Temporary Duty

by Ric Locke

  “Yeah? What’s it like?”

  “Just big windows and the ship’s wheel, well, one of them arrowhead things, like on the dli, only bigger.” Peters gestured to indicate how big. “Cap’n had a screen in front of him, I dunno what it did, but the rest looked—” he shook his head, grinned, and held his palm out to indicate his surroundings. “I guess consistent is the word.”

  “You met the captain?”

  “Seen him. We wasn’t introduced.” Peters took another sip of coffee.

  Todd said musingly, “You know what I’d like? I’d like to go outside. You feel up to giving me a look around?”

  Peters thought about that. “I don’t mind,” he said. “But I don’t think we oughta just pop out the door without tellin’ somebody.” Todd looked at him, questioning; Peters frowned and went on, “Today was an emergency, and the truth is I didn’t really think before jumpin’, but what if the ship moves while we’re goofin’ around, for instance?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Todd admitted. He shook his head. “You know, Peters, I think I know why you have trouble sometimes.”

  “How’s that?” Peters wanted to know when Todd didn’t complete the thought.

  “You’re bright as Hell, but it takes people a while to appreciate it,” Todd said. “Th’ hillbilly acksent thows ‘em off, ah reckon.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Evenin’, Chief,” Peters greeted Warnocki, who was waiting for the elevator.

  “Assuming ‘morning’ and ‘evening’ mean anything here, good evening, Peters,” Warnocki said agreeably. “Todd,” he added with a nod. The elevator came, and the chief eyed them as they were clanking and bumping down. “You mind giving me a progress report?” he asked calmly.

  Peters flushed. “Sorry, Chief, had somethin’ on my mind. Everybody’s been fitted for suits and got the first shot at learnin’ how to use them. Tomorrow we start on figgerin’ out the controls and how to move around.” He thought a moment, looking at the door without seeing it. “Might be best if you and the other Chiefs came in the first group, if it’d fit your schedule,” he suggested.

  “Yes,” the chief agreed. “I’ll speak to Master Chief Joshua about it.” The door opened, and they came out into the ops bay before Warnocki went on: “Hear you had a little trouble today.”

  “Aw, nothin’ to speak of, Chief,” Peters said, flushing again. He looked around. “Well I be damned. You folks’ve been right busy, Chief.”

  Warnocki eyed him sidelong. “Yes, I’m not real popular right now. I didn’t really believe you when you told us what to expect. I’m not sure what I did expect in outer space, but a week of field days wasn’t it.” There was no clutter at all on the deck, and a couple of sailors were pushing brooms, with others picking up dirt in shovels as it was collected. “Do you know where we ought to put the stuff we pick up?” Warnocki went on after a few steps. “It didn’t seem right to just fling it overboard.”

  “No, I don’t, Chief,” said Peters.

  When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to continue, Warnocki glanced at him, half a smile quirking his lip. “Ask somebody and report back to me.”

  “Aye, Chief,” said Peters. Then, sotto voce: “This is hard.”

  Warnocki’s smile was fully evident. “I’m familiar with the problem,” he said wryly. “You’re brighter than you act, but from what I hear about what happened today I think you could use a few pointers. You want to come up to my quarters and talk about it?”

  “I’d appreciate that,” said Peters.

  “You, too, Todd, you’re in an even worse position.” Todd dipped his head and followed along.

  “Take a seat,” Warnocki offered when they reached his room. Todd and Peters sat, and Warnocki pushed his desk chair over to the table. He leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and regarded the two sailors, remarking mildly, “You know, I’m not sure putting crows on the suits was a good idea, at least at first. We could have done it later, and it’s confusing things a little, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hunh.” Peters grasped his head in his hands and brushed backward, pulling his hair tight and ending with a pseudomassage of the nape of his neck. “Chief, I think you’re right.” He shook his head and looked up, meeting Warnocki’s eye. “We been on board sixteen llor, near enough three weeks, and we know things could help everybody, but seems like every swingin’ dick we meet’s countin’ chevrons an’ sneerin’ if somebody comes up short. I reckon it’d've been better if they sent you and Master Chief Joshua up here instead of us.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Warnocki with a twinkle, then grinned. “From all I hear, you two’ve been turning to right smartly, and neither Leon nor I would’ve been quite so willing with a swab.” More seriously, “It might’ve been better to send a First Class and a Second rather than a Second and a Third, but hindsight’s always better.”

