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Five

“You’re not bad for a FUN,” Jablonski said, watching as Dana carefully went through the port gravitics relay checklist.

Despite their relatively small size, the Myrmidons were enormously complex. The main power was supplied by a twelve gigawatt matter-energy converter located directly behind the engineer station. That drove a repulsor drive capable of pulling four hundred gravities of delta-V. Pulling that much acceleration would turn a human to paste, though, so the craft had to have an Inertial Stabilization System, ISS, that kept the internal gravity more or less normal. More or less because beyond one hundred gravities of acceleration the system started to fall behind. At full drive, the internals—crew and cargo—were subjected to three gravities of acceleration.

In addition to the drive and ISS, there were four magnetic grapnels capable of localized gradients of over nine hundred gravities. They were designed primarily to lock onto a ship for boarding but from what Dana had heard they were mostly used as ersatz tug systems. The Myrmidons could only “reverse” at sixty gravities so they were better for pushing than pulling. But they got stuff moved in space eventually.

Since you had to get in and out of the boat somehow, there was a forward ramp and air-lock system as well as an emergency hatch in the flight compartment. The ramp was for terrestrial landings, which very few of the coxswains on the Troy had ever done. For Dana it was just another damned thing to check. Not to mention the “useless as tits on a boar hog” as AJ had pointed out, landing jacks.

Then there was the air lock. Air locks for more or less Terran sized sophonts, which included Glatun and Horvath, were fairly standardized across the local arm. The air lock was essentially two hatches with a space a bit shorter than the width of the Myrm between. A squad of Marines could stack up in the space to do an entry.

The hatches were fairly conventional steel with a high-tech sealant and fairly normal wheel-latches. They had to be authorized for opening from the engineer of the boat and checked for closure. The detectors were futzy as hell. And you wanted to make sure the hatches were sealed before you went into the Black. Most of the time, if there was time, the engineer would get out of the flight compartment and do a manual check. Especially if Marines were the ones doing the closure.

Searchlights, shields, double four-terawatt lasers for close-air support, avionics, more superconductor relays than a terrestrial power plant, the boat’s engineer had to know all of it well enough to, at least, detect faults and report them for repair. In general, with the lack of higher support due to the way the Navy was growing and the lack of bay space on the Troy, most repairs took place in the bay with ENs, engineers first class, and EMs, petty officer engineering mates, sweating and cursing in suits.

To make full rate, an engineer apprentice was required to demonstrate that he, or in Dana’s case, she, could just locate and analyze faults, not repair them. In a suit, in microgravity, in vacuum, in the dark.

And they had to meet minimum standard capability as coxswains in case the cox was disabled during an “evolution.”

“Checks completed, EN,” Dana said, straightening up and trying to keep from rubbing her back. Checking the gravitics mostly meant bending over for hours. The one good thing about Jablonski was that he barely seemed to notice her as a girl. “No faults detected.”

“Check completed, aye,” Jablonski said, making a notation on his pad. “No faults detected, aye. Good check.”

“Good check, aye,” Dana said.

“Break it down,” AJ said. “We have mandatory flight fun time this afternoon.”

“Flight fun time” translated as physical training. There was a basketball court and a gym. Dana spent most of her work-out time in the gym since there wasn’t a good gymnastics set up.

She’d been a cheerleader in high school but mostly she’d been into the gymnastics. If she hadn’t “blossomed” a bit young she might have made the pros. It was one of the reasons she was ahead of the curve for training in microgravity. With enough time on parallel bars, micro wasn’t a really big issue. She still wasn’t good in micro, but she could manage simple tasks.

“Break it down, aye,” Dana said, gathering up the tools and carefully stowing them away. The stow point for the boat’s tools was to the starboard side of the flight compartment, just to the side and aft of the engineer’s station. Over the compartment was a post-production welded on set of clamps with a crowbar installed. The second day she’d been working on the boat, AJ had come in with the crowbar, the clamps and a laser welding set and grimly welded the crowbar into place. He hadn’t said anything about why but it wasn’t until the crowbar was in place that Twenty-Nine was listed as flight-certified.

She’d wondered about the crowbar—it wasn’t part of the standard tool-set and it seemed to hold some particular significance—but she hadn’t asked. There were no stupid questions, but she had learned that there were answers you only got at a certain point in your training. She suspected the Significance of the Crowbar was one of them. She’d figured out some of the meanings. “Going crow” on a boat, or a person, meant beating the hell out of a part, or a person. But there seemed to be more. One time when Sean’s boat had had a mid-space malfunction he had mentioned it “looked like crowbar time.” And EM Hartwell had been pretty grim. There was some significance to the crowbar.

