Dremiks (10 page)

“Good morning, ma’am. I thought I could spot for you, if you’d return the favor afterwards?” He smiled and stepped back from the bench.

O’Connell shrugged. “Fine with me.” She affixed the weight she wanted to start with and went to work. After a few reps, she asked Price to add more weight to the bar. He complied but was otherwise, blessedly, silent. While he said nothing and his expression remained neutral, Maggie couldn’t help but feel he was sizing her up, that he was challenging her. She threw in a few more reps than were strictly necessary, but stopped before her arms completely gave out.

“I knew a cadet in basic flight training who almost killed herself trying to lift too much weight. It is such a joy to work with a female officer who knows her limits, ma’am”.

In the process of standing up, O’Connell stopped and looked over her shoulder at the younger man. “I only wish I could experience such reciprocal feelings, Lieutenant. Now, if you’re ready?”

Tony had gorgeously sculpted arm muscles. He showed them off with pride and obviously spent many hours perfecting his physique. Rather than be impressed, as she would have with just about any other man, O’Connell was merely irritated.

He’s got a model’s body, an engineer’s mind, and the personality of a rutting baboon.

He didn’t strain lifting twice the amount of weight she could handle, no matter how fervently she wished for him to get in over his head.

By the time Price had finished showing off, O’Connell was fifteen minutes behind schedule for her run. She spit out a terse goodbye and took off down the corridors.

And promptly ran full force into Lieutenant Guttmann.

He was a big man, but she was not a little girl and had been running a hard sprint. They both toppled to the floor. His head bounced off the latex covered metal with a nasty reverberation. The fall knocked the breath out of both of them.

“Shit Swede!” She tried to lean up to check his head wound, but he grunted at her and with another grunt lifted her straight up, and off, his prone form.

“Good morning, ma’am.” He lay very still, with his eyes closed, trying to ignore the throbbing at the base of his skull.

O’Connell pushed herself to a standing position and nudged him, gently, in the thigh with her boot. “Up, Lieutenant.” She reached out a hand when he opened his eyes. Muscles already sore from her workout screamed as she pulled his considerable bulk to a standing position. He groused at her like a giant bear as she tried to pull his head down to feel for a lump.

“Am fine Mags….
ma’am
.” He winced. He obviously wasn’t fine if he’d let that nickname slip out of his mouth.

“Right.” She tugged on her tank top. Rubbing a shoulder, she asked, “What the hell were you doing in the middle of the corridor anyway?”

Typical Maggie
, he thought. “Ma’am, you cut that corner too sharp, and you know it. I was working on that panel. I shut it, turned around, and you tackled me.”

She snorted and tugged her ponytail tighter. Her leg muscles were beginning to tighten up. She started bouncing on her toes to slow the process. “If I had tackled you I would have dropped my shoulder and done it properly.” Her eyes offered an apology. “Are you sure you’re ok?”

He smiled down at her. “I’ll be fine. Have a good run.” He employed a touch of melodrama and flattened himself against the bulkhead to give her plenty of room. She threw back her head and laughed before sprinting off. Swede was still smiling ruefully when he looked up and noticed Ryan Hill standing just around the far corner. He’d obviously been a silent witness to the whole incident. His expression was thoughtful. Before Guttmann could even speak in greeting, the vice chancellor turned on his heel and walked off.

***

Captain Hill allowed his face to show approval to the
Hudson
’s chief engineer. Guttmann visibly relaxed. The rational part of his well-ordered mind told him that his report was spotless and thorough. Swede was still not sure, however, how often his logical view of the
Hudson’s
engineering spaces jived with Captain Hill’s agenda. Agenda, thought Swede, was not the right word. The captain was just so... driven. If there had been a fault to find with the post-jump summary, Captain Hill was the man to find it.

“Excellent report, Lieutenant. I appreciate you delivering this in person. You’ve earned some much deserved down-time. I assume the commander has scheduled you for light duty this rotation?”

“She has, sir. Thank you.”

The captain checked his schedule. “How’s 1600 tomorrow afternoon?”

