“Have you?”
“First few times. Not anymore.” Ciorio lowered his voice. “We don’t tell ‘em. If we fix all twenty right, we’ll report that we had to junk five, fed ‘em into the main fusactor. Otherwise, next time, they’ll send us even more of the defective ones, load the repairs onto us.”
“Major Sewiki… she’s stet with that?”
“Stet? It was her idea. No good officer wants the techs working twice as hard to bail out BuWeaps and their screwups.”
That made sense, in a way, but it went down hard for me. The whole idea of a senior tech and a field-grade officer disregarding command procedures—it undermined order and discipline. My first thought was that it didn’t happen in the CSN, but I’d have wagered it did. It was probably even quieter, because no one wanted the crusaders or their priors to find out.
“Besides,” Ciorio went on, “that gives us more torps.” He turned back to the open section of the torp, using the nanoprobes to disengage the links. Sweat beaded up his forehead, but his hands were steady. I watched as closely as I could. I’d used Comity nanoprobes. I just hadn’t been trained in anything like what he was doing.
“Is it only the 503s?” I asked, when he took another deep breath and blotted his forehead on the back of his wrist. “I’d thought…”
“Nah. 502s sometimes, but there aren’t many of them left anymore, and they pulled the 504s before they started sending ‘em out Too many 503s in service. Corvettes are the ones that get screwed, cause they don’t have but one armorer, and no equipment to do refits. Good thing we’re not in a big war. You want to try it?”
That was the last thing I wanted. “I’ve only watched. I’d like to learn… if you’re not worried about spoiling a torp.”
“You came from corvettes, I’d wager.”
“What can I say?”
Ciorio shook his head. “Got to learn sometime. Better take it real easy. One step at a time. I’ll guide you, once I replace the module on this one.”
He made it seem easy, and within fifteen minutes, we had the refitted torp back on the slider, ready to head back to storage.
“Now, we’ll switch places,” Ciorio said.
We switched. He eased the next torp onto the bench cradle.
As I’d seen Ciorio do, I unsealed the power access. “Check power route.”
“Power off.”
I looked down through the nanomags at the module in the open section of the torp. It wasn’t much bigger than the tip of my fingernail without them.
“Look for the green supercon line. Don’t want to touch that Real delicate. The red links are where you want to cut, anyplace between silver beads.”
That was simple enough, and I did know the nanoprobes. I’ve also always had good fine-muscle control. I made the cut.
“Good. Nice touch there. Sure you never did this?”
“Omer stuff. Not this.”
“All right Now… you use the left probe to insert the disable code.”
“That’s me standard D-I-S-X.”
“Right.”
I followed instructions, and the module went dull gray.
“There. Simple as that. Just ease it out. ‘Ware of the supercon line.”
In a few moments, I had the module out and into the disposal holder, sealed.
Ciorio eased the replacement module holder, nanite-protected against dust, up to the probes. I lifted the new module and eased it back into place. It fit perfectly. From Ciorio’s exhaling, I had the feeling that didn’t always happen.
“Now… you’ll have to extrude a touch of the control line, on polarity two. Just fill the gaps where you cut.”
I managed that as well.
“Next… reactivate.”
“R-E-A-T?”
“For 503s. For 502s, it’s R-E-A-3. Don’t ask me why.”
I got the code in, again without brushing the supercon, and retracted the probes. “Diagnostics?”
“Green. You can seal it up, Bond. We got ten more to do. We’ll take turns. Don’t get as tired or careless that way.”
I’d managed to get through one thing I probably should have known and hadn’t. How many more would there be?
16
Chang
Had almost a week more simulator training. Not all of it was on the shuttles. Spent four sessions getting a basic fam on the Magellan. Then Morgan took Lerrys, Braun, and me to the control room, let us link and get the feel of the systems. Decided I’d never really want to drive anything that big on a regular basis. Another three sim sessions were on needleboats. Pretty much all drives and enough mass to carry three torps. Screwy configuration. Couldn’t figure why only three torps with two tubes. Morgan insisted it was the stripped-down fusactor limits and that the original design had only allowed for two torps. Magellan had five needles, just like a battle-cruiser. We were backups. Regular pilots were junior lieutenants out of the two Comity space academies.
After another two days of simulator training, Morgan cleared me to take out shuttle one—the real shuttle, hot a simmie. It was locked on Deep Find Station’s tower three, a good kay “west” of the training bay. Wore my new armor and carried my helmet. A shipsuit will get you through a decompression, but not a battle or a fusillade of space junk. Takes armor for that Morgan escorted me through the ops personnel tunnel. Armor was hot. I was sweating when we reached the base of the ramp up to the lock tower.
Morgan stopped. “Just take it easy. It’s a fam run. I don’t want you acting like a test pilot.”
Commander was acting like he’d built the shuttles. “You put together the specs for them, sir?”
His head jerked toward me. Started to glare, then laughed, shaking his head. “Lieutenant, I don’t understand why you ever had to break anyone’s fingers.”
“Because he didn’t understand some words—like ‘honesty’ and ‘no.’”
He nodded. “Too many people hear what they want and not what’s said.”
Was Morgan was a nice guy inside? So nice that he’d built an endurasteel shell? Or was the niceness was just politeness over practicality? Either way, not my type. Be either too solicitous or as immovable as a singularity.
He stopped short of the tower lock. Noted he was carrying a stunner. “Shuttle one’s all yours, Lieutenant No more than two hours out, and stay clear of the Magellan and the station until you’re ready to return.”
“Yes, sir.” I stepped to the lock. Pulsed the codes and got a return scan. That was another thing about the shuttles. All had the security features of armed Comity scouts. Never seen shuttles that did, not until now.
Stepped into the crew lock, and went weightless. No habitability gravs until I powered up the shuttle. Set my shipboots on the deck and closed the outer lock door, then opened the inner door. Pulled myself into—or over—the quarterdeck. More like a closet with a hatch to the cockpit to the left, passageway to passenger section to the right. Behind the passenger section was one big cargo hold, with the drives and ship’s systems aft.
I opened the hatch one-handed, holding the grip with the other. Like the simulator, only one seat in the cockpit. Inside console and boards were identical to the simulator. Strapped into the pilot’s couch and adjusted the links.
Delta Control, this is Porter Tigress. Requesting clearance to power up this time.