The Middle of Nowhere Read online

  Korie spoke with great care. “Admiral O’Hara, do you know something? I have a very bad habit. I talk too much.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not sure you can trust me to keep my mouth shut. I mean, suppose I got drunk some night and started mumbling things I’ve heard. Or what if I hired a bed-warmer and started talking in my sleep. That’s not safe either. But if I were off in space somewhere, I wouldn’t have the same opportunities to endanger security, would I? It’d probably be a lot more discreet for both of us if you minimized my opportunities to . . . gossip.”

  “I’m an old woman, Commander. Spell it out for me.”

  “You trusted me with Double-Red information. You didn’t ask if I could be trusted before you told me how you sacrificed the Burke. Well, maybe I can’t be trusted. What do you think?” He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “I don’t think you want the heirs knowing the crew of the Burke was sacrificed. In fact, I don’t think you want anyone knowing that the Admiralty is making those kinds of decisions. Certainly not your ship commanders.”

  “You can’t blackmail me, Commander.”

  “You think not?”

  “For one thing, no one will believe you. You have no credibility. You have no proof.”

  “You’re right. But you’ll still have to take action against me, won’t you? And the more severe the action you take, the more credibility you’ll give my story. And even if you don’t do anything at all, I can still do irreparable harm to your credibility—especially among your superiors who will know I’m telling the truth. Your career will be as dead as mine. We can retire together.”

  Surprisingly, O’Hara smiled. She sat back again. “I admire your bravado, Commander—it’s a useful strength. But I didn’t get to this side of the desk by accident, Jon. Remember rule number one? Youth and enthusiasm will never be a match for age and experience. Not to mention an occasional bit of treachery.”

  “I’m learning about the treachery part,” Korie said. And then he realized something. She hadn’t buckled, but neither had she confronted his challenge. Korie regarded her dispassionately. She stared back at him. The moment stretched out painfully as each tried to gauge the other’s intentions. Korie wondered if he should say anything else. He knew the admiral believed he was crazy enough to do exactly what he’d threatened. He was counting on that.

  “Call the bluff, ma’am?”

  Vice Admiral O’Hara stood up abruptly. She put her hands on the desk and leaned slightly forward; Korie suddenly realized how she’d gotten her nickname, “The Steel Grandma.” She looked down at him like a force of nature. “You are one royal pain in the ass, Commander Korie,” she said. “And I have some real problems to deal with that you know nothing about. I’ve got to move a hundred ships out of here in the next ten days. You’re to stand by your ship and make appropriate spare parts available to any ship commander who requests them.” She slid his insignias toward him. “You’ve made your point. Now put your buttons back on.”

  Korie stood up to face her on her own level. “Keep ’em,” he said. “I’m going to detox my ship. In ten days we’ll be ready to rejoin the fleet. I’ll come back when you have a pair of stars for me.” He met her gaze without fear and waited for her rebuke, but instead she merely looked at her watch and sighed.

  “Commander Korie, I have neither the time nor the patience for this. I’m going to assume that you’re speaking out of frustration and stress. So I’m going to pretend that I went deaf today and that I haven’t heard a thing you’ve said. In that, I am being extraordinarily generous. You may even consider this the acknowledgment that you’re asking for. Take it to heart, because when my hearing returns, I expect you to be more... appropriate.”

  Korie returned her gaze stonily. He refused to acknowledge her comments with either word or gesture.

  “And, Jon—”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You’re wrong about something. I don’t dislike you. I understand you better than you think. Don’t do anything irrevocable. My office door will be open to you for the next ten days. After that, well... I’ll proceed with whatever actions are suitable to the situation.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded.

  A chance? Maybe. She hadn’t said yes, she hadn’t said no. She hadn’t said anything at all. Suitable to the situation. That could mean anything.

  He had to assume that she was giving him an opportunity to prove his point. It was a very small loophole indeed, but it was better than nothing. He gave her an impeccable salute, turned sharply about, and exited the way he’d come.

