The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


TWENTY-TWO





H

e didn’t remember much about the accident itself—pain, yes, but only an echo of the agony; voices that hadn’t made much sense; the feeling of falling, though certainly the shaft had never ini-tialized gravity. Afterward there had been only a great red desert un-der a burnt-toast sky, and the Wirrinun dragging out designs in the dirt with the tip of his spear.



“Your path will fork,” the Wirrinun said. “Uluru is your future.”



“Uluru?” In this dream he was as naked as the Wirrinun, but he felt curiously unembarrassed. Myell craned his neck, trying to make sense of the Wirrinun’s designs, but the lines wavered and shim-mered and refused to hold still. The landscape around them both was without distinctive features of any kind. “Am I dead? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”



“You will have to choose.” The Wirrinun slammed his staff against the ground and the Rainbow Serpent spiraled out of the dirt, carry-ing Myell up toward the sky. “Choose, choose, choose,” the snake echoed, its voice oily and coy, and Myell slipped from its neck and fell toward a long line of shattered Mother Spheres. Just as he hit the bro-ken stonework of the nearest one, it transformed into the soft mat-tress of a hospital bed. A dark silhouette moved above him, a woman with perfume that almost smelled like strawberries.



“Kay?” he asked.



“No, it’s Chaplain Mow.” She touched his forehead with warm, soft fingers. “There was an accident yesterday. Do you remember?”



“I was dreaming,” he said, groggy from sleep and sedatives. “A snake. The Spheres.”



Chaplain Mow moved to the bedside table. “Here. Drink this.”



A straw in his mouth, blessed coolness: never before had water tasted so good. After a moment the chaplain took the glass away and he grasped her arm. “Did you tell them about our trip?” he asked, sure she was Jodenny. “Do they know about the other planets?”



“I don’t think they know,” she replied. “But if you’d like, you could tell me.”



* * * *



T

he General Quarters that nearly killed Myell also resulted, indi-rectly, in the destruction of Lieutenant Francesco’s career.



Jodenny didn’t hear about the scandal until the day after the acci-dent. She had gone to bed and slept ten hours straight, without a single dream to disturb her. The morning had been spent going through logs and procedures with the Safety Department representa-tives. She was sure that Myell hadn’t done anything wrong during his trip to the slots, and the data sensors confirmed it. His EV suit had been properly operating, the DNGOs had all been locked down, and every safety code had been strictly adhered to. But Circe, who’d been located and removed by a special team, showed no record of colliding with Myell. As far as the robot was concerned, there hadn’t even been an accident.



“Something must be wrong with her programming,” Jodenny said.



Al-Banna, who had sat in for part of the meeting, took her aside af-terward. “You’re sure your people did nothing wrong? Sergeant Myell didn’t bring this on himself in some way?”



The implication made her temper rise. “No, sir. In no possible way did he bring this on himself.”



“Sometimes people do,” Al-Banna said, but he didn’t press her on it.



Later that afternoon she was in her office when Holland asked,

“Lieutenant, would you care to be informed of a development in the officers’ wardroom?”



“What development?” Jodenny asked.



“Lieutenant Francesco has been relieved of duty pending an offi-cial investigation into charges of fraternization with Chief Vostic.”



Hultz had all the gossip, and was glad to share it over the gib. “When the GQ went off one of their RTs walked in on them—it wasn’t pretty, from what I heard.”



Jodenny didn’t know which was worse—Francesco falling for his own chief, or them fooling around in his office. She remembered kissing Myell in Sick Berth, and chided herself for her hypocrisy.



“She’s still at work but he’s been relieved,” Hultz said. “Quenger’s taking over for A. J. for the time being. Poor guy.”



Jodenny called Francesco but he didn’t answer. She decided a visit to Sick Berth could wait. She continued to be upset with her division, though. She snapped at Amador for daring to ask who would take Myell’s place. She caught Mauro leaving his issue room fifteen min-utes early for lunch and put him on report. When she found Lange in IR3 watching the East Enfield vs. Suffolk game on his gib, she snatched it from his hands.



“Where did you get that?” Jodenny demanded.



“It’s mine, Lieutenant!”



“Yours is in Chief Nitta’s desk. This must be stolen.”



“Chief Nitta gave it back to me,” Lange said sourly. “You were supposed to have Strayborn sit down with me but you never did. Chief said I’d been punished long enough.”



