Tapestries

Lounge XII was normally a large, echoing space with sheer plastic walls, plastic tables, and metal chairs bolted to a metal-grille floor.  At one end was a counter from which food was served and drinks dispensed, and both the side walls had screens mounted on them showing ship-information.  The Eagalante was too far out from Earth to receive any kind of real-time transmissions or entertainment feeds, so those were recorded and not usually played in public areas.  All this had changed for the cocktail party though.

The floor was now carpeted, something thick and plush enough that it was difficult to walk through unless she picked her feet up as though she was doing knee-raises in the gym.  Her dress definitely wasn’t cut for that, so she resigned herself to trudging around for the evening.  There were tables suspended from the ceiling by slender, silvery chains that connected to some kind of filigree centrepiece; the tables were dotted with glasses, mostly empty.  The walls were hidden behind tapestries that depicted scenes from the Eagalante’s own history, and must have been specially made for this party.  Anna shivered a little as she wondered at the expense and intent of such a gesture.  She scanned across them, spotting the launch of the Eagalante first, and then the first port of call, a planet called Safire II.  The tapestry showed the planet as seen from the ship in orbit, seemingly peaceful though a little more colourful than most due to the dust storms that slowly precessed around the planet.  Anna’s eyes widened a little; she hadn’t been on the Eagalante back then but she’d heard the stories of the crew expecting a quiet planet and sending down a trade mission, from which one person returned, half-dead and having staged a daring escape to warn them of the despot now in power.  Hours after they returned the Eagalante detected the launch of both missiles and small orbital gunships and accepted that the despot on the surface wanted to capture them.

The initial skirmishes had been one-sided, with the Eagalante destroying the missiles after they’d left the atmosphere, just in case they were nuclear, and attempting to just cripple the gunships.  There were a couple of accidents where the gunships were destroyed, or ripped open to the vacuum, but mostly the gunships crews should have been able to save themselves.  The despot on the planet below ordered the gunships shot down from the surface rather than let them land.

The second wave of the battle came just after the Eagalante received word from Earth, then not so far away that it couldn’t be contacted for advice, which simply told them to contain the situation and Earth would investigate it in due course.  The Captain of the Eagalante then, Captain Peverett, reportedly swore so colourfully that his First Office was reaching for his radio to get the ship’s doctor to sedate him before he calmed down again.  Then the missiles launched from space were detected, much closer, and faster moving.

The Eagalante suffered a small amount of damage from the missiles it couldn’t destroy in time, but its defensive shielding was more than adequate, and the damage was from the impact shock rather than penetration.  Captain Peverett at that point decided that containment was only possible if the despot of Safire II was unable to leave the planet before Earth got there.  Rather than waste armament attacking population centres and manufactories, which he was certain would be co-located to try and inhibit an attacker from assaulting them, he used the ship’s gigawatt lasers to heat the atmosphere over the next three days, stirring the already problematic dust clouds into a violent super-hurricane and then pouring more energy into it as it attempted to vent across the world.  The assaults on the Eagalante died off half-way through the second day, but Captain Peverett remained firm on his plan, and when the Eagalante finally broke orbit and started on to its second destination the surface of Safire II could barely be seen for the raging tumult of the dust-storms.  Where a rare gap opened up all that was visible of the land below was bare, sand-blasted rock, and the oceans seemed sluggish and silted.

Reportedly Earth had sent a message after the Eagalante to report on what they’d found when they arrived, but no-one on board the ship would admit to having ever heard that the message had arrived.

Anna shook herself, wondering why she was surprised that Michal should have decided to include a tapestry of what was arguably an atrocity in one of his dinner parties.  A hand fell to rest gently on her shoulder, and she tensed, turning her head to see that Captain Leverel had appeared next to her.

“He’s got tapestries of all the deployments of the EST,” he said, his gaze following hers.  “If I didn’t think he was an inhuman little shit I’d say he’s got a thing for you.”

