Warm. Now that wasn’t good. The thing should have been insulated, should have felt no warmer than the air around them. But warm was good enough for now.
Be the Engineer. Be the room. Be what they expect. Be what they want to see.
She slapped the console on, pulled up some screens. Doesn’t matter what they are. It matters that they look like they should be there. A couple of diagnostics alongside some schematics would do. She looked at the wall opposite the console, saw the tools tidied away. That wouldn’t do: while Hope was supposed to be ex-Guild, she was ex for a reason. Grace grabbed something that looked like a cutting laser, placed it on the deck near one of the fusion cowls. She grabbed another tool — no clue what this one was, but it looked impressive, a mechanized head attached to a power pack that had real weight. She tossed that next to the cutting laser.
Quick glance down. Overalls, faded, worn. A little tight, because Hope was smaller than her. But that was okay, because no one expected Engineers to dress well. Hell, they expected Engineers to dress like vagrants. It was in the cultural meme of every world Grace had put boots on. Drunk Spacers went right alongside Gruff Engineers With Bad Taste.
If the shoe fits … Grace ran a hand along the edge of one of the engine cowls, her fingers coming away with a layer of grease. She rubbed her hands together, dashed some against her face, and then pulled her fingers through her hair. Grace needed to look the part. She needed to be the part. Cultural memes aside, no Engineers did their job without getting grease under their nails.
“Hope?” Nate’s voice came up to her from the ladder. “You ready for inspection?”
Showtime. “I don’t know,” she yelled back. She tried to put a little more spaceport, a little less cocktail bar, in her voice. “You ready to get under my feet and fuck up my day?”
There was a pause. “Uh, yeah,” said Nate. “These nice Navy officers would like to come and see we do not have contraband or stowaways in Engineering.”
“Great,” she said, low enough it should sound like a mutter, loud enough to be heard down the ladder. “The Navy want to get under my feet and fuck up my day. That’s no problem, because it’s the Navy.”
A head came through the airlock, cap on, uniform showing. Some kind of junior officer, and she knew an Engineer wouldn’t care. “Excuse me, Engineer—”
She pointed a finger at the officer. “You touch one fucking thing and break it, you’re getting the bill.”
“I—”
“Oh, I know,” said Grace. “You won’t break anything! That’s what the last circus clown who came up here said. Right before he broke something. Do you,” and she fixed the terrified man with a hard stare, “know what you are doing?”
“I’m in training as an Engineer,” said the officer. “I’m—”
“Well that’s okay then,” said Grace. “You’re in training. We’re all going to be saved.” She folded her arms across her chest.
Nate came up the ladder behind the officer. “Hope? Hope, this is Ensign Savidge. Savidge is here because … well, you know why.”
“Yeah,” said Grace. “He’s here to get under my feet and fuck up my day.”
“Uh,” said Ensign Savidge.
“Well, get on with it,” said Grace. “I assume you know what an engine looks like?”
“I—”
“It’s those things over there,” said Grace, pointing an angry jab at each of the fusion cowls. “They make the ship go, when we’re not hauled aside for lawful shipment of lawful cargo.”
“Uh,” said Ensign Savidge. He turned pleading eyes on Nate. “Is there some other place we could start?”
“What?” said Nate. “Hell no, son. You’ve got people crawling all over the Tyche. You’re here, in Engineering. Time is money. Let’s go.” He clapped his hands.
Savidge, to his credit, got going. He walked around Grace like she was a pit viper, turning himself sideways so she wouldn’t be out of his line of sight. He didn’t realize he was doing it. Grace could feel the anxiety pouring off the officer in waves, could imagine his stomach clenched like a fist, his heart beating faster, and felt herself wanting to give a feral smile. She held it in, because this wasn’t a victory lap. Not yet. This was still the show, and the show wasn’t over.
“Excuse me, Engineer Baedeker,” said Savidge. “Can I—”
“Who the fuck,” said Grace, “is Engineer Baedeker?”
