by Jake Elwood
"He's unconscious?" Hammett said. "Then who was signalling us?"
"It was one of the technicians, Sir. I don't know his name. The young man with the big nose. He says he was floating behind the Gate when he saw a big spark. Mr. al Faisal went floating past, leaking air from his glove. The technician got him patched up. There was some kind of electrical fire inside the ring, and he used an emergency suit patch as a mirror, reflecting the light toward us."
Hammett shook his head in disbelief. Fire and mirrors? This is what we've been reduced to?
Well, it worked, didn't it?
"Were coming up on Freedom Station," Cartwright announced.
"Good," he said. "Let's get our people and go."
Chapter 29 – West
The long, wide expanse of the shuttle bay looked like a garbage dump. Mathew West looked around him and sighed. It was chaos, and he'd volunteered to clean it up.
It was all that Asian woman's fault, he decided grumpily. She'd smiled so brightly as she strolled through the dining hall asking for volunteers that he'd bounced right up out of his seat and stuck a hand in the air. Anything to make her direct that stunning smile at him.
He still remembered the petty stab of disappointment he'd felt when she held up a notebook and asked for his name. She hadn't reacted when he told her, either.
Not a blues fan, then.
Decades of songwriting had given him a deeply entrenched habit of self-awareness, and he chuckled at his own immaturity. The truth was, he'd been feeling pretty useless. It didn't look as if he would be giving a concert any time soon, and he wasn't good for much without a guitar. Another day of loafing in his room or hanging around the dining hall would have driven him mad. This was infinitely better.
Several blocky, inelegant ships filled one end of the bay. The rest of the bay was given over to heaps of junk. He wandered through stacks of detritus, getting his bearings. There was an order of sorts, he saw. Not much of one, but something. What he'd taken for a single pile of trash was in fact several dozen separate heaps that bled into each other. Each heap was just one thing, much of it incomprehensible.
There were metal ingots, each the size of his fist, cylindrical and flat on both ends. Those at least stacked properly. There was a mountain of bedding, all different sizes and fabrics, and beside it a mountain of gray cloth that seemed to be one impossibly long bolt.
A pile of notebooks caught his eye. They were palm-sized, little booklets with maybe a hundred pages each. He picked one up and flipped through it, mystified. He recognized them, of course. He'd seen such things in old movies. He'd just never seen one in person. They would be useless without some sort of stylus, though.
A little box caught his eye. It was big enough to hold a good-sized pair of boots, and it was completely full of pencils. He picked up a pencil, examined it, and touched the sharp point. Then he tested it on the cover of a notebook.
And smiled. "I'm back in the songwriting business," he said, and pocketed pencil and notebook.
Not knowing where else to start, he knelt and began re-stacking notebooks that had spilled across the floor. Deck, he corrected himself. It was a ship, which meant everything had to have a stupid new name. Stairs were ladders, doors were hatches, and walls were bulkheads. At least there weren't a lot of ropes around, which he supposed he would have to refer to as lines.
Sailors. Who understands them?
As if summoned by the thought, a man in a blue uniform came striding through the piles of goods toward him. He looked about thirty, with a weary face looking out from under a blue uniform cap. He stopped in front of West, frowning. West considered the effort involved in getting himself back upright and decided to stay on one knee.
"What are you doing? Passengers shouldn't really be in the shuttle bay."
West sighed. This is what I get for over-reacting to a pretty smile. "Miss Ling sent me. She's putting together civilian volunteers to help out with …" He gestured around him at the entire ship. "Everything. She said I was to come here and help organize things."
The man frowned down at him. Then the frown vanished, replaced by a tired smile. "Really?" He took the silly blue cap from his head and raked fingers through an untidy forest of short dark hair. "I asked for help, but really, I was just going through the motions. I never actually thought I'd get any help." He stuck out a hand. "I'm Raleigh Neal."
West reached up to shake his hand. "Matt West. Pleased to meet you. Are you a cadet?"