She’d find out when it was time.

* * *

“We have a special event for you today, boys and girls.”

Chief Petty Officer John Wagner looked like a recruiting poster. Tall, blond and mustachioed, he simply reeked of being God’s gift to women. His good point was that he wasn’t an ass about it and had never so much as hinted to Dana. On the other hand, he seemed to positively enjoy passing on the worst possible news to the flight. So the fact that he’d fallen out for “flight fun time” meant that they were probably not going to like the result.

“With the activation of C-West, there are four new grav ball courts open,” the chief said, grinning broadly.

There was a collective groan from the assembled flight.

“So it’s helmet and pads time,” the chief finished, grinning ear to ear. “Fall out for MWR draw.”

* * *

“What’s wrong with grav ball?” Dana asked. She was actually pretty excited. She’d heard about the sport but the only people who seemed to play it were the Marines. And she’d been pointedly warned about playing them.

“Where to start?” Sean said, receiving a set of knee and elbow pads and a helmet from the MWR civilian manning the desk. “You know the rules?”

“Sort of like hockey,” Dana said, accepting her own pads. “Five-person teams. One goalie, two forwards, two defense. Two goals. Once you catch the ball you can’t push off from the walls, you have to pass. Okay, hockey and ultimate Frisbee. You can bounce the ball off of any wall. Move it down the court to get it in the enemy goal.”

“Ever really thought about it?” Sean asked. “The walls have padding. Some. You’ve got to be able to bounce the ball, so it’s not real thick. Then there’s the viewing wall made out of optical sapphire, which is, let me tell you, very, very hard stuff. Note the pads and helmet. The first Marine unit to play it had about ten percent injuries that required doctor’s input. Of course, they have since created jungleball, which you don’t want to play.”

“What’s jungleball?” Dana asked as they reached the null grav court.

“Null grav actually has about a hundred thousand rules,” Sean said. “Most of them related to no hitting, biting, scratching or kicking the other guy in the balls. The Marines wear a cup. It’s like Aussie Rules football. The first rule of jungleball is ‘No weapons.’ There’s seven more.”

“Oh,” Dana said.

They’d reached the court and Dana started to get a feel for why Sean wasn’t exactly looking forward to null-grav ball.

The viewing wall fronted on the corridor and was a three-story-tall wall of optical sapphire. The door was even sapphire with a small, recessed latch. The other five walls were lightly padded. One end of the court was broadly marked in blue, the other red. The overall court looked like an extended version of a handball court.

The goals were recessed nets about two meters wide surrounded by six recessed hand-holds. Dana recalled that the only person who was allowed to retain traction, hold on to the grips, was the goalie.

The court was apparently still under gravity since First division’s engineering personnel were just filing in. The engineering crew, a couple of administrative seamen including Sarin and CM1 Glass. Glass was tossing a soccer ball up and down in his hand and looking positively happy.

“Since I’m not neutral in this group, I’m going to be refereeing, not playing. Bigus and Carter, you’re team captains. Divvie them up.”

Dana ended up on Carter’s team but got cut from the first string along with Sarin. All the SAs and EAs got cut and pulled out of the court to watch.

“This is going to be insane,” Sarin said. “Carter was bitching up a storm.”

“It looks like it should be fun,” Dana said.

The two team captains faced towards their own goals with Glass in the center, holding the ball.

“And . . . grav off,” Glass said, releasing the ball. “Game on.”

Bigus, the EM3 of shuttle Thirty-Two, managed to hit the ball first, sending it towards the blue team that was starting to float up, slowly. Carter had taken a swing and floated off in a random direction.

The ball missed the blue team entirely, caromed off two walls and headed down court towards red. Which pushed off from the floor and all missed intercepting the ball. Which, fortunately, was slowing due to air-resistance. Sean managed to get a hand on it and passed it to Bigus. Which sent Sean spinning off into the sapphire wall, cracking his head hard enough to ring the aluminum alloy.

In no time at all it was a maelstrom. Despite the jerseys, Dana couldn’t keep up with what was happening and she was pretty sure neither could anyone on the teams. People were more or less randomly ramming into walls. She saw Bigus drive for the goal at one point—he’d managed to snag the ball in midair while headed in more or less the direction of the goal—and nearly make it. Problem being it was his own goal. He corrected at the last minute and tried a pass to Sean but that was intercepted by a red team SN Dana didn’t know, who made the goal.

