Chapter 47

Third Mission, inbound aboard the FUP Deep Space Exploration vessel Glenndeavor, 2401 CE

We were released from our final debriefing and critique in TSB-2 by my name-friend, Gunnery Sergeant Kiarianne Krychenkov at 0722. She was in a hurry to be somewhere else and told us three Irregulars before she left that we needed to get together with her sometime in the next few days to visit. Kiari also related that we should arrange a time to meet with Lieutenant Shellbee off duty as well. Beatrice let her know that we all missed spending time with her, and the Lieutenant, too as she headed out of the compartment.

Anika, Bea, and I said our good-byes to our friends in Fire Team 1, again turning down offers to have a few drinks. Anika told them she’d have Bea contact everyone and set up a tea time in our own Rumpus Room, and that made Calvin Vespa breakout laughing and blushing. As Private Benson started plying Plunk for why he responded in such a way to what Anika said, the three of us took the opportunity to depart from the classroom compartment.

As we walked along the corridor, I suggested, that since we had time, we should all go meet Juliet at Shuttle Bay 1 when she returned from her training outside the Glenndeavor. Anika and Bea said that Juliet needed to spend some time alone with me, even if it was just walking slowly back to our suite before going on to our PT session. My younger wife and voluptuous mistress let me know they were about to call and see if Melvina wanted to visit Hydroponics with them. Anika told me she was certain that Mel would want to go along because they would ask our neighbor if she wanted to visit with the Ship’s cats—all four of them.

Beatrice then told me that if Melvina didn’t at least want to visit the cats, if not get excited by the opportunity, that perhaps we didn’t really want to waste our efforts trying to spend any more emotional and intimate time with our neighbor after all.

Vetting the new recruit has begun, my PAW sighed, you poor bastard.

“I’m going to call MoveCon now with our itinerary,” G3 Beatrice Henderson informed me in her military manner. “I suggest you need to make your own travel arrangements with them, Mister Sitwell.

Then she and Anika both burst out laughing to the point of leaning against each other for a few steps, while still maintaining control of their shotguns strapped over the shoulders of their ballistic and beam vests. By the looks the few passing Marines gave the two women as they cackled away during the five or six steps it took for them to calm down, I knew I wasn’t the only person who would like to know what was so funny. We were fortunate that none of the sparse foot traffic around us was an officer.

“I bet—” I warned the two blushing women, both having their electric eyes retracted, while I stopped my inner geek before he could fire-up the factoid engine and pull out the appropriate Marine Corps regulations that might apply. When I’d looked up the ExServ regulations dealing with my responsibilities as an SPI agent, I’d decided to redeem my lagging nerd ticket and did a speed reading of not only the ExServ Gray Jackets’ Manual again, but also the Marine Corps Green Jackets’ Manual as well. “—that your present behavior could be considered conduct unbecoming down here in the Block.”

Bea’s visor deployed and Anika stuck her tongue out at me, her dark-blue eyes twinkling from her young-looking, aristocratic features framed by her Kilo helmet. I noticed a stray copper-colored curl coming down from under the helmet and resting against her left cheek.

I figured if I was going to be abused that I might as well call MoveCon so it would be official. With a few blinks of my left eye I was in contact and immediately transferred to one of the schedulers. Informing him of my name, rating, and that I was on detached duty as an SPI agent, I said I was heading to Ship’s Shuttle Bay 1 where I’d meet with my wife, G4 Mindenhall-Sitwell. From there we’d be heading back to our suite, before going to a PT session in the Gym where we would meet the rest of our household. Our PT session would be followed by supper at the Enlisted Mess, and we planned on going to the Firing Range in the Barracks Block after that before returning to our quarters for bed.

“Where are you located now, G5 Sitwell?“ the young male voice asked in my right ear.

After establishing that I was in Tactical Simulations Bay 2 in the Barracks Block and why I was able to leave duty early—which I didn’t see was any of his business—I slowly went back through my planned itinerary with the scheduler—three times.

Then he asked why I hadn’t sent a text message with the proper information as his files showed that I or a member of my traveling party had done as recently as this morning.

