Temporary Duty (59 page)

Vogt grimaced. "Yeah. There’s a godawful big hole on the starboard side, two of the compartments are open to the outside there. They probably got blown out."

"Probably so." Warnocki finished his notes and looked up. "Any progress aft?"

"I haven’t heard anything from back there in a while, Chief. Want me to check?"

"Yeah, do that. But be careful."

"Aye, aye."

Aft was where it really got strange. Right aft was a section that was weirdly arranged–or wasn’t; certainly it was weird for a spaceship, though most of them had encountered similar, or at least equivalent, setups in the past. A hundred and twenty-eight bunks–two squares–occupied two rooms, each holding sixty-four in four tiers, four high and four long. About half, all top bunks, were unmade, apparently unused, but seventy were or had been occupied. Between the two rooms was a group of cubicles on two decks, each holding a comfortable bed and little else. The only access to the whole section came through there, a hatch with a strong lock.

All seventy of the occupants were female: thirty-nine humans of the same two types as the males, thirty-one Grallt of about the same mix as were aboard
Llapaaloapalla
. Sixty had survived the battle, thirty-two humans and twenty-eight Grallt. All of them were young, and all of them were pretty.

They were, without exception, frightened out of their minds. It wasn’t possible to communicate with the human girls at all; they spoke no Grallt, and even considering English was ludicrous. The Grallt girls spoke their own language, but in halting baby-talk with little or no vocabulary and less grammar. Se’en, Dee, and a short squad of others were back there, trying to let the girls know they were safe and could come out. Sending men, human or Grallt, to try to talk to them was worse than useless. If a male of either species entered their section they scrambled for their bunks and lay there, cowering and uncommunicative.

That wouldn’t do at all.
Llapaaloapalla
was still "dead in space", drifting between stars far from its ports of departure or destination. They were, in a few words, in bad trouble.

«You say this has never happened before that you know of?» Peters asked.

Heelinig shook her head. «No, I’ve never heard of anything like this happening.» She looked up at the ferassi ship. «Ships have been attacked by the ferassi; I’ve never had the experience, but I’ve been told about it. It would start out just as this did, but the ship would heave to, and the Grallt men would come aboard and start picking out what they wanted. They would ransack the ship, but mostly they would take food, valuable things, and–»

«And girls,» Peters finished when the pause extended itself.

«Yes. Nobody ever found out what happened to them. I suppose we know now.»

«Slaves.» Peters had learned the word from reading historical romances. He’d never expected to need to use it.

«So it would seem.» Heelinig was grim. «But for the moment that’s secondary. If it were up to Preligotis, or me, we’d dump that hulk right here, bodies, survivors, girls, and all, and get our butts to Jivver, and never never never breathe a word about this to anybody anywhere.»

«You really think it’s that bad? There’s lots of interesting stuff on board.»

«Peteris, you simply have no idea.» Most of the Grallt did that now, added a schwa between the "r" and the "s" of his name. «We have to trade with these people, or at least with their Grallt flunkies.» She pursed her mouth and blew in exasperation. «Ssth. They are the only source of zifthkakik, and until we found you people they were the only source of breakbeams. I still can’t quite believe they couldn’t disable your breakbeams.»

«Apparently what they can disable is the control system. They didn’t disable your zifthkakik, or the ones on the planes.»

Heelinig nodded. «That would kill everybody. It would make robbing us easier, but if they want slaves it isn’t practical. They brought us down from High Phase, but that would be a function of the control system, as you say.»

«And you anticipate–»

«Ssth. Picture the scene,» she suggested, gesturing forward. «We breeze in to Jivver system, take up orbit, and send you people down for your holidays. There are almost four squares of you, and how many can keep secrets? You start bragging and showing off souvenirs… Jivver is a nexus, there’s almost always two or three other ships there, and one of them is almost bound to be ferassi, a ferassi trade ship I mean.»

«Yes, I think I see what you’re getting at.»

