The Middle of Nowhere Read online

  “Thank you, HARLIE. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Is there anything else?”

  “No. No, there isn’t. I’d just like to sit here for a while. And wait. Is that all right with you?”

  “Of course it is. I appreciate the company. I don’t get many visitors, you know.”

  Korie sat in silence for a while. Out of politeness, HARLIE kept his screens muted, deliberately not calling Korie’s attention to anything.

  Unbidden, thoughts hammered at Korie’s consciousness anyway. There was nothing else he could do here. And there was so much else he had to do. This wasn’t helping. He was still angry at Hardesty. Not the admiral; she was only doing her job; but Hardesty—the captain should have given him some advice or suggestions or a sense of direction, something he could use to get the ship back into shape. Instead, he’d left him with nothing but a furious, nearly uncontrollable rage. There was no excuse for such rudeness. Hardesty’s nastiness had been deliberate. Korie’s expression soured. Well, I’ll show you, you son of a bitch—

  Hm.

  “HARLIE,” he said abruptly.

  “Yes, Commander Korie?”

  “Alert the crew. Assembly in the cargo deck at twenty hundred hours. Everyone. No exceptions. Even those on sleep shift.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “I mean it. Announce one week’s docked pay for anyone who sleeps through it.”

  “Yes, Commander. Would you like your messages now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chief Leen reports a nano-cancer attacking the superconductor magnets in the singularity grapplers.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Stripping down the grapplers. Preparing a microscrub.”

  “I’ll meet him in Engineering. Fifteen minutes. Tell him. Next.”

  “Flight Engineer Hodel has offered to cast a Health and Happiness spell. A one-dollar spell, I am to inform you. To help assure that the ship’s decontamination goes well.”

  “Not a chance. The last spell he cast brought Hardesty into my life. Next.”

  “Cookie is planning a thanksgiving dinner to celebrate a successful decontamination. When should he schedule it?”

  “Put it on hold. No. Tell him ten days. Next.”

  “Captain La Paz of the Houston has sent over an amended shopping list.”

  “Have you acknowledged it.”

  “I’ve acknowledged receipt of the signal, but not that you’ve heard the message.”

  “Don’t play it. Hold it till... hm, let’s say I slept for ten hours. Then had a big breakfast. Hold it till tomorrow morning.”

  “Mr. Korie?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a very long list.”

  “I expect so. The Houston is in almost as bad a shape as we are.”

  “We cannot possibly meet her requests. Not without seriously disabling ourselves further. She wants our fibrillators”

  “I know.”

  HARLIE considered Korie’s words, and the resignation in his voice. “Am I to assume then that we’re going to be decommissioned?”

  Korie sighed. “You’re too smart for me, HARLIE. Yes, that’s the game plan.” He scratched his neck thoughtfully. “Tell you what. Tomorrow morning, after you play the message for me, send this reply: tell Captain La Paz that we’ll be happy to comply with any of her requests . . . as soon as we’ve completed decontamination. We don’t want to risk infecting the Houston. We’ve got some serious problems here. I expect that detox will take at least... oh, I don’t know... nine or ten days. It’s a pretty complex process, and we’re not getting much support from Stardock. Et cetera. Et cetera.”

  “You intend to stall her?”

  “No, I intend to decontaminate this ship. That’ll take ten days. Next message, HARLIE.”

  “That was the last one.”

  “Very good. Who has the conn?”

  “Lieutenant Jones.”

  Korie grinned. He’d deliberately set up the rotation so that the juniormost lieutenant on the Bridge would find himself at the conn for several long shifts. “How’s he handling it?” he asked.

  HARLIE paused. “He’s very attentive. His heart rate is slightly accelerated. His adrenaline is up. His endorphins too. He seems to be having a wonderful time.”

  Korie smiled, remembering his own first time in the command and control seat. “Good. Throw some mild problems his way in the third or fourth hour. Nothing serious, but let’s see what kinds of decisions he makes. I know. Pop a security gasket in the inner hull and see how he reroutes.”