“Dead ball,” Glass called. The ball had stopped in mid-court and so had all the team members. He’d managed to take up a position near the top of the court and more or less hang there by making very light motions. He pushed off lightly and plucked the ball out of the middle of the court.

“Sean for Danno,” Bigus called. He was sort of upside-down and drifting slowly in the direction of the blue goal but so far away from the walls he might never make it.

“How am I going to get out?” Sean called. He was hanging more or less motionless on the red side but, again, nowhere near the walls.

“Easy,” Glass said, hitting him with the ball and sending him careening towards the red wall. “Now get your butt out.”

Dana stepped into the court and slowly bounced her way over to the defender’s position. The one thing she knew about micrograv was that it was hard to move fast. Not impossible, Glass seemed to have the knack. But it was hard.

She managed to stabilize up in the corner by the blue goal and waited for play to resume.

“And . . . game on,” Glass said, sending the ball spinning into the middle of the court.

Bigus had the angle of the bounce figured right and probably would have intercepted. If Glass hadn’t put some English on it. The ball passed his flailing hand and got to the red team.

It was headed for a red team player in position to shoot for the goal when Dana pushed off the wall and made possibly the slowest intercept in the short history of nullball. The pass had been long and the ball was slowing so she nearly missed but managed to snag it. The impact of the ball on her hand and pulling it in caused her to rotate. But she let herself follow around and then pushed the ball off with both feet towards the red goal.

“Bust a move, Danno,” Bigus called, grinning. “But you might want to—”

Dana slammed into the sapphire wall head first. Since she was grinning, it ground her teeth together painfully.

“Ow!” she said, rebounding towards the “floor” and rubbing her head. “That hurt.”

“You okay?” Glass said.

“One hundred percent, CM,” Dana said, not wanting to add that it was one hundred percent headache and neck-ache.

* * *

“I can understand your lack of joy at playing nullball,” Dana said, rubbing her neck. “But it’s pretty fun if you keep your situational awareness.”

“Which is the point,” Glass said, coming up behind Dana and Sean. The flight NCOIC had the lightest step Dana had ever seen. “It’s good training for micrograv. It’s even good flight training. Speaking of which, EA, you’re four hours behind on coxswain quals. I want to see you in the simulator course one night a week for the next week.”

“One night a week, aye, CM,” Dana said, trying not to sigh. There went sleep.

* * *

“Personnel cycling air lock will perform a visual check of all seals prior to sealing inner door . . .” EM1 Hartwell said in a rapid patter.

“Personnel cycling air lock will perform a visual check of all seals prior to sealing inner door, aye,” Dana said, adding a manual check for burs or scratches by running her hand over the seal. The latter wasn’t part of the air lock operations procedure but it would be if Chief Barnett ever had her way.

Dana had been qualed on basic suit function and function in a microgravity atmosphere environment. The latter translated as she was starting to kick some serious butt at nullball.

So now it was time for her full suit quals.

“Procedure Two-Nine-Six-Four-Eight-November, Secure Safety Line complete,” Hartwell said. “Personnel will contact air lock and integrity control to release outer door.”

“Personnel will contact air lock and integrity control to release outer door, aye,” Dana said, clearing her throat. “Paris, EA Parker One-One-Three-Eight.”

EA Parker One-One-Three-Eight, Paris.”

She got her usual thrill hearing the AI. Paris didn’t have much time to chat with an EA rate, which was too bad. He had a really sexy voice.

“Request release, Air-lock Outer Door Six-One-Seven,” Dana said. She was still a bit iffy on comming without speaking. She’d passed quals but she preferred to talk. Especially with Paris, she tended to add “unintended transmissions” when she internal commed.

Release Air-lock Outer Door Six-One-Seven, aye,” Paris replied. “Verify Procedure Six-Six-One-Four-Eight-Alpha, Open Air-lock Doors complete.”

“Procedure Six-Six-One-Four-Eight-Alpha, Open Air-lock Doors complete, aye,” Dana said.

Verify Procedure Four-Seven-Thee-Six-Charlie-Alpha, Suit Integrity check complete.”

Procedure Four-Seven-Thee-Six-Charlie-Alpha, Suit Integrity check complete, aye,” Dana said, trying not to sigh. There was a reason for all the readbacks but they got to be a pain in the butt.

“List personnel using air lock for manifest integrity . . .”

Verify Procedure . . .”

