Back From the Dead (12 page)

“So: work with you guys and get my ship fixed for the cost of parts, while pocketing rent. Or get bled white by the local official shakedown crew.” Helton leans back and strokes his chin with exaggerated concern and thoughtfulness. “Hmmm …. let me see here … You drive a hard bargain, but you talked me into it.”

The three men are walking down the cargo ramp together when Lag suddenly freezes mid step and turns his head to the side. Something has caught his eye. The others stop, turn back to look at him, then follow his gaze toward the side of the ship. Lag cocks his head. He walks over to the side where the loading ramp lowers out of the ship’s end. He holds up his arms to measure the thickness of the hull, which appears to be a meter or more thick.

“That’s not right,” Lag says flatly.

Stenson is incredulous. “Naw. Couldn’t be.”

They hop over the side of the ramp to examine it from the side. Lag looks it over briefly, frowning, then looks up at Kaminski and Kaushik, who are standing next to a second light truck, now wearing simple camo fatigues, basic breastplate armor, and carrying suppressed compact rifles. Lag waves Kaminski over.

“Rifle.”

“Sir? … Okay, Sir. Full mag, empty chamber.”

Lag pulls protective eyewear from a pocket, cycles a round into the chamber, flicks the selector to “F”, and aims at the angled underside of the ship, about waist level. He pulls the trigger. Muffled BANG. A bullet strikes the ship and splatters into the dust around the impact point and down onto the ground.

Helton is more than a little surprised. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Lag ignores him, deep in thought. He reaches forward and brushes his hand over the impact point. Then he flicks the selector to “A”, takes a knee, aims at the same area, and pulls the trigger. Twenty-four more rounds rip out of the rifle and into the underside of the ship, first in one spot, then sweeping back and forth in a tight arc as brass showers the ground.

Helton jumps back, covers his ears, and looks away. Dust and bullet splatter fill a new hollow under the angle of the ship’s side. The dust billows out, then blows aside in the breeze. Lag reaches in and dusts his fingertips over the impact points. They’re not holes, just bumps of bullet residue. There doesn’t appear to be so much as a new scratch on the hull.

“WHAT’N’FRAK’ER’YOU’DOON?!”

Lag speaks in quiet wonderment, “Apparently … nothing. Nothing at all.”

Stenson's eyes are wide. “Holy Hindu’s pot roast.”

“Yup. It is,” says Lag. Still eyeing the place on the hull where he shot, he absently flicks the safety back on and hands the rifle to Kaminski, who touch-checks the empty chamber, drops the magazine, puts it in a pocket, and inserts a new one, all without taking his eyes off Lag.

“Well son of a bitch,” Stenson says.

“WHAT?”

“Looks like your ship
isn’t
a Meridian,” Lag answers.

“What? But,
you
just told me–”

“Nope,” Stenson confirms. “It’s an ALAT. Armored Landing Assault Transport. A very old, heavily modified one to be sure. But it’s definitely armored.”

“Soooo…?”

Lag’s tight smile reveals little. “That’s interesting.
Very
interesting.”

Cleaning

Half a dozen young men are on the cargo deck — some soldiers in camo, some wearing overalls — working at clearing the cargo bay. Two chain hoists run from the ceiling down to the ramp, which is now partially raised and slowly inching up. Each hoist has three soldiers hanging and climbing from the chains. They are just barely able to lift the ramp. Chief Stenson is in charge, signaling to one of the teams to climb faster. Outside is a single guard in light body armor with a rifle. Quinn sits on top of a pile of crates to one side, wide-eyed, taking it all in.

Lag stands out of the way with Harbin, both wearing camo uniforms with sidearms, watching the progress. “What do you think?”

“I can make it work,” Harbin answers, looking on critically.

“When was the last time you had a real ship to train recruits on?”

Harbin grunts. Question irrelevant.

“Have a good leave?” Lag asks casually. Harbin nods. “Anything you need to tell me about?”

“… No.”

“Oh, by the way. Did I tell you who the owner is?” Harbin grunts. “Guy by the name of Helton. Helton Strom.”

“… Good man.”

“Are you sure there isn’t anything you want to tell me about your leave?”

