by Rolf Nelson
“Um, yes?”
“It’s been a long time since power was hooked up. A celebration seemed called for.”
“A celebration?” Helton says.
“Yes, Sir. Former crewmen liked that song, and it seemed appropriate. I can play something else if you’d prefer.”
“It’s okay. Just not quite so loud. It was a surprise.”
“Noted.”
“And on that note–”
Allonia guides Helton through the ship. The wall-mounted view screens double as lights, but many are broken or missing, so the lighting is uneven, but usable. His overall impression: the ship is old and massively overbuilt; a flexible design, but in disrepair; cluttered and dirty except for the handful of places Allonia has cleaned because she uses them.
It’s like an old submarine, with lots of strongly built, obviously airtight hatchways. Thick metal and extra reinforcement everywhere. Bulkheads and shutoff valves, but no swooshy sliding doors. Each room has a small communication panel near the door. Ugly-but-functional equipment mounted on bulkheads, partially hidden behind decorative walls that have been altered from their original condition. Color schemes vary and styles are mismatched where the original design has been modified, more than once, with whatever materials were available.
C Deck
In the cargo bay and elsewhere are a number of mystery cylinders (70 centimeters across and 1 meter long, with a 10 centimeter hole in the top), marked with a simple image of a lit candle on one end. Helton tries to move one by tipping it up but fails. It’s too heavy.
A heavy door off the cargo bay reveals a small storage closet with a jumble of assorted mechanical detritus stacked in it and machinery access points on the walls.
B Deck
There are six of the tight, 12-man sleeping berth rooms Helton saw before. In good light they still look cramped, but no longer dangerous and haunted, just old and dirty.
A portion of the galley has been cleaned and used — Allonia’s doing — with the rest of the clutter pushed semi-neatly aside.
Some of the midlevel windows into the cargo bay are propped up and open. They watch through one of them across the cargo bay, where they can see Quinn’s head passing by other open windows, one after another, holding something up over his head like a flag.
The head, obviously designed for large numbers to use fast, has six shower fixtures in a communal stall, pocket doors on either end, toilets in small stalls, eight small sinks with emergency “lost gravity” covers, and lots of small, numbered lockers and cupboards.
Allonia’s cabin is small, and orderly. She’s got a desk with a sewing machine on it, chair, bed, decorative draperies, bookshelves with a few books and various knickknacks, as well as a couple of plants under a light. It looks clean, bright, cozy. There is a closed door to one side, and an open closet door with a variety of clothes hanging in it.
On a B deck passageway she points out a small hatch that is clearly welded shut along one edge. The bulkhead and hatch are damaged from previous attempts to open it.
A Deck
Allonia’s garden is a largish room full of racks and trays, with some plants growing here and there in soil or water, along with a few small potted bushes. Workbenches and cupboards line the walls, and there are several light panels hooked up to some sort of battery/fuel-cell unit.
The Officers’ Mess is a room with a long table in the middle, a dozen mounted pedestal chairs around it. Cupboards and access hatches line the walls, along with a couple of screens. On the ceiling are several one-meter screens with folding mounts. Two are down and obviously broken.
The Engineering Command Center is about eighteen meters long, a low room with lots of machinery and many hatches and panel covers, some of which are open, wires and components exposed or dangling. Several pieces of machinery are hanging down from the ceiling, and a large tube with lots of stuff hanging off of it occupies one side of the room. A partially disassembled torpedo-sized something sits on a wheeled cradle in the middle. They briefly examine an empty, open tube entrance about half a meter across. They don’t notice the hatch, low against a corner, barely discernible, marked with a lit candle logo.
Seymore
Helton approaches one side of the big aft doors and pushes a button on the wall. “Open.” Nothing happens. Helton pushes the button again. “Open Sesame.” Nothing. “Open the cargo bay doors, please, Tajemnica.”
“I am afraid I can’t do that,” the Ship AI says softly.
“What?”
“I can’t open the cargo bay doors, Sir.”
“Why not?”