* * *

All procedures for EVA verified and checked,” Paris said. “Open Air-lock Outer Door Six-One-Seven, Procedure Niner-Niner-Four-Four-Eight complete. Pumping down.”

“Pumping down, aye,” Dana said.

The red light overhead started to rotate and Dana could feel the slight change in texture as vacuum started to surround her suit. She took a deep breath and hoped that all the checks, which she had completed and verified, were good.

“It’s all good,” Hartwell said. “Ready to step?”

“Ready to step,” Dana said, starting to move forward.

“Whoa there, Space Eagle,” Hartwell said. “What do you do next?”

“Procedure Eight-Seven-Four-One-Six-Delta,” Dana said, reaching out the air-lock door and clipping off her outer safety line. It wasn’t like she was going to do a Dutchman. She was wearing a navopak that could get her nearly to Mars on internal power. “Complete.”

“Procedure Eight-Seven-Four-One-Six-Delta complete, aye,” Hartwell said. “Begin procedure . . .”

It made things safer but it sure took the fun out of life.

* * *

Finally they were out in EVA and the air lock closed. The air lock was near the base of the tube to which all the shuttles were attached and shuttle Twelve from Flight A was more or less entirely blocking the view of the main bay.

“Okay,” Hartwell said. “We need to get past all this crap to get to Twenty-Nine. Give me a one-eightieth vertical thrust on navo.”

“One-eightieth vertical thrust, aye,” Dana said, giving the system just about its lowest possible boost “upwards.”

This lifted them “above” the shuttle and the main bay was finally revealed.

“Holy hell,” Dana muttered.

“You okay?” Thermal asked.

“It’s . . .”

“Stabilize and drink it in for a minute. I’ll give you that. Most people need to get a good look before they can get their heads around getting to work.”

The main bay of the Troy was six kilometers across. She knew that intellectually. But seeing it was something different. It was just hard to get the scale of the thing. Down and to port there were two ships that looked like the sort of toys she’d played with when she was a kid. One was a freighter or an Apollo miner. Those were three hundred meters long. As long as a supercarrier. More than three football fields in length.

It looked about the size of her pinkie. Smaller.

Next to it was a Constitution-class cruiser, the biggest true “ship” produced by humanity. It didn’t look much bigger. There were some tiny dots moving around on its surface and she realized they were other suits doing EVA. They were almost microscopic. The bay was just immense.

But there was more that was throwing her. Jutting up from the walls were three massive spikes. They reached up through the interior to very nearly meet in the middle. Then she realized they were about three kilometers long.

What got her wasn’t just the size. She was sort of intellectually prepared for that. But she wasn’t prepared for the fact that the interior was so shiny it was almost like a mirror. There was a God damned big, she had no clue how big but it had to be immense, light bulb “down” from their position. The light filled the hold and reflected off the surfaces so there were no shadows at all. None. Even the Constitution and the spikes didn’t cast a shadow. That was a bit eerie. But with no atmosphere and the reflection of the mirrorlike walls, there was nowhere for shadows to hide.

“It’s beautiful,” Dana said, softly. “I wasn’t expecting it to be beautiful.”

“There is that,” Thermal said. “Think you can pay attention to exterior checks on the shuttle?”

“I am prepared and ready to perform, EM,” Dana said.

“Then let us, slowly and carefully, make our way over to Twenty-Nine and actually get some work done.”

* * *

“How you doing, Parker?” CM1 Glass asked.

“I am five by, CM,” Parker said, examining her engineering screen.

She was most of the way through quals. The truth was, there wasn’t time to teach all the procedures and processes involved in doing the job of a shuttle engineer in A School. All that A School could do was produce people who sort of had a basic understanding of the systems. How to work with them in the environment of a permanent position was “makee-learnee” after you got to your post. Until you learned enough to not be a danger to yourself and others, you were a FUN: Fracking Useless Noob.

That meant that when the shuttles went out, whether for training or a “real-world evolution,” the FUN EAs and CAs were left behind with the nonshuttle personnel, called Troglos because they never got out of the Troy, to work on their quals, polish the brass, clean heads or whatever else the BMs could come up with to motivate them to finish quals.

But part of quals was, occasionally, heading out into the bay, or sometimes the Black, to show that they’d mastered how to work with the shuttles in the real world.

When she’d arrived on the Troy she had initially despaired of ever learning all the SOPs and processes necessary to do her job. Take the engineering display. It had readouts of all the monitored systems, four hundred and twenty-eight, on the shuttle. Power levels, relay conditions, avionics, hatches. It all added up. And much of it interacted so you had to have some clue what the cascade issues of a failure might mean.

