The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


NINE





F

ortyeight hours before the Aral Sea dropped into the Alcheringa, Jodenny called Commander Calinder and explained she’d been tasked to be the watchbill training officer for the Supply Department.



“Good luck to you,” Calinder said. “I turned the job over to Com-mander Osherman last week.”



“Thank you, sir. I’ll contact him.” Jodenny hung up and buried her head in her arms. After several minutes she mustered enough strength to ping Osherman.



“Jodenny,” he said when he answered his gib.



“I’ve taken over junior officer training for the Supply Department. I didn’t know you were in charge of the program.”



“I’ll send you the meeting schedule.”



“Thank you, sir.”



“Jo—” Osherman leaned closer to the vid. She remembered the tenderness of his touch, the way he sighed sometimes in his sleep. “Are you sure you’re ready to be back in space?”



“As ready as you are, Commander,” she said, and cut the connection. Her health and well-being certainly hadn’t been a priority for him when he had so abruptly broken off their relationship on the Yangtze. She was still glaring at the comm when Caldicot pinged her to say Lund had arrived. He came into her office with a pained expression.




“Ma’am. You wanted to talk to me?”



“Sit, sit,” Jodenny insisted. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been to Sick Berth twelve times this month.”



“Irritable bowel syndrome. Chronic indigestion. My headaches— you wouldn’t believe my headaches.”



She offered him a bottle of water from her refrigerator. “It’s crimi-nal that none of the doctors onboard have helped you.”



Lund looked pitiful. “They try, ma’am.”



Jodenny shook her head. “They’re not doing enough. I’m going to complain to Commander Al-Banna on your behalf. The staff is obvi-ously incompetent.”



“I wouldn’t go that far, ma’am. They do a lot of tests.”



“Tests are nothing without results. I’ve scheduled you to see some specialists at Fleet when we get to Mary River. And if they can’t help, specialists on Warramala. Everywhere we go, I want you to see physi-cians until we get you proper treatment.”



Lund’s face was almost comically indecisive. “Everywhere we go?”



“Everywhere,” Jodenny said. “And every test there is, every proce-dure, no matter how arduous—you need to undergo it.”



“Arduous?” he squeaked out.



“But this is the hard part, AT Lund. Even though you’re ill, even though you may not feel your best, I need you in this division. We’re falling apart without people like you who know how to do their jobs. Will you promise me that you’ll do your best to come to work, even though you might feel ill?”



“I’ll try, ma’am,” he said, his voice faint.



“Good,” Jodenny replied. “Thank you.”



Twenty-four hours before the countdown to the Alcheringa ex-pired, Jodenny pinged Ensign Sanchez in Ship’s Services and said, “Commander Al-Banna put me in charge of watchbill training. We’re having a meeting tonight, at twenty hundred hours, in the ward-room. Why don’t you come to dinner first?”



That night the wardroom table was full. Sanchez, a dour older woman with a pin for prior enlisted service, had joined the usual complement of Hultz, Francesco, Zeni, Ysten, and Weaver. Also join-ing them was the ever-talkative Cally Gunther, who dug into roasted eggplant and papita.



“I should eat here more often,” he said around a mouthful of food.



“I hear you’ve been working out at the main gym, Jodenny,” Zeni said.

“Didn’t anyone tell you there’s an officers’ gym on F-Deck?”



“Isn’t E-Deck bigger? More equipment.” And less chance of run-ning into Osherman, Jodenny thought.



“Aren’t you worried about being all sweaty in front of your troops?”

Hultz asked.



Francesco smiled. “I think it’s a fine idea. If more division officers worked out with their crews, there might be fewer people in the obe-sity program.”



After coffee and dessert, Jodenny gathered Hultz, Gunther, Sanchez, and Ysten in the lounge. She said, “The four of you are all overdue on your watch qualifications.”



“I’ve tried, honest!” Hultz protested.



Ysten had obviously not forgiven her for the Dicensu incident. With a sneer he said, “It’s hard getting the quals done when you have other duties, Lieutenant.”



“I understand,” Jodenny said. “That’s why we’re going to help each other. Every night after dinner we’re going to get together right here and study. The only time you’re excused is if you’re on a training watch—I’ll schedule you for those—or you’re in Sick Berth.”



Sanchez folded her arms. “I’ve got a husband and kids in the Tow-ers. My evenings are for spending with them, not studying here.”



“As soon as you get qualified, you go on the watchbill. Then your evenings will be up to the watchbill coordinator.”



Sanchez stood up. “I’m going to talk to Lieutenant Commander Vu.”



“Sit down, Ensign,” Jodenny ordered. After a moment Sanchez sat with a glower. Jodenny continued. “Any of your division officers can call me tomorrow if they have any questions. In the meantime, I’ve pulled the quals each of you still have to finish, as well as my own. Let’s take a look.”



Four hours before they reached the Alcheringa, Jodenny got out of the bed in which she’d spent most of the night staring at the overhead. She brought coffee to the security guards on duty at the base of T6.



