Suddenly the g force vanished, and once again the two men floated in their straps. There was a short pause, and then the car began to move, artificial gravity returning to drop Michael back into his seat again. Michael followed Baker’s lead as, without a word, he unstrapped and stood up.
The drop car’s doors opened to reveal yet another lobby hacked out of the rock. Three tunnels led off the lobby. Baker wasted no time before plunging into the center tunnel; he took off so fast that Michael had to run to catch up. Fifty meters down the tunnel, Baker stopped in front of a bench set up across the mouth of a room the size of a small warehouse and packed floor to ceiling with shelves loaded with orange plasfiber boxes; a sign proclaimed it to be the Personal Maneuvering Systems Workshop. Michael’s confusion was now absolute, so he stood there as Baker commed someone out of the back of the workshop.
A crusty old chief appeared, a smile on his face as he saw Baker.
“Hullo, sir. Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Some of us have to work for a living, Chief.”
“Well, sir, thank God I don’t,” the man replied cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
“Two units, please. Oh, I forgot.” He waved an arm at Michael. “Chief, this is Lieutenant Helfort. You’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
“Morning, Chief. Junior Lieutenant Helfort. Nice to meet you.” Michael shook hands across the counter.
“Oh, shit, damn, and blast,” Baker muttered, shaking his head. “Sorry, Michael. You’re improperly dressed.”
Michael looked puzzled. It was pretty hard to be improperly dressed in a shipsuit and boots. “Sir?”
“Yes. Improperly dressed. A lieutenant should not be wearing a junior lieutenant’s shoulder straps. Fleet Dress Regulations, chapter something or other.”
“What? I don’t. .” The penny dropped. “Aaah.”
“Yes, sorry. Effective today, you’re a lieutenant. Orders only arrived this morning. Should have told you but forgot. Congratulations and all that. Now, where were we?” Baker asked briskly.
“Two units?” the workshop chief asked sardonically.
“Ah, yes. That’ll do. Plus stick boots, of course.” Ten minutes later, the personal maneuvering unit heavy on his back and stick boots on his feet, an even more confused Michael followed Baker down the tunnel. He had no idea what they were doing. He had no idea why they were wearing personal maneuvering systems. He had no idea why he had been promoted to lieutenant two years early. All in all, the whole day was turning out to be a complete mystery.
“Good, we’re here,” Baker said.
They were in front of a plasglass security lock behind which lay a black and yellow striped door marked REPAIR FACILITY YANKEE. DOOR M-34. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in emphatic red letters.
“Now, Michael, I’m going to download a safety briefing. While you’re going through that, I’ll confirm that we can actually get in.”
“Sir.”
Michael got some answers as he watched the safety vid. Seemingly, behind the black and yellow striped door lay a single enormous space, brilliantly lit by wall-mounted light panels. Quite what the space was for, the briefing did not say. In the vid, it was empty except for a network of spidery bridges running in all directions. The briefing’s main purpose appeared to be telling him over and over again that unless authorized by a superior officer, he was to keep his stick boots on the bridges at all times. The rest of the brief was standard stuff for working in a zero-
One by one, with their identities confirmed by a skeptical security AI, Baker and Michael passed through the personnel lock.
“Ready?” Baker asked.
Michael could have screamed. Get on with it, he wanted to shout. The suspense was killing him, but he nodded.
Baker commed the door open. It slid back silently. Michael blinked in the wave of harsh white light that flooded out. He followed Baker out onto one of the bridges, the artgrav disappearing as soon as he left the lock. As he looked down, his stomach lurched. They were hanging a good two hundred meters or more above the floor. For a moment, what he saw did not make any sense.
Then it did.
The space was vast, easily big enough to hold five heavy cruisers in a line with room to spare, the massive shapes sitting in cradles anchored to the floor and ceiling. Michael looked closely. The ships showed signs of massive radiation damage, with huge patches of their armor stripped away, in some cases down to the titanium inner hull. There were orange-strobed spacers and small workbots everywhere, maneuvering units spitting thin white spikes of compressed nitrogen as they wheeled and danced around the ships in an elaborately choreographed ballet. There were heavy bots on the move, too: salvagers, transporters, welders, cutters, hydraulic rammers, and more. Their escorts of safety bots were clearing the way through the endlessly shifting fireflies that infested the place.
Ah, Michael thought. Now he understood. It was a repair facility. No, hang on, that was not right. No repair facility ever had such strict security. After all, the fact that the Federation was fixing its battle-damaged heavy cruisers was hardly the state secret of all time, and why was the facility right at the heart of Comdur? Getting ships the size of heavy cruisers down Comdur’s gravity well, small as it was, would take some doing.
So what was going on here?
“Well, Michael. What do you think?” Baker asked.
“Impressive, sir,” Michael replied guardedly. “Impressive. But it’s not just another repair facility, is it?”
“Smart man,” Baker said approvingly. “No, it’s not just another repair facility.” He paused for a second. “No, Michael. What you are looking at is your next command,” he said, waving his arm across the heavy cruisers.
Michael stared at him, mouth open. His next command? What in God’s name was the man talking about?
“You got to be kidding, sir!” Michael protested. “A cruiser captain? That’s a four-ringer’s job. Even if it is to be my job, I haven’t got the exper-”
“Stop!” Baker ordered firmly. “Let me tell you something, Michael. You’re here because you’re the right person for the job. That’s my opinion. It’s also the boss’s opinion and one arrived at after a great deal of thought. So let’s go and meet her, and she can put you out of your misery. Now, where is the woman?” Baker asked himself. “Ah, yes. She’s inside the
“Sir?”
“Please do not crash into anything.”
“Sir!” Michael did his best to sound hurt. “As if!”
“Hmmphh,” was Baker’s only comment. He unstuck his boots and pushed himself into space clear of the walkway. With casual competence, his backpack maneuvering unit spitting spikes of nitrogen, Baker spun on the spot and stopped dead; with easy grace, he accelerated away across the void, directly toward the center of the line of heavy cruisers. Michael was impressed. Baker needed only the briefest of brief jets of ice-cold nitrogen to nudge him back on vector.
With a deep gulp, Michael followed; he tried hard not to look down. When he was more or less lined up, he accelerated after Baker, his trajectory degenerating in seconds into an erratically three-dimensional corkscrew. It was not easy. No, it was bloody well impossible. He’d only worked in zero g wearing a combat space suit complete with life-support and maneuvering systems. Everything was different, and not surprisingly, the result was a mess. He was too light, his center of mass was all wrong, and, not surprisingly, the results were not good to look at. He got there in the end, though it was more a controlled crash than a carefully executed landing as he thumped into the
Acutely aware that every spacer with nothing better to do must be enjoying the show he was putting on, he bounced heavily off the
“God above, Michael. What a performance!” Baker called cheerfully.