  Vice Admiral O’Hara glanced down. Korie’s insignia lay unretrieved on her desk. Still wondering if she was doing the right thing, she shook her head and swept them into a drawer.

  Leen

  Chief Engineer Leen glowered up into the Alpha-spar optical-calibration G3 assembly tube with a ferocious scowl, as if by sheer will alone he could force the unit into alignment. He stood on the catwalk above the spherical singularity containment—with Cappy, MacHeath, and Gatineau standing by—and considered the possibility of dropping the whole unit directly down into the singularity and starting from scratch.

  Faster-than-light travel depends upon the creation of a condition of hyperstate. The condition of hyperstate only occurs in the presence of a triangular singularity inversion. A triangular singularity inversion requires the application of three separate fluxor displacements on a pinpoint singularity. The fluxor displacements all have to occur in the exact same instant; they have to be precisely in phase, and they have to be delivered along separate vectors precisely 120 degrees apart. To insure accurate calibration, each fluctuator is housed in a spar of foamed poly-titanium nitro-carbonate ceramic, projecting away from the main fuselage of the vessel and held in alignment by magnetic tension adjustors throughout its length. The alignment of the spar is triply calibrated with multiple high-cycle U-maser beams reflecting off of special redirection plates at the end of the spar. The holographic image of the redirection plates is continually deconstructed for calibrating the moment-to-moment alignment of the fluxor displacements. The resultant pattern of quantum embolisms is compensated for by counterbalancing the attack velocities of the phasecoherent gravitational hammers in the fluctuator rods.

  With ultrahigh-cycle maser beams and compensators in place, more precise calibration of the hyperstate field is possible, and significantly greater FTL velocities can be realized. With less precise calibration, the starship is limited to only the lowest range of FTL speeds. With imprecise calibration, the starship is not capable of any FTL velocity at all; instead, it is much more likely to shift the state of its existence from solid matter to glowing plasma, plus a few stray tachyons to alert passersby of the event.

  Paradoxically, the construction of a hyperstate fluctuator is actually a very simple matter. Any college student could build one with off-the-shelf parts, and quite a few had. However, the precision tolerances necessary to actually realizing a condition of mutable hyperstate is another matter altogether. The fluctuators have to be targeted on a location in space less than a micron in diameter. The event horizon of the artificial singularity is considerably smaller than that; although it isn’t measurable by any standard technology—you can’t reflect energy off a black hole of any size—but judging by the mass displacement of the singularity, the event horizon can be calculated to submicronic resolution.

  For hyperstate to be achieved, the pinpoint presence of the singularity has to be held in the precise center of the fluctuator targeting field. Aboard the Star Wolf, this was accomplished with concentric, multiply redundant, gravitational reflectors held in the large spherical containment that dominated the ship’s engine room. The containment served as a perfect tension-field, simultaneously pushing and pulling at its own center in a self-maintained state of intense but rigorous balance.

  Beyond the containment, however, the maintenance of micronic precision across the entire length of the fluctuator spars, with
all the tensions and strains they routinely experienced, became a matter of escalating difficulty—especially as the ship grew older and its structure became more fatigued.

  Some ship designers depended on heavy, rigid frameworks for the singularity and the fluctuator spars. The greater mass provided greater security, but also required greater power and heavier singularities, with all the increased complexity that implied. Other designers used complex sets of self-adjusting cables, to maintain constant tension and linearity throughout the vessel as if each ship were its own self-contained suspension bridge. Liberty ships like the Star Wolf were built along these lines; they were small, fast, cheap, and often extremely fussy to maintain. It was sometimes said that saints aspired to have the patience of a liberty ship chief engineer. But then, few saints had ever met Chief Engineer Leen.

