After a badly needed shower, Michael changed into a dark gray one-piece ship suit marked only by his shoulder badges of rank, his name tag, and the deep purple starburst of the Federated Worlds on the left breast. The ship badge that belonged on his upper right arm would have to wait until he could find someone to issue him one from stores.
With the transition from crumpled space traveler to ship’s officer complete, he commed Mother. Her avatar was the pleasant face of a middle-aged woman, calm and unflappable and, like most Worlders, the color of milky coffee.
“Welcome aboard DLS-387, Junior Lieutenant Helfort.” It was a velvet voice, as calm and unflappable as her avatar.
“Thank you, Mother. Please call me Michael.”
“Certainly. Welcome aboard DLS-387, Michael.”
Michael smiled. An AI with a sense of humor?
“Mother, since it’s early and most of my division, not to mention my new boss, are away on weekend leave, I would like to get the ship knowledge and safety test out of the way first. Can you set up the guided tour for me? I’ll see if I can get it done this morning. I’ve been through the induction material and done the sims, but this is the first time in years that I’ve actually been in a light scout.”
“Stand by. Ship knowledge and safety induction tour set up. We’ll start on 4 Deck aft in propulsion and primary power. Please follow the arrows.” As Mother finished, Michael’s neuronics pointed the way to the nearest hatch and he set off.
Four hours later, Mother had taken Michael into every compartment, every corner, every recess of DLS-387, and there had been a hell of a lot of ship to see. She had taken him through every system onboard end to end, including, and this had been a particular thrill for Michael, the personnel and ship waste recycling system. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn that this particular AI definitely had a sense of humor. She had taken an awfully long time making sure he knew the full intricacies of a system that most were happy to leave to the engineers.
Finally, the induction tour over, Michael sat in his tiny cabin on 2 Deck, eyes half-closed as he successfully navigated his way through the ship knowledge and safety test before finishing up with the two mandatory damage control sims: first a catastrophic loss of hull pressure after a collision with a large meteorite and second a fire. Heart pounding and covered in sweat, Michael and his imaginary team, most of whom had to be directed more firmly than he was used to, finally had extinguished the fire that had threatened to engulf most of 3 Deck from its starting point in the galley.
He sat back to wait for his score.
Mother was not long, and she did not disappoint.
“Thank you for waiting, Michael. I’m happy to tell you that you have achieved a score of 98 percent, thereby passing the mandatory ship knowledge and safety test. I will update your personnel file accordingly and inform the captain, the executive officer, and Lieutenant Hosani.”
Michael breathed out with relief. While he had never been in any doubt-Michael was nothing if not good at passing tests after three years of Space College-it was still good to get this hurdle, the first of many, no doubt, out of the way. “Any idea when the XO and Lieutenant Hosani will be back onboard?”
“Yes, I’ve just gotten an update. They’ll both be on the up-shuttle from Anjaxx scheduled to arrive at 20:25 tonight.”
“Fine. Can you let them know I’ve arrived?”
A short pause. “Done, Michael.”
“Thanks, Mother.”
With that, Michael turned his attention to the next thing on his very long list: space-suit setup. He commed the duty safety equipment operator, one Senior Spacer Carlsson, and arranged to pick up his suit. Setup would take an hour or so, and then lunch would be a damn fine thing.
Michael set off to find Carlsson, who according to Mother was testing one of the lifepods right aft and down on 4 Deck.
Sunday, August 30, 2398, UD
Outside the Diplomatic Compound, City of McNair, Commitment Planet
Digby stood, as he had done on so many dark mornings, alone on the Avenue of Heroes.
Running away from him all the way down to the Grand Corniche that fronted the eastern shores of the Koenig Channel, carefully shaded streetlights threw sharply distinct pools of orange light, stretching away like a long double string of exotic pearls. Massive trees flanked the road, visible only as ink-black shapes against the star-studded sky; well set back, the anonymous shapes of government buildings loomed gray and forbidding.
As he hung back from the street safe in the deep shadows thrown by the trees, Digby was beginning not to care whether Kumar appeared. He’d seen the bloody man only once in the last ten days, and then in the company of two other men. Thank Kraa, he’d decided to get his wife out-system; confirmation that she’d made it to Scobie’s World safely had come as a huge relief. The risks he had been taking had been hard enough to bear; they would have been infinitely harder to take knowing that Jana, too, would suffer if he was arrested loitering close to the diplomatic compound for no good reason.
He did have his running gear on. Even brigadier generals of marines were supposed to stay fit, after all.
Digby comforted himself with the knowledge that for all its fearsome reputation, Doctrinal Security was as slack as most security organizations without an immediate and obvious threat to deal with seemed to be. Its supposedly random patrols were far from random, and Digby would have sworn before Kraa that at least half of them wouldn’t have seen an elephant standing at the side of the road unless it was painted bright pink and floodlit with a strobe light nailed to its head. He’d been a marine for far too long not to recognize the signs of low morale, poor discipline, and weak leadership at a glance. He’d even had to dodge the shattered remains of a beer bottle thrown from a jeep as it sped past.
Then, all of a sudden, there was activity at the compound gate. A light came on to reveal a man talking to the gate guards, but it was too far away to tell if he was Kumar. Please, let it be him and nobody else, Digby pleaded, his heart thudding. Please let it be Kumar and let him be alone. Digby waited in impatient agony. They must know him well, he thought, as the faint sounds of laughter came down the avenue. They seemed very chummy; maybe it was not Kumar.
Finally, the man was off and running. Kumar. Please Kraa, let it be Kumar. Nerves jangling, Digby turned and moved down the road to a position 50 meters short of the first cross-street, turning every so often to track the man coming toward him.
And Kumar it was, and thank Kraa, he was alone.
Almost before Digby knew it, Kumar was on him.
“Captain Kumar, it’s Julius Digby,” he hissed. “Don’t slow down. Keep running and turn right at the cross-street and stay close to the trees. I must talk to you.”
And with that, Digby was off through the shadows, hoping like hell that Kumar wouldn’t do what common sense would tell him to do: turn around and go straight home.
Moments later, Kumar rounded the corner, jogging steadily up the Avenue of Martyrs toward the sea some 3 kilometers in front of him, hugging the curb, running in and out of the shadows. Suddenly he stopped, bending down as though to adjust an overly tight shoe.
“You’ve got twenty seconds, Digby, and then I’m gone.” Kumar’s voice was harsh. No Sylvanian would ever trust a Hammer, and for all Kumar knew, this could be entrapment.
“Ashok, you must trust me. I have a message capsule here for you. It will open only when you say the passphrase ‘concurrent,’ that’s ‘concurrent.’ Please repeat.”
“Concurrent,” Kumar replied shortly. “Five seconds.”