“A bit more eventful than planned. We worked it out. Medical knows the relevant details. I’m fit for duty.”

“… Good man you say?”

“I trust his character. Flying … not so much.”

“My thoughts too. How do you happen to know about his flying?”

“I’d rather not go into details, sir…”

The hard work of cleaning and refitting the ship begins in earnest, along with the training of new recruits. Everyone’s busy: the soldiers and the recruits, Stenson and his crew, Helton and Allonia, even Quinn pitches in.

Kaminski drags a stack of thin, dirty, holey mattresses from one of the B-Deck berth rooms while another soldier sweeps out after him. A third oils the hinges on hatches and doors. In the galley, a pair of recruits scrubs down the serving line until everything shines.

Helton carries a toolbox to one of the airtight hatches on the mid-deck passageway. It’s stuck, about three-quarters open. He shoves on the hatch, but it doesn’t budge. He produces a grease gun from the toolbox, sticks the coupler tip on a zerk fitting, gives it a pump. Repeat for all five hinges.

He’s putting the grease gun back in his toolbox when Allonia walks up and, with a simple lean-and-shove, swings the hatch all the way open, then closes it. She nods in satisfaction and moves on.

Chief Stenson lies on his back in a cramped space, a wrench in one hand, an oddly shaped ship part in the other, and a puzzled look on his face. He looks back and forth between the part and the diagram on a small wall-mounted screen next to him, trying to figure out a nonstandard system.

Throughout the ship, Stenson’s men replace broken display screens, popping out the standard-sized units and locking new ones into place.

Helton is intrigued by the bridge; it is different from any other he’s ever seen. The stations are positioned for standing. There are five spots: two in front, one angled at each side, and one in the center back. Each station has a variety of ordinary screens and old-fashioned hard-function switches, dials, levers, and controls. Each also has a swing-out chair with flip-up headrest and safety harness. He stands in front of one of the positions and swings the chair out, then swings it back. He runs his hands over the controls, checking the reach of things. Suddenly he starts gliding away as part of the floor moves backwards. It’s a built-in treadmill, so the crew standing watch can walk or jog to keep in shape and stay alert while on duty.

There are six massively thick windows, angled so the back center station can see out directly through them. Screens and projectors around the rest of the bridge allow a synthetic outside view to be displayed. There is considerable duplication of controls between the stations, but they appear to be set up for (from port to starboard): communications & sensors, flight control, navigation, weapons. The back center station is for command.

Harbin inspects a ragged line of recruits, wearing civilian clothing, standing in the clean and tidy cargo bay. He reaches the end, does an about-face, looks down the line, and shakes his head in disappointment. It’s a mixed lot; fixed-duration, paid training-eval platoons always are. Kids with little formal education or real-world experience, without enough money to pay for a full training program, some with troubled pasts that preclude normal career and education paths.

While repairs are underway, Harbin alternates training, testing, plain old work, and evaluation: Who can learn? Who’s willing to work hard? Who knows what? He has seen all kinds, and he sorts them with the harsh realism born of experiencing people at their best, and worst.

Allonia makes good use of the clean and refurbished galley, baking and cooking for a crowd of very appreciative young men. She takes a pair of steaming hot loaves of bread from an oven and sets them on the now-spotless serving line. Two recruits look in the door, one eyeing the bread and the other eyeing her. She glares at them. One politely ducks out. The other licks his lips, then turns and walks away slowly.

Stenson and his crew have made rapid progress on some systems and gotten nowhere with others. Quinn is fascinated with the process. If he’s not playing in the cargo bay (on a makeshift swing strung between chain hoists), or doing whatever it is he does when he can’t be found, he’s watching — from a safe distance — as Stenson works.

Stenson plugs a diagnostic multimeter probe into a socket and pushes a few buttons. The socket sparks, surprising Stenson, then the tool sparks and a small puff of smoke rises from it. Stenson looks suspiciously at the ship and the tool.

Some drills are simple: run down a passageway with a rifle.

Corporal Kaminski stands at the front of a line of soldiers, wearing light armor and carrying a rifle at port arms. Harbin slaps him on the shoulder and Kaminski runs down the passageway, deftly ducking and jumping at the threshold of each open hatch. But his rifle would hit the sides of the hatch if held at port arms, so he must also swing it up into “present arms” position before each hatch, then back down again after. When he reaches the end of the passageway, he turns down the stairs.

