An Officer’s Duty (41 page)

“They can separate in combat to have twice the maneuverability and a little extra firepower, and if one gets damaged, the other can swoop in and pick it back up. The ventral airlocks are in the same place as the dorsal ones, so they can be matched up the other way around if need be, in case one or both sets of dorsal connections are damaged too much to connect. All in all, it’s a good design,” Ia praised. She outlined the swept-back, triangular wings, tracing them on the window. “Both halves are fully functional as tri-state ships, too. They can fly in an atmosphere, maneuver with insystem thrusters, and each half can spark a hyperrift for OTL between star systems.”

A wistful smile curved up the corner of her mouth. Bennie caught sight of it and arched a brow. “You really like these ships?”

“My brothers hung up models of them, or rather of ships like them, growing up. This newer model came out about…five years ago?” She shrugged, dismissing the exact date as
irrelevant. Pulling back from the window, Ia studied the signboard next to the airlock door.

The signboard read, “TUPSF
Audie-Murphy
,” followed by the jumble of letters and numbers that were its registry code, the name of its commanding officer and Navy organization numbers, the timestamp for when it had docked, the timestamp for when it was due to depart, and a scrolling checklist of redlit, yellowlit, and greenlit repairs in various stages of high priority, low priority, and completed status respectively.

“Of course, I never dreamed I’d wind up on one of these ships myself, as a little girl.” Resting the weight suit case on its wheels, she dug into her kitbag and fished out her Dress Blues jacket and cap. Shrugging into the former and donning the latter, she checked the faint image of her reflection in the docking bay window, buttoning and adjusting her uniform. When she was done, she faced her friend. “How do I look?”

“Officer-ish,” Bennie promised. “Wait a moment. One of your piloting pins is crooked.” Stepping close, the redhead adjusted one of the pins on Ia’s shoulder boards, three pairs of wings forming a triangle shape around the partitioned letters
O/F
.

The pin identified her as having been certified for atmospheric, orbital, and insystem maneuvers, plus capable of manning the helm for both other-than-light and faster-than-light interstellar travel.
If it had been just the one set of wings, she would have been planet-bound, or just the three, restricted to sub-light speeds. With either an O or an F alone, it would have meant she was qualified to use one or the other, but with the slash, it meant she had passed the exams for both. Doing so had meant spending eight and ten hours a day in flight simulators for weeks on end, on top of additional hours of theory and instruction in class each day, but she had passed with ratings high enough in OTL for this assignment, and sufficient enough in FTL for future ship assignments.

“There. I kind of feel like a proud mother, sending her little girl off to her first day of school. Except you’re not my little girl, and you’re fully capable of tearing a K’katta limb from limb,” Bennie quipped drolly.

Ia groaned and rolled her eyes. “Not you, too? For the record—yet again—I did
not
actually rip off that K’katta’s leg and beat him to death with it!”

The airlock door cycled open just as she got to the “rip off” part of her complaint. From the wide-eyed looks of the petty officer and her three coverall-clad teammates, none of them had heard the “did
not
” disclaimer. A quick probe of the timestreams convinced Ia it wasn’t worth pursuing a correction in their minds.

Still, the petty officer was made of stern stuff. Lifting her chin, the shorter woman stepped up to Ia and saluted her, a requirement since Ia was wearing her cap. Belatedly, the three maintenance crewmeioas saluted as well. “Lieutenant, Commander. Chief Petty Officer Browne, Bay 16 Security. Is there something I can do for you, sirs?”

Ia returned the salute. “I’m Lieutenant Second Grade Ia. I’m here with orders to board the TUPSF
Audie-Murphy
under Commander Salish.”

“
Ah
, aye, sir. Welcome aboard the
Mad Jack
, Lieutenant,” the petty officer added, smiling. “We were told to expect you. The Delta-VXs jump around from bay to bay, depending on which bay is open, but the moment the
Audie-Murphy
came in early, they routed your clearance for this bay, today.”

“Thank you. Is the Commander here?” Ia asked her.

“One moment, sir, I’ll check,” Browne promised.

Since she had a few moments, Ia turned to face Bennie. She held out her hand to the chaplain, but the older woman didn’t bother with it. Instead, Bennie embraced Ia and pressed a kiss to her cheek. The move didn’t quite twinge Ia’s psychic sensitivities awake, but then the chaplain kept her touches brief.

