Once a Hero

Chapter Eight

Her compartment was small, but her own—lieutenants had that bit of privacy. Her duffel was waiting on the bunk, its seals unbroken. She stowed her gear in the locker, activated the status board, and confirmed her identity to the computer’s flat-voiced inquiry. On a bulkhead a colored plan explained the officer housing arrangement. T-2 was configured for personnel housing: decks of enlisted bunking, broken into large bays for most, with two- or four-person compartments for the most senior. An entire deck for junior officers, with ensigns in ten-man bays, jigs in two-person compartments, and lieutenants in separate compartments, ranging outward by seniority. Above her was a deck of billeting for field grade officers, and above that a deck for the flag officers; she blinked at the number of admirals aboard.

Messing was in the same wing: two levels of food storage, kitchens, and dining halls. Exercise rooms, gyms, pools, even team sports space—she groaned at the thought of more parpaun enthusiasts—and on the top decks, open gardens. Gardens? Some space stations had gardens, but no Fleet vessel she’d ever been on. She thanked whatever beneficent deities had not assigned her to Environmental; it must be unbelievably difficult on a ship like this.

She looked around her compartment again. She hadn’t minded ensign bunking, when she’d been that junior. Some automatic device in her brain kept the worst dreams away when she was sleeping in a public space. Lack of privacy when awake had rarely bothered her either; she had not had much free time to miss it. Now . . . now she would have to hope that the nightmares didn’t wake her neighbors on either side. Her conscience pointed out that she could always go to Medical and request help from the psychs; she ignored it.

She had no messages waiting; she was not expected anywhere in particular. Which meant she could take a look at Pitak’s assignment on the cube, if she could find a cube reader free. The console informed her that she had her own cube reader . . . it took her a moment to find it; she had never seen one in the fully-stowed position. Most people left them half-open at least, for the next user.

The cube contained what looked like ordinary ship schematics. Not ordinary, exactly—this ship wasn’t ordinary—but nothing she couldn’t have pulled off the general user base and displayed on her own console. Esmay called up the schematics on the console to check that.

Not quite the same. Passages that went through on one schematic dead-ended in the other . . . lifts were in slightly different places. Esmay scowled at the display. Was the major trying to play her for a fool, or was the ship’s own database wrong? If so, why?

She looked for the nearest non-match, which was back on T-3, where a cross-corridor on Deck Three that the ship’s database said ran through “Forming Workshop 2-B” ended on Pitak’s data cube before reaching the workshop; according to her data, “forming workshop 2-B” couldn’t be reached except by a detour around “Die Storage.”

Only one way to find out. She glanced at the time . . . she could get up there and back to her assigned mess in T-2 before the next meal.

Back to the hub end of T-2, then clockwise to the base of T-3 . . . she was getting the hang of this. She located the personnel lift tube beside a cluster of four labeled cargo only.

The personnel lift light changed to green, and Esmay punched in. When the second light came on, she stepped in and felt a quick double lurch of her innards before she came to rest at the hatch eight decks down. Waiting there was another lieutenant, male, with a couple of ensigns in tow.

“I don’t know you,” the lieutenant said, as she stepped out. “Are you assigned here?”

“Just aboard, sir,” Esmay said, hoping she didn’t have the bug-eyed look that usually followed a short hop on the lift tube. “Esmay Suiza, assigned to Hull and Architecture . . .”

“Oh, yes.” He extended a hand; he had a good handshake. “Tai Golonifer. Short for something horrible and familial, don’t ask. I heard you were coming; I’m with 14th Maintenance staff. Are you busy at the moment?”

What was this? “I’m assigned to Major Pitak,” Esmay said, intentionally oblique.

“You’re busy,” Golonifer said, as if there were no doubt. “I’m not surprised she’s already got you running all over the ship. But meet these two—also newbies—Ensigns Anson and Partrade.” The two ensigns returned Esmay’s handshakes—Anson had a chilly, damp palm, and Partrade’s felt as if he’d lined it with saddle leather. “See you at mess,” Golonifer said. “Come on, guys, down the tube we go.”

