes closed, sat on an overturned storage bin and leaned against the wall. He wore one of those worksuits identifying him as an able starman, the gray sleeves rolled up over thickly-muscled arms, the top partially unzipped, exposing a white shirt beneath. There were dark smudges on both the uniform and the face, signs of a morning’s labor. He was handsome, in a rough and common sort of way.
Fletcher hesitated, staring for a moment. The Harvest’s complement was so modest that shore watch was shared out between officers and crew. This was clearly the sentry, and just as clearly, he was asleep. Should she scold him? On a merchant ship, as long as the duty didn’t involve guarding some precious cargo, she would have nudged him awake, made a joke of it and warned the crewman how lucky it was she and not the captain had found him. But she was now second in command of one of His Majesty’s royal vessels, and she had thoroughly read the King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions that Pearce had sent her. Sleeping on duty was a significant offense in the Navy.
“Well?” The voice was a low rasp, drifting quietly and low from the motionless starman. His dark eyes were open, little more than a sliver, but he was watching her with them. “You gonna stand there all day, or yell at me proper?” He raised a slow, lazy arm and touched a knuckle to his black hair. “Sir.”
Saul Lamb, thought Fletcher. She had read the manifest, knew the likeness and reputation and personal history of each of the crew. Born into near-abject poverty in the Scots District, Lamb had been to space often enough, on merchant ships when he could, on Navy ships when pressed. His disciplinary file was long and varied, but somehow he had always managed to avoid real trouble, and stay employed because he was a skilled jack. She knew the type. Fancies himself a wit, but will throw hands as readily as words. Best to dose him with his own medicine.
“Yell?” she raised an eyebrow and frowned. “You going to give me a reason to yell, Lamb? Is being ugly against the King’s Regs now?” Lamb’s laugh was a coarse bark, and it erupted from him in a short burst, almost as if it surprised him. He stood up, smiled crookedly, and bowed slightly from the waist, touching his hairline again, with greater ceremony.
“Able Starman Saul Lamb,” he said.
“Lieutenant Christine Fletcher,” she replied, nodding at the salute, and she smiled back, just a little, just enough. “Sleep on your own time, Lamb. Next time it could be Captain Pearce who finds you, or me in a less forgiving mood.”
“Weren’t sleepin’,” he said, sitting back down and putting his hands behind his head. “Though I could use it. We all could, the way we been workin’.” He leaned back again, closing his eyes. “Welcome to the Harvest, Lieutenant. Pearce been waitin’ on you.”
“That’s Captain Pearce,” she said, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder. She was getting anxious to be aboard, but she knew from his file that Lamb was the kind of jack likely to have influence among the rest of the crew, and it was important to build a rapport with him from the beginning. “And I’m glad to hear you’ve been hard at it. A ship runs best when we all work. I’ll see you aboard.” Turning on her heel, she walked to the circular mouth of the round polymer gangway, sensing his eyes watching her go. He’d hardly be the first to desire her, she knew, and hardly the first to underestimate her for it.
Fletcher navigated the gangway with practiced ease, and when she stepped onto the dull-gray plate of the Harvest’s floor, it felt a little like coming home. He’ll be on the quarterdeck, she thought, and wound her way through the dark, quiet guts of the ship, so similar to the Britannia, up the command fin to the bridge. The doors of the lift opened with a smooth hiss, smelling of benzene. Newly repaired, she figured. God only knew how much work Bill had done getting the old bird ready to fly. Stepping out into the snug quarterdeck, she saw a man and woman she did not know leaning against the center console, and under that, a pair of short legs in working-officer trousers.
“Try her again,” came a muffled, yet familiar voice from beneath the station. The woman, a young redhead, a girl really, tapped a sequence on the board, which chirped merrily for a moment before breaking into a sustained wail. “Stop! Stop!” cried the voice, and Fletcher laughed out loud as the girl scrambled to shut down the malfunctioning system.
