The Outback Stars (30 page)

Holland replied, “Not that I can see, Lieutenant.”

Maybe he had died of his injuries. More likely he was off enjoying medical leave at the beach while she cleaned up his damned division.

Her eyes returned to the deskgib. Lieutenant Jennifer Anzo, the officer who had failed to report Greiger's accident right away, had graduated from Officer Candidate School in the same class as David Quenger. Quenger, in turn, had been slated to take over Greiger's job until Jodenny arrived. She queried Anzo's duty assignment and saw that she was attached to the Data Department, working for Osherman. There was a pattern there, a network of connections she couldn't quite see, but she was too tired to think it through.

With only fifteen minutes until morning quarters she swung by the mess decks and found Francesco in a corner booth, looking hungover and nursing a cup of coffee.

“Do you know Lieutenant Anzo in Data?” she asked.

“Not by name. Why?”

Jodenny slid into his booth. “Heard she got into trouble with the captain when she didn't report Greiger's accident.”

Francesco reached for the imitation sugar. “You can get in trouble for a lot less. You don't want to be making too many inquiries about Data, anyway.”

“Why not?”

He dumped the sugar into this cup. “Close-knit bunch. Keep to themselves. Something dirty happens, they sweep it under the rug and don't want you peeking.”

“Did something dirty happen?”

He wagged a finger at her. “Precisely my point. Don't ask, don't get lied to.”

Jodenny checked her watch. She was perilously close to being late to quarters. “Something dirty about Greiger? It's no secret he wasn't doing a good job in Underway Stores. But why would Anzo delay reporting his accident?”

“I don't know what you're rambling on about.”

“But you suspect.”

Francesco reached for more sugar. “I suspect a lot of things. Why did Commander Matsuda keep Greiger and Chiba in Underway Stores, when everyone knew they were trouble? Was he part of whatever they're up to? Where did Matsuda disappear to, anyway? And remember that dingo your division lost when we were leaving Kookaburra? Bigger stuff than that's gone missing. People hush it up, investigations get quashed. You can guess who did it, but they've always got alibis on the other side of the ship when shit happens.”

Jodenny had to go immediately or set a bad example for her sailors. “Thanks for the info. You all right, or just up too late?”

Francesco poured himself more coffee. “A gentleman never tells.”

*   *   *

Jodenny was almost late to quarters. Myell watched her rush in just a moment before Nitta called the ranks to order. Her face was haggard, as if she'd been up all night. After quarters she asked Myell to take on Ensign Ysten for the day, training him in tower operations.

“Yet another in a long line of skills I'll never need to know,” Ysten said as he and Myell rode the lift to the command module.

Myell wasn't thrilled with the idea of Ysten hanging around all day. He, Hosaka, and Ishikawa were finishing up the June inventory and the DNGOs were acting up again. Thera had a three-minute gap in her memory and Andromeda failed to acknowledge a retrieval order from Core. Myell had both robots report to the bottom of the hold.

“I'll go take a look at them, Sergeant,” Hosaka said.

“No, I will,” he said, enjoying the power of delegation. If one of them had to be stuck with Ysten, it might as well be her. “I'll be back soon.”

Hosaka mouthed a mild obscenity at him as he left. Myell only grinned. He took Andromeda to his workbench and stripped out her transceiver. It tested fine when he ran a diagnostic, but just to be sure he swapped it out for a standby unit. While he was wrestling it in he spied a tiny silver chip. He might have ignored it completely if he hadn't seen ones just like it back when he served on the
Kashmir.
He extracted the master chip and held it up to the light.

“Well, hello,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Master chips were only in use on Class IV and Class V DNGOs. Andromeda was a Class III, and the chip appeared fairly new. He had it running through the diagnostic unit when Hosaka pinged and said, “Circe won't respond.”

“Have Core reboot her.”

“I tried, Sarge.”

Ensign Ysten cut onto the line. “Sergeant, really, you need to handle this yourself.”

