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Corporate BioShip Irian Jaya
Don't let me screw this up, the pilot prayed. A survivor of Alliance's Fleet, he'd been an interloper on the civilian Irian Jaya since he'd boarded.
"Three klicks out, same heading." The cybernetics tech raised his voice a careful degree to carry over the hums and beeps of navigation and the rasping breaths of three techs and one pilot trying to pretend they weren't expendable. "That's the worst of it. Better strap in."
Shirtsleeve environment, these civilian riderships were supposed to be, but now the crew sealed their helms, cautious as Alliance spacers who'd survived the Secess' war that had first divided, then almost destroyed, space-faring humanity. The pilot felt his hands sweat, then go cold inside his heavy gloves. He looked beyond the slagged and tangled umbilicals to the adiabatic pods that held a new generation of pioneers for a war-torn world. Let even one of them snap and the recoil could crush the tiny rider, slash through the hull of the corporate bioship, bound on its mission of well-paid mercy, and fling its cargo, men and women sleeping deep in Freeze, beyond this isolated Jump point through the space beyond the No Man's Worlds.
If they were lucky, they'd drift and not even feel the moment centuries from now when their systems failed and Freeze became death. But if their luck failed, they'd be retrieved by pirates. They'd fired on Jaya before, prying the light-armed ship away from its convoy until it had two choices: surrender or risk premature Jump.
Jaya had Jumped. By the time it miraculously emerged at a Jump point near its goal, the rough return to normal space sent the damaged umbilicals twisting around the ship's central disk. If they couldn't be stopped, they'd soon exceed their tolerances, and they'd snap, leaving Jaya easy prey. He had no confidence that the civilian captain, who'd made him feel like a hired killer since the moment he'd come on board, would blow the ship. Probably he feared to stick his estate--because of course the bastard had a substantial one--with the insurance premiums.
The pilot drew a rough breath. Other Fleet TDYs had complained of claustrophobia on these civ riderships, prompting long, long meetings on how cubic was precisely, absolutely the same as on Fleet riderships. But cubic be damned: matched against Jaya, this thing felt fragile as an egg. Matching it against a warship was like going throughJump in a soap bubble. And Fleet didn't give medals for damn-foolishness.
He swallowed. Atmosphere display might be nominal, but he still felt he wasn't getting enough air.
Through the suit-comms, he heard a tech cough. Nerves or spacer's throat, whatever: the man fought to suppress it as the pilot edged away from Jaya's central disk toward the worst of the tangled lines. So he wasn't the only one.
The cyberneticist's voice seemed to vibrate in the cramped cabin. "Jim. Did you hear me? Three klicks out. Same heading."
The pilot bent over a jury-rigged display he'd delayed takeoff to install. Its yellows, reds, and greens glowed too brightly in the reddish cabin lighting that preserved his night vision.
The tension in the ridership thickened.
"Did you hear me, mister?" the cybernetics tech snapped. He seemed to puff up in his flight-suit. Custom-made, no less, not ship's issue. On bioships in particular, cybes were privileged characters, used to people asking "how high" if they so much as murmured "jump."
If Jim remembered it right, this particular cybe was some kind of VIP or VP of R&D groundside. Civilian alphabet soup. The whole chain of command was different.
On Irian Jaya, though, this bigshot cybe came under the orders of Chief Tech Danamon, who reported direct to Captain Heikkonen. Never mind that: for now, this rider was under its pilot's command, and that was Jim.
And if they didn't like it, they could all breathe space.
A Regular service arms officer, Jim was on an expensive and somewhat controversial exchange to the civilian bioship Irian Jaya. He wasn't in the corporate chain of command. All the evidence of a six months' tour of duty--at taxpayers' expense, as the captain liked to point out too often at too many meetings--showed he barely understood. From the first day he'd come on board, it had tripped him up. Like the major flap before they got under way for New Amman when he insisted on going through the usual security manual before certifying that Irian Jaya was fit for departure. The deadline was tight, and Jaya could win a fat bonus if it arrived before it. The captain had tried to "give him guidance" about security. Jim had replied, "Management guidelines be damned," no one was going anywhere until the ship was secure.
So what if they missed a fat performance bonus. The money wasn't going into Jim's account. But if the mission failed, they'd take that out of his hide.
No one in Fleet had ever accused Jim of being arrogant. There, after his rare minor screwups, he'd apologize and make good fast. A career in Fleet with lives riding on his decisions gave him a phenomenal learning curve, and he never made the same mistake twice.
The problem was he wasn't on their team, they didn't want him on their team, and he had only to breathe to antagonize them. He'd more than breathed; he'd insisted on Fleet levels of security, and they couldn't forgive him.
Especially because he'd been right.
God. Get them through the Secess' war, and now all the civs, especially the corporates, wanted to do was get on with their lives. People like Jim were an unpleasant reminder that not only could fighting break out again, it might break them--and what's worse, any way they sliced it, they'd have to pay.
"Jim!"
The pilot whirled. Blue eyes flashed beneath his gleaming visor. Seeing only the ridership's crew, he made himself relax and turn back to his instruments. Mustn't scare the passengers.
"Three klicks, aye."
Behind him, he heard the techs start to breathe again. Don't want to stir up combat reflexes, do you? Not when I'm driving.
"Steady."
After his last wardroom confrontation, Jim had taken to keeping to himself on board Jaya. He was actually more shy than aloof, and he thought some of the crew were beginning to see it. But most of the senior staff saw him only as "tin soldier," an expensive line item on the ship's manifest, useful in the kinds of PR that used more spin than a space platform explaining to shareholders how concerned management was to protect their investment. They simply couldn't forgive him for being what they thought he was: a meticulously groomed, polite, stiff-backed recruiting holo of the sort that had lured their brothers and sisters out of secure berths, into the damn Secess' war and the subject lines of messages that began "we regret to inform you."
For a long moment, Jim stared at his passengers, reflected in the glow of the instrument panels. He could see his own reflection staring back at him from their helms, could see what they saw now: a soldier who restrained himself from striking out, whose eyes were bracketed from strain, and who stared at the ship's crewmembers as if they were part of an unquiet dream that distracted him from his instruments.
A pilot's concentration approached trance, sometimes. Even corporate pilots. The story was, all pilots did was eat, sleep, and brag for ninety-eight percent of their time. The other two percent, they earnedthe exorbitant bonuses and even stock options that helped divide them even further from the rest of the crew.
Stop thinking and drive, Jim told...
