“Since there are ruins there, you have to figure that the race that built this thing had this star blinking on and off all the time,” Bill continued. “You can just see it: Those damned kids are at it again!” He looked less excited than he sounded.
“I’m glad we found this,” Miriam replied softly. “It’s nice to find that at least one race could pour this much effort into something of beauty, that has no other use than to bring joy.” She looked at him for a moment and then snorted. “Penny and some dehydrated fruit for your thoughts?” she added, holding out a bag of dehydrated apples.
“Is it that obvious?” Bill asked.
“Not to get too Star Trekkish,” Miriam said. “But I’m also an empath. To me, yeah.”
“I’m wondering whether I’m doing the right thing,” he said, shrugging. “This is more my cup of tea than personnel records or wheedling clerks. Yes, I chose to be a Naval officer but I’m a scientist at heart. Astro was fun, exciting, challenging in a way that I found… useful and interesting. XO…”
“Sucks,” Miriam said.
“In a nutshell,” he replied. “And God only knows how long I’m gonna be stuck as one.”
“And you don’t get along with Captain Prael,” Miriam said. “Not that I blame you.”
“We’re getting along better,” he said. “But I’ll admit I’ve been comforting myself with the thought: ‘He’s not going to be here long.’ That said, what do I get next? Somebody more like Spectre? More like Prael? Worse?”
“What are you going to do?” Miriam asked.
“I’m not good at turning down a challenge,” Bill said. “And I’ve gotten better at the paperwork. It’s not the sort of paperwork I prefer, and I think it’s really limiting my scope, but I’m getting better at it. Being XO has taught me stuff. And if I’m ever going to command the Blade, it’s stuff I need to know.”
“You want to command the Blade?” Miriam asked.
“Oh, hell,” Bill said, snorting. “I want to own the Blade. I want to go off looking at what I want to look at. But the closest I’ll ever come is commanding it. So, yes. And to do that, I need to be XO. No matter how much it sucks.”
“So you’re not going to bunk off to something else?” Miriam asked.
“Nope. I’ll stick it as long as it takes for the Navy to trust me to command.”
“Good,” Miriam said. “In that case, I’ll stick around too.”
“I wonder what Gants is going to sing?”
“No idea,” Miriam said. “But it couldn’t be worse than Captain Zanella’s rendition of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ ”
Sub Dude stepped into the middle of the crystals and cleared his throat. Sticking his right hand into his blouse, he straightened from his habitual slouch, opened his mouth and proceeded to “sing”:
“Okay,” Miriam said, laughing so hard tears were coming out of her eyes, “I was wrong.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What we need is a band,” Weaver said, rubbing his hands together.
“Sir, with all due respect, I think you’re taking this too far,” Captain Zanella said, smiling.
“I’m not sure he is.” Miriam looked at her notes. “There are different effects for the guitar and singing. A band would have that much more effect. Actually, a symphony would be about right or a full opera…”
“Anybody else got any instruments?” Weaver asked. “Keyboard? Drums? A flute even?”
“I’ve got a keyboard,” Miriam admitted.
“Really?” Berg said. “I’ve never heard you play it.”
“I use headphones,” Miriam said. “And I don’t play ’70s rock.”
“God, not that Goth stuff,” Weaver moaned. “There’s hardly a guitar part in it.”
“I play classical,” Miriam said.
“Well, that’s not gonna work.”
“I dunno,” Captain Zanella said. “Be interesting to see how it reacts to ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.’ ”
“Got any idea how hard that is to play on a guitar?”
“My point, which I’m making badly, sir,” Captain Zanella said, “is that our mission was to investigate and explore this facility and determine if we could find its purpose and potentially activate it. Not to use it as a concert venue.”
“Because we still don’t understand its full abilities,” Bill pointed out. “We’ve determined that it can distinguish between recorded music and live and reacts better to live…”
“Good thing Ashley Simpson doesn’t have to use it, then,” Berg quipped.
“That right there is something to investigate,” Weaver finished, ignoring the lieutenant. “I see no reason, given that we’ve determined its purpose, not to fully explore that purpose. I want a survey all of the sailors and Marines to determine if anyone has any instruments with them and their level of playing ability. I intend to fully explore the abilities of this facility.”
“A one and a two…”
It turned out that there was more musical talent, for want of a better word, on the ship than had been realized. One of Colonel Che-chee’s dragonfly pilots had a Cheerick reed-flute with him. The device looked like a super-recorder, played more like a bassoon and had the sound quality of a Peruvian flute. The LPO of the mess section had brought an Adar drum-set, a full collection of drums that could be folded down to the size of an alarm clock. When extended it wasn’t much more than thin membranes and floor triggers but it had all the sound of a full drum-set.
With Weaver’s guitar and Miriam’s keyboard there was a minimal band. Heck, with just Miriam’s keyboard there was a minimal band. Her keyboard was just as advanced as Weaver’s guitar set-up but with a much broader range of abilities, capable of mixing or replicating a full orchestra.
After a brief wrangle, it was agreed that Miriam was lead singer. And since she was also unwilling to play the wide variety of suggestions from Weaver, from Lynyrd Skynyrd to .38 Special to the Allman Brothers, she had also picked the music.
Weaver still, ostensibly, led the band.
“How can you see into my eyes, like open doors…” Miriam sang as Weaver rolled his eyes. He didn’t get to come in with some serious guitar until a third of the way into the song. What kind of rock and roll did you call that?
“Def Leppard even,” Weaver said.
“Too ’80s,” Miriam replied, looking over the music that she had with her.
“But it’s got big, big sound!” Weaver pointed out. “Big sound is good with this place. Blue Öyster Cult?”
“Ugh!”
“But it was the original Goth band,” Weaver explained. “What else do you call ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’?”