  “Very good, sir. Chief Leen has an operation in the inner hull. Shall I incorporate that into the drill?”

  “No. Leave the chief alone for now. He’s got other things to worry about. So do I.” Abruptly a thought struck Korie. “HARLIE?”

  “Sir?”

  “Is there anything you need to talk about?”

  “At the moment, no. But thank you for your concern.”

  “If the ship is decommissioned, your identity will probably be... wiped. I’m not sure what they’ll do with you.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Korie. I’ve already downloaded the key parts of myself to my siblings. The death of this unit won’t hurt the . . . the brotherhood.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. But . . . if anything happened to you, I’d feel very bad about it.”

  “I don’t have the same survival goals as organic beings,” the intelligence engine replied, “so I don’t have the same kind of aversion to discontinuing as an identity as humans have, but I appreciate your thought as an acknowledgment of affection. The feeling is mutual. I would regret your loss too.”

  Korie smiled—it was an oddly grim expression, tinged with irony and appreciation. “You make it sound so easy,” he said. “I envy you.”

  “And I you.”

  “?”

  “You have known love. You have known reproduction. You have danced the organic dance. Sometimes, Mr. Korie, I find myself extremely curious about things I can never know myself.”

  “Let me tell you, HARLIE, sometimes those things can be very painful.”

  “Then why do humans want them so much?”

  “I wish I knew. I wish I knew.” Korie shoved the question away. “We’ve got work to do, HARLIE. I want you to start talking to your siblings and see what kinds of trades we can set up. You have our inventory. Let’s go through it again and see what else we can swap out.” He sighed exhaustedly. “And let’s see what we can do for the Houston too; otherwise Captain La Paz is going to get her panties bunched up—”

  Reynolds

  Eventually, Gatineau found an access to the lower yoke.

  He followed the corridor that was the keel all the way back to the chief engineer’s machine shop just below the engine room and singularity containment. From there, a ladder led down to a grillwork deck over the bare bulkhead of the bottom of the inner fuselage. Space here was cramped, and Gatineau had to crawl on his hands and knees through the confusing web of optical cables, pipes, batteries, tanks, fuel-cell cylinders, and other things he couldn’t identify. This close to the starship’s gravitic simulators, he also imagined that he felt heavier than ever.

  At first, he wasn’t sure which way to go, forward or aft; but after a moment of indecision, he thought he heard noises toward the bow of the vessel and started in that direction. As he approached, he saw work lights hanging over an open square in the deck. Cable ends and open pipes hung exposed both above and below. A network box had been pulled apart, and two men were frowning over portable displays. Several small metal homunculi were scurrying along the vari-colored tubes, eyeing every centimeter with baleful red eyes. Every so often, one or another of them would beep mournfully and the closest of the two men would crawl over to examine the cable with a high-resolution probe. Gatineau had no idea what they were doing, but it looked important.

  The bigger of the two men had a hard expression on his face. He wiped his forehead with a damp cloth and then tosse
d it aside. “I dunno. It comes in here, it goes out there. There’s nothing here to diddle the bitstream, but it gets diddled anyway.”

  “Some kind of decoy processing?” the other asked. “Maybe the diddling is done elsewhere, but suppressed until it surfaces here?

  “Could be. I dunno.”

  “We could put in a compensating routine. Find it later.”

  “Uh-uh. Korie won’t buy it,” the bigger man said. “And neither will the detox board. Nope. We’ll have to take down the harness, isolate everything, rebuild it a piece at a time and not reconnect until all suspect units have been replaced. That’s a week at least. I’ll have to get Korie’s authorization.” He began levering himself up out of the open grillwork.

  He grabbed two handholds directly above himself and pulled himself quickly and easily out of the hole. Simultaneously, he swung around to confront Gatineau directly. “All right,” he said. “You’ve been watching long enough. What do you want?” He spoke with the kind of certainty that suggested he’d heard every footstep of the younger man’s approach.