The party

The cocktail party was being held in Lounge XII and there were security guards on the door checking people off the guest-list.  Anna sighed when she saw them, but set her face to calmly neutral with a hint of a smile on her lips as she got close enough for them to notice her.  Captain Leverel wouldn’t have asked for the security, nor would he have approved it if it had been run past him.  It would undoubtedly be the work of his social secretary, Michal Anrasmus, who was a greasy little pole-climber in her opinion.  The guards wore standard issue uniform in olive-green with orange splash-patches; camouflage for an environment you never found on board the ship.  To mark their duties for this evening though, they were wearing silver armbands on the right-arm, and their weapons were concealed well enough that Anna couldn’t spot them or bulges where they may might be.

“Dr. Lesjes,” said the guard on the right as she drew close enough that he didn’t need to raise his voice.  “You’re right on time, ma’am.”

The guard on the left, a woman she realised, held out a tablet.  “If you would be so good…?” she said, leaving the sentence dangling.  Anna forced the smile onto her face properly and rested her palm on the tablet.  After a moment it beeped, and the first guard produced a copper bracelet from somewhere and held it out expectantly.  After another moment wondering if she really wanted to do this Anna offered her wrist, and the guard placed the bracelet around it.  It was slightly heavy and cold.

“What’s this for?” she asked.  She’d been to cocktail parties arranged by Anrasmus before where the ticket, as she assumed this bracelet was, was needed to access various areas in the party room.  She’d quickly removed the ticket, which had been a brooch that time, to a pocket so that she couldn’t accidentally walk into any of his little attractions.

“Identification,” said the female guard looking beyond her.  Anna glanced back over her shoulder and saw a couple of senior engineering officers approaching the party.  She was pleased to see that they looked as wary about it as she felt herself.  “If you need to leave the party for any reason the bracelet is the only way to regain entry.”

“Right,” said Anna, nodding.  “That sounds… like Michal.”  Presumably this meant that he could throw people out if they didn’t want to join in whatever he’d planned this time.  “Thank-you.”

“Please go in,” said the first guard, gesturing to the door.  He clearly wanted to start processing the guests now almost behind her.  She moved forwards without answering him, as both guards were now occupied with greeting the new arrivals.  She found she had to push the door to Lounge XII open by hand, which surprised her, and that her bracelet warmed slightly and tingled when she touched the door.  Then she walked through into Michal’s latest notion of a cocktail party.

Maintenance

The data taken from the biotank readouts consisted of eighteen different measurements, and Dan rapidly saw that it was going to be easiest to assemble them into a data-cube and then slice through it in various directions to assess what patterns there were, and what data wasn’t conforming.  He transferred the data from Dr. Lesjes’s tablet to his own, backing up a copy on the lab’s local computer as part of standard process.  He was just about to turn the lab computer off again when he noticed that a decision box had appeared and overlaid part of the screen.

“Copy data to cloud?” he read out loud.  Strange, he thought, surely backing all the data up to the cloud – the information dense computing structure that laced its way through the entire star-freighter – was also standard process?  He reached out and tapped the Enter key almost automatically, and then noticed that the highlighted option had been Cancel.  The decision box disappeared, leaving the backed-up data visible on the screen.  He cursed softly under his breath and studied the screen, looking for the menu that would allow him to upload the data to the cloud for safe-storage, but before he’d covered more than a quarter of the screen (did Dr. Lesjes store everything on the desktop?) the door to the lab chimed, telling him that someone was requesting entry.

Surprised again, he called out “Enter,” looking over at the doors.

“Voice control is not active,” said a greasily smooth voice, too polished and enunciated to be human.

“What?” Dan looked up and around him, as most people did when addressed by the disembodied voice of the ship systems, and then felt a little foolish.  There was no response, and the entry chime sounded again.  He walked over to the door to the lab and pressed the door release pad.  There was a responsiveness to it that made him wonder if it was actually a mechanical switch instead of a touch-pad.  The door opened, and three men in maintenance uniforms stepped through.

