God.
So, well, if you wanted to see how bad the joints were, the easiest way was just to strip down and start building the rig around you joint by joint, freezing not only your ass off, but various other sensitive spots, because the internal heater wouldn't work until the rig was powered up, and you didn't want the power on while you were making tension adjustments. You messed around with lousy little pin-sized wrenches and screwdrivers and tried not to chatter your teeth loose while you were getting the wrench or the screwdriver seated in little inconspicuous holes, about three to five of them a joint, and you fussed and you messed with one turn against another, and you tried the tension in this and that joint, till it felt right.
While your nose ran.
But you warmed up, joint by joint. Joint by joint, starting with the boots, the rig cased you in and linked up, joint with joint and contact with contact, heavy as sin and about all you could do to lift a knee and test the flex, clear up to the body-armor.
Tension-straps between two layers of the ceramic, each with their little access caps, and their nasty little adjustment screws on the action, too, four or five a segment, that pulled the sensor contacts up against bare skin, contacts that were going to carry signals to the hydraulics—all those had to be tightened or loosened, so they'd all loosen up to the right degree when you pulled the release to get out of the armor, and go right back to the proper configuration when you got inside and threw the master switch: you could feel all those little contact-points, and they shouldn't press hard, but they shouldn't lose contact either, and the padding that kept you from bumping up against those contacts too hard in spots had to be tightened down or loosened up with another lot of fussy little spring-screws.
Some damned fool had just got in and powered up. Probably fallen on his ass or sprained something just trying to stand up.
She hoped to hell it had been Fitch.
Maybe it was that thought that brought him.
The door opened. And she was sitting there on the deck half-naked and half-suited, with Fitch standing in a warm draft from the door.
Fitch looked at her, she looked at Fitch with her heart pounding. Dammit. The man still panicked her.
"Yessir," she said. "Excuse me if I don't get up, got no power at the moment."
"How's it going?" Fitch asked.
Plain question. She rested an armor-heavy wrist on an armored knee. "Thing's a mess," she said. "Fixable. Take me a little while. Few days on this one."
Silence, then. "Tac-squad, huh?"
"Yessir."
If you had a quarrel with a mof, you for God's sake didn't act up and you didn't get snide, you just kept your face innocent and your voice calm and all professional, no matter what you were thinking.
"Is that insubordination, Ms. Yeager?"
"Nossir."
"Hard feelings, Ms. Yeager?"
"I've had worse than you give, sir."
Fitch took that and seemed to think about it a minute.
Stupid, Yeager, real stupid, watchthat mouth of yours.
"Smartass again, Yeager?"
"Nossir, no intention of being."
"Are you quite sure of that, Ms. Yeager?"
"Twenty years on Africa, sir, I was never insubordinate."
"That's good, Ms. Yeager. That's real good."
After which, Fitch walked out and shut the door.
Dammit, Yeager, that was bright.
God, NG's working alone down there. Where's Wolfe?
Who else is on watch?
She threw the four manual latches on the gauntlet, slid it off; threw latches on the body-armor and on the chisses and boots. Fast. And scrambled up and put clip-lines on the scattered pieces and grabbed her clothes.
"Got to check supply," was the excuse she handed the bridge when she went through.
"Be back soon as I can."
Down the lift, all the way to downside, and up the curving downside deck in as much hurry as she could, past the deserted lowerdeck ops, up-rim toward the shop.
And naturally she popped into Engineering on the way. "H'lo," she called out at NG's back, over the noise of working pumps, and startled NG out of his next dozen heartbeats.
"God," he said.
"Fitch," she said. "Just thought I'd warn you."
He leaned back against the counter. She stepped up onto the first of the gimbaled sections that turned Engineering into a stairstep puzzle-board. "No particular trouble," she said, and raised a thumb toward the topside, casual. "Captain's up there too, what I saw."
"They come and they go," NG said. Worried, she thought. "Captain may have gone dockside. Don't get off in places with no witnesses."
"I'm working right next the—"
The lift was operating, audible over the heartbeat-thump of the fueling pumps.
"—bridge. I better get to the shop. I'm picking up some stuff, if Fitch asks."
"He'll ask," NG said, sober-faced, and she started back to the corridor and stopped again, with this terrible fear that Fitch intended something, that Fitch could, for firsts, spill everything.
"I got something I got to talk to you about," she said. "NG—"
He looked scared. She was. Maybe they caught it off each other. And the lift had passed the core, had made that little catch it did when it passed through.
"He'll try to hurt us," she said. "Whatever he says, that's what he's intending to do.
Whatever happens, don't believe anything till you ask me—hear me? You hear me, NG?
You got to trust me."
"What's going on?"
"I—" She heard the lift stop, downside. There wasn't time, wasn't time to do anything but mess things up if she threw it out cold. The way Fitch might. "Just for God's sake—
He's trying to get to us. Whatever he does, whatever he says, remember what the game is.
All right?"
He stared at her.
She eeled past and out the door again, ducked fast into the machine-shop entry, hitting the lights on the way.
Cold, God, your breath frosted. You got the cold right through your boots, off the tilting deck-plates, and the air bit bare skin and clothed parts alike. She cut the heat on, cursing the sum-bitches who'd decided to powersave, and hurried, grabbed a few extra clip-lines, typed, Flexyne? on the terminal, and got inventory and location of tubing and sheets.
Flexbond?
Location of that, too. She blew on her fingers, entered six clip-lines and wondered what was going on next door, wondered whether she just ought to walk back in, whether it was Fitch at all, whether he was next door with NG, what in hell was going on over therec
God knew what she'd babbled, sounded like a fool, or worse .
You got to trust me—
God! If that won't make a man check his pockets—
She took her lip between her teeth and stood there shivering a second, then made up her mind and ducked out into the corridor again, down the curve past Engineering. The door was open and Fitch wasthere, all right, she saw him talking to NG, NG standing there paying all his attention, the way you better do with Fitch—
She couldn't hear anything, couldn't read lips: NG wasn't saying anything and she couldn't see Fitch's face. She just went on past, down to the lift and up again the long ride to the bridge.
Her coming up here got a bare turn of the head from the officer on duty—not even sure who it was. She had a momentary, desperate thought about going straight to the captain and telling him how Fitch was pushing them—but that might not be a good idea.