Esmay turned away and looked around her. She needed the starboard main axial passage for T-3. On this deck, the corridor was wide enough to drive a small truck through, and the inlaid guidelines for transport carts, along with marked pedestrian lanes on either side, suggested that small trucks did in fact drive it, at speed.

A soft rushing . . . she glanced back and saw a flatbed carrier loaded with canisters rolling smoothly along the guideline, its red sensor blinking like a mad red eye. Five meters from her, its automatic warning bleated three times . . . then it was past. Ahead, Esmay saw it slow and swing into a large hatch on the outboard side. When she got to the hatch and looked in, she saw a long robotic arm plucking canisters off the carrier and placing them on racks. Someone in the compartment yelled—she couldn’t hear clearly—and the arm stopped in mid-move, with one canister in its pincers.

She couldn’t stand there all day—she would have the rest of her tour to figure out what was going on in there. She set off again. The first cross-passage was double the width of the one she was using, with warning lights as well as mirrors at the corners. Esmay glanced at the mirrors, even though the lights were green. Far down the inboard side something large and lumpy with flashing yellow lights sat motionless, with little dark figures swarming over it . . . she blinked, startled again at the distances inside this ship.

Esmay almost missed the second cross-corridor; a dark slit opened on either side, barely one pedestrian wide, and lit only by wide-spaced lights. Again she stopped and peered at it. On a cramped escort, this might be a normal width—but it didn’t fit with the others she’d seen. The third aft was the most normal so far, if anything about this ship was normal. Three could have walked abreast, if they didn’t mind banging hands now and then. Evenly spaced hatches opened off it on either side. The fourth aft was much like it . . . a passage that might have been on any ship, save for its length. The fifth, the one she’d come to see . . . she turned inboard.

Forming Workshop A was right where both Pitak’s cube and the ship’s own schematics said it should be. Esmay wasn’t sure what a forming workshop was, but she could tell that was important. Guide lines for robotic carts streaked the floor, curving into one hatch after another. Through the open hatches she could see long arrays of equipment that meant nothing to her: cylinders and inverted cones, racks of nozzles mounted overhead on tracks, great blank-faced cubes with warning logos on them.

Ahead of her, the passage ended in a sealed hatch. Esmay glanced again at her notes. The ship’s computer evidently thought this passage continued . . . and perhaps it did, past the obstruction. no admittance without authorization in yellow on red . . . and Esmay suspected that some of the little gleaming knobs on the hatch seal were actually video sensors.

She retraced her way to the longitudinal passage, and followed the indirect path suggested by Pitak’s cube. It took longer than she’d expected . . . she kept being surprised at the size, and annoyed with herself for still being surprised. But she found Forming Workshop B where Pitak’s cube said it would be, and on this side the obstruction looked like an ordinary hatch with the label Die Storage.

A soft tone rang through the ship, and she glanced at her handcomp. Almost late—she would have to hurry, and she was on the other side of the ship from territory she was already thinking of as home. She didn’t bother to compare Pitak’s data with the ship’s own this time; she jogged forward on the portside main passage, back around the hub passage, popped into the first passenger tube, and fetched up at her assigned mess only just ahead of the gong.

Here she found that lieutenants were expected to head a table of jigs and ensigns. She had met none of them yet. They introduced themselves politely and she tried to sort out names and faces. She said little, listening to them and hoping to find out something to make them memorable. The light-haired ensign on the left had a scrape on his left hand; surely by the time it healed she’d have another reason to know him. The jigs seemed a bit stiff, as if they were afraid of her. They must have heard about the court-martial, but was that all?

“Lieutenant Suiza, did you really meet Admiral Serrano?” That was an ensign, not the blond one but a thin dark young man with green eyes. Custis, his nametag said.