My paranoid ass-wipe didn’t like the adhesive tone of his voice in my ear but knew we’d never be able to go confront him with our weapons and offer him one chance to experience supreme adventure, no matter how short or painfully it might be delivered from our hands.

To my right, I notice Bea’s visor was already retracted into her Kilo and she and Anika were giggling about something. As we approached the hatch to leave TSB-1, there was a Marine guard ahead with her data pad ready to scan us. I told the scheduler that I’d be sure to send a text message the next time I contacted MoveCon and terminated my call.

I was beginning to see the down side to allowing all aspects of tedious duties to be handled by Bea, no matter how effective she was. I was beginning to understand why my mother made me learn how to cook, do the dishes, and wash my own clothes beginning at such a young age while informing me time and again that I wouldn’t have her around to do those things for me once I left home.

My electric eyes were deployed as I made my way toward Ship’s Shuttle Bay 1 using the heel-toe express. I figured I still had a few minutes before I’d arrive as I finished with the email itinerary I planned on sending to MoveCon before I departed with Juliet. I made three eye blinks and attempted contacting our household’s very own shuttle pilot. My call was switched immediately to Juliet’s voicemail and a recorded female voice that wasn’t my first wife told me in my right ear, “The crew member you are attempting to contact is unable to respond at this time. Please leave a message along with your name, rating, or rank and you will be contacted once they are available. Thank you.“

I figured that message meant Juliet’s shuttle was still outside the Glenndeavor.

A few moments later I was scanned through the starboard auxiliary personnel hatchway by one of the two Marines on guard. I figured there was good time to spare before Juliet was scheduled to return. As the hatch closed behind me, I was confronted with all the hustle and bustle, the deep hums of shuttles, and the smells inside the huge cavernous space of Ship’s Shuttle Bay 1. Even at this distance, I immediately notice the different fluorescent colors of hard hats worn by the tiny figures of the crew. The colors denoting each group’s primary work responsibilities as they moved about doing their specialized tasks among the shuttles, donks, and other pieces of big equipment and stacks of cargo pods dotting the place.

Just inside the personnel hatchway and to my right was a portable security kiosk near the corner where the aft bulkhead that I came through and the starboard bulkhead met. As I turned and stepped over to the shack, I saw a sign covering the inside of the kiosk window that looked quickly hand-lettered in black marker which announced:

Welcome to SSB-1. You MUST check in HERE. Wait for an attendant to present you with a visitor’s pass. Without a pass you will be arrested! While the customer is always right; YOU are NOT a customer! So serve those who also wait.

While I wondered at the wording of the unofficial sign, and how long it was going to take before somebody showed up, the right side door of the kiosk opened and a G3 came out wearing a garrison hat. She closed the door behind her and, stepping around in front of me, she scanned my chest with her data pad. I looked at her nametag as the G3 consulted the results on the screen of her device.

G3 Cinolone was short and squat in her duty blues. She looked older than me by several years at least, and she had a Transportation Specialist blaze on her left sleeve. She also wore a pistol on her belt in a holster that appeared well cared for and well used.

“I see you’re here to escort a G4 Mindenhall-Sitwell, who is working on upgrading her shuttle ticket, to her next destination,” she said, looking up from the data screen. She focused on my ballistic and beam vest, reading my nametag. I noticed her garrison cap looked a size too big for her apparently bald head as she again consulted her data pad. The tops of her ears were sticking up beyond the bottom hem of the cap on both sides. “Ahhh, according to flight control, her shuttle isn’t scheduled to return for another ten to twelve minutes, G5 Sitwell.”

“Ah, yes, G3, that is what I’m here for,” I responded, surprised that the MoveCon scheduler I’d had the extended conversation with got my information correctly entered into the system. “Could you direct me to the area where she will disembark from the shuttle?”

“Certainly, Mister Sitwell,” the G3 replied, now peering through my tinted visor at my eyes. “Sitwell—Mindenhall-Sitwell; that’s not a coincidence is it?”

“No, it’s not,” I said, feeling a grin form on my face at the genuine smile I saw appear on the G3’s oval face as her pale brown eyes seemed to fill with appreciation, or mirth, or something. With a blink to be polite, my visor retracted into my Kilo.