Thrown by the shift in the conversation, and the captain’s more personable tone, Swede could only mumble a questioning “Sir?”

Hill laughed. “You owe me a round or two in the ring, remember?” The senior officer flexed his shoulders. “Considering how long it’s been, perhaps just one round this time.”

“It will be my pleasure, Captain.”

Captain Hill grimaced. “I certainly hope it won’t be
too
pleasurable. I hope I haven’t gone
that
soft.”

Dismissed a few minutes later, Swede made his way to the
Hudson’s
water treatment facilities to spot check their duty routines. The senior watch stander on duty was a military enlisted man. The two other engineers with him were civilian volunteers. All three of them endured hours of training on the
Hudson’s
water recycling, treatment and processing systems. With only one potable water source along their route, the ship had to be able to conserve and re-use as much as eighty-five percent of the water stored in her anachronistically termed “ballast” tanks.

One of the civilian engineers would be left on the surface of Dremiks to begin the lengthy terra-forming and mining operations. The other civilian would return to Earth with the
Hudson
. Should she decide in the future to resettle on Dremiks, she would be at the top of the eligibility list and exempt from any of the usual fees. Her payment for that hypothetical future journey would be teaching another civilian how to do her job.

Dremikian technology opened up a host of possibilities for humans to explore and move through the universe in ways previousy imagined only in day-dreams and novels. What was once a three year journey to Mars took less than two days. The seemingly massive population of Earth quite suddenly found itself able to stretch and expand as never before.

For the military officers of the
Hudson
and the rest of the ISA, there would be no self determination of location and times of travel. They went where the service sent them, for however long necessary, under whatever conditions they could eke out for themselves. Swede knew that the civilian colonists and crew volunteers had trouble understanding why he and his shipmates placed themselves at the mercy of capricious government officials and military leaders. He didn’t have time for the soul gazing necessary to formulate any answer to their questions. He had engines and gravity wells and water recyclers and trash compactors and a billion other systems to over-see.

And a lump on his head. He grunted and rubbed the sore spot. It throbbed, truth be told. There was the beginning of a headache forming behind his eyes. If it hadn’t been painful to even consider, he would have rolled his eyes at how a brief encounter with Maggie had thrown his day in disarray. Not at all shocking, that effect. He excused himself from the water station and made his way to the medical bay. Dr. Ruger understood headaches and knew all too well about how the commander could so often instigate them.

***

Dr. Ruger reviewed the post-jump spot-check physicals conducted by herself and Specialist Mangoda. Her randomly generated list did not jive with the results. Marissa Hill had been skipped for some reason. That fact wasn’t enough to make her frown. That Mrs. Hill had also missed her scheduled physical that morning was also not a worrying state of affairs. There were, after all, few women who enjoyed a physical, even with the advanced procedures and vitals monitoring of modern medicine. The two events combined were enough to cause Cassie to look closer at the data from Marissa Hill’s bio-med chip. She was frowning over that data when the large form of the engineering officer appeared in the medical bay.

Swede stifled a moan. The lights of the bay made his burgeoning headache even worse.

Oh, Mags will certainly owe me for this on
e.
She had better pray this disappears before tomorrow afternoon.

“What disappears, Lieutenant?” Dr. Ruger glanced around her medical bay with a worried look. She could not immediately determine what had caused the ferocious frown on the officer’s face, but she must have made an egregious error to cause his comment and expression.

Swede blushed, an endearing reaction on so large a man. He hadn’t meant to speak the thought. “Sorry Doctor, just muttering to myself. Nothing for you to worry about.” He rubbed the back of his head and groaned. “The commander tackled me in the passageway this morning, and I’ve got a bit of a lump. Could you help me with the headache?”

She laughed, quietly—bless her, and motioned to a chair. “Sit down and let me check you out before I give you anything for the pain. No, don’t try to talk right now. You can tell me later why Maggie tackled you.” She chuckled again, her eyes dancing with merriment.

