The Parafaith War (18 page)

“I’m Elgin Yuraki-the one who’s in charge of stowing, balancing, and retrieving cargo, not to mention food supplies, air regeneration, and all the other nonpropulsion and navigational details of the mighty Roosveldt. Welcome to our humble craft, cramped as it may be.” “Thank you. I didn’t mean- “

“That’s all right. We should apologize to you. We’re carrying two very senior commanders. They got the two good transport cabins, ecobalance and protocol forbid that they should share with anyone.”

“I’m sorry. It sounds like you’ve got a full load. How many on board?” Trystin asked.

“Not really that many. The crew’s just six. The captain and Lieutenant Hithers, me, and three techs. But we’ve also got you and the commanders, and five more techs in transit. We’re configured more for cargo than passengers. A barge like the Udahl could handle thirty supercargo easily, sixty in a pinch.” Yuraki paused and gestured toward the console. “Sorry … but …”

“You must have a lot to do right now. Just tell me where to put things, and I’ll get out of your way.” Trystin offered a smile.

“The lower lockers are empty, and the bottom bunk’s yours.”

“Fine. Can I sit in the mess to get out of your way?” “That’s where I’d be if I didn’t have all this …” Yuraki grimaced. “But you should have it to yourself.”

Trystin slipped his two bags into the lower locker, where they barely fit. By the time he had straightened, Yuraki was back at the console.

The mess was just abaft the aft-third bulkhead on the right-and empty. Six light gray plastic chairs clustered around a long narrow table, and three more were stacked in the corner. The combined odors of strong tea and the false citrus of Sustain permeated the room. After looking around, Trystin found a spare cup and thumbed the spigot on the samovar.

The steam carried the smell of relatively fresh hot tea, and Trystin burned his mouth with an incautiously quick first sip. He slumped into a corner chair. While connected to the orbit station-and the station’s power supplies-the Roosveldt remained at full Perdyan gravity. A face peered into the mess. “Lieutenant?” Trystin turned around and then stood as he recognized not only the commander’s uniform but the green shoulder braid that signified something on the Service Command Staff. “Yes, ser.”

“Could you rustle up a cup of tea for me? I’d appreciate it.” The woman in the uniform had traces of actual gray in her short-cropped black hair. “I’m in number six.”

“I’ll see what I can do, ser.” Before Trystin bad Finished responding, the commander had vanished.

With a slow, deep breath, he went to the wall cupboard and took another plastic cup from the rack inside, then filled it. He turned right outside the mess and walked to number six, where he rapped on the door. “Your tea. Commander.” . “Come on in.”

Trystin opened the door and stepped into the stateroom, no bigger than the one he would share with Yuraki. The commander’s eyes were faintly glazed as she concentrated on the largest portable console Trystin had ever seen. The display seemed to contain a three-dimensional star map, and he couldn’t resist mentally trying to adjust his implant to pick up the signals.

“I wouldn’t. The standard implant isn’t equipped for that kind of data flow.” She took the tea. “Thank you.” Her eyes glazed over as she turned in the chair back to the console that sat on the built-in desk shelf.

Trystin stood there for a moment, then realized he had been dismissed. He closed the door and returned to the mess, where he sat and took a deep swallow from his own cup.

He really hadn’t even been there for the commander, except as a piece of equipment. He got up and poured another cup of tea from the samovar.

As slowly as he sipped and waited, no one else entered the mess. No one even passed the open door.

“Stand by for seal-off.” Major Laurentian’s voice echoed from the speakers. “Stand by for seal-off.”

With the announcement, Trystin rinsed off the empty cup, reracked it, and slowly walked forward past the now-empty quarterdeck and the sealed hatch through which he had entered the Roosveldt.

As he neared the open hatch to the cockpit, the major’s voice again echoed from the speakers. “Stand by for power changeover.”

Trystin reached out and braced himself between the narrow bulkheads.

The noncom at the screens in the alcove to his left grinned.

Then the lights flickered; for a moment the hum of the ventilators stopped; and the gravity dropped to point five, ship standard.

As always, Trystin’s guts twisted slightly at the transition. He licked his lips, leaned forward and peered into the cockpit. The consoles in front of the captain and the first officer blazed with lights.