But after a bare three months, here she was with CM Glass doing her final deploy qual.

“All the little bits ticking over?” Mutant asked.

“Tick, tock, CM,” Dana said.

She had been out in the main bay doing EVA work on the birds so many times the view had gotten common if not boring. It was hard to imagine the main bay ever getting boring if for no other reason than that it kept changing.

She had finally looked up the full plan for Troy and been absolutely shocked. The construction plans were barely in “Part One, Phase One” of the full plan. The full plan was intended to take at least a hundred years. And it was only referred to as a rough plan because nobody knew how technology was going to change.

Troy was broken up into six notional zones, North, South, East, West, One and Two. South was the zone that had the main door, a kilometer-wide, kilometer-and-a-half-thick plug that was currently the only way in and out of the battlestation. North was the general area where the big ships hung out. There wasn’t much going on over there and it was out of the way. Currently there were four Constitutions and a new Independence-class frigate holding station in the Arctic. Gravitic tractor docking systems were being constructed down there by a swarm of bots and EVA personnel. In the meantime the cruisers and frigates had to maintain station against the slight gravity produced by the Troy.

Zone Two was where most of the construction materials were piling up. There were entire “environment packs,” prefabricated quarters, bays and repair shops, piling up down there. The next big construction phase, involving pulling out a chunk of the wall and installing the packs, was about to take place. But all the packs had to be in place, first. Pulling the wall out was only going to happen once.

East and West were mostly empty. There was an Apollo mining support ship hovering over in East. It was probably there to get ready for the pull. West only had some piled up material that had been cut out of the walls.

On the other hand, West also had the Dragon’s Orb, the one-hundred-meter diameter ball of “dirty” sapphire that provided light to the main bay. The blazing ball was held in place by a sculpted four-prong setting of nickel-iron that looked like an eagle or dragon’s claw. The light came from a four terawatt SAPL beam that reflected off of embedded “micro beads” of platinum embedded in the sapphire. It fully illuminated the main bay. Perhaps too fully: the ball was hard to look at it was so bright.

Phase One was simply getting full support systems in place in Zone One, the part that Dana was based in. There still weren’t shuttle bays for the current Myrmidon complement and Zone One was eventually supposed to house, internal, a wing of Myrmidons, three full squadrons and all their support personnel and equipment.

That was nothing compared to other parts of the plan. There were plans to build internal bays for the Constitution-class cruisers as well as other combat and support ships. By the end of Phase One, an entire task force of ships was to be installed in the walls of the fortress. With launch systems to send the ships out without using the main bay doors. They were going to be shot out like missiles. The same plan was in place for the shuttles. They would eventually go out by a bypass system rather than flying around the main bay.

Like everything with the Troy, the plan was beyond big. But it was going to be fun to watch. And occasionally support. The Myrmidons spent about half their active time training and the rest acting as “filler” tugs for the construction projects.

She recognized all the classes, another qual, except one.

“CM?” she said, tilting her head to the side quizzically. “What class is that?”

The shuttle looked like a Myrmidon but it didn’t have the gravity grapnels. And it was painted bright white with an Apollo logo on the side, a graphic of a chariot towing the sun. It was parked on the Zone Two side of the bay apparently involved in some of the moving of materials. It might be a command ship for that matter.

“That is in a class by itself,” Glass said, adjusting his vector slightly.

By swinging around, Mutant was able to get a position where they could see the starboard side of the shuttle. They’d been looking at the port and base before.

“Is that a glass wall?” Dana asked. The starboard side of the cargo bay of the shuttle appeared to be glass or sapphire. It was reflective so you couldn’t really see in, but it was clearly not steel.

“Sapphire,” Glass said. “That is the Starfire, the personal transport of Mr. Tyler Vernon.”

“Oh,” Dana said, her eyes widening. Vernon was about as big a name as you got. He was the richest guy in the solar system, the owner of the SAPL, which was, at base, nothing more than a gigantic mining laser, and the visionary who had conceived and created the Troy. “Is he in there?” she squeaked.

“Probably,” CM1 Glass said. “He spends about half his time in a compartment in the civvie side of Zone One. A big compartment that is appropriately fitted out for a multibillionaire. And from what I hear the Starfire is a flying boudoir.”

I hear he doesn’t even have a girlfriend,” Dana said.