“Yes, I did,” Esmay said. Ensign Custis opened his mouth to say more, but the blond ensign elbowed him visibly and he shut it again. A brief silence followed, during which Esmay ate steadily. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Custis glancing at her from time to time. Finally he got his courage up again.

“You know her grandson’s aboard . . . Barin Serrano . . .”

“Toby!” That was the blond, disapproving. Esmay didn’t rise to that bait, but she did wonder if coincidence or Serrano influence had anything to do with a young Serrano’s assignment.

“If you’d eat without talking, you wouldn’t get your foot in your mouth,” said one of the jigs further down the table. Esmay looked up in time to see a Look pass from that jig to another one. Great. Something mysterious which would, no doubt, end up on her shoulders.

She put her fork down; her appetite had disappeared. “Admiral Serrano’s a very interesting person,” she said. That was always safe . . . she hoped. From the startled looks of the two jigs, perhaps it wasn’t. “Not that it wasn’t an alarming situation.” Now everyone was looking at her. A year ago, she might have felt her face flushing, but the publicity around the court-martial had taken care of that. She smiled around the table. “Any of you ever serve with Admiral Serrano?”

“No, sir,” said the senior jig. “But she’s a Serrano, and they’re all pretty much alike.” His tone tried for superior, that of the one with secret knowledge, but its very smugness defeated its intent. Esmay knew exactly what he didn’t know. For the first time she realized she could enjoy this.

“I don’t think I’d put it that way,” she said, leaning forward a little. “Frankly, having served under both of them—” She had served under Admiral Serrano only remotely, and briefly, but this was no time for precision on that point. “Admiral Vida Serrano, that is, and Commander Heris Serrano . . .” Thus reminding everyone that a lineup of all the admirals and commanders Serrano would take up a fair length of deck. “I thought them quite individual. Nor is the difference all seniority.” Let them make what they could of that.

“But isn’t Commander Serrano—Heris Serrano that is—the admiral’s niece?”

Esmay let her eyebrows go up at this appalling lack of manners. “What, precisely, are you suggesting?”

“Well . . . you know, they all stick together. Being related so close, I mean.”

Esmay had not imagined that kind of prejudice aimed at anyone but Fleet outsiders like herself, those who had enlisted from some planet. The Serranos were Fleet royalty, one of the fourteen private military forces that had combined into the Regular Space Service of the Familias Regnant. Through the white rage she felt, her mind reacted as if pricked, correlating remarks made months ago, even years ago, as early as her second term in the Fleet prep school. She had always ignored them, labeled them pique or envy or momentary annoyance. If those people had been serious . . . if there were serious resentment of the Serranos—and possibly some of the other First Fourteen—someone should know. She should know, and she should not lose her temper and shove this brash youngster’s face in the stew.

Her temper bucked, like one of the green colts in training, and she rode it down, hoping her eyes showed none of the strain.

“I think with a little more experience you won’t either think or say things like that, Jig Callison,” Esmay said in the mildest tone she could manage. Callison turned red, and looked down. Someone snickered; she didn’t spot who.

Conversation, naturally, died, and she pretended to eat the rest of her dinner. When the senior lieutenant tapped on his glass for attention, Esmay felt more relief than curiosity. She found it hard to keep her attention on the announcements of who had the duty, and almost missed her introduction. She stood, off-balance mentally if not physically, and nodded to the faces that seemed only pale and dark blurs.

After the meal, she left for her quarters as soon as she could. She was annoyed with herself for her immediate prickly response to the mention of the Serrano name. And why was she so blurry? Usually she could focus on new people without much trouble.

When she thought about it, she realized that she had actually run about thirty standard hours without sleep. Her transport ship had come in on its own schedule, skewed a full shift and a half from the Koskiusko. Shiplag . . . luckily she never had much trouble with it. One night’s sleep seemed to rearrange her internal timer . . . but right now she wanted that sleep badly. She wasn’t on the watch schedule yet, so she set her personal timer to allow ten hours.

