THE CAMP WAS positively gray when Dar got there. The heavy rain had turned the ground into a slough of sheeting ripples of water, broken by heavily rutted areas of mud where marching recruits and multi-ton vehicles had passed.
The guard didn’t even blink at her this time, he just waved her through; and she navigated the puddles cautiously as she made her way into the main parking lot. “What a mess.” She regarded the steady rain with a critical eye, glad she’d brought her all-weather gear. She pulled up her hood and fastened the front clasps, then opened the door and slid out, her booted feet sending a respectable splash out in all directions. “Glad I remembered these, too.” She closed the door and started toward the command building, ripples moving away from her toward the edge of the lot as she walked.
The Marine beside the door opened it as she approached, and she gave him a nod as she went inside the building, taking in a breath of the brass-scented air with a renewed twinge of nostalgia. She took the stairs up two at a time and walked briskly through the upper hall entrance, turning right and crashing headlong into Chief Daniel, who had been headed just as quickly in the other direction.
Dar hopped back a step, reaching out in pure instinct as the chief bounced off her and slammed against the wall. “Hey. Sorry about that.”
The chief ripped her arm out of Dar’s grasp and glared at her. “You really should watch where you’re going, ma’am.”
“Well, I would, but my eyeballs don’t extend out on stalks and reach around corners,” Dar replied. “And I left my handheld radar at home. So, either accept my apology, or just get the hell out of my way.”
The chief wrestled her best stiff upper lip into position and dusted herself off. “We didn’t expect to see you here today.”
“I bet.” Dar smiled engagingly at her. “We left off at Battle Operations yesterday, didn’t we?”
The chief’s jaw jerked and her lips twitched, but she merely extended Red Sky At Morning 103
a hand in the direction she’d been originally going. “After you.”
They passed through the halls, going through offices, then the chief turned and went through a door into a stairwell. “It’s on the top floor,”
she informed Dar with a brief smile. “We don’t have elevators.” The chief started up the stairs without further words, and Dar shook her head and rolled her eyes before she followed.
The six flights served to give her a nice little workout, and she was in a better mood by the time she beat the chief to the door at the top of the stairs and pulled it open, sweeping her arm forward in a courtly flourish. “After you.”
The chief eyed her narrowly, then sighed and walked past into the hall.
Dar undid the catches on her trench coat and let the edges flap free as she strode down the center of the woven carpet floor. On either side of her, the walls were lined with bulletin boards, and this area had the look of a working space. It was more Spartan than the floors below, and she could just detect the scent of sweat and old wool on the air. The boards held notices of classes and rotations; she caught glimpses of platoon names and the personnel assigned to them, uniformly typewritten with a first initial and surname. She smiled at a brief memory of when she was very young, running up here and searching for her father’s name, hoping against hope he’d been assigned to a base unit and not a ship for the next six months.
She’d usually been disappointed. But every once in a while, there’d been a break, and she’d gone back home in giddy high spirits, looking forward to six months of piggyback rides and Saturday morning games in the backyard.
“Ms. Roberts.”
The chief’s voice broke into her memories and she looked up to face the sailor’s dour expression. “Yes?”
“I don’t care what you think about what you see in here, do not voice your opinion in front of the recruits or my sailors.” The ginger-haired woman’s jaw moved. “Is that clear?”
Dar let her wonder what her response was going to be for a few seconds. “Agreed,” she finally replied. “Even if it’s a good opinion.”
She met the chief’s eyes steadily. “Let’s go.”
They passed through the doors and entered into another world.
Here, the quiet hallways were left behind, and a bustle of activity surrounded them, consisting chiefly of moving bodies in blue denim with serious faces. To one side, a small group of recruits was getting bawled out, their bodies stiffened against the tirade and their eyes strictly to the front. To their left, a row of closed gray painted doors with rubber seals on them called to mind the watertight doors on a ship and, Dar knew, enclosed simulators.
They kept walking, past the open doors of a large open room where a class in hand-to-hand was being taught, the hoarse yells and dull 104 Melissa Good splats of bodies hitting the floor distinctive in the air.
“Chief!” a male voice hollered from just in front of them. A young man with bright-red hair was leaning half out a doorway and gesturing to Dar’s reluctant guide. “That damn sim program’s down again!”
“Wait here,” the chief ordered, heading in that direction.
Dar ignored the order, following the sailor with a look of mild amusement.
Chief Daniel stopped and turned. “Don’t you ever do what you’re told, Ms. Roberts?”
“No.” Dar walked past her and ducked around the redheaded sailor. “One of the major reasons I never joined the Navy.” She evaded a hurrying tech carrying a piece of hardware and let a brief grin cross her face. “This place hasn’t changed.” Three men were gathered around a computer console, and as she watched, one reared back and slapped the side of it in frustration. She walked up behind them and peered over their shoulders as the chief hurried up on the other side. Lines of code were scrolling across the screen, and Dar studied them, head cocked just slightly to one side, blue eyes intent.
“What’s the problem?” The chief pushed one of the sailors out of the way and sat down, punching buttons rapidly. “Did you reset it?”
“Twice,” the displaced sailor told her. “Stupid thing keeps going out. Piece of crap.”
The chief managed to get the display to steady, and she started a reset of the equipment. “Is there anyone in this thing? I don’t want to cycle it if I’m gonna douse a furkin’ admiral or something.”
“No. It’s empty.” The sailor glanced over the equipment into the simulator through a one-way mirrored window. “We took the class out the second time it dumped and told ’em to dry off.”
“All right. Let me just...” the chief muttered.
“Hold it.” Dar’s voice cut through the crowd suddenly. She moved the sailor in front of her aside and leaned over the chief, ignoring the look of outrage. “Move.”
“Ma’am, now you just—”
Dar’s tone deepened and went cold, snapping with an authority they hadn’t heard from her yet. “I said move!”
Purely by instinct, the chief obeyed, sliding out of the chair as Dar dropped into it, her eyes on the screen as her fingers sped over the keys with practiced sureness.
“What are you doing?” the chief demanded.
Dar didn’t answer. She was too busy wracking her brain for codes and logic as she called up the simulator’s program and studied it, her brows knitting tightly as she searched the lines of green letters and symbols.
“Ms. Roberts, what are you doing!” the chief yelled, almost into Dar’s ear. “You do not have the authority to be touching this equipment.”
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Dar called up another screen. “Someone’s altered the program.”