Rimrunners, page 7
part #5 of Company Wars Series
Stowage compartment, dark series of zigs and zags going God knew how far back.
Oh, shit! she thought. And Fitch shoved her inside, and shut the door.
She searched beside it with her hands, found a number of switches. None of them worked. No com in here that she could feel. No power to anything, not even ventilation, so far as she could hear. The master switch had to be cut off from ops.
She leaned back against the wall of lockers facing the entry, did a fast mental sort, in the total dark, what the orientation was, where the ship-axis was—
What Fitch had said—a problem. She was a problem.
Like Fitch was damn pissed about her, but Fitch didn't seem to be onto her as one of Mazian's. Fitch might not know anything beyond the fact of a new-hire the captain wanted hauled out of the station brig and dumped into a secure place aboard.
Wolfe himself might not know.
God, if, if there was any chance of getting out of here, if there was any chance a spook ship was that desperate for crew—
She braced one boot tentatively against the door opposite to see if there was the right amount of room. Just about.
After a long time she heard the take-hold.
And there was no going back from here, live or die. She knew that, knew that better than the station lawyer could ever say it.
You held on, that was all, just held on, braced the best way you could, fair chance—fair chance that son of a bitch had given her, the kind of a safe-hole you used if you got caught by a take-hold in a long corridor, narrow space, a place to wedge in: and after the shocks of Loki's oversized engines firing and after the slam of force that tried to float your kidneys through your stomach and a second one that bashed a sore skull against a metal locker, you just clenched your teeth and tried to stay braced and keep from slipping, because if you got pushed off center you could spend a real uncomfortable ride; and if you slipped off to the left you could fall a long, long way.
And when Loki finally smoothed out into a steady one G plus push, you just lay on the face of the lockers that were going to be the deck for a while and kept your foot braced, in case, in case of God-knew-what.
Eventually Fitch would get somebody down here. Eventually somebody would get around to it before the ship went jump. Somebody would get the drugs you had to have in hyperspace, without which you were good as dead.
Without which you had no grip on where you were and you had no way back again, no way to process what the mind and the senses had no way to get hold of.
It was one way to get rid of a problem. All it took was a little screw-up in orders. And there was no com in here.
Somebody remember I'm down here, dammit!
She risked her skull to try the switches again, overhead this time. Nothing. The acceleration dragged at her arms, made her dizzy, made her knees weak. She lay down and braced one foot up against the door again.
Calm, she told herself. They'd get around to it. A ship heading for jump was damned busy, that was all. Matter of priorities. Somebody like Fitch didn't trek all the way up to station ops to get a skut out of the brig only to scramble her brain for good and all in some fucking official screw-up.
Couldn't do that.
God—get somebody down here!
CHAPTER 7
She heard the latch give, and she moved, rolled across the uneven surface of the lockers and staggered for her knees as the hatch opened and light flooded in—a man was standing astride the doorway, which was the way the stowage was oriented since the sort-out, a pit of unguessed depth in its zigzag contours.
It wasn't Fitch. "Up," the man said, and she pulled herself to her feet, tried to use the door-edges beside her for a ladder up to the deck level, but the edges were shallow and her own weight dragged at her.
He reached down and grabbed her chained hands, she climbed and he pulled, and landed her over the rim onto the floor. She would have been happy just to lie there and breathe a moment, but he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her to her feet. "Come on, come on," he said. "We got a narrow window here."
"I'm walking," she protested, trying to, on the narrow plastic mat along the edge of the burn-deck—doors to the right, the main-deck a wall at their left, lights on the right-hand wall. The hard push they were under kept buckling her knees and making her vision come and go. Well more than one, maybe most of two G's, she thought. That was most of the problem with her head and her legs. Or the bashing against the wall had rattled her brain more than she'd thought. "God—"
Black skeins of webbing hung in front of them, around the curve. Crew safety-area, hammocks up and down it, empty black-mesh bundles strung vertically along the left-hand wall. She limped ahead, walking more on her own now, just sore from the G-stress and the cold, through the safety-area, curtain of hammocks giving way into a rec-hall, crew members sitting on a low main-deck/burn-deck bench along the wall, where the walkway mat spread out wide, clear up to the swing-section galley. Sandwiches and drinks. Food-smell hit her stomach hard, she wasn't sure whether it was good or bad.
A handful of crew stood up to look at her, not in any wise friendly.
