An Officer’s Duty (43 page)

The one drawback the restraints couldn’t help with was the exhaustion of having lived too fast. The side effects for everyone, Ia included, were shaking muscles, dry mouth, nausea, and hunger. The last three did not mix particularly well. Once she was sure she could stand, Ia climbed out of her bunk, then straightened it and restored the webbing. The comm by the door came to life as she padded toward the closet-sized room that served as her private bathroom.

“Commander Salish to Lieutenant Ia, rise and shine. This is your wake-up call. You have one hour before your duty shift begins.”

Swerving by the doorframe, Ia touched the private return-call button.
“Gee, and here I thought the OTL warning was supposed to be my adrenaline-based wake-up call.”

“I like to do both. Private Ryker says breakfast will be ready for the
Audie’s
crew in ten minutes. He likes to cook extra spicy, just to warn you.”

“Acknowledged.”
Ending the call, Ia padded into the head. From the storage cupboard over the toilet—which came with its own set of acceleration restraints, just in case—she pulled the locking boxes that held her “holy beads.” She had already showed the untainted ones to Salish. Now, she pricked one of the veins on the back of her hand, extracting the day’s allotted dose of blood with the Triple-S she had washed and passed under the sterilizer last night.

Sticking her hand into the box of beads, she extracted energy from the mass, molding and shaping roughly a quarter of it into a single large glob with a shot-glass-sized hollow. Injecting the hollow with the blood, she mashed and melded the two with mind and hands, then divided them into beads telekinetically before rehardening them and dropping them back into the padded box in a trickling clatter of crystal on crystal. It took up most of her allotted ten minutes, but breakfast would be kept hot and ready for her in its own warming tray.

Securing the box, she quickly scrubbed and sterilized the extractor and put it away, then used the facilities, scrubbing hands and face and giving a sketchy wash of the other areas.
She also dampened her sleep-rumpled hair, allowing her to comb the white locks straight. Once that was done and everything stowed, with even the rag she had used tucked into the sonic cleaner, she exited and dressed quickly in black ship boots with their steady, deck-gripping soles, dark blue trousers, and a light blue shirt.

Her arm unit, Ia clasped over her left sleeve; jacket sleeves had snaps so the units could be discreetly covered or easily accessed, but shirt sleeves were often tucked under the bracer-like devices. Before retiring to sleep, she had pinned her bars and wings on the collar points and boards with the wings centered inside the stripe loop that designated her part of a ship’s bridge crew. On the left breast pocket, she added a flat triangle pin with the middle point carefully aimed downward, mark of the upper crew for a Delta-VX patrol ship. Once the tails of her shirt were smoothed into her trousers and a stray fold of sleeve fabric tugged straight under her command unit, she was ready to go.

Ia didn’t have far to go, to get to breakfast; her tiny cabin was attached to the equally small captain’s office, with both squeezed between the bridge at the heart of the ship and the galley. Orienting herself more from precognitive familiarity than from the colors banding the placards holding every door and cupboard sign lining the portside corridor, she headed toward the bow and entered the dining half of the galley.

Most of her crew were there. They had departed from the
Mad Jack
at the start of the
Murphy
’s watch, which had given Ia’s half the chance to rest. Eight soldiers, five in the blue of the Navy and three in the brown of the Marines, occupied the space. All of them wore a shallow triangular pin on their shirt pockets with the middle point turned down, indicating they crewed the upper of the two ships.

Private Ryker entered behind Ia, dangling a carrying case from one hand. The pin on his shirt had its middle point facing up. He nodded to her. “Sir. Breakfast has been delivered to the
Audie
four still on watch. Shall I fetch your breakfast now, sir?”

Ia nodded and took her place at the head of the long metal table. At the far end sat First Petty Officer Michaelson, the
Audie
’s noncommissioned officer. Down each side sat most of her crew, save for the four manning the
Audie
’s systems during
the off-watch, and one missing soldier. The absent, brown-clad woman came hurrying in a moment later, still tucking her shirt into her pants.