  “I think that’s one of the problems, Chief,” Todd put in. “I don’t think anybody realized at first just how top-heavy the detachment would be.”

  “Interesting point, if I see what you’re getting at,” the Chief said. “You want to work on that thought a bit?”

  Todd shrugged in frustration, held his hand out to gesture around. “Well, look at it, the detachment I mean. Two hundred people; if we had that many for something normal, what would it be? Probably a hundred seamen and Thirds, maybe fifty or sixty Seconds, and a Chief to head it up. What we’ve actually got is six seamen…”

  “Seven,” Warnocki interjected.

  “Seven seamen, and eleven Thirds, including me; I counted. Maybe twenty-five or thirty Seconds…”

  “Twenty-eight, to be exact.”

  “Right. Twenty-eight Seconds, two of them medics. Three Chiefs, two Senior Chiefs, and a Master Chief.” Todd shrugged. “That’s forty-one; the other hundred and fifty-nine are all First Class of one rate or another.”

  “Yeah.” Warnocki made a face. “You think you’re having trouble? Try bossing that crew. Everybody agrees the place needs cleaning, but they’re down to comparing dates of rank to see who gets to pilot a swab and who gets to watch.”

  Peters snorted. “I can imagine.”

  “Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. It isn’t your problem. You know what your problem is?”

  “Yeah,” said Peters with a growl. “If all them First Class is tryin’ to sort out the peckin’ order to figger out who’s boss, they can’t afford to give an inch to a piddly Second.”

  “Almost right,” the chief agreed. “There’s a few who seem to be adjusting all right.” He snorted. “Of course, they’re the ones with the most hash marks and the most horsepower. Like Mannix.”

  “Yeah. I owe Mannix a beer,” said Peters. “Maybe a lot of beers. I don’t think I’d've got through the mornin’ if he hadn’t put a oar in.”

  “I think you’re right,” the chief smiled. “There’s ways of handling that sort of situation, you know.”

  “Don’t none of ‘em involve punchin’ out assholes, I bet,” said Peters with another snort.

  “Heh. No, most of them don’t.” Warnocki chuckled. “You have to keep that in reserve, sort of put away for a rainy day.”

  “Pah.” Peters chuckled in spite of himself, then smiled wanly. “I reckon that means I done shot my wad, don’t it?”

  “Well, no, not quite, but it’d be good if you could avoid repetitions. It took me and the Master Chief nearly two hours to figure out how to log that little incident so as to not excite the folks back home unduly.” Warnocki paused, looked at Peters. “At least you picked the right man to punch out. Tollison still hasn’t admitted to either me or Chief Joshua that you actually hit him, and he’s been, ah, real forceful with some of the others. Between him and Mannix, I don’t think you’ll have much trouble for the next couple of days.”

  “That’s good, I reckon.”

  “Damn right.” Chief Warnocki laid his hands on the table, looked from one sailor to the other. “Like I said, there’s ways
to handle that sort of situation, but we don’t have time to teach them to you two. Tell me, do the people on this ship have any kind of rank insignia? I haven’t seen anything I’d call a crow or officer’s bars.”

  “Not the ones we’re dealin’ with most of the time,” Peters told him. “They ain’t got much in the way of rank structure, or any other structure for that matter.”

  “They’re set up kind of like merchant seamen,” Todd explained. “You know, seaman and AB? That’s about it, until you get to the real crew.”

  “Real crew?” Warnocki was suddenly attentive. “What do you mean? Aren’t the people we’ve been seeing the crew?”

  “They are and they ain’t,” said Peters. “They all live and work on the ship, so far’s that’s concerned they’re crew. But there’s some of ‘em, the ones that tend the engines and stand watch on the bridge, they’re the ones Todd means when he says the ‘real crew.’”