Harbin slaps the next soldier, a recruit in uniform and helmet, but no armor, carrying an obviously fake training rifle. He runs forward and passes the first hatch imitating Kaminski’s jump-duck-present-arms motion, but he flubs the second. The dummy rifle is still at port arms across his chest when he tries to jump through the hatch, clotheslining himself, and he falls heavily backward onto the deck.

Harbin looks at him, closes his eyes, and shakes his head. The recruit stands up unsteadily and tries again, more carefully and much more slowly.

Up in Engineering, Stenson watches while one of his mechanics pulls an old and damaged, soup-can-shaped part from its mount inside an access hatch. The mechanic pushes a much cleaner similar part into place, then gives Stenson a thumbs-up.

Stenson flips a switch, then watches the mechanic dive for cover as the new part explodes with an arc of electricity and a puff of smoke.

Well away from sounds of the men hard at work, at the end of a small, dark access tunnel, Quinn sits, smiling happily, in a cubbyhole no more than a meter on each side. The screen in front of him shows the pretty figure of a schoolmarm. The schoolmarm shows him pictures and words: English, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, Kanji, something like runes. Next to the screen are a dozen small sockets, empty, protected by dust covers. Painted on the wall, but barely visible, is the number “5”.

A soldier sprays the side of the ship with a pressure washer. The difference between the cleaned and uncleaned is stark: smooth grayish metal revealed beneath a century of accumulated layers of drab dust and the colorful wisdom of youth. Slowly, the ship starts to look more like a real machine than a wreck in a fever-dream.

Allonia expands her work in the hydroponics room, planting large racks of greens, cleaning, organizing, and making it look cheery, bright, warm, and wholesome. As does she, in her simple, practical, and comfortable clothing. Quinn, similarly dressed, “helps” her by playing in the dirt off to one side, alternately filling small starter pots and building a small dirt castle in a large tray.

Stenson, now wearing a helmet and body armor, looks cautiously around the engine room, then carefully flips the switch. Nothing happens for a few moments, and he starts to smile and relax. Then a part across the room blows up and sends debris flying.

Helton stands at command position in the clean and polished bridge. He pulls the chair out from under the console and gently takes a seat. He leans back, flips a switch off to one side, watches the screens light up, and grins like a kid in a candy store.

Stenson is concentrating on several screens full of readouts when Helton walks into the Engineering Command Center. It’s a long, cramped, toolbox and machinery and control-panel filled room on the top deck, right over the cargo bay.

“So, how’s progress?” Helton asks.

“Ah, just the person I wanted to see. You know what? I think, thanks to a few local geniuses and things not being quite as bad they first looked, we might just get this thing flying again.”

“Really? You’re sure?”

“I’m not
sure
about anything here, but–”

“How long?”

“Good question,” Stenson replies.

“… Do you have a good answer?”

“Well, there are some things about the ship I still don’t get, like what
that
thing is,” Stenson points to a nearly featureless bit of black metal protruding from the ceiling, “other than an analog 200 amp engine part that seems to be important but isn’t on any of the schematics and doesn’t fit with anything I know about on a theoretical basis. But what I
have
determined is that a lot of these systems are in usable, or least fixable, condition. A lot of the peripheral stuff just needed oil, new gaskets, cleaning, replacement chemicals, and so forth. Even the drive cores seem to still be mostly balanced and in surprisingly good shape for their age. For a lot of the worn parts, we can just print out little widgets to replace them. With a couple of parts that are very hard to get around here, I believe I can get her in the air again. Can’t promise anything on performance, though.”

“What sort of parts?”

Stenson hands him an e-reader. “Here’s the list. At least one pair of mil-spec turbo encabulators so we can get two drives up; preferably three matched pairs, or an impossible matched six-pack. Some other things. I’m pretty sure they could be found at the big boneyard at Eridani II. Not very expensive ‘cause they are an old style, just hard to find.”

“That’s not too far from here. Maybe a ten day round trip. I’ll see if I can find someone to head over that way and pick them up.”