by Ron Collins
He reordered the list by type.
“Abke, please assign items one through seven to janitorial. Number eight goes to power systems, ten through fifteen to Petty Officer Olissy in electrical. I’ll take nine, myself.”
“Assignments made,” Abke replied.
He took a deep swallow of his coffee. The caffeine had a hell of a job to do this morning—he was fried from three straight late evenings with Marisa.
Not that he was complaining.
Not a damned bit.
It had been a long time since he had actually wanted to spend time with someone else, and Marisa was fantastic. Thinking about her got him…uh…interested. The light aroma of her hair, the way her eyes grew wide when she was talking about something she was absorbed in, the quirk that came to the corner of her mouth when she was tired of talking. The memory of the touch of her skin against his made him grin.
No, he was most definitely not complaining.
On the other hand, time was beginning to drag in the office.
The first few weeks after star sling were filled with basic boot-up operations. Now the crew had settled back into its mundane rhythm, and everything felt numb. It was like everyone had lost a step. The mission was done—the real mission, anyway. The tension they had once had, or at least the sense of purpose that the mission once carried, was gone, leaving behind the fact that Everguard was a drifting relic now, a dinosaur on a mission that probably had an end game that included a good mothballing as a museum piece.
As far as Interstellar Command was concerned, Everguard was obsolete.
So, what did that say about her crew?
He grimaced and took a final swig of coffee, trying to bootstrap his energy for looking into issue number nine.
It was a lighting system problem, which he had pulled aside specifically because it seemed unusual.
He scanned the code calibration for D Deck and saw someone had reset the system to toggle the lights off through a different controller.
It was a prank.
Of course it was.
How many lieutenant commanders does it take to change a light bulb?
“Adjust the light node in compartment D112 to the on position, please, and reconnect the controllers to their standard configuration.”
“Modification made.”
“I need the service record for the last change made to this parameter.”
“Light node D112 was last changed by Thomas Kitchell, identification key on screen.”
Kitchell. Why didn’t that surprise him?
The kid was the son of Indego Kitchell, the Nutrition Processing System director. He was fifteen, which meant he had been aboard for almost as far back as his memory could take him. The boy thought he was pretty sharp. And, Torrance had to admit, Kitchell was quick for his age—just not as bright as he thought he was. His brash approach to everything meant he was something of a punk, though, and his constant fiddling with the ship’s basic wiring was a pain in the butt.
Looking at the tracking system, it was also clear that the kid had no idea what it meant to live on a ship that could track every movement you made.
Torrance had more than half a mind to go down to Education Deck and give the kid hell, except that he had too much to do already.
He had to submit the duty roster, then provide budgetary estimates to Romanov. Developmental plans for each of his people were due tomorrow, system availability metrics the day after that. Security Officer Casey would get his standard access reports at the end of the week—a step that made Torrance nervous despite his confidence in the system.
They would do it all again two standard weeks later, creating a whole new set of administrative vapor work that also meant nothing.
Joy of all joys.
He focused on the grunt work, but his brain turned all sorts of mental acrobatics to keep him from making progress. His fingers didn’t want to move the toggles that would set the roster. His brain refused to think about the staff. His eyes kept drifting to some random movement outside his office.
Finally he gave in and stepped back.
All he wanted to do was see Marisa and dig into the Eden files, but it was too early—for both.
He had found a sweet zone right at the end of his shift when it was quiet enough that he could work with the Eden data here in his office. If he was cautious, and if he kept it to himself, he could pipe into several of the more powerful data parsing routines that came from the Signal Processing Lab. He had all the system codes, and he could cover his tracers. No one else had to know.
The idea of the pod crashing into Eden’s surface came over him again.
It made him bittersweet, made him think about the world as even bigger than anyone else knew it was.
He imagined creatures approaching the pod as it lay crumpled.
They would be bipedal with long arms and weird, elongated legs. Science fiction come to life.
He laughed at himself when he recognized the creatures as a memory of an adventure game he used to play as a kid. Fat chance that aliens would ever look like something some programmer who probably worked in some tiny sweatshop of a compartment had dreamed up.
As if on autopilot, Torrance accessed his private space and pulled up the data from Eden.
He ran a frequency plot.
The data fell apart in the midrange, but was more firm in the lower frequencies. The power density of the waves was remarkably strong and intensely chaotic, a characteristic that probably led the analyst program to classify the event as a storm.
But the data varied considerably from pass to pass.
He cut it into different meta-categories and stored them off for later.
The signal’s curves clung to him.
He sensed a pattern here that was almost there in the periphery of the power spectrum, but not quite. It was like a thought in a lucid dream, a piece of information that slipped away as soon as he turned directly toward it.
He peered into the depth of the holo-pad, feeling the data as if it was a real thing, as if the vibration of the signals rubbed up against his skin.
