The Outback Stars (18 page)

“Out,” Roush repeated. Chiba left with his dogs in tow. Roush asked Myell, “You hurt?”

“No.” Myell brushed bread crumbs from his coveralls. He could feel something wet on his backside and hoped the stain wasn't too obvious. Fucking Chiba, fucking all of them.

Roush patted his shoulder. “They're assholes. Best thing to do? You take Chiba down below and beat the shit out of him.”

“Great idea, Chief. I'll look into that.” Myell left before Roush could offer any more helpful advice. He went to T6 for morning quarters and hid until the last minute, unable to bear seeing Gallivan or the others who had witnessed his humiliation. Jodenny made some announcements, Nitta added something irrelevant, and Strayborn said that the ASUPPO would be inspecting the lounge at the end of the week. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought. Didn't anyone on the ship realize there were more important things to worry about than inspections?

After quarters, Gallivan snagged his arm. “Chiba's a swipe. You know that, right?”

“He's a swipe who people believe.”

Gallivan grimaced. “Not him. They believed Ford.”

Her name still caused Myell's gut to churn. Before her, he had never known exactly how much trouble a man could get into based on one woman's accusations. “You believed her.”

“No,” Gallivan. “I never believed her. But for a while … well, for a while it seemed safer to mind my own business. No one knows what really happened to the old SUPPO, right? And with Chiba and Greiger running things … I'm sorry. It was the wrong decision.”

He sounded contrite, but Myell wasn't so eager to forgive. Before he could say so, Jodenny called his name. How she had already managed to hear about the fracas was beyond him, but as Gallivan slinked away and Jodenny approached he steeled himself for questions or a lecture.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“How's the inventory going?”

“It's in Sergeant Strayborn's queue, ma'am. Looks like ninety-five percent.”

“Good. Anything else exciting going on?”

“No, ma'am,” he said. “But I don't think the ASUPPO should inspect our lounge. Officer berthing doesn't get inspected. Why should ours?”

“Because the officers are keeping their common areas clean.” Jodenny cocked her head. “When I walked through yours the other day, it was filthy.”

Abrupt weariness washed through him. Fuck Team Space, anyway. “Yes, ma'am.”

After everyone had cleared out of his tower he settled down in the control module for a few hours of upsynching. Circe had come back from the shop with a new battery and showed no errors at all, but as a Class II named Hera synched he saw a thousand duplicate records. Myell traced the glitch back to Core, reported it to the duty techs, and waited for them to reboot the appropriate subroutines. Lunch was a cold sandwich from a vending machine. His only visitor was Strayborn, who showed up with the leave roster in hand and took an interest in Hera's problem.

“How long have you been waiting for the reboot?” Strayborn asked.

“Two hours.”

“Data techs. All they do is sit around on their asses.” Strayborn studied the roster. “Is this right? You're taking a week when we get to Mary River?”

“Yes.”

“Going hiking?”

“Visiting family.”

A beep on the deskgib alerted him to the reboot. Hera came back online and began uploading again. Strayborn stuck around to watch the datastream.

Myell said, “The duplicates have cleared, but now she's missing ten minutes of her log.”

“Ask for another reboot,” Strayborn said.

If Jodenny hadn't made her new rule, Myell might have wasted the next two hours playing Snipe. He almost did it anyway. Instead he skimmed practice questions for the chief's exam he didn't intend to take. No doubt VanAmsal had already spent months in preparation, but as he keyed through questions about regs, procedures, and more procedures he scored moderately well. When Core signaled that the subroutine was reset, he ordered Hera to upsynch again. She dashed up and away into the slots.

“Get back here,” he said, but she didn't respond to his orders. He checked Core, but no tasks had been sent her way. He turned on the tracking monitors but she didn't register, and when he pinged her transponder he got no response. “Where did you go?”

After several minutes he had Core reboot her. Hera's transponder began blinking on level ten. He recalled her to the command module and she floated up to hover outside the window. Myell upsynched her and saw that the records matched Core exactly.

“That's pretty convenient,” he told her.