“You never could fix a balky nav relay,” Fletcher said into the subsequent silence. Two heads swiveled to look her way, and a sudden loud bang came from below.
“Damn!” Captain Pearce roared, emerging from the access port, rubbing his reddening forehead where he had struck it sitting up in surprise. He stared a moment, as if disbelieving. “Good of you to come, Lieutenant.” Fletcher could hear the word finally, unsaid but only just. Pointing to the other officers, he made swift introductions. “Lieutenant John Pott, Midshipman Hope Worth, this is Lieutenant Christine Fletcher, second in command of the Harvest. If we ever get the bloody beast out of spacedock.” Fletcher smiled at her shipmates by way of greeting, and Pott nodded in return, while Worth snapped a swift salute. It was all Fletcher could do not to giggle, the poor girl was so painfully earnest. Instead, she returned the gesture and turned her attention to Pearce.
“Reporting for duty, sir.” Before he could respond, she glanced over his shoulder, dropping her bag to the deck and removing her jacket, which she tossed onto the command chair. “Permission to come aboard. Nav console giving you grief?”
Now Pearce was the one to grin. “Granted! Nobody knows their way around these relays like Fletcher,” he said, leaning toward Pott. “Once, she won a bet in the New Indies by disconnecting and reconnecting all eleven in sixty seconds.”
“Fifty-four,” she said. “And after drinking seven Spinning Nebulas, too. Lightened that poor blighter’s wallet a fair piece that night.” She could see Pott’s eyebrows raise, but the story was true. Mostly true. She did shave a second off the time every year.
Pearce indicated the console. “She’s all yours. Mister Worth, please convey Lieutenant Fletcher’s baggage to her quarters.” Placing a hand on her shoulder, he leaned in close. “It is good to have you aboard,” he murmured. “Thank you.” Then he was gone, the young midshipman trailing behind with Fletcher’s things.
“Go back a bit with the captain, do you,” asked Pott, after the doors slid shut, in an unmistakable Australian twang. Fletcher glanced at him sidelong as she began examining the faulty panel. He was scruffy, with salt-and-pepper bristles around his jaw. Not unhandsome, he projected a kind of rough competence, and was probably fifteen years her elder. And after weeks during which he’d been second only to Pearce, she was now his senior officer.
“A bit,” she replied carefully, sitting on the floor and shining a handlight into the dangling electronic guts under the unit. “We made a few trading runs together these past few years.”
“Merchant marine,” he said flatly. “And this is your first cruise in one of His Majesty’s ships?” She set down the handlight with a sharp clang.
“Look, Pott, is it? I’m new to your Navy. We both know that. But I’m here because the captain wants me here, which means the Admiralty wants me here, which means the King wants me here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have the damn commission in my pocket or the damn stripes on my sleeve. If that bothers you, I’m happy to hea
r all about it over a drink in the mess later, my treat. But right now, I’m going to fix these relays. You can help me, or I can kick your ass and then you’ll help me. Up to you.” She finished and there was a long pause, during which she wondered if he would challenge her, walk away, or stand there like an idiot.
“Sixty seconds?” he finally asked.
“Fifty-four.”
“Seven Spinners?”
“Maybe eight. Didn’t want the old man thinking I’m a drunk.”
Finally, Pott laughed, a rolling, thundering laugh.
“You might be all right, Fletcher. And if you can fix this console, those drinks will be on me.”
Six
Ignition
“No books tonight.”
Taryn Hadley sat down across from Worth in the mess, nudging Hall down the bench with her hip and shoulder. Worth sort of liked Hadley. She was one of the two female ables, and you could talk to her, which was more than could be said of Peggy Briggs. Briggs, eating her dinner at another table with Saul Lamb and some of the rougher crewmen, was big and scary and almost never spoke. Hadley wasn’t big, wasn’t scary, and never shut up. Worth knew the men found her sexy; she had even noticed Hall looking at her. She understood why. The woman was built like a holovid model, fleshy or flat in all the right spots. It was a fact she clearly relished, wearing working-uniforms at least two sizes too small. Hadley was always friendly, but now she was even more so, and Worth noticed the cup in her hand and smelled what was in it. The wetting, she remembered.
