“You’re a sick man,” I told myself with some degree of satisfaction as I made my way down to the mess deck.
As I expected, the place was largely deserted. The chrono said 17:00 and we’d been underway for only a couple of stans. Those who had day work were undoubtedly doing it, and those who had watch standing duties were either on, or preparing to go on, watch. The galley proper was just beyond the mess deck. The door was open and I heard voices. They’d be getting ready for the dinner mess which meant making sure the coffee was made.
I stepped up to the galley door and stuck my head in.
Mr. Vorhees spotted me right away and smiled. “Mr. Wang, can I help you?”
The two messmates looked up from their work—Davies, whom I recognized from wardroom service and another woman whom I’d never met. I read, “Cramer,” on her shipsuit.
“Actually, Chief, I think I can help you. I know you’re getting ready for the evening mess, but I wonder if I could borrow whichever of your mates usually makes the coffee?”
He frowned slightly at that and crossed the galley to where I was standing, and I backed out of the doorway so we could step onto the mess deck for a modicum of privacy.
“Something wrong with the coffee, Mr. Wang?” he asked with a guarded expression.
“No offense, Mr. Vorhees, but my sense from the wardroom meeting this morning was that the captain has been raggin’ your coffee for a while now? Correct me if I’m wrong.”
He looked at me hard. “You got that just from one question and my answer?” he asked.
“No, I’ve had the coffee.”
He barked a laugh in surprise. “Well, Mr. Wang, you shoot from the hip, but you got the right of it. What’s on your mind?”
“I know a bit about making coffee. Long story, but I was a messmate before an officer. I know what you’re up against.”
“I’m still listening, but the clock’s tickin’, sar,” he said.
“You buy beans or ground?” I asked.
“Beans, we grind it by the bucket load.”
“Okay, who does the coffee? Cramer?”
“How’d you know?”
“Because Davies has wardroom duty and you strike me as a fair man.”
“Fair? How’s that, sar?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
“You’d not give all the crap duty to one messmate.”
He barked another laugh. “Guilty as charged, sar.”
“Could you send Ms. Cramer out, and we’ll see if we can do a little good here. Which one’s the next urn to go?” I asked.
“Number two,” he said, pointing at one of the chrome monsters mounted on the bulkhead.
I rolled up my sleeves and nodded. “Excellent. If you’d have Ms. Cramer bring out a step stool, a scrub brush, and a couple of liters of white vinegar, we’ll get on this.”
He didn’t stand there looking for more than a heartbeat before he went back into the galley and started giving orders.
Ms. Cramer came out looking scared and confused but lugging the supplies I’d asked for.
“You wanted to see me, sar?” she asked.
“Yes, Ms. Cramer. How would you like to make coffee to die for?” I said with a smile.
“Oh, sar, if we could get people to stop complaining about the coffee, sar…” she said wistfully.
“I think your next problem will be keeping the urn full, Ms. Cramer. Now look sharp because we don’t have a lot of time.”
We got to work and between the two of us, managed to overhaul the number two urn. There was a fair amount of sludge built up in it, but the vinegar and hot water made short work of it. The mess deck smelled like a pickle vat for a while, but that was actually an improvement.
I explained the ratios of water to coffee, and we went back to the pantry where the requisite equipment was stored. I tossed the bucket of stale ground coffee and had her break out a fresh one. We ground enough for three urns, which would take the ship through dinner, evening, and the following morning. I had her write down the amounts and the grinder settings. It was a standard twenty liter model. It was so much like the Lois’s that I felt a little homesick. We loaded a basket and filter and I had her check the water temperature to make sure we were brewing with cold water. She looked at me one last time and I nodded encouragingly. She opened the valve and began the brew cycle.
While the urn brewed, I stuck my head into the galley.
“Thank you, Mr. Vorhees,” I called. “I’ll get out of your hair, but I think you’ll find Ms. Cramer has a most astonishing talent for making coffee.”
