The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


SEVEN





M

yell had known Lieutenant Scott was in T6 because Hosaka had left the comm open. He and Ishikawa heard her order Strayborn to deliver a set of coveralls to some apprentice mate and mar-veled at how enthusiastically Strayborn snapped, “Aye, aye, ma’am.”



Ishikawa asked, “Are we doing home deliveries now?”



“Lieutenant’s a big believer in customer service,” Myell replied. And Strayborn was a big believer in sucking-up. Granted, Team Space wasn’t usually kind to Maori and Strayborn was notoriously ambi-tious. Myell suspected much more ass kissing to come.



“This is boring.” Ishikawa plopped into a chair and spun around lazily. Outside the observation module’s windows, a DNGO was busy uploading its data. “How much longer is it going to take?”



“All day and maybe half the night.” The Class IV and Vs could up-synch from wherever they were in the slots. The other classes had to be retrieved and plugged into Core so that their data could be down-loaded to the master database. Once the comparison was run, all dis-crepancies had to be corrected or justified. If the job had been done daily, per regulations, the task would have only taken a few hours.



“I can’t stay half the night.” Ishikawa slumped dramatically. “I have a date.”



Myell wondered if it was kasai. He realized that he and Ishikawa were alone in the module without anyone else to observe them and remembered Timrin’s lecture on proof. Ish was an okay kid but like Ford she could make any accusation she wanted and people would lis-ten. With a slight flick of his left hand he turned on the recording log.



“The dingoes can’t go faster,” he said. “The reconciliations are to make sure no one’s stealing anything. Everything that comes in or goes out has to be accounted for.”



Through the comm they heard Lieutenant Scott warn Strayborn about people playing Snipe or Izim. Ishikawa asked, “Can she really take away someone’s gib?”



“Sure she can,” Myell said, although it would be a drastic step to take.



Lieutenant Scott departed. Strayborn sent Hosaka off to deliver the coveralls while he and Myell resumed pulling DNGOs from the slots.



“Sarge, you know my roommate, right? Shevi Dyatt?” Ishikawa asked.



“Sure,” he said. Dyatt worked for VanAmsal over on Loading Dock G. She’d transferred from Ops back on Fortune, already three months pregnant.



“She’s having a problem with Joe Olsson.”



“What kind of problem?” he asked, against his better judgment. Olsson had been in Underway Stores until he transferred with Chiba to Maintenance. He wasn’t as bad as Spallone, but he could cause trouble when he wanted to.



“I think she wants to break up with him, but he won’t take no for an answer.”



“She should report it to Sergeant VanAmsal. Or to Security.”



Ishikawa pushed her black bangs away from her eyes. “She doesn’t want to make it official. Could you talk to him or something? Guy to guy?”



“VanAmsal’s her boss.”



“You could tell him—”



“No. I’m not getting involved.”



Ishikawa sulked for the rest of the afternoon. Myell concentrated on retrieving the DNGOs and gathering their data. By seventeen hundred hours they had most of the job done, but a Class III named Circe failed to respond when summoned.



“Myell, go in and get her,” Strayborn said over the comm.



“How about you, Ish?” Myell asked. “Want to have a go?”



“No, sir.”



Myell said, “That’s ‘No, Sergeant.’ Watch your attitude.”



“You hear me up there?” Strayborn asked.



“We hear you.” Already he could tell that Lieutenant Scott’s atten-tion was going to Strayborn’s head. “Give me five minutes.”



Myell started pulling equipment from the gear locker. He kicked off his boots and zipped himself into the EV suit. Ishikawa, apparently done with her sulking, helped him check the oxygen supply, heating unit, and maneuvering thrusters. The bubble dome gave him a wide range of vision but made him feel as if his head were in a fishbowl.



Ishikawa said, “I hate zero-g. Doesn’t it scare you?”



“No,” he said, but he wasn’t mad keen on it, either. As he waited for the airlock to decompress, he decided the worst part was always looking down from the ledge at a thousand meters of horrifying emptiness and forcing himself to step away, in defiance of all logic and self-preservation, from the haven of safety.