Jodenny had in fact forgotten about her promise. Jaunting through the universe via the Mother Sphere and Myell’s near-death had left her slightly preoccupied. She let Lange keep the gib but issued him five demerits for watching soccer on duty and then went back to her office, intent on berating Nitta for going behind her back.



“No one’s here but me, ma’am,” Dicensu said when she stormed in.

“Mrs. Mullaly has a doctor’s appointment. Chief and RT Caldicot went for coffee. Oh, and Commander Picariello’s in your office.”



Picariello was sitting in front of her desk, his long legs stretched in front of him. “What do you know about the animosity between Chief Chiba and Sergeant Myell?”



Jodenny closed the hatch. “You think Chiba tried to kill him?”



“It’s worth a look-see. Wasn’t there an incident between them on the mess deck not long ago?”



“The day before we dropped into Mary River’s system.”



“And then, a fight between Underway Stores and Maintenance.”



Jodenny sat down. “Chief Chiba used to be in Underway Stores. He didn’t like Myell then. Then there was the rape allegation, which you know about.”



“Yes. And I know about what happened while Myell was in custody.”



She remembered Strayborn saying he’d been put in the brig. “What was that, sir?”



Picariello hesitated. “You didn’t hear? Some of the men who worked for Chiba got into Myell’s cell.”



Jodenny leaned forward. “He was in Security’s custody and he got assaulted?”



Picariello’s blue and brown eyes hardened. “There were no in-juries. Sergeant Myell wouldn’t press charges.”



“Was Lieutenant Commander Senga involved, sir?” Jodenny asked.

“He seemed a bit hostile toward Myell when I first talked to him.”



“You let me worry about Senga. My concern is making sure nothing like what happened in T6 happens again, and I don’t care who I have to incarcerate to make sure of it.”



“There’s more.” Jodenny told him about what she’d discovered re-garding the missing DNGO and Chiba being logged into a lifepod he couldn’t possibly have reached in the allotted time span. Picariello lis-tened with a grave expression and went off vowing to look into it. Jo-denny checked the time, wondering if it was a wise idea to go visit Myell in Sick Berth in light of what had happened to Francesco.




Dicensu was still minding the front office. He asked, “How’s Sergeant Myell, ma’am?”



Jodenny picked up a pile of handmail that had come in. “If you’re so interested, why don’t you damn well go and ask him?”



Dicensu cowered. “Because Chief said not to.”



“Chief Nitta said what?”



“When Terry got hurt we wanted to go to Sick Berth,” Dicensu said.

“A lot of people did. The chief ordered us to stay away and not bother him.”



Ysten came in, looking as unhappy with the world as ever. Jodenny knew she should move the conversation with Dicensu to somewhere more private, but her temper overrode her judgment. “What else did the chief say?”



Dicensu’s face furrowed. “That it’s Myell’s own damn fault for get-ting hurt.”



He did a good Nitta impersonation, but Jodenny had a sudden sus-picion. “He said all of that to you?”



“Some of it.” Dicensu hung his head. “Some he was telling Barivee and I kinda overheard.”



Ysten unexpectedly spoke up. “I’ve heard that talk, too. Chief Nitta’s been saying it was Myell and Hosaka who screwed up, otherwise noth-ing would have happened.”



Jodenny retreated to her office with Ysten on her heels. “I’ve imailed you my essay,” he said. “Four thousand words. Plus another two for good measure. You were right.”



She sorted through the handmail. Reports, leave requests, a flyer from the Morale Committee. “Right about what?”



Ysten locked his gaze on the bulkhead. “About what you said. I’m not a good officer. I’m lazy. I don’t take initiative. I could have gone into the shaft to save Myell, but instead a nineteen-year-old AT showed me up as a coward.”



Jodenny put down the mail and gave him her full attention. “Go on.”



“I thought you were exaggerating, so I went back and asked Lieu-tenant Commander Vu to tell me again her opinion of me. Then I asked Master Chief DiSola.”



“And?”



Ysten took a deep breath. “Lieutenant Commander Vu told me if it were up to her, I’d have to turn in my commission tomorrow. Mas-ter Chief DiSola said he pitied anyone under my command.” His face colored. “I never wanted to be that kind of officer. It wasn’t my in-tention.”



“So what are you going to do about it, Ensign?”



“I’m going to improve. I’m going to work for you until I earn your approval.”



