The Crypt: Shakedown: (A Military Sci-Fi Novel), page 29
The want in her eyes. Not a lustful desire, fueled by her body’s needs, but rather from the spirit, from her soul.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Nitzan saw her need for a deeper connection. In a ship packed so tightly with bodies there was almost no privacy to be had, Bethany Darkwater was lonely.
He understood.
Bennett was a solid guy. As was Abshire. Beaver was an idiot, but also a bulldog who would not quit, not ever. Nitzan liked them, yet he knew they’d all burn in the Low Place unless they repented and asked High One for forgiveness. He couldn’t allow himself to truly be friends with them. Not down deep, where it counted.
Yes, he was lonely, too. He had been for a long, long time. This woman might be the one person on this ship who could truly understand that loneliness.
But he couldn’t focus on that. Until he verified that Darkwater was a Purist Nation plant, he had to consider her as nothing more than a source of information. He had to get what he could out of her.
He dug his fork into his cake. “So, tell me what you do in the atrium.”
“I can’t tell you much,” she said. “A lot of it is classified, even from the XO.”
He put the fork in his mouth. The cake was rich and sugary sweet but tainted by the flavor that permeated everything on the ship.
“Imagine that,” he said. “Dessert that tastes like mushrooms.”
She took a bite, chewed and thought.
“A little, sure.” She set her fork on her plate, pinched off a bit of cake and popped it in her mouth. She closed her eyes and smiled. “Don’t use the mycoware and it’s perfect.”
He stared at her plate, wondering how he’d never thought of that, how none of the Raiders had thought of it. So obvious—eat with your hands. Don’t put the utensils-made-from-mushrooms in your mouth, and things don’t taste like mushrooms.
He pinched off a piece of his own, careful to not get any that had touched his plate. So good. The Combat Cook knew his business.
“It’s fantastic,” Nitzan said.
Bethany nodded. She seemed pleased he was enjoying himself.
Nitzan pinched off another morsel, spoke while he chewed.
“So, tell me the stuff you can tell me. It gets boring dealing with stinky Raiders all the time. Tell me what your typical day is like, but without the secret bits.”
Bethany smiled. A soft, small smile, but one that told Nitzan he could, and would, become this woman’s close friend.
“I’d rather know what you think about the rumor,” she said. “With you not being a Purist, and all.”
“Rumor?”
“About the mission.”
Nitzan shrugged. “Oh, that. We fight where they tell us to fight. I hope it’s Sklorno, but if it’s Nationalites, it’s Nationalites.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Obviously we’re fighting Nationalites. You haven’t heard the rumor about where we’re going?”
He shook his head.
“Hathorn, in my department, told me we’re going into Purist Nation territory,” Darkwater said. “Like, way into it. Maybe as far as Micothree.”
Later, Nitzan would give himself a pat on the back for maintaining his cool. He kept the conversation going, picked up a few details about the atrium that Bethany let slip, but his mind didn’t stray far from what she’d said. If Bethany was right, the Keeling might be heading to Mining Colony Three, a place only Nationalites referred to by the amalgamation of abbreviations: Mi. Co. 3—Micothree.
The Crypt would be deep in Purist Nation space, undoubtedly alone.
If Bethany was right, he might have the chance to escape and bring his intel home.
Or, maybe, bring the entire ship home.
43
Sascha put the last forkful of chicken and yam casserole in her mouth and bit off the end of the fork. Some crewmembers bitched about the taste of mushrooms, but not her. She chewed, enjoying the crunch the fork added to the soft dish.
“Another home run from Combat Cook,” she said.
“You can say that again.” XO Ellis had already cleaned his plate and was snapping off fragments of it, popping them into his mouth like little crackers. “He really grew all of that in the atrium? Besides the chicken, I mean.”
Anne Lafferty nodded. “The yams, yes. And the chia in the chia-buckwheat bread, but not the buckwheat.”
“So full.” Ellis leaned back in his wardroom chair, rubbed at his belly. “I hope I get some real sleep before we rendezvous with Ishi.”
Sascha hoped for the same. The Keeling would punch-out in another twelve hours. The Ishi rendezvous was scheduled to be short, maybe not even an hour, then both ships would punch-in for the FTL trip to the mission demarcation point. After that, two days in the Mud. Would there be any crew left when they reached the Purist Nation?
Lafferty stood. “I’ve got work to do.”
She walked out, leaving her mycoware plate and utensils for someone else to clean up. Only the XO and Sascha remained in the wardroom.
“I don’t like her,” Sascha said.
“She’s BII.” Ellis rubbed his belly again. “Nobody likes BII. Not even other people in BII.” He glanced toward the galley. The serving port door to the galley was closed. He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “The other day in my quarters, there was something you wanted to tell me. Is that thing still on your mind?”
It was on her mind all day, every day. She had one hundred and two weeks left to serve on this bizarre ship. She couldn’t talk to people in her department about her fears—a department head’s concerns about command decisions went up the ladder, never down.
Could she trust Ellis? Might as well find out.
“There’s something weird about this ship,” she said.
