Blaze Ward [The Science Offic The Science Officer (epub)

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.After a few of the stars faded from sight, he looked over a shoulder.“Handcuffs off, please?”She glared down at the top of his head.“Face the wall,” she growled.Javier stood perfectly still when she unlocked him, and clenched a little as he expected a rabbit punch or another shot to the head, but she stepped back and activated the security field without a word.Javier leaned close enough to the force field that it started to spark at him.“Remember, Sykora,” he called, “clean air and smiling faces.” He looked around, found a bed to sit on, and stretched out to contemplate his day.Kinda sucky, but it could have been much, much worse.ΞThe voice jarred him out of his daydreams.Probably just was well.They weren’t fit for polite company anyway.“On your feet.”Javier smiled.His princess Sykora had come back to rescue him.Or shoot him.Never a dull moment in space.He stood up and stayed well back from the security field as she disarmed it and stepped to the doorway.She had to duck to clear the lintel.Javier maybe came up to her chin.“Hands together in front,” she said as she held out a set of manacles.Which was better than a pistol.He put his hands out politely and watched her cuff them expertly.She pulled the connecting chain until he was almost touching her chest, staring up into her face, which was probably a smarter response than sticking his nose between her boobs.Probably.“Come with me,” she said, so quietly as to be almost a whisper.Like I had a choice? Javier thought to himself.Even four years of Academy training in close–combat drill would make him look like a fool if he tried something.This woman was a killer.She pulled him into the hallway.Sykora stood him up in front of a tall, skinny, Asian guy.Almost the same skin tone as his, but a different hue.He looked almost as confused as Javier.“Yu, this is…” She paused and stared hard at Javier.“What is your name, anyway?”Javier stuck both manacled hands out at the man to shake.“Javier Aritza,” he said with a smile.Silver linings.Yu shook absently.“Aritza,” she said, tense, “you are going to show Machinist’s Mate Yu here how to fix the life–support system and tune the bio–scrubbers.”Javier looked up at her and blinked.“Or?”She smiled cruelly.“Or I bounce you off the wall for a bit.”He smiled back, warm and sarcastic.“Didn’t think I was your type, madam.”Light.Pain.Stars.The wall was cold on his back.And his butt.And he was on the floor.And his face hurt where she had punched him.And his head had a goose egg growing where his skull had bounced off the bulkhead.And bells.Wonderful.Another concussion.He hated getting concussions.You felt like you were standing three feet behind yourself and a little to one side, watching everything like it was happening to someone else.Remote.Hard to process things in real time.Another really bad drunk.Punch drunk.The worst kind.Javier kinda fish–eyed her as she grabbed him by the front of his tunic and hefted him upright.She looked closely at his face.He might have even talked, although nothing really coherent was going on behind his eyes, either.Hallway.Corridor lights.Pretty music, but that might have been in his head.Med–bay.They were the same on every ship in space.Maybe one factory built them all and just slapped on different name plates.Small room.Three meters by five.Two beds.One big console between them with robotic spider/waldo examination arms that did stuff to whoever you dropped into the bed.Javier found himself on his side on the port–side bed.Hands were still manacled.Cold, proby thingee stretched out.Bright light in each eye.Cold something on the back of his head to make the bad go away.Sting in the shoulder when the spider/waldo thingee bit him.That was rude.Oh.Warm.Happy thoughts.Binary chemicals achieved medical significance.Conscious thought.Javier sat up with the fading remains of a bad hangover.Or something.Four minutes had passed.She was still there, glowering.With the other guy.You–something?Javier blinked.Blinked again.They were both still there.“Ow.Was that necessary?”She leaned in extra close.Even leered.Someone had been chewing wintermint gumdrops.“Necessary, Aritza? No.Fun? Absolutely.Feel free to keep mouthing off to me.Medbay’s not far away, as long as I don’t do anything the med–bot can’t fix before you bleed to death.”Javier tried to concentrate on the freckle on the left side of her nose.Kissing her suddenly at this moment, as much fun as the look on her face would be, would probably get him killed.“I will try,” he finally said, with some modicum of normalcy, “to keep that in mind.Where were we?”He was almost back to competent when she pulled him off the bed and propelled him back into the hallway.Silver linings.ΞEngineering on the old Osiris–class heavy corvettes was mainly on C deck, with a secondary–level catwalk down on B deck following the curve of the lower hull and allowing an awkward access to engineering spaces.The whole thing appeared to have been designed by circus contortionists who wanted to stay in practice while on duty.Javier followed the skinny Asian guy through internal airlocks, with Sykora’s hand heavy on his shoulder.She was holding him upright while he wobbled forward, as much as keeping him from running away.Honestly, where did she think he was he going to go?The equipment one C–deck made his heart sink.The Osiris boats were a bad tradeoff to begin with, adding guns and armor to a design that would have been better off with bigger engines to run away from capital ships.Someone had decided to fix that here.But they did it by adding a couple of auxiliary power reactors, one of which seemed to be bolted down exactly where you wanted to be sitting to work on the environmental systems.Javier considered teaching the engineering crew new swear words, but he decided they probably already knew most of them, if they had to keep this mess running.Javier watched Yu flag down a petite woman wearing the uniform of the Balustrade Imperial Navy, deepest green with yellow piping.“Chief, we’re back.”The short woman kept her red hair medium length.Javier looked closer and realized she must have come from a high–gravity world originally.She wasn’t squat, but had a perfectly proportioned body that had been stretched sideways and hung over heavy bones.Not bad, she but only came up to his nose, and even then she might have out–weighed him.She never glanced up at them from her portable computer and appeared to process the situation by reading their shadows on the deck plates.“That’s good, Yu,” she said diffidently.She glanced up for the briefest moment, studied Sykora.“Will it be safe to have him in here, Dragoon Sykora?”Javier heard her voice right in his ear.“I’ll keep close watch on him, Chief.” He felt her pinch his shoulder to drive the point home.As if he was likely to forget.They moved down a ladder/stairwell to B–deck.Yup.Just as bad as it looked from above.Javier took a deep breath and turned to the guy.“We’re gonna need a triage camera, a number four toolkit, and as many towels as you can scrounge up.”The man looked at him with concern and confusion.“What’s a triage camera?”Javier counted to five in his head.He’d already had one concussion today.“How long,” he asked, wincing already in his mind, “have you been a Machinist’s Mate, Yu?”The man lit up.“Oh, I haven’t passed the exam yet, sir,” he smiled.“I’ve been an apprentice for four months now.”Javier nodded sagely.This was the way he got another punch in the face.He turned to the giantess.“And you’re sure you won’t let me in there to do this?”Her smile was way too pleased with herself.“Absolutely,” she purred.“Shall I tell Captain Sokolov you refused to help?”One.Two.Three.Four.Five [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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