“They are manually locked, Sir.”
Helton looks over at the doors and sees a solid manual latching bolt, shut fast. He stands, arms akimbo, staring at the latch in frustration for a moment. Then he walks over and with great effort loosens and unlatches it. “Open the door.”
An airlock hatch door off to one side opens with a creaking sound, like a crypt that hasn’t been disturbed for centuries. Helton looks at it, a quizzical expression on his face, then he articulates carefully. “Open the main aft cargo doors … that I just unlatched.”
With a rending, screeching sound, as if the occupant of the crypt is annoyed, the massive doors grind sideways, revealing the closed loading ramp sloping up.
“Lower the ramp,” Helton orders.
“I would not advise that at the current time.”
“Who’s in charge here? I said lower the ramp.”
“Are you positive, sir?”
“Yes, I’m positive!”
“Right now, sir?”
“YES! Drop the ramp RIGHT NOW!”
There is a brief pause, the sound of metal sliding on metal, then with a tremendous crashing, whumping CLANG, the massive ramp drops, falling uncontrolled. It hits the ground hard, sounding like an iron mountain falling to earth. Sunlight blasts in. A very surprised Floyd stands in a cloud of dust, right beside the now-nearly-horizontal ramp. He turns to look at Helton, then at the ramp, which lies across his very recently made foot prints.
“Um, uh, youuu…”
“Oh, God, was there someone behind you?”
“N-n-n-no, bu-buuut… some…” Floyd points off to the side, trembling, in shock at his close call. On the road near the side entry of the ship is a utility truck with several workers and a lot of equipment in the back. On the ground and walking briskly toward them is a well-dressed pair of men: Seymore, very slick and in his mid-thirties, and Seeless, fifties, balding, paunchy, and bearing a distinct resemblance to a weasel.
The younger man sounds like a used car salesman with a quart of high-octane coffee in him. “Jed Seymore, Seymore’s Custom Aerospace Maintenance. Biggest and best ship shop in Adelaide. I heard that you were planning on refitting this fine old ship, and I am at your service. We can start with a full survey of her to find out what she needs, then work through a bill of particulars. Survey’s free if you contract the work out to us, and we are the only company that could possibly put this grand old classic back in service. When would you like to start?”
Helton’s suspicious. “How much for just the survey, no promises?”
“Ah, a man that likes to keep his options open! Good idea. For a ship of this type and age, it would need a very thorough going over, and just the preliminary might take five or six–”
“Quote, or walk.”
“Ah, well, it’s not like I can–”
“Five… Four…”
“One fifty.”
Helton smells a rat. “A hundred and fifty what?”
“Well, we’d have to–”
“No,” Helton says firmly.
Seymore is indignant. “What do you mean, NO?”
“If you can’t give a specific price for a specific service, then ‘no’.”
“You can’t just turn me down like that! There’s no one else around that can do this sort of work.”
“I’ll find someone.” Helton turns and walks back up the ramp. Seymore starts to follow. Helton pau
ses and glares at him. “Off my ship.”
Seymore is getting angry. “Now, look here–”
Helton glances over toward the truck. The group of workers have jumped out and are walking over to their boss, carrying tools. Not just workers, enforcers.
“Let me think about it,” Helton offers, “and make some calls to see how things work around here, okay?”
Seymore is instantly all smarmy smiles again. “Fine, fine. That’d be just the thing to do. I look forward to hearing from you soon.” He and the older man join their group of enforcers and walk back to their truck. Helton stands with Allonia at the top of the ramp watching them drive away.
“Well, the good news is that you just told Scammin’ Seymore to take a hike, and saved yourself a pile of money,” Allonia says.
“And?” he asks cautiously.
“He’s connected to the local mob and the city council, and he’s a big player in the Port Authority, so it will cost you an even bigger pile. He likely heard you paid the power bill and figured you were rich enough to want to bleed you personally.”
Helton makes an ah, shit face. “Just lovin’ this ship more and more.”
