by Chris Kuhn
"Oh," Yvans responded, uncertainty on his face. "I don't- I mean, do you think I'd get in trouble for that?"
"For what?" I asked. "Getting the job done on time and buying a girl some booze? I assure you, the Navy encourages both."
He thought for a moment and then nodded furiously. He handed me his work tablet.
"Here's the compartment listing." He said. "They're all on this deck. The new sensors are right there." He pointed to a box in the corner.
"Perfect." I said, bobbing my head. "Try not to get stopped on your way."
"Easy." He replied, holding up his work order. I saw Byers' signature at the bottom. "No one stops you when you've got one of these."
I grinned as he left the compartment, then got to work.
It was odd, I realized, that such a big work order hadn't been signed by Chief Engineer Abeen.
Or maybe not.
Abeen ran the engineering department, which - depending on our mission - could be a massive job. At any given time, she might be extricating a ship from a wormhole, repairing a planetary climate grid, or doing any number of crazy-ass things. On such occasions, she tended to delegate the routine duties to Byers. Byers, in turn, would delegate them to his underlings. People like Yvans.
And me.
Within moments of Yvans' departure, I was changing modules. It was boring work, and as I moved from one compartment to the next, my mind began to wander.
One bottle of alcohol per month. How does that math work out?
One bottle was seven-hundred-fifty milliliters. In a thirty day month, that worked to twenty-five milliliters per day. But I didn't drink every day. Not even close. That was good, but I supposed it was a fairly low standard. It meant that I was healthy in the same way that not being chased by an axe murderer meant I was safe. I was twenty-six. If I was going to have a problem, I'd have many fine years to develop it.
I got the final connector snapped into place. The job was done. It hadn't been hard, although it seemed to have questionable value. Par for the course. We were always upgrading things that didn't need to be upgraded (and failing to upgrade the stuff that did).
I went back to the maintenance locker where I'd met Yvans. He was waiting there with my shiny new bottle of whiskey. Thoughtful little lizard that he was, he even commandeered an empty box for me to carry it in.
I thanked him and gave him his stuff back.
After ensuring that the corridor was empty - it was - I made my way to the starboard MAGLEV tunnel and summoned the car. There was a new sign posted on the door, which read "All Fluids Must Be Secured Prior to Entry."
I grinned at that and patted my new box. The MAGLEV tunnels were zero-G, which saved a ton of money in unnecessary gravity plates. The problem was that people got used to having gravity on the ship. They liked to carry things around which didn't make sense in a zero-G environment.
Like open cups of coffee.
About a week ago, one crewman had wandered into the MAGLEV with his morning latte. The beverage had drifted out of its container and taken up residence on someone's dress uniform. Hell of way to start your day. I half-stepped, half-floated my way into the car and grabbed one of the creaky handrails. For obvious reasons, there were no seats.
I punched the key for Section 4, which was where my quarters were located. About three seconds later, I became aware of someone else's presence in the car.
"Crewman," A masculine voice grumbled from behind me. I turned to find Michael Byers.
Beautiful.
His arms were crossed over his thin frame, and his neck seemed too narrow for the bearded head that sat on it. Beards were technically authorized for Humans in Coalition service, but nobody really seemed to wear them anymore.
Nobody except for Byers.
He floated toward me now, managing to keep his arms crossed as he did it.
"I think you've pressed the wrong button," he announced pointedly, indicating the control panel.
"Um," I said cleverly, "Why's that, sir?"
“Because the button you pressed will take you back to the crew area. I'm sure you didn't mean to do that. I'm sure that you're aware of the briefing in five minutes, and that you're desperately trying to get there before it starts. Luckily for you, I'm headed in that direction."
"I'm not going, sir," I attempted. "I just pulled a twelve-hour shift-."
"Look at me carefully, crewman," he said, no trace of sympathy on his bony lumberjack face.
"Can you estimate the number of fucks I give?"
No, I thought bitterly, but I can estimate how many you've been getting.
There were also other things I could estimate, like how much time Byers spent perfecting his demeanor. I suspected it was a lot, and that he'd modeled it after some gruff and authoritative man who'd picked on him as a child. After careful analysis, I'd determined that Byers suffered from an acute case of Small Penis Syndrome.
"Sir," I attempted again, "reactor duty requires mandatory crew rest. A minimum-"
"Crew rest comes before your shift, not afterwards." He snapped. "Do you work again within eight hours?"
"No, sir," I admitted. He'd know.
"Then your ass had better be at that briefing. If I recall correctly, you've recently submitted re-enlistment paperwork for the old man's signature. Is that correct?"