He laughed. “Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t mean just the Keeling itself. I mean the command structure. Only one person, Hasik, supposedly knows how the ship actually works. What happens if he dies? There’s no redundancy, XO. It’s a critical failure waiting to happen.”
Ellis grew serious. “Supposedly? Are you trying to say Hasik doesn’t know how this ship works?”
Sascha hesitated, wondering if she should continue. Screw it—if the XO was going to burn her, he was going to burn her.
“Hasik knows how to operate it,” she said. “But as for how it accesses other membranes? Or what the hull material really is? What this ship really is? Maybe someone in Fleet knows, but if so, it ain’t Hasik.”
The XO studied her for a moment.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Hasik knows how it works. How could we perform transdim dives if he didn’t?”
Sasha pulled Lafferty’s empty plate closer. She bit off a bit, slowly chewing it as she talked.
“You’re not a gunner, but could you operate our artillery?”
Ellis nodded. “I’m rated on the Type24 system.”
“You could load it and fire it?”
He nodded again.
“Say we capture a Sklorno warship,” Sascha said. “Have you ever been on one?”
“I have not.”
“Say you were, and your job was to figure out how to operate that ship’s artillery. There’s no manual. No tutorial. No one to show you how it works. But you still have to figure out how to load it and fire it. Could you?”
That made him think. He broke off a piece of his own plate, turned it in his fingers.
“Probably, yeah. Shell diameter, bore size… figuring out what goes where would be simple enough. Find the trigger mechanism, learn how to move the weapon. Then trial and error, test firing until you got it down. If I had enough time, I could figure it out.”
“So you could learn how to fire alien weaponry,” Sascha said. “But could you mine the ore to make the shell casing? Could you smelt it to the right tolerances? Could you cast it with the exacting measurements necessary so it doesn’t blow up when you fire it? Could you identify the explosives used, then mix those chemicals correctly to make new rounds?”
“Highly doubtful,” he said. “I know trig—I don’t know chemistry. Or metallurgy and mining, for that matter.”
“Then, you could operate alien weaponry, but you don’t really know how it works.”
He frowned. “I get what you’re saying, but that’s pretty simplistic compared to jumping into another dimension. Or membrane. Or whatever the Mud is.”
Ellis wasn’t judging her, wasn’t placating her. He seemed like a genuinely good person. Despite the albatross of cowardice hanging around his neck, Sascha knew she could learn from the XO. But could she make him see what she saw?
“Yes, it’s simplistic, but the principle still applies.” She leaned closer to him. “Someone found this ship. Through trial and error, most likely, they figured out how to operate it. Was Hasik part of that? We don’t know. But even if he was, it doesn’t mean he truly understands the science involved.”
“What about all that stuff he said about membranes and universes and dimensions?” Ellis leaned back, crossed his arms. “He described what the ship can do, then the ship did those things.”
“I don’t think he showed us facts,” Sascha said. “I think he showed us his hypothesis. His or someone else’s. He’s bullshitting us. He’s trying to build an explanation from observed data, but he doesn’t know how it works.”
The XO thought that over.
“If you’re right, Hasik isn’t that different from the rest of us,” he said. “Hasik pushes the buttons he’s told to push. The people who have the real knowledge aren’t here. So what?”
So what? A good question, one she hadn’t thought to consider. She’d focused on her instinct that Hasik was full of shit—she hadn’t thought about what him being full of shit truly meant or if it even mattered.
“I know something’s wrong, that’s all,” she said. “And there’s one more thing.”
Ellis sighed. “This better be important. You’re cutting into my full-belly-sleepy-time.”
He was still listening, but not for long.
“There are areas of the ship that aren’t listed on the deck schematics,” she said. “The lower bow that holds Raider Land, that’s hollow, but the upper bow is solid. And that big chunk of deck five, between the pouch and the lower bow, that’s solid, too.”
The XO shrugged. “It’s probably structural. Right? It holds the ship together, or something like that?”
“I don’t think so. I scanned the tail section. It appears solid, completely solid but it’s not—it stretches out when we’re in-dim. If the tail is malleable, are the other solid sections as well? Does Hasik know? Does anyone?”
Ellis sighed, stood.
“No one told you to scan anything, Lieutenant, so I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you just said, and you will stop scanning. Let’s worry about surviving the mission. If we do, you and I can talk about this some more.”
He left the wardroom.
Sascha grew irritated with herself. Had she thought the XO would have answers? He’d only been here two weeks, same as her.
Her job as engineering chief was to know every part of the ship inside and out, yet she knew nothing about the atrium, nothing about the material the xeno department sometimes called the heart and other times the heartstone, and nothing about the solid-but-not-solid sections.
Understanding those things could mean the difference between life or death.
She didn’t know when, she didn’t know how, but one way or another, she was going to get answers.
44
John ran a gun brush through his rifle barrel, back and forth, turning the brush slightly each time.
“So, Bennett,” Abshire said. “You still banging Winter? Haven’t seen you two canoodling about town lately.”
Fire team Alpha-Two used Shamdi’s bunk as a table to clean their weapons. A hand towel marked each man’s work area. If John had to go into battle with these guys, he’d make damn sure their rifles were in perfect working order.