Trystin eased up the receptivity of his implant-and staggered slightly as even a fraction of the complete data load seemed to drown him before his cutoffs blocked the flow. His eyes watered, and his head throbbed. After a moment, he licked his lips again. Did all pilots have to carry and monitor that much data-or was he accessing the wrong channels?

He shrugged. It could be either, and he wasn’t about to ask.

“… Pelican two… cleared for low-thrust separation…” “… Pelican two separating this time - . .” The representational screen, easiest for Trystin to recognize, showed the separation of the Roosveldt from the orbit station.

Trystin watched as the signals apparently cascaded across the boards, and as the screens flashed the latest data. Neither the major nor the pilot officer in the second seat used their hands, but those hands rested lightly on the manual controls, and Trystin could see that both officers clearly crosschecked the purely visual screens, almost as if they did not fully trust their implants and the direct links to the Roosveldt.

“Lieutenant?” The first officer looked at Trystin. “Yes, ser.” Although Hithers couldn’t have outranked Trystin much, Hithers was the first officer in the line of command, and Trystin responded.

“We won’t be translating for almost three hours relative, and it’s likely to be rather boring. Go get some tea or something.” “Could I get you anything?”

“No, thank you. It might be boring for you, but we’ll be occupied.”

Trystin took the hint and headed back to the mess, where Elgin Yuraki was pouring himself a cup of tea. “You all right?” Trystin asked.

“Fine. Last-minute stuff.” Yuraki glanced toward the door and lowered his voice. “Commander Milsini-she’s the one in six-she dumped something like five tonnes of shielded equipment on us. That’s a bitch to handle at the last minute-shielding, weight and balance, and recomputing all the mass for translation.” The supply officer cleared his throat. “I was afraid we’d be over the translation limit, but we’ve got a good two tonnes to spare.”

Trystin nodded politely. Two tonnes on a large ship didn’t sound like that much of a safety margin.

“See … the total mass isn’t as much of a problem as the accuracy of the mass calculation. The closer the calculated mass is to the translation power approximation, the less the translation error-all other things being equal, which they’re not. Anyway, you’ll learn all that better than I know it. All I know is that the captain gives me hell if the mass calculation isn’t as good as I can make it.” Yuraki took a deep swallow of the boiling tea without even wincing. “And when some commander dumps stuff whose mass is mostly unknown on me … how do you tell a commander it’s a problem? All they say is that I should solve it:” “That’s right.” Both junior officers glanced up. The second commander-a stocky dark man with the holoed wings over the name “Chiang”-stood by the samovar. “When you’re a junior officer, you have to solve problems. When you get to be a commander, you get to create them. When you get to the senior staff level, you have to tell the commanders which problems to create.” He snorted. “Enjoy problem-solving while you can. It’s easier.” With that, Commander Chiang carried his cup from the mess.

“Who are they?” Trystin asked. “Do you know?” “Commander Milsini works for the planning branch of the general staff. Commander Chiang-1 don’t know. Except all the pilots sort of whispered when they heard he was coming. He only brought three cases of stuff, and the mass computations were taped to each case.” “Thoughtful of him,” observed Trystin. “He was, or is, a pilot. If all pilots are like the captain, they never forget the importance of mass computations.” Yuraki stood and poured another cup of tea, then added a heap of Sustain powder to the steaming liquid. Trystin winced. “How can you drink that?” “You get used to it.” Yuraki took a deep breath. “Besides, I’ve got more to do. See you later.” He carried the cup out of the mess.

Trystin helped himself to a half cup of tea, without Sustain, and slowly sipped it. He must have dozed, because he sat up with a start, checking his implant for the time-over two hours since he had left the cockpit. He must have been more tired than he thought.

Another cup of tea, with some Sustain, helped wake him, and he finally walked forward to the cockpit, past the tech in his shipsuit, still monitoring the ship’s maintenance systems through the six-screen panel.

“Not bad timing,” said Hithers from the right-hand seat. “Be another fifteen or so.” His eyes glazed over. Major Laurentian never glanced toward Trystin. The cascade of lights across the board seemed to slow, more and more lights winking out with each passing minute. Were systems being powered down prior to translation? Trystin didn’t know. This was the first time he’d watched a translation from the cockpit, and the time slipped past.