  Leen was a stocky man; he had a fuzzy ring of graying hair circling the shiny spot in the center of his skull; and his skin had a dark leathery sheen that hinted of an exotic and possibly ferocious ancestry. At the moment he was more ferocious than usual. This was the seventh time he had reconstructed the Alpha-spar optical-calibration G3 assembly tube, and this was the seventh time it had failed to accurately align itself. Both the G1 and G2 assembly tubes had snapped into place with satisfying precision. Those units were identical to this one. A minimum of three G-matrix assembly tubes were necessary in each spar to guarantee alignment of the fluctuator. Theoretically, a ship could run with two—or even one—G-matrix calibration unit, but it was not something that Chief Leen ever wanted to try. He had no desire to experience hyperstatic molecular deconstruction from the inside.

  He muttered a paint-blistering oath, then turned to the three members of the Black Hole Gang standing beside him; Cappy, MacHeath, and the new kid, Gatineau. Gatineau was the one whose T-shirt did not fit snugly. He still had space burns on his face and arms, and his eyes were terribly bloodshot, but he wore an eager expression, as if he was determined to prove that he was a survivor, not a victim.

  “All right,” Leen said to Cappy. “Break it down. Try again.”

  Gatineau was already reaching for the toolbox. “I know how to do it,” he said. “Let me. I was in the second highest rated squad. I’ll bet it’s the codex chip. We had a krypton misalignment once and the codex couldn’t synchronize.”

  “Thanks for sharing that,” Leen said dryly. Codex alignments were always the first things a chief engineer checked. “MacHeath, take it down; run the reliability suite again. And just to make junior happy, let him watch when you test the codex. By the book. Triple-check everything. Use HARLIE as a monitor.”

  MacHeath’s easygoing expression curdled instantly. He was a big man; his physical bulk was an intimidating presence. “Aww, come on, Chief. I’m not a baby-sitter,” he groaned.

  “Hey!” Gatineau scowled up at him. “I know what I’m doing.” But the boy’s voice was a little too high and his tone was a little too shrill to be totally convincing. “If it’s not a codex alignment, then it’s got to be a krypton displacement. Any good quantum mechanic knows that—”

  MacHeath looked like he wanted to spit. Cappy rolled his eyes upward. Leen merely closed his eyes for a moment, as if to test a personal belief that things he couldn’t see didn’t really exist; but when he opened his eyes again, Gatineau was still there. The theory was wrong.

  Gatineau didn’t notice either of their reactions. He was still talking semiknowledgeably about particle decelerators, fluxor hammers, and Suford-Lewis modules. “See?” he demanded. “I know the difference between an assimulator and an elbow field.”

  “Right,” said MacHeath. He looked grimly at Gatineau. “Do you know what’s blue and taps on the glass . . .?”

  “Huh?”

  “You. Testing an airlock.”

  “Belay that,” the chief engineer growled at MacHeath. “You know the regs about harassment... even as a joke.”

  “Sorry.” The big man mumbled his apology—to the chief, not to Gatineau.

  “There is something,” Leen said slowly. “But I don’t know if I can trust you with the responsibility . . .” He looked warily at the boy.

  “I can do it!” Gatineau insisted. “Trust me. Please, Chief?”

  Leen sighed. “All right. I need a moebius wrench. We only have two of them aboard. They’re very expensive. I don’t know who had them last. You’re going to have to ask around.”

  “You need a—a moebius wrench?”

  “You do know what a moebius wrench is, don’t you?”

  Gatineau looked offended. “Of course, I do. What do you think I am?”

  Cappy turned away, abruptly overcome by a coughing fit. MacHeath was suddenly interested in the ceiling.

  “All right, then,” said the chief. “See if you can find me the left-handed one. Either one will do, but I’d prefer not to have to reset the polarity on a moebius wrench just for one job, okay?” He started to turn away, then glanced suspiciously back to Gatineau. “You do know what a left-handed moebius wrench looks like... don’t you?”

  Now it was Gatineau’s turn to look annoyed. He spread his hands wide and gave the chief engineer a look of sheer disdain. “Chief—really.”

  “Okay,” said Leen. “Go get it. Don’t come back without it.”

  “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!”