“Please identify yourself,” said the first man holding out a tablet.  He was taller than Dan, and taller than the other members of his team, with hair that was greying at the temples and eyes that looked as though they’d frosted over.  His uniform, midnight blue with the maintenance logo sewn on both shoulders and the midriff, across the bellybutton, was tight-fitting, and after a moment Dan realised that the elasticated cuffs meant it was a pressure-suit, intended to keep its wearer alive for minutes in the event of a sudden pressure leak.  There was no sign of the helmet that would complete the suit, and Dan wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.  He looked at the tablet, and laid his palm flat on it, inside the lines drawn on the screen.  The tablet chirped almost immediately, and as he lifted his hand off the man was already pulling the tablet back and reading the instructions on the screen.

“Sticking door in Lab-EST?” he said.  His voice rose slightly at the end of the sentence, but Dan wasn’t completely certain it was a question.

“Yes,” he said.  “Er, who are you?”

“Maintenance,” grunted one of the guys behind the grey-templed man.  “What more do you need to know?  We fix your door, fast as a supernova.”

“I can’t really call you maintenance,” said Dan feeling awkward now.  “That seems a bit impersonal.”

“You can call me Malik,” said the grey-templed man, turning his head slightly towards Dan.  His eyes seemed almost to be hiding behind the curtain of frost, but they didn’t look directly at him, or even indicate that they were focusing.  “Otherwise we’re just the maintenance team.  Where’s your door?”

“It’s on the tablet, boss,” said the third man, who’d not yet spoken.

“Nope,” said Malik.  “This is Lab-EST.  We make no assumptions, and we go nowhere without authorisation.  Not if you want to leave in one piece.  This man here,” he pointed at Dan, “will show us where the door is, and will show us out again.”

“Right,” said Dan, wonderingly.  “It’s this way, just over here in fact.”   He pointed himself, and then realised that he’d gestured so vaguely that he might have been pointing into the corner.  “Er, just follow me.”

The maintenance men, led by Malik, did exactly that, walking behind him in single file, stopping as soon as he did, and generally acting like they expected the whole room to explode at any second.

Lab-EST

The lab was quiet except for the occasional gurgle as blue fluid was exchanged in the biotanks.  There were a total of thirty biotanks, upright cylinders made of treated titanium with a quarter-panel of toughened glass so that visual inspection of their contents could be carried out.  The titanium was treated to prevent the build-up of biofilms, and a further five biotanks were currently empty, being re-treated.  Low-powered lights were set into the top cap of the biotanks, weakly illuminating the fluid and its contents, and casting odd shadows across the floor of the lab.  Unlike the other labs in this end of the starfreighter the ceiling lights in here, harsh fluorescent tubes capable of producing a blinding white light and irradiative UV-rays, were turned off and recessed, filtered LEDs produced something closer to moonglow.

Dr. Anna Lesjes walked from one occupied biotank to the next, her pace slow and even.  At each tank she paused, checking the contents by sight and then sliding back a titanium plate to reveal a set of digital displays and readouts.  She carried a clipboard-like tablet, with a pen-like stylus attached to one corner by a long, flexible cord, and she copied down the values from the displays before closing up the panel and moving on the next.  She was wearing a white lab-coat with the Cobaxia logo emblazoned on both breast pockets, but underneath the lab coat she was wearing a short black dress that was a little too tight for comfort, sheer black stockings and high-heeled shoes.  She had reached the twenty-fifth tank before a door at the far end of the lab shuddered and tried to open.  It stopped, closed up, and tried again, getting a little further this time.  A hand, golden skin and hairy, seized the side of the one of the halves of the door and pushed.  She turned and watched now, a faint smile playing across her lips, as the door sighed and groaned and eventually gave in and opened enough to let a man through.

“Dr. Lesjes!” called the man, his voice booming through the quiet lab and drowning out the latest gurgle.  He looked a little startled, and spoke next instead of shouting.  “How long has that door been like that?”

