Citadel Page 5

  "Brother and sister-in-law," the chief said. "Two nieces and a nephew. Mother. Father was already dead. Chicago."

  "Yes, Chief," Dana said.

  "How old?" the chief said. "Never mind, I can count. Where'd you grow up?"

  "Indiana, Chief," Dana said. "Middle of no-where Indiana. Place called Tangier."

  "Best place to be," the chief said. "You handling it?"

  "Haven't you heard?" Dana said, as lightly as she could. "PTSD is the new normal. Something like eighty percent of the U.S. has lost someone close to them. Fifty-three percent have had direct experience of a Horvath attack. And that doesn't begin to touch the whole Johannsen thing. The strange part about being in Tangier was that I was weird. I was the only person in my school who had been in a target city. They... didn't get it."

  "Bitter much?" the chief said.

  "Sorry, Chief," Dana said.

  "I actually understand what you're talking about," the chief said. "You're not old enough to know ancient history like the Cole bombing. So I won't go into it, and compared to what's happened since, it's a minor blip. But I know about being the only person around who has nightmares."

  "Roger, Chief," Dana said, setting the suit down. Now for the neck ring seals on the helmet.

  "These are brand new," the chief said, picking up the gloves and inspecting them. "And the fabber here doesn't seem to have the problems of the ship fabber in Wolf. They're generally perfect right off the line. But you need to make sure the seal material is on solidly."

  "Roger, Chief," Dana said, suddenly panicking. She was pretty sure she'd checked the seal material.

  "You checked," the chief said, looking up. "I watched. And I'm double-checking."

  "Thank you, Chief," Dana said.

  —|—

  "That was a pretty good job," Chief Barnett said when Dana was done with her inspection. "You know the parts and functions. You did a good, quality, detailed inspection. Technically, I could sign you off on parts and functions and inspection right here. Which is amazing considering most of the nitwits we've been getting. But I expect that, 'cause you're a split. Especially since this Johannsen's shit, we've got twice as much to prove as ever."

  "Yes, Chief," Dana said, not sure what else to say.

  "And I'm not going to sign you off," the chief said, picking up the gloves again. "Because what I'm about to teach you ain't in the book. Yet. It's how to really inspect your suit. By the numbers, to the task and standard we ought to be requiring. Pick up the other glove."

  "Yes, Chief," Dana said.

  "Place glove in left hand, palm up," the chief said, demonstrating.

  "Glove in left hand, palm up, aye," Dana said.

  "Run the index finger of your right hand down the inner thumb of the glove, checking for any burrs, irregularities or cuts," the chief said.

  "Run index finger of right hand down inner thumb of glove, checking for burrs, irregularities or cuts, aye..."

  The standard for donning a full suit was thirty-five seconds, about the maximum time a person could hold out in absolute vacuum. The initial "evolution" took nearly thirty minutes and by the end Dana was sweating in her suit and wondering if she really wanted to be in the Navy.

  The new chief who had gone Dutchman in the main bay may have had some issues with attention to detail. Chief Barnett did not. Chief Barnett probably had a task, condition and standard for going to the head.

  "And now you're a fine junior space eagle," Chief Barnett said. "As soon as you learn to do that in thirty seconds."

  "Roger, Chief," Dana said, her voice muffled by the bubble helmet.

  "I've placed the inspection document in your mailbox," the chief said. "Use it. If you can demonstrate that you can perform the task, condition and standard, I'll check you off on inspection and parts. Check back with me in a week."

  "Check back in a week, aye, Chief."

  "And now you're ready to see your boat."

  —|—

  "I am going to do this with gloves and helmet off," Hartwell said, cycling the lock marked 142/C Bay. "Because I'm qualed to get them on if there's a problem. You're going to have to stay in the suit, buttoned up."

  "Roger, EM," Dana said.

  The "leopard" suits were not the Michelin-man suits of yore but a marvel of modern technology impossible without Glatun support.