I nodded. Despite my distaste for the Navy, I hadn't exactly developed an alternative career plan. I'd submitted a re-enlistment request the week prior, which meant that the Captain (and just about everyone else, apparently) had to sign off on it. Needing signatures meant that I had to avoid getting in trouble while my documents were being routed.
Obviously, I hadn't pulled that off.
"Then I believe," Byers continued with an unpleasant smile, "that it's in your best interest not to skip mandatory functions."
I nodded briskly, confirming to myself that he would not be getting a burrito.
We rode the rest of the way in near-silence.
I ran my hand over the car's worn plastic surface. I liked it. The MAGLEV was a loyal machine, a neglected but dutiful workhorse. I appreciated it far more than my fellow occupant, whose words were still echoing in my brain.
Crew rest comes before your shift, not afterwards.
Technically, that was true. But a nice person might have noted that I'd been working all day, and that due to Naval scheduling deficiencies, a briefing now stood between me and my sleep. A nice person might have decided to let me go home, but that was precisely the type of conclusion at which Byers would never arrive.
I watched his reflection in the car's window.
I watched him fidget with his uniform. He glanced at me, and then away, and then at the deck. He flared his nostrils.
Fuck you, I thought, surprised by my level of anger.
I wasn't alone in hating Byers. Abeen got along better with machines than people, and even she seemed to have a shorter temper with Byers than anyone else. I suspected she wasn't the only senior officer that disliked him. It wasn't like any of them confided in me, but I could imagine it easily. They had phrases that they liked, qualities they saw in themselves and would surely find lacking in Michael Byers.
But whatever they may have thought of him, Byers had an impeccable pedigree. He'd been to the Coalition Officer's Academy and graduated with honors. He had the gold ring to prove it, and he'd apparently struggled with how to use the thing. He'd first worn it constantly, and then occasionally, and then not at all. It seemed like he was unsure of how to unleash its powers, worried that the respect it was supposed to engender might be offset by the envy of those lacking a similar background.
Maybe he'd just grown bored with the clunky thing.
It didn't matter.
Byers' ring wasn't the problem.
Neither was his natural personality deficit.
Byers was the only officer aboard who had actually been born on Earth. Even with the most charming of personalities, he'd have never fit in. He wasn't just an outsider, he wa
s an outsider who wanted in, and the last thing he wanted to do was affiliate with others who didn't mesh.
Byers and I had different reasons for our ostracism. I'd never expected us to be friends, but once upon a time, I thought he might have warmed up to me.
Apparently that was too much to ask.
So yeah.
No burrito.
The MAGLEV came to a halt.
Log 004: Bad to worse.
I stepped into the auditorium, noting that Byers and I were the last ones to arrive.
Other than Captain Wiley.
The briefing should have started already, but the captain had obviously been delayed.
Good.
I grabbed a seat near the back, awkwardly stuffing my whiskey-box under the chair in front of me. I watched another Human female come in, glance at me, and move promptly to a seat on the other side of the room.
I grinned at the complete lack of subtlety.
It had once been explained to me - by a Miliari data analyst - that Human brains were appliances with many connectors. They didn't function well in isolation, and it was advisable to link them together.
This device must be wired in parallel. Please connect to a network.
When brains met other brains, they were supposed to offer their connectors to each other. Let's make a link. My brain didn't do that. My brain got confused. It would rummage absently through its backpack, uncertain where it had placed its connectors.
"Attention on deck!" Someone called from the front. The entire menagerie of crew-members jumped to their feet.
Captain Wiley made his way to the front of the room. He strolled up to the center, ran a hand through his graying hair, and surveyed his crew. A lot of the crew really liked Wiley. He smiled a lot. He told everyone that he was from Mars and had Rogga family (which I assumed was true), and that he was thus a little slower than those around him (which was completely untrue). Wiley was the type of guy who would nod sympathetically when you told him you hadn't found time for the gym. He'd tell you he had the same problem, and that he really wanted to do better. Then he'd go run a marathon. And win.
It was inconceivable that someone in Wiley's position had gotten there by accident. It just didn't work like that. The Captain of an experimental warship, one of the fastest in the Coalition's fleet, didn't get his job by accident. Somehow, though, he could convince you that he'd slipped on a banana peel and fallen into the big chair. I understood why the crew liked Wiley, but I took everything he said with a dose of skepticism.
I could afford to. According to my last performance report, I had an inexhaustible supply.
"Relax, guys." Wiley began, in the faux-casual tone that was standard issue for all captains.
"Please, take your seats."
I took my seat.
Wiley nodded at someone in the back. The lights dimmed and the wall behind him was replaced with a holographic crest of the Coalition of Unified Planets.