He didn’t look like he believed me, but as I left the mess deck, the smell of fresh coffee was beginning to overwhelm the pickley smell of the vinegar. I smiled in satisfaction and headed for the bridge to check on the ship’s systems before I needed to report to the wardroom for dinner.
I got to the bridge just as the watch was changing at 17:45. I still wasn’t used to so few people on the bridge. The only two underway watch standers consisted of the bridge officer and helm watch. The engineering watch standers sat in the aft section’s engineering control room. Because the ship was under one hundred fifty meters, it didn’t require an astrogation watch even though the mass of the ship was considerable. It was part of what made this Bar Bell class so popular. Fewer hands required meant greater profits.
Mr. Burnside left the bridge, followed by his helm watch stander, Mallory. Neither of them looked back as they left. Arletta checked the instrumentation and chatted for a moment with her helm—Arnold Betts—before crossing to my station.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.” I replied with a grin at my screen. “Should be interesting.”
“You got to Vorhees?” she murmured.
“Keep your fingers crossed, but I worked with Cramer for about a half a stan and showed her a few tricks about making a big pot of coffee.” I glanced up at her. “You were right about Vorhees. He was skeptical, but willing to give me a shot.”
“Can you make the coffee better?” she asked with more than a little skepticism of her own.
I snorted. “Well, I would be hard pressed to make it worse. There were some relatively minor adjustments which taken as a whole should yield coffee the likes of which this ship has apparently not seen in a long, long time.”
“Humble, too, I see,” she said with a grin.
“Well, don’t look at me. Ms. Cramer did all the work. Any improvements are the direct result of her diligence and hard work.”
Arletta looked at me for a long moment in the glow of the screen.
“Ishmael Wang, you are a strange man,” she said softly, but with humor in her voice. She patted me on the shoulder and went back to her duty station.
I satisfied myself with the status of the ship’s systems and secured the station. It was time to see if this first small effort would pay dividends.
It was all I could do not to go directly to the mess deck and check on the coffee, and the suspense nearly killed me. I’d left before the urn had finished brewing, so I wasn’t sure if the changes had made that much difference.
Sure, we’d washed out a lot of sludge, and used fresh grounds which was always better than trying to coax flavor out of week old—or month old—grinds. But I didn’t know if the problem was related to the beans, the urn, or even the water supply.
In due course, Ms. Davies served the wardroom meal. It was some kind of bland chicken dish with a light sauce and some rather badly overcooked green vegetables. I sighed, wondering whatever made a lube jockey take the lateral move to steward. The food wasn’t bad, just not good. I vowed to count my blessings should I ever get to a ship with a decent cook again. Finally, Davies came in with the coffee carafe, and she gave me a little wink behind Mr. Burnside’s back. She poured around the table, leaving the pot between the captain and first mate before leaving the way she’d come.
I took a sip and suppressed a smile of satisfaction. Whatever the other problems, the coff
ee would not be one of them for the remainder of the voyage. The brew was rich, flavorful, and completely devoid of the burnt, oily aftertaste. Mel must have seen something in my expression because she frowned just slightly in curiosity before trying her own coffee. I saw the surprise in her face, and she looked at me sharply but didn’t say anything. I tried to look innocent and paid close attention to not tasting my dinner.
Fredi was the next to sip her coffee, her head bowed over her plate, not looking at anybody directly, but casting the small glances out and around as required. I saw her stiffen as she raised the cup to her mouth. She straightened slightly and took a tentative sniff. I could practically see the gears turning in her head as she processed the reality that the coffee was very good. Finally, whatever calculus of logic swirled through her brain reached a solution, and she looked at me directly for the very first time with a shock of recognition. She didn’t ask how, but she knew that I’d had something to do with the change.
Mel murmured something to Fredi and Fredi lowered her head once more into her normal posture but a gentle smile curved the edges of her mouth.
