Double Share (8 page)

“I know them and I’ll be sure to check the relevant ship policies.”

Mr. Burnside grunted. “Good. Now get busy and if you have a question, my advice is to try and find the answer yourself before you waste my time with it. If you ask me a question that you could have answered from reading the standing orders, I’m not going to be happy. That would fall under the
not good
heading. Do you copy?”

“Roger that,” I responded, using the formulaic response almost without thinking.

“Good,” he replied, and turned to his monitor, dismissing me with his posture.

I settled back to the desk and ordered a set of shipsuits with DST livery at the orbital’s chandlery. As I suspected, being the corporate home, the appropriate specifications were on file and the order was completed in less than five ticks. They promised fulfillment by the end of the watch and I paid extra to have them delivered to the ship. I had a feeling I would need those extra minutes and I certainly wanted those shipsuits.

C
HAPTER
N
INE
D
IURNIA
O
RBITAL
2358-
J
ULY-6

The thing about in-port OOD watch is that you’re nominally in charge of the ship. Unlike my previous watch standing duties where I’d had specific tasks and assignments to accomplish, the OOD really was there only if something broke or required arbitration.

At 12:30 we went to the wardroom—a small dining room off the mess deck—where the officers could eat without mixing with the crew. The noon meal consisted largely of cold cuts and bread on an iced platter. I wasn’t sure what the crew was eating, but I suspected not much different. The coffee was predictably horrendous.

Mr. Burnside stood on no ceremony, helping himself from the trays, sitting in what was apparently his accustomed seat—on what would be the right hand of the captain. I took a seat well down the board. It’s not like there were a lot of choices, but I didn’t need to see the roster to know that I was the junior officer aboard, and I had no desire to attract the attention of the erstwhile alpha male. As I chewed my sandwich of mystery meat and cheese, I idly wondered, how the captain related to the first mate. I suspected that there would be more ceremony when the ship was underway and the captain presided over the mess.

The afternoon passed to evening without incident. I had plenty of time to review the relevant policies and procedures under the careful non-scrutiny of the first mate. Periodically, he’d ask a question about ship’s procedures or operations. Most of them were textbook stuff although a couple had hidden teeth relating to local conditions in the Diurnia quadrant. The ship’s fittings and fixtures were common enough. I’d not worked with these precise models before, but the manufacturers were certainly familiar.

At 18:30, Mr. Burnside stood, stretched, and headed for the door.

“Come on, Wang,” he said. “May as well introduce you to the sewing circle.”

When we arrived in the wardroom, he introduced me to the engineering and cargo officers—Amelia Menas and Frederica DeGrut.

Amelia Menas was an older woman, smartly turned out in a shipsuit. The gray hair and crow’s feet made her look distinguished. “Welcome aboard, Ishmael.” She greeted me warmly with a two-handed handshake. Her dark eyes held a sparkling humor.

Frederica DeGrut, on the other hand, was twitchy. She didn’t look me in the eye and only offered the most perfunctory of handshakes. She was birdlike, even frail. She avoided Mr. Burnside as if he carried some plague.

Mr. Burnside led the way to the buffet. He browsed through it like a goat on a junk pile, helping himself with his fingers, pausing to pick up the odd tasty and pop it in his mouth. It was a bit off putting, but he didn’t seem overly concerned about making an impression on any of us. Ms. Menas sighed softly and gave me a small shrug when Burnside’s back was turned, as if to say, “What can you do?”

I stood back to let the senior officers go ahead of me. Ms. Menas smiled and nodded her thanks, but Ms. DeGrut seemed not to notice until I extended a hand indicating that she should proceed. She almost flinched, but then offered a fleeting smile and a tentative nod, stepping up closely behind Ms. Menas at the steam table.