  Made of extremely thin layers, they wore like a wet-skin rather than a puffy NASA suit. Normally that would mean that, due to vacuum dilation, the user would be stuck in a starfish configuration. Vacuum "sucked" on a person in a space suit and they tended to end up in a spread-eagle. The suits got around that by being, in effect, very low-powered armor. The inner layer was an Earth-tech material that was used in high-end wetsuits. It was slick enough to slide on easily over bare skin, making it possible to don the suits rapidly. The next layer was a complex of heat transfer tubes that looked not unlike the human capillary system. That permitted the wearer to maintain temperature control in the varied conditions of space. It also absorbed transpired CO2 and other gases from the skin and carried back O2 to prevent degradation.

  The next layer was a thin layer of woven carbon nanotube. Beyond that was the Glatun "autoflex" material. Essentially, it magnified the movements of the user just enough to overcome the suction aspects of vacuum. It couldn't be powered up, much, but it was enough to overcome the problem of moving in space.

  Over that were two more layers of carbon nanotube to prevent damage to the suit. They also were so finely woven, no volatiles like, say, blood and oxygen, escaped.

  A wonder of modern technology and Dana was already starting to loathe it.

  "Oh, yeah," Hartwell said as the inner door cycled. "Micrograv."

  "Roger, EM," Dana said as the yellow micrograv light started flashing.

  The lock was in gravity. Hartwell reached into the corridor and grabbed a bar, pulling himself up and into micrograv.

  "Be careful," Hartwell said, going slowly hand-over-hand down the corridor. "Don't overexert. The shuttles are in grav but they're configured all over the place so they left the corridor in micro."

  "Roger," Dana said, reaching up and, barely, getting a hand on the bar. But by just pulling forward out of the lock she was able to enter micrograv without much effort. And immediately found herself going out-of-control as the momentum more or less threw her into the corridor. She bounced off the bulkhead and had to make a quick snatch for another bar. Fortunately, all the bulkheads were lined with them like four sets of monkeybars. She still bruised the heck out of her thigh.

  "Like I said, don't overexert," Hartwell said. "You okay?"

  "All good, EM," Dana said, slowly moving around so she could orient in the direction of travel. She had had one familiarization flight in a shuttle in micro.

  "Follow me," Hartwell said, pulling himself down the corridor.

  He stopped at an air lock marked 40.

  "Flight C, Division One, Twenty-Nine," Hartwell said, checking the air lock then cycling it.

  "Roger, EM," Dana said, following him through the double hatches.

  She'd spent dozens of hours in the Myrmidon mock-up at A School but to be in her Myrm was a shock. It was another of several shocks she'd had since signing up. The creeping realization that she was in the Navy. It wasn't just some strange dream or daydream. This was her shuttle. Well, hers and AJ's. She was responsible for the six hundred and eighty-seven thousand moving parts, electrical parts or electronic boxes that required checks and maintenance.

  It was enough of a shock she nearly floated out into gravity.

  "Whoa, space eagle," Hartwell said, pushing her back into micro. "Grab the bar."

  Dana grabbed the safety bar and swung herself down into gravity with much more grace than she'd demonstrated going into micro. Her earlier screw-up was humiliating on several levels since she considered herself something of a gymnast.

  The interior of the cargo bay of the Myrm wasn't much to look at. Six gray steel bulkheads—two point three met
ers high, four wide—most of them covered in access patches and latch points. At the rear was a hatch to the guidance section. In flight, that was her normal station, manning the engineering and EW position.

  "What do you think?" Hartwell asked.

  "It looks brand new," Dana said.

  "It is," Hartwell said. "It's straight from the Granadica Yard in Wolf 359. You have permission to temporarily undog your helmet. Because it also smells brand new. And it's never going to smell quite the same again."

  Dana carefully undogged her helmet and took a sniff. The EM was right, it did smell brand new. Not like a new car, just... new. Steel and oils with a touch of ozone. But... new.

  "Don't get used to that smell," Hartwell said. "Because in short order it's going to smell like stinky jarheads. And all the other crap we haul. There's no way to fully turn over the atmosphere and it just... builds up. The recyclers never quite clean it out. I thought about stiefing it, but I'm just getting all the crap that's wrong with Thirty-Three done and I didn't want to do that again."

  "EM?" Dana said.