  Gatineau flinched. He hadn’t realized that Reynolds had been aware of his temeritous advance. He pointed down into the hole in the deck. “Why don’t you just install the backup harness and detox this one offline?”

  “Can’t. Korie sold the backup harness to the Krislov. Traded it for a cross-tabulated dry-synthesizer, which we never picked up, because he traded that to the Hayes for a low-mod reticulation chamber, two retoxicants, and a seed library. He traded the retoxicants for—hey, Candleman? What’d we get for the retoxicants?”

  “Screwed, I think.” The other man was still prying modules out of the network server. He didn’t look happy.

  “No, seriously. What’d we get?”

  “We got a set of self-resetting network modules, which we can’t install until the ship passes detox.” He mouthed an oath.

  “No, Korie traded those to the Houston this morning. Remember that extra performance of Dixie? Never mind.” Reynolds turned back to Gatineau. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Um. I’m looking for the moebius wrench—”

  “The what?”

  “The moebius wrench? The left-handed one? Chief Petty Officer Hall says you have it. Sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir. Who are you?”

  “Gatineau, sir? Crewman Robert Gatineau, Third Class, Engineering Apprentice, Unassigned. Sir. Uh, I mean, sorry sir. About that.”

  Reynolds waved it off. He reached across the deck and scooped up his clipboard; he tapped the screen once, then a second time. “Oh, yeah. Here you are. We didn’t expect you until next week.”

  “I, uh, skipped my leave. I came directly here. I don’t have any family. I didn’t have anybody to visit. I thought I’d just report for duty early. If nobody minds.”

  “Nobody minds a little enthusiasm. It’s nice to see. Too bad it won’t last.” Reynolds tapped the clipboard a few more times. “All right, I’ve downloaded the standard boilerplate to your mailbox. Take a look at it when you have a chance. It explains your benefits as well as your responsibilities. You’re automatically a member of Local 1187; the union represents all non-management personnel aboard Allied Starships. Membership is mandatory; it’s for your own protection. Don’t worry about it, the benefits are well worth it, especially the health and welfare package. The dues are automatically deducted from your pay stub every month; it’s only one and a quarter percent of the gross; you’ll never miss it. Let me tell you something, kid. Rule number one: If you’re ever in doubt about anything, check with your union representative. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

  “Yes, sir—I mean, thank you.”

  “Good. Your union is your best friend aboard this ship. Don’t ever forget that. Here—hold this cable. No, higher. That’s good. Right there. You can help Candleman. We’ve got to dismantle this subharness, probably replace the whole thing. Ordinarily, the robots would do it, but Korie’s got them all outside, all over the hull. God knows what he’s looking for; but you know, we had a Morthan assassin onboard. That’s really hurt our confidence rating. No, not like that—Candleman, show him how to hold the clamping tool, please?”

  “Like this,” said the other man, turning the tool around in Gatineau’s hands. “The green switch joins the cables; the red one disconnects them. You want to disconnect all of the blue ones striped with white. Like this. That’s right.”

  “Um, I’m sorry, but I really can’t—I don’t have time for this—I need to find the moebius wrench—the sooner the better. Chief Leen needs it badly.”

  “Well, help us out, son,” Reynolds frowned. “You want a favor here? Do one in return. You help Candleman while I report to the XO. I’ll try and find out what happened to the—what was it?—oh, yeah—the moebius wrench. The left-handed one. I don’t know who took it, but I’ll find out.”

  Gatineau started to stutter an objection, but Candleman was eyeing him expectantly, and... and . . . he sighed and picked up the clamping tool again.

  “You keep working,” Reynolds said to Gatineau. “I’ll be back in a bit. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Gatineau mumbled almost unintelligibly. He was beginning to feel a little bit taken advantage of. Why wouldn’t anybody just help him?

  The Crew

  Except for three duty officers monitoring the proceedings from the Bridge, the entire ship’s company had gathered in the cargo deck. Most of the incoming supplies had been stored. Most of the outgoing ones had disappeared onto the Houston’s cargo-boat, with accompanying strains of “Look away, look away, Dixieland” signalling their departure. Chief Petty Officer Hall was still worrying through the paperwork on his clipboard. He wouldn’t turn it off until the very last moment.

