"Panis, take the helm." Ollery pushed himself back, gave Dupaynil a challenging glance, and stretched.
"Sir." Panis, the Executive Officer, had slid forward to the main control panel. He, too, glanced at Dupaynil before looking back at the screen.
"I'm going on a round." Ollery said. "Want to come along, Major?" A round of inspection, through all those long access tubes.
Dupaynil shook his head. "Not this time, thanks. I'll just…" What? he wondered. There was nothing to do on the tiny bridge but stare at the back of Panis's head or the side of the Weapons Control master mate's thick neck. A swingaway facescreen hid his face as he tinkered delicately with something in the weapons systems. At least, that's what Dupaynil assumed he was doing with a tiny joystick and something that looked like a silver toothpick. Maybe he was playing a game.
"You'll get tired of it," warned Ollery. Then he was gone, easing through the narrow hatch.
A lengthy silence, in which Dupaynil noted the scuffmarks on the decking by the captain's seat, the faded blue covers of the Fleet manuals racked for reference below the Exec's workstation. Finally Jig Panis looked over his shoulder and gave Dupaynil a shy smile. "The Captain's ticked," he said softly. "We got into the supply station a day early."
"Ollery reporting: Environmental, section 43, number-two scrubber's up a half-degree."
"Logged, sir." Panis entered the report, thumbed a control, and sent "Spec Zigran" off to check on the errant scrubber. Then he turned back to Dupaynil.
"We'd had a long run without liberty," he said. "The Captain said we'd have a couple of days off-schedule, sort of rest up and then get ready for inspection."
Dupaynil nodded. "So… my orders upset your party-time, eh?"
"Yes. Playtak was supposed to be in at the same time."
With a loud click, the Weapons Control mate flicked the facescreen back into place. Dupaynil caught the look he gave the young officer; he had seen senior noncoms dispense that "You talk too much!" warning glance at every rank up to admiral.
Panis turned red, and focussed on his board. Dupaynil asked no more; he'd heard enough to know why Ollery was hostile. Presumably Playtak's captain was a friend of Ollery's and they'd agreed to meet at the supply station and celebrate. Quite against regulations, because he had no doubt that they had stretched their orders to make that overlap. It might be innocent, just friendship, or it might have been more. Smuggling, spying, who knows what? And he had been dumped into the middle of it, forcing them to leave ahead of schedule. "Too bad," he said casually. "It certainly wasn't my idea. But Fleet's Fleet and orders are orders."
"Right, sir." Panis did not look up. Dupaynil looked over at the Weapons Control mate whose lowering expression did not ease although it was not overtly hostile.
"You're Fleet Security, sir?" asked the mate.
"That's right. Major Dupaynil."
"And we're taking you into Seti space?"
"Right." He wondered who'd told the man that. Ollery had had to know, but hadn't he realized those orders were secret? Of course they weren't really secret, since they were faked orders, but… He pushed that away. It was too complicated to think about now.
"Huh. Nasty critters." The mate put the toothpick-like tool he'd been using into a toolcase, and settled back in his seat. "Always get the feeling they're hoping for trouble."
Dupaynil had the same feeling about the mate. Those scarred knuckles had broken more than a few teeth, he was sure. "I was there with a diplomatic team once," he said. "I suppose that's why they're sending me."
"Yeah. Well, don't let the toads sit on you." The mate lumbered up, and with a casual wave at the Exec, left the bridge.
Dupaynil looked after him, a little startled. He had not considered Sassinak strict on etiquette, but no one would have left her bridge without a proper salute to the officer in charge, and permission to withdraw. Of course, this was a smaller ship than he'd ever been on. Was it healthy to have such a casual relationship?
Then the term 'toads' which wasn't at all an accurate description of the Seti, but conveyed the kind of racial contempt that put Dupaynil on alert. Everyone knew the Federation combined races and cultures that preferred separation, that some hardly-remembered force had compelled the Seti and humans both to sign agreements against aggression. And, for the most part, abide by them. As professional keepers of this fragile peace, Fleet personnel were expected to have a more dispassionate view. Besides, he always thought of the Seti as 'lizards.'
" 'Scuse me, sir." That was another crewman, squeezing past him to get to a control panel on his left.
Dupaynil felt very much in the way, and very much unwanted. Blast Sassinak! The woman might at least have dumped him onto something comfortable. He looked over at Panis who was determinedly not looking at him. If he remembered correctly, the shortest route to Seti space was going to take weeks and he could not endure this kind of thing for weeks.
The crew had worked off their bad humor in less than a week. Dupaynil exerted his considerable charm, let Ollery win several card games, and entertained them with some of the safer racy anecdotes from his last assignment in a political realm. He had read Ollery correctly; the man liked to find flaws in those above him; preferably blackmailable flaws. Given a story about an ambassador's lady addicted to drugs or a wealthy senior bureaucrat who preferred cross-cultural divertissements, his eyes glistened and his cheeks flushed.
Dupaynil concealed his own contempt. Those who best liked to hear such things usually had their own similar appetites to hide.
Panis, however, was of very different stripe. He had tittered nervously at the story about the bureaucrat and turned brick red when Ollery and the senior mate sneered at him. It was clear that he had no close friends among the crew. When Dupaynil checked, he found that Panis had replaced the previous Exec only a few months before, while the rest of the crew had been unchanged for almost five years. And the previous Exec had left the ship because of an injury in a dockside brawl. It was odd, and more than odd: regular rotation of crew was especially important on small ships. Fleet policy insisted on it. No matter how efficient a crew seemed to be, they were never left unchanged too long.
Dupaynil had not been able to bring all his tools; along, but he always had some. He placed his sensors carefully, as carefully as he had in the larger ship, and linked his probe into the datalinks very delicately indeed. He had the feeling that carelessness here would get him more trouble than a chewing out by the captain. In the meantime, as the days wore on, the crew sned up with him and played endless hands of every card game he knew, and a few he'd never seen. Crutch was a pirate's game, he'd been told once by the merchanter who taught it to him; he wondered where this crew had learned it. Poker, blind-eye, sin on toast, at which he won back all he'd lost so far, having learned that on Bretagne, where it began.
He sweated up and down the access tube ladders, learning to respond quickly to the shifting artificial-G, keeping his muscles supple. He discovered a storage bay full of water ice which made the restrictions on bathing ridiculous. There was enough to last a crew twice that size all the way to Seti space and back but he kept his mouth shut. It seemed safer.
For all their friendliness, all their casual demeanor, he'd noticed that Ollery or the senior mate were always in any compartment he happened into. Except his own tiny cabin. And he was sure they'd been there when he found evidence that his things had been searched. He had time to wonder if Sassinak had known just what kind of ship she'd sent him to. He thought not. She had probably done a fest scan of locations, looking for the nearest docked escort vessel, some way to keep him from communicating while he was in FTL.