“You’ll have a lot of work to do,” she said. “I’m firing Chief Nitta.”



Jodenny couldn’t kick Nitta off the ship. Only the captain could do that, after months of documentation and progressive disciplinary ac-tion. But she had decided that she could no longer afford to have him in her division. She went to Master Chief DiSola and said, “Chief Nitta doesn’t work for me any longer.”



DiSola leaned back in his chair. “He doesn’t?”



“He works somewhere else. I don’t care where else. I don’t care who I have to take to square it.”



“I don’t know if it’s going to fly,” DiSola said cautiously.



“Let me tell you what’s going to happen if you don’t transfer Nitta. I’m going to give him Myell’s old job. He’ll sit in T6 every single day for the rest of this deployment. No chiefs’ lunches. No late mornings or early knock-offs. He’ll be complaining so incessantly that you’ll have a constant earache and a headache to match. Am I painting a pretty picture?”



“Pretty enough. What if I say no?”



“Then I’ll go above your head.”



DiSola’s voice was calm, though his cheeks had spots of red. “That strategy isn’t always going to work for you, Lieutenant.”



“But it’ll work for me today,” Jodenny said.



Later that day Nitta was called to Master Chief DiSola’s office. When he emerged an hour later, he returned to Underway Stores, threw his plaques into a box, and left without a single word. Two days later Jodenny introduced Chief Faddig to the division. Faddig had been working in the ship’s Public Relations office, writing press releases about Aral Sea and her crew. He knew absolutely nothing about supply requisitions, balance sheets, or DNGOs. His primary qualification, and the only one Jodenny cared about, was that he was not Nitta. Nitta was now in Ship’s Services, where Vu assigned him to work in the laundry with a dismayed Ensign Hultz.



Mrs. Mullaly badly rattled by the General Quarters and fearful for her unborn child, decided to quit. She knew the ship would have more drills, but at least she’d be in the Towers with all the other wives when they occurred.



“Sorry about the short notice,” she said. “Will you have trouble filling the position?”



“We’ll be fine,” Jodenny assured her.



If she wanted a new civvie, the position would have to go to Out-sourcing for recruitment. Al-Banna said, “Move Myell into it. He’s go-ing to have to ride a desk for a while anyway.”



Wildstein suggested, “Maybe we could put him somewhere else.”



“Why?” Al-Banna asked. “Underway Stores is short on personnel as it is, or so Lieutenant Scott here likes to tell me every week.”



Jodenny said, “I’ll ask him, sir,” and went to Sick Berth with Faddig in tow. It had been almost three days since she had seen Myell. He was sitting up in bed.



Myell’s expression brightened. “Lieutenant.”



“You’re looking better, Sergeant.” She would keep this thoroughly professional, as she would with any member of her division. “This is Chief Faddig. He’s taking over for Chief Nitta.”



Myell shook Faddig’s hand. “Welcome to the division.”



“I hear it’s an exciting place to be,” Faddig said.



Jodenny said, “Mrs. Mullaly’s leaving and we need someone to fill in her job. Do you want the position?”



He gazed squarely at her. “I’m not sure I’m the admin type, Lieu-tenant.”



“You need light duty and the schedule will be easy.” Myell frowned. Jodenny suffered an attack of self-consciousness. Maybe he blamed her for the accident in some way. Maybe he knew she’d kissed him after surgery and was uncomfortable because her af-fection was not reciprocated. She said, “I can ask the SUPPO to trans-fer you elsewhere.”



“No.” Myell fiddled with the edge of his sheet. “I’ll do it.”



“Good,” she said briskly. “We’ll leave you to rest, then.”



“Actually Lieutenant,” Myell said, and there was no mistaking the hope in his voice. “Can I have a word with you in private?”



She didn’t trust herself. The accident was still too recent, her feel-ings for him too raw. “I’m sorry, but I’m due for a meeting.”



Myell imailed her later that day, asking her to stop by. Jodenny told Holland to delete it unanswered. Rude, she knew, but given what had happened to Francesco, it was the only reasonable action she could take.



* * * *



G

allivan and Timrin visited every day Myell was in Sick Berth. VanAmsal dropped by with some books. Kevwitch came round and asked Myell if he wanted Chiba hurt and hurt bad.



“It was an accident,” Myell insisted. “Leave it be.”