"This is Yeager," the man holding her said, and turned her loose and said, "Good luck, Yeager."
She stood there, just managed to stay on her feet for a few breaths, dizzy in the G-stress, dizzy in the sudden realization they were turning her loose, that they had bought the story, everything—
She had a chance, then—fair chance, exactly that, exactly the way you got when you got swept up into the Fleet, volunteer or otherwise. You were the new skut in the 'decks, you got the rough side of things, and you learned the way to live or you died, end of it, right there.
Good luck, Yeager.
"What ship?" a woman asked from the bench, while she stood there in front of everybody, maybe thirty, forty crew, varied as the Fleet was varied, a dozen shades, most of them looking at her as if she was on the menu.
"Ernestine."
"Why'd you leave her?"
"I was a hire-on. They got a mechanical, couldn't take me further."
"You any good?" a man asked, one of the ones standing.
"Damn good."
Any way you want to take it, man.
Long silence, then. While her knees shook. She set her jaw and stared at them with sweat cold on her face.
"You about missed board-call," a second man said.
"Had a problem."
Another long pause. "Makings on the counter," another man said, from further down the bench, and made an offhand gesture toward the galley. "You want anything you better get it now."
"Thanks," she said.
Permission to help herself, then. Handcuffs and all. She walked on to the counter, did an instant soup out of the hot-water tap, got a packet of crackers; she came and sat down at the end of the bench where there was a little room, and drank her soup, deciding finally she was hungry and that food was what her upset stomach needed. Her hands were still shaking. The salt stung where her teeth had cracked shut on the inside of her cheek. The man next to her seemed less than glad of her being there; he was no temptation to conversation, which was all right, she had no interest in talking right now: the soup was uncertain enough on her stomach; and she phased out, staring at the detail of the tiles, not interested in advance planning at all. Her situation could be hell and away worse. And all the planning she could do now had the shape of memories she had just as soon keep far, far to the back of her mind.
A fool kid had volunteered herself onto Africa's deck, volunteered because Africa was going to take what they wanted from that refinery ship at Pan-paris, anyway, which was always the young ones, and that was her. Better choose, she had thought then, because that way you were a volunteer and that was points on your record; and because she hated her life and hated the mines and she wanted starships more than she wanted anything.
And the fool kid had found herself in something she'd never remotely imagined, and the fool kid had figured out damn fast how not to be a fool. The Fleet taught you that straight-off, or it broke you, and she was still alive.
The fool kid had gotten part of what she'd wanted. She still reckoned that had to be worth the rest of it… and still must be, since she'd just had her chance at station-life, and here she was back again. If it killed her, she thought, right now it was like something in her was back in connection again and a part of her was alive that wasn't, on station.
And you couldn't make sense of that, but it was true.
She drank her soup, she kept her mouth shut except when a man two places down the row asked her questions—like her side of the business on Thule.
Like it was behind her already; and that was a breath of clean air too.
"I killed a couple bastards," she said quietly. "They picked it. Me or them."
Fitch walked in. Her pulse picked up. She looked up very carefully while Fitch made himself a cup of tea at the counter.
Fitch stood there to drink it and look at her, and after a moment he tossed a key down three or four places down the row. It lay there a moment.
Finally one of them, older man, picked it up and tossed it down toward her.
The man next to her, the unfriendly one, picked it up and gave it to her.
"Thanks," she said. She fumbled around and got the cuffs off.
No one said anything. She certainly didn't expect a You're Welcome from Fitch. She just pocketed the cuffs and the key. You didn't leave junk on the deck, and nobody asked for it.
"Hour till," Fitch said. "Yeager?"
She looked up, fought the twitch that said stand up, reminding herself this was a civ ship. "Yes, sir?"
"You like this ship?"
"Yes, sir."
"Like what you see?"
"Fine, sir."
Long silence.
"You being smart with me, Yeager?"
"No, sir. I'm glad to get off that station."
Fitch sipped his tea. And ignored her after that, thank God. Fitch left, and some of the rest did.
"Is there a place I'm supposed to pick up a trank-pack?" Bet asked the man next.
The man shrugged, pointed with a forefinger and his cup. "Galley. Right there by the hot, should be."
She got up and went and opened the cabinet, found the plastic-wrapped packs and found the c-pack in a clip beside it. "Thanks," she said, coming back to sit.
"Name's Masad," the man said, and indicated the man on his left. "Joe. Johnny." The one past that.
