Behind him, a driving rain battered the corpses sprawled in the courtyard, washing the blood into gutters, and finally through drains down into the sea. When the squalls moved on, the seabirds came, and for a time made a column of flickering wings above the towering stack.
Bonar Tighe’s LACs screamed south, and rose from their designated drop zones back to orbit an ample twelve minutes before Martin-Lehore finally fixed MetSatIV’s glitch.
MetSatIV picked them up at near-orbital level, but they were outbound, carrying Fleet beacons; the satellite’s AI tagged them as friendlies.
The first LAC eased into Bonar Tighe’s drop bay and settled onto its marks. Pivot Anseli Markham, who always read manuals and followed them to the letter, aimed the hand-held bioscan at its fuselage.
“Put that down,” growled her boss, Sergeant-minor Prinkin.
“But sir, the manual said—” Anseli goggled at the readout. The LACs had gone out empty, with flight crew only, and her instrument was showing dozens and dozens of little green blips.
“Put it down, Pivot; it’s out of order.”
“Oh.” Anseli racked the instrument. So that’s why it was showing troops aboard an empty LAC. “Should I take it to the repair bay, Sergeant Prinkin?”
He gave her a sour look. “Do that, Pivot. You’re no damn use in here anyway.”
Anseli unracked the bioscan and headed toward the repair bay. She was tempted to turn it on and see if it worked when it didn’t have to read through hull material, but she could feel Sergeant Prinkin watching her. He’d never liked her; he was always sniping at her, and she tried so hard . . . she let her mind drift into her favorite reverie, of how much better she would treat pivots when she made sergeant-minor.
The repair bay for small scan equipment was out of sight of the LAC service bay. Once around the corner, Anseli experimented with the bioscan. When she pointed it at her foot, a green blurry foot-shaped image appeared. When she aimed at the squad coming down the passage, it showed all eight of them. When she aimed it at a bulkhead, there were two squatting shapes . . . and then a rush through the water pipes that made her blush. She hadn’t meant to do anything like that.
Chief Stockard, in the repair bay, took the bioscan and gave her forms to fill out.
“But I think it’s working now,” Anseli said, trying to fit the entire thirteen-digit part number into a space only two centimeters long. Print clearly, the directions said, but how could she print clearly that small? And why did she have to fill out forms at all, when the computerized ID system would read the part number right off the bioscan itself? She did know better than to ask that one; it wasn’t her first trip to the repair bay. “I tried it on people coming along here, and it always registered them.”
“If your sergeant said it wasn’t working, then it wasn’t working,” Stockard said, folding his lips under. “It may be working now, but it wasn’t working then. What was he trying to do when he said it malfunctioned?”
“He wasn’t using it, Chief. I was. I was taking a bioscan reading of the incoming LAC, just like it says to do in the manual, and he said put it down, it’s not working right. And I guess it wasn’t, because it said the LAC was full of troops.”
“LACs usually are,” Stockard said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“But they dropped empty,” Anseli said. “I was there; I scanned them going out, just like the manual says, and they carried only flight crew. It was just a practice flight.”
Stockard froze, his hands flat on the counter between them. “Are you saying the LACs went down empty and came up full?”
“Well . . . no, sir, not really. They couldn’t have. It’s just this bioscan unit, but since it’s malfunctioning—”
“You just wait there a minute.” Stockard turned away, and Anseli could see him talking into a comunit, though she couldn’t hear him. He turned back, shaking his head, still muttering into the comunit. Then he gave her a rueful look. “I guess it malfunctioned . . . I just asked Chief Burdine if the LACs carried troops, and he said no. Oh—he says for you to take a detour up to Admin and pick up the liberty passes for the section. We’ll be docking in a few hours.”
“Yes, sir.” No chance that her name would be on the list, given Sergeant Prinkin’s animosity, but maybe he’d go, and she’d have a few hours of peace.
Chief Burdine, on the LAC service bay deck, strolled over to Sergeant Prinkin as if making his usual round of stations. “Just had a call from Stockard in repair—that idiot pivot of yours told him all about the malfunctioning bioscan showing the LAC full of troops. I think Stockard bought my assurance that they’re empty, but how much chance that pivot will blab to someone else about the bioscan reading?”
“Near a hundred percent,” Sergeant Prinkin said. “The girl’s got no sense.”
“Is she popular?”
“She’s got friends. Hard worker, shows initiative, always willing to help out.”
“A milk biscuit.” That with contempt.
“Oh yes, all the way through.”
“I wish we didn’t have any of that sort aboard,” Chief Burdine said. “They could have a happy life milking cows somewhere; what’d they have to join Fleet for?”
“For our sport,” Sergeant Prinkin said.
“That’s true.” Burdine grinned at him. “Though it’s little sport someone like her will give us.”
Running up to Admin from the repair bay meant running up a lot of ladders, which other people seemed busy running down. Again and again Anseli had to stand aside while one or more officers or squads of NEMs clattered down. She wasn’t really in a hurry, because the longer she was away from Sergeant Prinkin the better, but standing at the foot of ladders wasn’t her idea of fun. Her mind wandered to the LACs and the bioscan. If LACs could drop and pick up troops . . . or drop troops off . . . why couldn’t they pick troops up? Go down empty, come back full? And if you didn’t bioscan the LACs, how could you tell?
“Stand clear!”
She flattened herself to the bulkhead yet again, not really seeing the uniforms flashing past her. What if there were people on the ship who weren’t crew? People from down on the planet?
Of course, everyone on this planet was Fleet, so it didn’t matter. Did it?
Anseli knew that pivots weren’t supposed to think—well, not beyond memorizing instruction sets in manuals. But she’d always had a sort of itchy feeling in her head if she didn’t get things straight. Machines either worked or they didn’t, in her very clear interior universe. A bioscan which reported on real, verifiable human-sized beings behind one wall didn’t turn liar and report that there were people where there weren’t any. That very same bioscan unit had reported nothing in the LAC holds when the LAC left . . . when it was known to be empty. So how did the sergeant know the LAC was empty when the bioscan said it was loaded with troops? Sergeants knew everything, but . . . her mind itched.
A non-itchy part of her mind began its own commentary on the crew members who kept coming down the ladders. There had been no general alarm, so why were the ship’s security details on their way to the LAC bays?
By the time she reached Admin, her mind was worse than a case of hives, and the only way she knew to scratch it was ask questions. The chief in Admin growled and handed her another job to do. How was she supposed to learn if no one answered her questions?