“Spit it out, dammit.”
“You might want to think real hard about puttin’ a squid with a popgun by the door, Master Chief. I been here eleven llor, near enough two weeks, and I ain’t seen a sentry yet. They don’t even guard the engines. Might make a wrong impression.” This was delivered in as evenly noncommittal a tone as he could manage.
“I’ll think about it.” Joshua turned away, looked out the window, neck and shoulders tense again.
Peters shrugged. “Your call, Master Chief.”
“Don’t I just know it.” Joshua took his hat off and rubbed his forehead again. “All right, Peters, that’s it, you’re dismissed. And by the way…” he met Peters’ eyes again. “Thanks. I’ve been a little short, chalk it up to stress.”
“Can’t say as I noticed, Master Chief,” Peters lied, but it was the right thing to say. “Been tough on everybody, and I reckon it’s likely to get worse.”
“Yeah. Well, go on, go back to your quarters. If you see Warnocki outside, ask him to see me.” He paused. “And if you don’t mind, go tell Lawson to strike the watch and turn in his sidearm. I think you’re probably right about sentries.”
“Aye, Master Chief.” Peters stiffened a moment, nodded, and turned to go out. He was half expecting a parting shot or question, but Joshua just watched him leave, hat still in his hand. Warnocki and Spearman were waiting in the corridor. “Chief Joshua’s compliments, and could you join him in his quarters?” Peters told Warnocki. “There’s things you need to discuss.”
“Thanks, Peters,” Warnocki said, looking a little aside at Chief Spearman, a brief movement of the eyeballs that maybe only Peters saw. He started toward Joshua’s door, closely followed by the other Chief, who gave Peters a trouble-promising look as he passed. Peters just shook his head and headed toward the ladder. Lawson needed to know he didn’t have to simulate a jarhead any more.
Back in his compartment after taking care of that chore, he shut the door with a click and a feeling of relief. He slung his hat on the desk and sat down on the bunk to begin pulling his trousers off, and the events of the day caught up with him all at once, like water through a broken dam. The next thing he knew the ship had rotated so that the sun came through the window, he was still fully dressed, and Dee’s watch told him it was a little before the sixth ande. It only took a minute or so to strip off uniform and kathir suit and climb into the bunk. The next time he woke up it was time to roll out and begin the day.
Promptly at the beginning of the first ande Peters was tapping on Chief Joshua’s door. “Mornin’, Master Chief,” he said when the hatch swung back a bit. “Reportin’ for duty as ordered.”
Joshua had unpacked and stowed his gear, but looked rumpled, not the image a Chief likes to project. He took Peters’s ID block and inserted it into a portable, tapped the screen a few times, then keyed a short sequence. “Hmph.” The display changed, and again Joshua stroked a few spots, typed in a password, then entered a few keystrokes. “What’s this?” He paged through a couple of screens, working his way down the links. “Hmph,” he said again, pulling Peters’s ID out and laying it on the table. “Todd, let’s have yours.” The Chief repeated his search, entering passwords and code sequences here and there. “We have a problem,” he announced, looking up at the sailors.
“What sort of problem, Chief?” Peters asked warily.
“You two aren’t on my TO,” said Joshua. “You ever looked at your orders?”
Peters shrugged. “Report-for-temporary-duty,” he said. He exchanged a glance with Todd. “Went by pretty fast there at first.”
Joshua grunted. “Yeah, it must have. Who cut these orders?” He tapped the screen.
“BUPERS, regular form.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance have a personal friend in Ohio, would you?” Joshua was bent over the display, looking up at Peters out of the corner of his eye.
Peters shrugged again, looked at the wall past Joshua’s head. “I know a couple people. You know how it is.”
“I know how it is.” He pulled Todd’s ID out of the slot and handed it back. “These orders are to report to commanding officer, Llapaaloapalla, for duties as assigned until released by that authority. You two are not members of U.S. Navy Space Detachment One, and I don’t know what to do with you.”
Peters’s expression was bemused. “Well, I be damned.”
Todd spoke up for the first time. “I guess that means we’re ship’s company,” he remarked.
“I don’t know what you are,” said Chief Joshua forcefully. “And we can’t straighten it out right now. I’ll see what Commander Bolton wants to do about it when I get a chance.” The expression on his face said he wasn’t looking forward to the interview.
“You got an assignment for us, Master Chief?” Peters wanted to know.
Chief Joshua lowered his head, looked up through his eyebrows. “Well, Peters, I guess you ought to check up your chain of command for your duty assignment. It ain’t my problem.”
“Aye, Master Chief,” said Peters after a pause. “You got my handheld, Master Chief?”
“Right here.” Joshua patted a pocket. “Your personal property, is it?”
“No, Master Chief, I checked it out from NIS when I got this assignment.” Peters thought a moment, then paraphrased the boilerplate on the request chit: “That there Navy property is bein’ used in the performance of my duty as assigned, Master Chief.”
Joshua flushed slightly, drew the gadget out of his pocket by the lanyard, and laid it on the table. “You two are dismissed.”
“Aye, Master Chief,” they chorused. Peters grabbed the handheld, then worked the door latch and led Todd out into the corridor.
“So what do we do now?” Todd asked when the latch clicked.
“I reckon we better find Dreelig. Let’s check the chow hall.”
“I’m not exactly real hungry right now.”
Peters grimaced. “Me neither, but it’s the best place to look anyway.”
Most of the members of the detachment were assembled in irregular groups next to the EM quarters hatch. A group of four or five was following a Grallt, Dee by the blue-and-yellow outfit and hip swing, across the bay toward the elevator to the mess deck. Se’en was standing, arms folded, regarding the mob with obvious disfavor. “Pleasant greetings,” Peters said in Grallt. Then in English, “Where’s Dreelig? We need to talk.”
“Greetings,” said Se’en, without the arm-lift gesture. In English: “Busy. Be down, this cluster-fuck finish,” indicating the milling mob with a nod.
Peters grinned. “I see you’re learnin’ the language,” he observed.
She smiled slightly, a quick flash. “You finish talk Chief Joshua?”
“That’s what we need to talk to Dreelig about,” Todd explained.
“You wait,” she told them. “Dreelig soon.”
“We go eat,” Peters said in Grallt.
“Will go,” Se’en corrected.
“Eh? Ah. We will go eat,” Peters corrected himself. “Perhaps Dreelig will be there,” he added very carefully.
“Perhaps.” Se’en produced a real smile this time. “You are learning a language also,” she pronounced slowly and distinctly.
Peters flushed. “Yeah, thanks. See you later.”
Dee was in the chow hall, circulating among the tables, exhorting dalliers to finish and clear out; she flashed a grin as Peters and Todd came in, but kept to her job. There was a good bit of low-voiced comment, none of it addressed to them, as the two took a table by the wall near the door to the kitchens, separated by a couple of tables of Grallt from the nearest white hat. While they ate the two girls made several trips back and forth between the mess room and the deck, escorting groups of sailors.