"Bet," she said.
Other crew came through the section. And the jump-warning sounded.
"Better get hammocked-in," Masad said. Olive skin. Fortyish. Shaved head. "You got any problems?"
"No," she said, and got up and offered a hand for other cups—hard to do, a lets-be-friends move; but she was smarter than she'd grown up: the surly brat who'd signed onto Africa had gotten hell and away smarter nowadays. And a little friendly move won things with strangers, sometimes. So they handed theirs over, she chucked them all in the galley bin, then walked with them down-ring, found herself a vacant hammock, stepped in, wrapped up and snugged the tabs closed. Then she carefully put the c-pack in her breast-pocket and took her trank-dose.
Going out of here, she told herself, while the bell kept ringing and the ship drove toward jump. She had no idea where they were going. It could even be Pell. But she felt the trank take hold and felt herself drifting, old familiar feeling, live or die, you never knew how or if you'd come out when the ship made transit.
The burn stopped. They went weightless for a few seconds, inertial. And slowly the G started pulling her down horizontally instead of vertically. Main-deck orientation, now. The light that had been shining in her eyes was clearly, by body-sense, truly in the overhead, and her back was to the deck.
Going out of here.
Goodbye, Thule. Goodbye, Nan and Ely. You give stationers a good name.
Blow the rest of you to hell.
CHAPTER 8
The fog cleared, the bell that signalled system-drop was ringing, but that was for the tekkies to handle, they were making their dumps.
Dark spot again. The bell had stopped, the mind kept trying to make it into Africa's crowded lowerdeck, tried to smell the same smells and hear the same sounds and hear the major cussing them awake: not the same, with the black mesh in front of her face, the glare of light in her eyes, not Ernestine, either, with its cubbyhole cabins—
No doubt it was shipboard, everything told you that, sounds, smells, the muzzy feeling of trank downbound now, knocked her for a long, deep one, it had. She found her mental place again, remembered when and where she was, remembered—
V-dump, then. Another half-nightmare. She heard the wake-call ringing, at least she thought it was, she fumbled after her c-pack and got the foil torn. Fingernails broke doing that, three of them on the same hand, a bad sign—she lost the rest of them pulling the tube out, and sucked down the citrusy stuff in the pack bit by bit, fighting nausea, trying to get her head clear.
"Move, move, move!" someone was yelling and you never argued with a voice like that. She gulped the last, stuffed the foil in her pocket and fumbled the catch open, rolled out and held on, with the jumpsuit hanging on her and her hands like claws clutching the black netting. Steady one G main-deck. Loki was inertial now. If the bridge expected maneuvers, they wouldn't order crew up and about.
Undo the floor clip, the one that held at your butt, undo the end clips and furl the hammock in its elastic lines, into the latch-bins that were the mess-hall bench while specific crew-calls pealed out over the general com, but none of them said Yeager.
Thank God, one part of her said; and another part said: This is odd. We're star-to-star on this track, did those dumps feel light? Was I that far out, or are we still carrying that much V in a station-zone!
And no take-hold?
Spook ship. We've short-jumped, we're nowhere near the star, and we've dumped and we must be doing a real quiet run-in, that's what we're doing.
Where in hell are we?
There was a dizzying quiet, ship-quiet, full of pumps and fans and systems cycling, heartbeat of a healthy ship. Crew passed her in a business-like hurry, some probably on call, other crew on private emergencies, things like finding the head, like getting to the galley, on a priority of duty and off-duty crew. Her own lower gut told her what her own priorities were, and she followed crew members into the first door down the corridor.
Not like Ernestine's cabin-style cubbies, but not damn bad either, she thought, looking around: plastic sheeting tight-stretched between the bunks, downside and loft with a buffer-net up there for safety—but you got the view.
And toilets downside, that was what she was interested in, fast as she could get there. She fell in the nearest, shortest line and stood there rubbery-legged with her back against the wall, and distracted herself by cracking the rest of her fingernails off.
Every one of them brittle, breaking down to the quick. Gums were sore. Hair came out when she raked a hand through it, a web of blond hairs in her fingers.
Short rations too damn long, and the time in jump took it out of you, used up nutrients, made your knees pop and your joints brittle. She'd seen it happen. It had never happened to her. Not like this—and it scared her. The thought that a spook was prone to far, fast moves, that they might kite out of here again—that also scared her. You lost more than fingernails if you got worn down like that.