  “I see,” said Warnocki in a tone of revelation. He focussed on Todd: “Blue and white on their suits? Like that woman you had going around with you posting OFF LIMITS signs?”

  “That’s right, Chief,” said Todd warily.

  “I’m going to want to hear why those areas are off limits, but this isn’t the time.” Warnocki frowned. “Could you two wear blue and white suits? Would anybody object?”

  “Probably,” said Peters. “Look, the situation ain’t exactly what it seems. We all, all of us human bein’s, we work for what Dreelig called the Alien Relations division when he was chewin’ out Chief Joshua…”

  “He told me about it.” Warnocki grinned. “I’d've liked to’ve been a fly on the wall for that.”

  Peters snorted. “You coulda had my place, I was wishin’ I was at Diego Garcia. Anyways, I reckon a better translation’d be ‘Sales and Marketin’ Department’. They’re all what we’d call civilians, and the blue-and-whites don’t think much of ‘em. If we tried to wear their uniform, I’d expect to get in all kinds of trouble.”

  “I see. So we’re all salesmen?”

  “Pretty much, except it’s more like Amway than runnin’ a store,” said Peters. “Showin’ off the product to the prospects.”

  “Interesting. I don’t think I’m going to tell Leon about that just yet.” Warnocki leaned forward, his face becoming serious. “All right, here’s what we’re gonna do. First thing tomorrow, you shag ass down to the suit place and get your crows wiped off, you understand? You think of something else, not Navy blue, you hear me?”

  “Aye, Chief,” said Peters. Todd nodded.

  Chief Warnocki nodded back. “OK, when that’s done, you come see me. I’ll get you started back on suit teaching. If anybody asks what’s going on, you tell ‘em I said you’re Spaceman Chief, and anybody wants to argue can come see me about it.”

  “Aye, Chief,” they chorused, and Peters added, “Thanks, Chief. I been wonderin’ if somethin’ like that’d work, but I didn’t have the horsepower to implement it, even if it would.”

  Warnocki nodded. “Yeah. Well, now you got all the horsepower you need. You just have to learn how to drive.” He snorted. “And try not to have any more men overboard, hey? It took me an hour, this afternoon, to talk Nolan into not hopping the next boat back to Puget Sound, and he’s the closest thing to an IC we’ve got, been running the entertainment system on a can.”

  “That brings up another question,” said Todd. “Have you issued earbugs yet, Chief? It’d be a lot easier to teach people the suits if we could talk to one another.”

  “No.” Warnocki looked at him sharply. “That’s right, I forgot. The suits don’t have radios.”

  “Nope. That’s one of the things the Grallt think they can sell,” Todd told him.

  “Shit. All right, I’ll get with Chief Gross and see what we can do. And I’ve got to tell the Master Chief about all this.” It was clearly not an explanation he was looking forward to. “You boys go get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

  “They’re all long days, Chief.” Peters looked at Todd, then back at Warnocki. “Chief, you got anythin’ pressin’ for the next hour or so?”

  “Ten thousand things,” said the Chief. “What did you have in mind?”

  “We have a bennie we can pass out,” Todd said with a smile. “If you’ll get your kathir suit on, and come with us, you can be the first recipient.”

  “Yeah,” said Peters with a smile of his own. “That’s assumin’ you like to have a beer now and again, that is.”

  “Son, if you can buy me a beer, I’ll let you say you’re Spaceman Senior Chief.”

  “Then suit up,” Peters told him. “We’re buckin’ for promotion. First round’s on me.” He grinned. “But keep it quiet. We want to be able to surprise people with it.”

  “Good idea.” Warnocki produced a grin of his own. “Just don’t put off letting the Master Chief in on it too long,” he suggested. “He might not take it too kindly.”

  * * *

  “So who do we ask?” Todd wanted to know over breakfast the next “morning.”

  “I got a idea,” Peters told him. “I seen the bridge yesterday, and I talked to the XO. I reckon if they can’t give us an answer, they can point us towards the folks who can.”

  Todd frowned. “Are you confident enough to ask in Grallt? The people upstairs aren’t likely to know English.”