  "It's like a new car, isn't it?" Hartwell said. "A new car from an entirely new line. There's stuff that's just not right. So far, none of it has been absolutely critical, but most of our birds are deadlined about half the time. Most of it's warranty work, but Apollo is so backed up, we're handling it. And none of it's consistent. No, I take that back. Watch your port, lower, grav grapnel. For some reason those seem to be about half bad. AJ! Yo! Jablonski! Jablonski."

  "I heard you," a voice commed back. "Micro in three... two... one..."

  A couple of seconds after the power cut off, a suited but unhelmeted engineer came floating out of the flight compartment towing a large capacitor.

  "The Six-One-Eight is out," Jablonski said, lifting his chin to point at Dana. "What's up?"

  "This is your new EA," Hartwell said.

  "You're sticking me with a FUN?" Jablonski said sourly. The EN was as tall as Hartwell but seemed to be slender from what she could tell in the suit. "What the hell did I do to you?"

  "I'm not," Hartwell said. "The Old Man stuck you with a FUN. Which brings me to the FUN's first mission."

  "Yes, EM?" Dana said.

  "You need to do the thirty day, ninety day and six month PM on this bird," Hartwell said. "That catches most of the major faults. Jablonski will supervise your checks and sign off on your quals on this analysis."

  "Thirty day, ninety day and six month PM, aye, EM," Dana said, trying not to curse. That was going to take forever. But it sure would get her used to the bird.

  "I'm going to have to be checking on Jablonski's sign-off," Hartwell said. "I'll be either in the Division Bay or Thirty-Three or... well, here. You have the manuals on your plant?"

  "Yes, EM," Dana said.

  "Dog your helmet and get to work."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "Yo, Behanchod, you got the cut done, yet?" BFM commed.

  Butch figured the company got the name of his job wrong. He wasn't an optical welding technician. That implied he occasionally joined two pieces of metal together. So far all he'd been was an optical cutting technician.

  Robots did most of the actual welding. Putting things together, the way Apollo did it, was dead simple. Most of the parts were pre-fabbed on Earth and generally went together like Legos. He hadn't been part of the crew that did the life-station on Troy but he'd heard enough about it. There were sixty different massive pieces that had fit in the plug cut out of the Troy like a three dimensional puzzle. But it was a puzzle the robots had in their guts and so no problem.

  Almost no problem. The plans were never perfect and when it got to putting stuff together there were always problems. Sometimes a part needed to be joined that wasn't on the plans. More often, some joker on Earth had left a bit too much steel here or there. The stuff on Earth was supposed to be all robots, too. But Butch had seen enough of how dumb ass robots could be to not be too impressed.

  Point was, when something like that happened and it wasn't too big, it was generally easier to get a "sophont" with a laser rig to come over and cut the bit off. Chop here, chop there, stuff fit together.

  When it was too big for a human to cut, they brought in the SAPL and everybody ran for cover.

  "Just done, Mr. Price," Butch said. He could ignore his handle at this point. Despite the fact that that bastard Monaghan had been right and the crews had zeroed in on his sisters the first week. Then Gursy found the perfect handle to piss him off.

  And they pushed. He'd had little mutilated Barbie dolls left in his locker, his personal stuff messed with. They'd found pictures of his sisters on the Internet, Susie and Maricela had both ended up in the hometown newspaper a couple of times, and done really ugly things with them. Just about everything but his suit messed with. The rules on that one were absolute. It was an automatic, do not pass go, firing offense to "molest, disturb, change, modify, add to or in any other way bother the personal safety system of another employee."

  Gursy was the worst. The rest of the guys seemed to do it for the reasons Mr. Monaghan had talked about. But Gursy was just a bully. Butch was pretty sure it was Gursy who had put the girls' pictures in his locker with... stuff on 'em.

  Well, Gursy had his "issues," too. And the rules said you couldn't futz with a guy's suit. They never said nothing about a sled. Butch had checked real carefully.