«Ssth. They ask to come aboard, and how can we refuse them? We have to trade, after all; we need zifthkakik for the rest of our round. They see this.» She thumped the side of the ship. «They discover that we have killed two and eight of them, and taken two captive. This has never happened before, even in the stories. Which means–»

«Which means either it really never has happened before, or the ones who did it got rather thoroughly suppressed.» Peters stretched his mouth in a rictus that wasn’t in any way reflective of amusement. «I lean toward the second possibility, myself. I have heard some hints, on Zenth–» he remembered Keezer’s sneer «–and elsewhere, that the ferassi aren’t completely unknown.»

«Yes, I’ve heard similar hints.» She looked around. «We simply cannot do this, Peteris.»

«Oh, yes, we can.» Peters "smiled" again. «We just have to be careful. Trust us, Heelinig. This sort of deception is common in our society.»

«Oh, I trust you.» She looked him in the eye. «I have to, don’t I? And really I don’t have a problem with you, but him–» indicating Warnocki «–and the rest of you–»

«Don’t worry.»

«Too late.»

Warnocki had come up while he and Heelinig were talking, obviously to ask a question, but something had changed in Peters. Maybe it was the fact that he was only Navy on a technicality now, maybe it was the sight of Todd with a spear through his heart; he’d felt the change between two heartbeats, looking at his reflection in a spaceship windshield, and while he still used the proper forms of address it was perfunctory, habit. He’d been talking business with the XO, not on equal terms but professionally; Chiefs could wait.

"Did you find out whether the Grallt have any welders we can use?" Warnocki asked when he had the chance.

"Yes, I did, and no, they ain’t, Chief. The only welders on
Llapaaloapalla
are the ones we brought with us."

Warnocki grimaced. "It’s gonna be tough."

What they proposed to do was cut the ferassi ship up into sections and haul it into the dark unoccupied section above the berthing compartments. Given the size and mass of it, that was about like deciding to keep a destroyer for a souvenir, but Bolton was adamant, Warnocki enthusiastic, and Joshua dubious and cupidous by turns, and Peters was going along. He’d pointed out that there was no access to that area from the ops bay; Tollison had grinned, glanced at the overhead, and said in a good imitation of Peters’s accent, "Reckon where do they want one?" He was up there now, in the bucket lift, dribbling sparks on the deck along a piece of overhead as wide as the space between the beams and thirty meters long.

"Can we get oxygen and some kind of gas?" Warnocki persisted. "All we’ve got to cut with are the LIGs, and we’ll be out of wire before we’re done here."

"Nope." Warnocki obviously found that hard to believe, as did Peters. Incredibly, the Grallt had no, repeat no, stores of compressed gases. They did have sizeable stores of water–most of the section below the engine rooms was water tanks–and if they needed atmosphere they simply electrolyzed it, using the never-ending energy from the
zifthkakik
. Filler gases like nitrogen they’d never paid attention to, although Lindalu the supply supervisor had had an aha! experience. «Maybe that’s why people get silly and crazy when the air is lost and has to be replaced,» he’d suggested, and Peters could only nod and turn away.

"This is gonna take a while with hacksaws and chisels," Warnocki warned. "Do we have that much time?"

"Probably not. It’s gotta be done before we go Down to Jivver." Peters glanced up at the side of the ship, all eighteen meters of it. "Could we use the lasers to whack off big pieces, and use welders to cut those up? We know the lasers’ll cut it."

"Probably." Warnocki followed Peters’s gaze, then looked down. "Trouble is, they don’t collimate down fine enough. There’s lots of interesting stuff on board. Hate to chop any of it up because we’re in too big a hurry."

All that was true enough. The ship’s
zifthkakik
–it had two, side by side near midships–were almost straight-sided like a pressure tank, and instead of being bright plated were the shiny dark of black chrome. They weren’t exactly transparent, but a strong light behind them revealed shadowy shapes. The breakbeam generators were similar, but what had the pilots and some of the enlisted sailors intrigued, to say the least, was that they would most likely be immune to whatever force the ferassi had used to disable the Grallt equipment.

The ferassi had detected and run them down in High Phase, where all logic dictated that they should be the next best thing to invisible. Mannix, Schott, and the other electronic types had identified the subsystem they thought had possibilities in that direction, a set of vanes ten centimeters across and thirty long set in the top and bottom surfaces near the bow; each had a lump like a miniature
zifthkakik
embedded in the bottom. They were nowhere close to figuring out how they worked, even to the point of turning them on, if they weren’t already.