The captain and Mr. Burnside paid no attention to the table. They were busy regaling each other with commentary on various issues of mutual interest and general jocularity. The captain actually sipped from his cup and put it back down without noticing any change. Mr. Burnside took a sip, and he looked confused for a moment. As he started to put the cup back onto its saucer, he stopped and raised it again to take another careful sip. He put the cup down and sat there looking at it in consternation for a moment before looking around at us. Mel sat with the smug look of a canary-filled-cat, cradling her cup in her fingers and inhaling the aroma. Fredi hunched in her usual position, head bowed, but smiling a slight smile. I pretended not to notice, eating my dinner methodically.
Eventually the captain noticed the shift in dynamic, proving that even the most self absorbed individual will pay attention when enough people are not looking at them.
“Is something going on, Mr. Burnside?” he asked.
“Try the coffee, Captain,” Mr. Burnside suggested.
The captain frowned in consternation, but took a careful sip and then another before placing the cup back on its saucer with a thoughtful expression.
“Well,” he finally said, looking up. “It seems Mr. Vorhees as resolved the coffee issue.”
As if surprised, I lifted my cup for a sip, once more savoring the smoothly flavorful brew and nodding in appreciation.
Mel watched me through slightly narrowed eyes, but the captain and Mr. Burnside engaged themselves in discussing how lovely, marvelous, and unexpected the change in the coffee was.
After dinner, I retired to my stateroom, making sure to secure the door behind me. I crawled into my bunk for a nap before watch. I had, at least for the moment, a feeling of profound satisfaction and I drifted off to sleep secure in the knowledge that I’d managed to do a little good.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DIURNIA SYSTEM
2358-JULY-8
My tablet bipped me awake in time to take a shower and change into a fresh shipsuit. It was the roundabout route, but on my way to the bridge, I stopped into the galley and was pleased to see that Ms. Cramer had gotten to the number three urn and the coffee in it was as good as I’d hoped. I filled a mug and headed for the bridge.
Arletta smiled as I climbed the ladder balancing my coffee cup carefully. Betts eyed me curiously from the helm but offered no comment.
“You about ready to get off watch?” I asked, eyeing the chrono on the watch station—23:40. I was still a little early.
“How in the world did you fix the coffee?” she asked in a lowered voice.
“Me? I didn’t do a thing,” I objected with the emphasis on the “do” part. “It was all Ms. Cramer’s work.”
She fixed me with a look. “Yes, but you told her what needed doing, right?”
I shrugged. “Guilty as charged, but that’s just between us.”
“And the mess crew,” she said.
I nodded a reluctant agreement.
“How long do you think that’ll stay under wraps?” she asked.
“Probably not long, but it needed doing.”
It was her turn to nod in agreement.
“Still. Burnside isn’t going to like it,” she said. “You’re hobnobbin’ with the enlisted and givin’ advice to other divisions.”
“Hobnobbing?” I asked with a chuckle. “I haven’t heard that word in ages.”
She frowned at me.
“Yeah, I suspect I’m painting a target on my forehead, but gods, I couldn’t drink too much more of that mud without doing something.”
“I wish I’d known how to deal with it,” she said ruefully. “I’ve been drinkin’ that crap for months.”
I gave a little one shouldered shrug. “See me between watches and I’ll explain it.”
The chrono clicked over to 23:45 and I heard footsteps on the ladder. Jaxton, my helm watch, was dragging onto the bridge, wearing the predictably grubby shipsuit.
“Well, I think I can relieve the watch now, Ms. Novea,” I said.
“Ship is on course and on target,” she replied formally. “No incidents or actions. Standing orders are unchanged. You may relieve the watch, Mr. Wang.”
“I have the watch, Ms. Novea, logged on 2358, July 8 at 23:45 per standing orders.”
She stood.
I sat.
Jaxton and Betts changed positions with a few murmured words which included the current course and speed. I watched as Jaxton logged the watch change on the console and then looked on line to see the watch change in engineering and environmental as the names of the watch standers flickered and changed to the third section.
