“We’d better get started, then, hadn’t we?”
The chief still didn’t move. “It’s not going to be that easy. This thing is big, but not big enough to hold inventory like that in convenient arrays. Weapons and guidance systems are stored separately, and since the guidance systems are compact, we’ve squirreled them away wherever they’d fit. It’s not anything like the way you worked on that patrol ship. At least we have an automated system. Let me show you some video.” He ran his hand over the control panel on his desk, and a display came up on the wall. “That’s one of the inventory bays in which guidance systems are stored.” Racks rose from the deck to the overhead, the familiar pattern of automated inventory systems controls along the vertical rails. “Because the guidance systems are small, and most of the time we’re not restocking the warships, we fit them in by size, not by type.”
“So we’re going to have to go through there and pull them out one at a time?”
“Not quite that bad. One rack at a time, though. This bay, right now, has . . .” The chief flicked another control that brought up a display on his desk. “Eight thousand two hundred sixty-four ASAC-32 modules. But they’re on at least eight different stacks, and I’d bet that someone has moved at least a few of them when restocking other goods, and hasn’t bothered to update the file.”
“Won’t your automated system do that?”
“So-so.” The chief wobbled his hand in the age-old gesture. “High-security items have a tracer that sounds off if they’re removed from that hold, but not if they’re moved a few meters. We’d have spent all our time rekeying the tracers—we’re always having to move things in and out.”
“So you know they’re in there, and you probably know where most of them are, but . . .”
“But not all. Which is why it’s a stupid idea, thought up by someone who’s never seen a big repair inventory.” The chief grinned. “I hope they’re paying you a daily allowance, and not by piece, or you’ll be here forever and earn nothing.”
Arhos wasn’t sure that prospect would bother the chief, but it certainly bothered him. He had worried that the job wouldn’t take long enough—that he’d have to stretch it out—that they wouldn’t need to wander over enough of the ship to find the self-destruct. Instead . . . they would be here far too long, and although they’d have wide access they might be too busy to use it.
“I wonder if someone leaked this problem to Burrahn, Hing & Co., and that’s why they didn’t bid on this job,” he said, and watched the chief’s face. No flicker, but . . . but someone had to have leaked it. Damn the Bloodhorde! “At least we are getting a per diem . . . but it’s going to be a bitch.”
Arhos eyed his partners and gave a meaningful glance at the gray cylinder on the table between them. Fleet would expect them to disable the simpler scans of their compartment; Arhos had not concealed the device. Now he turned it on. Telltales blinked hotly: it had detected signals it could not fog. He’d expected that. Right now, it was important for Fleet to think its more delicate scans worked here. What lay concealed within the familiar cylinder, under the Morin Co. seal, was for later use, and more private conversations. His partners would know that, and would interpret what he said in the light of the caution now necessary.
“We have a problem,” Arhos began, when the team had assembled. Quickly he repeated the chief’s explanation of the way weapons guidance systems were stored on Koskiusko. “It’s going to take a lot longer than we thought. It might be better to start with the weapons on the warships, since they’re in the arrays we know—”
“But our contract states that we should begin with the DSR,” Losa said, playing up beautifully.
“Yes, but they didn’t tell us the whole story. With this arrangement, there’ll be a lot of dead time—we’ll be waiting around while they figure out where some of the weapons are. I’m considering whether to discuss a restructuring of the whole job.” It would be difficult, with a signed contract; he would have to prove that Fleet had not provided necessary information. He wasn’t sure he could trust that Chief Furlow to give evidence, if it came to that.
“A suggestion . . .” Gori said.
“Go ahead.”
“Why not split the team, and send some of ’em over to the larger warships? That way, the manhours lost in dead time won’t be as great.”
“Possibly . . . in fact, that’s a good idea. We won’t have to worry about them . . .” Noticing anything, he didn’t say, but Gori’s upward twitch of eyebrow meant he’d understood exactly what Arhos didn’t say.
“We don’t look like whiners, we get the job done faster . . . and we’re here to show that our top people cope with the unexpected.” Losa sounded enthusiastic; her eyes sparkled. Arhos thought it over, liking the idea better every moment. The one thing they’d worried about was having one of their own people notice something. Yet the Fleet contract had required a larger team. This way—this way he got rid of those bright, inquisitive minds, in a way that could cast no suspicion on the partners.
“Good, then. I’ll speak to the admiral’s office. If we’re sending people off, we need to do that before we leave Sierra.”
From Altiplano to Comus Station, Esmay traveled by civilian carrier, a regularly scheduled passenger ship. In the thirty days of her leave, other news had come to dominate the screens. No one seemed to recognize her in her civilian clothes, for which she was grateful. She divided her time between her own quarters and the ship’s palatial fitness equipment. It felt odd to be aboard a ship and have no duties, but she was not about to call attention to herself by hanging around the crew looking wistful. Better to sweat on the exercise machines, and then cool off in the pool. She was vaguely aware that some of the other passengers who regularly used the fitness equipment might have wanted to chat, but swimming steady laps made that difficult. In her quarters, she worked her way through one teaching cube after another, everything in the ship’s library that seemed relevant.
At Comus, she chose to walk the distance from the liner’s docking bay to Fleetgate rather than taking a slideway. She needed to do a bit of shopping; she wanted to replace every bit of clothing she’d brought from Altiplano. It was wasteful, she admitted, to throw away perfectly good garments . . . but she wanted nothing to connect her to her past. When she found a Space Relief outlet store, she emptied her cases, and then handed over the cases, all but her Fleet duffel.
She needed little, really. A few comfortable things for lounging, one good dress outfit. She found all that in the first store she entered, picking the things hastily. It didn’t really matter what she wore when she was off-duty. She was eager to get back to Fleet territory. When she arrived at the Fleetgate, the sentry’s cheerful “Welcome home, Lieutenant!” sent her mood up three notches.
Esmay found her new assignment posted to her private mail when she checked in. She had expected a tour on Comus itself—else why send her out here in the first place?—but her orders directed her to Sierra Station, there to take up her duties with the Fourteenth Heavy Maintenance Yard aboard the Koskiusko. She’d never heard of that ship; when she looked it up in the Table of Ships, she discovered that it was a DSR, a deepspace repair ship, part of the second-wave deployment out of Sierra Station.
Someone must be seriously annoyed with her. Repair ships were huge, ungainly, complicated, and totally unglamorous. Worse, DSR ships were a logistics nightmare, the natural and lawful prey of every inspector generaclass="underline" it was impossible to keep them in perfect order, up to nominal inventory, because they were always losing parts to some other vessel. Legitimately, but inevitably, the paperwork lagged reality.