“Morning,” she murmured, nodding to the others. She lifted her chin at the
Murphy
crewman working in the actual cooking space at the far end of the galley. “Hey, Jack, I’ll take a caf’, hot ’n black. None of that creamy-sweet
v’zuei
the officers drink.”

“Private Knorssen, your language is highly inappropriate,” Petty Michaelson snapped. “Your disrespect will not—”

“
Will
be tolerated, Petty, before the first cup of the day,” Ia interrupted, holding up her hand. She met Knorssen’s slightly pink-cheeked glance with a wry smile, knowing the woman had planned to test her new commanding officer this way. “But be advised, Private,
only
before the first cup of the day. Also understand that I will give as good as I get.” Lifting her chin and her voice, she, too, addressed the man in the galley. “
I’ll
take the Marine’s choice of breakfast drink, Private Ryker.”

“Sir?” he asked, ducking his head enough to look out through the pass-through between the two spaces.

“Milk,” she told him, and slipped a wink to the nearest enlisted Marine on her right, who choked on his caf’. “Cold. Straight. You got a problem with that?”

“No, sir.” Pulling back, he finished gathering her meal together.

A couple of the crew were whispering and snickering softly among themselves, casting her amused looks. One of them whispered a little too loudly, “Maybe Jack should make that a
chocolate
milk.”

Her petty officer gave her a disgruntled look. Bracing her elbows on the table, Ia loosely clasped her hands together and addressed the men and women around her.

“Over the last two days, we were briefly but formally introduced to each other. Myself as your new lieutenant, and you as the various members of my half of our joint crew. But we were pressed for time in getting the
Audie-Murphy
turned around, and did not have the opportunity to go into background details,” she explained, pitching her voice just loud enough for Ryker to hear. Ia knew he would carry this information to his own crewmates on the
Murphy
side of things. “Allow me to enlighten you with a few of those details.

“I started in the Service as a grunt in the Marines. I bear more decorations from my two years of service than anyone else outside of a Blockade Patrol.
Most
of my career in the Corps, I served as a noncom officer. I earned my Field Commission at the battle of Zubeneschamali…and I earned my military nickname from my very first combat three and a half years ago. My CO looked at me standing there before him, covered multiple times from head to toe in Choya blood and Salik
guts
, and dubbed me ‘Bloody Mary.’ I have
kept
that nickname throughout my career to date, and kept it
fresh
.

“Call me whatever you want before my first cup of the day,
whatever
I may choose to drink…but you will learn to call me it with
respect
the moment we go on duty.”

She paused a beat as Ryker came out, bearing one of the multilidded trays the others were eating from. He clipped it onto the table in front of her and tucked a lidded mug of milk into its holder at her side. Opening the compartment with her silverware, she plucked out the fork and snapped that lid shut before opening the next, following the Lock and Web Law of shipboard life even as she dug into her pepper-fried potatoes.

“For those of you who doubt my nickname, and doubt my abilities as either a combatant or a commander, you will have ample opportunity to see both in action firsthand. This is the Blockade, after all.” Popping the forkful into her mouth, she chewed and swallowed, then unclipped her mug. “In the meantime, while I may take combat very seriously, I see no reason why our breakfast should be considered a mirth-free zone. Or a conversation-free one. Private Tamaganej, tell me something about your home. Your file says you’re from North Mumbai? How long have you lived there?”

“
Ah
…yes, sir,” he said, glancing briefly at the others. Shrugging, he dug into his salsa-slathered eggs. “My family’s lived on Earth, in one part or another of India, for…for as long as the Ganges has flowed, I suppose. My family line has been traced all the way back to before the Persian Empire. Or so I’ve been told.”

“You’re tryin’ to tell me that your family line goes back three thousand years?” one of the brown-clad crewmen across from him asked. “I can barely trace my family line back three hundred, when we moved into Lower New York.”

“You lived in Lower New York, Kipple?” Private Nguyen asked, lifting his head from his meal. “I have family in Lower New York, too. I used to spend every summer there, with my cousins.”

“You did?” Private Kipple asked him. “Well, hell, I’ve served with you for a tour and a half, and I never knew that. I grew up in Jersey Province, but I used to visit Saint Vinnie’s Deli every time I was in town. You ever eat there?”