Myell had Hera report to the base of the tower. He locked her down with a restraining bolt and tugged her to his bench. There were fresh scratches on her hull, but that was no surprise. DNGOs were always scraping themselves against the bins. Her access plate was also loose. That was an easy fix, but didn't explain her vanishing act.

“Time for a full diagnostic,” he told her.

His gib beeped. “Go over to IR2,” Nitta said. “Chang's sick, Gallivan's gone off to stand watch, and there's no one else to cover. Lieutenant's really pissed.”

Myell hesitated. It was possible that Nitta was setting him up again for another assault. He fingered his pocket server and went over full of trepidation, relaxing only when he saw Jodenny herself manning the issue room. She looked irritated, though not at him. She said, “I need you to deliver these orders, Sergeant. The uniforms are for Lieutenant Deven, these boots are for Lieutenant Coswell, and the sheets go to Lieutenant Pearson. Don't dawdle.”

Dawdle.
Myell never dawdled. He did, however, keep his eyes down as he hurried through the passages. He remembered stumbling into officer country by accident on his first cruise and the tongue-lashing he'd received. A former shipmate had been court-martialed for being caught in Ops officer berthing. Of course, the man had also been having an affair with an ensign, and so he was also court-martialed for fraternization. The ensign had been, too.

No one was home in Deven's cabin. Coswell was sleepy-eyed and took his new boots with a grumble. Myell was approaching Pearson's cabin when a tall officer barreled out of a cabin without looking and knocked Myell backward. His head slammed into the bulkhead.

“Damn it!” the officer said. “Are you all right?”

Myell's vision filled with stars. Beneath the domed sky, a harsh desert stretched far and flat to the horizon. A snake as large as a mountain flicked its massive tongue to the beat of ancient drums and consciousness faded, faded, faded away.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Myell woke to find an unfamiliar shape bent over him.
Daris,
he thought, and almost lashed out with his hands and feet. Then he saw commander's bars and a nametag that said Osherman. His patches included several Alcheringa runs and a memoriam badge for the
Yangtze.

“Stay still, Sergeant,” Osherman ordered sternly. “I'll call Medical.”

“I'm fine.” Myell sat up to prove it. He rubbed the side of his head and touched a hot spot where his cheek had slammed into the deck. “What happened?”

“I knocked you down. I apologize. Can you stand?”

He could, and did, and though he himself was steady the passageway swayed like a boat on an ocean. Osherman wanted to walk him down to Sick Berth but Myell convinced him that going back to the issue room was a better idea. Jodenny blanched when she saw the two of them.

“What happened to you?” she demanded, reaching as if to touch his cheek.

Myell deflected her hand. “An accident.”

“My fault,” Osherman said. “Should I call Medical?”

“Sit down.” Jodenny steered him toward a stool. Her hands were remarkably soft, and felt warm against his skin. “Medbot activate.”

“I don't need—” Myell started to stay, but the unit was already honing in on him with a flashing light. “It's nothing, Lieutenant.”

“Did you lose consciousness?”

The medbot hovered around his right ear and swung to his left. “No,” Myell said.

“Yes,” Osherman said. “Only for a few seconds.”

Jodenny shot Osherman a gaze. In it Myell saw something old, maybe something bitter. He knew they had both served on the
Yangtze.
It didn't take much to imagine them attending the same meetings, or sharing a cozy rendezvous in officer berthing.

Osherman added, “You were trying to say something, Sergeant.”

Myell tried to remember, but nothing came to him. The medbot announced, “No emergency medical assistance required. Please report to Sick Berth at your convenience.”

Lieutenant Quenger appeared at the counter. He was Chiba's boss, as much as any officer could be said to be. Almost as much trouble, though far less powerful. Myell had never liked him. Quenger said, “So, what happened here? Blood and guts. Looks interesting.”

Osherman ignored Quenger completely. “Again, Sergeant, my apologies. If you'll excuse me, I'm late to an appointment.”

He strode off. Quenger said, cheerfully, “I can come back, if you two need a moment or two.”

Myell didn't like the tone in Quenger's voice, but Jodenny's expression betrayed nothing. She said, “Go get yourself checked out, Sergeant. I'll have Nitta send someone else up.”