The nav instruments were different and more complex. The control panel featured switches and indicators that had no parallel on any of the other ships Peters had seen, including the bridge of
Llapaaloapalla
. The heads flushed automatically, no big trick, but the sensors weren’t IR; they responded to humans and Grallt, but not to any nonliving substitute. The weapons bay under the "chin" held two dozen long thin objects with what looked like reaction nozzles; if they were missiles, why hadn’t they launched them?

All the written materials aboard were in the ferassi language, blocky characters that looked a little like Cyrillic, as different from Grallt as a written language could be; if there were operating manuals and circuit diagrams aboard they were useless. The ferassi ship was a prize, all right. Now to hold on to it.

"Look out below!" came to their ears via both atmosphere and earbug, and the section of overhead Tollison had been cutting fell to the deck with a clang louder than anything Peters had heard before, bar the breakbeam that had killed Todd. The big blond sailor began lowering the bucket lift, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and Peters and Warnocki shared looks.

After a bit of that Warnocki shrugged. "What we’ve got is what we’ve got," he said. "What we have to do is be smart using it."

«We should go,» Heelinig commented. «Veedal is expecting us.»

"Chief, you’re gonna have to excuse me. Me’n Heelinig’ve got an appointment."

"I see." Warnocki regarded him steadily. "You got a minute? Something I need to chat about."

Pause. "Let me tell her." When Warnocki nodded he told the Grallt, «We have a little business to conduct. Go ahead, if you don’t mind, and I’ll see you in a few tle.»

«Not a problem.» Heelinig nodded, but didn’t take herself off, just stepped aside and waited.

Warnocki gave her a look. "You know, I’m just now starting to realize that that’s a good-looking woman."

Peters grimaced. "Yeah. What’cha need, Chief?"

Warnocki took a deep breath. "Peters, you’re a Second Class with ten years of service, and I shouldn’t have to say this, but you do not, you simply do not, tell a Senior Chief you’ve got business and just walk off. It doesn’t matter much to me, but your attitude the last couple of days is about to send the Master Chief into orbit."

Peters didn’t even flinch. "Chief, you got any idea what the date is?"

"Not exactly. I figure it’s end of June, first of July, somewhere in there."

"Good estimatin’, Chief. ‘Cordin’ to my handheld it’s the eighth of July, 2055."

"Fine. What’s that got to do with anything?"

"Well, Chief, I joined up in April of 2045, walked down out of the hills and hitched a ride to Huntington. When I shipped over in 2047 I took the option to do the whole eight years active so I’d get the double bonus. I liked the life, and besides Granpap was sick and needed the cash for doctorin’."

"So your ETS date is–"

"Was, Chief. Seventeenth of April."

"Three months ago. I think I see where this is going."

Peters nodded. "That good-lookin’ woman you was just complimentin’ is the Executive Officer, as we’d count it. She come to my new quarters for dinner, call it ‘last night’. You heard about my new quarters?"

"Yeah. It was part of what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a member of the detachment to take separate quarters."

"Am I a member of the detachment, Chief? That ain’t what my orders say, it’s one of th’ things that got me crosswise with Chief Joshua in the first place."

"I hadn’t thought of that."

"I thought not. Me’n Todd got orders to
Llapaaloapalla
, not to the detachment. Dreelig detailed us to work with the rest of you, but Prethuvenigis could cancel that any time you like."

"Might not be a bad idea. Get it on paper."

"Hunh. Anyway, Heelinig’s around forty an’ got two kids, she ain’t interested in romance, this was more in the way of a housewarmin’. Dhuvenig was there, and the Captain stopped by for a minute. So did Prethuvenigis and a couple of his people, and some folks from the Engineerin’ Department I get on with. We had ourselves a right nice party."

"I’m sure you did. So?"

"So I was late gettin’ there. I reckon you know why." Warnocki looked at him, and Peters nodded, and grinned with more than a bit of irony. "Yep. I spent a quarter of an hour standin’ at parade rest with my hat on, listenin’ to Master Chief Joshua chew me out for assumin’ above my ratin’ and outside my rate, by talkin’ on the radio to the airplane drivers."