“A boudoir does not require women, EA,” Glass said, moving back into his lane and out of sight of the sapphire bulkhead. “That simply means it’s very comfortable.”

“So, does he like . . . guys?” Dana asked.

“I have no idea,” Mutant said, chuckling. “But don’t get your hopes up. He’s not going to notice a lowly EA.”

“I wasn’t . . .” Dana said.

“I’m funning you, FUN,” Glass said. “I’m not the sort of guy who pays a lot of attention to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. So I have no idea of Mr. Vernon’s tastes in such things. But you see him around. He rarely goes back to Earth. He sort of lives on the Troy or in Wolf.”

“That sounds . . . lonely,” Dana said.

Permission to enter a personal conversation?” Paris commed.

“Granted, Paris,” Glass said. Practically every conversation in the station was monitored by Paris but he rarely interjected.

Mr. Tyler’s sexual tastes are heterosexual,” the AI commed. “He does not have a significant other. He occasionally complains about that, but his schedule is such that he rarely meets with appropriate females. He spends much of his time alone. And, yes, it is lonely. He says that he is adjusted to that existence, having maintained it for over fifteen years.

“Oh,” Dana said.

“Paris, don’t go matchmaking with my EA,” Glass said, grinning.

That was not the intent,” Paris replied. “My intent is more complex.” The AI cut the connection.

“I think you stepped on it, CM,” Dana said.

“I’m trying to figure out Paris’ point,” Glass said, thoughtfully. “I suppose it might be situational awareness.”

“CM?”

“Vernon’s . . .” Glass said then paused. “Vernon was the guy who created the Troy. He had little or nothing to do with developing the Constitutions, but he created SAPL, which is the real defense of the solar system, and Troy. I think that Paris was making the point that knowing something about a guy who has that much power and influence is slightly different than knowing which movie star is cheating on which.”

“Ah,” Dana said.

“What I’m still trying to process is why Paris made the point to us,” Glass said. “But I’m not a big brain AI so I’m going to ignore it for now.”

Dana swiveled her screen around to examine the Starfire again.

“Maybe because we asked?”

Mutant had carefully traveled around to the West side to get to the door, avoiding all the other traffic in the bay. Entering the opening was to be plunged into blackness. Vacuum didn’t transmit light except in a straight line so the light from the Dragon’s Orb was cut off abruptly.

“No traffic,” CM1 Glass said, leaning back. “That’s nice. I always hate it when the tunnel’s full.”

“It’s a kilometer across, CM,” Dana said, frowning. “The Constitutions are a hundred and fifty meters in width. Even with two or three across . . . There’s plenty of room.”

“There are six SAPL beams coming through,” Glass pointed out. “Fifty-meter radius safety zones around those. So that’s two hundred meters cut off. And the internal diameter is only seven hundred, not a klick. Crowded is relative, but when you’re a very small boat negotiating around giants . . .”

“I take your point, CM,” Dana said.

“Can’t wait for the internal SAPL system to get done,” Glass said with a sigh. “Those things are killers.”

“Internal?” Dana asked, confused.

“They intend to eventually drill SAPL conduits through the walls,” Glass said. “Run them in through big collimators on the surface and bounce them around the interior. That way they’re not crossing the main bay.”

“That will be nice,” Dana said as they emerged from the tunnel. “Oh . . . my.”

“Nice, huh?” Glass said.

In the shuttle up to Troy she’d been in a center seat and the Columbias didn’t really have much in the way of portholes. Sarin had gone over to look out the one free one but she hadn’t bothered. She wasn’t really big on space, she just wanted to give the Horvath some payback.

This wasn’t a porthole and it wasn’t even a big screen. But it was full of stars.

Every square centimeter seemed to have some point of light in it. From Earth, most of the light from distant stars was filtered out by the atmosphere. In space, they were everywhere.

This is what makes all the other crap worthwhile,” the coxswain’s mate said.

“I don’t understand why they call it the Black,” Dana said softly.

“Depends on which way you’re looking,” Mutant said, enigmatically. “And now we get to work.”

He engaged standard cruise power, ninety gravities, and headed out into deep space.

“Once we are clear of the busy parts we will go through some evolutions,” CM Glass said. “We will run through some standard shipboard emergencies and you will respond to them, following all procedures and standards. If you pass this qual, you will be well on your way to being an engineer first class.”

“Yes, CM,” Dana said.

“And so we start,” Glass said as the lights and grav cut out. “Uh, Engineer, we seem to have a failure . . . ?”

