The Outback Stars (2 page)

“Yes, sir. I'm sure,” Jodenny said.

“Then you'd better go pack, Lieutenant. The admiral will authorize your transfer.”

*   *   *

If he waited only thirty more minutes, Terry Myell would miss the birdie and be officially AWOL. It wouldn't be the first detrimental entry on his service record but it would be the last, because if he started walking, he would keep going—up over the mountains, straight past Sydney Harbor, and all the way to the back of beyond. No more closed-in starships filled with filtered air and recycled gossip for him. He would live in a tent on the open range, cook over open fires, maybe even get a dog. A Labrador retriever. And it would all be perfect and peaceful until military police showed up to haul him away in handcuffs.

“Hey, Terry!” a woman called out happily. Myell turned, but the woman went into the arms of a businessman in a blue summer suit. He should have known. Although he'd once had friends on the
Aral Sea,
people who might be happy to see him, that had all changed since Fortune. No one but Team Space security would care if he disappeared over the hills.

Something flickered at the corner of his eye, and he focused on a small brown gecko that had crawled up onto the slat of his bench.

“What do you think?” Myell asked it. “Stay or go?”

The gecko didn't answer. A dozen Sydney United fans poured out of a van, boisterous after their weekend victory. A sullen group of Manchester South supporters watched them from across the median. Three do-wops with guitars slung over their backs strolled past a woman teleconferencing on her sunglasses. A young girl beside her played with a toy robot. The girl resembled Myell's niece, and he reminded himself that when the
Aral Sea
made it to Mary River he'd at least have some downtime with Colby and the family.

If he survived the trip to Mary River.

Maybe going AWOL wasn't such a bad idea after all.

“Hey, donger,” a voice called out. “Forget where the ship is?”

Myell stood up. “Fuck you, too, Spallone.”

Tony Spallone gave him a smile that did nothing to improve his puffy features. Behind him, Joe Olsson paid off a cabdriver and shouldered his bag. Both men were Chiba's dogs, and Spallone, at least, was as much a bully and thief as his boss.

“Sure you don't want to head north and put all this shit behind you?” Spallone asked. “It's not like people are going to forget, Myell. Space is big but Team Space is fucking tiny.”

Myell said, “Only two people know what really happened, and you're not one of them.”

“But Wendy told us everything. So you'd better stay in your little dark corner and don't come out, you understand?”

Olsson started inside. “I'm not missing the birdie for this.”

Spallone cuffed Myell on the side of the head and followed Olsson. Myell stood rooted to his spot with his fists clenched until a female lieutenant approached him. She had dark blue eyes, glossy brown hair pulled back into a regulation-style braid, and a pretty face marred by dark circles under her eyes. Her nametag read Scott and she wore the same supply insignia he did. For a moment he felt a faint sizzle of recognition, almost as if they were old friends unexpectedly reunited, but the feeling passed almost immediately.

Myell saluted. “Good morning, ma'am.”

“Good morning, Sergeant. Do you know which gate is for the
Aral Sea
?”

“Number twelve, ma'am.”

“Thank you.” She scrutinized his uniform. “You need to polish your boots.”

Myell glanced down at his scuffed heels. “Yes, ma'am.”

Lieutenant Scott started inside. She wore her uniform quite well, and her slacks showed off her long legs and shapely rear. He might never be able to date a commissioned officer, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate her assets. After a moment she turned as if sensing his attention and asked, rather crisply, “Do you intend to miss the flight?”

So much for appreciation. Myell picked up his rucksack, resisted one last look at the mountains, and followed her inside.

*   *   *

Jodenny had hurried to her quarters, crammed her gear into a bag, and rented a P-train. She spent two hours reviewing data about the
Aral Sea
as the unit whisked her south and looked up only when the local triad of Father, Mother, and Child Spheres appeared near Point Elliot. The Spheres stood enormous and regal in the sunshine, ancient sentinels from another age. A busload of tourists posed for pictures, even though dozens of Spheres, always in the same grouping and same alignment, dotted every continent in the Seven Sisters. The orphanage in which Jodenny had grown up had been right across from the most popular triad on Fortune.