  Most of the welding wasn't done in suits. Butch had been on the Troy for a month and he'd spent maybe four hours, other than "familiarization," in his suit. Most of the time he worked in a laser sled. The lasers they used were powered by an annie plant and an emitter, not the SAPL. So they had to have something to tow the laser around with. The laser sled was like a little mini space ship with arms, called waldoes for some reason, that you controlled from the inside. Some of the control you did with your plants. Most of it was using your hands to manipulate the waldoes.

  Two of the waldoes were laser heads, one a low-power and the other high. There were four more "grip arms" that could go in just about any direction and amplify the strength of the user. Overall, the sleds looked sort of like an octopus. With, and this was important, a crystal porthole on the front.

  "Move down to lever Two," Price said. "They're putting in a power plant and figure it's going to have something needs done the fracking bots can't figure out."

  "Right away, Mr. Price," Butch said, turning his sled around and heading towards the big "lever" horns that punched up into the main bay of the Troy.

  "Who the frack?" a voice screamed over the open channel. "God damn joking bastards! This is a safety violation! Get it off! Get it OFF!"

  Butch tried not to giggle as he headed down to lever Two and somebody else had to pull off the plastic spider taped to Gursy's porthole.

  —|—

  "Somebody has been a bad boy," Dracula said, rolling into his bunk and turning on the TV.

  "Really?" Butch said, trying not to sound too interested. "What happened?"

  Dracula, AKA Drac, AKA Vladimir Anthony DeRosa was also a probie but he'd made it past the "hard" probation period. He only had a couple more months and he'd make full tech. He was also Butch's roommate and a ready source of the sort of gossip that wasn't shared with an absolute FNG.

  "Somebody, and Gursy is steaming mad to try to find out who, taped a spider to his porthole," Drac said. "He's also filed an official safety complaint."

  "I'm so sorry to hear that," Butch said.

  "What I can't figure out is how they did it," Drac said. "Somebody would have to go out in a suit, or a sled, and tape it there."

  "Unless, and this is just a guess," Butch said. "Somebody noticed that Gursy always uses the sled parked at slot Three. Then, if somebody was an evil bastard, all they had to do was put the spider on their sled and park it at Three."

  "In which case, when Gursy finds out the last guy to use the sled, he's going to be making a formal complaint," Drac said.

  "That assumes that the last guy to use the sled kn
ew the spider was there," Butch said.

  "How could you miss a spider on your porthole?" Drac asked.

  "Well if, and this is just thinking you understand," Butch said. "If you knew that the guy using the sled was going to go back to three because Gursy was out and three is the closest to the entrance that didn't have a sled, and you knew that he was only going to be gone for less time than Gursy, somebody, and I've got no idea who, could tape the spider in place above the porthole on a bit of monofilament and space tape and hold it in place with regular scotch tape. The scotch tape was going to last long enough for somebody like, oh, BFM, to go out and back and never notice the spider 'cause it was way up over where he could see without doing a full exterior. And it might be particularly hard to spot sin... if it was up under the Number Four Arm. Just a guess."

  "Damn," Drac said. "That's... complicated. Whoever thought that one up was a genius. But... BFM?" He chuckled at that and then guffawed.

  The team lead was a regular and serious practical joker. But whereas Gursy's jokes were never very funny, BFM's were hilarious. It had just the right touch to be a Price. Complicated, hard to prove...

  "Gursy is going to try to pin this on Price," Drac said. "Which means making an official safety complaint."

  "Read the regs," Butch said. "Strangely enough, futzing with a suit is covered but not a sled. The spider could have been in the sled, and it wouldn't have been a safety violation. Not officially."

  "I see a new reg being written," Drac said. "And since you're a temp probie..."

  "I had nothing to do with it," Butch said. "What temp probie could possibly have come up with something that crazy?"

  —|—

  "First, I didn't do it," Ben "BFM" Price said, holding up his hands. "Second, it's not a safety violation."

  The team lead was simply huge, six-eight with a big bear gut, a beard that hung to his chest and a mass of shaggy hair. He looked like a black-haired Bigfoot.

  "It was messing with my suit," Carter Gursy said. Gursy was much shorter but with the same general shape and just about as hairy. Except on top where he was pretty much bald. "That's a firing offense. And you were the last person to use it, Price!"