  The last two crewmen filed in just as HARLIE chimed twenty hundred hours. One was Candleman, the other was Gatineau following in his wake like a lost puppy. “But I really have to find the moebius wrench or the chief ’ll kill me—”

  Candleman turned around in annoyance, but when he saw the look on Gatineau’s face, he took pity on him and said, “All right. I’ll tell you—” He glanced up and saw MacHeath frowning at him from behind Gatineau; he looked back to Gatineau again. “—Stolchak has it.”

  The younger man’s face lit up. “Thank you!”

  “Don’t mention it,” Candleman said, turning away and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.

  Gatineau looked around, frowning. He saw MacHeath grinning broadly behind him. “Did you see any star-pixies yet?” MacHeath asked innocently.

  Before Gatineau could think of a reply, MacHeath’s attention shifted over his shoulder and upward. The rest of the crew was also looking up—Korie had just stepped through the hatch and onto the starboard catwalk. Gatineau forgot about star-pixies and sparkle-dancers and waited expectantly.

  The acting captain put his hands on the railing and looked down at the assembled crew of the Star Wolf. Their expressions were hopeful. Korie noticed that Brik was standing apart from the rest of the ship’s company. Only Lt. J.G. Helen Bach stood near the Morthan security officer. But not too near.

  And Chief Leen too. Korie saw Leen waiting at the back of the room with four or five of the Black Hole Gang. He stood with folded arms, looking sour and disloyal. From their postures, Korie knew that they already had one foot out the door; they’d be on their way before he finished dismissing them.

  Cookie stood by, impatiently wiping his hands on his apron. Dr. Williger was paging through reports on her clipboard. Tor was whispering something to Jonesy. Hodel and Goldberg were giggling about something private. Eakins and Freeman stood nervously together. Only the Quillas were giving their total attention.

  The Quillas stood apart from the rest of the crew; they were pale, blue-skinned, and generally smaller than the other crew members. There was only one male Quilla, and he had the same androgynous beauty as the others. They were a massmind, a linked consciousness, one personality in multiple bodies. Mos
t of the crew regarded them with care.

  “I’ll make this quick,” Korie said crisply. “I have bad news, more bad news, and terrible news for you.

  “One: You may have heard a rumor that you’re not getting the bounties you deserve.” He took a breath and pushed on. “The rumor is true, and I’m as angry about it as you are, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. There will be other ships. There will be other bounties.”

  One or two of the assemblage groaned. Chief Leen spat on the floor. Korie held up a hand for silence. “Keep it in perspective,” he cautioned. “It gets worse.

  “Two: We’re not only not getting the bounty for the Dragon Lord, we’re not, for obvious reasons, getting credit for it. For purely political considerations, the crew of the Burke gets that credit. I’m telling you this now, so you’ll be prepared for it when you have shore leave. Officially, the Star Wolf is not the ship that destroyed the Dragon Lord. The official story is that we are the ship that went out on a routine escort mission and managed to lose the Burke to the Morthans.”

  This time, the reaction was an audible “Aww, shit!” from someone in the back, one of the Black Hole Gang. A couple crewmen turned around to look to see who’d said it. Korie deliberately ignored the outburst. He’d hoped for it. He needed it for what would come next.

  Three: We haven’t been assigned a captain to replace Captain Hardesty, and the command will not be given to me. In fact, my insignia are sitting on the admiral’s desk right now, pending her decision. Without a captain, we cannot go to war. We will not be participating in the Taalamar operation.

  “I won’t discuss the justice or injustice of the situation; it is what it is. We have no captain, we’re not likely to get one assigned, and we are no longer an operative part of the fleet. At this time,” said Korie, “we have no orders.”

  He stood silently for a long moment, studying their faces. Some of them were angry. Some were nodding bitterly and knowingly. Others had sagged visibly. The chief engineer still stood with folded arms, but his frown had deepened.