The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


THREE





M

yell’s gib beeped as soon as the birdie landed. “Get yourself over to T6,”

Chief Nitta said. “Ishikawa’s sick and I need someone in the tower for launch.”



Myell was a sergeant and Ishikawa was an able tech. Underway Stores had twenty personnel assigned to it, and almost any of them could have babysat the DNGOs in Tower 6. But there was no use ar-guing about it. He dropped his rucksack off in his cabin and took a tram from Mainship to the Rocks. The access ring to T6 switched him around to the tower’s gravity orientation and six minutes after Nitta’s page he was relieving Ahmed Lange in the command module. Lange had his feet up on the counter and was playing Snipe.




“What’s wrong with Ish?” Myell asked.



“Who knows?” Lange gestured toward the windows. “Your dogs missed you.”



Myell gazed out at the tower, which measured fifty decks from base to dome. DNGOs darted silently and efficiently in the zero-g of the central shaft, their guide lights glimmering like stars. Directly be-neath the command module, Loading Dock 6 received deliveries from the DNGOs and sent them over to Mainship via a mag-lev Di-rect Conveyance System.



“Anyone else around?” Myell asked.



“Strayborn and some others are down securing the dock. I’m off to a security watch.”



“Right, then. See you.”



Myell locked down the command controls and took the lift down to the base of the hold. Dim down there, cold as hell, but the gravity shell kept him rooted to the deck. Ishikawa had left three DNGOs at his workbench and a log of what she’d done while he was on Kook-aburra.



“Again, Castalia?” He patted the Class III’s round surface and took a look at her damaged thruster. “What have you been banging against?”



Although DNGOs couldn’t feel emotions, he fancied a certain glumness in her eyes. Beside her, Boann, a Class IV had damaged her camera while retrieving items in the slots. The Class I, Isis, had stopped responding to recalls from the control module. He could probably fix the latter two but Castalia would have to go to the Repair Shop. When he went to attach her leash, she rose swiftly from the bench and hov-ered in place ten meters above him. The damaged thruster made her wobble dangerously.



“Damn it,” Myell said. Ishikawa knew better than to leave the unit on standby. He switched his gib to the DNGO command channel and ordered her down. Castalia spun hesitantly, listed to the side, and de-scended with an air of resignation.



“Sorry, girl.” Myell slid in a restraining bolt. “It’s an unfair uni-verse.”



He tugged Castalia into the lift, up to level twenty-five, and across the access ring to the Rocks. The restaurants, shops, and other busi-nesses along the kilometer-long promenade were closing up in prepa-ration for launch. Electronic ducks cruising the winding stream began to tuck their heads under their wings, and similarly artificial koalas re-treated to the upper branches of a live eucalyptus tree. The overhead dome offered a stunning view of Kookaburra but after they dropped into the Alcheringa, holograms would simulate blue skies or starry nights. In a month or so they would emerge at Mary River, and after a week or so continue down the Alcheringa to Warramala and Baiame. He didn’t mind Warramala so much. He had no intention of stepping foot on Baiame.



“Launch minus two hours,” the comm announced. “All passengers return to quarters.”



A tram stopped at a nearby station. Inside it, a dozen youngsters jumped up and down in excitement while red-robed nuns tried to calm them. An elderly couple smiled at the children and stroked a pair of puppies squirming in their laps. As the tram started to slide away Myell saw something he never expected to see on a starship, even one full of immigrants and travelers: a naked Aboriginal man, dusty and short, standing at a set of doors with a wooden spear in hand. He wore a belt of knotted hair, and his skin had been painted with swirling white de-signs from forehead to hips. He was scowling at Myell with such a fierce expression that Myell took an involuntary step backward.



All the trams were equipped with cameras, and Security would never let anyone wander around naked and armed. Yet no one on the tram even seemed to notice him. Throat suddenly dry, Myell told himself it was some odd trick of the light, maybe a prank by some-one with a hologram projector. He forced himself to look away for a few seconds. When he turned his head back the tram was far down the boulevard and the Aboriginal was gone.



Pushing down a sense of unease, Myell tugged Castalia over to the Repair Shop.



Pug-ugly RT Engel, who nobody much liked anyway, said, “We’re closed.”



“Says who?” Myell asked.



“New rules. We close two hours before launch.”



“Why?”



“He said we’re closed, swipe.”



He knew that voice. Had listened to it almost every day during the bad months, when Greiger had been the DIVO but everyone in Un-derway Stores understood who was really in charge. Myell turned to Chief Chiba. “I heard him.”