Her compartment filtered out most of the noises . . . she could just hear the bass thump of someone’s music cube, DUM-da-DUM-DUM, over and over. She didn’t like it, but it wouldn’t keep her awake. She logged off the status board, and stretched out on her bunk. She had just time to wonder if she would have nightmares when she fell asleep.

Beside her, Peli leaned out to toss a gasser into the passage. A blue line traced the air just above his head and he jerked back. Esmay pressed the filters snugly into her nostrils and peered through the helmet visor. When the smoke obscured normal vision, her helmet sensors gave her a wiggly false-color view of the corridor. She snaked out into it, hoping that whoever’d been shooting at them didn’t have a similar helmet. They thought they’d gotten to the locker before the traitors, but none of the juniors knew how many helmets were supposed to be in that locker.

Ahead, someone braced into an angle of a hatch, weapon at ready. Esmay couldn’t see the features, but she could hear, with the clarity provided by the helmet external pickups, the words “Get this bunch of little fuckers, and we’ll have only Dovir to worry about—”

She braced her own weapon and fired. The wiggly pink—and-green image blew apart; something wet and warm splashed her arm. She ignored it. Through the dense stinging fog, she slithered on, attention focussed on the helmet’s input . . . aware that behind her Peli and the others followed, that somewhere Major Dovir still led the few other loyalist officers . . . .

The fog lifted in ragged wisps . . . ahead she could see the scorched lines on the bulkheads . . . she did not look at the deck except when she had to, when she would have fallen over the obstructions . . . but even so she saw them. Heaps of old clothes, dirty and stained, scattered here and there . . . she would not think of it now, she would not, later was soon enough . . . .

She woke in a sweat, heart pounding. Later. Later was now, when she was safe. She turned on her bed light, and lay staring at the overhead. They had not been heaps of clothes; she had known it even then. Her father had been all too right—warfare was ugly, no matter where. Guts and blood and flesh stank the same in a spaceship as in the aftermath of a street riot. And she herself had added to that stench, that ugliness. She and the other juniors had fought their way up the ship, onto the bridge, where Dovir, mortally wounded, held the command chair after Hearne was dead. Dovir, his guts slipping out of his hands, had given her that one glazed look . . . his voice, struggling for control, as he gave his last orders . . . .

She blinked, trying not to cry. She had cried; it didn’t do any good. She felt slimy all over, the sweat cold and slick now, the bedclothes damp and tangled around her. It reminded her of her aunt’s description of menopause, waking up sweaty and then having cold chills. Or something like that. She forced her mind back to this place and time. Thinking about home wouldn’t help her at all.

According to the chronometer, she had slept a solid seven hours. She could try for another short nap . . . but experience suggested that she wouldn’t really sleep. Better would be a shower—it was late third shift on this ship—and an early start on the working day.

No one was in the big shower room; she let the hot water warm her and wash away the fear-stink. As she came back down the passage, she heard someone’s alarm go off. Not hers—she had carefully shut hers off. Then, from down the passage, another alarm. She made it into her compartment before those alarms stopped, and when she emerged, it was to find two bleary-eyed ensigns on their way to the showers, and a jig leaning on the bulkhead folding down the top flap of his uniform boot.

“Sir!” they all said, coming to more or less upright posture. Esmay nodded, feeling the momentary glow of virtue that accompanies an early rising, clean teeth, and the evidence that one’s associates are still half-asleep.

She did not let herself dwell on that. She had work to do—not only learning the ship, as Major Pitak had said, but figuring out why the major’s data cube and the ship’s records were so different. All that day, except for hurried meals, Esmay mapped the real ship against two dissimilar records. Major Pitak’s data cube was right except once, far in the bow end of T-1, Deck Thirteen, when neither fit the reality. A hatch had disappeared completely, replaced by a bulkhead painted in garish stripes. As Esmay stood there, wondering what the pattern meant, a bald senior chief bustled out of the nearest cross-passage, and hurried toward her.