By this time, Mr. Burnside had seated himself and proceeded to tuck into the piled platter. As he sat, a side door opened and a delicate girl in a white waiter’s uniform, complete with side-buttoned tunic and black trousers, stepped into the wardroom with a silver coffee pot. She smiled at Mr. Burnside and placed the pot handy to his setting and slipped quietly out of the room without speaking. She came and went so quickly and quietly, that if I hadn’t been watching, I might not have noticed.

Ms. Menas waited while Ms. DeGrut and I finished at the buffet and took our seats, before beginning her meal. I saw Mr. Burnside’s sneer at this small courtesy, and I wondered, again, just what I’d gotten myself in to.

“So, Mr. Wang,” Ms. Menas started, “this is your first billet as third mate? Are you excited?”

She seemed honestly interested and smiled as she offered the opening volley on the dinner conversation.

“Yes I am, Ms. Menas. I spent two years on a container ship over in the Dunsany Roads Quadrant before I went to Port Newmar. It seemed a good thing to do at the time.”

“You were a crewman?” Mr. Burnside asked with a low chuckle.

“Yes, I was. Two years on the
Lois McKendrick
. It was…um…enlightening for a land rat.”

Ms. Menas forestalled further comment from Mr. Burnside by asking, “You don’t come from a spacer family? And you went to the academy?”

I smiled and shrugged. “Yes, well, my captain rather twisted my arm until I submitted the application. After all she’d done for me, I would have felt ungrateful if I hadn’t even tried.”

Mr. Burnside barked a laugh. “She? Your captain was a woman?”

Ms. Menas frowned at Mr. Burnside’s outburst. “David? Half the captains in space are women. Don’t sound so surprised,” she chided him gently.

“Not in
this
company, they’re not,” he retorted with an emphasis on the word “this.”

Ms. Menas pursed her lips. “Yes, that’s true enough,” she said but failed to comment further on that subject.

She turned to me once more to follow up. “Alys Giggone? She was in command of the
Lois McKendrick
last I knew.”

I all but gaped.

She smiled. “Don’t look so surprised. Alys and I were at the academy together, many moons long past. We keep up.”

“Was?” I managed to ask. “She’s left the
Lois
?”

“She’s still on the
Lois
, as far as I know, Mr. Wang. I think she’ll retire from there if Federated Freight can’t force her to take the training command at the academy.”

I laughed softly at that. “I think her father has to retire first.”

“No doubt,” Ms. Menas offered back. “No doubt.”

Ms. DeGrut surprised me by speaking with a quick glance from her plate in my direction. “And Alys recommended you to the academy, yes?”

“Yes, she did!” I said with surprise.

Ms. DeGrut smiled into her plate and flickered her eyes in my direction again. “What number were you?”

“Thirty-four,” I said.

“Eight,” Ms. DeGrut offered with a shy smile, a kind of peace offering to me.

Ms. Menas looked at her companion curiously but didn’t ask the obvious question and the conversation died for a moment.

Mr. Burnside had finished his meal and pushed the plate noisily toward the middle of the table.

“So? What was your rating, Ish?” he asked. “Did you make it to half share in your two years as crew?”

It was a curious question. He’d obviously not looked at my hiring jacket or he’d have known. I think Ms. Menas must have realized that, too, because she froze, her fork just lifting from her plate, and stared at him.

“Full share,” I said with a glance at Mr. Burnside. “When I left to go to the academy, I was full share.”

Mr. Burnside’s expression went from bland disinterest to a patronizing smile. “Well, do tell! You made it all the way up to full share in just two years? That’s quite an accomplishment for a land rat? What division? Steward?” His tone made it clear what he thought of stewards.

“All four,” I answered.

The confusion rolled across his expression and Ms. Menas smirked.

“All four what?” he asked.

“All four divisions.”

I focused on my plate. He wasn’t going to like that answer and I didn’t want to appear confrontational by looking him in the face.

There was a moment of stunned silence before Mr. Burnside barked a harsh laugh and slapped the table. Ms. DeGrut flinched at the sudden sound and movement but Ms. Menas merely looked annoyed.

