As one of the Songlance’s thirty-five lieutenants, Alysha reported to Lieutenant Commander Orien Felix, a Seersa male a foot shorter than her and white as the Arctic fox he resembled. The Flitzbe clod required nothing from her beyond escort to and from the Medplex, so her primary duties as alien liaison were to the water complement onboard. As most of the aquatics were involved in navigation, her duty station during her shift was on the auxiliary bridge, which was closer to the core of the ship and the navigation chamber. She reported there and settled into her seat, checking the data on her board: the display was slaved to the main bridge’s, which was currently displaying their patrol pattern. They’d pulled out of the starbase not long after her arrival, and sometime overnight they’d returned to the part of the border they’d been tasked with keeping clear of pirates. While piracy and skirmishes had become typical of the neutral territory separating the Alliance and the Chatcaavan Empire, the area assigned to the Songlance abutted the Crown—also known as “the suburbs”—and was so well-established that fights were rare: there just wasn’t enough space to fight over. Most of the action was spinward, where there was room to expand. While their area of responsibility wasn’t as quiet as the “milk run” patrols on the border near Earth, it was still considered an easy cruise.
Alysha wasn’t sorry for that. Let the people who craved glory find out what fighting was really like. She flexed her fingers, feeling the ache of the breathnache that had replaced the claws she’d lost.
Her board included a sidebar that linked her to the water habitat, with a running text translation of comments from the Naysha there and optional viseo or solidigraphic displays if one of them wanted to sign to her directly. She checked the status there and found everyone working; signing in, she greeted them and got back their acknowledgments, and from Sar the report that Hood was “in the flow,” something she guessed was both literal and figurative. She was about to ask when she felt a shadow over her shoulder.
“Anything interesting going on, Lieutenant?” Felix asked, his bass rumble a surprise out of such a small body.
“No, sir,” she said. “Just checking in with the Naysha.”
“Mmm. And did they say anything interesting?”
“Just that the navigator is well.”
Did he sound amused? “Busy, I imagine.”
Since the ship was moving... “Yes, sir.”
“Then that leaves you free to run some drills,” the Seersa said, and now she was sure she wasn’t imagining his merriment.
“It does, sir,” she agreed, having an idea of how her shift was going to go.
“Well, then,” Felix said. “Let’s not waste a quiet day. Pull up the simulator library, mmm?”
* * *
That evening she clambered down onto the edge of the water environment, thinking that sitting at a station for seven hours shouldn’t exhaust her so much. The last thing she wanted to do was head into the heavy water, swim for another hour, and then drag herself out in time for the skullbash. But then, if she hadn’t wanted to work hard, what was she here for? With a half-smile, she pulled her face-mask on and said to the ensign, “Log me in, please.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
His expression was so perplexed, she couldn’t help but ask, “Is there something else, Ensign?”
“Ah... you’re back, is all, sir,” the youth said. “Usually the liaison only comes once a week.”
Something in the way he said that made her think he really wanted to add ‘if that.’ She wondered what all her predecessors had been doing with the extra hour they were allotted to swim with the Naysha. What she said, though, was, “I see. I’ll be here every day, though, Ferrault.”
He nodded. “Understood.” To the computer, “Lieutenant Forrest, entering water environment, mark twenty.”
The computer chimed, and Alysha dragged in a breath and dove.
She wasn’t long under before Sar glided into view. The Naysha stopped before her and signed, hands jerky, /Is something wrong?/
/No?/ Alysha paused. /Why do you ask?/
/You are here!/
/I am supposed to be here,/ Alysha answered, the motions deliberate. /I am given an hour every shift to do this./
The Naysha looked at her oddly; it was an arresting expression in someone with eyes that large. /You are given the hour in case of need. It has rarely been used./
/Should I leave?/ Alysha asked. /Am I—/ She stopped, not remembering the word, substituting something she did. /Intruding?/
/No,/ the Naysha replied, her motions slower, more graceful. /If you wanted to spend an hour a day with us, we would be.../ She paused, her fins gently undulating to keep her in place. /Pleased./
/You meant to say ‘surprised’,/ Alysha guessed, wondering how one made sign look wry.
The Naysha snorted, bubbles rising from her nostrils. /That too. Come./ As Alysha joined her, the Naysha added, /There have been some who have entered the waters more often. But it’s rare. We take care of ourselves, mostly./
/I know,/ Alysha answered. /I don’t think I can do much for you. I think maybe this is selfish on my part./
That stopped Sar entirely. The Naysha finned in front of her and made a quizzical gesture.