She knew that most ables liked their liquor. It was an ancient naval tradition, dating back centuries to a time when ship’s crews had been half-drunk more often than not, and regarded their rum rations as a God-given right. More than one commander had cut those rations or eliminated them altogether, to his eventual regret. Some things had changed in His Majesty’s Royal Navy in the long years since Nelson or Anson strode their wooden decks, and some had not. There were still rum rations, though not nearly as stupefyingly generous as before, and never served to sailors then expected to work the ship. The crew still jealously guarded their drink, a welcome source of good cheer on long star voyages.
Glancing about, Worth noticed that the mess was mostly full. The chiseled, terrifying Briggs had left, nor did she see the quiet Xi Xiang; they must have been on duty. But Isaac Pratt was there, huge and brooding, manfully ignoring whatever it was Tom Churchill was blathering at him. Cheeks already ruddy with drink, Churchill was universally disdained by the others, though seemingly ignorant of it. He worked less and less competently, and talked more and more stupidly than any of them, and at the moment, he was waving his cup in broad arcs to punctuate some story, blissfully unaware that Pratt was edging closer to annoyance. I would never want to annoy that man, she thought of Pratt.
The short, swarthy Latino, Mathias Quintal, was there, too, chatting amiably with Saul Lamb by the beverage dispenser. Lamb had shaved, she noticed, and was wearing a clean shirt. There was something bizarrely magnetic about Lamb, though whether it was despite his air of barely controlled violence or because of it, she couldn’t say. He must have felt her stare, because he turned his head and smiled at her, a tooth-filled smile, and she looked hurriedly away, reddening. She forced herself to look at another table, where the two older ables were seated, cups at their elbows, playing a game of hologram chess. The board and pieces, fragments of blue and red light, hovered over the table between Arash el-Barzin and Gordan Rowland. Rowland was almost fatherly, his face lined and kind, graying at the temples and with a slight paunch around his midsection. He was married with a little girl, Worth knew from her review of the manifest, and had always been unfailingly pleasant to her when they shared duty. El-Barzin was even older than Rowland, who was at least forty, but he didn’t look it. Taut and slender, a coiled spring of muscle and endless deep-space experience, he was the captain of the jacks, their clear leader, though he rarely made a point of it. Other than Lieutenant Pott, it was el-Barzin who had taught Worth and Hall the most, over the course of their pre-launch work and training. The man seemed to know every seam and bolt of the Harvest intimately, almost effortlessly. Once, Worth had remarked something to that effect, and el-Barzin had laughed. “When you’ve had as many years in space as I have, sir, you’ll know just as much.”
“Hey,” Hadley was saying, “are you here to stare at the old men, or to have some fun? Lamb!” she called. “Quintal! We need some refreshment for our officers here.” The two ables looked over from their conversation, and both grinned. Lamb’s smile was still wolfish, unsettling, but Quintal’s was more of a smirk, a slanted line across his inscrutable face.
“Of course,” Quintal said, and he deftly extracted two rations from the dispenser. The cups were clear, hard plasteen, tinted vaguely blue, and the brownish hue of the drink showed through muddy and dark. When Worth took hers, it was warm to the touch. Quintal’s face was close to hers, and she could smell that he had begun some time earlier. “Grog,” he said, “is best served hot.” He clinked her cup with his own, and watched expectantly.
Worth stared at it for a moment. She knew about liquor, of course. She was young, but not a child. Her father had been no stranger to alcohol, frequently hosting gatherings while ashore, the apartment full of fellow-officers and other luminaries, the rum, wine and other spirits always integral guests. She had seen Captain Worth with glass in hand many times, but she had never seen him approach the level of drunkenness his friends often achieved.