But Security seemed to think it was more than just a random colli-sion. Two chiefs came down to ask him about the fight he’d broken up in the locker room between Spallone, Engel, and Olsson. They also wanted to know about the incident between Myell and Chiba on the mess decks, and the fight that had occurred between Underway Stores and Maintenance. Myell downplayed it all, because he really couldn’t see a connection between all that and the fact Circe had mal-functioned during a General Quarters. He’d seen DNGOs do worse.



“It was just bad luck,” he told Timrin.



Timrin shrugged. “If it is, then they won’t find any evidence of wrongdoing, will they?”



Chaplain Mow called to see how he was doing. Myell remembered a hazy visit from her after his surgery and thanked her for it. Com-mander Wildstein and Master Chief DiSola stopped by for brief chats, which startled him—after the Ford incident, they’d both been cold as ice. Dyatt came by, so large and close to giving birth that Myell wondered if she just shouldn’t grab a bed in the next cubicle over and spread her legs.



“Look what Joe gave me!” She waved her hand so that he could see Olsson’s engagement ring on her finger. “They reassigned him to En-gineering. We’re getting married just as soon as the baby’s born and we know it’s his.”



“That’s great,” he said, and thought back to Olsson in the locker room, Spallone’s threats. A vague memory nagged at him, something about the Repair Shop and DNGOs. He rubbed his forehead, trying to remember.



Dyatt’s smile faded. “He’s been told not to talk to you, but he wants you to know he didn’t have anything to do with what hap-pened. I believe him, Sarge. He’s made some bad choices, and so have I, but we’re both trying to do right.”



Timrin dropped by with the news that Nitta had been transferred.

“Lieutenant Scott’s getting some wash-up to take his place. As good as pissing in the wind, if you ask me.”



Jodenny brought Faddig around but wouldn’t stay. She wouldn’t return Myell’s calls. He brooded on that, telling himself not to be un-reasonable. Gallivan had told him how she’d spent most of the day in the waiting room, waiting to see if he emerged from surgery alive, but she would have done that for anyone. She was just that kind of officer. By the time Dr. Lee released him he had resigned himself to unrequited love. He was looking for his boots when Chaplain Mow came by.



“You look much better,” she said.



“Thanks. At least my insides don’t feel like they’re still broken.”



“Your ribs or your heart?”



He opened the closet doors. “I don’t know what you mean.”



Chaplain Mow sat in the visitor’s chair. “Did you hear about Lieu-tenant Francesco and Chief Vostic?”



“Got caught, I hear.” Timrin had told him. “Stupid of them.”



“Do you think the fraternization rules are fair?” Chaplain Mow asked.



The boots were under a spare blanket on the bottom shelf. Bend-ing carefully, one arm pressed against his ribs, Myell fished them out. He told himself that as soon as he got back to his cabin he was going to slide into bed, pull a sheet over his head, and sleep for another week. “It doesn’t matter what I think. I was wrong about how she feels.”



“Perhaps. But that doesn’t change how you feel.” Chaplain Mow leaned forward. “What about the trip through the Mother Spheres the two of you took?”



He was almost too flummoxed to reply. “She told you?”



“No. You did. You weren’t exactly clearheaded at the time.”



Myell got one boot on with ease, but his right side lit up with fire as he reached for the other. “You shouldn’t have listened. It was non-sense from the drugs.”



Chaplain Mow gazed at him steadily.



“It was,” Myell insisted. If he breathed slowly and shallowly, the pain was just about manageable. “People visit Spheres all the time. Nothing ever happens to them. And we couldn’t make it happen again.”



“But you made it happen once,” Chaplain Mow insisted. “It’s the greatest discovery since Jackie MacBride found the Little Alcheringa, and it brings us all closer to the Wondjina. Don’t you see? You told me that the Rainbow Serpent said you would have to make a choice. Secrecy versus the truth, Terry. The path where you continue to hide your knowledge, or the road where you follow the spirit path that’s been laid for you in your visions.”



Spirit path. Road to ruin, more likely. “You don’t know that for sure.”



“No one knows anything for sure,” she replied. “Do you feel up for a walk? There’s someone you should meet. Someone who might be able to help.”



Chaplain Mow seemed so earnest, so sincere, that something hard inside him softened just a little. Bed would have to wait. “All right. But unless you want me to go barefoot, I need your help with this damned boot.”



* * * *