“What are you—oh, excuse me, sir. Can I help you find something?”

Esmay had not missed the tension . . . something was clearly going on. But it was not yet her job to find it. She smiled instead. “I’m Lieutenant Suiza,” she said. “Major Pitak told me to familiarize myself with the entire ship by 0800 on the 27th, and I thought there was a hatch up here to the electronics warehouse facility.”

“Oh . . . Major Pitak,” the man said. Evidently Major Pitak was well known outside her own bailiwick. “Well, sir, the ship’s database hasn’t caught up to renovations. The electronics warehouse access is up that way.” He pointed. “I’ll be glad to show you.”

“Thanks,” Esmay said. As they turned away, she said “This bulkhead pattern—is it something they didn’t teach us, or—?”

A red flush went up the back of his neck. “It’s—probably unique to DSR ships, Lieutenant. They’re so big, you see . . . the captain’s permitted some nonreg markings to keep newbies oriented.”

“I see,” Esmay said. “Very sensible—I’ve gotten lost several times already.”

The red flush receded; she could hear relaxation in his voice. “Most people do, Lieutenant. That pattern just lets people know that what the ship’s schematics show isn’t there any more—they haven’t gone the wrong way, exactly, but the way’s changed.”

Something about the intonation of that almost put a capital letter on “way.” Esmay stowed that slight emphasis for later consideration, and followed the chief outboard, then forward again, to a hatch clearly labeled Electronics Warehouse Facility. Under that official label was another.

Esmay thanked her guide, and went in. It looked like any storage facility she’d seen, as large as most on major bases. Racks of containers labeled with part numbers; bins with the most commonly needed parts piled loosely. A jig she had not met yet came out from a warren of racks.

“Sher, is that you—oh, sorry, sir.” Esmay went through her explanation again, introducing herself to Jig Forrest. He seemed eager enough to show her the whole warehouse.

“I just wondered—my ship schematic showed a different entrance.”

“Before my time,” he said. “I know—I got lost trying to find this place when they sent me up from the 14th. We share this warehouse with Training—those technical schools people are always needing more parts in the lab. That’s why they moved this warehouse. I don’t think they update the ship’s schematics often enough, especially since this is a DSR—it’s important for us to know where we are. But you know how it is, Lieutenant: no one asks jigs for their opinion.”

Esmay grinned. “I do indeed. And I suspect, new as my extra bar is, that no one asks lieutenants their opinion either.” At least not until the middle of a mutiny, when everyone else was dead. But this fresh-faced young man with the coppery hair hadn’t been through that.

“You must be with Major Pitak,” he said now, and at her expression laughed again. “She always sends her new juniors out to find impossible corners of the ship. I’ve never been in H&A, for which I thank whatever gods govern the assignments.”

“At least I know where this is now,” Esmay said. “And I’d better get back to my list.”

She was glad for the years of open-country navigation on the estancia . . . she had no problem retracing her route down and aft, and arrived in the junior officers’ section in plenty of time to freshen up before taking her assigned table at mess. Now that she was wide awake, she found it easier to engage them in conversation.

Callison, the senior jig, had a graduate degree in environmental engineering. Partrade, the junior jig, worked in administration—a specialty still called paper-pushing, though relatively little of it was on paper. The five ensigns at her table included one in Hull and Architecture, two in Weapons Systems, and one each in Medical Support and Data Systems.

Esmay wondered if any of them had served aboard a ship in combat, but didn’t like to ask. She had spooked them enough the previous night. Partrade brought the topic up without her having to ask.

“Was the Xavier action your only experience in combat, Lieutenant Suiza?”

Esmay managed not to choke on her peas. “Yes, it was.” End of sentence.

