Esmay thanked her guide, and went in. It looked like any storage facility she’d seen, as large as most on major bases. Racks of containers labeled with part numbers; bins with the most commonly needed parts piled loosely. A jig she had not met yet came out from a warren of racks.
“Sher, is that you—oh, sorry, sir.” Esmay went through her explanation again, introducing herself to Jig Forrest. He seemed eager enough to show her the whole warehouse.
“I just wondered—my ship schematic showed a different entrance.”
“Before my time,” he said. “I know—I got lost trying to find this place when they sent me up from the 14th. We share this warehouse with Training—those technical schools people are always needing more parts in the lab. That’s why they moved this warehouse. I don’t think they update the ship’s schematics often enough, especially since this is a DSR—it’s important for us to know where we are. But you know how it is, Lieutenant: no one asks jigs for their opinion.”
Esmay grinned. “I do indeed. And I suspect, new as my extra bar is, that no one asks lieutenants their opinion either.” At least not until the middle of a mutiny, when everyone else was dead. But this fresh-faced young man with the coppery hair hadn’t been through that.
“You must be with Major Pitak,” he said now, and at her expression laughed again. “She always sends her new juniors out to find impossible corners of the ship. I’ve never been in H&A, for which I thank whatever gods govern the assignments.”
“At least I know where this is now,” Esmay said. “And I’d better get back to my list.”
She was glad for the years of open-country navigation on the estancia . . . she had no problem retracing her route down and aft, and arrived in the junior officers’ section in plenty of time to freshen up before taking her assigned table at mess. Now that she was wide awake, she found it easier to engage them in conversation.
Callison, the senior jig, had a graduate degree in environmental engineering. Partrade, the junior jig, worked in administration—a specialty still called paper-pushing, though relatively little of it was on paper. The five ensigns at her table included one in Hull and Architecture, two in Weapons Systems, and one each in Medical Support and Data Systems.
Esmay wondered if any of them had served aboard a ship in combat, but didn’t like to ask. She had spooked them enough the previous night. Partrade brought the topic up without her having to ask.
“Was the Xavier action your only experience in combat, Lieutenant Suiza?”
Esmay managed not to choke on her peas. “Yes, it was.” End of sentence.
“I’ve never even served on a warship,” Partrade went on, with a glance around. “I don’t think anyone at this table has. They put me in Maintenance Administration right away, and I’ve been on the Kos for five solid years.”
“I was on Checkmate,” one of the ensigns said. “But we never did anything but patrol.”
“Be grateful,” said Esmay, before she could stop herself. Now they all stared at her. She hated this. She felt too young and too old at the same time.
“If the lieutenant doesn’t want to talk about it, don’t push her.” That from the lieutenant at the next table, whom Esmay now remembered was the one she’d met outside the lift tube. “Dinner’s not the time for gory stories anyway.” He winked at Esmay. She grinned in spite of herself.
“He’s right,” she said to her table. “It’s not a fit topic at the table.” Or among strangers, she realized. Now she understood why the veterans tended to cluster apart to tell their tales, why they had fallen silent when she and other juniors had tried to overhear them. “Any of the rest of you have any experience?” She was surprised to hear in her own voice the same slight emphasis to the word which she had heard from more senior, and experienced officers. Their heads shook. “Well,” she said. “Then we won’t be tempted to bring up things like that at dinner.” Her smile would, she hoped, take the sting out of that. “Now . . . Zintner, you’re in H&A. Was that your intent at the Academy?”
“Yes, sir.” Zintner, who must have stood on tiptoe to make the minimum height requirement, almost sparkled in her seat. “My family’s been in shipbuilding forever—a long time anyway. I wanted to work on military hulls . . . that’s where the good new stuff is.”
“And this is your first assignment?”
“Yes, sir. It’s great. You’ve met Major Pitak—she knows so much—and we get to work on everything, once we’re out with the wave.”
“Mmm. My background’s scan technology, so I don’t know much about H&A. I expect you’ll be teaching me a lot.”
“Me, sir? I doubt it—the major’s got me working on a technical manual right now. She’ll probably tell Master Chief Sivars to take you on.”
Direct contradiction was rude, but the ensign looked too bouncy to have intended any rudeness. She was simply full of what she was doing. Esmay understood that. She turned to the jigs. Callison was pleasantly willing to discuss the less disgusting processes that kept the ship’s crew alive, and had amusing anecdotes of the sorts of things that went wrong. It had not occurred to Esmay that a few insect egg cases caught in the mud in someone’s hiking boots could hatch and cause serious problems, but apparently they had, on another ship. That story led Partrade to regale them with a story about the time an unnamed junior lieutenant transposed a few numbers and caused a massive overdraft of his ship’s account . . . everyone had been bumped up ten grades, so the whole ship was crewed—according to the computer—by officers, and the captain outranked the sector commander.
One of the many differences from home that Esmay savored was this . . . that they could talk about their assignments at dinner. On Altiplano, nothing related to one’s work could be discussed at dinner, even if all at the table were working together. She found that unnatural . . . here, a flurry of shop talk would unwind naturally into other topics.
“Are you ready for my exam?” Major Pitak asked when she reported.
“Yes, sir,” Esmay said. “But I do have a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why doesn’t the ship’s schematics agree with reality—or with the schematics on your cube?”
“Excellent. How many discrepancies did you find?”
Esmay blinked. She hadn’t expected that reaction. She began to describe the discrepancies, starting at the bow and working aft. Pitak listened without comment. When she had finished, Pitak made a note on her pad.
“I believe you found them all. Good work. You asked why we have discrepancies, and that’s not a question I can answer. I suspect it’s the new AI subroutines, which actively protect data considered especially important. A software glitch, in other words, though we can’t seem to convince the Fleet systems designers that it’s a problem. They take the view that architecture, once launched, shouldn’t change . . . which is probably true for most hulls.”
Esmay thought that over. “So you create new data cubes individually when you change architecture.”
“Right. We can actually change the main system for a time—usually an hour or so before it ‘heals’ itself and repairs what it thinks is a data injury.”
“But there were two places where your data cube didn’t match the reality.”
Pitak grinned at her. “I gave you an old data cube, Lieutenant—to see if you’d really check things out. The stupid ones come back all confused, complaining that they can’t find their way by ship schematics. The clever ones check out one or two locations, then come back with a list of discrepancies between my cube and the ship schematics. Good, honest officers who aren’t afraid of work do what you did—they check everything. That’s what I want in my section . . . people who skip the details in H&A kill ships, and we’re here to save them.”