I followed the others. Sick bay was slightly forward of midships, and two decks below the main deck. Even after the delay at the lock tower, there were still ten techs lined up waiting for their scans. When my turn came, I passed over the ID and order cards.
The medtech didn’t even look at me. “Into the scanner, Bond.”
I stepped between the two panels and put my hands on the plates. There was a faint hum.
“You’re clear and entered into the ship system.”
How the colonel had managed it, I had no idea. I was just happy he had. If the scan had gone red, certain proteins in my brain would have gone to work, and… I wouldn’t have known anything within moments. They don’t tell you about that when they first recruit you for Covenant intelligence. It provides a certain incentive not to be caught.
“Thank you.” I smiled and picked up my kit.
The tech nodded.
The main crew passage was two levels down. A spiral ramp just forward of sick bay led both up and down. I headed down, keeping to the right. I passed a shipfitter first. He didn’t even look in my direction. Once I was down two levels, I headed aft. The crew passageways were narrower, only about a meter and a half wide, tight for two techs with gear, but I only had to pass a handful of others on the way back. A thousand frames was more than a kay. I had to shift the duffel from shoulder to shoulder four or five times.
D.S.S. didn’t use ship slideways. They claimed the longer corridors gave the crew exercise. They also saved mass and construction expense. Our ships were more crew-friendly.
The stateroom was easy enough to find. Getting inside was harder. It was more like a long narrow closet with two built-in bunks. Each bunk had an entertainment screen at the end, flat video, and earplugs—decadent luxury for a fighting ship.
Alveres had taken the upper bunk. That didn’t matter to me. I took my time unpacking the kit and stowing the uniforms and gear according to D.S.S. regs, but not precisely.
Then I was ready to head to the armory. It was “up” and slightly aft of where I was billeted. The hardest part was finding the crew ramp up. When I got there, the armory hatch was open. In the bay just inside were sliders and trolleys. They were configured for torps and probes, but they were empty.
A wiry chief appeared. The name strip on his vest read Stuval.
“William Bond, chief, reporting.”
“Glad to see you, Bond. You’re the last one in the division to report. How was the trip?”
“I could have done without the slowboat from Hamilton.” I offered a headshake. “And what they called food.”
Stuval laughed. “That’s the way it is. Food’ll be a lot better here. You’ll be working in the torp section. Mostly inspection and maintenance. We got some substandard torps with the refit kits. BuWeaps couldn’t give us a complete load of new ones. Told the major that, with the stepped-up patrols along the systems bordering the Covenant worlds, there weren’t enough brand-new torps for everyone, and we’re not going into hostile systems. Captain complained, but it didn’t change anything. You and Ciorio will have to make the bloc switches.”
“Yes, chief.”
“Major Sewiki is the head of weapons, and the assistant weapons officer is Lieutenant Swallow. Now, let’s give you the quick tour, so that you know where everything is.”
I followed the chief.
14
Chang
By the end of fiveday, I’d been through six runs in the simulator, each one tougher than the last. Each exercise told me more about where we were headed. On the last two simmie hops, Morgan had me setting down on a planet, not like anyplace I’d been or even heard of. Gravs were close to one-point-four, but no atmosphere, and cold as Hel. No mag-field and a thirty-three-hour rotation.
Once I got off training, I went to the station system and plugged in the parameters. Nothing matched. Not anywhere in any cataloged system. Figured it wouldn’t, but it was worth the effort.
Ten hundred was my sixday simulator session. I got to the training bay at zero nine forty-seven. Anson Lerrys was getting out of the simulator. Little guy, smaller than me by a couple of centimeters, but just as tough. Have to be at his size and with a name like Anson. Wiry and red-haired. Cute ass, and smiled a lot, though. Morgan had said we’d get two more shuttle pilots, but Lerrys was the only one who showed up. Gave him the same senior lieutenant’s bars as Braun and I had. Had the feeling that the other one didn’t make the cut.
Hung back until Morgan dismissed Lerrys, then moved toward the simulator.
Lerrys grinned. His forehead was coated in sweat. “Good luck, Jiendra.”
Don’t know how he’d found out my first name, but he had. Said it nicely, though. “Morgan in a bad mood, Anson?” Figured I’d give him back the first-name stuff.
“More like a ‘show me your stuff’ attitude.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Do the same for me if it comes to that.”
“I will.” I would, too. Couldn’t help but like him, brotherlike. Wish I’d had one like him.
Morgan was wiping his forehead—like working the simulator was as hard on him as the pilot. Probably was. Looked at me. “You won’t find our destination in the station’s data system, Lieutenant Chang.” He grinned. “Good try, though.”
“You never know.” I grinned back. Mouth felt stiff from all the forced smiles.
“You’ll find out in time.” Morgan cleared his throat and motioned to the open hatch of the simulator. “Today, you’ll start on weapons fam and indoc. The shuttles are armed, but only with a pair of torps. There are no lasers, no particle beams, and no projectile weapons for space or atmospheric defense. Torps are technically the only weapons the shuttles have, but they also have photon nets and scoops for mass collection for the fusactors. In certain circumstances those can also prove useful.”
“How much mass can the nets sling?” I asked. “How fast and how accurate?”
Morgan gave a wry frown. “Enough, if you’re in-system. The accuracy depends on the pilot. Don’t fiddle with those on this run. This is for the torps, just to get you familiar with the systems and the controls. The installation’s not quite standard.”
Didn’t know how anything in the shuttle could be. Shuttles were each one of a kind.
He motioned me toward the simulator.
I went Was… and wasn’t… looking forward to the next two hours.
15
Goodman/Bond
By sixday, I was working with Ciorio on refitting the substandard deep-space torps. Because he was a tech first class, he was lead, and that was fine by me. We were in the torp bay, on the outer deck, right against the hull, with secondary shields. No one wanted a torp malfunction to break the ship in half or impact the drives, but the placement was psychological. If a torp went off inside the Magellan, the ship wouldn’t be going anyplace.
You couldn’t repair a torp, not without more work than made sense. The insides were miracles of microtronics— well, not miracles like those done by the Christ or the saints, but close to them. All an armorer could do was replace defective components and make sure that the systems checked out I eased the second torp off the slider and onto the bench cradle.
Ciorio unsealed the power access. “Check power route.” I ran the links and the diagnostics. “Power off.” Ciorio took a deep breath. “Good. That’s the nasty part. Model is a standard 503. Problem is that the control modules were too temperature sensitive. Not to space. They did fine in cold, but if the internals in the ship got above thirty degrees Celsius, the power cutouts didn’t work. Makes working on them a real bitch, because you’ve got to cut the routing. If you miss by a millimeter, the torp’s junk. That’s why they sent us ten extras. Figured we’d screw up some.”