“That’s not good,” Bill said, the air going out of his lungs in a rush. He walked around to look at her computer and contemplated the list. “Holy Maulk, that’s a lot of stuff. And none of it’s standard inventory. We’re going to have to get it all straight from the Hexosehr.”
“You’re missing something,” Miriam said, pulling up another list. Bill couldn’t figure out what it was then noted that it was an inventory of “non-vital materials” removed from the ship for storage landside. “They gave us everything we needed when they built the ship. Enough to last for a cruise or two, at least. This ship was absolutely turnkey when we got it. But some idiot pulled it all off the ship as nonvital.”
Bill looked at the annotations on the form and felt his blood pressure start to go through the roof.
“GE-E-E-E-E-ST-NER!”
“Where’s Top taking the company?” Portana asked. “We’re starting loading tomorrow!”
“I’m sure the first sergeant is cognizant of that, Sergeant,” Berg said, grinning. “He’s pissed people are mugging for the cameras so he’s going to administer a Powell Pounding.”
“Glad I got stuff to do,” Portana replied. “You infantry types can have it. I don’t have to go, right?”
“No, Portana, you get to stay back here,” Berg said. “But I need you to do me a favor. A big one. I need you to run in town and pick something up for me. A sign. Then I need you to…”
CHAPTER TWO
“So where is it now and why doesn’t this have your signature or mine on it?” Captain Prael asked.
“Equipment transfers of nonspecial inventory are handled below our level, sir,” Bill replied.
“XO, if the most advanced Hexosehr technology isn’t ‘special inventory,’ I don’t know what is!”
“Yes, sir,” Bill replied. “Agreed. Among other things, he shipped out fourteen hand melders. Fourteen. And a fabricator! A whole grapping fabber! I don’t know what the street value of one would be but I’d put it as at least a million dollars. Possibly a billion. Punch in the design and it will turn out the most advanced microchips we make nearly as fast as a multibillion dollar plant! But it’s not noted as being special inventory or even particularly expensive. It’s not like they were trying to requisition a hundred rolls of space tape. It actually opened up our budget for material, probably the reason that Gestner and the Eng did it. This was a routine movement out into normal distribution channels. The problem being that none of the stuff is normal inventory. It doesn’t even have Federal Stock numbers and nobody had any idea how to inventory it. I’ve tracked it as far as Newport Base. They didn’t know what to do with it so they sent it to the main supply base at Norfolk. Norfolk, assuming it was surplus and out-of-date material, shipped it to the surplus and salvage yard. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m hoping that surplus and salvage can find it for us.”
“Where did the tracking numbers come from, then?” Prael asked, frowning at the screen. “There’s even associated costs. Low ones. Most of them are under a hundred dollars. Including the fabber? Jesus Chr — ”
“Not sure, sir,” Bill said, shrugging. “Not my department at the time.”
“Damn,” Prael said, shaking his head. “Grapp me. Okay, find this stuff. We’re grounded until we get it back. And I now have to call SpacCom and explain to them that we’re non-mission-capable until a couple of tons of unobtainium parts and tools get found!”
“With all due respect, sir,” Bill said. “Sucks to be you.”
Prael stiffened. “Thanks, XO. Send a message to the Eng and Gestner. Tell them I want them standing at my door in ten minutes. In the meantime, I need to go over to SpacCom and report on this little grapp-up in person. I’ll probably be a couple of hours.”
Since there were no hills of any significance in the entire Norfolk area, the first sergeant had promised to find some. The nearest, he’d opined, were in Richmond.
Most of the company had chuckled at what they took to be a joke. Richmond was eighty miles away.
The more experienced members of the company just groaned. You could do eighty miles in one day, if you counted a day as from when you woke up until you collapsed in exhaustion. The trick was alternating a slow dog-trot with a fast walk. With enough training, a person could do that trick until their body ran out of muscle to eat or they went stark staring mad from sleep-deprivation dementia. With First Sergeant Powell in the mood he was in, either was possible. Nobody had mentioned anything about busses once they got to Richmond. They’d have to come back, too.
It was somewhere around Williamsburg, just short of thirty miles into the march and all of six hours later, that Berg got to take over cadence. The problem being that the first sergeant, who had the most remarkable memory for lyrics and cadences Berg had ever experienced, had used up just about everything. Six hours of cadence calling that ranged from standard military cadences like “Yellow Ribbon” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” to rock and roll tunes with an appropriate beat. Hell, he’d even slipped in Britney Spears. If you worked with it, you could march to both “Oops, I Did It Again” and “Hit Me.” “John Brown’s Body” was buried back in Newport News. So were “Early Morning Rain” and “Yellow Bird,” all twenty known verses including all the dirty ones.
But Top’s musical tastes were just divergent enough from Eric’s that Berg had a few Top hadn’t thought of. Not eight hours worth, and they’d be going for a lot longer than that. But he could keep the company groaning out cadences for an hour or so just on Within Temptation, a few Manowar songs Top had missed, and Crüxshadows. Hell, there was some ZZ Top that the first sergeant had missed.
But start with the good stuff.
“Languid waves of desperation fall before the rain,” Eric sang, grinning at the groans from the experienced hands. “A vanguard to approaching war is born upon the sea. The icy breath of cyclones bent on raging our destruction, drills hard against the hearts of heroes, called here to defend. Double-time… march! Chorus, Marines!”
“What do you mean you don’t know where it is?” Weaver said, trying not to whimper.
The warehouse was vast and filled with packing crates. If the Arc of the Covenant was buried anywhere, it was in this warehouse.
“How do you maintain inventory?”
“We don’t, really,” the warehouse manager said. “When stuff comes in it’s dated and moved to a particular section. If it sits there for ninety days, it’s put up to auction. Yours had been here less than ninety days, right?”
Bill looked at his forms and sighed in relief. Sixty days, maximum.
“It should have gotten here around the middle of July,” he said. “You should have it.”
“Mid July,” the warehouse manager said, muttering to himself. “What did you say this stuff was?”
“Misplaced parts and tools,” Bill said. “It’s mostly in heavy plastic containers. They may look a little weird.”
Hexosehr fabbers had no issue with curves so their output had a tendency to look a bit more organic than human manufacture.
“Oh, hell, I remember that stuff,” the supervisor said, nodding. “We opened up a couple of the boxes but couldn’t figure out what the hell it was. I figure somebody might buy it for scrap. Section eighteen.”