“Tall, thoughtful, and you are an SPI agent as well,” said the woman giving me a look-over. “Your very significant other is a lucky woman. Wait, does that specialty blaze I see mean you were a code monkey in your past life? Points deducted, sorry.”

Then her smile disappeared as her eyes took on a veiled appearance. G3 Cinolone gestured to her right with her data pad, saying, “Follow SOP movement rules at all time while you are visiting Shuttle Bay One. Let’s go over those rules as a reminder. Please follow the marked starboard outside pedestrian lane on the right of the vehicle track until you reach the crossing marked Starboard-Seven. That crossing will be about a third of the way along, just beyond where the starboard bulkhead makes the corner, opening up on the maintenance yard to the right.

“Stay on the pede-lane,” she stressed and brought her hand holding her device to the chest of her duty blues, “at all times. G4 Sitwell-Mindenhall’s shuttle will berth across the vehicle track in spot S-Seven-Six.” She looked down at her data pad and touched the screen three times and checked the results.

“There will be shuttles in berths S-Seven-Four and S-Seven-Eight when you get down there,” Cinolone told me. “SS-Four is being serviced to depart in twenty minutes and SS-Eight is receiving spot maintenance for some reason. You will wait on the starboard side of the vehicle track until the rear hatch of her shuttle is lowered and the flight crew departs the vessel.

“Look both ways before crossing the VT,” the G3 told me as she pointed her data pad at the chest of my ballistic and beam vest. “As we both know from SOP, or should know; you, as a pedestrian, DO NOT have the right of way when you cross the vehicle track. So if you get run down, you’ll be the one in trouble and the vehicle may not stop. Once you have safely crossed the VT, stay on the S-I pede-lane until you reach the shuttle’s marked parking spot.

“Now ... you’ll have to keep yourself entertained for a bit while you wait,” she told me with a grin as her eyes took on life again, “So I hope you have some video games loaded in that fancy helmet. But be careful,” she added with a smirk on her oval face, “because there are some low-life shuttle wrenches down there who’ll probably talk your ear off through your helmet if you just give them a glance. They’re always looking for any excuse to put-off doing work. Be especially on your guard if one of them approaching you has a nametag you can read that says, McCord.“

“G3 Cinolone, certainly you’re not talking about,” I said to her in a bland tone-of-voice, while trying not to laugh out loud, “the resident rude, crude, and crusty dude that is a Shuttle Repair Tech named G2 Randolph McCord—not that we’re name-friends. It sounds like you know him.”

“Everyone knows of him, down here,” said G3 Cinolone, her eyes going big while taking a short step away from me. “How do you know that vagrant?” she asked. With a squint of her eyes, she looked me up and down. “Oh, and he just made G3. I can only figure his shuttle ticket upgrade finally put him over the top on that.”

“Have no fear from me,” I told her, holding up my tactical-glove-covered right hand, while my left held the strap of my shotgun where the strip of webbing angled down the chest of my vest from my left shoulder. “I know McCord because he sometimes plays poker with me and my friends, or harasses us from the gallery when he’s not seated at the table. So McCord’s on duty right now?”

I wondered what kind of gossip I’d hear if I did run into him while I waited for Juliet?

“Duty? If that’s what you want to call it,” said the Transportation Specialist, her lips coming together for a moment as if she wanted to spit. “If you know him, then you need to get down there before your lady disembarks from her shuttle. She didn’t enter the Bay through this portal, or I’d have had the chance to warn her before she got near him. But he was probably off requisitioning supplies for his assigned duties when she arrived at the beginning of this watch.”

“Oh, she already knows how to handle Randy Randolph McCord—and although I used his first name again—again, we’re not name-friends,” I said quickly, giving Cinolone a nod of my Kilo helmet, regretting my use of his first name without his permission.

“Few are,” interjected the G3 with a shrug of her broad shoulders.

“But thanks for the heads up,” I told her. “My wife is armed, and while she and McCord have come to some kind of agreement about what her boundaries are around the poker table, with the open-hand skills she’s developed recently, he might sing in a higher register if he puts a hand on her.”