* * *

For four hours, Glass had put Dana through hell. Most of the time there was neither light nor gravity. And whoever had built the failure tests was devilishly clever. Some of them would have been damned hard to find in a repair bay!

“The inertial system is up, CM,” Dana said, finally finding the “faulty” relay.

“Good,” Glass said. “We won’t be turned into glue when . . . ugh! Urk! Agh!”

He slumped over to the side theatrically.

“You noted that there is a large hole that is leaking volatiles from your coxswain’s head,” Glass said, pulling out a drink bulb filled with a red liquid and puncturing it. “He appears to have been hit by a micrometeor which had other issues . . .”

The air in the compartment started to pump down, the lights and power went out again, and Dana was left in microgravity. Then she noticed it wasn’t microgravity. The ship was starting to spin, causing a rather unpleasant centripetal effect. And the rate was increasing.

“That’s going to get everywhere, you know!” Dana said.

“I know,” Glass replied. “And you’re going to have to clean it up. I suggest a toothbrush.”

“Dammit,” she muttered. “Stupid coxswains always getting themselves killed.”

She first determined that she, in fact, had control power. But one of the maneuvering thrusters was set to full power and she couldn’t kill it from her engineer’s position.

Getting to the relay, with the ship spinning harder and harder, was a matter of clambering hand-over-hand across the flight compartment to the appropriate panel. She got the relay to shut down by the simple expedient of pulling it. Then she had to start working the other problems . . .

“CM Glass, all engineering issues rectified,” she said.

Glass was still slumped over to the side. He appeared to have fallen asleep.

“Uh . . . Coxswain?” Dana said.

“Your coxswain has bled out while you were fixing the ship,” Glass said. “It’s okay. With that head wound he was going to be a vegetable anyway. You are on your own. You noted in your repairs that the same micrometeorite that killed your coxswain also took out the navigation system and the hypernode. Paris, CM1 Glass Four-Three-Eight-Two.”

CM1 Glass Four-Three-Eight-Two, Paris.”

“Notional emergency in shuttle Two-Niner,” Glass said. “Repeat, notional. Hypernode and navigation inoperable. Coxswain terminated. Control transferred to EA Parker.”

Confirm notional emergency,” Paris responded. “Good luck, Parker.”

Parker was confused. With the hypercom out she couldn’t even call to ask Hartwell what she was supposed to do. She had done the engineering side, except for the “destroyed” hypercom. But she didn’t have any orders and couldn’t recall a procedure that fit.

“Am I supposed to fly back?” she asked.

“You’re talking to a dead man,” Glass said, sitting up. “What you do, now, is up to you entirely. You have a dead person and the bird.”

“Well, I could always discharge the dead weight,” Dana said. “Save some fuel.”

Try it, Danno.”

Dana finally realized that Glass just wasn’t going to give her any orders. She’d been following orders for so long she wasn’t used to making her own decisions.

“Okay,” she said, aloud. “Boat’s damaged. Coxswain dead. The only smart choice is to head to the nearest help. Which is . . .”

The navigational system wasn’t operating. She could probably tinker around the lock-out but that wasn’t what the test was looking for.

Troy, Troy,” she muttered. “Where is Troy?”

She had visual systems. But they had spent so much time under power that even the massive nine-kilometer space station had disappeared. Not only was it probably a dot, she wasn’t sure which direction it was from their current position. She’d been paying attention to engineering, not nav. All there was was deep space all around her.

“Oh . . . crap,” she muttered. Without nav she had no real idea where she was. “Okay, okay, I can figure this out . . .”

She oriented the ship towards the sun and started hunting. The gate stayed in a location between Earth and Mars, in line with Earth. It wasn’t actually in a stable orbit but it had gravitic controls to keep it in place. The gate was ten kilometers across but the ring was only a hundred meters wide. It might be hard to spot.

Troy was near the gate. Near, not at. It moved around due to the L point gravitational issues. If she could orient to the gate, she might be able to spot the space globe. If worse came to worst, she had enough fuel to make it to Earth. But she figured she’d probably get reamed out if she took the Myrm back to McKinley Base.

She found the sun. After a while she managed to find Earth. Line those two up and she’d be between Earth and the gate. Spin around.

But at their distance, the width of the sun left enough wiggle room that even by turning the ship around and orienting it carefully she still couldn’t spot Troy or the gate.

“Crap,” she muttered.

Now you know why they call it the Big Black,” Glass said. “Hartwell finally gave up on this one.”

“I know he doesn’t like the Black,” Dana said, glad the CM was at least willing to talk.