A look of annoyance flashed across Raleigh's face, then disappeared. "Sailor," he said. "I haven't been a cadet for ten years."
"No offense."
Raleigh waved that away. "I'm just grumpy because I've been on duty for, oh, nineteen hours straight." He did the same thing West kept doing, glancing sideways and down to activate his implants before remembering they no longer worked. "No reason you should know all our uniforms and ranks." He grinned. "Actually, I'm so happy to have some help, you can call me whatever you like. I'll answer to Chief Numbskull if it means I get to take a break."
West chuckled, liking him. "Any instructions for me, Raleigh?"
The sailor scratched his head. "You know what would be really grand? I'd love it if you would just run things here for a few hours." He yawned. "For a bunch of hours, actually. Be quartermaster while I grab some rack time." He gestured around the bay. "Familiarize yourself with what's where, so you know where to find it, or if it exists, if someone asks for something. Give 'em whatever they want. Just make a list of who took what." He gestured at the stack of notebooks. "Grab yourself a notebook and pencil. We've got lots."
West put a hand on the pocket containing his notebook and tried to look innocent.
"Other than that, if you get bored, you can do some tidying up. Like you were already doing." He gestured at the vast pile of gray cloth. "You could cut that into bedsheets if you really wanted. I wouldn't worry about the size. Just make 'em plenty big. Don't use all the cloth, though. The lieutenant says we might have to make clothing if we're out here too long. Some of the passengers only made it out of Freedom with the clothes on their backs."
Like me, West thought. It was four days since the fall of Freedom Station and he was sick of washing his underwear at night, then putting it on still clammy in the morning.
"I'm sure there's more you could do, but I'm too tired to think straight. Thanks, Matt. I really appreciate it." He started to turn away, then paused and looked back. "Did you say your name was Matt West?"
"Er, yes."
Raleigh peered closer at him. "As in Mathew West? The Mathew West? The blues singer?"
West grinned and nodded.
"Oh, my god! I saw you live at the Blue Cat in Hawking. You were amazing." The weariness was gone now. "We have to arrange a concert!"
West shook his head. "I lost Jessica. She didn't make it off Freedom Station."
The sailor's face fell. "Oh, I'm sorry." He gave West a sympathetic look. "She was … someone close to you?"
West frowned, embarrassed. People had lost family and friends when the station fell. It made his own loss trivial.
Still, it was Jessica.
"She was my guitar," he said. "I'm no good without her."
A silent moment passed while Raleigh processed this. At last he said, "You could sing a cappella?"
West shook his head.
"Oh. Well, all right. That's too bad." He put his uniform cap back on his head. "I'll see you in five or six hours, okay?"
"Don't be late," West told him. "I have a lot of important appointments, you know." When Raleigh just stared at him he said, "That's a joke. I have exactly nothing else to do. Take your time. Get a good night's sleep."
"All right." Raleigh grinned, "See you in the morning."
West explored, wandering among the stacks and telling himself that it wasn't so bad. Then he discovered that things were only going to get worse. A large object that he'd taken for a shuttle turned out to be a fabricator salvaged from Baffin. A bored young woman
operated the machine, turning out hollow plastic handsets. It was a task that didn't require much attention, and she seemed happy to chat with him.
"With the big replicator back at the station we could have made handsets with the speaker and microphone parts already built-in. Someone's going to have to assemble these by hand." She pushed blonde bangs out of her eyes. "I'm almost done this run. Any requests for what I make next?"
He wanted to say, how about underwear with a fifty-inch waist? If she hadn't been a pretty young woman he might have. Instead he looked around the bay and said, "I could really use some boxes."