Chiba had at least six centimeters and ten kilograms on Myell, and spent two hours a day weight lifting. Myell had seen him once put his fist through a barracks wall in a fit of pique. It was hard not to step back when he approached, or beg for mercy right away to avoid being hurt. Myell stood his ground anyway, despite the cold sweat beading on his palms.



Chiba said, “You heard him but you don’t listen, Myell. You never listen.”



“Two hours is ridiculous—” Myell said, and made the mistake of glancing toward Engel. Chiba grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and shoved him up against the bulkhead. Something jabbed him so hard in the lower back that he gasped. Chiba’s arm went across his throat, choking off most of his air supply.



“You have a lot of problems,” Chiba growled, his face so close Myell could smell onions on his breath. “But I will always be number one on your list. Understand?”



Myell tried to pull Chiba’s arm away but couldn’t. The Repair Shop grayed at the edges as the pressure against his throat grew stronger. How would they explain his body if they killed him? Maybe they’d shove his corpse out an airlock, or stow it in a tower until someone found it by accident.



“Understand, swipe?” Chiba asked.



“Yes,” Myell ground out.



The crushing pressure eased away. Chiba stepped back. “Good. Get the hell out of my shop.”



Myell grabbed Castalia’s leash and left as quickly as he could. His face felt hot and his fists shook. He should have gone AWOL, he should have never joined Team Space, he should have—



The General Quarters alarm started shrieking. Passengers who’d been dawdling on the Rocks jerked in surprise. A tram that had started across the gulf to Mainship ground to a halt and reversed di-rection. Fire and radiation hatches slammed shut as comm orders squawked overhead.



“Crew to emergency stations. Power Plants into standby. Lifepods, prepare to launch.”



Myell’s lifepod was back in Mainship. He’d never make it. He leashed Castalia to a lamppost and sprinted toward T6. Twenty sec-onds passed. Thirty. The alarm blasted against his eardrums. He reached a crew ladder and scrambled down to the station below the access ring. The press of his thumb opened the hatch and registered his location with Core. More than a dozen men and women had already crowded inside, some from his own department, the others from Maintenance or Tower Support. All the lights on the boards shone a steady green.



Myell pushed his way forward. “What’s going on?”



Only Gordon Strayborn, as immaculate and straight-shouldered as ever, deigned to answer. “When I got here, Engineering was lit up like a Christmas tree. But everything switched back. It must have been a screwy sensor.”



Chardray Nagarajan slapped the panel. “Maybe it’s this shitty ma-chine, and the whole ship is going to hell around us.”



“Like the Yangtze,” someone said.



Strayborn ordered, “Don’t say that name.”



Although the module was well ventilated, Myell smelled the dank odor of fear. Nearly eight hundred people had died on the Yangtze. The board lights remained green, the comm silent. He asked, “Can you get the bridge channel up?”




Strayborn shook his head. “It’s locked out.”



An able tech from Maintenance raised her hand. “Sometimes I lis-ten to the Repair channel. It’s simplex, but they forget to lock it.”



Strayborn punched it up. They heard a fast clicking sound, then a man’s irritated voice. “That’s a big fat zero. I double-checked. Noth-ing looks out of place.”



“They’re looking for sabotage,” Strayborn said tightly.



Or maybe a CFP bomb. For thirty minutes they listened to the one-sided conversations. The GQ lights and tones finally faded and the comm announced, “All conditions normal. All personnel report back to duty. Passengers are restricted to quarters. T-minus two hours and holding.”



Myell approached the tech who’d spoken up about the Repair line.

“That was a good suggestion, AT Holden. What else can you hear?”



She gave him a nervous smile. “Almost all the B channels. Not Se-curity, not Medical, but you can listen to Tower Support bitch about passengers and hear what the captain’s ordered for lunch.”



Myell grinned. “You don’t want to be caught eavesdropping on the captain.” Everyone knew his punishments were swift and severe.



“You’re right about that.” Her smile widened, but then she focused on his nametag and all good humor fled. “You’re Sergeant Myell?”



He said, “Last time I checked, yes.”



“Oh.” This time her voice was filled with ice. “I’ve got to get back to work.”



Myell watched her go. Her reaction reminded him of Chiba and the swipes back in Repair Services. He trudged back to the Rocks to retrieve Castalia, but she was no longer attached to the post where he’d left her. Myell tipped his head back, wondering if she’d floated off, but the dome was stark blue with no sign of the DNGO. He opened the command channel on his gib but she didn’t come when called, and in fact made no response at all.