Hit the galley, pour down the c-rations if she could get them, anything to get her weight back up.
Her gut kept cramping. Another crew member came up behind her and didn't bump her out of line on privilege, which could happen to a new skut on Africa, damn likely. You didn't get favors. You didn't get anything but hell.
All right, she decided about that man—Muller, G., was the name on him—and asked, while they were waiting: "Where are we? Venture? Bryant's?—'Dorado?"
Muller looked at her like that was some kind of privileged information, like asking made him wonder about her.
So she shut up, she ducked her head and she waited and gritted her teeth until she made it through the line.
Back up to the galley, then. She waited her turn, picked up the sandwich and hot tea the cook was handing out, and she sat down along the wall where a squat-level ell between main-deck and burn-deck made one long galley bench, sat and sipped her tea and ate the best sandwich she'd had in half a year.
Better than the vending machines on Thule, damn sure.
She sat there, no idea where she was assigned; no real hurry about matters, she figured, the ship must be on some kind of sit-and-wait, spook-like, maybe at Venture, maybe at Bryant's, wherever. She left the whereabouts of the ship as a whole to the mofs and just wished she knew if she dared go back to the lockers and see where her duffle was; she wished she knew if she had a bunk or whatever, and if she let herself think as far as the other prospects of settling in, her stomach got upset. But she figured she was on somebody's list, sooner or later, and somebody was going to tell her. Muller's reaction told her it was a nervous ship and experience told her staying low and quiet was the best thing to do for the time being.
Especially if it got her fed and got her a sit-down, long enough to get the wobbles out, before some mof showed up with a duty-list.
Damn sure.
Damn near a med case, with teeth sore and the bones showing in her hands till she hardly recognized them for hers—but she was afraid to go to the meds and complain, afraid to start out her sign-up on this ship with a med report, afraid to go anywhere near officers and people who might take a close look at her and then start watching her more than they needed to.
But a man came by, stopped and stood in front of her.
"Yeager."
She looked up, did a fast scan from the boots to the faded collar with the three black bands of a civ ship's officer and the circle-and-circuit of Engineering on the sleeve.
"Sir," she said, "Bet Yeager, sir." She would have gotten up, but the man was in the way.
Oh, shit! she thought. And Fitch shoved her inside, and shut the door.
She searched beside it with her hands, found a number of switches. None of them worked. No com in here that she could feel. No power to anything, not even ventilation, so far as she could hear. The master switch had to be cut off from ops.
She leaned back against the wall of lockers facing the entry, did a fast mental sort, in the total dark, what the orientation was, where the ship-axis was—
What Fitch had said—a problem. She was a problem.
Like Fitch was damn pissed about her, but Fitch didn't seem to be onto her as one of Mazian's. Fitch might not know anything beyond the fact of a new-hire the captain wanted hauled out of the station brig and dumped into a secure place aboard.
Wolfe himself might not know.
God, if, if there was any chance of getting out of here, if there was any chance a spook ship was that desperate for crew—
She braced one boot tentatively against the door opposite to see if there was the right amount of room. Just about.
After a long time she heard the take-hold.
And there was no going back from here, live or die. She knew that, knew that better than the station lawyer could ever say it.
You held on, that was all, just held on, braced the best way you could, fair chance—fair chance that son of a bitch had given her, the kind of a safe-hole you used if you got caught by a take-hold in a long corridor, narrow space, a place to wedge in: and after the shocks of Loki's oversized engines firing and after the slam of force that tried to float your kidneys through your stomach and a second one that bashed a sore skull against a metal locker, you just clenched your teeth and tried to stay braced and keep from slipping, because if you got pushed off center you could spend a real uncomfortable ride; and if you slipped off to the left you could fall a long, long way.
And when Loki finally smoothed out into a steady one G plus push, you just lay on the face of the lockers that were going to be the deck for a while and kept your foot braced, in case, in case of God-knew-what.
Eventually Fitch would get somebody down here. Eventually somebody would get around to it before the ship went jump. Somebody would get the drugs you had to have in hyperspace, without which you were good as dead.
Without which you had no grip on where you were and you had no way back again, no way to process what the mind and the senses had no way to get hold of.
It was one way to get rid of a problem. All it took was a little screw-up in orders. And there was no com in here.
Somebody remember I'm down here, dammit!