He was a little shorter than her – most of the men on the starfreighter were shorter than her – but if she hadn’t been wearing high heels they’d have been about the same height.  He had dark hair in a widow’s peak that was definitely starting to recede, and a lined face that made him look about fifteen years older than she knew he was.  His eyes twinkled pretty much all the time, and his lips were constantly curving into a mischievous, boyish smile.

“Dan,” she said, her voice warm but containing a little bit of control.  He was her junior after all.  “As I’ve told you at least three times, that door’s been broken for over eighteen days now.  I keep telling you to contact maintenance about it.”

“I did contact maintenance,” he said, crossing the lab to join her in front of the biotanks.  “Every time you told me to.  They keep telling me that we’re low priority and there are more urgent things on their list to do.  I tried raising that the last time, and they just told me that airlocks are priority over everything else and I would just have to wait.”

Anna closed up the panel on this biotank, and moved on to the next.  Dan followed her.

“What department did you say we were?” she asked, sliding open the readout panel and starting to copy the data onto her tablet.

“Research and Development, Military I,” he said.  He sounded a little puzzled.  “Why should that make a difference?”

“You told them the wrong thing,” said Anna.  The data on the readout was all within normal parameters, but she added a star next to it on the tablet anyway.  Some of the figures were a little higher than she was expecting.  She checked the biotank number: 26.  “You should have told them that it was Lab-EST.”

“I’ve seen that written on some things,” said Dan.  “I don’t know what it means though.”

“Then ask!”  Anna turned to face him, her eyes bright and annoyed.  She pursed her lips.  “You’re my assistant, Dan, and you can’t assist me if you don’t know everything!  Ask when you see something you don’t understand, because by the time you need to know, I might not be here!”

Dan’s face creased a little with shock, and his mouth dropped a little before he controlled himself and closed it again.

“Where are you going?” he said, his voice sounding astonishingly quiet suddenly.

“Nowhere.  No you idiot, I’m not leaving or dying, or any such thing.  But this is a dangerous job and you can’t just assume that you’ll get an education before you’re required to use it.  This isn’t a school, and you’re not going to get things just put in front of you for you to absorb at your own rate.”

He was quiet now, thinking about what she’d just said, and she took the opportunity to move on to the next tank.  Four more and she could hand the data over to Dan for the evening, he could process it, and she could go and attend this ridiculous cocktail party she was all dressed up for.

“What’s Lab-EST mean, please?” he said, and she was pleased that he’d decided to listen and not argue.

“EST are the Empirical Storm Troopers,” she said, peering into the tank.  Something in the shadows caught her eye, but before she could identify what it was a clatter on the floor behind her made her turn her head.  Dan was bending down picking up his tablet.

“We look after the Empirical Storm Troopers?” he said.  “But they’re like… they’re the elite….”

“Yes,” said Anna.  “And since you’ve apparently not realised it, we don’t look after them.  We grow them.  That’s what’s going on in these biotanks right here, and what the data I’m gathering is for.  They’ll be grown in another thirty-five hours, and then–“ she stopped there.  Dan clearly needed to understand a lot more about the job, and it would be better to get that understanding in place before she told him what the ESTs had been grown for this time.

“We grow them?”

“Yes.  Look, Dan, this is not the right time for this conversation.  Make sure you’re here tomorrow at 12ship and we’ll find out what else you don’t already know.”  She looked back at the biotank, but the shadows seemed normal now.  She supposed it must have been a trick of the difficult lighting, and copied down the numbers from the readouts.  Her wrist-assist chimed, telling her she had ten minutes before the cocktail party started.

“Right,” she said.  “There are three biotanks left, you can do them Dan.”  I’ll do the visual tomorrow with you, so you know what you’re looking for, but for now you just copy down the data here and take it and the rest for initial processing.  Got that?”  She passed him her tablet, then took it back from him and tapped in a override password to allow him read-and-write access to the biotank data.  She handed it over once more, and shrugged out of her lab-coat. 

“Have fun,” he said, noting her dress and smiling warmly.

“Hah!”