“I will give you exactly one hint,” Glass said. “You are looking the wrong way.”

“There are three hundred and sixty other degrees to look,” Dana said. “In plane and in vertical. That’s one hundred twenty-nine thousand six hundred degrees to search.”

“Didn’t say it was easy,” Glass replied.

Looking the wrong way. She had assumed when Glass headed out from the Troy he had headed towards Earth. But they had kept a more or less straight initial vector from the door. And the door was oriented away from the gate, “up” in the plane of ecliptic.

She oriented to the sun again then rotated the boat so that the sun was “up” from her position. Then she started scanning around.

It was the gate that she spotted first. The thin, high albedo, ring just leapt out. Then by searching around some more she finally spotted the Troy. It was so small it looked like a minor star. Without figuring out their initial vector she’d have been lost in space until their power ran out. Or she just gave up and headed to Earth.

She engaged power and started to head back at full cruise.

“Paris, Shuttle Two-Niner,” she said. “Declaring notional emergency.”

“Your hypernode is out,” Glass pointed out.

“At some point, my internals are going to get through,” Dana said. “If I recall the manual, at about six kilometers, but I’m willing to bet Paris has some ears out from Troy. And I’d really like to know where the SAPL beams are. They head in to Troy along this line, somewhere.”

“Discontinue test,” Glass said, grinning.

“Thank God,” Dana said, lifting her hands from her flight controls. “Your bird, Coxswain.”

Your bird, Engineer Apprentice,” Glass said. “Paris, Two-Niner.”

Two-Niner, Paris. Get your notional emergency under control?”

“All done,” Glass said. “Shuttle Two-Niner continues under control of EA Parker.”

Coxswain EA Parker, aye,” Paris said. “EA Parker will observe all traffic notices and lanes. Be aware of SAPL zone six thousand meters to your right. No major traffic in entry zone for one hour. Please decelerate to a maximum of one thousand kilometers per hour before entering close approach zone. Maximum velocity in entry, ninety kilometers per hour. Have a nice day.”

“Am I taking it all the way back to the dock?” Parker asked.

“That depends on if you ding it on the way.”

* * *

“Docking maneuver complete.” Dana sighed. Even with the automatic systems and the tractors, docking was always ticklish.

“Verify hard dock, Procedure Three-Six-Five-Four-Niner-Dash-Alpha,” Glass said.

“The engineer does that,” Dana said, looking over her shoulder.

“And you’re the EA,” Glass said.

Dana checked all her telltales and noted one red light.

“We’ve got an environmental light,” Dana said, frowning. “It’s . . . cabin pressure?”

“I’m going to give you a pass on this qual,” Glass said. “You did a great job on correcting all the crap I threw at you and at responding to the emergency. And you found your way back to the barn. But next time you might want to repressurize the cabin.”

* * *

“Watch quals complete,” EM1 Hartwell said. “Suit, eng and cox cross quals complete. Drill quals complete. I’m recommending EA Parker to EN, Chief.”

“Mutant?” the chief said, looking at Glass. “She’s completed them sort of fast. I hate to suggest . . . favoritism . . .”

“If you mean she has a cute ass, Chief, just say it,” Glass said. “And she does. But that’s not why she made quals so fast. Oh, maybe a bit but just because people were willing to spend more time with her, not let her slide. She’s pretty damned sharp. I held her back on cox quals ’cause she was doing well enough I wanted to see how far I could push her. I’d take her as a cox OJT any day. She’s just . . . good.”

* * *

“Parker,” Hartwell said, sticking his head into Twenty-Nine.

“EM?” Dana said. She was removing a balky grav plate that was part of the ISS. The things were not only heavy, they were just bulky. She was about to kill the internal grav to get the damned thing out.

“Go down to the BX and get your EN tabs,” Hartwell said. “Once they’re slapped on, I’m going to move you over to Thirty-Six.”

“Boomer,” Dana said. She got along well enough with the CM3. He was better than most at having his ass kicked by a guuurl at nullball. “Does that mean . . . ?”

“You’re full qualed,” Thermal said. “Don’t let it go to your head. You know some of the idiots we’ve got who are full qualed. But take some time getting your tabs. Maybe pick up some lunch at the food court. You’ve earned it.”

“What about the grav plate?” Dana asked.

“Leave it for AJ,” Hartwell said. “This isn’t your bird anymore.”

“Booyah!” Dana said when the EM was gone. “Hey! AJ!”


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Framed