“Thank you, ma’am. There’s nothing to report here.” That came from Poison, whose sister had died on the Yangtze. He had volunteered for this duty. It had been the captain’s decision, to tighten security and cancel normal routine in T6 as the Aral Sea made her final approach. Jodenny didn’t agree with the fuss, but she didn’t disagree, either.



Ten minutes later the Security Officer, Commander Picariello, made his appearance. He had a noble face of Mediterranean ancestry and mismatched eyes. One was bright blue, like a robin’s egg. The other was as brown as milk chocolate.



“How are you holding up, Lieutenant?” Picariello asked.



“I’ll be a lot happier once we’re in the Alcheringa,” she admitted. “How about you, sir?”



“First ship to follow the Yangtze. You can tell yourself there’s no way the CFP could have planted anything onboard—and I’m here to guarantee it—but I wouldn’t want to be the CO right now.” Picariello made sure none of the guards were within eavesdropping range. “I heard you had a discussion with Lieutenant Commander Senga.”



“Yes, sir,” Jodenny said. Discussion was a polite way of labeling it. She had clearly articulated what she thought of him whisking Myell away before regular working hours for an impromptu interrogation. He had expressed his adamant belief that Myell was guilty as hell of rape and theft. Only the presence of Sergeant Rosegarten had kept things civil.



“I’ll be keeping my eye on things,” Picariello said. “Call me if you have any more problems.”



Three hours before the Aral Sea was scheduled to drop, Mrs. Mullaly came into Jodenny’s office and burst into tears.



“What if something goes wrong?” she asked.



Jodenny handed her a tissue. “Nothing’s going to go wrong. One minute we’ll be in normal space, and the next we won’t. It’s like drop-ping a stone into a river.”



Mrs. Mullaly blew her nose. “Sure. That’s what they all say. When we left Fortune, I thought it was hardly worth the fuss. You wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t looking out a porthole. But it went wrong for the Yangtze, right? It could go wrong again.”



“That was because of the CFP, not the Alcheringa,” Jodenny said.

“The Wondjina built it very carefully. If we don’t approach the drop point at the right speed and trajectory, we just keep going in normal space.”



Mrs. Mullaly seemed satisfied by Jodenny’s explanation, although her nose was still dripping as she returned to her desk. Jodenny al-most gave her the rest of the day off, but most offices and services were open for business and every department was under orders to maintain routine. She checked her queue for messages. No one had sent her anything in the last ten minutes. Jodenny reviewed the min-utes of the Garden and Soil Committee twice before realizing none of the words were making any sense. When she scanned for the wreck of the Yangtze, it was too far out of range to display.




Her gib beeped. “Scott, this is Al-Banna.”



“Yes, sir?”



“Report to the CO’s briefing room on C-Deck.”



What had she done wrong? “Sir?”



Al-Banna didn’t mask the displeasure in his voice. “Now, Lieu-tenant.”



Jodenny hurried to the lift.



* * * *



B

ecause T6 was closed, Nitta told Myell to make himself useful in IR4 by helping Mauro straighten out his logs. The issue room had seen better days, but after a few hours of Mauro working the counter and Myell matching receipts, a small modicum of order was restored.



“You’ve got to stay on top of this stuff,” Myell said.



“I try,” Mauro said, “but it’s a lot of work.”



Myell checked the clock. Just about an hour until they dropped into the Alcheringa. He wondered how Lieutenant Scott was holding up under the pressure. He was trying to invent a pretext for visiting her of-fice when Nitta pinged and said, “Mauro, get down here to LD-G and explain what the hell kind of COSAL you sent VanAmsal yesterday.”



Mauro grimaced. “Yes, Chief.”



Business died down after Mauro left, and Myell started restacking boxes of boots. He heard a shuffle behind him but swung around too late to prevent someone’s fist from driving into his side. The shock of it drove the breath from his lungs and sent him to his knees. Surging sideways, he tackled his attacker at the waist and knocked him against the shelves. Spallone. The bastard. A second attacker grabbed Myell’s shoulders, dragged him backward, and threw him facedown to the deck. A terrible weight pressed against his spine.



“Stay out of Olsson’s business,” Engel said, malicious glee in his voice.



Spallone crouched low beside Myell. “You make the same f*cking mistake over and over, Myell. Curiosity killed the—”



“Medbot activate!” Myell ordered.



The flying robot swooped in to be of assistance. While Engel’s at-tention was momentarily distracted, Myell bucked him off. Spallone made a grab for him, and the two of them slammed against the shelves again. A sharp pain spiraled along Myell’s left ribs but he kept swinging his fist at Spallone’s face.



“Hey! What’s going on in there?” someone shouted.



“F*ck off!” Spallone said.



Three apprentice mates burst into the issue room and separated them. Spallone’s nose was bleeding, Engel had cut his head against a shelf, and Myell’s right hand throbbed as if he’d been hitting a brick wall. The medbot fluttered in indecision before zeroing in on Spallone.



“Please stand still,” it said to him.



Spallone twisted away. “Get the f*ck away.”