“I’ve never even served on a warship,” Partrade went on, with a glance around. “I don’t think anyone at this table has. They put me in Maintenance Administration right away, and I’ve been on the Kos for five solid years.”

“I was on Checkmate,” one of the ensigns said. “But we never did anything but patrol.”

“Be grateful,” said Esmay, before she could stop herself. Now they all stared at her. She hated this. She felt too young and too old at the same time.

“If the lieutenant doesn’t want to talk about it, don’t push her.” That from the lieutenant at the next table, whom Esmay now remembered was the one she’d met outside the lift tube. “Dinner’s not the time for gory stories anyway.” He winked at Esmay. She grinned in spite of herself.

“He’s right,” she said to her table. “It’s not a fit topic at the table.” Or among strangers, she realized. Now she understood why the veterans tended to cluster apart to tell their tales, why they had fallen silent when she and other juniors had tried to overhear them. “Any of the rest of you have any experience?” She was surprised to hear in her own voice the same slight emphasis to the word which she had heard from more senior, and experienced officers. Their heads shook. “Well,” she said. “Then we won’t be tempted to bring up things like that at dinner.” Her smile would, she hoped, take the sting out of that. “Now . . . Zintner, you’re in H&A. Was that your intent at the Academy?”

“Yes, sir.” Zintner, who must have stood on tiptoe to make the minimum height requirement, almost sparkled in her seat. “My family’s been in shipbuilding forever—a long time anyway. I wanted to work on military hulls . . . that’s where the good new stuff is.”

“And this is your first assignment?”

“Yes, sir. It’s great. You’ve met Major Pitak—she knows so much—and we get to work on everything, once we’re out with the wave.”

“Mmm. My background’s scan technology, so I don’t know much about H&A. I expect you’ll be teaching me a lot.”

“Me, sir? I doubt it—the major’s got me working on a technical manual right now. She’ll probably tell Master Chief Sivars to take you on.”

Direct contradiction was rude, but the ensign looked too bouncy to have intended any rudeness. She was simply full of what she was doing. Esmay understood that. She turned to the jigs. Callison was pleasantly willing to discuss the less disgusting processes that kept the ship’s crew alive, and had amusing anecdotes of the sorts of things that went wrong. It had not occurred to Esmay that a few insect egg cases caught in the mud in someone’s hiking boots could hatch and cause serious problems, but apparently they had, on another ship. That story led Partrade to regale them with a story about the time an unnamed junior lieutenant transposed a few numbers and caused a massive overdraft of his ship’s account . . . everyone had been bumped up ten grades, so the whole ship was crewed—according to the computer—by officers, and the captain outranked the sector commander.

One of the many differences from home that Esmay savored was this . . . that they could talk about their assignments at dinner. On Altiplano, nothing related to one’s work could be discussed at dinner, even if all at the table were working together. She found that unnatural . . . here, a flurry of shop talk would unwind naturally into other topics.

“Are you ready for my exam?” Major Pitak asked when she reported.

“Yes, sir,” Esmay said. “But I do have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why doesn’t the ship’s schematics agree with reality—or with the schematics on your cube?”

“Excellent. How many discrepancies did you find?”

Esmay blinked. She hadn’t expected that reaction. She began to describe the discrepancies, starting at the bow and working aft. Pitak listened without comment. When she had finished, Pitak made a note on her pad.

“I believe you found them all. Good work. You asked why we have discrepancies, and that’s not a question I can answer. I suspect it’s the new AI subroutines, which actively protect data considered especially important. A software glitch, in other words, though we can’t seem to convince the Fleet systems designers that it’s a problem. They take the view that architecture, once launched, shouldn’t change . . . which is probably true for most hulls.”

Esmay thought that over. “So you create new data cubes individually when you change architecture.”

“Right. We can actually change the main system for a time—usually an hour or so before it ‘heals’ itself and repairs what it thinks is a data injury.”