“Well, good luck, Ishmael,” Arletta said. “I’m off on my twenty-four so I’ll be sleeping in tomorrow.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said. “Sleep well.”
She headed down the ladder ahead of Betts and I felt the ship settle into the only really quiet time it had while underway—midnight to about 04:00. That’s when the cycle would start again—when the galley started baking and getting ready for the morning meal. I sipped my coffee and looked out of the ports at the points of light out there in the Deep Dark. Aft, I saw the glowing Diurnian primary. The planet Diurnia itself fell away, almost visibly and the limb of the planet obscured the orbital station we’d so recently left.
“Well, good morning, Ms. Jaxton,” I said. “Looks like we’ll be spending some time together.”
“Yes, sar,” she said. It wasn’t quite a sulky response, but one that spoke volumes about her outlook.
I sighed and stood up from my station. Jaxton flinched at the movement as if expecting that I was going to come at her. She glanced quickly in my direction but glanced away when it became clear that I was just crossing from one station to another.
At the system’s console, I fired up a schematic showing the data and electrical flows in the ship. Each switch, node, and interlock glowed in high-resolution detail. The consoles, while far from new, had been upgraded recently and were considerably better than what I’d grown used to at the academy. I watched as the automated backups kicked in, rotating the logs and spooling the copies out to the removables in the closet under my feet.
Straightening from the console, I stretched and began wondering what I could do to stay awake. I crossed to the after observation port and looked out at the wide bodied ship. I found myself shifting back and forth to see around the smudges on the armor-glass. I saw only the glass rather than the scene beyond it and snorted. It was covered in a layer of finger prints, smudges, and what looked like a series of evenly placed nose prints that ran from one side of the two meter window all the way across to the other in an unbroken line.
“Somebody had too much time on their hands,” I said aloud.
Ms. Jaxton asked, “Sar?”
“Oh nothing, Ms. Jaxton,” I said.
I looked around and note
d for the first time just how cruddy the bridge actually was. I had been so focused on the systems and backups during my previous trips that I hadn’t noticed that the bridge was as bad off as the rest of the ship.
“Ms. Jaxton, what’s the common practice on bridge watch?” I asked.
“Depends on the watch, sar,” she replied warily, “and who’s on it.”
“I see. Thank you, Ms. Jaxton. What do you think we should do for the next few stans?”
“Me, sar?” she asked apparently shocked by the question.
“Yes, you. What do you think the two of us should do?”
She looked at me hard, square in the eye. It was an assessing look that I couldn’t quite fathom, but I kept my features very still while she made up her mind. She sighed.
“Well, sar, you’re the officer here,” she said in a sort of resigned voice. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I can think of a lot of things that need doing, but I suggest we get Ms. D’Heng up here, since she’s part of this section.”
I saw the confusion crossing her face. I wasn’t sure what she might have been thinking, but given what little I knew about the culture of this particular ship, I was pretty sure she had no real clue about where I was headed. I just smiled a little and pulled out my tablet to call the messenger of the watch to the bridge.
Charlotte D’Heng was one of the crew I hadn’t met yet. Small, fine boned, and quite pretty, she had a ready smile but a guarded expression as she climbed the ladder to the bridge.
She shot Ms. Jaxton an apprehensive look, before saying, “You called, sar?”
“Yes, Ms. D’Heng. I hadn’t had a chance to meet you yet and since you’re in my watch section, I wanted to get to know you a bit.”
“Oh, I see, sar,” she said, and started to unzip her shipsuit. “And you wanted Ms. Jaxton to watch?”
“Um, no!” I said.
“Understood, sar,” she purred and crossed to the helm. “We’re used to working together aren’t we, dear,” she said to Ms. Jaxton with a gentle hand on her arm.
“Oh, yes,” she replied and started to reach for her own zipper.
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