Traffic was heavy, and by the time she reached Sato Spaceport she only had a few minutes to spare. She asked directions from the first crewman she saw, a sergeant with an
Aral Sea
nametag and ten years' worth of patches on his uniform.

“Number twelve, ma'am,” Sergeant Myell told her.

He had short brown hair and brown eyes to match. Handsome, with sturdy muscles in his forearms and a bit of sunburn in his cheeks. The outdoorsy type, probably, as much as any man could be when he spent most of his life on a starship. She pushed down a pull of attraction and told him he needed to polish his boots.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

Jodenny gave Myell a nod and started inside. He didn't follow. “Do you intend to miss the flight?” she asked, more sharply than she intended. Myell's only answer was to pick up his sack and follow her at a respectful distance.

Inside, Sato was an oasis of cool air and well-tended gardens that stretched along concourses filled with tourist shops. Gate twelve was crowded with friends and family who'd come to bid farewell to the crew already beyond the barriers. Given what had happened to the
Yangtze,
security was tighter than usual. Jodenny had to pass through two scanners to get to the manning desk, where a civilian security guard checked her retinal scans and said, “You're not on the access list, Lieutenant.”

“I just got reassigned. Check again.”

“Salter, Sbrizza, Seabaugh—no Scott.”

The comm announced boarding for the
Aral Sea
's birdie. Myell, who'd already moved through his line, glanced back over his shoulder at her. Jodenny insisted, “Admiral Cartwright authorized the transfer himself.”

The guard called a coworker over. The two of them conferred while the
Aral Sea
crew filed up a ramp. Had the admiral changed his mind, or something gone wrong with her records? Jodenny tried not to fidget.

“I need to get on that birdie,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” the second guard said. “Know you from someplace, don't I?”

Surely he'd seen the media reports. “Maybe. Can you check again?”

The first guard let out a triumphant noise. “Ha! Here you are, Lieutenant. Just came through. You'd better hurry.”

She rushed into the nearly empty lounge and started for the ramp. After two steps her legs locked, her mouth went dry, and her heart began to pound out a staccato beat. Only three months had passed since the bombing. Ninety days of injury, recovery, sleepless nights, and continuous regret. Jem was dead. Dyanne was dead. Jodenny could have requested a planetside job and Team Space would have given it to her; she could have asked to terminate her contract and not even the admiral himself would have refused.

“Lieutenant?” Myell stood at her elbow with a crease between his eyes. She hadn't even noticed him hang back while others went ahead. He asked, “Something wrong?”

Last chance to turn around, she told herself. To be free. The
Aral Sea
is not a happy ship, Taymore had said. But her life wasn't about happiness. It hadn't been for a long time.

“No,” she said. “Nothing's wrong. Let's go.”

They walked up the ramp together.

CHAPTER TWO

Jodenny took the last remaining aisle seat beside a sailor whose nametag and insignia identified him as Able Technician Cardoza. Myell maneuvered into the window seat of a row up ahead, and she was disappointed that they couldn't sit together. As a member of the Supply Department he could give her all the most current gouge. Cardoza, who wore an Ops patch, wouldn't know much gossip at all.

“Would you like the window, ma'am?” Cardoza asked. “I can move.”

“I'm fine, thank you.” The window wasn't real anyway, just another vid.

The sailors on the birdie ignored the prerecorded safety announcements and talked right over the launch countdown. As the engines roared to life Jodenny gripped the armrests so hard her fingers went numb. Kookaburra receded beneath their wings and the artificial gravity kicked in. A DNGO rolled down the dirty carpet of the aisle to sell refreshments. Jodenny paid for a bottle of marsala tea and some onigiri to settle her stomach.

“How long have you been aboard, AT Cardoza?”

“About a year. This is my first run.” He eyed her patches. “You've done three, that's great.”

Two and a half, actually. She'd earned her first two Alcheringa patches the hard way, each run taking about ten months. Jodenny's third trip down the Alcheringa had been brutally cut short, as had the lives of seven hundred forty-nine sailors and civilians. The terrorists of the Colonial Freedom Project had seen to that.