Myell knew Ysten didn't like Hosaka, and hadn't since she had complained to Jodenny about his safety inspection. “I'll be right up,” he said, and sealed Andromeda up again. He almost left the master chip out on the bench, but reconsidered. He reached far into the top drawer and pressed up with his fingers until a small compartment fell open. Chief Mustav had kept a liquor flask in there, all the better for warming oneself up on cold mornings in the hold. The chip easily fit inside.

Up in the command module, he tried recalling Circe. She ignored all requests.

Ysten said, “You'll have to get her.”

He could have sent Ishikawa or Hosaka, but it would be more expedient to do it himself. As a favor to Hosaka he took Ysten up to the observation module, where Ishikawa had already hauled out an EV suit and gear.

“Would you like to come into the slots with me, sir?” Myell asked.

Ysten's lips thinned. “I'll stay right here on terra firma.”

Over the comm, Hosaka announced she was locking down the tower. Five minutes later the DNGOs were stilled and Myell was gazing at the drop from the safety of the ledge. That first step never got any better. He maneuvered down the rungs a short distance to level forty-eight and peered into the slot. His headlamp picked out bins, grates, and navigation markers.

“How long does this normally take?” Ysten asked over his headset.

“Depends on how badly she's stuck, sir,” Myell replied.

He moved slowly through the zero-g, trying hard to keep from imagining monsters lurking in the shadows. Why did Andromeda have a master chip inside her? For the same reasons other DNGOs did. Someone outside of Core was radioing her instructions. Such a person would have needed access to the DNGOs to make the modifications. Someone who worked in Repair. What had Dyatt said the night he took her to Chaplain Mow? That Olsson and the others were at the shop in the middle of the night—

The General Quarters alarm tore through his headset, making him jerk in surprise.

“Damn it,” Hosaka said. “Goddamned GQ!”

Up in the observation module, Ishikawa asked, “What do we do?”

Myell ordered, “Go to your stations. I'll follow as soon as I can.”

“You know we can't,” Hosaka said. “We can't leave anyone in the shaft unattended.”

Their delay would drag down the department's response rate but it was the captain's fault for having a drill at such an inopportune time anyway. The obnoxiously loud siren made Myell's ears ache and he dialed down his comm. He headed back toward the shaft.

Ysten asked, peevishly, “Where are you, Sergeant?”

“Still at D—”

Something bright and fast-moving flashed in the corner of his eye.

“Shit!” Myell tried to jerk away, but the DNGO slammed into him and sent him reeling against the nearest bin. The lamp in his helmet flickered and went out. For a moment he felt no injuries. What fortune. Direct impact with a flying hunk of metal and he wasn't even hurt. Then red sparkles filled his vision and a bone-deep pain seared through his right side, hip, and knee as surely as if he'd been set on fire.

“Terry!” Hosaka's voice was sharp in his ear.

“Report, Sergeant!” Ysten ordered.

“Dingo—” he started, and coughed up blood. Some of it splattered against his helmet but most of it clogged his throat or hung in the zero-g. The DNGO that had hit him hovered just a few feet away, having automatically gone into standby mode.

“Sarge, where are you?” Ishikawa asked.

Darkness and his own blood obscured the bin markers. Myell's suit temperature must have dropped thirty degrees, because his lungs were freezing up in his chest. Fire and ice battled through him. Although he could wrap his hands around the thruster controls, he didn't have the strength to squeeze the handles or steer himself in any given direction. Even if he did move, he feared ramming himself against the DNGO or into bins. More blood clogged his throat and his efforts to clear it produced an odd choking screech. The voices on his headset faded in and out, accompanied by the GQ alarm.

“Which dingo hit him?” Hosaka asked.

Ishikawa sounded near tears. “Circe.”

“What does it matter?” Ysten demanded.

“If we can kick her out of standby, she can tow him out to the shaft.” Hosaka's voice turned stern. “Terry! Do you see Circe? Can you get to her?”

The DNGO's blue lights blurred at the edges. Every breath sent red-hot spears into Myell's side, and for one clear moment he imagined his injuries—crushed ribs, maybe a punctured lung, some other fractures. He tried to get closer to the robot and saw that something was wrong. The hull markings, the scratches …

“Terry, listen to me,” Hosaka said. “Hold on!”