“But there were two places where your data cube didn’t match the reality.”

Pitak grinned at her. “I gave you an old data cube, Lieutenant—to see if you’d really check things out. The stupid ones come back all confused, complaining that they can’t find their way by ship schematics. The clever ones check out one or two locations, then come back with a list of discrepancies between my cube and the ship schematics. Good, honest officers who aren’t afraid of work do what you did—they check everything. That’s what I want in my section . . . people who skip the details in H&A kill ships, and we’re here to save them.”

“Yes . . . sir.” Esmay thought about that. It was an efficient way of separating lazy and careless from diligent and careful, but she wondered what other tricks Major Pitak had waiting. It would, she thought, be some exam. “Thank you, sir, for explaining.”

Pitak looked at her oddly. “Thank you for passing the test, Lieutenant—or hadn’t you figured that out yet?”

She hadn’t, and now she felt stupid. “No, sir.” Stupid, gauche . . . she felt her ears burning and hoped the glow didn’t come through her hair.

“A one-track mind, I wonder, or . . . of course you are a dropsquirt.” That in a thoughtful voice with no edge to it.

“Dropsquirt?” Esmay hadn’t heard that before, though it sounded pejorative.

“Sorry. DSR vessels develop their own local slang . . . almost a local dialect, though we try not to be too impenetrable. It means Personnel of Planetary Origin, the official term . . . someone squirted into deepspace work from a drop—a gravity well. And someone junior, which is when you can really tell the difference. One doesn’t expect dropsquirts to get all the nuances of Fleet social structure right away . . . when did you join, Suiza?”

“Prep school, sir.” Esmay thought of the years she’d been in a Fleet environment. Two in prep school, four in the Academy, a tour as ensign, and two assignments as jig. If she hadn’t caught on by now, would she ever? She’d thought she had—her fitness reports always commented on her quiet, mannerly demeanor. What was she doing wrong, besides getting involved in mutinies?

“Hmm. Technical track, most of the way.” Pitak gave her a long look. “You know, Suiza, we technical types have a reputation for being a little dense in some things. Wouldn’t surprise me if you are too. That doesn’t bother me, and won’t cause you as much trouble here as it would on a warship. But since you are not from a Fleet family, you might want to think about opening your sensors to a little wider band. Just a suggestion—not an order.”

“Yes, sir,” Esmay said. She felt a little dizzy. What was she doing wrong? What was so obvious? She knew she didn’t have an accent any more; she had tried so hard . . . but Major Pitak had moved to her process chart.

“To get you up to speed in H&A, you’re going to have to take a couple of quick courses. Right now all we have is a minor little plate repair job for an escort—it’ll be done before you’re through with the tapes, and you’ll be more use to us then. How are you with tools? Ever done metal fabrication? Ceramics or plastics molding?”

“No, sir.”

“Mmm. All right, then. Take these tapes down to Training, and run through them as many times as it takes. Then come back here, and I’ll set you up with some instructors. You’ve got to know how a process is supposed to be done before you can supervise it.”

That made perfect sense, and Esmay had never minded learning new things. “Yes, sir,” she said, accepting a thick stack of tapes for the machines.

“We’ll probably be out on deployment before you’re through with the tapes,” Pitak said. “Take what time you need.” Then she shook her head. “Sorry—you’re naturally thorough—I don’t have to warn you against rushing through them.”

“Sir.” Esmay backed out, with very mixed feelings. One side of her mind felt ruffled and itchy; another part felt soothed and confident.

Scheduling sessions in Training took longer than she had expected. The techs in charge of the banks of machines explained. “A DSR needs more specialties than any other kind of ship. And we have to know everything—all the old stuff, and all the new stuff, and anything someone’s come up with to make repair easier. Our people are always retraining. The rest of Fleet just thinks it retrains, with its predictable little drills every so many days. But we’ll get you in, Lieutenant, don’t worry. And Major Pitak knows what the situation is—she’s not going to blame you.”