Pulling back, the older woman gripped Ia’s blue-sleeved arms lightly. “Since your mothers can’t be here, let me give you a blessing in their stead. Or rather, a blessing and a nag. May the Universe protect you and keep you in the warmth of the Light, no matter how deep into the shadows your paths may take you…and if you come home with more of your own blood on you than the enemies’, I am
never
going to let you live it down. You have a Marine Corps nickname to live up to, sailor.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Ia agreed. “I won’t disappoint you, sir. I promise.”

“Just make sure it’s not
gratuitous
amounts of enemy blood,” the chaplain warned her, waggling a finger at the younger woman.

“I’ll try my best to spill only whatever blood is absolutely
necessary, and not one drop more,” Ia promised, mock-solemn. Sincere, but mock-solemn.

Bennie rolled her eyes, gave her one last hug, and stepped back. “Just make sure you come back sane and whole, okay? I’ll be worrying about you.”

“I’ll try not to give you anything to worry about, Commander.” Saluting, Ia held the pose until Bennie returned it. Grabbing the handle of her weight suit case, she turned back to the petty officer, who stood ready at the airlock door.

“Ident scan, sir?” Chief Petty Browne asked, nodding at the reader by the door controls. “All hangar bays are restricted areas, sir.”

Nodding, she held her arm under the projection for a moment. The lights turned green, and the petty officer nodded, unlocking the airlock with her own passcode. Ia followed her through the double doors, hauling her belongings in her wake.

“Once you’ve been logged into your new duty post, sir, you’ll be able to enter and leave at your discretion,” Browne told her as the airlock pressurized. “We do run repeated security checks on everyone posted to the Blockade at multiple checkpoints, but it’s still possible for smugglers and terrorists to infiltrate personnel into the Service. Speaking of which, once you’re logged in as your ship’s cadre, you’ll need to scan your hand in order to open the airlock from the inside. It’s required from all personnel for going either way, unless you’re accompanied by security personnel like myself.”

Ia waited for the petty officer to cycle them through, then stepped into the large but crowded bay. Here lay the smell of sparks, the ozone she had been missing elsewhere on the Battle Platform, mainly from the use of arc welders. Safety stripes marked a path through the pallets of damaged and pristine components, the stacks of ceristeel hull segments, the crates of delicate instrumentation wrapped in recyclable plexi, items meant to be installed deep within the thick layers of the ship’s carefully fitted hull.

Commander Salish was waiting for them at the gantry attached to the lower airlock. She had rolled up the sleeves of her blue dress shirt at some point. She also wore only the bare minimum of pins at her collar points, shirt pocket, and shoulder boards, but she did have her Dress cap perched on her thick, dark hair. One of her cheeks gleamed with the blue sheen of regeneration goo
over a pinkish scar, giving her mouth a twisted, sardonic look. But she did smile, and returned the salute Ia gave her.

“Lieutenant Second Grade Ia, reporting as ordered, sir. Here is my transfer chip with the orders on it,” Ia added, handing over the small disc. “I request permission to come aboard, sir.”

Salish nodded, opened her arm unit, and slapped the disc inside for an immediate review. “Good, good. Everything’s in order. Permission granted, and welcome aboard, Lieutenant Ia. We’ll be in dock for two days, but there’s still plenty for you to do, as they’ve just started repairs. Lieutenant Piezzan is still in the process of removing his personal effects. For now, you can stow your…wait, what’s in that case, Lieutenant?”

“My weight suit, sir. I’m a heavyworlder,” Ia explained, glancing in the direction Salish pointed.

“I
know
you’re a heavyworlder. Master Chief!” Salish called out. One of the noncoms chatting nearby with some of the workers broke off and headed their way. “You’ll be on the
Audie
, which is top-deck. You can set the gym closet to whatever gravity setting you like, provided it doesn’t imbalance the ship or stress the hull. Just don’t do it while anyone else is in there. Master Chief Rutgers, please issue a storage ticket for this weight suit to Lieutenant Ia. She won’t be needing it—do you need anything else out of the case, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir,” Ia said. “Just the things in my kitbag.”

