The Serrano Connection (20 page)

A long sigh, through pursed lips. "About many things, Lieutenant, of which your potential for mutiny is only one minute particle. I have been assured, by those who are supposed to know, that the public reports of your court-martial were in fact accurate . . . that there is no suspicion of your having conspired to mutiny ahead of your captain's treacherous act." He waited; Esmay could think of nothing helpful to say, and kept quiet. "I shall expect your loyalty, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir," Esmay said. That she could do.

"And have you no corresponding concern that your next captain might also be a traitor? That I might be in the pay of some enemy?"

She had not let herself think about that; the effort pushed her response into exclamation. "No, sir! Captain Hearne must have been an aberration—"

"And the others as well? You're happier than I, if you can believe that, Lieutenant."

Now what was he getting at?

"We've had investigators all over every ship in the Fleet—and that's reassuring only to those who think the investigators can't be bent. A mess of trouble that Serrano woman caused."

Esmay opened her mouth to defend Heris Serrano, and realized it would do no good. If Hakin seriously believed that Serrano had "caused trouble" by unmasking traitors and saving the Familias from invasion, she couldn't change his mind. She could only ruin her own reputation.

"Not that she isn't a brilliant commander," Hakin went on, as if she had said something. "I suppose Fleet must count itself lucky to have her back on active status . . . if we do get into a war." He looked at Esmay again. "I'm told Admiral Vida Serrano is pleased with you . . . I suppose she would be, since you saved her niece's neck."

That, too, was unanswerable. Esmay wished he would get to the point, if his point was not merely to needle her, trying to get some sort of reaction.

"I hope you don't have a swelled head from all the attention, Lieutenant. Or some kind of psychological trauma from the strain of the court-martial, which I've been warned is sometimes the case, even with a favorable verdict." From his expression, he would want some kind of answer this time.

"No, sir." Esmay said.

"Good. I'm sure you're aware that this is a time of crisis for both the Fleet and the Familias. No one knows quite what to expect . . . except that on this ship, I expect everyone to attend to duty. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good, Lieutenant; I'll see you from time to time as the mess rotations come around." He dismissed her with a nod, and Esmay went out trying to suppress a resentment that she knew would do her no good. No one lasted long in any service with a "why me?" attitude; she wasn't to blame for the things held against her, but what was new about that? In the history of the universe, Papa Stefan had taught them all, life was unfair more often than not . . . life wasn't about
fair
. What it was about had filled more than one evening with explosive argument . . . Esmay tried not to think about it more than necessary.

She handed her order chip to the clerk in the front office. "What's my duty assignment, do you know?" He glanced at it and shook his head. "That's the 14th Heavy Maintenance Yard, Lieutenant: Admiral Dossignal's command. You'll need to report to his Admin section . . . here—" He sketched out a route on her compad. "Just keep going clockwise around the core, and you'll come to it at the base of T-3."

"Is the bridge on this deck?" asked Esmay, gesturing to the color-coded deck tiles.

"No, sir. The bridge is up on 17; this ship's too big for the usual color-codes. There is a system, but it's not standard. We call this command deck because all the commands have their headquarters units here. That's just for convenience, really; it cuts down the transit time." Esmay could imagine that in a ship this size any hand-carried message could take awhile to arrive. She had never been on a ship where the captain's office and the bridge were not near each other.

On her way around the core, she passed another obvious headquarters, this one with a neat sign informing her that it was the Sector 14 Training Command, Admiral Livadhi commanding. Underneath were smaller signs: Senior Technical Schools Admin Office, Senior Technical Schools Assessment, Support Systems. She walked on, past the base of another wing, this one labeled T-2. That was where she would be living, but she didn't have time to explore it now. On and on . . . and there ahead she saw a large banner proclaiming
Fourteenth Heavy Maintenance Yard: The Scrap Will Rise Again
. Below that, smaller signs directed the ignorant to the administrative offices. There, a bright-eyed pivot-major sent her directly to the admiral's chief of staff, Commander Atarin. He greeted Esmay's appearance in a matter-of-fact way she found reassuring. He had already read her report on the inventory aboard the supply ship, and seemed far more interested in that than her past.

"We've been trying to nail our supplier on these leaky adhesive tubes for a couple of years," he said. "But we couldn't prove that the supplies were damaged before we got here. I'm glad old Scorry—the XO on that supply ship—thought of having you go over the stock on your way here. We may finally get some leverage on them."

"Yes, sir."

"How much experience do you have with inventory control?"

"None, sir," Esmay said. Her record cube, she knew, was on the XO's desk, but he might not have had time to look at it.

"I'm impressed, then, especially that you caught those fasteners. Most people give up after fifty or sixty items. Or assume the computer will catch it. It's supposed to, of course—there's supposed to be automatic labeling, right from the manufacturing machinery. Zero-error, they keep claiming. Never have
seen
zero errors, though." He grinned at her. "Of course, it could be someone from the IG's office, putting little tests in our path, to see if we're alert."

That possibility hadn't occurred to Esmay, though sabotage had. But he hadn't been on
Despite
.

"Of course, it could also be enemy action," he said. She hoped he hadn't seen that on her face. "But I'd rather believe in stupidity than malice." He looked down at his desk display. "Now let's see . . . your last duty was on a patrol craft—your emphasis on your last few cruises was scan technology. Frankly, we have plenty of scan tech experts aboard now, all more experienced than you in the field. It would do you good to branch out, get some expertise in other ship systems—" He looked up as if expecting her to disagree.

"Fine, sir," Esmay said. She hoped it was fine. She knew she needed to learn about other systems, but was he just determined to keep her away from scan, because scan was political?

