Chapter 19
“Do not delude yourself with your talk of universal peace. As you read these words, your body slaughters thousands…your immune system continually mocks your pretension.”
Legacy Mandate by Emperor Yung I
Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith made her way through the companionway to the Weapons section. Since her previous weapons experience only included floats in system pickets and cutters, the meager armaments of Tanager still represented the most awesome hardware ever under her control. The internal magazine of 64-gauge missiles to her left and right, the 32-gauge up forward, the antique loading armatures, the even-more-antique glasscaster munitions—these all filled her with a deep awe.
She passed a graceful hand over the smooth column of a glasscaster round, then stopped. She bent at the waist, staring at the loading armature links.
“Chief!” Pennysmith called out, standing upright. After a moment an improbable hatch clattered open from the side of one of the loading trays, and the short-cropped gray hair of Chief Sandi Patel thrust out. The head pivoted about until her glaring expression faced Pennysmith. Chief Patel’s face wore a map of creases that seemed ironed in, and the eye patch over one socket completed her grim front. Tilly figured that the eye patch surely must be some sort of affectation, but Chief Patel’s foul temper seemed entirely genuine.
“Lieutenant,” Chief Patel growled before levering herself out of the load tray’s bowels. Now on the level deck, her arms crossed, Chief Patel said, “What can we do for you?”
“This loading armature,” Pennysmith pointed, “is dry.”
Chief Patel barely glanced. “So it is.”
“I seem to recall that all loading armatures were inspected and lubricated,” Pennysmith said. “You signed off on those inspections yourself.”
Chief Patel just stared at Pennysmith, her lone, dark eye unblinking. “My, my, Lieutenant, you are so very attentive to your duties.”
The shaved head of a young rating emerged from the open hatch of the load tray. He clambered out, looking uncertainly from Pennysmith to Patel. Pennysmith wondered if the chief and this rating might be an unlikely romantic couple, then noted the interior of the load trays did not appear on the ship UI wireframe. An improbable, indistinct hatch led to a concealed space. How much space was in there, out of the eyes and ears of the ship Intelligence? She turned her focus back to the territorial department chief.
“Chief, if we engaged in action now—right this moment—would these munitions cycle into the hardpoint weapons? Or, as I suspect, would dry links seize up?”
Chief Patel waved the young rating off and watched as he left the compartment. She turned back to Lieutenant Pennysmith. “Do you know how many times these popguns have been fired in action in the last century, Lieutenant?”
“No, Chief. But that does not answer the question, does it?”
“Instead of making a grease trap, with lubricant mucking up my section, we juice it all up as soon as live-fire drills are called. Make all shipshape. See, Lieutenant?”
“I see.” One day into their cruise, and Tilly Pennysmith needed the support of her weapons chief, and this conversation formed the foundation of all that would follow. “In peacetime that might answer well enough, Chief, but it isn’t peacetime.”
Chief Patel’s mouth twisted. “So I take it you’ll be looking over my shoulder with war as your excuse, eh, Lieutenant?”
“The captain,” Pennysmith quickly began, immediately hating herself for leaning on the upstream bogeyman, “is very exacting.”
Chief Patel smiled, her one eye narrowing to a mere slit, and Tilly Pennysmith suddenly felt her authority slipping from her fingers as Patel leaned closer. “Don’t you worry, now. We’ve handled harder horses than his lordship, and we’ll settle him soon enough.”
Pennysmith realized too late that Sandi Patel knew every game of the Fleet authority shuffle and could play a perfect hand of “Confederated Departments vs. the Tyrant” on any ship. That patting hand on Pennysmith’s arm was a familiarity she should have blasted, the conspiratorial smile a betrayal. It was, it seemed, a positive joy for her.
Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith fled the Weapons section nauseated, needing a shower, or to vomit, or both.
In the wake of the lieutenant’s flight, Chief Patel stood thoughtfully tapping her teeth with the nail of her index finger. Rawlings, the shaved-headed rating, stepped hesitantly into the compartment. “Chief, what’d she gripe—”
Patel jerked a silencing hand. “Let’s check the load tray again.”
Rawlings smiled and opened the inconvenient hatch. “Oh yeah. It probably needs checking alright.”
Patel rolled her eye but followed Rawlings into the tight quarters of the load tray.
All Fleet ships held spaces where the ship Intelligence possessed few sensors. The load trays carried projectile ammunition on rails from the internal magazines up to the ship’s external hardpoints. At the junction of the four trays a void opened, allowing maintenance access and manual operation of the loaders. It incidentally provided enough space for all manner of activity out of sight from the ship Intelligence. Loki only operated sensors in various components of the load apparatus rather than audio or vidstream feeds within the load tray confines.
Safely within the tight quarters, the hatch dogged shut, Rawlings tried again. “What’s her gripe, then?”
Sandi Patel shook her head. “Trying her wings, pet. Not to worry. I’ve met her sort every float since forever.”
“You said we’d have the run. You said officers keep outta the grime.”
Sandi Patel patted Rawlings’s face gently twice, the third a slap. “I said it’s no worry. Hear me? Try her wings too far and I’ll clip ’em.”
Rawlings put a hand to his stinging cheek and pulled back. “She said something about war, though. You haven’t been to war, I know you haven’t.”
“Here’s what you need to know about war, Rawlings, duck: war’s a time when credits flow and fortunes are made. There’s a mid, back in the day, made enough in one wartime float to buy a mansion. In one float, you hear?”
Rawlings took his hand from his cheek and nodded, although he held only the vaguest idea how mislabeling and pilfering a bagful of components from their section could equal any sort of mansion.
“Okay, Chief.” He reached under the cartridge rails and patted the concealed lump of looted componentry. “You sure this’ll be alright?”
“The only worry you got, pet, is me, you hear?”
Rawlings slumped. “Yes, Chief.”