“Prepare for translation. Prepare for translation.” Hithers’s words spilled from the ship’s speakers. “Thirty seconds to translation.”

The whole ship went totally silent. The ventilators stopped. The screens blanked. The gravity went, and Trystin thrust out his legs and awkwardly braced himself, inwardly damning himself for his forgetfulness.

At the moment of translation, the entire ship seemed to turn inside out, and black turned to white, and dark to light, for an instant that seemed momentarily endless-yet was totally subjective. No clock ever designed had been able to measure any duration for a translation.

Then, with a stomach-wrenching twist, the ship was back in norm-space. The screens in front of the pilots began to flash, slowly, and then more quickly, as the telltales reported system information.

The hissing of the ventilators resumed, and ship’s gravity dragged Trystin perhaps ten centimeters to the hard deck.

But neither pilot moved, although Trystin could almost sense the stepped-up flow of information through the cockpit.

The representational screen twisted, and reformed, showing the Roosveldt heading insystem, toward Chevel Beta, and the first officer reached out and tapped a stud beside the console.

“Translation complete. We are heading insystem. We are heading insystem.”

Somewhere on the inbound leg to Chevel Beta, the Roosveldt would use its receivers to pick up the simultaneous dual and continuous signals beamed from asteroids on opposite sides of the system in synchronous orbits. The signals contained coded algorithms that, when deciphered and with the computed parallax, allowed incoming Coalition ships to determine real time and thus their translation error.

“That’s it, Lieutenant. We’ll see you later.” Hithers offered a brief smile to Trystin.

Trystin understood the dismissal. “Thank you, ser.” He slipped back into the narrow corridor behind the crowded cockpit.

From the tech alcove beside the hatch, the noncom in the shipsuit glanced up. “Good luck. Lieutenant.”

From what he’d seen, Trystin wondered if he’d need a lot more than luck, a lot more.

The only instructions Trystin had received when he had checked in at the Chevel Beta training command and received his room assignment were to report to room B7 at 0900 a week later with everything on his checklist taken care of. Room B7 meant second level, relatively high for an asteroid station. Report to B7 and wait, not that he’d been doing much besides waiting. Taking another physical, updating his personnel files, being issued shipsuit and fitted for deep-space pressure armor hadn’t taken all that long. The most complicated thing had been arranging all the paperwork for his translation trust. Neither payroll nor the admin section had been terribly pleased, but his father had provided a step-by-step procedure and all the Service and legal cites. That hadn’t exactly pleased Major Turakini, and her reaction had given Trystin the distinct impression that should anything happen to one Trystin Desoll, the Service really wanted to hang on to his pay and everything else for as long as possible.

The other time-consuming, necessary, and boring item had been a screen-based intro class to the basics of spatial coordinate systems. He’d spent a lot of time in the station library, using his implant to access all the general information on piloting, and on translation engines, and more than a few hours in the high-gee exercise room. With the station gravity kept at point five, probably because the energy consumption to maintain standard gee would have taken a pair of large fusactors alone, high gee was classified at one point one, or a trace over Maran norm.

Trystin tried not to bound or bounce as he walked toward the up-level ramps. His quarters-a cube four meters on a side carved out of solid rock and sealed with plastic-were on J level.

The ramp corridors, zigzagging back and forth toward the surface of Chevel Beta, were plastic-coated rock, bare except for the air-collection vents set midway between each level.

Between E and D level, a noncom brushed by Trystin, her eyes flickering to his name patch as she muttered a low, “Excuse me, ser.”

As he nodded and moved aside, wondering at her glance at his rank and the totally perfunctory nature of the request, Trystin cranked up his hearing and caught the words, “… ‘nother frigging greenie …”

Would the whole training program be like that, with perfunctory respect covering scorn for junior officers by the deep-space noncoms? Trystin took a deep breath and kept going up the ramps.

Room B7 smelled faintly of sweat and ozone, but looked like an old-style classroom, with a dozen flat consoles and scratched gray plastic chairs. Trystin glanced around. Three lieutenants and a major returned his glance.