He remembered his mother, dead too early by her own hand. And surely he was dying too, because he could almost see her image reflected on the DNGO's hull, and wasn't that how things worked? That the dead came to escort you to the other side? She would have been more useful if she'd come on those cold winter mornings to protect him from Daris, but anger served no purpose and he was glad of the company. She looked like Colby, her skin smooth and dewy, her hair short and golden. The last present she had given him was a gram of herself on a beach, and then she had hanged herself.

“Terry,” someone said—maybe his mother, maybe Hosaka, maybe even the sour Ensign Ysten. It didn't matter. Blood was in his throat again, and this time he couldn't cough it out no matter how hard he tried.

His heart stuttered and all sensation faded away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jodenny was sitting at her desk after quarters, fighting fatigue for just a little while longer. On her deskgib was the sketch of the glyphs she and Myell had seen on Mary River. Wondjina runes, or so Ng believed. On her desk itself was Sergeant Rosegarten's report on the missing DNGO.
You can guess who did it, but they've always got alibis on the other side of the ship,
Francesco had said.

“Holland, can you access the lifepod rosters during the last GQ? Tell me where Chief Chiba and RT Engel went.”

“Chief Chiba reported to lifepod H-23. RT Engel went to lifepod I-26.”

“Show me their response times,” Jodenny said.

There it was, on the screen. Chiba's alibi. And the numbers didn't work at all. He'd checked into H-23 ninety seconds after the first alarm, but he couldn't have gotten there from the Repair Shop in that short amount of time. Not with the trams between Mainship and the Rocks locked down. Likewise Engel could have never made it to I-26. Jodenny called up the supervisors of both pods and wasn't at all surprised to see Nitta's and Quenger's names.

“Holland, call Commander Picariello for me,” she said, just as the General Quarters alarm started to blare. For a moment Jodenny was perplexed—was she just imagining the alarm, based on her reading?—but the intensity of it jerked her to her feet and to the front office. Caldicot had a morning watch to stand and Mrs. Mullaly was all alone.

“Where do we go?” Mrs. Mullaly asked.

For a moment Jodenny couldn't remember.
You got through this before,
she told herself.
You can do this again.
Overhead the comm announced, “This is a drill. This is only a drill. All crew and passengers to lifepods. Power Plants retain full power.”

A knot of tension eased in Jodenny's chest. “Do you know where your lifepod is?”

Mrs. Mullaly's voice shook. “Back in our tower, but I'll never make it.”

“You go to C-Deck,” Jodenny said, because there was an auxiliary pod there for civilians with day jobs on Mainship. She'd learned that much from going over watch qualifications with the junior officers. “Do you know how to get there?”

Mrs. Mullaly wrapped her arms over her stomach. “I don't want to climb any ladders. Can't I just stay here?”

“No.” Jodenny tugged her out into the passage, which was busy with sailors dashing to their stations. She urged Mrs. Mullaly up the nearest ladder and tried to shelter her against jostling while staying focused on the present day.
Aral Sea,
not
Yangtze.
A drill, not a tragedy. She fought off memories of an AT sheared in two, of burning hair and melting plastasteel. On C-Deck, they moved aft toward the lifepods. Beneath the wail of the siren she heard a ping on her gib. Who the hell would call her during a GQ?

“In there,” Jodenny said, getting Mrs. Mullaly to her station. Chief Roush checked her in. Jodenny whirled to head off to her own lifepod, but her gib distracted her again. She accepted the call and glared at Ysten's face.

“We're in the middle of a drill, Ensign!”

“There's been an accident. A dingo hit Myell—”

Jodenny ducked into an alcove. She didn't think she had heard him correctly. “What? Where are you?”

“He was in the slots—”

“Patch me through your board.”

“I don't know how—”

“Holland, patch me through,” Jodenny ordered. The audio channel filled with an odd, strangled sound that she first supposed was a DNGO malfunctioning. But no, it was someone choking. Myell, choking to death.

“Hosaka, report!” Jodenny ordered.

“He's on level forty-eight, D-block, but I can't get any of the dingoes to pull him out. Core won't release them under a General Quarters lockdown.”

Ishikawa's voice joined the line. “I can do it, Lieutenant. I can climb down and get him.”