“Shit,” he said. Something else to be blamed for.



* * * *



J

odenny had fled her cabin blindly, with no idea where she was go-ing. On the Yangtze, her emergency station had been on H-Deck. On the Aral Sea, it could be on any of a dozen others. Flummoxed, she came to a complete halt on the ladder she was climbing. A hand shoved her ass indelicately and she stumbled out to the nearest deck. The GQ klaxon screamed into her brain as it had so many nightmare-soaked nights in the Alice barracks.



T6 lighting up like a supernova. Parts of its shredded hull shattering the Rocks and ripping into Mainship. Thick smoke all around her, the wounded screaming in pain and panic, the pulsing fear that some-thing terrible had already befallen her friends—



“Them’s the breaks, boot,” Jem would have said, had he lived.



Jodenny blinked. F-Deck. Damn it, this wasn’t the Yangtze. She hauled herself down the ladder and made for her old station. A slim, short chief named Vostic was supervising as personnel rushed past.



“You don’t belong here,” Vostic said to Jodenny.



“I don’t know which one—”



“We’re full. Try J-Deck.”



Nonessential personnel from Supply, Medical, and Ops pushed their thumbs to the wallgib and hurried inside the lifepod. Jodenny said, “No!

They might not have room.”



“Try D—”



“Chief, nothing in this universe is keeping me from getting into that pod,” Jodenny said, and meant it. Something in her expression must have convinced the chief of her desperation, because Vostic grabbed Jodenny’s thumb, pushed it to the gib, verified it with her own print, and shoved her inside the pod.



Tears threatening to blind her, Jodenny staggered down the row to one of the last remaining seats. She pulled the safety bars down over her body and sat on her violently trembling hands. The crew around her tactfully ignored her shaken state.



“If this is a damn drill, I’ll kill the lunatic who planned it,” an en-sign said.



Someone answered with, “I’ll help you dispose of the body.”



Jodenny squeezed her eyes shut. Jem’s corpse had been lost in space. Dyanne had been crushed between bulkheads until only a mangle of bones and flesh remained. Voices swam around her in de-bate, some fearful, some petulant. Campos had been right. She should have never left Kookaburra.



“You know what I think?” a sergeant said. “I think whoever decided naming these ships after environmental disasters back on Earth ought to have a psych consult.”



For several minutes Jodenny forced herself to exhale and inhale through her nose. The Yangtze had been lost. The Aral Sea was still in-tact. The longer the lifepod stayed in dock, the more likely it was that the GQ was either a false alarm or a test of crew readiness. There was no way that the fanatics of the Colonial Freedom Project could have successfully planted another bomb. When the comm clicked to life, Jodenny’s head shot up.



‘All conditions normal,” a voice said.



Complaints and conversation drowned out the rest of the an-nouncement. Jodenny stood up and was nearly crushed by a swarm of bodies. By diligently keeping her eyes on the hatch she was able to keep from panicking, and after an interminably long period of push-ing and pulling she broke free into the passage.



Vostic was there, in conference with a commander. Embarrassed by her overreaction, Jodenny tried to slink off unnoticed but didn’t get far.



“Lieutenant Scott!” The commander came her way. He was short and compact, with steel-colored hair. He squeezed her hand like a vise. “Fayid Al-Banna. You ready to check in with me?”



“Yes, sir,” she replied, but he had already walked away.



Al-Banna brushed past the line forming at the lift. “Bet this scared the hell out of you.”



“A little, sir.”



“Piss on that. I was scared, and I didn’t just come off the worst wreck in TS history.” The lift arrived and Al-Banna boarded immedi-ately

“Goddamn drills. Probably delay us at least two hours. What do they think on the bridge, that we’ve got nothing better to do down here?”



Jodenny didn’t think he was setting a good example, complaining in front of the crew that way, but she tried to make a diplomatic re-sponse.

“Maybe it was a mistake.”



“Whoever made it should get his ass demoted.”



On the Flats, people scurried to get out of Al-Banna’s way. He led Jodenny past Bartis’s counter and into his office, which was small and immaculate and located in the middle of a desert. The grammed walls showed bleached sand and pale blue sky in all directions. She wondered if he considered himself a direct descen-dant of the nomads of ancient Egypt or a reincarnation of some mighty pharaoh.



Al-Banna gestured for her to sit and then dropped into his own chair, his back ramrod straight. “There have to be dozens of supply lieutenants down on Kookaburra, just waiting for an assignment like this. How’d you land it?”