“I can keep working—”

She gave him a forced smile. Maybe she was ashamed of him in some way, or maybe she just wanted to talk to Quenger alone. “You'll scare the ensigns, looking like you do. They'll think I'm abusing my crew.”

Myell nodded unhappily. He left the issue room and rounded the next corner, then stopped to eavesdrop.

“What do you need?” Jodenny asked.

“That's a pretty open-ended question, isn't it, Jo?”

“What do you need from the issue room?”

“New jacket. Lost my other one.”

Myell envisioned her taking the requisition and pulling down a jacket from the shelves. The prospect of Quenger ogling her while she bent over or reached up made his fists clench. Quenger asked, “When are you going to let me take you to dinner?”

“Is that what you had in mind the other night?”

“You should have let me in.”

“I don't date fellow officers.”

Quenger laughed. “Dating wasn't on the agenda.”

“Here's your jacket.” Jodenny didn't sound amused. “Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

“Jo, Jo, Jo,” Quenger chided.

The approach of footsteps made Myell climb down the nearest ladder and head back to his quarters. A cold cloth eased the bump on his head and aspirin started to work on the headache. He lay in his rack trying not to think about Quenger putting his hands on Jodenny. After several sleepless minutes of replaying the accident with Osherman he checked officer berthing assignments in Core. Osherman had knocked him down while coming out of quarters assigned to Lieutenant Anzo, who worked for him in the Data Department.

Myell called up Anzo's biography and picture but didn't recognize her. There could be a very innocent reason for Osherman visiting one of his subordinates' cabins during working hours—maybe Anzo was sick in quarters, or just coming off a watch—but Myell found it curious she hadn't noticed the accident in the passage just outside her door, or hadn't come to check. Or had she?

The pocket server, programmed to activate at any impact, had dumped data right into an encrypted account. Myell played it back and heard Osherman saying, “Damn it!” A thud. A rustle as Osherman bent over him. “Sergeant? Sergeant?” he asked, somewhat frantic. A cabin hatch clicked open.

“What happened?” a woman's voice asked.

“I'll take care of it,” Osherman said.

“You want me to call Medical?”

“No. Go back inside.”

The hatch door closed. Osherman said, “Sergeant, wake up,” and then Myell's own voice murmured something too low for him to hear on the replay. He upped the volume.

“Uru…”

Osherman asked, “What, Sergeant?”

“Oolu…” Myell mumbled, then silence. A few seconds later he had woken up.

Myell stared at Koo, who was busy sleeping in her terrarium and no help at all. Though Osherman had told Myell he would call Medical, and had again offered in front of Jodenny, it was obvious he didn't want anyone else involved. His trip to Lieutenant Anzo's cabin didn't look so innocuous after all. Suddenly weary, Myell downloaded all of the pocket server's data to his personal ship's account and climbed into bed. Sometime later cloth rustled and he woke up swinging.

“Hey, hey!” Timrin backed away with a blanket in hand. “Just trying to be nice.”

Upright, dizzy, Myell dragged a hand across his eyes. “Sorry.”

Timrin peered at his cheek. “Jesus. Chiba do that to you?”

“Got knocked down.” The past and present blurred, and Myell wasn't sure who he was making excuses for. Timrin's thoughtful if incautious move had tumbled him back to Baiame, the fall of a shadow in the doorway, Daris's calloused hands.

“Terry? You with me?”

He shook himself back to the present. “What time is it?”

“Almost time for the game, and I've got my money on East Enfield.” Timrin threw the blanket aside and pulled off his coveralls with quick, efficient tugs. “Someone should teach fucking Chiba a lesson.”

“I told you. This wasn't Chiba.”

“Don't cover for him. I heard what happened. Did you record it?”

Myell sipped some water. “You're not listening.”

“I hear what you're not saying.” Timrin slid into a new shirt and buttoned it. He was a thin man, bony in all the wrong places, unlucky when it came to women. He paid for sex, usually, either directly or through kasai girls. “So why does the side of your face look like raw hamburger?”

The anger in Timrin's voice made Myell feel a little better. “Someone rushed too quickly out of a hatch while I was in berthing. Satisfied? Drop it.”