It was, he would have said if someone had asked him then, as if the data was actually whispering to him.
Torrance checked the time and nearly panicked.
A half hour had passed.
He glanced out the clear panes of his office. No one had seen him.
He released the information from his projector, cleared the path logs that would let anyone trace his steps, and stepped away from his screen.
That was dumb, he thought. He had to be more careful.
Certain he was safe now, however, he found his thoughts were still deep enough into the data that coming back to the real world was like pulling his head out of quick sand.
The ideas he was immersed in clung to him with annoying persistence.
In general, working on personal projects while on duty would be fine. Torrance was well known for blurring shifts—meaning he was essentially on call at all times, so his personal and work life were never separated by much more than a page. But if anyone understood what he was doing, and if that news were to leak …
He stretched his neck and pictured Security Officer Casey standing over him.
Torrance needed to study this, though.
He really couldn’t ignore it.
Sitting alone in his office, the need to know what was going on burned throughout his entire body with power that was as physical as his need for Marisa.
The afterglow of his run through Eden’s data felt so similar it was embarrassing.
He glanced out his office at the status boards.
Each of the crew was at their stations, except for the artificial gravity team, which had left to deal with an issue at the physical fitness command. Their status symbol flashed yellow on the board.
Torrance turned back to his own workstation.
The duty roster peeked out from the edge of his glass-top display.
He had work to do, budgets to budge
t, toilet systems to toilet.
Joy.
Welcome to my life.
CHAPTER 16
UGIS Everguard
Ship Local Date: June 13, 2204
Ship Local Time: 0913
The next day’s incident report described the situation well enough that Torrance didn’t have to check it out in person to understand the details. A maintenance bot had somehow gotten into the ductwork, made it down to D Deck, and used a paint sprayer to cover much, if not all, of a young man’s sleeping quarters in red tomato paste.
It could have been only Thomas Kitchell.
Enough.
Torrance stomped through Systems Command with his brow furrowed and his jaw set. Young Thomas had hacked his last piece of code. The kid was going to be killed, that was all there was to it.
He tried Kitchell’s personal quarters, then the holo-game area.
He tried Education Deck, then the mess.
He even tried the low-g tumbling center.
He finally found Kitchell in the Technical Library, a room about the size of a decent restaurant back home on Earth, with tables and data projectors spaced out to facilitate comfortable use.
It felt strange to see the kid sitting here with his back to the door, studying a lesson cube about optical spectrum transistors. He was small for his age. Dirty blond hair just a bit long and equally unkempt fell toward shoulder blades that stuck out from his blue shirt like the rims of coat hangers. Torrance had always felt at home in the Tech Library, like this was his place. Yet the essence of Kitchell’s presence here, and the way he seemed to have taken over the system he was at gave Torrance an off sense of territorial discomfort.
He didn’t like someone in his space.
“Mr. Kitchell?” Torrance said.
Kitchell craned his neck to look up.
Red stereo buttons filled his ears. The circles under his eyes were shiny with oil.
No pimples yet, Torrance thought. Just give him time.
“What’s the matter?” Kitchell nearly shouted.
“Take the music out, Mr. Kitchell.”
Kitchell picked a button out of one ear and gave him a stare that suggested Torrance was beyond rude and may well be interrupting something on the scale of a universe-wide peace conference.
“Can I help you?” the boy said.
“What can you tell me about Robert Frazier’s sleeping quarters, Mr. Kitchell?”
“I don’t know nothing about Robert Frazier’s sleeping quarters,” Kitchell said. “Except that it can’t possibly get used for anything but a good fist-pounding every night, if you know what I mean.”
Torrance merely maintained his stare.
“I can tell you Frazier’s a dick.”
“I appreciate your opinion, but I don’t think that has anything to do with my question.”
“What are you picking on me for? He’s the one who started it.”
“I don’t care what occurred between you and Robert Frazier, Mr. Kitchell. But I do care what you do with my ship. I will not let you use our ventilation ducts and our robots to attack a crewmate.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t give me that crap. I am beyond tired of cleaning up after your escapades. So this time, you’re the one who’s going to do it.”
“Do what?” The kid glared.
Torrance raised a pointed finger. “You are going to grab a mop and a bucket, and you are going to clean the wall and the floor of Robert Frazier’s quarters. Then you are going to do his laundry. After that, you are going to disassemble the ventilation grating, and clean that area of the ductwork to ensure we don’t get tomato sauce decomposing on my ship.”
“Bullshit.”
Torrance bent down and got in Kitchell’s face.
“You want bullshit? I’ll tell you about bullshit. Bullshit is trying to run an entire ship’s systems when you’ve got a dumb-assed kid tinkering around like he knows what the hell he’s doing. Bullshit is wasting an hour and a half trying to find that dumb-assed kid. And bullshit is listening to that same dumb-assed kid tell me I’m wrong when I’ve got his identification code captured as accessing almost every system I control.”