“Uh,” said the ensign. He held up his tablet, consulting it. “It said on the manifest—”
“Engineer Baedeker is not an Engineer,” said Grace. “She left the Guild. It’s just Baedeker. My friends call me Hope, which means you should call me Ms. Baedeker. Or just Baedeker, because Lord knows we don’t have the time to waste on ceremony. You know, time you’re wasting. You get me?”
“I get you,” said Savidge. “It’s just that—”
“Sweet Christ,” said Grace, sighing. “If you’re here to tell me that the reactor’s running a little hot, I know. I know, okay? I know. I work here. With no parts, because this asshole,” and she jerked a thumb at Nate, “is always running late, meaning no completion bonuses. Do you know why he’s always running late?”
Savidge swallowed. “No,” he said.
“Take a guess.”
“Because,” said Savidge, as cautiously as a man might if he were about to put a toe on a landmine, “of inspections?”
“You got it!” said Grace. “Look, I got shit to do. This reactor will not stop exploding by itself.”
“It’ll explode?” said Savidge.
“No,” said Grace, “or at least, not if I get time to stop it exploding. Are you done getting under my feet and fucking up my day?”
“Yes ma’am,” said Savidge.
“It’s just Baedeker,” said Grace. “Now get the fuck out of my engine room.”
The ensign scurried back down the ramp. Nate watched him go, started after, then paused. He looked back over his shoulder at Grace. “Asshole?”
“Definitely,” said Grace. “Seriously. This reactor? It should not be warm to the touch.”
“Best we get an Engineer on that,” said Nate. He flashed her a smile, and she felt warm — not because of that smile, but because of what Nate was feeling. It was gratitude/thanks/friend all at once. It was just what she needed him to feel.
She hated herself for it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“While I think this whole experience has been enlightening — for you, for me, for my crew, and for the great Republic under which we sail — I can’t help but wonder why you’re here,” said Nate. He was leaning against the cargo, plastic covering the components inside. For a change, he’d left his blaster in his cabin, not because he didn’t want to shoot someone, but because he did. And that wouldn’t end well; the Tyche was a nimble spirit, but the Torrington was a ship of war. While not a carrier behemoth, the Torrington was loaded for bear. Scans had shown all manner of unpleasantness waiting to come their way if they didn’t fly steady. Particle cannons. PDCs. Torpedo tubes. They probably had a railgun or two tucked away for special occasions. Assuming they could overpower the boarding party — which they couldn’t, not even if Kohl was all the way sober — and break the docking locks, they’d need to punch the Endless drive so hard their brains would pop out the side of their skulls. If they didn’t, the Torrington would turn them into an expanding cloud of atoms, some of them carbon.
So, no gun.
“Captain,” said the officer in front of him, offering him a smile like someone would offer a tray of chocolates. “It’s a routine inspection.”
“Fuck off,” said Nate, but amiably enough.
“I beg your pardon?” said the officer. This one was a Lieutenant, just like Evans, except this one had a different name: Karkoski. She had a face that looked like it would have a nice smile, if they’d met under different circumstances.
“I mean, I appreciate the cover,” said Nate. “I appreciate you coming on board with a scanning crew, crawling in
to every nook and cranny that the Tyche’s got. Some of those compartments haven’t been opened in years, Lieutenant. You got the dust out, and for that I thank you. My crew thanks you, because they sure hate cleaning. I tell you! I try and scrape up a cleaning detail, and it’s like the Tyche’s a ghost ship. You get me?”
“I,” said Karkoski, then stopped.
Nate pushed off from the cargo with an elbow, turned towards it, and frowned. “It makes you wonder, don’t it?” He glanced in Karkoski’s direction, and as she was about to say something, he said, “No, no. I understand. You can’t tell me what this is all about. But I know you’re delaying this shipment. This Republic shipment. This time sensitive cargo. This cargo, as I understand it, will bring light, hope, and messages from far-flung relatives to the settlers of Absalom Delta.” He paused, sucking air through his teeth, still looking at the cargo. “The thing is, this cargo was given to me by the Republic Navy. The very same navy that protects us from God-knows-what since there’s no war, but also the same navy you serve as an officer of some distinction.” He gave her a glance. “I mean, I’m assuming you serve with distinction. Right?”
