“That’s just it, Port,” Berg said. “Nothing but pocking stars. You feel that hull under your feet?”
“Yeah,” Portana said.
“There’s a hundred and fifty or so sailors, forty-one Marines, a couple of SF guys, a bizarre doctor and a very weird linguist in there,” Berg said. “Out here there’s not a damned thing but killer vacuum and worlds that are usually more dangerous. The sailors keep the vacuum under check and get us to and from those worlds. Then us Marines get to go find out what’s going to kill us. If the slightest thing goes wrong it’s figure it out or we all die. And nobody will mark our remains. We’ll be lost for pretty much all of time. That’s if we’re not a smear of plasma across the sky that eventually settles into a nebula and gets reborn in a billion years as a new planet. Your sister will never know where you fell. Nor will my parents nor any of the people who care about the people in this steel tube. There’s nobody and nothing out here to save our asses. It’s just us.”
“And… ?” Portana said.
“That’s it,” Berg replied. “Let’s go get some chow.”
Berg waited as the armorer chewed his chicken thoughtfully.
“So wha’ you’re saying is I nee’ to learn how to ge’ along,” Portana said, taking a sip of Coke.
“Nope,” Berg said, shaking his head. “What I’m saying is what I said. It’s just us. What you do with that is up to you.”
The armorer was silent for the rest of the meal and Berg just let him chew.
10
“Officer of the Watch,” the pilot said, looking over his shoulder. “Approaching Mu Ori multiple binary system. There’s a chill and astrophysics survey on the schedule for that system.”
The TACO, currently officer of the watch, looked over at the astrogator’s position where a newbie ensign was parked as the “secondary astrogator.” He grimaced at the thought of doing a system entry of a multiple star star system while Commander Weaver was asleep. Actually, he knew it shouldn’t be done, and probably couldn’t be done without the lieutenant commander. Not to mention that the CO was going to want to be present.
“Oh, grapp. An astrophysics survey? Astro?”
“We are now approximately one hundred and forty-three light-years from Sol closing in on Mu Ori, sir,” Ensign Waterhouse replied, seriously. Ensign Waterhouse had matriculated with a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from Colorado State University. He had joined the Navy on a Nuke track and been rather surprised when an entirely new branch was presented to him. But here he was in space about to do a close-up survey of the Mu Ori system. What could be cooler? Except checking out a nebula or a Mira variable or… gosh, there were so many choices! “We should be at the system entry distance in about an hour.”
In the TACO’s opinion, astrogator in training was actually a misnomer for what Waterhouse was doing. Manning a post, putting a butt in a seat, that was more like it. Commander Weaver was really the only one on-board who actually knew how to navigate with the ship’s computer system. If anybody started grapping around with the controls it would likely cause… problems. That’s why both the commander and the captain had ordered that on Weaver’s off shifts the manning of the navigation post meant “nobody touch a grapping thing or the maulk will hit the fan!”
“Shiny. Quartermaster of the Watch?”
“Sir?”
“Wake up Commander Weaver and the captain.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Miriam had never really had a problem with sleep. Close her eyes, she slept. Sometimes she woke up in the morning covered in sweat and with memories of some really odd and disturbing dreams. But she didn’t have a lot of problem with sleep per se. But the manual labor she had been putting in on the Blade since the ship went under weigh from Earth was beginning to take a toll on her physically. Oh, she absolutely loved what she was doing, otherwise she just wouldn’t do it. But, most things on the ship were put together with heavy mechanisms and required big, very big, tools. In fact, Machinist’s Mate Gants had referred to one of the pipe wrenches as a BGW. It didn’t take Miriam long to figure out what that meant.
Either she had picked up various big grapping wrenches too many times over the last few days or she really needed to sleep. She squirmed in her bunk hoping to find a comfortable position that would allow her to drift off.
“…a better construct…” whispered faintly through her mind.
“What?” Miriam hugged herself closer and tried to ignore the voice. It was relentless and would come and go at random, but once it got started it would go on for hours. And, she really needed some rest.
“…adjustment of the permeability factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density is necessary before realigning the frame dragging coefficients for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation…” the whisper continued.
“I don’t understand that… wait, say that again.” Miriam hugged herself even tighter just wishing she could sleep, but that damned voice had been whispering in her mind for more than two weeks. At least for the last week it was finally in English. The first few days it was pure gibberish and then it was a mix of all the languages she understood, which made it gibberish, and then it finally settled on English. Thank God.
“…adjustment of the permeability factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density is necessary before realigning the frame dragging coefficients for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation…” the whisper repeated.
“Hey! You’re listening to me.” Miriam opened her eyes and blinked them hard a few times at the darkness of her small bunk. She could see cracks of light that were seeping through the seam at her door and cast shadows of her on the bunk bulkhead. “Responding, anyway. Repeat that again.”
“…adjustment of the permeability factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density is necessary before realigning the frame dragging coefficients for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation…” the whisper repeated.
“I don’t get the first part but, oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density I understand and entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation I get.”
“…the background emissions due to the…”
“Shhh! Quiet.” Miriam said. The whisper stopped. It. Stopped. “Now why the maulk didn’t I think of that before.” Miriam rolled herself out of her fetal position and then like a slender cat quietly fell to the floor. She slipped on some jeans and a T-shirt and then her steel-toed spike heel boots.
“Commander Weaver?” she said, activating her implant.
“Miriam?” Weaver answered through a yawn. “It’s late; shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Long story…”
“Another time. What’d you need?”
“Are we about to do a system entry?”
“Uh, I uh, dunno. Hang on a sec, there’s someone at my door.” Weaver stretched and scratched and blinked his eyes hard trying to wake up. “Enter.”