“Oh yeah, if you get a video of that,” G3 Cinolone informed me in a serious-sounding voice, “I’ll gladly buy a copy.

I wondered how many people G3 Cinolone had talked to since she came on duty today, being stuck back here in the corner.

“Still,” said the stout woman, “it would be better to be down there soon, Mister Sitwell, before she disembarks her shuttle. McCord’s been in a peculiar state of mind lately. A body like him would be just so much skin-wrapped vacuum if he wasn’t such a good wrench...” She handed me a visitor’s pass on a long dummy cord for around my neck that seemed to have magically appeared in her left hand. “Please return this to the guard at any hatchway as you depart, and have a good one—hopefully without sighting a single stormy McCord on your horizon during your entire visit here to Ship’s Shuttle Bay One.”

“Thanks again,” I told her, putting the cord over my helmet and then threading it under the strap of my shotgun.

With a smile and nod of my Kilo helmet, I turned to my left and started off at a good pace along the black surface of the pedestrian lane. There was a meter-wide yellow berm marking it from the brick-red-colored decking of the vehicle track on my left. Taking long strides, I looked around off to my left; seeing the rest of the decking in the shuttle bay that wasn’t marked with color-coded walkways, vehicle routes, crossings, shuttle parking spots, or warning thresholds, was light gray.

As I walked along the towering bulkhead a few strides to my right, part of me wondered what G3 Cinolone meant by saying McCord had been in a peculiar state of mind lately. How could a guy like him get any more peculiar? I thought if I did run into him, it would be interesting to see McCord in his own environment. I couldn’t image what his working relationship with the people around him might be—was he the brash, outspoken braggart and the self-proclaimed crusty dude Juliet and I knew from Poker Night, or something different?

I remembered the things that G3 Chrystal Ruby and G3 Aspi-Arti Thizdrall said about McCord when we met in Ship’s Shuttle Bay Two. Everything they’d related seemed to collate perfectly with the flawed man I knew. I had to admit I was curious to see him at work and I shrugged those thoughts off—if I ran into him my curiosity might be satisfied. But I was more interested in greeting Juliet and spending time walking along the passageways with her; just the two of us.

Then off to my left and across the vehicle track, the in-system drive on one of the SSC-12 cargo shuttles parked at some berth on the flight line spooled up with a growing hum. Each one of the in-flight marker beacons on the top, sides, and the bottom front of the vessel started blinking their specific position-indicator colors. Attracted first to the lights and commotion, my attention then gawked around at the different types of activity going in the bay as I walked along. I enjoyed watching the various shuttles moving around or parked inside the huge bay. Across the VT from me I noted that some of the shuttles were parked facing me and some must have backed into their assigned spaces.

I watched a pair of three-man crews at two of the cargo shuttles parked on adjacent berths across the vehicle track as they unloaded dark-blue storage pods. All of the crew shifting cargo wore fluorescent pink hard hats. It seemed each of the SSC-12s could carry four of the huge pods in the vessel’s cargo hold. I figured the uniformly sized pods could only be coming from the external clamping points used for storage that ran along three sides of the hexagonal cross-section of the Ship’s Drive Boom.

Tired of being a walking tourist, I looked toward the far bow-end of the bay. It was then that I really noticed the wide swath of red-on-yellow checkerboard warning that the cold vacuum of the All Alone was behind the hatches and bulkheads there.

I felt my butt pucker and heard my paranoid ass-wipe down in my lizard brain starting to chant something to himself I couldn’t make out.

I picked up my pace, and hearing clean tires on clean decking coming from behind me. I momentarily glance where my tactical display would be if my electric eyes were deployed. Feeling foolish, I looked over my left shoulder. Approaching on the vehicle track was a spidery-looking, empty mover designed to haul two cargo-pods. There was a gap in the front of the machine that was being driven by a driver standing on one frame-rail side with an assistant holding onto the other side of the big, open frame.

As the vehicle went by, the assistant giving me a grin and a wave while the look of the machine reminded me of home. There was a good-sized vegetable growing operation outside of my hometown that was one of the few remaining places nearby that provided employment to large numbers of people. There were six hectares of arched ribbed greenhouses where the food was grown all year around. The cargo vehicle looked like a tiny version of a ribbed greenhouse with the poly film missing. The operator would line up a cargo pod between the two front frame rails and then drive forward until the pod was aligned under one of the two lift arms attached to the top of the arched framework. The handler would lower the arm, attaching both ends to the front and back of the pod, and then raise the load and lock it in place.