“Wha—”
“That’s right, Mr. Kitchell. I can track every movement you make. I’ve seen every line of code you’ve ever touched. And, to take it a step further, I’ve been programming since before you were born. If you ask me, you’re not as hot as you think you are.”
The kid turned all sorts of dark colors.
Torrance continued.
“So, either you do what I tell you to do, or you suffer a formal reporting of this to your parents and to the psych officer.”
Kitchell stammered.
The threat to his parents wouldn’t faze the kid, but if Torrance knew Kitchell’s profile at all, he knew the idea of a trip to the psychologist had him flummoxed.
“Your choice,” he said. “But make it now.”
The kid shut his mouth. His gaze flickered sideways as the room around them settled into a tone of stunned silence.
“I’m not doing his laundry.”
Torrance didn’t respond.
“Frazier will tell my Mom and Dad, anyway.”
“Are six months with Dr. Taylor worth it?” Torrance finally said, watching with no little degree of satisfaction as the question settled.
“All right,” Kitchell finally said. “Show me where the mop is.”
CHAPTER 17
UGIS Everguard
Ship Local Date: June 13, 2204
Ship Local Time: 2345
It was later that evening before Torrance could manage to laugh, but when the time came, it was all he could do to keep a straight face.
He and Marisa were lying in bed, Torrance on his back.
She had not moved in so much as they had just come to the point where she slept in his quarters because it was more comfortable for her. Fewer people to deal with, she told him. Less time needed to get ready in the morning.
It totally worked for him.
Of course, Torrance would have been happy with pretty much anything that resulted in her staying. Sure, it was a little strange to have someone in his room again. It had been years since the divorce. And, yes, military and standard-oriented or not, Marisa had her own way on things. But he didn’t care. Need a place with more space? Bingo. Pull the sheets off the bed, isn’t that cute. Prefer my toothpaste? I’ll go down to the PX and get more.
As they lay there that night, the compartment was dark, with only the barest of light coming from the safety system. The weight of the bedclothes fell over his skin, and soft heat of Marisa’s body was a presence beside him when, all of a sudden, Torrance was giggling uncontrollably.
“What?” Marisa said, rolling over and putting her arm around his waist. Her features were dim, but he could pick them out. Her eyes glittered with the blue component of the light.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s that kid. Kitchell.”
He couldn’t tell if her sigh was one of exasperation or humor. Humor, he hoped.
“What about him?” she said.
He described their discussion.
“You should have seen the expression on his face when I said I would send him to psych.”
“You’re a bad man, Mr. Black.”
“Yes, I suppose I am.” Torrance got a smug grin. “Felt good though.”
“Mmmmm. I suppose it did.”
They lay like that for a while.
“Tell me about your ex-wife,” Marisa said.
Torrance sighed. “So much for feeling good, huh?”
“Is it that bad?”
The sheets ruffled as Torrance sat up in the darkness and crossed his legs. He set the temperature cool at night, and the air chilled his back. He figured this discussion was coming sooner or later.
She sat up beside him and ran her hand over her hair in a way that was already familiar to him.
“No. Not really. Adrienne was gr
eat, actually. We met while I was at the Academy. Everything was good for a while, but things change, you know? We split up a couple months before the Everguard slot came along.”
“What changed?”
He shrugged. “Mostly kids, I guess. Adrienne wanted kids.”
“And you didn’t?”
“We tried.” Torrance pursed his lips. “But it turns out I can’t be a father.”
There it was, the so-called pregnant pause.
“Oh. I’m, uh, sorry to hear that.”
“It’s all right. Just another thing I can’t do.”
“Don’t talk like that. There are other ways, you know? Clone. Adopt.”
“Yeah, believe me, I know.”
“But?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t bring myself to get comfortable with the idea.”
“But—”
“I know.” Torrance raised his hand. “I know. We even talked about DNA grafting and a few other more eccentric ideas. I just couldn’t do it…I just couldn’t get over the idea that every time I looked into the kid’s face, I would be reminded of my own failure.”
“Sounds to me like you were just scared.”
“And embarrassed. Don’t forget embarrassed.”
“Do you still feel the same way?”
“I don’t know.”
The question bothered him.
“You want to start a family?” he finally said.
“No,” Marisa said more vehemently than Torrance had expected. “I’m not exactly a homemaking kind of girl, you know?”
“That’s what I figured,” he said. “You’re clearly all service.”
“That’s not a problem, is it?” she asked.
“No. Not a problem at all.”
They were quiet again.
“You know what I think?” Marisa said.
“What do you think?”
“I think you should talk to the kid again.”
“Kitchell?”
“Yeah. See if he wants to be a techie. If he does, then you could mentor him.”
“Ah, be a surrogate dad.”
“More like an uncle.”
“Kitchell needs a lobotomy more than he needs an uncle.”