Ishikawa said, “Radio check. Can you hear me?”



“No problems.” Myell’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in his own ears.



“The tower’s all locked down,” Hosaka said. “Not a creature stir-ring, not even a mouse.”



Myell demagnetized his boots, squeezed his eyes shut, and pushed off. One pulse-pounding second passed, then another, and when he was sure he wasn’t going to plummet to his death he opened his eyes again. He used his thrusters to maneuver toward level forty-six. Over the commset Ishikawa asked, “Why do all the dingoes have strange names?”




“That was Chief Mustav’s idea,” Myell said. “He named them after ancient Earth goddesses.”



Ishikawa said, “Oh.” A moment later she asked, “Can we send out for dinner? I’m dying of starvation.”



Lange, down at the bottom of the shaft, chipped in with a sour comment. “I bet the lieutenant’s enjoying her dinner.”



His friend Su added, “How come officers never do any of the hard work?”



“Shut up,” Strayborn said. “This is our job, not hers.” Myell reached the level he wanted and peered inside the slots cau-tiously. DNGOs could sense each other but weren’t as good with soft human flesh. One could easily crash into him or crush him against a bulkhead.



“You’re sure everything’s locked down?” he asked.



From the command module Hosaka said, “Absolutely.”



Myell pulled himself inside. He coasted along on momentum for a few seconds and then used the thrusters to propel himself past the bins. The headlights on his helmet provided illumination in the cold dark-ness. Among other things, level forty-six housed weapons and ammu-nition in case the Security Department was ever needed to augment local Team Space forces in times of civil unrest, like they had during the Separatist uprisings on Warramala. He could feel the weight of vio-lence and death surrounding him, the never-ending prospect of war.



“We’re tracking you at 46-340-Bravo,” Hosaka said. “Is that right?”



Myell read the address on the nearest bin. “Perfect.”



Something flickered at the edge of his vision, but when he swung around he saw only crates lashed into place behind the metal grat-ings. Newsvids of the Yangtze disaster rose in his mind. No one knew why their T6 had exploded. One moment it was all whole and intact, the next a horrific outrushing of shrapnel and burning cargo.



“Haven’t you found anything yet?” Strayborn asked.



“I don’t see it,” Myell said. “Are you sure-no, wait.”



Another flicker of motion, gone almost before he could register it. Goose bumps ran across the back of his neck. Maybe someone was playing tricks on him. Maybe this was an elaborate setup for some new prank by Chiba. Or maybe someone—something?—was in the slot with him, crouched behind the crates. Something cold and alien, sinuous and malevolent. The fact that no alien life had ever been dis-covered in the Seven Sisters did nothing to calm him.



“Terry?” Hosaka asked.



“It’s okay.” Myell hoped they didn’t hear the crack in his voice. “I thought I saw—”



Something large darted by at the corner of his eye. “Christ!” he said.

“Something’s moving down here!”



“Stay exactly where you are,” Strayborn ordered.



“Don’t move,” Hosaka echoed.



Myell ignored them both. He swung his flashlight down the slots and maneuvered closer to the bins. Strayborn and Hosaka were chat-tering on, reading off lists of DNGO whereabouts, double-checking that no strays had slipped through Core’s lockdown. With each elim-inated possibility he heard doubt edging into their voices and knew, with a sinking feeling, that this would be another bit of gossip held against him—nut job Myell, imagining monsters in the slots and un-der his bed.



“There’s nothing on the scopes,” Strayborn finally said, which was a polite way of questioning his sanity.



“Maybe it’s Circe,” Hosaka said. “You should get out of there until we make sure.”



“No,” Myell said. He had calmed down a little, and was beginning to doubt whether he’d really seen anything at all. “I’ll get her.”



He moved deeper into the slots gingerly, hyperaware of every shadow. Ten minutes later his beam caught the silver-gray of Circe’s hull. The DNGO hung adrift with her lights out. She didn’t look dam-aged, but nothing happened when Myell tried to reset her manually.