“Control, Hope,” he would tell her when she was old enough to make an appearance at the levees. “It is sociable to be convivial, but always stay in control. Look.” He would point at some old shipmate, in advanced lubrication, inevitably slouched in a chair, or storytelling in a too-loud, too-slurred voice, or tottering about, in danger of crashing into other guests, or the furniture, or the floor. “You’re a fool if you let the booze master you. Don’t be a fool, Hope.”
This advice, as had so much of her father’s, stayed with Worth when she went to Greenwich, and she made it a point never to drink more than a single cup at any time. It contributed to her reputation as a standoffish prude, and after a few months she would be invited to only the most inclusive parties, which reduced her need to exercise control.
Just the one, then, she thought, and sipped, somewhat more daintily than she intended, at the cup. It was indeed grog, descended from the ancestral Navy drink, hot rum mixed with water and lemon.
“It’s Her Majesty the Queen!” mocked Quintal, with that lopsided smirk, and they laughed at her. Her first instinct was to blush and withdraw, but she forced herself not to. Instead she inclined her head, raised her free hand in a regally dismissive wave, and the laughter swelled. Something relaxed within her chest. They’re just people, she thought. Not so different from her, even with their rougher talk and manners. They liked to laugh, to eat and drink and love, and she resolved then to give them no reason to hate her.
The evening progressed, drink and music flowing together with talk of old cruises and shipmates.
“I shipped with your father,” Rowland told her, “twice. A great captain, your old man. There’s those of us who would have reefed for him into the heart of a star if he’d ordered. Had a way with a ship and a crew, like…like a musician, I suppose. Couldn’t never put your finger on it, but you knew everything would be all right with Captain Worth on deck. Wasn’t no gladhander, a tight ship and all, but always fair to the jacks.”
“Where’s he, then?” asked Pratt in a growl. “Who’s this Pearce, anyway? A right tin tyrant, ain’t he?”
“You’re as stupid as you are ugly,” called el-Barzin from the next table, where he and Lamb were at cards. From the darkening look on Lamb’s face, the older crewman was having the better luck. El-Barzin fixed his eyes on his huge crewmate. “Stow your salt-talk, Pratt, I won’t have it.”
“Oh, he won’t have it,” put in Lamb, voice thick with drink, flinging his cards on the table.
“You an officer, then, Arash? You want to lord it about over the commons like Pearce?”
“I said stow it.” El-Barzin’s voice grew low and dangerous. “First, that’s Captain Pearce, you bloody fool. There’s officers on deck. Young, aye, but officers still. Second, the man’s a right cracking officer, I should know. And third, he’s no more lordly than any of us. From common stock, he is. Born as low as you or me, but he worked with his mind as much as his back, and up he climbed. I don’t begrudge the man his success.”
“You’d never know he was common,” Lamb spat while Pratt scowled in silence, trembling slightly as though in barely restrained violence. There’s no way he’s afraid of el-Barzin, Worth thought. Something, though, was holding all that rage back, if only just. Afraid of punishment? Or afraid of what he might do? “Not like Fletcher. Damn.” Lamb shook his head. “She’s noble-born, but don’t act like it, and he ain’t but acts like he is. The way he barks at us ables. Busts us proper, don’t he?”
“You talk like you ain’t never shipped before,” Rowland said. “Like this is some joy cruise to Io. That woman come on just yesterday, and already you’re talking like you know her. Just ’cause she’s pretty and smiles at you don’t mean she ain’t an officer. Watch your step, boy.” He’d had his share of grog, as had el-Barzin and the others, but while the edges of the room had taken on a rosy glow for Worth, and her belly was warm and her head fuzzy, the two older starmen seemed no different than when the night had begun. Old hands, she thought, with old bellies, and for some reason that made her giggle, the sound bubbling out of her before she could stop it.