Helton sits at the table in the Officers’ Mess, now clean, though sparsely appointed, interviewing representatives from every ship maintenance and repair shop in the area. Most of them are already familiar with the white elephant on Pad D9.
Skinny guy in greasy overalls: “Not gonna be cheap. Engines shot, grav’s shot, life support’s on life support.” He continues with a litany of systems that need major overhauls or total replacement. His verdict: gut the ship and reuse the hull.
Well-dressed, plain, older woman: “Initial survey would cost at least a quarter mil to get a comprehensive audit on what needs to be done.” She refuses to even look at the ship without a contract.
Bemused fat guy: “Not even worth anything as a parts ship. Nothing on board is used anymore.”
Young guy, with a new shop and a thin résumé: “Looks worse than it is. Nothing here you can’t patch or buy replacement parts for.”
Nervous guy, with well-worn coveralls, and deep-set stains on his hands, and a tool-belt with a million miles on it: “Has Seymore turned it down yet? I don’t want to move in on him or anything.”
Allonia, with her hair up, holding an e-reader, wearing a neutral expression: “That’s everyone I could find who would even talk to you.”
Helton slumps back into his seat, depressed and grim.
Orders
Lag has a modest office with four desks, eight chairs, two doors, good lighting, and a number of generic shelves (which are almost entirely empty). Minimal, spare, industrial, and recently-moved-into. It’s early morning, and Lag’s behind one of the desks perusing an e-reader. He’s wearing a simple, but smart, dark blue military uniform.
There is a knock at the door, and he calls out loudly, “ENTER!”
A middle aged woman wearing a similar uniform opens the door and walks in. She’s slender and fit, her long hair restrained in a braid. Time and experience have done a poor job of hiding the beauty of her youth. She walks crisply to the front of Lag’s desk, comes to attention, salutes. “Reporting for duty.”
Lag casually returns the salute, waves to a seat in front of his desk. “Welcome back, Lieutenant.” “Good to see you again. Have fun on McCullum Prime?”
She smiles back. “Not nearly as exciting as working with you, of course, but no bullet holes, either. Good to be back, been too long.”
“Different sort of mission now, Kat.” He hands her an e-reader. “Wade through that and tell me what you think.” She takes the e-reader, leans back, and begins to read intently.
For the rest of the morning Lt. Kat wades through a mass of articles, notes, appendices, and cross-references. She fidgets and gets up to pace about the room nervously, increasingly agitated and confused. She starts flipping back and forth rapidly between sections, her frustration mounting, until finally she gives up in disgust and sets the e-reader down on the desk — rather hard — a little before noon.
“Sir,” she says, rubbing her face wearily, “as a long-time legal officer I’ve seen all sorts of orders. But I have never seen anything so poorly written, contradictory, confusing, and patched together. It looks like a copy and paste from a hundred different standard-form directives, put together by a demented third lieutenant, with random alterations of commas and periods, odd external references, numerous changes of ‘and’ to ‘or’ and vice versa. It is a bizarre mix of administrative budget cutting, logistics support, working with local contractors, recruiting, transporting of down-cycle troops, reconnaissance, border clarification, training, combat, pirate-hunting, negotiation, and God-only-knows what all else. Even by the standards of headquarters military-legalese, these orders make no sense, and the further I dig into this mountain of verbiage and obfuscation, the less order and intelligence it shows.
“I officially have absolutely no idea what the hell we are supposed to do or what the priorities are, what assets we have, what the budget is, where we go, or what sort of timeline we have. I’m not even sure who you report to! 136 sections, 81 appendices, and at least a half dozen circular references–”
Lag cuts her off cheerfully. “Excellent!”
“What?! … Sir?”
“Could you find something in these orders to justify just about anything?”
“Well, yes,” Kat responds cautiously. “Likely there’s something, somewhere in here, that could, in theory, support anything short of multi-system genocide if you torture definitions and phrases hard enough.”
“And is there anything in there that prohibits action?”
