Kravitz could almost feel Bengessert’s cold, hard hatred as the junior officer escorted them from the Sleep Chamber. Led into the mess, Kravitz was nearly bowled over by an overpowering smell of yeast. Then he saw the gaping holes it had eaten in the walls and he understood his buddy’s panic stricken face. No one said a word. Bengessert pulled them roughly by the arms and marched the pair out of the galley, describing their fates in graphic detail as they went.
The brig occupied an all but unused section of the ship—a half dozen standard Sleep chambers and a single large, caged space with three bunk beds. Built-in toilets and sinks grew out of the far wall and a noisy ten-gallon recycling plant in the corner supplied them with all their water needs.
Ernie could not recall even hearing of a Marine being confined in a ship’s brig. Major breaches of protocol or onboard rules were exceedingly rare. When transgressions did occur, they usually resulted in a double or triple shift on some scut detail, or maybe a day or two confined to quarters, isolated and awake. Then again, he’d never heard of anyone who had disabled a major component of an Expeditionary Battle Cruiser before.
“What do you think they’re going to do to us?” Randy whispered once the lieutenant had moved out of earshot.
“Maybe they’ll just send us back to Hyperion,” Kravitz said, hoping to wipe the fear off his friend’s face. He did not believe it himself. But dwelling on worst case scenarios did him no good—that was Urquell’s specialty and Ernie had no intention of being sucked into it.
Ernie could hear the lieutenant reading a set of instructions to one of the utilitbots—a basic program in the care and guarding of live, awake prisoners. Bengessert had evidently tired of tormenting them, though Ernie would have bet a reduction in rank that mercy had nothing to do with it. Once the utilibot had been trained, he figured they would probably not hear another human voice until their Article 32 hearing.
He turned out to be half right. Three days (by his best estimation, considering there were no light/dark cycles in the brig) the ‘bot rolled in a holoprojector and the top half of one Col. Verna Hazelshen, a no-nonsense desk officer from the look on her face, popped into the empty space.
“So,” Kravitz whispered to his cellmate, “at least they’ve got the Quantangle up and functioning.”
Randy answered with a look of mild contempt and Ernie felt foolish for stating the obvious. Still, it had to be the most hopeful news either of them had gotten since being thrown into this hole.
“Just tell me your whole story,” Col. Hazelshen said in a caramel-smooth voice, her eyes shining with sincere concern. “Of course Lt. Bengessert has reminded you that all your utterances will become part of the official record.” She purred the admonition so reassuringly that Ernie felt like she was the last person in the inhabited worlds who would consider using something he said to his detriment.
“What are we charged with?” Sgt. Urquell broke in, unbidden. His question snapped Ernie out of his reverie, a slap across his cortex to remind him they faced serious charges this time.
“Theft of federal property. Unauthorized use of Marine facilities. Destruction of military property, sabotage, public intoxication.” The colonel read off something she was holding below the reach of the holocam.
“Public intoxication!” Randy struck a pose of genuine offense. “Sgt. Kravitz had to be dragged out of Deep Sleep just to be put in the brig. Even if there’d been anything to drink, when would we’ve had a chance to sample it, much less get schnockered?” Ernie tried to shush him three or four times but the junior spacer was on a tear.
Col. Hazelshen smiled slyly, like a mongoose that realized she had the cobra tied in a knot.
“Then you admit the rest?” the colonel said in an uninterested monotone.
“We don’t admit anything,” Kravitz said quickly. “As senior mess officer it’s my duty to allocate edible resources.”
“And this was an authorized provisioning of how may kilos of water, Master Sergeant?”
“Was not authorized,” Kravitz mumbled.
“What was that, Sergeant?”
“It was not an authorized allocation, M’am,” he said, straightening his back as he did.
“And the grain?”
“No’m”
“The yeast.”
“Well…”
“That was mine,” Randy spoke up. “It’s what you might call a family heirloom.” The colonel did not look well-pleased by being contradicted. “M’am,” he added when Ernie reminded him with a kick in the shins. Ernie couldn’t see how whose yeast it had been made any material difference. Still, he was grateful to his friend for getting him out of the firing line.
She nodded, consulted her invisible notes again. “Then what took place, Sgt. Urquell? In your own words. To the best of your understanding, of course.” The caramel tap was open again.
Ernie drew air deep into his lungs. The cold air stung the back of his throat and the pressed on his ribs from the inside ached but he held back, letting it go out in a slow, silent leak through his nose. Mentally he tugged on Randy’s collar, shook him by the shoulders—say as little as you can. Tell just what you need to, no more. Don’t explain ANYTHING! But he stood ramrod straight, unmoving, knowing he had no good options.
“Well, first I had to malt the rice, and that’s no easy thing. You know, a lot of people think rice can’t be malted because that’s not how they make sake. They inject the grain with a special kind of mold instead. But you can malt rice, if you know what you’re doing.” Randy had clearly warmed to his subject. Col. Hazelshen just as clearly had not. The impatience blossomed on her face like a moon flower but she remained close-mouthed.
“Then, I decided on a single temperature infusion of the mash. It’s really the simplest way to do it, so I brought the water up to about 97 degrees and poured it all onto the malt, after I’d ground it up, of course. You need to keep the mash temperature down to about 92 or 93 degrees. You know, how you treat the mash and the temp you use is critical. It determines what kind of beer you’re going to end up with.”
When he began explaining the lautering process in detail the colonel had finally had enough.
“Just skip over to the accident itself, Sgt. Urquell,” she said, struggling to keep her irritation in check. Ernie recognized the effort—he’d felt the same way himself, listening to his friend carry on about the difference between brewing a good dark ale and a light pilsner. The Urquell family had been making beer since the 19th or 20th century. Randy said that stout ran through his veins instead of blood. Ernie had been tempted more than once to see if it were true.
“Honestly, I don’t know what happened. After I’d gotten the wort into the fermenter I trained the utilibot to monitor it while I went to nap for a week or so. When the ‘bot got me up ahead of schedule I knew something was up. I came down to the mess, and you know what a mess I found.” He waited for someone to appreciate his pun, futilely. “There was beer everywhere. The fermenter was still intact but the plug that measures CO2 was clear on the other side of the room, and there was this white crust around the rim. Somehow the airlock must’ve got clogged up. I guess I hadn’t covered that eventuality when I was programming the ‘bot. I didn’t even think about something like that happening.
“Of course, there are lots of variables you have to take into account when you’re making beer and you know, you can’t always teach these utilibots what to do in all the eventualities. So I just told it to get me if anything out of the ordinary happened. Maybe I should have planned that better.”