Cardoza adjusted the vid screen. “Is this okay? I always like that first glimpse of the ship. Kind of reminds you how big she really is.”

The image of the
Aral Sea
grew larger. She was identical to the
Yangtze,
both of them built in Fortune's orbital shipyards, each freighter twelve decks high and longer than three soccer fields. Attached to Mainship by an umbilical shaft was the ship's promenade, and attached to the promenade were twenty cylindrical towers, each a self-contained cargo hold crammed with colonists, equipment, supplies, and families of the
Aral Sea
's crew. Most of the towers were destined to be towed away and replaced at one of the Seven Sister planets farther down the Alcheringa.

“You don't think there's going to be any problem, do you, ma'am?”

“Everything will be fine,” Jodenny said. “It's not going to happen again.”

Halfway to the
Aral Sea
she went to wash up in the head, and when she came out she bumped into another sergeant from the Supply Department. “I'm Tony Spallone, ma'am,” he said, a smile pasted on his face. “You must be here because of Lieutenant Commander Greiger. Too bad about him, eh?”

“What happened?”

He grimaced. “Car accident. A shame, really. I hope he makes it.”

Jodenny heard sympathy in his voice but Spallone's gaze was shifty, insincere. She saw that Myell had stood up to stretch and had his eye on the both of them. “What division do you work in, Sergeant?”

“Maintenance/HazMat, ma'am. Great place. All the divisions are straight up except for Underway Stores. That was Lieutenant Commander Greiger's division. Not his fault, mind you, he got stuck with some bad apples. Dicensu, Ishikawa, Myell—I shouldn't say any more.”

“No, you shouldn't.” Spallone had no doubt watched her and Myell board together. “I'll see you around, Sergeant.”

She returned to her seat. Myell had sat down again, and the back of his head told her nothing. Jodenny unwrapped her onigiri and ate her way to the marinated kelp at its center. The ship's Supply Officer had the discretion to put anyone he wanted in charge of Underway Stores. Surely he wouldn't fill it with a junior officer such as herself. With any luck at all she'd be put into Flight Support, which was much more exciting and interesting. Underway Stores sounded like a troubled division, and she didn't need any more problems than the ones she already had.

*   *   *

That first whiff of the
Aral Sea
's air—clean but recycled, cool and faintly scented with machine oil—should have kicked her in the stomach. She expected it to, and stepped off the birdie in the Flight Hangar braced for a flood of memories. To her surprise Jodenny felt only a bit of disorientation as the other passengers cleared a temporary security barrier and began to disperse. The hangar was large and well organized, busy with equipment and Flight personnel, and not conducive to casual lingering. Once past the barrier Jodenny decided to head for the Supply Flats, but a blond ensign with pale skin blocked her way.

“Hi, I'm Clara Hultz. You're Lieutenant Scott, right? I'm supposed to show you around. First stop's the bridge, because the captain wants to see you. Then I'll take you to the Flats and you can meet Commander Al-Banna. He's the new SUPPO. Well, not so new now. Are you hungry? Nothing's really open on Mainship but I'm in charge of the vending machines, so I know where the best ones are. Oh, and we're going to be working together. Isn't that great?”

Hultz stopped to take a breath.

“I need to drop off my things,” Jodenny said.

“I'll have someone take it down. Hey, Sergeant Spallone, could you—”

“Never mind.” Jodenny tightened her grip. I'll keep it with me.”

“You're sure? Okay. Let's go. I hardly ever get to go to the bridge—”

Jodenny followed the chattering ensign down the passage. The
Aral Sea
's black and gray color scheme was similar to the
Yangtze'
s, but the matting on the decks was a little darker, the lettering on signs larger. The ship's air and drive systems hummed in the background, punctuated by occasional comm announcements. She noticed that the
Yangtze
was the one thing that Hultz wasn't talking about, and was grateful.

“—and I'm supposed to be done with my quals already, but things have been busy since the Commander Banana came onboard—”