  “Watch out for sparkle-dancers,” Cappy said dryly.

  “And star-pixies,” MacHeath added noncommittally.

  Gatineau turned and gave them both a look of derision. “Give me a break. What kind of dummy do you think I am?” He turned and almost sprinted along the catwalk and out of the engine room. Cappy and MacHeath barely waited until he had disappeared through the hatch before they started laughing.

  Leen glanced at them, annoyed. “Are you done?”

  “Yes, sir!” said Cappy, a little too brightly.

  “Thank you, sir!” echoed MacHeath in a perfect imitation of Gatineau’s shrill voice.

  “Belay that,” said Leen. “We’ve got work to do.” He scowled up into the G3 assembly tube again and repeated a few of his more colorful oaths. “I think we should check the alignment of all the tension monitors too. I’m wondering if we’re missing something there—”

  Both Cappy and MacHeath groaned loudly.

  Hardesty

  Captain Richard Hardesty, the “Star Wolf,” was dead.

  Korie hoped it would make the man easier to talk to.

  It didn’t.

  Hardesty had been carefully transferred off the Star Wolf to a medical bay out on the quarantine spar of the Stardock. His body was still breathing on its own, but that was the sum of it. He was being fed intravenously with wastes removed from his blood by dialysis. His heart had stopped, and the blood was being forced through his veins by internal pumps. His bone marrow had ceased producing blood cells; only constant scrubbing of his blood kept him from developing half a dozen opportunistic infections. During the journey back to base, the twelve crewmembers who shared his blood type had been kept busy providing new blood for him as the old wore out. Here at Stardock, four regeneration tanks of bone-coral were percolating with fresh new blood. For the most part, it wasn’t helping. Hardesty remained completely paralyzed from the neck down and his extremities were pre-cancerous. The smell of the body on the bed was astonishing—sickly sweet, intense, deathly, and horrible. Korie wondered if it would be impolite to hold a tissue over his nose.

  He could barely stand to look at his captain. His one organic eye had collapsed. The left half of his face was metal; where the metal touched the skin, the skin had turned a slightly greenish color. It was all the result of exposure to Phullogine, a food preservative gas administered to the captain by the Morthan assassin Cinnabar.

  Captain Richard Hardesty, the “Star Wolf,” was brain-dead in all his higher cognitive functions, and had been since a few days after it happened.

  He was of course completely incapable of speech. His voice came to Korie through a speaker. The thoughts that drove the spe
aker came from the augment in his skull, from the accident twenty years prior that had left him with half a head.

  Now the rest of the head—and everything else, for that matter—was dead. And only the augment was left.

  The augment was only slightly less caustic than the man had been. Korie told Hardesty about his meeting with the admiral. Hardesty’s reaction was surprising. The speaker made noises like something rustling at the bottom of a tomb. “She’s right. You’re not ready for command.”

  Korie stifled his reaction. Who was really speaking? Hardesty? Or the intelligence engine in his skull? He kept his voice dispassionate. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  Korie should have turned and walked away. It was Hardesty’s anger talking. It was the pain. It was the drugs. It was the Morthan gas. Who knew if the spark that was Hardesty was even here anymore. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “May I have the specifics, please?”

  “You’re feral.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re not civilized. You’re wild. You don’t have a military mind. You never will.”

  “I resent that, sir. I have—”

  “I know what you have. You have anger. You have fury. You have rage. All of that overwhelms whatever intelligence you might bring to a situation. It makes you impatient.”

  Thinking back on his meeting with the admiral, Korie knew that Hardesty was right. Sort of. “I’ve tried to be the best officer I can—”

  The graveyard voice whispered damningly, “Morale is in the toilet.”

  “That’s not true—”

  The voice rasped over his protests. “You’ve exposed your crew to the one thing a crew should never have to face: uncertainty in the authority over them. They had doubts about you after Marathon, when you came back from the mauling and didn’t get your captaincy. Now, they’re not getting the bounty you told them they deserved. How do you think they’ll react to that?”