The battle at the Moons of Hell

complete ass of himself, Michael’s brain came back online and he recovered his balance and composure, if not his dignity. He presented his thumb for DNA checking and his left eye for retinal scanning and then commed his orders to Bienefelt, marking his formal arrival onboard Space Fleet’s second youngest deepspace light scout, the name- challenged DLS-387.

Michael didn’t approve of warships not having names, but Space Fleet policy was unshakable. In its view, there were simply too many small ships-light scouts like 387, courier ships, and a multitude of small auxiliary support ships-to give each one a name. So numbers it was, something Michael had always thought depersonalized a ship. That was a pity. With its master AI, a ship was in a way a living thing and as such deserved better. Still, that was the way things were, and he’d never be able to change them.

“Thank you, sir. Welcome aboard. I’m Leading Spacer Bienefelt, and I’m in your division.” Bienefelt stuck out a hand the size of a plate and proceeded to crush Michael’s in a grip like a steel vise. Michael resolved on the spot not to argue with Bienefelt unless it was absolutely necessary. She was at least forty centimeters taller than he, maybe more, and probably a good 50 kilos heavier, to the point where she was as close to being declared a cyborg as any Worlder he’d ever seen; she’d make Karen Sutler look small. In fact, if she were any larger, she might be declared an illegal and expelled from the FedWorlds.

“Sir, the captain asked that you see him as soon as you came aboard; he’s in his cabin.”

Michael grimaced. He needed a shower. “What do you think, Leader? Time to change?”

“I think you’ll find that when the skipper says now, he generally means now, sir.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You have the ship schematics, sir?”

“I do, thanks, Leader. Can someone take my stuff to my cabin, please.” Michael gestured at the battered trunk and a couple of smaller bags, all of which had been unceremoniously dumped just outside 387’s open air lock by the baggage bot and containing everything that Space Fleet deemed necessary for the proper conduct of his duties.

“No worries, sir. Leave it with me. Karpov, you fucking worm.” Bienefelt turned to the young spacer standing slightly behind and to one side of the quartermaster’s desk, “Gear. Junior Lieutenant Helfort’s cabin. Now. You’ve got two minutes.”

Bienefelt turned back to Helfort. “I’ve commed the captain to let him know you are on your way. Anything else I can help you with, sir?”

“No thanks, Leader. It’s good to be aboard.”

“Good to have you, sir.”

Michael hoped she meant it.

And with that, Michael brought up the ship’s schematics on his neuronics, nominated the captain’s cabin as his destination, and set off through the massive doorway that opened from the drone deployment air lock into the brightly lit drone hangar deck. He paused a moment to catch his breath. Ahead of him, blackly menacing in their stealth coats of radio frequency and light absorbent material, sat two massive Mark 88-K surveillance drones, to the human eye just two bottomless holes. The nothingness was absolute, so completely did they absorb the light thrown at them.

Along the hangar walls, six smaller drones sat in two neat rows on the gray ceramsteel deck, three to a side. My babies, he thought, just the things to keep an assistant warfare officer busy. His neuronics pointed the way down through a small personnel hatch set in the deck to his right.

Michael dropped down the ladder onto 2 Deck, the upper accommodation level, and followed a passageway lined with the usual clutter of pipe work and cabling broken up every so often by damage control lockers, firefighting equipment, and all the other odds and ends that warships used passageways to store. Michael went forward for 10 meters or so before dropping down another hatch in spacer style, boots on the outside of the ladder, hands braking his fall at the very last minute, to thump onto 3 Deck. The ship’s main cross-passage, leaving the galley and the wardroom on the left and the combat information center on the right, finally brought him to the captain’s cabin at the far end. He hadn’t passed another soul. Not surprising, he thought, this early on a Sunday morning. He’d be in bed if he had the choice.

Michael stopped outside the closed door to straighten the rather rumpled clothes he’d been wearing since he had left home. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he knocked on the door.

“Yes, Helfort, come in.” The voice was incredibly deep, with rich warm overtones.

Should have been an opera singer, Michael thought irreverently as he stepped into his new captain’s cabin.

Twenty minutes later, any irreverence Michael might have felt toward Lieutenant Jean-Pierre Ribot, JP to his friends and captain-in-command of the Federated Worlds warship DLS-387, had evaporated in the face of a very detailed statement of what Ribot expected him to do to become a useful member of 387’s command team. And with the ship due out on patrol in forty-eight hours, the list of things he had to do before it departed seemed to be a million strong. But first things first.

After a badly needed shower, Michael changed into a dark gray one-piece ship suit marked only by his shoulder badges of rank, his name tag, and the deep purple starburst of the Federated Worlds on the left breast. The ship badge that belonged on his upper right arm would have to wait until he could find someone to issue him one from stores.

With the transition from crumpled space traveler to ship’s officer complete, he commed Mother. Her avatar was the pleasant face of a middle-aged woman, calm and unflappable and, like most Worlders, the color of milky coffee.

“Welcome aboard DLS-387, Junior Lieutenant Helfort.” It was a velvet voice, as calm and unflappable as her avatar.

“Thank you, Mother. Please call me Michael.”

“Certainly. Welcome aboard DLS-387, Michael.”

Michael smiled. An AI with a sense of humor?

“Mother, since it’s early and most of my division, not to mention my new boss, are away on weekend leave, I would like to get the ship knowledge and safety test out of the way first. Can you set up the guided tour for me? I’ll see if I can get it done this morning. I’ve been through the induction material and done the sims, but this is the first time in years that I’ve actually been in a light scout.”

“Stand by. Ship knowledge and safety induction tour set up. We’ll start on 4 Deck aft in propulsion and primary power. Please follow the arrows.” As Mother finished, Michael’s neuronics pointed the way to the nearest hatch and he set off.

Four hours later, Mother had taken Michael into every compartment, every corner, every recess of DLS-387, and there had been a hell of a lot of ship to see. She had taken him through every system onboard end to end, including, and this had been a particular thrill for Michael, the personnel and ship waste recycling system. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn that this particular AI definitely had a sense of humor. She had taken an awfully long time making sure he knew the full intricacies of a system that most were happy to leave to the engineers.

Finally, the induction tour over, Michael sat in his tiny cabin on 2 Deck, eyes half-closed as he successfully navigated his way through the ship knowledge and safety test before finishing up with the two mandatory damage control sims: first a catastrophic loss of hull pressure after a collision with a large meteorite and second a fire. Heart pounding and covered in sweat, Michael and his imaginary team, most of whom had to be directed more firmly than he was used to, finally had extinguished the fire that had threatened to engulf most of 3 Deck from its starting point in the galley.

He sat back to wait for his score.

Mother was not long, and she did not disappoint.

“Thank you for waiting, Michael. I’m happy to tell you that you have achieved a score of 98 percent, thereby passing the mandatory ship knowledge and safety test. I will update your personnel file accordingly and inform the captain, the executive officer, and Lieutenant Hosani.”

Michael breathed out with relief. While he had never been in any doubt-Michael was nothing if not good at passing tests after three years of Space College-it was still good to get this hurdle, the first of many, no doubt, out of the way. “Any idea when the XO and Lieutenant Hosani will be back onboard?”

“Yes, I’ve just gotten an update. They’ll both be on the up-shuttle from Anjaxx scheduled to arrive at 20:25