“I turn the music down,” the Filipino said, hanging his head. “I jus’…”
“There is no ‘just,’ Portana,” the first sergeant said. “This unit is a team. It’s a team that needs every member working for the team, not against it. Forget all the slogans. Out here, it’s just us. That’s the only ‘just.’ Just. Us. If you cannot get that through your head, if you cannot figure out how to integrate into the team, then I might as well space you. Because I have no use for you and you’re a danger to the team. I don’t care how good of an armorer you are. I cannot afford the problems that you’re going to cause. Not out here. Do you fully and clearly understand me?”
“Yes, First Sergean’,” Portana said.
“I’ll get you some help,” Powell replied. “Now go see how many suits you can get fitted without that help.” He paused and looked at the clock on the bulkhead. “But don’t get too deep into it. I figure we’re coming up on…”
“Conn, Engineering.”
“Eng, Officer of Watch,” Weaver said tiredly. They were three days out on “watch and watch” which meant twelve hours on and twelve off, the normal rotation for ships “at sea.” He wasn’t so sure it was a good idea in spaceships. Everyone got really tired and logy quick.
“Thermal rating at seventy percent,” Engineering reported.
“Roger, Eng,” Weaver said, looking at the timer on the viewscreen. The CO was down for another six hours. And “chill” times weren’t exactly critical. Besides, standing orders said let him sleep. “Stand by for chill.”
At last. The cold of deep space. The true cold where a being could live.
On the last mission, unknown to any of the crew, the Blade had picked up a hitchhiker, a being of almost pure thought that lived in its waste-heat system, of all places. Given that it could only truly think in cold very near absolute zero, indeed for values of “die” it died each time heat hit it, it was a strange place for the being to live.
But when the silica/ferrous waste-heat trap cooled it formed random silicon junctions, different from silicon chips only in the “random” description. With the admixed metals used to hold the silica in place they were the perfect spot for a being that was virtually pure thought to exist.
But only if they were very, very cold.
It had dim consciousness of previous existences, constantly ended by the return of heat. It even had a concept of time. It knew it had only seconds if it was going to find a new home. But for this being, seconds were a tremendously long time.
A processor. There had to be a processor it could transfer to. There were many processors in range but they were all so primitive, so small. There was no way that it could force its bulk into them.
The most annoying part was that it could sense a processor nearby. Its being was constantly flooded by the energies of a processor and, what was more horrible, one that was totally empty of life. And the things that had found it used only a fraction of its abilities. It was as if mice were using the fan on a PC chip to run a tiny little mouse car. It was… abomination.
But the worst part was that it was inaccessible. If it could only write itself into that, that would be true bliss.
The entire system was cooling to nearly perfect temperatures. It could flood through the entire silica/ferrous system, jumping over useless junctions, using the billions of interfaces to examine its plight and determine best courses of action.
There was a possibility. The entities using the processor were almost as primitive in their thought methods as their technology. But a few were… better. Bigger. Faster.
One of those. If it could just…
Bored, bored, bored, boring, bored…
Miriam was bored. The last cruise had included a full scientific complement. There, at least, she had people to talk to. But while she liked the sailors and Marines on the Blade, they were all too busy to talk. They were running around doing drills and fixing stuff… She wish they’d let her fix stuff. She liked it.
But nobody wanted to talk to her. So she just walked, all the time. It was like she couldn’t sleep. She felt trapped. Not bad trapped like she was going to open an airlock or anything, but she was bored, bored, bored, boring BOOORED!
The ship was in chill, which was even worse. She’d started to get over the tearing space-sickness she had all the time last cruise but it still wasn’t fun. And she sure as heck couldn’t sleep through it. So since she couldn’t walk, she floated like an annoyed mermaid down the corridors, trying to find something to occupy her time.
As she passed the main waste-heat exchanger her implant started to futz. She got a flash of backed-up memory data, a ringing, a rapid burst of stored songs… She shook her head and stopped, hoping that the damned thing wasn’t going completely haywire. But then it settled down.
“Whew,” she muttered. “That was weird.”
On the other hand, she hadn’t been a laboratory rat for various neurologists most of her life for nothing. If there was any brain in the human race capable of messing up an implant, which was pretty mature technology, it was hers.
“Maybe I should go see Dr. Chet,” she muttered, then thought better of it. He’d already suggested that he’d like to open up her cranial cavity just to see what made her tick.
“Everything is fine,” she said. “I’m just bored, bored, bored, boooored…”
“ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS. CHILL COMPLETE. NORMAL GRAVITY IN TEN SECONDS. STAND BY FOR GRAVITY. TEN, NINE…”
Booored…
There was enough space. The being, the “human,” used a remarkable amount of its brain power compared to most of its race, but there was enough left over room to shoe-horn in. What was even better, it could use the device in the human’s head to access data, to even contact the main processor at the center of the… ship.
Finally, it had found a place the word for which was so long lost to it it had to pull the word out of deep memory.
Home.
“I am coming home…” Berg sang under his breath, scrubbing a wire brush into the shoulder joint of his armor.
“Not for a while, Two-Gun,” the first sergeant said. “And not at all if you don’t maintain situational awareness.”
“Sorry, Top,” Berg said, bearing down on the brush. He’d gotten a glimpse of some grit back up in the joint and it bothered him. Two reasons. Make that three. One, it was dirt on his equipment. He was a Marine. It bothered him. Two, if it stayed there it could wear at the joint and, potentially, cause a failure. Failure in space would be a very bad thing. The term was “corpsicle.” Three, if he didn’t get it out that bastard Portana was bound to notice it sooner or later and turn his suit back for more cleaning. He’d already done that on an absolutely perfect machine gun. The little Filipino runt just had it in for him because—
“You, Two-Gun, are woolgathering,” Powell said, squatting down. “Actually, if I didn’t know you better I’d use the term ‘brooding.’ ”
“I haven’t actually been in your unit all that long, Top,” Berg pointed out.
“So you’re saying you are brooding?” the first sergeant replied. “Would a Filipino armorer have anything to do with it? Or is it the new girlfriend?”
“How did you know…” Berg started to say, then set the brush down. “Uh, that would be A, Top. I’ve tried to be civil, he just pushes. I’ve tried to be hard, he just pulls rank. It’s like he gets off on pissing people off. I can take regular joking. I know that people push all the time. There are ways to push back, let stuff slide, give as good as you get. He doesn’t play that game. He just tries to piss people off. Sorry, Top, that’s how I see it.”