Sunday, August 30, 2398, UD
Deepspace Light Scout 387 Berthed on Space Battle Station 20, in Orbit around Anjaxx Planet
“Welcome aboard, sir. Identity check and orders, please.”
Even as she saluted, the quartermaster’s voice betrayed none of the fun she’d had watching the young officer make a complete mess of crossing the line. She’d known he would do that the second it became obvious that he wasn’t going to use the lubber’s rail, because crossing the line was not the straightforward exercise it first appeared. As one approached any berthed starship, up was definitely and without doubt up. Down was down. Left was left. Right was right. Easy and, after millions of years of evolution, something the human mind was well able to manage.
But as you crossed the line that marked the change from the space battle station’s artificial gravity to ship’s artificial gravity, up could be down or sideways or all three mashed together. In this particular case, 387 was berthed so that horizontal became down by way of a sharp, almost 90-degree lean backward coupled with a slight right-hand twist. And Leading Spacer Matthilde Bienefelt had seen everyone from admirals down to the youngest and most inexperienced recruit ignore the lubber’s rail and make a mess of a deceptively simple problem: how to cross a red and white striped line, adjust to a new gravity field, and maintain some semblance of balance, control, and dignity in the space of less than a second. But after more than twenty years in Space Fleet, Bienefelt knew full well that the human brain simply could not cope with the instantaneous rearrangement of the forces of gravity through three axes and that Junior Lieutenant Helfort was wasting his time trying. His brain’s balance control system would stay shut down until it was ready to cope. That, of course, was why the lubber’s rail was provided, though a remarkably large number of spacers let ego override common sense and ignored it.
He would learn, Bienefelt thought, standing patiently as Michael scrambled his way across the threshold and fell rather than climbed down the ladder into the ship’s surveillance drone deployment air lock. He arrived at her feet standing up, thanks to a desperate lunge for the ladder handrail.
After a few seconds and conscious that he, like generations of junior officers before him, had just made a complete ass of himself, Michael’s brain came back online and he recovered his balance and composure, if not his dignity. He presented his thumb for DNA checking and his left eye for retinal scanning and then commed his orders to Bienefelt, marking his formal arrival onboard Space Fleet’s second youngest deepspace light scout, the name-challenged DLS-387.
Michael didn’t approve of warships not having names, but Space Fleet policy was unshakable. In its view, there were simply too many small ships-light scouts like 387, courier ships, and a multitude of small auxiliary support ships-to give each one a name. So numbers it was, something Michael had always thought depersonalized a ship. That was a pity. With its master AI, a ship was in a way a living thing and as such deserved better. Still, that was the way things were, and he’d never be able to change them.
“Thank you, sir. Welcome aboard. I’m Leading Spacer Bienefelt, and I’m in your division.” Bienefelt stuck out a hand the size of a plate and proceeded to crush Michael’s in a grip like a steel vise. Michael resolved on the spot not to argue with Bienefelt unless it was absolutely necessary. She was at least forty centimeters taller than he, maybe more, and probably a good 50 kilos heavier, to the point where she was as close to being declared a cyborg as any Worlder he’d ever seen; she’d make Karen Sutler look small. In fact, if she were any larger, she might be declared an illegal and expelled from the FedWorlds.
“Sir, the captain asked that you see him as soon as you came aboard; he’s in his cabin.”
Michael grimaced. He needed a shower. “What do you think, Leader? Time to change?”
“I think you’ll find that when the skipper says now, he generally means now, sir.”
“Oh, okay.”
“You have the ship schematics, sir?”
“I do, thanks, Leader. Can someone take my stuff to my cabin, please.” Michael gestured at the battered trunk and a couple of smaller bags, all of which had been unceremoniously dumped just outside 387’s open air lock by the baggage bot and containing everything that Space Fleet deemed necessary for the proper conduct of his duties.
“No worries, sir. Leave it with me. Karpov, you fucking worm.” Bienefelt turned to the young spacer standing slightly behind and to one side of the quartermaster’s desk, “Gear. Junior Lieutenant Helfort’s cabin. Now. You’ve got two minutes.”
Bienefelt turned back to Helfort. “I’ve commed the captain to let him know you are on your way. Anything else I can help you with, sir?”
“No thanks, Leader. It’s good to be aboard.”
“Good to have you, sir.”
Michael hoped she meant it.
And with that, Michael brought up the ship’s schematics on his neuronics, nominated the captain’s cabin as his destination, and set off through the massive doorway that opened from the drone deployment air lock into the brightly lit drone hangar deck. He paused a moment to catch his breath. Ahead of him, blackly menacing in their stealth coats of radio frequency and light absorbent material, sat two massive Mark 88-K surveillance drones, to the human eye just two bottomless holes. The nothingness was absolute, so completely did they absorb the light thrown at them.
Along the hangar walls, six smaller drones sat in two neat rows on the gray ceramsteel deck, three to a side. My babies, he thought, just the things to keep an assistant warfare officer busy. His neuronics pointed the way down through a small personnel hatch set in the deck to his right.
Michael dropped down the ladder onto 2 Deck, the upper accommodation level, and followed a passageway lined with the usual clutter of pipe work and cabling broken up every so often by damage control lockers, firefighting equipment, and all the other odds and ends that warships used passageways to store. Michael went forward for 10 meters or so before dropping down another hatch in spacer style, boots on the outside of the ladder, hands braking his fall at the very last minute, to thump onto 3 Deck. The ship’s main cross-passage, leaving the galley and the wardroom on the left and the combat information center on the right, finally brought him to the captain’s cabin at the far end. He hadn’t passed another soul. Not surprising, he thought, this early on a Sunday morning. He’d be in bed if he had the choice.
Michael stopped outside the closed door to straighten the rather rumpled clothes he’d been wearing since he had left home. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he knocked on the door.
“Yes, Helfort, come in.” The voice was incredibly deep, with rich warm overtones.
Should have been an opera singer, Michael thought irreverently as he stepped into his new captain’s cabin.
Twenty minutes later, any irreverence Michael might have felt toward Lieutenant Jean-Pierre Ribot, JP to his friends and captain-in-command of the Federated Worlds warship DLS-387, had evaporated in the face of a very detailed statement of what Ribot expected him to do to become a useful member of 387’s command team. And with the ship due out on patrol in forty-eight hours, the list of things he had to do before it departed seemed to be a million strong. But first things first.