“Right,” said Karkoski. Then, “Sir? Sir. My service record—”
“You can’t talk about that either, I know,” said Nate. “I know. What can you do?” He gave her a smile. “What I’d like to know is whether you guys have got a mix-up back at the Admiralty, or if you’ve got special instructions I need to know about. I’m good either way, but what I don’t need, not today, is you to yank on my chain to see whether it’s got bells on it. It doesn’t. It’s got anger and spite and a bunch of bad attitude, because you’ll affect my completion bonus. Time is money, Lieutenant. Time is money.”
Karkoski considered him for a long, slow moment. “You’re quite direct, sir.”
“It’s stopped my rise in politics, but it works well enough out here in the hard black. Cuts to the point. Stops people dying. That kind of thing.” He stretched, leaned back against the cargo. “This thing going to blow my ship apart? Is it a bomb?”
“No,” said Karkoski. “It’s not a bomb.” She paused as the scanning crew entered the cargo bay — two techs. One was some rank-and-file junior with a skinny frame who’d done all the crawling where crawling was needed. The other was the ensign Nate had taken to Engineering. Poor man was still sweating from his encounter with Grace-as-Hope; Nate had taken pity on him and let him talk with El. She was ex-Navy too, despite being from the other side; El knew the language, knew the rules. A softer target, something to take the edge off before he wrote a report damning them all to hell.
Grace. That one had done something quite special. Quite … unusual for a new crew member. She’d put herself in harm’s way. She’d defused the heat that might have come their way for harboring Hope, taken it and put it in a little box the ensign would take home and remember forever. But the kind of experience that young officer had had? His report would be crystal clear. It would say the Engineer of the Tyche was a striking cobra, a danger to all unprotected souls, but it wouldn’t have any of Hope’s real attributes. It’d advise caution or encourage restraint when dealing with her in the future, but it wouldn’t say she is a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head. It was the kind of report that would be pinned to walls in tired hardcopy, shared on tablets, hell even fired around the internal skunkworks comms of the Navy’s engineering teams. That kind of thing was against protocol, but it would happen. Sure enough, Grace had bought Hope a reprieve for a time. While that was a welcome kindness, it bothered Nate.
It bothered him because people didn’t do stuff for free.
Not in the Core worlds, not out here in the hard black. Not anywhere. Especially not stuff that was dangerous, could get you killed, either in front of a firing squad, or just ejected out into space without a suit. While Grace had done them all a kindness, she’d done it for reasons. Nate didn’t understand those reasons, and needed to find them out.
Later.
Right now, he needed to get Karkoski and her scanning crew off his ship. Karkoski looked at her crew, selected Ensign Savidge with her eyes, and said, “Report.”
“Ma’am,” said Savidge, crisping a salute. “Manifest is accurate. Cargo, crew, transponder codes, all in order.” He frowned, like he wanted to add something, but stopped himself.
“Very good,” said Karkoski. “Dismissed.”
There was a thing to watch: two members of the Navy, leaving his cargo hold like they were good posture trying to slink away and hide. Nate wondered what had happened to the skinny one. Maybe he’d found Kohl’s … literature collection. He watched them slide on by, out the airlock, and into the safety of the Torrington. Nate said nothing, waiting for Karkoski.
He didn’t have to wait long. “There is nothing wrong with the cargo,” she said. “The cargo is what Lieutenant Evans described to you. It’s a transmitter. Get it to the Bridge at Absalom Delta, bolt it to the side, and comms are back up. You get your bonus, we get to talk to our colony, and the colonists get their sims and holo shows on a regular drip again. Nothing special about any of that.”
“Sure,” said Nate, like he was agreeing. “Nothing special. Except for you scanning my crew.”
“Your ship,” said Karkoski.
“My what?”
“Your ship,” said Karkoski. “Not your crew. Look, Captain—”
“Nate. Call me Nate.” He offered another smile.