AM Loudermilk, baby-faced and indignant, asked, “You hurt, Sarge?”



Spallone tried to free himself from Loudermilk’s grip. “You should goddamn mind your own business.”



“You want us to call Security?” Hoefer asked.



“No,” Myell said. “They’re not going to cause any more trouble.”



It wasn’t true, but it was expedient. Spallone and Engel shrugged themselves free and left the issue room. The apprentice mates gave Myell reproachful looks. He knew that in their eyes he was chicken-shit, a coward, one damn poor excuse for a sergeant.



“Did you have some requisitions?” he asked, ducking his head.



Loudermilk answered for all of them. “Nah, we’ll come back later.”



His rescuers departed. Myell locked the door that Mauro had neg-lected to secure and closed the gate on the counter. He sat on a stool in the back until the worst of the shakes passed and he could hold his hands steady. When Mauro came back he didn’t say anything about the closed gate or Myell’s disheveled condition.



“Chief said you can go back to T6 once we drop into the Alcheringa,”

Mauro said, his eyes averted.



“Yeah.” Myell slipped a hand into his pocket and touched the thin, flat server that had recorded the whole incident. “I bet he did.”



* * * *



T

he captain’s briefing room was guarded by a security tech who opened the hatch for Jodenny. Once inside she saw several high-ranking officers and civilians as well as Chaplain Mow and Osherman. Most people were picking food from a buffet table or sipping morning cocktails. The ship’s Executive Officer, Commander Larrean, came over to introduce himself.



“Sorry I wasn’t available when you checked onboard.” He was a short man with round checks and a kind smile. “I’m glad you could come this morning.”



“Does the captain throw a party every time we drop, sir?” Jodenny asked.



Larrean’s smile widened. “Not always. Let me show you around.”



She shook hands with the governor of an Aboriginal colony in T9, the warden of the penal tower, and the Bishop of Baiame, who was returning from the Vatican on Fortune. Larrean didn’t tell them she’d been on the Yangtze, but more than one gaze lingered on her MacBride Cross. When she couldn’t bring herself to mingle anymore she stood by the vids and looked at the stars. The Alcheringa was out there, in-visible, twisting, waiting to carry them down the line or herald their destruction.



Osherman appeared at her elbow. “I heard you’re shaking up Un-derway Stores.”



Jodenny deliberately kept her gaze on the vid. “I held a uniform in-spection. That’s as far as shaking up goes.”



His voice was dry. “Challenging the status quo on this ship might not be the wisest course of action to take.”



“What would you suggest? Leaving things the way they are?”



“There’s some benefit in keeping under the radar.”



“It doesn’t benefit my people,” she replied.



“If you can’t be persuaded, at least take care,” Osherman said. “The stress can pile up on you in ways you don’t expect, make you do things you regret later.”



The hairs on Jodenny’s neck stood up. Her records were sealed. No one but Commander Campos was supposed to know what had hap-pened. She turned to him and said, “I never saw you at Alice. Weren’t you there for temp duty?”



“Only on paper. Mostly I was doing odd jobs over at Fleet.” He stared at the vid. “It’s not going to happen again, you know.”



Their relationship or an explosion? The first was a given, but the sec-ond was still to be determined. Osherman drifted off to mingle. With ten minutes left on the clock, Jodenny rehearsed the number and loca-tion of her lifepod. She plotted a mental map on how she was going to get there. She watched the countdown clock and realized that she should be with her people, wherever they were. She turned to tell Lar-rean she was leaving but he was deep in conversation with a com-mander from Drive. Why wasn’t he on the bridge, where he belonged? Why weren’t they all already in their lifepods, ready to launch?



Chaplain Mow caught her gaze and came straight over. “Don’t worry Dropping into the Alcheringa is as routine as brushing your teeth.”



“It wasn’t last time I did it.” Jodenny started to shake. “We should go to our lifepods.”



Chaplain Mow steered Jodenny back to the vids. “What do you see out there?”



“Nothing.”



“Focus, Lieutenant.”



The snap in Mow’s voice helped. “The universe,” Jodenny replied.




“Imagine Jackie MacBride and her crew on that first accidental slide down the Little Alcheringa. One minute they’re approaching Mars and then—nothing! Sensors dead, no external data. They had no idea of what had happened or where they were going. Did they panic?”



“No.”



“But as far as they knew, they were already dead.”



“She held them together.”



“How?” Chaplain Mow asked.



“Faith.” Jodenny took a steadying breath. Back at the academy, the cadets had been required to read the crew logs from that fateful trip. Books, movies, and popular songs had immortalized the story. A pic-ture of Jackie MacBride had hung in her room for years. “Discipline.”



“And what happened?”



“They reached Fortune, turned around, and came home safely.”



Chaplain Mow smiled. “As will we.”



The countdown expired. Without any sense of transition at all, the ship dropped into the stream and the vids went dark.



“We’re in,” Chaplain Mow said, and gave her a friendly squeeze around the shoulders.



In. On the circuit. Sliding down the Big Alcheringa. And alive, for now.



* * * *