  Peters sipped klisti thoughtfully. “No, I ain’t gonna try that all by myself,” he said after a pause. “And no, the bridge crew don’t speak English. They don’t have no reason to, as far as I can see.” He scanned the room. “I don’t see Dreelig or Dee.”

  “I saw Dreelig yesterday. He and Dee, and Donollo, had to go down and do the President of Mars act for the suits in Washington. He probably won’t be back until late.”

  “Shit. Well, I reckon there’s nothin’ for it but bug Znereda again. I think the professor’s gettin’ a little tired of us.” Peters sighed and leaned back. “Let’s take our time over coffee, huh? I don’t think Znereda gets up real early, and I don’t want to add insult to injury by roustin’ him outa the rack.”

  The little language teacher made no difficulty about going with them, even though they did find him in his nightshirt. “I don’t have a class at the moment, and I have only seen the control room once before myself,” he confided in carefully enunciated Grallt. “I’m grateful for a good excuse to see it again and meet the people there. Thank you for asking me.” He put on a kathir suit, irregular splotches of red and purple over the base color, and a jumper and trousers in pale blue over that. “Shall we go?” he asked with a smile.

  “Can you prepare me for what we are to talk about?” Znereda said as he puffed up the stairs. “In the Trade, if possible. You need the practice.” Peters tried, with Todd putting in suggestions from time to time, but he had to resort to English for several of the points. The little teacher nodded. “Yes, I understand,” he said, then reverted to Grallt as they passed through the door and encountered the first watchstander. “We would like to see Dhuvenig,” he explained.

  “Yes,” said the other. “Second door on the right. If he is not there, wait. He will come soon.”

  Dhuvenig wasn’t in his office, but breezed in before they had waited more than a few minutes. “Oh, Hello,” he said to Peters. “You were here yesterday, were you not? What are you doing here, Znereda?”

  “Peters and Todd have some questions to ask, Dhuvenig,” Znareda said. “They aren’t confident of their ability to ask clearly, so they asked me to come along to clear up any misunderstandings that might arise.”

  Dhuvenig nodded. “That was probably a wise decision,” he agreed. To Peters: “What do you need?”

  “Two things,” said Peters very carefully. When the other nodded, he went on, “Our group been—has been cleaning the operations bay. They collected a large quantity of what seems waste. We want to know what—ah, what should be done with waste.” He paused, out of breath and apprehensive, and looked at Znereda, who beamed. />
  Dhuvenig only nodded. “Remarkable. Do you mean we actually have people in marketing who care about ship operations? This must be encouraged. I will send people to look over the waste and decide what to do. Where should they go?”

  “They should see Warnocki, on the second level, right side, ship storage room four.”

  Dhuvenig frowned. “Those are not correct designations,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. Just a moment.” Peters reverted to English. “He don’t understand which compartment I mean. What’re the official designations?”

  A little back and forth established Warnocki’s whereabouts to Dhuvenig’s satisfaction; the correct designation for the hangar wasn’t a number, but used ship-specific terms that Peters and Todd filed mentally as “hangar, midships, aft.” “I will send someone right away,” said Dhuvenig. “And your second question?”

  “We—” Peters indicated himself and Todd with a gesture, “— want practice using airsuits outside ship. I was outside once, and it was very, ah, confusing. Is there place where this is normally done, and will the ship move soon?”

  Dhuvenig looked alarmed. “You have been outside the ship? When was this? I was not informed.”

  “A man fell.” He explained the incident in hesitant Grallt; Znereda stayed silent, grinning, throughout.

  “That is bad,” said Dhuvenig. “It’s not normal to go outside the ship. You were careless, and very lucky.”

  “Oh, shit, don’t I know it,” said Peters in English under his breath, then to Dhuvenig: “Yes, agree fully both points. For this reason we need practice.”

  “Yes,” said Dhuvenig. He hesitated. “The zifthakik are not engaged at the moment, except for life support. It is unlikely that the ship will move, but it is impossible to guarantee that without special precautions.” He looked at Peters. “When would you like to practice outside?”

  “At your convenience,” said Peters. “If needs special arrangement, you tell us when safe.”