She risked her skull to try the switches again, overhead this time. Nothing. The acceleration dragged at her arms, made her dizzy, made her knees weak. She lay down and braced one foot up against the door again.
Calm, she told herself. They'd get around to it. A ship heading for jump was damned busy, that was all. Matter of priorities. Somebody like Fitch didn't trek all the way up to station ops to get a skut out of the brig only to scramble her brain for good and all in some fucking official screw-up.
Couldn't do that.
God—get somebody down here!
CHAPTER 7
She heard the latch give, and she moved, rolled across the uneven surface of the lockers and staggered for her knees as the hatch opened and light flooded in—a man was standing astride the doorway, which was the way the stowage was oriented since the sort-out, a pit of unguessed depth in its zigzag contours.
It wasn't Fitch. "Up," the man said, and she pulled herself to her feet, tried to use the door-edges beside her for a ladder up to the deck level, but the edges were shallow and her own weight dragged at her.
He reached down and grabbed her chained hands, she climbed and he pulled, and landed her over the rim onto the floor. She would have been happy just to lie there and breathe a moment, but he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her to her feet. "Come on, come on," he said. "We got a narrow window here."
"I'm walking," she protested, trying to, on the narrow plastic mat along the edge of the burn-deck—doors to the right, the main-deck a wall at their left, lights on the right-hand wall. The hard push they were under kept buckling her knees and making her vision come and go. Well more than one, maybe most of two G's, she thought. That was most of the problem with her head and her legs. Or the bashing against the wall had rattled her brain more than she'd thought. "God—"
Black skeins of webbing hung in front of them, around the curve. Crew safety-area, hammocks up and down it, empty black-mesh bundles strung vertically along the left-hand wall. She limped ahead, walking more on her own now, just sore from the G-stress and the cold, through the safety-area, curtain of hammocks giving way into a rec-hall, crew members sitting on a low main-deck/burn-deck bench along the wall, where the walkway mat spread out wide, clear up to the swing-section galley. Sandwiches and drinks. Food-smell hit her stomach hard, she wasn't sure whether it was good or bad.
A handful of crew stood up to look at her, not in any wise friendly.
"This is Yeager," the man holding her said, and turned her loose and said, "Good luck, Yeager."
She stood there, just managed to stay on her feet for a few breaths, dizzy in the G-stress, dizzy in the sudden realization they were turning her loose, that they had bought the story, everything—
She had a chance, then—fair chance, exactly that, exactly the way you got when you got swept up into the Fleet, volunteer or otherwise. You were the new skut in the 'decks, you got the rough side of things, and you learned the way to live or you died, end of it, right there.
Good luck, Yeager.
"What ship?" a woman asked from the bench, while she stood there in front of everybody, maybe thirty, forty crew, varied as the Fleet was varied, a dozen shades, most of them looking at her as if she was on the menu.
"Ernestine."
"Why'd you leave her?"
"I was a hire-on. They got a mechanical, couldn't take me further."
"You any good?" a man asked, one of the ones standing.
"Damn good."
Any way you want to take it, man.
Long silence, then. While her knees shook. She set her jaw and stared at them with sweat cold on her face.
"You about missed board-call," a second man said.
"Had a problem."
Another long pause. "Makings on the counter," another man said, from further down the bench, and made an offhand gesture toward the galley. "You want anything you better get it now."
"Thanks," she said.
Permission to help herself, then. Handcuffs and all. She walked on to the counter, did an instant soup out of the hot-water tap, got a packet of crackers; she came and sat down at the end of the bench where there was a little room, and drank her soup, deciding finally she was hungry and that food was what her upset stomach needed. Her hands were still shaking. The salt stung where her teeth had cracked shut on the inside of her cheek. The man next to her seemed less than glad of her being there; he was no temptation to conversation, which was all right, she had no interest in talking right now: the soup was uncertain enough on her stomach; and she phased out, staring at the detail of the tiles, not interested in advance planning at all. Her situation could be hell and away worse. And all the planning she could do now had the shape of memories she had just as soon keep far, far to the back of her mind.
A fool kid had volunteered herself onto Africa's deck, volunteered because Africa was going to take what they wanted from that refinery ship at Pan-paris, anyway, which was always the young ones, and that was her. Better choose, she had thought then, because that way you were a volunteer and that was points on your record; and because she hated her life and hated the mines and she wanted starships more than she wanted anything.
