“I’m surprised you could get a TS clearance,” was all Berg said as the armorer wound down.
“I neber lie abou’ it,” Portana replied. “I tell recrui’er. I tell agen’s. T’ey no like t’ey can’ check my backgroun’ too much. Mos’ people I know dead or gone. An’ t’ey no like go in t’e bario,” he added with a grin.
“How’s your sister?” Berg asked.
“Marry,” Portana said. “Good guy. Singapore guy. She sing in ban’. Wan’ to be a star bu’ she don’ play t’e game. Jus’ like brot’er. T’ink she star’ have babies soon. Always be a star to me.”
“Me too, man,” Berg said, shaking his head.
“Wha’ you think abou’ her music?” Portana asked.
“I’ve grown accustomed to it,” Berg said. “But…”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’ll stick with Goth and metal, if it’s all the same to you.”
“T’at stuff rot your brain.”
9
It was times like this that Spectre had to admit being the CO of a spaceship was just cool. The ship was in deep transit, the massive screens set to forward view, he had a cup of coffee in one hand, the other wrapped around the back of his head, his feet propped up on the edge of the tactical station and was just watching the stars. The warp system, product of some ancient and powerful civilization that man wot not of or whatever, cycled the ship in and out of warp at a very high frequency. The frequency was adjusted so that the only things that could get in or out were certain wavelengths of visible light. None of them could be used for high energy weapons, so it was a sort of screen against attack. But it did let in all that glorious starlight. And the ship moved so fast that the stars, almost imperceptibly, moved across the view. He could sit for hours and watch as the stars slowly slid across…
“Whatcha doin’?” Miss Moon said from over his shoulder.
His ears had caught the subtle clack, clack from high heels so he didn’t quite jump out of his skin, much less spill his coffee. But he did get a shot of adrenaline to the heart.
“Jesus,” he barked. “Where’d you come from?”
“Just walking,” Miriam said. “Pretty. Whatcha doin’?”
“Expectantly awaiting any emergency that may occur on my watch, Miss Moon,” Spectre said, wincing internally at the pompous answer.
“I’m bored,” Miriam replied. “I’ve been all over the ship. I talked to the Marines but they just wanted to talk about guns and I talked to some guys working on a pump but they wouldn’t let me help. Then I talked to a guy in the missile room. He was the nicest. He never left until the end of his watch.”
“If it was the missile watch, he couldn’t,” the CO said, wincing again at the image. Camp Watch, located in the much reduced Sherwood Forest, was required to stay in place and watch the missile board. In the event of an emergency, he was the closest missile tech to the weapons and the first responder. It was possibly the most boring of many many boring jobs on the ship, nothing but sitting or standing in front of a bunch of lights, hoping that none of them went yellow or red.
While Miss Moon must have felt like a visitor from heaven at first, someone to talk to…
“How long were you there?” the CO asked.
“Oh, pretty much the whole watch,” Miriam replied.
Twelve hours. Miss Moon, when she got in one of these moods, talked so fast you couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He’d better find out if last shift’s camp watch needed to be tranked.
“I’m afraid to ask, but what did you… ?”
“Pretty much my whole life story,” Miriam replied. “I was born in Waycross, Georgia, which is right down by the Florida border—”
“Before you repeat yourself,” Spectre said quickly, holding up his hand. “I have a really great idea. You wanted to help the machinist mates with a pump? You like mechanisms?”
“I love taking things apart!” Miriam said, smiling.
“Can you put them back together?” Spectre asked.
“Usually,” Miriam said. “Sometimes I have some parts left over but—”
“Great,” the CO interjected. “That’s normal in the Navy. COB!”
“Sir?” the chief of boat replied.
“You are now officially in charge of Keeping Miss Moon Occupied,” the CO said. “Make it so.”
“Yes, sir,” the COB said, trying not to sigh. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“We shall start with a tour of the ship,” the COB said as they made their way forward. “Absent areas for which you do not have security access.”
“If you mean the engine room,” Miriam said brightly, “seen it. I go down there sometimes to play chess with Tchar.”
“And areas involving explosive systems,” the COB added, rolling his eyes. He was going to have to convince Tchar that there was a point to security. Somehow.
“I like explosions,” Miriam replied, pouting.
“So do I, Miss Moon,” the COB said. “But outside the ship. And we need to get you some better shoes,” the COB added, looking at the five-inch stilettos she was wearing. “We may have some steel-toed boots in your size.”
“Flats?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t walk in flats,” Miriam said. “But I’ve got some steel-toed boots with three inch heels. Will those do?”
“Needs must,” the COB replied. “I would suggest you change into something you don’t mind getting dirty.”
“And the laundry…”
They’d been at it for most of the watch. The COB had started off annoyed at the job. He was not into idle chatter and Miriam was, to put it kindly, a chatterbox. But he’d ended up impressed.
He’d started off with an inspection of the hydraulic system that raised and lowered the landing pods. The bastard thing was an add-on and the hydraulics were forever going out, spewing the area with hydraulic fluid. But when he’d asked her to crawl in there and look for signs of wear, she’d gone at it enthusiastically and with a degree of knowledge he’d found surprising. She’d come out with the opinion that the system could use some redesign and offered to do up CAD drawings. Several of the lines crossed hard points when lowering, something that had been obvious to her when she looked at the system but had apparently escaped its engineers. Rerouting the lines, according to the multidegreed linguist, would probably increase its reliability a hundred percent.
By the time they got to the laundry, he’d taken her through only about thirty percent of the ship because she ended up doing something in each area and usually coming up with tweaks to it that certainly sounded plausible. COB had come up through supply, not engineering, so he had to admit he wasn’t sure if she was right on some of it. But he had learned, unquestionably, that she was brilliant. And pretty. That didn’t hurt.
“Everybody has to get their clothes cleaned,” he said, gesturing around the facility. It was going full bore as it did twenty-four hours a day. “This is where it goes on.”
“I only send down my issue stuff,” Miriam admitted, gesturing to the grease and hydraulic-fluid stained coverall she was wearing. “They really messed up my bras so I do those myself.”
“The washers are water recycling,” the COB continued, trying to indirectly point out that washing her clothes by hand was a major water drain, “the dryers are high efficiency to cut down on heat generation.”
As they walked down the rows he noted that one of the “water recycling washers” was marked as down. That was a problem. They only had a few washers and a lot of dirty clothes. One down meant that… yep, a huge pile of dirty laundry was building up.