She didn’t give him one back. “Captain Chevell,” she said, “the Navy is prepared to overlook your small indiscretion of breaking lockdown.”
“Hey, now,” said Nate. “The clamps were lifted. We got out. Completion bonus, remember?”
She considered that, and he could see the wheels spinning in her head. Trying to work out if this was the important conversation she wanted to have, working her way from this guy is an asshole all the way to there are bigger problems. Bigger problems were things that worried Nate too. Karkoski turned away from him, faced the cargo. “You know, these things don’t fail.”
Odd thing to say. “Clearly they do.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not Old Empire tech. These are Guild made. Guild made, Captain. The Guild stopped the AIs. The Guild made FTL possible. A spiced-up communicator? Trust me. They don’t break. They’re a lifeline to the hundreds of worlds we have scattered over space. They can’t break. A downed transmitter is as likely as humans surviving a zero-time Endless jump. Can’t happen.”
“Okay,” said Nate, thinking, Well, shit just got real. “Can’t happen. So why is this one here?”
Karkoski frowned. “Maybe I’m being too strong. They have been known to fail. Some fool fiddles with them. Messes up the timing. Asteroids. There has been — and I checked — exactly one instance of systems failure. Solar collector burned out, not the transmitter itself.” She sighed. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the one at Absalom Delta’s Bridge has done dark. It’s not sending to us, not schedule. The Gate at our side opens, but nothing comes through. That is a situation that makes us nervous. It makes us nervous because of what happened on Arlington.”
“Huh,” said Nate, because his brain was saying what the hell does what happened on Arlington have to do with Absalom Delta?
“I’d bet you’re wondering,” said Karkoski, “what Arlington and the Absalom system have in common.”
“Thought crossed my mind,” agreed Nate.
“Nothing,” said Karkoski, “yet.” She looked at Nate like she was waiting for him to say something clever.
“Normally I’d have something to offer here like, ’This sounds a lot like the usual sorts of military intelligence,’ but I’m expecting you to shower me with fine Republic wisdom,” said Nate. “I am here, waiting for my shower.”
She sniffed, wrinkled her nose. “Yes, I can see why.”
“Hey—”
“There was an esper on Arlington,” she said.
That stopped Nate. Espers. It was the fucking Emperor’s Intelligence
rs that had cost him a good left hand and an equally good left foot. He wondered for a hot second about Grace Gushiken, then pushed that thought aside. Espers were evil, and Grace might have been many things — liar chief among them — but she didn’t carry the Intelligencer reek. Their arrogance was hard to miss. “Those assholes,” he said, with some feeling. He clenched his metal hand.
She noticed the motion. “Something personal, Captain?”
“Could be,” he said.
The silence stretched, and when she realized he would’t fill it with the story behind his metal hand, she turned away. Karkoski spoke to the cargo bay like it was a person, not looking at him. “You can understand why we’re interested in any ship leaving Arlington.”
“Well, shit,” he said. “You could have just opened with that. I’d have laid on a welcome party. A few beers. We could have looked around together.” He felt the ache in his missing arm, rubbed at the metal like it would make the pain stop. “People who can read minds are a cancer, Lieutenant.”
“Yes,” she said. “But if we’d warned you, and there was an esper on your ship, they might have rabbited. Or cored out your minds and left you drooling in your chairs. Hell,” and here she sighed, “they could have jumped ships, got on the Torrington.”
“They can’t core out minds,” said Nate, thinking, a fucking esper.
“Sure,” said Karkoski. “Sure.”
“Well,” said Nate. “I appreciate the heads-up. But what about Absalom Delta?”
“When a world goes dark,” said Karkoski, “it’s usually pirates. If it’s not pirates, it’s an uprising. We still have a Navy, despite there not being a war on, because of those two things. But an uprising would be worse. An uprising led by an esper? That would be disaster. So. Be careful. Report back. I hope it’s a faulty solar collector. I really do. But if it’s pirates, we’ll send in the cavalry. If it’s an uprising, we’ll send all the cavalry.” She considered him a moment longer, then turned towards the airlock. Hand on the sill, she paused. “Captain.”
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