And the fool kid had found herself in something she'd never remotely imagined, and the fool kid had figured out damn fast how not to be a fool. The Fleet taught you that straight-off, or it broke you, and she was still alive.
The fool kid had gotten part of what she'd wanted. She still reckoned that had to be worth the rest of it… and still must be, since she'd just had her chance at station-life, and here she was back again. If it killed her, she thought, right now it was like something in her was back in connection again and a part of her was alive that wasn't, on station.
And you couldn't make sense of that, but it was true.
She drank her soup, she kept her mouth shut except when a man two places down the row asked her questions—like her side of the business on Thule.
Like it was behind her already; and that was a breath of clean air too.
"I killed a couple bastards," she said quietly. "They picked it. Me or them."
Fitch walked in. Her pulse picked up. She looked up very carefully while Fitch made himself a cup of tea at the counter.
Fitch stood there to drink it and look at her, and after a moment he tossed a key down three or four places down the row. It lay there a moment.
Finally one of them, older man, picked it up and tossed it down toward her.
The man next to her, the unfriendly one, picked it up and gave it to her.
"Thanks," she said. She fumbled around and got the cuffs off.
No one said anything. She certainly didn't expect a You're Welcome from Fitch. She just pocketed the cuffs and the key. You didn't leave junk on the deck, and nobody asked for it.
"Hour till," Fitch said. "Yeager?"
She looked up, fought the twitch that said stand up, reminding herself this was a civ ship. "Yes, sir?"
"You like this ship?"
"Yes, sir."
"Like what you see?"
"Fine, sir."
Long silence.
"You being smart with me, Yeager?"
"No, sir. I'm glad to get off that station."
Fitch sipped his tea. And ignored her after that, thank God. Fitch left, and some of the rest did.
"Is there a place I'm supposed to pick up a trank-pack?" Bet asked the man next.
The man shrugged, pointed with a forefinger and his cup. "Galley. Right there by the hot, should be."
She got up and went and opened the cabinet, found the plastic-wrapped packs and found the c-pack in a clip beside it. "Thanks," she said, coming back to sit.
"Name's Masad," the man said, and indicated the man on his left. "Joe. Johnny." The one past that.
"Bet," she said.
Other crew came through the section. And the jump-warning sounded.
"Better get hammocked-in," Masad said. Olive skin. Fortyish. Shaved head. "You got any problems?"
"No," she said, and got up and offered a hand for other cups—hard to do, a lets-be-friends move; but she was smarter than she'd grown up: the surly brat who'd signed onto Africa had gotten hell and away smarter nowadays. And a little friendly move won things with strangers, sometimes. So they handed theirs over, she chucked them all in the galley bin, then walked with them down-ring, found herself a vacant hammock, stepped in, wrapped up and snugged the tabs closed. Then she carefully put the c-pack in her breast-pocket and took her trank-dose.
Going out of here, she told herself, while the bell kept ringing and the ship drove toward jump. She had no idea where they were going. It could even be Pell. But she felt the trank take hold and felt herself drifting, old familiar feeling, live or die, you never knew how or if you'd come out when the ship made transit.
The burn stopped. They went weightless for a few seconds, inertial. And slowly the G started pulling her down horizontally instead of vertically. Main-deck orientation, now. The light that had been shining in her eyes was clearly, by body-sense, truly in the overhead, and her back was to the deck.
Going out of here.
Goodbye, Thule. Goodbye, Nan and Ely. You give stationers a good name.
Blow the rest of you to hell.
CHAPTER 8
The fog cleared, the bell that signalled system-drop was ringing, but that was for the tekkies to handle, they were making their dumps.
Dark spot again. The bell had stopped, the mind kept trying to make it into Africa's crowded lowerdeck, tried to smell the same smells and hear the same sounds and hear the major cussing them awake: not the same, with the black mesh in front of her face, the glare of light in her eyes, not Ernestine, either, with its cubbyhole cabins—
No doubt it was shipboard, everything told you that, sounds, smells, the muzzy feeling of trank downbound now, knocked her for a long, deep one, it had. She found her mental place again, remembered when and where she was, remembered—
V-dump, then. Another half-nightmare. She heard the wake-call ringing, at least she thought it was, she fumbled after her c-pack and got the foil torn. Fingernails broke doing that, three of them on the same hand, a bad sign—she lost the rest of them pulling the tube out, and sucked down the citrusy stuff in the pack bit by bit, fighting nausea, trying to get her head clear.
