What was this? “I’m assigned to Major Pitak,” Esmay said, intentionally oblique.
“You’re busy,” Golonifer said, as if there were no doubt. “I’m not surprised she’s already got you running all over the ship. But meet these two—also newbies—Ensigns Anson and Partrade.” The two ensigns returned Esmay’s handshakes—Anson had a chilly, damp palm, and Partrade’s felt as if he’d lined it with saddle leather. “See you at mess,” Golonifer said. “Come on, guys, down the tube we go.”
Esmay turned away and looked around her. She needed the starboard main axial passage for T-3. On this deck, the corridor was wide enough to drive a small truck through, and the inlaid guidelines for transport carts, along with marked pedestrian lanes on either side, suggested that small trucks did in fact drive it, at speed.
A soft rushing . . . she glanced back and saw a flatbed carrier loaded with canisters rolling smoothly along the guideline, its red sensor blinking like a mad red eye. Five meters from her, its automatic warning bleated three times . . . then it was past. Ahead, Esmay saw it slow and swing into a large hatch on the outboard side. When she got to the hatch and looked in, she saw a long robotic arm plucking canisters off the carrier and placing them on racks. Someone in the compartment yelled—she couldn’t hear clearly—and the arm stopped in mid-move, with one canister in its pincers.
She couldn’t stand there all day—she would have the rest of her tour to figure out what was going on in there. She set off again. The first cross-passage was double the width of the one she was using, with warning lights as well as mirrors at the corners. Esmay glanced at the mirrors, even though the lights were green. Far down the inboard side something large and lumpy with flashing yellow lights sat motionless, with little dark figures swarming over it . . . she blinked, startled again at the distances inside this ship.
Esmay almost missed the second cross-corridor; a dark slit opened on either side, barely one pedestrian wide, and lit only by wide-spaced lights. Again she stopped and peered at it. On a cramped escort, this might be a normal width—but it didn’t fit with the others she’d seen. The third aft was the most normal so far, if anything about this ship was normal. Three could have walked abreast, if they didn’t mind banging hands now and then. Evenly spaced hatches opened off it on either side. The fourth aft was much like it . . . a passage that might have been on any ship, save for its length. The fifth, the one she’d come to see . . . she turned inboard.
Forming Workshop A was right where both Pitak’s cube and the ship’s own schematics said it should be. Esmay wasn’t sure what a forming workshop was, but she could tell that was important. Guide lines for robotic carts streaked the floor, curving into one hatch after another. Through the open hatches she could see long arrays of equipment that meant nothing to her: cylinders and inverted cones, racks of nozzles mounted overhead on tracks, great blank-faced cubes with warning logos on them.
Ahead of her, the passage ended in a sealed hatch. Esmay glanced again at her notes. The ship’s computer evidently thought this passage continued . . . and perhaps it did, past the obstruction. no admittance without authorization in yellow on red . . . and Esmay suspected that some of the little gleaming knobs on the hatch seal were actually video sensors.
She retraced her way to the longitudinal passage, and followed the indirect path suggested by Pitak’s cube. It took longer than she’d expected . . . she kept being surprised at the size, and annoyed with herself for still being surprised. But she found Forming Workshop B where Pitak’s cube said it would be, and on this side the obstruction looked like an ordinary hatch with the label Die Storage.
A soft tone rang through the ship, and she glanced at her handcomp. Almost late—she would have to hurry, and she was on the other side of the ship from territory she was already thinking of as home. She didn’t bother to compare Pitak’s data with the ship’s own this time; she jogged forward on the portside main passage, back around the hub passage, popped into the first passenger tube, and fetched up at her assigned mess only just ahead of the gong.
Here she found that lieutenants were expected to head a table of jigs and ensigns. She had met none of them yet. They introduced themselves politely and she tried to sort out names and faces. She said little, listening to them and hoping to find out something to make them memorable. The light-haired ensign on the left had a scrape on his left hand; surely by the time it healed she’d have another reason to know him. The jigs seemed a bit stiff, as if they were afraid of her. They must have heard about the court-martial, but was that all?
“Lieutenant Suiza, did you really meet Admiral Serrano?” That was an ensign, not the blond one but a thin dark young man with green eyes. Custis, his nametag said.
“Yes, I did,” Esmay said. Ensign Custis opened his mouth to say more, but the blond ensign elbowed him visibly and he shut it again. A brief silence followed, during which Esmay ate steadily. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Custis glancing at her from time to time. Finally he got his courage up again.
“You know her grandson’s aboard . . . Barin Serrano . . .”
“Toby!” That was the blond, disapproving. Esmay didn’t rise to that bait, but she did wonder if coincidence or Serrano influence had anything to do with a young Serrano’s assignment.
“If you’d eat without talking, you wouldn’t get your foot in your mouth,” said one of the jigs further down the table. Esmay looked up in time to see a Look pass from that jig to another one. Great. Something mysterious which would, no doubt, end up on her shoulders.
She put her fork down; her appetite had disappeared. “Admiral Serrano’s a very interesting person,” she said. That was always safe . . . she hoped. From the startled looks of the two jigs, perhaps it wasn’t. “Not that it wasn’t an alarming situation.” Now everyone was looking at her. A year ago, she might have felt her face flushing, but the publicity around the court-martial had taken care of that. She smiled around the table. “Any of you ever serve with Admiral Serrano?”
“No, sir,” said the senior jig. “But she’s a Serrano, and they’re all pretty much alike.” His tone tried for superior, that of the one with secret knowledge, but its very smugness defeated its intent. Esmay knew exactly what he didn’t know. For the first time she realized she could enjoy this.
“I don’t think I’d put it that way,” she said, leaning forward a little. “Frankly, having served under both of them—” She had served under Admiral Serrano only remotely, and briefly, but this was no time for precision on that point. “Admiral Vida Serrano, that is, and Commander Heris Serrano . . .” Thus reminding everyone that a lineup of all the admirals and commanders Serrano would take up a fair length of deck. “I thought them quite individual. Nor is the difference all seniority.” Let them make what they could of that.
“But isn’t Commander Serrano—Heris Serrano that is—the admiral’s niece?”
Esmay let her eyebrows go up at this appalling lack of manners. “What, precisely, are you suggesting?”
“Well . . . you know, they all stick together. Being related so close, I mean.”
Esmay had not imagined that kind of prejudice aimed at anyone but Fleet outsiders like herself, those who had enlisted from some planet. The Serranos were Fleet royalty, one of the fourteen private military forces that had combined into the Regular Space Service of the Familias Regnant. Through the white rage she felt, her mind reacted as if pricked, correlating remarks made months ago, even years ago, as early as her second term in the Fleet prep school. She had always ignored them, labeled them pique or envy or momentary annoyance. If those people had been serious . . . if there were serious resentment of the Serranos—and possibly some of the other First Fourteen—someone should know. She should know, and she should not lose her temper and shove this brash youngster’s face in the stew.