Nguyen snorted. “Who didn’t? Mind you, they couldn’t cook
pho
worth a
shakk
, but the
matzo ball
soup was pretty good.”

Private Kipple leaned over and nudged Ia’s elbow. “How ’bout you, sir? Ever been to Lower New York? Or even the Upper side?”

“Can’t say I have. Most of the time I visited Earth, it was either to Australia for Basic, Portugal for the Academy, or Madagascar to visit friends.” She unsnapped the lid over her toast and discovered Ryker had dusted it with pepper as well as butter. Plucking one of the triangles from the tray, she gave the man cleaning up in the galley a wry look. “Pepper even on the
toast
, Private Ryker? This is like eating my brother’s cooking! Are you sure you’re not a long-lost relative?”

The others chuckled among themselves. She bit off a corner of the bread before the others could try and tease her directly, enduring the tingling burn of the little flakes without any change of expression. This was the real reason why she had requested the milk, to kill the fire of the capsaicin seasoning her meal.

The rest of it was equally spicy, from the cold salad of steamed vegetables in a vinaigrette to the pepper-smoked bacon. Even the cheese had pepper dusted on it. She would suspect a deliberate trick played on her, if it hadn’t been for Salish’s warning that this was indeed how Private Ryker cooked all the time. At least it was reasonably well-cooked beneath all that fire. Private Kipple, she precognitively knew, could barely slap together edible sandwiches whenever it was his turn in the galley.
Which is hardly any better than what I can do…

“Think we’ll find anything today, Petty?” one of the Navy privates asked the noncom at the far end of the table.

“Three mining ships and a petrotanker, all FTL, plus twelve mining skiffs, insystem speed only. That’s on the docket for 1334. We board the petrotanker, two of the mining ships, and
a minimum of four of the skiffs, chosen at random by the Lieutenant,” First Petty Michaelson stated, nodding at Ia before looking back at the private. “Anything else, we shoot it down, and if there’s anything left, ask a lot of questions. The exact same as always.”

“Well, sir?” the private asked her next, turning to look at Ia. “Any guesses?”

“The three mining ships are Tlassian-run, under contract with the Alliance to supply the Salik back on the domeworld of Ss’nuk with basic metals and petroleums in carefully controlled amounts. If the profits weren’t so good, between what they mine for themselves, what the Blockade pays, and the premium the Salik are forced to pay, they wouldn’t bother. As it is, the Tlassian hate the Salik—they share the common insult of ‘egg-suckers,’ except that for the Tlassians, it was a very real tragedy of the war. One which the crewmembers of this particular mining consortium have neither forgiven nor forgotten, despite the intervening centuries. I doubt many of them would collaborate with the enemy.”

“And that means we search…?” he asked, shrugging. “Which ships?”

Ia shrugged back. “I’ll flip a coin.” Checking her chrono, she dug into her eggs. “Eat up and tidy up; our shift is in forty minutes.”

They dug in. The Marine woman, Private Knorssen, leaned closer to Ia and frowned at the heaped contents of her tray. “Hey! How come you get more food than I do? Food is supposed to be strictly weighed and rationed.”

“I’m a heavyworlder. We have more muscle mass, so we burn more calories.” Opening one of the untouched lids on her compartmented tray, she eyed the cinnamon roll warily. No pepper flakes, but he had dusted the premade roll with extra cinnamon. “For future reference, Private Ryker, try not to
waste
excessive amounts of spice. Since I know you are capable of cooking otherwise edible food, I would like you to try following the preparation instructions a bit more closely than this.

“I do expect all of you to toe the line and give your absolute best while you are members of this crew, and on duty,” she added, looking around the table. “I
know
you can do it, therefore you
will
do it…and it is easier to live up to these expectations
than you’d think. All you have to do is put your mind to it, and it’ll get done.”

“Easier said than done, sir,” Private Kipple muttered.

“Not in my experience, Private,” Ia corrected him, opening up the compartment that held her eggs. Overspiced or not, she needed to eat. “It’s often easier done than said. Just make up your mind to do it, and you’ll get it done.”