“She’s not responding.”



“Batteries must be dead,” Strayborn said.



“I doubt it,” he replied. The rechargeable ion cells had a shelf life of several hundred hours, and the DNGOs were programmed to charge themselves during off-hours. More likely Circe had burned out a thruster or lost her navigation sensors, but neither problem should have made her shut down so entirely.



Strayborn said, “Doesn’t matter. Haul her out of there.”



Myell fitted the DNGO with a restraining bolt in case she decided to wake up and finish the last task remaining in her cache. Like an oversized silver balloon, she drifted as he pulled her out of the slots. Focusing on the DNGO’s motion took his mind off the creepy feeling of being stalked, but he was still appallingly glad when they exited the maze into the free space of the shaft. Hosaka sent down another DNGO to tow Circe to the command module, and Myell made his own way back up to level fifty.



By the time he’d processed himself through the airlock, Hosaka had plugged Circe into the ship’s power supply and had ordered a re-boot. Hosaka said, “I hope the data’s still intact.”



Ishikawa helped Myell out of his suit. “Then can we go eat?”



No one said anything about his meltdown in the slots. Myell rubbed his arms until they’d warmed up and hoped the subject never came up again. He had seen something, hadn’t he? He sat down and saw that Ishikawa had been fiddling with the control panel while he was gone.



“What were you doing?” he asked.



Ishikawa’s nose crinkled in confusion. “You mean with the synch log?

Trying to figure out more about how it all works. Sounds important.



She was more likely to be cruising the ship’s message boards than actually taking the initiative on anything, but Myell’s suspicions were distracted by the flashing tally from Circe’s newly synched memory. “Crap,”

Hosaka said from the command module. “We’re never get-ting out of here.”



The comparison between transactions recorded by Core and trans-actions recorded by Circe scored only a seventy-eight percent match. Date of request, requisition number, quantity ordered, quantity re-trieved, quantity delivered—a deviation in any of a dozen categories was enough to kick the record onto the discrepancy list. It was the worst number from any of the DNGOs, and would drag down the monthly score to an unacceptable level.



“We’re going to have to justify each record manually.” Strayborn didn’t sound happy. “Myell, Ish, you take the first hundred and fifty. Lange, Su, you take the second batch.”



Myell heard heartfelt groans over the comm.



“How about we take a dinner break first, Sarge?” Su asked. “We’re starving down here.”



“Just a half hour,” Lange added.



While they tried to persuade Strayborn to let them go, Myell skimmed over the data. “Jen,” he said, “sort the discrepancies by date.”



“Why?” Hosaka asked. “Oh. I see it. Most of the mismatches are in the last twenty-four hours. If her batteries were going, it might have affected her data collection.”



Myell said, “We don’t know it’s the batteries. I’ll have to test it.”



“If it wasn’t the battery, we’ll be sitting here all night trying to fig-ure out why Core says the galley got a thousand spoons while Circe says it only got ten,” Strayborn said. “It’ll take us until at least mid-night, and that’s not counting all the other records we have to justify before we can think of getting out of here and preparing for tomor-row’s uniform inspection.”




Hosaka said, “It’s the battery.”



Lange and Su agreed.



“Myell?” Strayborn asked



Myell squeezed the bridge of his nose. “We can’t write off three hundred transactions without justification.”



“We’ve got justification,” Strayborn said. “They’re all glitches. I’ll write up a paragraph or two and make sure the chief and Lieutenant Scott are okay with it.”



Ishikawa’s hopeful gaze did Myell in. He already felt like a fool for imagining something in the slots. He wouldn’t be the jerk who kept everyone at work all night long.



‘All right,” Myell said. No use fighting about it. “It’s probably the battery.”



* * * *



O

n her way to dinner Jodenny passed Quenger boarding a lift.



“You shouldn’t waste too much time in our wardroom,” he said. “The real action’s elsewhere.”



She replied, “I’m not interested in real action. I’ve seen enough of it.”