“I was lucky, sir.”



“Piss on luck. Did you pull strings? Call in a favor or two, use your fame with the higher-ups?”



She almost denied it, but that seemed pointless. “Some might say so, sir.”



“Nothing wrong with that. But if you ever try jumping over my head, I’ll slap you down so hard they’ll have to scrape your career off the deck with a spatula. Understood?”




“Yes, sir.”



“Good. I’m putting you in Food Services. Try not to poison anyone important and we’ll get along fine.”



Jodenny took a deep breath. “The captain put me in charge of Un-derway Stores, sir.”



Al-Banna stared at her. “He did what?”



“He said I’m replacing Lieutenant Commander Greiger.”



“Goddamn it! Who the hell is running this department?” He stabbed his comm button. “Larrean, this is Al-Banna.”



An administrative aide replied, “I’m sorry, sir, the Executive Officer is unavailable. May I tell him you called?”



Al-Banna hung up. “F*ck it all. Go ahead and take over Underway Stores. It’s the worst division I have. If Greiger hadn’t run himself into a mountain I would have fired his ass. You’ll piss off Quenger, who was supposed to get it. Wildstein, too. She’s his mentor. But those are your problems now. Have fun.”



Jodenny left as quickly as she could. Out on the Flats, the air was cold and dry and oppressively thick. On rubbery legs she forced her-self past blurry strangers and toward her quarters. No one stopped her, which was a relief.



She certainly didn’t want her new shipmates to see her sobbing like a baby.



* * * *



A

t seventeen hundred hours the Aral Sea engaged aux drive and left Kookaburra. The haul to the Alcheringa drop point would take five days. An hour after launch, sequestered in his favorite booth at the No Holds Barred, Myell peered into the depths of his beer. His roommate Mick Timrin sat beside him. Some of the overvids displayed girls gy-rating to music but most were replaying the Dunredding soccer game.



“F*cking idiots.” Timrin glared at the soccer players. “I would have won a hundred yuros on that game, you know.”



Myell appreciated Timrin trying to distract him from the loss of the DNGO. He’d filed a report and knew that someone from Security would be by to interview him within twenty-four hours. “How do you lose a robot?”

some snarky chief would ask, as if Myell should have dragged a DNGO to the emergency station.



“There’s always another game,” Myell told Timrin.



Three Ops techs, each with one or two Alcheringa run patches, si-dled up to the bar. Above their heads, the dancers faded away as the nightly news came on. Two virtual hosts, Hal and Sal, addressed the camera with vapid smiles.



Hal said, “Good evening. In today’s news, departure was delayed by two hours and ten minutes after a General Quarters alarm.”



Sal added, “The five-minute response rate was ninety percent, a new ship’s record.”



“Notice they’re not saying why,” Timrin said. “Some Ops swipe probably pushed the wrong button.”



One of the Ops techs glared their way. Myell nudged Timrin.



Timrin grimaced. “So what?”



“Departure went smoothly,” Hal said. “All systems are go for a safe flight.”



Safe. Since the Yangtze, nothing about spaceflight seemed particu-larly safe. Myell had heard more than one rumor that the CFP was somehow responsible for the drill. The idea of a bomb somewhere on the ship made him gulp at his beer.



“In other news,” Sal said, “the Medical and Supply Departments both announced new appointments. Lieutenant Mitchell Moody has been appointed to Crew Medicine, and Lieutenant Jodenny Scott has taken over the Underway Stores Division.”



“Supply spaz,” said a tech wearing a Kiwi patch. “She freaked out during GQ.”



“What did she do?” another tech asked.



“Went to the wrong pod, got all hysterical. They almost had to se-date her.”



A third tech popped a peanut into his mouth. “They say you’re never the same after a spacewreck. She was on the Yangtze.”



The one with the Kiwi patch said, “Supply types always fall apart when there’s trouble. Look at the old SUPPO. Ran off like a jackal, didn’t he, rather than take it like a man?”



Timrin finished his drink. “You know where to find an Ops tech during an emergency? Under a desk, pissing his pants.”



The Kiwi tech pushed back his stool. The bartender, a bald civvie with wide shoulders, came out from behind the counter and warned, “You want trouble, you take it outside.”



“We don’t want trouble,” Myell said.



“Not unless there’s a girl to hold down,” the Kiwi tech said.



Myell changed his mind. He did want trouble, the kind that would result in the satisfying thump of his fist against the Kiwi tech’s nose. But Timrin’s barricading arm kept him from lunging forward. Tim-rin said, “They’re not worth it.”