“Narrowly read, it’s a straightjacket that makes us ask permission in triplicate to breathe.”
“So if we screw up, we get hung out to dry for disobeying orders?”
“Yes.”
“And anything we do that works out, we could justify?”
“… Yes?”
Lag grins. Kat nods slowly, beginning to catch on.
“So, let’s not screw things up, and see what we can do!” he says. “Let’s get started: Section 23 says we need to cut our core budget by 20%. That’s about the same as the maintenance section, I believe. Go find Chief Stenson, tell him he and his entire section are fired, and send him in here.”
Kat is appalled. “You want … me … to fire …”
“Yes,” Lag says cheerfully. “He should be out training some guys on the J-6’s.”
“Fired.”
“Absolutely.”
Kat stares at Lag in disbelief. Then she sets her face in a scowl, stands, salutes, makes an angry about-face, and stomps out. Lag smiles and returns to his e-reader.
“Fired again, eh?” says Chief Henery Stenson, smiling.
“Indeed. What’s the local talent like?”
“What, no vacation?”
Lag shakes his head. Stenson shrugs and flops into a chair. He’s in his late forties, trim and muscular, short-cropped graying hair and a mustache, wearing stained and well-worn cammies with rolled-up sleeves, and of course a tool belt.
“Eh, not bad,” Stenson says. “Local companies are a mixed lot, some good individuals, not many that could pass age, physical, or background as recruits, though.”
Kat, still standing in the doorway, is confused. “I thought he was fired?”
Lag ignores her. “How’s your section?”
“So-so. Usual mix. Only a handful of stand-outs.”
“Kat, how long to establish a local corporation?” Lag asks.
“Start a corp?”
Stenson grins at her confusion. Lag waits patiently for an answer.
“Uh. Well. An hour or so to find a location, if requirements aren’t too demanding, and another hour to fill out the forms and file. Pretty simple here, I think, depending on the type. But what does that have to do with–”
Lag cuts her off: “Section 30 says we must, quote, ‘support and utilize local companies whe
re possible,’ unquote. Please work with Mr. Stenson to identify a suitable nearby location for Stenson’s Heavy Equipment Repair Company, file the necessary forms for it and an associated apprenticeship program, transfer employment for the dozen or so platoon members he wants to keep, expedite the background checks for any locals he wants to hire and train, and select Stenson’s HERC as the local contractor of choice for needed support services for our unit, as stipulated in section 118.
“I’m sure that when we leave, we’ll also be able to achieve our recruitment goal of 15% laid out in Section 55, too, because we can take them with us. Oh, and while you are looking at real estate, see if you can locate a suitable place for housing an infantry company of recruit trainees. Section 103 says to assist with other units in the area, and I know the 46th have some training problems the First Sergeant can help with while we take care of some other items.”
Kat realizes she’s been tricked, glares at Lag for a moment, then smiles. “I see. Okay, Sir. Be happy to.”
Stenson teases Kat as they walk out the door, “You didn’t think he’d really let me go, did you?”
Noncoms
Corporal Kaminski, a huge Viking of a guy, drives a light truck down the dusty road leading to Pad D9 while eating a brown food-ration bar. Sergeant Kaushik, a trim, light-skinned East Indian rides in the passenger seat. They’re both wearing full combat armor, minus the helmets.
“She said ‘recon and secure the building’,” Kaminski says defensively.
“When the Colonel or Top tells you that, yeah, you need armor, air cover, and a hot line to the artillery battery. When the Lawfare Officer tells you, you gotta be smart enough to know she means look it over and get a lease with option to buy.” Kaushik points at their armor and weaponry. “All this gear is useless for checking out a building. Contrary to common myth, not all soldiering problems are solved with massive firepower, explosives, hacking, or any of your other creative solutions.”
Kaminski grunts, takes another bite of the food bar, then throws it down on the dash in disgust. “Get used to it,” Kaushik tells him. “Not likely to get better soon. Top says to keep a low profile in town, and there are not a lot of HQ services out here yet.”