"Move, move, move!" someone was yelling and you never argued with a voice like that. She gulped the last, stuffed the foil in her pocket and fumbled the catch open, rolled out and held on, with the jumpsuit hanging on her and her hands like claws clutching the black netting. Steady one G main-deck. Loki was inertial now. If the bridge expected maneuvers, they wouldn't order crew up and about.
Undo the floor clip, the one that held at your butt, undo the end clips and furl the hammock in its elastic lines, into the latch-bins that were the mess-hall bench while specific crew-calls pealed out over the general com, but none of them said Yeager.
Thank God, one part of her said; and another part said: This is odd. We're star-to-star on this track, did those dumps feel light? Was I that far out, or are we still carrying that much V in a station-zone!
And no take-hold?
Spook ship. We've short-jumped, we're nowhere near the star, and we've dumped and we must be doing a real quiet run-in, that's what we're doing.
Where in hell are we?
There was a dizzying quiet, ship-quiet, full of pumps and fans and systems cycling, heartbeat of a healthy ship. Crew passed her in a business-like hurry, some probably on call, other crew on private emergencies, things like finding the head, like getting to the galley, on a priority of duty and off-duty crew. Her own lower gut told her what her own priorities were, and she followed crew members into the first door down the corridor.
Not like Ernestine's cabin-style cubbies, but not damn bad either, she thought, looking around: plastic sheeting tight-stretched between the bunks, downside and loft with a buffer-net up there for safety—but you got the view.
And toilets downside, that was what she was interested in, fast as she could get there. She fell in the nearest, shortest line and stood there rubbery-legged with her back against the wall, and distracted herself by cracking the rest of her fingernails off.
Every one of them brittle, breaking down to the quick. Gums were sore. Hair came out when she raked a hand through it, a web of blond hairs in her fingers.
Short rations too damn long, and the time in jump took it out of you, used up nutrients, made your knees pop and your joints brittle. She'd seen it happen. It had never happened to her. Not like this—and it scared her. The thought that a spook was prone to far, fast moves, that they might kite out of here again—that also scared her. You lost more than fingernails if you got worn down like that.
Hit the galley, pour down the c-rations if she could get them, anything to get her weight back up.
Her gut kept cramping. Another crew member came up behind her and didn't bump her out of line on privilege, which could happen to a new skut on Africa, damn likely. You didn't get favors. You didn't get anything but hell.
All right, she decided about that man—Muller, G., was the name on him—and asked, while they were waiting: "Where are we? Venture? Bryant's?—'Dorado?"
Muller looked at her like that was some kind of privileged information, like asking made him wonder about her.
So she shut up, she ducked her head and she waited and gritted her teeth until she made it through the line.
Back up to the galley, then. She waited her turn, picked up the sandwich and hot tea the cook was handing out, and she sat down along the wall where a squat-level ell between main-deck and burn-deck made one long galley bench, sat and sipped her tea and ate the best sandwich she'd had in half a year.
Better than the vending machines on Thule, damn sure.
She sat there, no idea where she was assigned; no real hurry about matters, she figured, the ship must be on some kind of sit-and-wait, spook-like, maybe at Venture, maybe at Bryant's, wherever. She left the whereabouts of the ship as a whole to the mofs and just wished she knew if she dared go back to the lockers and see where her duffle was; she wished she knew if she had a bunk or whatever, and if she let herself think as far as the other prospects of settling in, her stomach got upset. But she figured she was on somebody's list, sooner or later, and somebody was going to tell her. Muller's reaction told her it was a nervous ship and experience told her staying low and quiet was the best thing to do for the time being.
Especially if it got her fed and got her a sit-down, long enough to get the wobbles out, before some mof showed up with a duty-list.
Damn sure.
Damn near a med case, with teeth sore and the bones showing in her hands till she hardly recognized them for hers—but she was afraid to go to the meds and complain, afraid to start out her sign-up on this ship with a med report, afraid to go anywhere near officers and people who might take a close look at her and then start watching her more than they needed to.
But a man came by, stopped and stood in front of her.
"Yeager."
She looked up, did a fast scan from the boots to the faded collar with the three black bands of a civ ship's officer and the circle-and-circuit of Engineering on the sleeve.
"Sir," she said, "Bet Yeager, sir." She would have gotten up, but the man was in the way.