“Sit your asses down before I call Security,” the bartender said to the Ops techs.



Public brawling could land the offenders in the brig and leave black marks on service records. Better to fight in private and explain the in-juries as work-related accidents—fingers caught in a hatch or ribs bruised by a ladder fall.



“Ignore them,” Timrin said when they reached the passage out-side.

“F*cking idiots.”



Myell’s temper cooled down on the ride to Supply berthing. A half-dozen people were sprawled in the lounge playing Izim on the large-screen vid. Someone had spilled beer on the carpet again, and pop-corn had been scattered on the sofa. Chris Amador, in charge of the Izim siege, said, “Jesus f*cking Christ! Where did those moths come from?”



Timrin’s gaze swept disdainfully over the screen. “Izim’s for slomes.”



“Heard you lost a dingo, Myell,” Nagarajan said, snuggling close to Amador’s side.



Amador asked, “How do you manage that?”



“Not so hard,” said Mike Gallivan, who was sprawled in a corner chair with his guitar in hand. Gallivan had checked onboard at the same time as Myell, and for a while they’d been good friends. “Little buggers get into all sorts of shit.”



“Or get put there,” Nagarajan said.



Myell clenched his fists and didn’t answer. F*ck them all if they thought he’d meant to lose any equipment put into his care. He fol-lowed Timrin down the noisy passage past a dozen half-open hatches. In cabin nine, Ben Chang was competing with the volume of his Snipe game as he relayed a story to Sergeant Tisa VanAmsal, who stood in the doorway.



“—so Chief Vostic told her she was at the wrong station, and Scott told her to get out of the way, and Vostic told her to try another lifepod, and Scott told her to go to hell.”



That encounter must have spawned dozens of imails and message threads, either through Core or on individual pocket servers. Myell wondered why the hell people didn’t have anything better to worry about.



“Quenger must be pissed she’s taking over,” VanAmsal said, unpin-ning one of her braids. She was older than most in Underway Stores but still one of the more attractive sergeants on the Aral Sea. Myell respected how she kept a cool head and ran Loading Dock G with a firm hand.



“Quenger’s a swipe,” Timrin said.



Chang scored a direct hit. “Nitta will put her in her place.”



Myell tried to put in a good word. “Lieutenant Scott seems sharp enough.”



VanAmsal gave him a frosty look. “It’s not a fresh start for you, Myell. Already you’re screwing up again.”



He turned away at the unexpected sting. The lost DNGO he could live with. Equipment was always disappearing on the ship. But no one was ever going to forget what Wendy Ford had said. Myell went inside his and Timlin’s cabin, yanked off his shirt, and threw it down the wash-chute.




“Christ,” Timrin said behind him. “What happened to you?”



Myell turned and glimpsed, in the mirror, a bruise darkening his back.

“Nothing.”



“If Chiba’s f*cking with you again, you should let someone know.”



“Who would I tell? Al-Banna? DiSola?” He pulled on a T-shirt, ig-noring the protest in his back. “I don’t care anymore.”



Timrin let the hatch close and leaned against his locker with folded arms. “You care. Too much. Honor, commitment, all that recruiting bullshit—they really got it when you signed up. Your trouble is you want to fight Chiba on his terms. You have to be smarter than him, not tougher. Next time something happens, get some proof.”



Proof. Wendy Ford had claimed the bruises on her body were Myell’s doing, when they both knew it had been Chiba. Gritting his teeth at the memory, he lifted his rucksack from his bed and went to shove it into his locker. Something small fell on his bedcover.



“Christ,” Myell said. “There’s an omen for you. A dead gecko.”



Timrin bent close to it. “I don’t think it’s dead.”



“Of course it is,” Myell said, but under Timrin’s urging he put the gecko in a cup near a lamp and it flicked its tail. It was small and brown, like the one that had crawled up on the bench outside Sato Spaceport. It peered up at Myell with beady black eyes.



Timrin grinned. “I always wanted a better roommate than you.”



Myell didn’t need a pet. He didn’t need to be responsible for any-one or anything else on the ship. Hell, he couldn’t even take care of a DNGO. But he couldn’t very well let it run loose or flush it down into the ship’s sewage system.



“What are you going to call him?” Timrin said.



“Kookaburra,” Myell decided. “Koo for short. And it’s a her, not a him.”



Timrin rolled his eyes. “Like you haven’t had enough trouble with women.”



“Welcome aboard, Koo.” Myell bent close to the cup. “I hope you don’t regret it.”



* * * *