The girl leaned to look past him. "I see what you mean." She thought for a moment. "I can make flat panels easily enough, but you'd have to seal the edges yourself." She frowned. "I know. I can make glue. Let me see. I need a container to put it in, but I need the glue to make a container …"
West left her to it and continued strolling around the bay. He was debating the merits of taking a nap in the giant pile of fabric when a woman in a Navy uniform walked in. He looked at her uniform, not wanting to repeat his gaffe of calling a sailor a cadet. Her outfit looked pretty formal, he decided, with rigid epaulet boards and lines of white piping that ran from her shoulder to the top button on her blouse. Did that make her an officer? He was pretty sure there were lots of lieutenants on board. The Captain was a man. He knew that much. She was most likely a lieutenant.
She marched over to him. There was no other word for the way she walked. She stopped a little bit closer than he liked and looked him up and down. By the look on her face, she wasn't too impressed with what she saw.
Not a blues fan, then.
"I'm looking for the quartermaster." Her voice was crisp and peremptory. And I don't expect to be kept waiting was the unmistakable subtext.
"That would be me, I guess. I'm Acting Quartermaster West." He almost saluted her, but restrained himself. "How can I help you, ah, Lieutenant?"
She scowled. "That's Commander. Commander Velasco."
They're so touchy about their ranks. I'm sure glad I didn't say cadet. He didn't speak, just lifted his eyebrows and waited.
Velasco sighed and took out a familiar-looking notebook. "I'm here to take inventory. Specifically I need to check on the rail gun ammunition."
West spread his hands in a shrug. "I don't know what everything is, but I haven't seen anything that looks like bullets."
She gave him an irritated look, then stepped past him. "Here they are." She gestured to him. "Come on. You'd better take a look. If someone needs these in a hurry, you should know what they look like." She surprised him by smiling. It made her look almost human. "Besides, you can help me count them."
She led him to the ingots, the fist-sized metal lumps that stacked so nicely. Apparently they could be fired from guns. He plopped himself down on the floor and counted the height, width, and depth of the stack. He counted the loose ingots in the top layer while she did some quick multiplication.
The stack didn't seem large, but apparently it contained almost two thousand rounds. West whistled.
"That's great," Velasco said, "until we need them in a hurry. I can't have cadets running back and forth with one round in each hand." She chuckled. "Actually, I suppose I could. I wouldn't be too popular with the cadets, though."
"Or with the civilians," West told her. "Some of us have volunteered to help out."
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. "That's good of you. Thank you." She frowned. Now, how to move large numbers of rounds in a hurry …" She looked to the vast bolt of fabric. "I wonder if we could make sacks."
"Actually," West said, "I have someone working on a better solution." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "The lady with the fabricator is going to make me some boxes."
Velasco smiled. "Excellent! You're a resourceful man." She looked around at the surrounding mess. "I realize you've got a lot going on here, but if we end up needing that ammunition, we're going to need it in a hurry. I hope you can make boxing the ammunition something of a priority." She looked around again. "It's a pity, though. It's just about the tidiest thing in here."
West found himself smiling back at her. She was very good at charming people when she worked at it. He was pretty sure she held him in contempt, but it didn't make her current persona any easier to resist. He would box the ammunition first, before he started on anything else.
"Thank you, Mr. West. I'm going to get out of the way and let you get back to work now. It was nice meeting you." She shook his hand.
I'll bet, he thought, but when she smiled at him he smiled back. She marched out and he watched her go, shaking his head. He was torn between wanting to like her and wanting to wash his hand where she'd touched him. Aloud he said, "Am I just being cynical?"
"Nope."
He turned around. It was the young woman from the fabricator, standing a couple of paces away. She wore plain brown coveralls with some sort of company logo above the breast pocket. She was a civilian like him, then. She seemed to know Velasco, though.
"The crew doesn't like her," she said. "They say she's not a real sailor."
West shrugged, not really knowing what that meant.
"She's second in command," the girl said. "But she's never served on a ship before." She rolled her eyes. "It's like …" She cocked her head. "What line of business are you in?"
"I sing and play the guitar."
"It's like going on stage with your road manager doing backup vocals. Or maybe your agent. Someone who's never been on the road before, much less played an instrument. It's ridiculous."
He nodded. "I see what you mean." He didn't care, but she was attractive and he didn't want to argue with her.