"Welcome to your mandatory mission briefing." said Wiley. "Note the use of that word. Mandatory. I'm sure some of you don't want to be here. I'm sure some of you think you already know everything I'm going to say. You may even feel that you have other things you could be doing right now."
Check.
"Guess what?" Wiley said. "I know all of this stuff too, and I most certainly have other things to do. But the Navy thinks this is important, and so do I. A lot of times we put blinders on, guys. I'm just as guilty as the rest of you. Well, not some of you.” Laughter punctuated the room. “We tend to focus on our narrow areas of responsibility, and sometimes, we lose sight of the bigger picture. Right now, though, we need to focus on every detail, large and small.”
The holographic display behind Wiley changed from the Coalition banner to a blue and green planet rotating with red blips covering its surface.
"This planet is DD-138,” Wiley continued. “The quarter of a million people who live there call it “Dakarta”. The Coalition lost contact with Dakarta after a distress signal was sent claiming the Brood had shown up and were feeding on the local population. The closest ship was the Melbourne, and she got to Dakarta 4 days ago and started evacuating the colonists. They saved a over hundred thousand people from a pretty good sized Brood infestation, but they lost over one hundred thousand colonists and 141 Coalition troops in the initial attacks.”
A group of people muttered and mumbled before Captain Wiley raised his hand and continued.
“I just made contact with the Melbourne's skipper. Their decks are full of refugees. They have to leave the system and get to the closest Coalition station 18 hours away. More troops are inbound, but since the Pridemore is the fastest girl in the fleet, we get a special job."
He looked around the room before continuing.
"Who thinks we're out here on a sightseeing trip?"
Predictably, no hands went up.
"The Pridemore's new engines allow us to get to the Sol system to pick up some of the Coalition's best and brightest scientists and make our way to Dakarta before the Melbourne even gets to the station to drop off the refugees." Wiley looked around as he continued. "We'll be near Earth in two hours, pick up the scientists, and be at Dakarta another nine hours after that. We'll have a window of fourteen hours before other support ships arrive and the Melbourne returns to rescue any remaining colonists. Our job will be to get the scientists on and off Dakarta safely so they can collect samples and data to help us learn more about the Brood operating in these systems. We're handing out briefs for each department, and we'll be going over those before we leave this meeting today."
Shit. I thought. We're gonna be here a while.
"At this point,” Wiley finished, “I'd like to turn the floor over to our Chief of Maintenance, Commander Michael Byers. Mike?"
Mike. Right.
Since basic training, I'd been lectured on proper terms of address. Apparently, these rules evaporated once you got above a certain rank. I suspected they weren't the only rules that did.
Byers made his way to the stage.
Byers hated giving briefings, but Chief Abeen insisted that he do them instead of her. It may have had something to do with the fact that Abeen didn't have a mouth (and had to speak through a VOX unit).
"Good Afternoon." Byers said to the crowd. "I'm excited to be going back to my home system near Earth. I lived there for my younger years of life. Most of my family still does. It's a beautiful place that I'm sad I can't share with most of you."
Uh-huh.
Earth was off-limits to almost everyone, especially anyone not Human. The Coalition kept its location secret, and some of the other races were a little upset by that fact. Even going to the Earth's moon was a big deal. I wondered if they'd force Wiley to undergo a memory wipe after the mission was over. Can't have him giving away the location of the biggest biological reserve in existence.
"Maintenance teams are all on double duty," Byers said, interrupting my thoughts. Half the room groaned as he continued. "You will focus on weapons and defensive systems. All non-essential maintenance on the reactor core will be suspended until after this mission."
What the fuck?
There were serious things going on with Anna. Did Byers expect me to hold off until after our little field trip and hope the ship doesn't blow up? I started to raise my hand, and Byers looked at me like he was about to set me on fire.
My hand crept back down.
As Byers droned on, someone took the seat beside me, and I felt a forearm on my shoulder, almost like a high-school buddy making fun of a shorter friend. I turned to find the alien eyes of Chief Engineer Abeen.
Abeen was from a race known as the Abanshi - her slender frame had six limbs (three on each side). Her narrow head and pointy snout were vaguely feline in shape. Unlike cats, however, Abeen had huge eyes with three pupils. Her body was covered in a velvety blue fur, and I always had an odd desire to pet her and see what she felt like.
I suppressed the urge.
Abeen reached into one
of her uniform pockets and pulled out a data tablet, which she then handed to me. As I turned on the screen, a little chat window popped up.
“Good morning,” Abeen said through the chat pop-up.
“Hi,” I typed.
“I saw you were working on Anna this morning. I also saw that she wasn't talking back. Was her AI offline?”