Warm. Now that wasn’t good. The thing should have been insulated, should have felt no warmer than the air around them. But warm was good enough for now.
Be the Engineer. Be the room. Be what they expect. Be what they want to see.
She slapped the console on, pulled up some screens. Doesn’t matter what they are. It matters that they look like they should be there. A couple of diagnostics alongside some schematics would do. She looked at the wall opposite the console, saw the tools tidied away. That wouldn’t do: while Hope was supposed to be ex-Guild, she was ex for a reason. Grace grabbed something that looked like a cutting laser, placed it on the deck near one of the fusion cowls. She grabbed another tool — no clue what this one was, but it looked impressive, a mechanized head attached to a power pack that had real weight. She tossed that next to the cutting laser.
Quick glance down. Overalls, faded, worn. A little tight, because Hope was smaller than her. But that was okay, because no one expected Engineers to dress well. Hell, they expected Engineers to dress like vagrants. It was in the cultural meme of every world Grace had put boots on. Drunk Spacers went right alongside Gruff Engineers With Bad Taste.
If the shoe fits … Grace ran a hand along the edge of one of the engine cowls, her fingers coming away with a layer of grease. She rubbed her hands together, dashed some against her face, and then pulled her fingers through her hair. Grace needed to look the part. She needed to be the part. Cultural memes aside, no Engineers did their job without getting grease under their nails.
“Hope?” Nate’s voice came up to her from the ladder. “You ready for inspection?”
Showtime. “I don’t know,” she yelled back. She tried to put a little more spaceport, a little less cocktail bar, in her voice. “You ready to get under my feet and fuck up my day?”
There was a pause. “Uh, yeah,” said Nate. “These nice Navy officers would like to come and see we do not have contraband or stowaways in Engineering.”
“Great,” she said, low enough it should sound like a mutter, loud enough to be heard down the ladder. “The Navy want to get under my feet and fuck up my day. That’s no problem, because it’s the Navy.”
A head came through the airlock, cap on, uniform showing. Some kind of junior officer, and she knew an Engineer wouldn’t care. “Excuse me, Engineer—”
She pointed a finger at the officer. “You touch one fucking thing and break it, you’re getting the bill.”
“I—”
“Oh, I know,” said Grace. “You won’t break anything! That’s what the last circus clown who came up here said. Right before he broke something. Do you,” and she fixed the terrified man with a hard stare, “know what you are doing?”
“I’m in training as an Engineer,” said the officer. “I’m—”
“Well that’s okay then,” said Grace. “You’re in training. We’re all going to be saved.” She folded her arms across her chest.
Nate came up the ladder behind the officer. “Hope? Hope, this is Ensign Savidge. Savidge is here because … well, you know why.”
“Yeah,” said Grace. “He’s here to get under my feet and fuck up my day.”
“Uh,” said Ensign Savidge.
“Well, get on with it,” said Grace. “I assume you know what an engine looks like?”
“I—”
“It’s those things over there,” said Grace, pointing an angry jab at each of the fusion cowls. “They make the ship go, when we’re not hauled aside for lawful shipment of lawful cargo.”
“Uh,” said Ensign Savidge. He turned pleading eyes on Nate. “Is there some other place we could start?”
“What?” said Nate. “Hell no, son. You’ve got people crawling all over the Tyche. You’re here, in Engineering. Time is money. Let’s go.” He clapped his hands.
Savidge, to his credit, got going. He walked around Grace like she was a pit viper, turning himself sideways so she wouldn’t be out of his line of sight. He didn’t realize he was doing it. Grace could feel the anxiety pouring off the officer in waves, could imagine his stomach clenched like a fist, his heart beating faster, and felt herself wanting to give a feral smile. She held it in, because this wasn’t a victory lap. Not yet. This was still the show, and the show wasn’t over.
“Excuse me, Engineer Baedeker,” said Savidge. “Can I—”
“Who the fuck,” said Grace, “is Engineer Baedeker?”
“Uh,” said the ensign. He held up his tablet, consulting it. “It said on the manifest—”
“Engineer Baedeker is not an Engineer,” said Grace. “She left the Guild. It’s just Baedeker. My friends call me Hope, which means you should call me Ms. Baedeker. Or just Baedeker, because Lord knows we don’t have the time to waste on ceremony. You know, time you’re wasting. You get me?”
“I get you,” said Savidge. “It’s just that—”
“Sweet Christ,” said Grace, sighing. “If you’re here to tell me that the reactor’s running a little hot, I know. I know, okay? I know. I work here. With no parts, because this asshole,” and she jerked a thumb at Nate, “is always running late, meaning no completion bonuses. Do you know why he’s always running late?”
Savidge swallowed. “No,” he said.
“Take a guess.”
“Because,” said Savidge, as cautiously as a man might if he were about to put a toe on a landmine, “of inspections?”
“You got it!” said Grace. “Look, I got shit to do. This reactor will not stop exploding by itself.”
“It’ll explode?” said Savidge.
“No,” said Grace, “or at least, not if I get time to stop it exploding. Are you done getting under my feet and fucking up my day?”
“Yes ma’am,” said Savidge.
“It’s just Baedeker,” said Grace. “Now get the fuck out of my engine room.”
The ensign scurried back down the ramp. Nate watched him go, started after, then paused. He looked back over his shoulder at Grace. “Asshole?”
“Definitely,” said Grace. “Seriously. This reactor? It should not be warm to the touch.”
“Best we get an Engineer on that,” said Nate. He flashed her a smile, and she felt warm — not because of that smile, but because of what Nate was feeling. It was gratitude/thanks/friend all at once. It was just what she needed him to feel.
She hated herself for it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“While I think this whole experience has been enlightening — for you, for me, for my crew, and for the great Republic under which we sail — I can’t help but wonder why you’re here,” said Nate. He was leaning against the cargo, plastic covering the components inside. For a change, he’d left his blaster in his cabin, not because he didn’t want to shoot someone, but because he did. And that wouldn’t end well; the Tyche was a nimble spirit, but the Torrington was a ship of war. While not a carrier behemoth, the Torrington was loaded for bear. Scans had shown all manner of unpleasantness waiting to come their way if they didn’t fly steady. Particle cannons. PDCs. Torpedo tubes. They probably had a railgun or two tucked away for special occasions. Assuming they could overpower the boarding party — which they couldn’t, not even if Kohl was all the way sober — and break the docking locks, they’d need to punch the Endless drive so hard their brains would pop out the side of their skulls. If they didn’t, the Torrington would turn them into an expanding cloud of atoms, some of them carbon.