“You’re going to be a pain in the ass, aren’t you?” Captain Prael said.
“Apparently, sir,” Bill replied, tiredly. “But as my momma used to say, don’t ask me a question if you don’t want the answer.”
“Well here’s one for your professional development, Captain,” the CO said. “We can have these sorts of differences in private, but you’d better damned well keep them to yourself around the crew.”
“Aye, aye,” Bill replied. He leaned back and shuddered after the door closed, rubbing his face. “Maulk. This is gonna be one grapped up cruise.”
“This is maulk,” PO Ian “Red” Morris said, unbolting the separator from its mounts. “I know how to fix this piece of maulk. You’ve got to open it with a melder, though.”
“And Gestner doesn’t want to hear for melders,” Michael “Sub Dude” Gants said, engaging the jack to lower the multiton separator. “Miriam’d have this thing fixed in five minutes,” he continued, sucking in through his teeth.
“No chither,” Red said, pulling his Number Two arm off and replacing it with Number Four. Two was good for small work but Four had more power. On each of the previous two cruises, the machinist had been hit by fire in, respectively, his right arm and right leg. He had a human prosthetic arm, a good one, and a Hexosehr prosthetic leg, a better one. He placed his prosthetic leg against the bulkhead, grabbed the hand-hold on the separator and pulled, rolling the massive piece of machinery out onto the deck. “He and the CO are going to be right sorry about that when we’re outside.”
“Sorry about what?” Chief Gestner said pointedly. Neither of the machinists had heard him arrive.
“Sorry you ignored the XO,” Gants said, pumping the jack and lifting the separator up to the level of the carry-cradle.
“Keep your opinions to yourself, PO,” Gestner said angrily. “I get lip from you like that again and I’ll have you up on report.”
“Chief, maybe you should just ground me now,” Gants said, helping Red get the separator positioned. “Because, honestly, you’re going to hear my opinions if you ask me a direct question. Gonna happen. You asked, I answered. If you consider that insolent, then you’d better ship me out now.”
“Just get this thing replaced,” Gestner snarled.
“Aye, aye, Chief,” Red said. “What are we supposed to do with it?”
“Send it to dock for repair,” the Chief said. “We don’t have room to keep it on the ship.”
“It’s times like this I wish Macelhenie had survived the last cruise,” Gants said as soon as the chief was out of earshot.
“It’s times like this I contemplate the pleasure I would obtain by brushing old Numbah Fow across his face,” Red said, holding up the massive prosthetic. “It’d be a right pleasure.”
“Come on,” Gants replied, shrugging. “Let’s get this thing winched out of the ship and see about finding a spare.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Lieutenant Ross said, looking at the directive.
“Excuse me, sir?” Eric replied.
In the last five days he’d seen Brooke exactly ten hours. At the moment he was using the computer station in officer’s Admin to try to catch up on paperwork. The company was doing PT and when they got back there was a field evolution he had to lead. He’d rather be running, but the paperwork just wouldn’t end!
“There’s a new position called ‘Vac Boss,’ ” Lieutenant Ross said. “He’s supposed to be the go-to guy if there’s an EVA. They’re starting a training class in it, but the boss has to have vac experience. Right now, the guy with the most hours wins. So we, I, am supposed to compute the number of hours each member of the company has in vacuum and find out who is vac boss. It will probably turn out to be one of the sergeants who survived the last couple of missions. How the hell are we going to put them in charge of an EVA exercise? God, I need a cigar.”
“Quickly,” Berg said, shrugging. “The last mission we did all the way outside EVA stuff. The squids stayed by the ship. Hell, it’s probably Corwin. Heh. That’d be funny. I wouldn’t want Corwin in charge of a day-care center.”
“That still doesn’t tell me how to compute it,” Ross growled. “How many hours do you have?”
“Whoa,” Berg replied, not looking up. “Lots. Depends on how you calculate it. I’m not sure if the drop on Cheerick counts or not, but that was just a couple of minutes. Hours and fricking hours at Tycho 714. More at HD Thirty-Seven. Wrestling that comet… When the Karchava dreadnought got evacuated, couple of hours right there… Come to think of it, there’s a vac indicator on the suits. That probably got dumped to the mission log; everything else was. Get Portana to pull the mission logs and look.”
“I’ve got a better idea, Lieutenant,” Ross said, grinning evilly.
“Oh, come on, sir!” Berg protested. “I’m swamped!”
“How hard could it be?”
“It not in the standart log,” the Filipino armorer said, shaking his head.
On the previous cruise, Berg and the then new unit armorer had gotten off to a rocky start, a little matter of, well, everything getting on each other’s nerves. Since they bunked right by each other, Portana’s habit of playing Filipino salsa music at top volume had led to Berg replying with Death Metal and country at same, which led to the rest of the compartment playing a medley of clashing tunes to the point that the CO and the first sergeant stepped in. Berg was big, good-looking, popular, easy-going and a West Virginia country boy. Portana was short, swarthy, caustic and Filipino. They’d managed to get past it during the course of the cruise and were now, to the extent a lieutenant and an enlisted man could be, friends. But it had been a long road to that point.
“It doesn’t get logged?” Berg asked, shaking his head. “Okay, I guess we’re going to have to…”
“It get logged,” Portana said. “But it in deep structure. Got to get a program to parse it out. And mission log’s encryp’ed so got to decryp’ first. Not something you can just press a button and there it is. Gonna be work.”
“I don’t suppose…” Berg said, grinning.
“I got fifteen Wyverns to configure,” Portana said. “You know how long t’at take. Not sure I’m going to be done by mission time. One being you new one. But, good news, you mission log survived. Well, right up to when you get all fried and stuff.”
“Chither,” Berg said. “Dump the raw mission logs to my computer and I’ll see what I can do…”
“Well, I guess it’s good I’m working so late, lately,” Eric said as he got in the truck. “How was work?”
“I’m trying to learn how to tell customers, ‘Sorry, I’m married,’ ” Brooke said, sighing exasperatedly. “Actually, I just hold up the ring. But some guys can’t take the hint.”
“Try ‘I’m happily married to a Force Recon lieutenant who’ll bust your face if you don’t keep your hands off me,’ ” Eric said, closing his eyes and leaning back in the seat.
“That won’t exactly help with the tips,” Brooke pointed out. “Not that this particular group of jerks left much of a tip, anyway. One of the other waitresses handles it just fine, but she’s been doing this for a long time. I’m trying to figure out how she does it. But most of the time, it looks to me as if she really is willing to go home with them. Then if they get too crude she just… hammers them flat and they like it.”