Nonetheless, it would be three standard days before Esmay could get a machine, and then only on third shift.

“Do you have anything similar that I could go over on my cube reader?” she asked. The tech ran the tape titles through his scanner.

“Yes, but this is really technical stuff, Lieutenant—what I have on cube is much more basic. The intermediate stuff’s all been checked out—in fact, it’s overdue.”

“I’ll take the basic,” Esmay said. “A good review for me.” She took the cubes, and gave the tech her tapes, to be held for her session. Back in her quarters, she inserted the first cube. An hour later, she was very glad she hadn’t been able to get time on the machines right away. The basic level cube was already past her. She sat back, blinking, and realized she’d have to take it in short doses.

Almost lunchtime. She wasn’t really hungry, but she did feel stiff and stale. What she wanted was exercise. She changed to shorts and padded shoes, and followed the directions (in this case identical) given by the ship’s schematics and Major Pitak’s cube to the junior officers’ workout area.

Aside from being bigger, it was much like the exercise compartments she’d seen on other ships. Rows of machines for exercising this or that group of muscles, enclosed spaces for pair games played on a small court, a large open space with mats for tumbling and unarmed combat practice. Half a dozen or so junior officers occupied various machines, and two were sparring on the mats. She checked the charts. At this time of the cycle, only a few machines were reserved; she could use almost anything. Esmay avoided the riding simulators, and climbed onto something said to simulate cross-country walking on snow. She had no desire to walk on real snow—she had done that—but it was better than pretending to ride horses by sitting on an arrangement of pistons and levers.

She had just begun to work up her heart rate when someone called her name. She looked around. It was one of the ensigns from her table . . . Custis? No, Dettin, the blond with the scrape, now healed.

“I just wondered if you’d talk to our tactics study group about the Xavier affair,” he asked. “Not necessarily your own role, though of course we’d like to hear it, but just how you saw the battle as a whole.”

“I didn’t see the battle as a whole,” Esmay said. “We got there late, as you may have heard.”

“Late?” His brow furrowed. Could he really be this ignorant.

“The ship I was on was captained by a—” it was extraordinarily hard to say “traitor” right out loud to a youngster like this. “Captain Hearne left the Xavier system before the battle,” she said. She didn’t know why she said it that way; she had not cared that much for Captain Hearne. “It was only after the—” mutiny was another hard word to say, but this time she got it out. “Only after the mutiny, when all the officers senior had died, that I took the ship back.”

She did not expect the look on his face, the expression of someone who has just seen impossible dreams fulfilled. “You—that’s like something out of Silver Stars.”

“Silver stars?”

“You know—the adventure game series.”

Shock knocked out her control. “It was nothing like an adventure game!”

He was oblivious. “No, but in the eighth series, when that young lord had to overcome the wicked prince and then lead the ships in battle . . .”

“It’s not a game,” Esmay said firmly, but with less heat. “People get killed for real.”

“I know that,” he said, looking annoyed. “But in the game—”

“I’m sorry,” Esmay said, “I don’t play adventure games.” I only fight wars, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

“But will you talk to our tactics group?”

She thought it over. Perhaps she could make clear the difference between game and reality. “Yes,” she said. “But I’ll have to check my schedule. When do you meet?”

“Every ten days, but we could move the meeting time if you wanted.”

“I’ll check,” Esmay said. “Now—I’ve got to finish my set.” He went away, and she worked until she felt she’d worked off not only the stiffness of study, but the unreasonable anger she’d felt at being compared to a gaming hero. By the time she’d cooled down again, she began to think whether she should have been quite so quick to agree . . . even if she hadn’t agreed to a specific time. Should she talk to a pack of ensigns about the Xavier affair? If she kept her own part to a minimum, and discussed the way Heris Serrano had held off a superior force, surely that could do no harm.