"Good." He smiled again, and nodded. "I expect most of you juniors think DSR is a bad assignment, but you'll discover that there's no better way to learn what really keeps ships operational. No ordinary ship deals with as many problems as we do, from hull to electronics. If you take advantage of it, this tour can teach you a lot."

Esmay relaxed. She recognized someone happily astride his favorite hobby horse. "Yes, sir," she said, and wondered if he would go on.

"Personally, I think every officer should have a tour on a DSR. Then we wouldn't have people coming up with bright ideas—even installing bright ideas—that they should know wouldn't work." He reined himself in with a visible effort. "Well. I'm going to assign you to H&A first—Hull and Architecture, that is. You'll find it a lot more complicated than your basic course at the academy."

"I expect so, sir," Esmay said.

"You'll be working with Major Pitak; she's on Deck Eight, portside main, aft third of T-4 . . . you can ask someone from there. Had time to stow your gear yet?"

"No, sir."

"Mmm. Well, technically you're not on duty until tomorrow, but—"

"I'll go see Major Pitak, sir."

"Good. Now, the admiral will want to meet you, but he's tied up right now in a meeting, and I don't expect he'll be free until tomorrow or the next day. Check back with me, and I'll set it up. You might want to take a look at the command structure here—it's more complex than you'd find in most assignments."

"Yes, sir."

Not only the command structure was complex, Esmay discovered. She headed clockwise from T-3, where the 14th Heavy Maintenance had its administrative offices, to T-4, sure that she had now caught on to the
Koskiusko's
peculiar structure. At the hub end of T-4, she found an array of personnel and cargo transport tubes, and took the personnel lift down to the eighth deck. There she faced an axial passage wide enough for three horsemen abreast, and plunged into it, looking for the third crosswise passage. She passed one administrative office after another, each occupied by busy clerks: Communications Systems, Weapons Systems, Remote Imaging Systems . . . but nothing labeled Hull and Architecture. Finally she stopped and asked.

"Hull and Architecture? That's on the portside main passage, sir. You'll have to go back to hub and clockwise to it—"

Esmay suspected a joke at her expense. "Surely there are cross-passages?"

A quickly-suppressed laugh. "No, sir . . . T-4 has one of the main repair bays . . . nothing goes straight across at this level, from Deck Three up to Deck Fifteen."

She had forgotten the repair bays. She felt annoyed with herself and the clerk both. "Oh yes. Sorry."

"No problem, sir. It takes awhile for anyone to get used to this place. Just take this passage back, turn left—" The civilian term seemed right for something this size, Esmay realized. "Then look for the P- designations on the bulkheads. That's portside main—if you keep going, you'll get to portside secondary, which you don't want. Hull and Architecture is about as far down portside main as we are down starboard, so . . ."

So she had given herself a lot more walk than she wanted. "Thank you," she said, with what courtesy she could muster past her annoyance. This ship shouldn't need any fitness equipment, if everyone got lost occasionally.

Although she felt the length of the hike in her legs, she had no more trouble finding Pitak's office. The portside main passage was easy enough, and at the third passage aft she found a pivot who directed her the rest of the way.

Major Pitak wasn't in that office. The pivot had said something about "the major's on a bit about something" but Esmay didn't know what that meant. She glanced up and down the passage. Crewmen moving along as if they knew what they were doing, and no major. She thought of going to look, and decided not to play that game. She would simply park here until Pitak came back.

She glanced around. On the bulkhead facing the entrance was a display of metal pieces. Esmay wondered what it was, and moved closer to read the label below. Common Welding Errors it said. Esmay could see the big lopsided blob at the one joint, and the failure of another blob to cover the joint . . . but what was wrong with the rest of them?

"So you're my new assistant," someone said behind her. Esmay turned around. Major Pitak looked like her name sounded: a short, angular woman with a narrow face that reminded Esmay uneasily of a mule.

"Sir," Esmay said. Pitak scowled at her.

"And no background at all in naval architecture or heavy engineering, I notice."

"No, sir."

"Do you at least have
some
background in construction of anything? Even a chicken house?" It was clear that Pitak was furious about something; Esmay hoped it wasn't her own presence.

"Not unless helping put a roof back on a stable after a windstorm counts," Esmay said.

Pitak glared a moment longer, then softened. "No . . . it doesn't. Someone must be mad at both of us, Lieutenant. Sector HQ stole three of my best H&A specialists, promoted my assistant off this ship, and left me short . . . and now they've sent you, whatever your background is."

"Scan, mostly," Esmay said.

"If I were religious, I would consign their sorry tails to some strenuous afterlife," Major Pitak said. The corner of her mouth twitched. "Blast it. I never can stay mad long enough to singe them properly, and they know it. All right, Lieutenant, let's see what you do know. Whatever it is, it's not enough, but at least you haven't done anything stupid yet."

"I've hardly had time, sir," Esmay said. She was beginning to like the major, against all expectation.

"There's a naive statement," Pitak said. She had moved to her desk, where she yanked at a drawer without effect. "I've been sent idiots who managed to screw up before I'd met them." Another yank, this one hard enough to shift the desk itself. "For instance, this drawer . . . it never has worked right since your predecessor times two thought it would be clever to rekey the lock. We still don't know what he did, but none of the command wands work on it, nor does anything else but brute force and profanity." Without changing expression, Pitak launched a blistering stream of the latter at the drawer, which finally yielded with a squawk.

Esmay wanted to ask why anyone would use such a pesky drawer—why not clean it out and leave it empty?—but this was not the time. She watched Pitak rummage through the contents, coming up with a couple of data cubes.