Walking along, I laughed as I remembered the time I astounded my Rastabuds when I told them the total weight of Ganga I estimated the company that owned the greenhouses could produce in one year if they converted their entire operation to growing the sacred herb. Part of me thought that even Percy Garvey would be impressed by the quantity, but likely not the quality.

Just a few paces from the pede-lane I followed, the huge, high bulkhead to my right formed a corner. As I walked by the corner, I saw the bulkhead ran perpendicular away from the marked walkway and I was looking at the Maintenance Yard. It was almost exactly like the yard I’d seen in Shuttle Bay 2, and was about a 70 meters deep and perhaps 120 meters long. In SSB-2 I’d seen SSPC-12s and an SSC-12 shuttle parked on the deck around the yard being worked on.

Here there were no shuttles receiving maintenance in the yard, and I reminded myself all heavy maintenance on any of the shuttles most likely was done before the Glenndeavor broke out of warp. However, in different marked parking areas throughout the yard I saw a group of three various-sized donks and a small towing tractor not presently being used, or the units were there for maintenance. I noted at least six new-looking in-system drive units; each was the size of a TD3 and mounted on dollies, ready to be swapped into a shuttle as quickly as possible if the need arose.

Also out in the big expanse of the yard, I saw the big frame and body of a partially torn-down six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. I figured that once it was back together, the machine would easily fit in the cargo hold of a SSC-12 with room to spare. It seemed a crew had been either fabricating or repairing parts of the removed composite body and cargo bed when they were called away to do some more important job. The six-wheeler was the type Juliet once described as being used by the Away Teams once they were planet-side. Then I saw what looked like a new motor for the vehicle on an engine stand next to some crates and a big, dollied tool chest on the far side of the ATV.

My view of the six-wheeler was cut off as I walked by a line of four big specialty wagons festooned with all kinds of tools parked in marked spaces several steps beyond the pede-lane. Then I began passing a line of other big to medium-sized pieces of neatly placed machinery my inner geek was embarrassed not to be able to name or even venture a guess at how the equipment might be used.

Along the far bulkhead of the yard, I saw the hatchways to several different maintenance storage and repair bays. Here was a difference from what I saw in Shuttle Bay 2. There was one maintenance storage bay in SSB-2; here there were two. The second had a really big hatchway and I deployed my electric eyes so I could use the system’s cameras to enlarge the stenciling from across the yard. I learned there was a shuttle drive-system maintenance storage compartment located inside the big hatch. My inner geek wondered what the larger bay held that the smaller bay didn’t.

Similar to SSB-2, there were a few donks and one small hauling tractor parked near entrances to the bays, as well as benches like the one Garrick and I sat on when I was introduced to his chew. Looking down in front of me I saw marked on the black deck in white lettering that the yellow-striped way crossing the VT which I was approaching was Starboard-Seven.

I stopped and looked across the vehicle track. Parked in the berth marked S-7-4 was an SSC-12 shuttle that had two workers unhooking a power umbilical from near the deployed rear loading ramp. I could see the large cargo hold inside the shuttle was empty. In berth S-7-8 was an SSPC-12 shuttle with two maintenance crew looking inside an opened cowling on the big starboard nacelle.

Between the two shuttles was an open berth that had huge light-blue letters on the dark-gray decking of the parking area that let me know I was looking at S-7-6 that I’d been told Juliet’s shuttle was supposed to use once it returned to the Glenndeavor from whatever had kept my first wife busy for so long.

“Mister Sitwell,” I heard a recognizable, pleased-sounding male voice call from behind me, “what are you doing here in my world? Come for a shuttle ride, have you?”

Before I turned around I knew it was G3 McCord.

He was standing a few strides away with a short, skinny G2 who had an almost weasel-looking face. They were both almost hidden between two big pieces of equipment and wore the almost glowing fluorescent lime-green hard hats that were the color worn by the maintenance crew.