“Excellent joke, Mr. Wang. All four divisions,” Mr. Burnside chortled nastily. “All four divisions, indeed.”

Ms. Menas placed her fork gently on her plate and leaned forward to face Mr. Burnside. “David? Perhaps you should review Mr. Wang’s jacket one more time. It seems there are some things you’ve missed,” she said quietly in the face of his derision.

Ms. DeGrut offered a small, furtive smile in my direction but focused on her meal.

Mr. Burnside’s expression went blank. “Indeed?” he asked, rounding on Ms. Menas. “Pray, enlighten me, Amelia? You’ve obviously seen more in his jacket than I did.”

“Our Mr. Wang here did in fact obtain full share ratings in all four divisions, including specialist second in environmental and specialist first in systems. His service record shows commendations from three captains, and his application to the academy was endorsed by ten officers of the line.”

Mr. Burnside’s expression went even flatter. “This land rat?” he asked finally, looking directly at me as if I were somehow to blame.

“This land rat,” I replied with a sheepish shrug, hoping against hope to defuse the situation.

Mr. Burnside’s eyes shuttered. His expression gave nothing away, but his words were calm and precise. “Well, it seems I owe you an apology, Mr. Wang. Very nice credentials and I look forward to working with you in the Deep Dark.”

Ms. DeGrut went stalk still at that last comment. She was pale before, but went positively bloodless at the mention of the Deep Dark.

Her reaction attracted the attention of Ms. Menas who leaned over to her. “Are you all right, Fredi?”

Ms. DeGrut looked like a bird caught indoors. Her eyes darted everywhere but she didn’t look up from her plate. “Yes, Amelia, thank you. It’s nothing.” Her eyes flickered fearfully in my direction, but she kept her head down and made no further comment.

My tablet bipped at just that moment and startled me. It was a message from the lock watch. My shipsuits had arrived.

“Excuse me,” I told the gathered officers. “My uniforms are here, and I’ve got to sign for them and have them added to my mass allotment.”

I stood and gathered my dirty dishes, placing them on the sideboard.

“You can just leave those on the table, Mr. Wang,” Mr. Burnside said coldly. “The mess crew gets paid to pick this up.”

“Aye,” I acknowledged, “old habits die hard.”

With a nod to Ms. Menas and Ms. DeGrut, I beat a hasty retreat to the gangway. I stepped off the ship to accept the delivery from the chandlery representative and the smell of clean, fresh dock air washed over me. In a matter of a few ticks, I signed in the bundles and logged them to my mass allotment. I lugged them to my stateroom, and took the tick it needed to shake one out and put it on, hanging my khaki undress uniform in the locker.

I felt a lot less out of place wearing a shipsuit, even a brand new one with the third mate pip on the collar tabs. I brushed my hand across the DST decal on the breast and fingered the black embroidered letters of my name. The suit itself was a neutral tan, not too far from the khaki outfit I’d just taken off. My tablet dropped into the designated pocket, and I felt a bit more settled as I headed back to the ship’s office to finish up my first watch.

I felt like I’d been aboard a stanyer, and it hadn’t even been a half day.

When I got back to the office, I found Mr. Burnside reviewing my jacket. He looked up as I entered and I expected to get blasted.

He nodded at the screen. “You really do all this stuff?” he asked, baldly.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” I replied.

“Wang, I owe you an apology. This is an outstanding jacket. I don’t usually bother with them—corporate hires and corporate fires. We don’t have a lot of say about who comes and who goes.” He sounded sincerely contrite. It didn’t make what he was saying any less dangerous, but he did sound like he was sorry. “Looks like we hit the jackpot when we got you, eh?”

I just shook my head. “I’m just a boot third right out of school. I got lucky with the
Lois
and I know perfectly well that I can’t expect to stay alive in the Deep Dark by relying on luck. I’m looking forward to what I can learn here, and I’ll do my best to cover my mass.”

It sounded trite and cheesy even as I said it, but I needed to say something.