She half stands, leans across the table, grabs me by the back of the head, and pulls me into a kiss.
“Don’t take any shit from him,” she says. “Getting iced is your job, and you were out there on orders. He can’t be mad at you for being a klutz.” She kisses me again, this time on the forehead. “I’m gonna need some rack time after I get back in, but I’ll ping you after that, huh?” She kisses me once more on the mouth. “Make sure you brush your teeth first, though. That cycler paste is nasty.”
She pats me once on the cheek, picks up her tray, and goes.
006
I SHOULDN’T BE nervous about going to see Marshall. I mean, he’s not likely to have me killed today. Especially lately, I can’t always say that.
Anyway, he may be our supreme commander, but I’ve known Marshall longer than I’ve known anyone else on Niflheim other than Berto. He was the first person to greet me when my shuttle docked at the orbital assembly plant where they were putting the finishing touches on the Drakkar, two days after my interview with Gwen Johansen and three days after Darius Blank’s minion made me spend the longest thirty seconds of my life staring into the face of Satan.
Well, greet might be a strong word for what Marshall did. He was definitely there, though.
In all fairness to him, I probably didn’t make a very good first impression. I’d never experienced free fall before the shuttle’s gravitics cut out for the approach to the station. I’d seen vids of people in orbit, of course. You couldn’t spend five minutes on the entertainment nets without seeing advertisements for the orbital resorts with tourists in wing suits playing zero-g handball or some damn thing. I always assumed it would be kind of relaxing—like floating in the ocean, but without having to worry about getting eaten by a kraken.
The thing is, though, it’s not called free float. It’s called free fall.
The second the gravitic field shut down, my stomach climbed up into my throat, my heart started pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips, and my lizard brain let me know in no uncertain terms that, visual evidence aside, we were dropping like rain from a clear blue sky, and we were definitely, definitely about to die.
I didn’t lose it like a few of my fellow passengers did. I didn’t scream, I didn’t start flailing around, and I didn’t need to use the vacuum mask they provided in the seat back for folks who couldn’t keep their lunches down. I was okay. I definitely wasn’t good, though, and by the time we’d docked and I’d made my way through the air lock and into the arrivals lounge, I was drenched in sweat and trembling.
I probably looked like a morphine addict two days into withdrawal—and that’s the first impression Commander Marshall got of me.
Marshall was in the lounge waiting for us, floating by the viewport opposite the air lock, staring down at the night side of Midgard as it spun past five hundred klicks below. He waited until the last of the dozen would-be colonists from the shuttle had drifted into the lounge and the air lock’s inner door had clanged shut behind her to acknowledge us. I could see right away that we were in the presence of someone who thought of himself as In Charge of Things. From his jet-black tight-fade haircut to his perpetually clenched jaw to the fact that he somehow managed to look like he had a metal rod for a spine even in free fall, he was almost a parody of the sort of cold-eyed, combat-hardened military man that Midgard hadn’t ever actually had or needed.
It took me three years and two reincarnations to realize that his whole aspect was ten percent genuine priggishness, ten percent insecurity, and eighty percent overcompensation for the fact that, as designated ground commander, he may as well have been cargo for the entirety of the transit.
“Well,” Marshall said, and kicked off the floor toward us. He caught himself with one hand on a grab bar set into the ceiling, then drifted down to more or less stand in front of me. “Welcome to Himmel Station. This will be your home until the Drakkar is cleared for boarding. My name is Hieronymus Marshall, and I’ll be in charge of this little expedition. Have any of you been off-planet before?” A half dozen hands went up. Marshall nodded. “Excellent. And how many of you others are trying desperately not to vomit right now?” Three hands went up, then a hesitant fourth. Marshall nodded again. “Yes, well. You’ll get over that eventually. Or else you won’t, I suppose. Either way, you’re here for the duration, as they say.”
“Sir?”
It was one of the vomiters. Marshall turned to look at him.
“Yes?”
“Dugan, sir. Biology. When—” He belched, then grimaced and swallowed. “Ugh … when will they be transferring up our personal effects? They wouldn’t let us bring them onto the shuttle.”
Marshall gave him a tight smile. “They will not be, unfortunately. Mass, as you can probably imagine, is a bit of an issue on a trip of this sort. As a result, we’ve made the decision to forbid the transfer of personal items.” That got a round of groans from the group, but Marshall cut it off with a wave. “None of that, please. I promise you’ll be given everything you need, and I think you’ll find there’s little need for knickknacks on a beachhead colony.” His eyes swept across us. “Any other questions?”
I raised my hand. This was the first of several mistakes I made in my early days as a colonist.
“Yes,” Marshall said. “You are?”
“Mickey Barnes,” I said. “They told us we had a thirty-kilo personal allowance.”
His smile became slightly tighter, and significantly less of a smile.
“As I said, Mr. Barnes, the decision was made to rescind that allowance.”
“Nobody told us that,” I said. “I need some of the stuff that I left in my bag.”
Marshall was definitely not smiling anymore. “Mr. Barnes,” he said. “When we are fully loaded, there will be one hundred and ninety-eight colonists and crew onboard the Drakkar. If each of them brought aboard thirty kilos of figurines and hand lotion and whatnot, that would increase the mass of the ship by nearly six thousand kilograms.”
“I know,” I said. “I can do math. I just—”
“Do you know how much energy is required to accelerate six thousand kilograms to point-nine c?”
“Um…” I said.
The smile came back. “Not so good at math after all, hmm?”