On their left, or my right, was one of the big pieces of unknown machinery that stood a meter over their heads and was a good four meters end-to-end. On their right was a covered-over cargo donk bigger than a TD3. Not only was a blue tarp protecting the front driver’s compartment, but a heavy silver tarp went up over what seemed to be the cram-packed and high-stacked low-rider cargo bed that made up the rear four-fifths of the vehicle.

“No shuttle ride for me today, Mister McCord,” I told him, hearing the grin in my voice as I took in both of their dirty, dark-blue coveralls and their tool belts. “Have you been outside since we broke out?”

“Ah, that I have ... that I have,” McCord told me with a genuine smile brightening his full face, his eyes almost seeming to glitter as I stepped toward both of them. I noticed a hand-lettered sign stuck to the LED panel on the front of the cargo donk telling me the machine was Nonfunctional. I noticed a meter-wide tray with two centimeter high sides down on the deck under the front of the donk. A small pool of reddish fluid collected inside the drip tray.

“Right now the Glenndeavor’s keeping formation with the most astounding cluster of cometary bodies I’ve ever heard about, let alone seen,” the crust dude told me, not being rude at all and surprising me with his words—and his eyes had a faraway look. “They’re already starting to out gas a bit, not that you can really tell with the clouds of sparkling crap hiding most of the swarm.

“But you should see it with your own eyes,” McCord spoke up over the hum I noticed coming from behind me while his companion looking at both of us as if we had three heads, “if you get the chance—that glorious sight makes our god-damn magnificent vessel seem like a tinky-toy by comparison.”

“Here comes tha’ last one for us,” the G2 spoke up, pointing past McCord and me and across the vehicle track. “Let’s get this thing ready to be unloaded and serviced up so we can get outta here, McCord. Our honorable duty’s almost done for another day.”

I turned around and there was an SSC-12 that had reversed in and parked on berth S-7-4. As the rear loading ramp came down, inside the shuttle I could see one of the big cargo pods the vehicle must be carrying. The dark blue container extended from nearly one side of the hold to the other and was all of three meters high. I could read the huge stenciled words COMMISSARY SUPPLIES on the pod and below that was a mix of letters and numbers used to identify the pod. I knew there had to be barcodes on the container in several places as well.

I felt a flush of pride and then excitement as I realized Juliet’s shuttle was here. On the flight deck of the vessel was my loving wife, G4 Juliet Iphigenia Mindenhall-Sitwell, and perhaps she was sitting in the command seat right this second.

I was thankful that McCord and his buddy were busy on the other side of the shuttle when Juliet and the three other members of the shuttle crew began to depart from the front portside hatch, coming down the seven steps of the deployed ladder. Even from across the vehicle track and the fact their figures were half the height of my little finger, I could see all were wearing duty-blues, belts, pistol holsters, and helmets; my wife in her Kilo and the other three in flight helmets.

As they gathered near the boarding ladder, Juliet saw me standing in front of the tarp covered donk in the maintenance yard and gave me a wave. My wife pointed me out to her crewmates and then they continued talking for several minutes, consulting their data pads from time to time. The tallest member of the group appeared to be in charge. The other two gave nods of their helmet-covered heads and then climbed back up the ladder, reentering the shuttle. Juliet and the remaining crew member, who it was easy to tell was a woman, turned in my direction and started walking along side of the SSC-12. They seemed to be chatting enthusiastically as they walked toward the pede-lane and the marked VT crossing, S-Seven.

Looking both ways along the vehicle track first, both women walked toward me on the yellow diagonal stripes marking the crossing. I could see now that Juliet’s companion was an ExServ Lieutenant. She gave me a nod of her helmet-covered head and turned to her left on the pedestrian lane on this side of the vehicle track before she started to stride along for parts unknown.

Juliet walked up to me with a happy smile on her face and excitement in her green eyes. I was more than happy for her gentle squeeze on my fingers through my tactical gloves, but I wished I had my gloves in one of my thigh cargo pockets and not on my hands so we’d be touching skin to skin. However, I was happy that my wife continued to hold my right hand with her left hand as we stood there looking into each other’s eyes.