***

Dr. Ruger returned from her duty rotation to an empty stateroom. Maggie hadn’t left a note saying whether she would join her roommate for lunch.
Not that I should be surprised,
Cassie thought. O’Connell was becoming just as taciturn as the captain. The doctor stripped off her white coat and pulled on a soft grey cardigan.

In the officers’ mess, Lieutenant Price was eating with one hand while playing a tablet game with the other. He was so caught up in the game, that he didn’t notice he was smacking his food. Across the table, Ensign Chi offered the doctor a warm smile when she entered, but then he rose; obviously he was finished with his meal and late for his shift. He was kind enough to pull out a chair for her before he left. The food was cold and bland. Cassie poked her sandwich with her finger. Without even taking a bite, she rose and dumped the entire plate in the garbage bin. Price didn’t notice the clatter as the compactor ground the plastic plate and metal utensils to pulp.

Off duty for the next twelve hours, without any appointments or the prospect of social activities, Dr. Ruger roamed the deck listlessly. She stopped to stare out of the observation bay. There wasn’t much to see, only a few far off stars and a nearby navigational beacon. She tried to smile at the colonist standing in the bay with her. The woman blinked rapidly before twitching her lips and hurrying away. The doctor didn’t realize that her smile had the forced look of a corpse’s rictus.

When the doctor slunk into the medical bay and headed right to her office without any of her usual sunny smiles or comments to shipmates, Fortunas noticed. He watched her shut the door to her office and change the window tinting to an opaque level that prevented anyone from seeing within.

“Clara!”

Anyone less-used to his mercurial moods would have jumped out of her skin at the sudden bark. Clara merely swiveled her head. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Don’t use that long suffering tone with me, young lady. Come here and confirm this sample reading.” Realizing that half the bay had heard him shout to his assistant, Fortunas waited until she was close enough that he could drop his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You have spent some time with Dr. Ruger, yes?”

Clara peered at the screen and checked her boss’s notes before commenting. “I have. There’s nothing wrong with this sample.”

“Of course there’s not.” He rolled his blue eyes at her. “Has she seemed a bit morose lately?’

His chief assistant sighed. “You called me away from my experiment to gossip?” When he glared at her, Clara shrugged, and then chewed her lip in thought.

He tapped her chin with his index finger. “Stop worrying that lip, girl.”

His chiding tone had the desired effect, as Clara glared right back at him while forgetting what she was worrying about. “She
has
been quieter lately. We’ve all been busy after the jump. You know how it is. Everyone spreads out of their departments between jumps, but then we have to re-focus.” When he didn’t immediately respond, she continued. “I assume she’s been distant and distracted the past few days because of the work load. I certainly haven’t had much time to socialize.”

His bushy white brows drew together. “Complaining are we?”

“Not at all. You know I just
adore
spending hours answering your inane inquiries. Shall I pass Cassie a note during study hall and ask her if we’re still best mates?’

“Impertinent chit. Get back to work.” Ben waved a large hand in her face. Then, he backed up the gesture with a gentle shove on her shoulder. Comfortable with his moods and teasing, Clara merely laughed and swatted at his hand. She returned to her work, leaving the science director to stare at the clouded windows of Dr. Ruger’s office.

***

Commander O’Connell sat at the wardroom table doodling on a schematic that hypothesized the weight-to-thrust ratios of the landers. She preferred the archaic use of a pencil for her mental wanderings, the ability to erase being a necessity since she had no idea which idea would pan out. With one hand she raised a bottle of water to her mouth. The other hand shook the pencil back and forth rapidly while her thoughts processed. The flicking pencil snapped repeatedly against the metal of her academy ring.

Across the table, Lieutenant Price sat with one hand gripping his forehead just along his brow line. The bright lights of the wardroom reflected off the table, the air was stale with a definite undertone of burnt coffee, and he’d voiced his disgust with this ridiculous exercise from the very beginning. There was absolutely no reason that he, the commander, and Guttmann all had to be in the same physical space to work out this problem. There was a
reason
man had invented secure RF transmissions. Price was fairly certain that reason stemmed from over-exposure to the general populace.