“ Chu-sa Kosho,” the man said, peering up at her with a pair of black eyes. The pupil and irises were almost exactly the same peat-dark brown, leaving only a thin white ring to outline them against his skin. He was wearing the somber black uniform of the Engineering service-not the shipboard branch, which was under the purview of the Fleet, but the station-side arm, which ran the sprawling complex of orbital habitats, forges, construction frames, and fitting stations which comprised the Akbal yards.
A Mayan, she thought with interest. Of an old, old family. What an astounding profile.
“Oc Chac, kyo,” he said, bowing stiffly to her once he’d stood.
“A pleasure,” she replied, then paused a split second before saying: “Is there something wrong with this zabuton?”
Chac nodded, lips thinning.
“Should it be replaced?”
He shook his head, no.
His silence was both amusing and irritating at the same time, and she was hungry.
Chac frowned, thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “ Chu-sa, be mindful of this mess hall-always leave one seat empty. Always.”
“What suggests this?” She shifted the binders under the tray and started picking at her sliced fruit.
“Saving yours, kyo, there are only twenty-five seats.” He indicated the tables and Kosho saw this was indeed the case. “The last to sit will be-must be-in the thirteenth chair, regardless of how they enter.”
“Ah,” she said, suddenly realizing who he must be. “You are our hafuri priest.”
“No!” He shook his bald head abruptly. “The jichinsai rites to consecrate the hull will be performed by others, before you leave the yards. I am your fitting officer, kyo.”
But our hafuri bonze should… “You’re not our fitting officer,” she said, voice suddenly cold. “You’re our superstitions officer.”
Chac’s impassive face seemed to congeal, and Susan bit down on further angry words. That was not polite.
“Starmen are… superstitious, Chu-sa,” the Mayan hissed, trying to keep his voice down. Kosho realized she’d cut him to the quick with the heedless statement. “Do not tempt fate! You bring this ship bad luck enough, kyo, without provoking Camaxtli with your rudeness!”
“Bad luck?” Susan’s eyes narrowed to bare slits.
“Not that you are a woman!” Chac hissed, standing his ground. Though Kosho would never be accounted tall, she had a good two inches over the tiny Mayan. But he did not flinch away from her. “Your last ship died, her crew disgraced, captain sent down to the List… you think no one here knows what happened at Jagan? And you survived? Were promoted? How dearly bought was that last golden skull, Chu-sa? Did your family pay?-Or did you?”
“I see.” Kosho felt still and cold, the Mayan’s words a well-placed dart straight to the heart. She turned, sweeping the mess with a sharp, piercing glance. Every officer sat still as a statue-staring at the two of them in varying degrees of interest, horror, and uncertainty. “Rumor is fleet of foot, they say, and your ears will be filled with all manner of calamities.” Her voice echoed from the unfinished shoji. “I will say this-and no more-the Cornuelle was well and truly caught in a trap at Jagan. Her captain taken by surprise, myself trapped planet-side when the ship was stricken. The Admiralty made many excuses for us, but none of them are the truth. We had been out on patrol too long. We were far past tired, and our ship had worn down to nothing… a stupid, deadly mistake her captain rues to this day. His soul was in that ship, and now-with Cornuelle sent to the breaking yards-he is lost as well.”
Kosho inclined her head towards the ensigns sitting near the main door. “Remember this lesson. Chu-sa Hadeishi was one of the finest ship-handlers you could ever meet-and even he was caught out-defeated-by an enemy whose first weapon was patience. The odds always turn against you.”
“So is my belief, kyo,” Chac said, in a voice too low for the others to hear. “And what did you learn from this excellent teacher?”
Kosho’s right hand tightened on the breakfast tray. The Mayan matched her frigid stare without flinching, then raised one eyebrow minutely, bowed, and made his way out of the room. Susan did not watch him go, but stalked to her seat and sat down.
Kosho took two deep breaths, closed her eyes for a moment, and then set to eating the rice pudding. A fine breakfast with my officers, she thought, chewing mechanically. Very fine.
The next week passed in a blur of construction review, sitting in with Thai-i Goroemon while the Logistics officer bartered with Supply Service to fill the ship’s holds with perishables and spare parts, and the lengthy business of actually meeting all of her department heads and their staff. In all the confusion of the tribunal at Toroson and the hurry to get to her new command, Susan had neglected to obtain the services of a manservant or-as she might have claimed-a maid. She’d always considered Hadeishi’s maintenance of old Yejin some kind of a charitable arrangement… until now, when she woke one morning, twenty-one days after reporting aboard the Naniwa, and found she had not a single clean uniform left in her closet. The ship, of course, boasted a fine, modern laundry, but someone had to gather up the dirty clothes and send them off to be cleaned.
Her comm chimed politely, reminding her that Thai-sho Kasir-the operational commander of the Yards-was expecting her on v-cast within the hour. A whole set of Fleet orders packets had arrived during shipnight and they required discussion with the Zosen officers responsible for the Naniwa ’s construction, as well as other personnel issues she would have to manage herself.
Grandmother Suchiru would put her cane to the soles of my feet for this… Kosho stiffened at the thought of facing a superior Fleet officer in a less-than-immaculate uniform. All night and all day. What to do? Improvise. I will improvise.
Frowning, Susan commed the laundry and asked the petty officer on duty to send someone around to collect everything, then she found a reasonably clean kimono and clipped her hair back.
Laughing a little at herself, Kosho sat at her desk, woke up her main comp, and unfolded three v-panes on the desk surface. Chapultepec lower form never taught a better lesson than this!
Her stylus skipped across the control interface in a blur as she called up a skinning module, mapped her proper dress whites onto a splice of the v-cast feed routed back from the pickup nodes to pane two, then set pane three to show her what the admiral would see.
Six minutes before the v-cast started, she was finished tweaking herself and the door cycled open to admit one of the midshipmen.
“ Kyo?”
“Everything is over there, Jushin- tzin.” She watched him for a moment, toying with a pair of reassignment packets from the bigger pile, as he bustled around, gathering up uniform tunics. A thought occurred to her while she was waiting. “ Ko-hosei -do you know if our fitting officer is still aboard?”
“Chac- tzin?” Jushin’s expression was carefully neutral. “I believe so, Chu-sa.”
“Excellent.” Kosho considered the packets sitting on her desk, then shook her head. I will just have to make do with the resources at hand.
Two hours later, Susan had an excellent view of the construction frame enclosing the six-hundred-meter length of the Naniwa. Beyond the spindly web of metal and the hundreds of canisters queuing to be unloaded into the cargo bays, the striated orb of Jupiter blotted out most of the visible sky. The constellation of orbital habitats holding station between Europa and the gas giant were off to her left, though invisible save for the tiny moving flares of shuttles or cargo lighters trolling between the wide-spread components of the Akbal complex.
Kosho stepped carefully, wending her way along the hexacomb pattern of the shipskin tiles. Her combat armor boots were magnetized, as were the narrow walkways installed for the final fit-out of the ship. Primary hull construction had been completed early the previous year-the last sixteen months had been spent by the Zosen installing crew compartments, weapon systems, fuel bladders, and so on.