“That’s obvious.” Quenger nodded toward her MacBride Cross.

“Flaunting it, are you? You weren’t wearing that when you first came aboard.”



The lift doors closed before she could tell him to go screw himself. Jodenny fumed all the way to the wardroom, where Ysten and Weaver were mixing drinks and Francesco was watching the ship’s evening news.



“You look ready to rip someone in pieces,” Weaver said.



“I am.” Jodenny considered pouring herself a strong drink but went to the table instead. “AT Ashmont, what time is it?”



“Ma’am? It’s top of the hour.”



“Start serving,” Jodenny ordered.



“We usually wait,” Weaver said.



“I’m the senior officer here,” Jodenny said, “and I’d like to eat.”



Francesco might have been senior to her, depending on his com-missioning date, but he only scratched his ear and took a seat without comment. Ysten and Weaver both sat down with cautious expres-sions. Zeni and Hultz wandered in ten minutes later and look startled to see the first course under way. “What happened?” Zeni asked.



“It’s a new tradition,” Jodenny said. “Dinner starts promptly at eighteen hundred.”



Ysten didn’t come to dinner at all, which prompted Hultz’s bit of gossip. “I hear Dicensu knocked him unconscious on the Flats.”



“They bumped each other in the passage,” Jodenny said. “Nothing more.”



Weaver reached for her beer. “He’s in big trouble with Vu, anyway. Keeps bad-mouthing the food on the mess decks. Not too smart when your own boss is in charge of it, right?”



Jodenny couldn’t have said what dinner that night tasted like. The minor victory of eating on time was far outweighed by Quenger’s cutting remarks. A heavy depression swung over her, a pitch-black shadow that encompassed the terrible condition of Underway Stores, the encounter with Osherman at lunch, and her problems with Nitta and Ysten.



“Is anything wrong?” Francesco asked when she went to check her queue after dinner.



“No,” Jodenny said. “I’m waiting for a report.”



“No talk of paperwork so soon after eating. Come play Seven Up.”



Jodenny partnered with Hultz. Zeni cut for the deal and Francesco showed the highest card. He dealt out six cards to each of them and turned up the next for trump. Hultz begged, Francesco dealt out more, and Jodenny wondered if Nitta had at least had dinner deliv-ered to the crew working over in T6.



“You weren’t even trying,” Hultz said when they lost the hand.



“I’m sorry.” Jodenny stood. “Excuse me. There’s something I need to go do.”



She couldn’t pretend to be in the tower for some casual reason. She would have to betray herself as someone who didn’t trust her own people. Even as the tram crossed across the gulf from Mainship, she told herself to turn back. But she ignored her own advice and crossed the access ring to T6’s control module.



The lights were down, the displays dim. Perplexed, her pulse be-ginning to pound against her temple, Jodenny went to the Underway Stores office and saw Nitta at his desk.



“I’m routing the inventory to you right this minute. Ninety-two percent.”

Nitta leaned back in his chair to beam at her. “We did a damn fine job.”



Jodenny didn’t return his smile. “I look forward to reading it. Don’t forget that uniform inspection in the morning.”



“Come on, Miz Scott. Don’t you think we could forego that? Everyone worked late.”



Jodenny glanced pointedly at the clock. “Not that late.”



“I think it’ll go over well if you postpone it.”



“No.”



He chuckled. “Then I better go hem my trousers.”



Jodenny watched him go. In the fourteen or so hours that she’d known him, she hadn’t thought he was capable of a good mood. She went to her desk and activated Holland.



“Take a look at the monthly inventory sitting in my queue,” Jodenny said. “Run all the standard fraud and irregularity checks. Double-check the ID numbers, purchase orders, accounts receivable, issued goods, and dingo retrieval rates.”



After a moment Holland said, “I’ve detected no anomalies, Lieu-tenant.”



Ninety-two percent. Not bad. She could think of one or two of her supply school classmates who would be happy to score that high.



Maybe her job wasn’t going to be as difficult as she had feared.



* * * *