Salish nodded. “Good. Take the weight suit case, Master Chief. We run a tight ship, Lieutenant. Excess weight is reserved for more important things, not for useless clutter. This way.”

Pausing just long enough to accept the receipt chip from the petty officer, Ia shrugged her bulky kitbag higher on her shoulder and hurried after her commanding officer.

The exterior of the ship was the same silvery hematite grey of any ceristeel hull. Most of it near the airlock was polished enough that she could see a shadowy reflection of everything in the curves of the composite material. Some sections were pitted and scorched, others crumpled, mainly along the leading edge of the V-swept wings below the boarding gantry. Technicians were removing the damaged pieces with the help of servo-bots and construction cranes. The majority moved with the practiced, swift pace of long experience with such maneuvers.

“As you can see, we take a lot of damage. Our hull plates
are extra thick for extra heat dispersion and impact resistance. If they’re not too deeply scored, they’ll be taken elsewhere, ground down to a polished shine, and used on other ships,” Salish pointed out with one hand while placing her other palm on the scanner of the door lock. “A lot of the OTL supply couriers follow a similar hull configuration, so they’re able to adapt most of the panels easily. Of course, on this run, we lost a bit more than hull components. The starboard bow wing tanks on both the
Murphy
and the
Audie
took a beating, along with some of our thruster panels. We’re actually in port a couple days early because of it, but it’s an easy enough set of repairs.

“As soon as they extract the twisted bits, they’ll take up the wing panels that are good enough for an inspection, yank out and replace the tank, and rewire new parts into place. Plus the food stores and the reoxygenators will be replenished, the recyclers and waste compartments emptied, the lifesupport filters replaced—we don’t usually scrub them ourselves; we rarely have the time—various missiles and scanner probes will be reloaded, and the hydrotanks topped up. Oh, your file said you come with your own mechsuit. Halfmech, right?” Commander Salish asked her, leading her into the ship. “Marine Corps?”

“Yes, sir,” Ia confirmed. “It arrived intact five days ahead of me. I ran the assembly diagnostic yesterday, packed it back up, then signed it off to be brought into the
Audie-Murphy
’s docking bay. It should be out there.”

“Good. Leave the packing case here on the
Mad Jack
, but suit up and march it on board. You’ll be our designated boarding officer. I’m
counting
on you to be able to handle that, Lieutenant,” Salish added, giving Ia a pointed look. “We won’t have time to coddle you through combat.”

“I have been a boarding officer before, Commander, searching ships for contraband and engaging in combat with smugglers and pirates,” Ia told Salish, following the older woman to an airlock-style lift. “Including nine separate engagements against the Salik, sir.”

“So your file says, but not quite like this, Lieutenant. We run into the Salik every damned week.” Salish gestured at the ship around them. “The two ships forming the
Audie-Murphy
are identical in facilities, but are mirrored to each other vertically. It starts with what we call the Numbers up in the
Audie
, which will
be your half, with Deck 1. Deck 1 corresponds to the bottommost deck of the
Murphy
, Deck C. The
Murphy
runs the Letters.”

“Deck 2 would then correspond with Deck B, and Deck 3 with A, correct, sir?” Ia asked.

“Correct,” Salish agreed, programming the controls. “Please note that accessing various rooms requires sticking your fingers in various openings. Do also note, Lieutenant, that it is inappropriate to make jokes or innuendos about such things…but that sometimes, for crew morale, I sometimes ignore certain quips.”

They were, Ia noted, located in recessed little holes, and required a downward curl of the finger to activate. This, she knew, was the equivalent of Salik buttons which had to be lifted away from their panels by the aliens’ suckered pseudo-fingers. Salik had no bones in their lower arms; the manual pressure required to insert a tentacle-tip and press down would not be easy for them to manage.

Salish headed out of the lift without looking back, trusting Ia to follow her. “Decks 2-B contain Lifesupport, the bridge, Engineering, that sort of thing. The other four decks have living quarters, gunnery pods, and so forth. Decks 1-C, being the two broadest sections, have the most room, so they have the most living quarters, the gym closets—you can really only fit maybe four people inside at most, hence the nickname—and of course the common rooms. I do not restrict access to either ship, but for the sake of ensuring each ship is properly crewed in the event of an emergency, I prefer the two sides to keep to their own vessel, or at least keep things even.