“Abs, make sure your mag-catch is properly slotted.” John looked down the disassembled barrel of his rifle, eyeballing it for significant wear or potential problems. “If you can’t put a mag in properly, Sands will rip the whole team to shreds. You should be focusing on your weapon—not my love life.”
Love life. As if love had anything to do with it.
“We can multitask.” Beaver set his reassembled weapon on the bunk, held his hands up palms out. “Platoon record! Gotta be. Right? I’m the fastest at this.” He grinned at John. “Come on, Grampa, tell us if you’re getting some cooch.”
John set the barrel down on the long towel that contained the parts of his RR. “Speed records don’t matter.” He picked up the firing selector switch, examined it closely. “What matters is that your rifle works properly when you need it.”
“You’re ducking the question,” Shamdi said. “You banging that wide ass or not? Considering Winter’s anger issues, though, maybe she’s the one banging you.”
John was almost as old as the three of them combined. They were young, dumb, and full of cum. He’d been that age once. Back then, he’d thought about sex a whole lot more than he did now.
But that was easy to say when he was the one getting laid.
“Any interpersonal communication between the Warrant Officer and me stays between me and the Warrant Officer,” John said. “I’ve never been on a ship that allows this kind of open-secret camaraderie. If I was you, boys, I’d stop asking questions before Lincoln gets reminded she’s letting an occasional tandem tummy-rub go down. It’s my experience that captains do not like to have the privileges they allow thrown back in their face.”
Shamdi slid his barrel into the receiver, spun it to thread it home.
“Grampa is right about that,” he said. “Let’s all shut the fuck up about fucking, lest not shutting the fuck up fucks up our fucking.”
Beaver’s face lit up. “Sham, that’s got to be a platoon record for using fuck the most times in one sentence.”
Abshire shook his head. “I don’t think the platoon tracks that record.”
Beaver started breaking his weapon down again.
“That’s bullshit,” he said. “It would be a good record.”
“I’m changing the subject.” Shamdi slotted his cleaned and reassembled trigger array back in his receiver. “We’re supposed to come out of punch-space in three hours. Then we rendezvous with Ishi and start the mission. Anyone think we’ll see action?”
By anyone, Shamdi obviously meant John. Beaver and Abs didn’t know their butt from a burnt biscuit when it came to second-guessing command.
“I assume we will,” John said. “I know you guys heard where we’re going, just like I have.”
Lindros hadn’t been forthcoming with the mission objectives, but Raiders found out, as Raiders often do.
“The fucking Purist Nation,” Abs said. “Can you believe my first hop is into enemy territory?”
Abshire carried his dread of combat like a toddler carries a threadbare blanket. There wasn’t much John or anyone else could do about it. Until the kid popped his cherry and found out what combat was like, that fear would haunt him.
“I can’t wait,” Beaver said. “Can. Not. Wait. I hope I get to shoot a churchie right in the face, so they can see it coming. How about you, Sham? You fought churchies before?”
John’s fingers knew how to put his weapon together—he didn’t need his eyes. He watched Shamdi’s reaction. There was something peculiar about the guy. John couldn’t nail it down. He wanted to better understand the man before they fought side-by-side. Only John and Shamdi had combat experience; it was up to them to keep Beaver and Abs on-task when the shit hit the fan.
“Yeah,” Shamdi said. “I fought them once.”
John heard the coldness, the hollowness in the man’s voice; Shamdi lost friends in that fight.
“Speaking of open secrets,” Abs said, “how about that spinner-milf ensign you been hounding, Sham?”
Shamdi set his partially assembled weapon on his towel. He stared straight at Abs. The look on Abshire’s face showed he knew he’d said something wrong.
John tensed, ready to jump between the two men if violence blossomed.
“Her name is Ensign Darkwater,” Shamdi said. “When you talk about her, you will give her the respect she deserves. Or better yet, how about you keep her name out of your shit-sipping mouth?”
Abshire tensed, sensing the anger coiled up inside Shamdi. John didn’t fault Abs for that. There is a vast difference between a threat spoken by a man who hasn’t taken life, and one who has. Body language, the tone of voice, a lack of doubt… it’s just different.
“Wait a minute,” Beaver said without looking up from assembling his weapon. “Sham, weren’t you just asking if Bennett was hooking up with PXO Winter, or versa visa or whatever?”
“Not the same thing.” Shamdi stared at Abs. “Not even fucking close.”
Beaver, it seemed, did not have Abshire’s ability to read the room and sense the obvious.
“Let’s all leave it alone,” John said. “No more talking about who is associating with whom. Got it?”
Abshire nodded.
Shamdi glared his dark glare for a few more seconds, then he did the same.
Beaver set his reassembled weapon down, raised both hands, palms out.
“Even faster! That’s got to be the platoon record!”
45
“All hands, general quarters,” XO Ellis said. “We’re exiting punch-space in three minutes. That is all.”
Anne watched him hang up the comm handset. She was growing quite used to her perch in the intel loft. From here, she could observe everybody. And so many people needed to be observed.
“Pilot, prepare to bring us out of punch-space,” XO Ellis said. “Darsat, I want any and all contacts the moment we punch back in.”