"All I can say is, if something happens to the captain, we are all in a shit-load of trouble."
That made him chuckle. "Let's hope he takes care of himself."
She nodded. "That's why she's down here checking inventory, you know. Because she doesn't know how to run the ship. The captain doesn't want her anywhere near the bridge, so he's giving her logistical stuff to keep her busy and out of his hair." She shrugged and gave him a self-deprecating grin. "At least, that's what the crew is saying."
With a little jump she boosted herself onto the stack of rail gun rounds and sat there, drumming her heels against the metal cylinders. West watched, cringing. They weren't dangerous, were they? "Um, should you do that?"
She looked down. "What?"
He reddened, feeling foolish. "Are they … I don't know, dangerous? Do they explode?"
She laughed. "Actually, it's a good question. There are some that explode, and they look just like these ones." She drummed her heels harder. "Don't worry. These ones are solid."
"Are you sure?"
"I made them." She gave one last hard kick and then sat still, much to West's relief.
She said, "I suppose it's the captain I should be annoyed with. He's the one who sicced her on me."
"Um, Velasco?"
She nodded. "He told her he wanted one of the shuttles converted to manual controls. If that works, he wants to add guns." She rolled her eyes. "That's the military for you." A hint of a mischievous grin touched her features. "Actually, that would be kind of cool."
West nodded uncertainly.
"Anyway, that Velasco woman came in and told me she needed me to drop everything and get to work on, and I quote, manual ship control parts. And that was the sum total of her instructions. As if some kind of standard template exists for technology that's been obsolete since before wormholes." She made a rude noise. "And she just kept badgering me. Told me she wanted solutions, not excuses. Told me to, and I quote again, requisition manpower as needed."
"Takes herself a bit seriously, does she?" West said.
"You have no idea! I finally told her I wasn't in her stupid Navy. Told her that meant two things. One, the "manpower" I was supposed to "requisition" was going to laugh in my face if I started ordering them around. Second, I said, you can go suck va
cuum because I'm not in your stupid Navy." She smiled at the memory.
"I bet the sailors and cadets love you," West said. "You're living their dream." She giggled, and he said, "It sounds like a folk ballad. It could be the best song ever."
She leaned toward him, her eyes merry. "Do you think so? Will you write it? Do you write songs, or just sing them?" She giggled. "I've never been in a song before."
You will be if I survive this trip, he thought.
She turned, looking toward the exit door. "What's this?"
West turned around. Raleigh came in, his left hand cradling a large bowl against his chest, his right hand gripping the handle of a battered guitar case. He walked up, heaved the case onto the pile of ingots, and set the bowl beside it. He said, "Hi, Dulcie."
"Hey, Raleigh. What's in the bowl?"
Raleigh lifted away a covering cloth and said, "I brought fruit. It's almost the last of the fresh food, and I suggest you enjoy it. You're not going to like what we'll be eating tomorrow."
There was more chatter, and the sound of Dulcie biting into an apple, but it was all just background noise to West. He stared at the guitar case. Finally Raleigh noticed the direction of his gaze and cleared his throat. "So, um. Matt." He looked embarrassed. "There's this guy in the room next to mine. Plays the guitar, once every month or two. He's not very good at it. So I talked to him, and I told him you were here. And I told him about Jessica."
West looked at him, trying to sort out a churning stew of emotions.
"Anyway, it's probably not as good a guitar as yours. But if you want to borrow it, he says it's yours for as long as you like."
West didn't say anything, just stared at the guitar for a time. Then he moved past Raleigh and rested a hand on the case. It was cheap plastic, scuffed and battered. It didn't bode well for the guitar inside.
Oh, well. It wasn't as if he had a lot of guitars to choose from. He pressed his thumb to the little panel on the top of the case.
Nothing happened.
"He couldn't open it either," Raleigh said. "He said you should just go ahead and pry it open if you like. If you don't, he'll have to, sooner or later. The lock is toast."