The Fight for 221 KD
Part 4
Of course, they expected him to open the mess and start slinging hash. Fingers still numb with cold, he went to work while they pounded the tables, filling their trays with reheated strips of meat, rounds of bread, spoons of sauce, pats of rice, and globs of vegetables. His stately private dining room, where he’d had dimly lit solitary meals for months, was now starkly, depressingly ablaze with blue-white LEDs turned up to maximum, unpleasantly illuminating grimy, tired enlisteds and their tense NCOs and officers. Just an ugly square mess hall again, where he had to keep his thoughts inside his head.
He eyed the rice and spilled sauce on the floor askance. “Oi,” he muttered.
“Rock-biter,” the commandant said, tossing his tray in the bin, “Chief Engineer says you weren’t totally useless.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ghuidicello said, wiping spilled food with his rag. “’Preciate it, sir.” The crew weren’t bussing their trays. They were getting up, lining up, marching out.
What a suffering mess! he thought. Take me all night to—”
“We’re taking on more air,” the commandant was saying. “We need to restart the drive and be underway and out of here in a few hours. Four max. I’m sending in a message to the Station asking what they want done with you.”
“Aye, sir?”
“Well, you aren’t exactly a crew,” the commandant pointed out. “And if you weren’t totally useless … well!”
“Not a—”
“Not a machinist, yes, you’ve been at pains to point out. I don’t think that you need to remain. Without a maintenance crew, a comms man and a loader and gopher isn’t much good.”
Ghuidicello rubbed his jaw.
“And I’m pretty sure,” the commandant said matter-of-factly, “you’re going to get hit in six hours. Maybe less.”
“What!” The telescope and its lack of drive signature flashed back into his mind. “Hit?”
“So you better bag your kit and grab your suit and be in an empty berth with your helmet on in three hours, ready to take on 3 gs.”
“Provisionals?” His mouth dropped. “Here?”
“Who else? Green men from beyond the stars?” The commandant scoffed. “Yah, the Provs. They’ve chased us halfway across the system from Zeus. About killed us twice, last time less than a day and a half ago. We thought we tore their can open but we just blew out their drive. Helm’s been watching back that way, and they’ve got it lit again, running hot. They’ll have watched every kilometer of our path.” He clapped Ghuidicello on the shoulder. “Welcome to Fantomo-3, crewman.” He strode off, suit clonking.
The uproar was dying down, and he stood there turning the rag over and over. He was going to leave his mess a … well, mess.
“Good god,” he said, throwing the wet cloth down. “You work, and you—Damn, and I’ve gone and forgot, then—there’s the … the prisoner.”
He sighed, and went back into the kitchen, and put together a metaplastoc tray, grabbed a wooden fork, and, avoiding the Fantomo crew, took a lift down two decks to the outer ring. He approached the brig nervously, but his jury-rigged door system seemed intact. He put the tray down in the guard station, and knocked. “Miss?” he said. “You there?”
“Where else would I be?” she asked, muffled.
“I don’t know, sorry, it’s been a long shift,” he said. “I’ve got a meal for you.”
“Which meal?”
“Third, around here,” he said. “I feel more breakfasty, but Fantomo took their supper.”
“I’ll take supper,” she said. “Missed lunch, anyway, and breakfast, and supper before that.
“Right, eh? I’ll open the door, but you have to promise not to rush me and do a runner, then.”
“I promise,” she said, sounding amused. “You all right? You sound right peaked out.”
“It’s been a shift,” he admitted, untying the data harness. “And the commandant is pulling me out of here, and me leaving this place a wreck. Like, in an hour, two. Oils me off.”
He pushed the chair out of the way and pulled the door open. The woman was sitting on the stack of toilet paper, arms on her knees. There was an empty water bottle lying on the floor. She’d taken off her gauntlets. “This doesn’t seem much like a brig,” she remarked.
“It was a storeroom,” he agreed. “Then they had to stow prisoners on station once.”
“What happened to them?”
He felt uncomfortable looking into her wide eyes, but he did it anyway and shrugged.
“I see.”
“Come out and eat.”
She got up slowly. “Scared of me running at you? Taking a swing?”
“No, Miss,” he said, backing away.
She smiled crookedly, and his heart skipped a beat. Haven’t seen a woman in two years, he thought as she glanced aside at him as she walked to the abandoned desk. That’s all, dummy.
Did I say that out loud? He bit his lip. Hard to say these days …
She rolled the meat in the flatbread, shoved it in the sauce, and ate hungrily as he watched.
“You got a name?” he asked, spacing his drill sergeant’s advice without a second thought. “No, you lot don’t have names.” He could see the barcode on the back of her neck, below a ducktail of yellow curls and above the lining of her EVA suit collar.
She grabbed the fork for the rice, tapped it on the tray, and swallowed. “Thank you for pointing that out,” she said, taking a drink from her cup. “Asking my model, are you? I’m a Lilibella if it means anything to you, Mark 2. Guaranteed Chamber-Tilsit Intelligence Capacity 90+. I’ll tell you what I’m for: rated household service, light manufacturing, truck agriculture, and base bar girl.” Her eyebrows furrowed together. “Don’t get any ideas. Done all of that over the past fifteen years and more, too. ‘You lot’! Well, I don’t go by my model anymore. My name,” she said stiffly, “is Mneme.”
“Mneme,” he said apologetically. “Sorry, then.”
She nodded and kept eating. “What’s yours?”
“Ghuidicello,” he said. “Filopeo. Crewman 2nd class.”
“Mneme,” she said. “No last name. No rank. Rebel. Good to meet you, Filopeo.”
They shook hands.
“There’s a Provisional ship inbound,” he said.
“That’s why that filthy mucker is skipping out.” She put down her fork. “Where’d all the food go?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.
“It couldn’t have been that good,” he said.
“I didn’t notice,” she said. “But I doubt it was.”
“You crew off that ship?”
“Not really. There was a fight at one of our mining stations. I was on board. And then I wasn’t. We don’t like losing people, so I guess Ribela Floro chased them when they figured out I was a prisoner.”
“That’s—that’s the Ribela Floro out there?”
“Yah.”
“Suff! She’s still alive? I thought she was blown at Athena.”
Mneme shook her head solemnly. “She’s our protection—for now.
He pointed. “Are you one of her marines?”
“Me?” She laughed. “Does my face look burned off, crewman? Do I mass a hundred kilos? What did I say?” She raised a hand and counted off on her grimy fingers. “Household service, light manufacturing, truck agriculture—whoop! Those two! No maids out here, and I don’t do bar girl anymore, so putting together hydroponics out of spare pipe and then running them: ring twice and ask for Mneme.”
He couldn’t help smiling at the music hall reference.
“How soon,” she asked casually, “will they get here?”
“Five hours?”
“That pig’s getting underway now, isn’t he?”
“Yah. Next couple hours.”
“Fika fiko,” she sighed. “That’s it for me, then. He’ll run in-system, and even Ribela Floro won’t follow there these days.” She laughed bleakly and pushed the empty tray away. “I’ve got a rough few days before they space me or I get to the labor camps. But you get a free ride, aren’t you the lucky sod.”
“Yah,” he said. “Real lucky.”
Part 7