/I want to learn more about you,/ Alysha answered, her hands slow. /And the Platies. I want to do my duty well, and maybe there’s no way to do that because you need so little. But I still want to be here, for myself./
The Naysha grinned. /Then come. And learn something. Maybe we will, too./
/Maybe you can tell me what it means for Hood to be in the flow..../
/A good beginning. How brave are you, Lieutenant?/
A pastiche of images tangled in her memory, of blood and back rooms, of too-late nights and too-narrow rescues. Her eyes cleared, and she signed, carefully, /Brave enough./ And added, rueful, /I hope./
Sar was watching her, the translucent lids narrowing the glow from those eyes. Then she grinned. /Good enough. This way, then./
Their route took them away from the living quarters, and the current here dragged at Alysha’s body: not a hardship, but knowing what she did about the navigator’s size, and the warning about the chamber, she couldn’t help an atavistic fear. She grasped Sar’s arm and stopped the Naysha, signing an interrogative with her free hand.
/We aren’t going in,/ Sar promised. /Only to the antechamber, where we keep watch on the machinery. This you will find fascinating./
The machinery that generated such enormous pressures? She hadn’t even considered how it was maintained. Of course, some of the Naysha were in engineering; this had to be their area of responsibility. Curiosity piqued, Alysha resumed swimming alongside Sar.
The antechamber was closer than she’d expected. It abutted an enormous round portal, currently sealed; the semicircular area in front of it was studded with stations and banks of monitoring equipment, and a second hatch with a flexglass door looked in on as complex a set of pipes and tubes as anything Alysha could remember seeing outside her brief engineering courses. What surprised her more was: /It’s out of the water./
/Partially./ Sar swam up alongside her, tapped the flexglass with the back of her knuckles. /Airlock here. Half the equipment is underwater. Other half, above. There we interface with the dry people./
Alysha made a note to locate the air environment access to the room. /What happens when it breaks?/
Sar shrugged, a motion obviously borrowed from other Pelted races. /What happens when air handlers break?/
Not good, Alysha thought. /How does it work? The currents. If they’re so strong?/
/Come. I show you./
Alysha pushed off the bulkhead and sailed after the Naysha, joining her beside the monitors. There she found an overhead schematic of the area, glowing with various inputs and outputs, and a camera view of Hood. The navigator was rippling in a way that seemed almost languid, holding in place in the center of the chamber.
/This,/ Sar signed, then tapped the schematic. /This chamber is as big as the Well engine capsule. Same reason. Helps make the ship go./
Through what method, Alysha suspected she would never understand, so she didn’t ask.
/Has airlock, like that one. Except not for air. For currents./ Sar paused, grinned. /Currentlock, we say./ She flicked her tail, absent. /This is a safety feature. For us, not Hood. In the lock, there are tethers. You get trapped in the lock accidentally, you tether yourself. Inner door opens, you will not get sucked in. If you do.../ Sar eyed her. /You get smashed against the back of the navigation chamber. Or sucked out through the recirculation vents. Won’t survive the trip around. You’ll come out the other end as little bits to tickle Hood’s fringes./
Alysha shuddered. /Right. What are the chances.../
/That you get trapped?/ Sar snorted, more a visual than an aural thing: little sardonic bubbles, spurting from her nose. /Not very. Ordinarily, the navigation chamber lock won’t open without an authorized person certifying all drylanders are gone. You could. Usually it is me, though. And from safely behind a bulkhead—we can’t be here either. Emergency, though—/ She pointed at a console. /There. A protocol, in case./
In case of what, Alysha wondered? Something that required the navigator’s ability to speed the ship. Precipitously. Hopefully not something she’d experience. /I see. I... would like to learn to use the tether anyway. And the protocol. If I can authorize it—if I need to—I should know what I’m doing./
Sar’s fingers wiggled in a laugh. /You practice everything, even the unnecessary./
/Sadly,/ Alysha signed, /one rarely has the time when it becomes necessary./
They spent a profitable half hour there, until Sar was satisfied that Alysha understood the basics of using the consoles, and Alysha was satisfied that in an emergency she could tether herself within the time she’d have before the internal door opened. That segued into a tour of the water environment’s safety features, with Sar pointing out the bulkheads that isolated the Naysha’s battlestations from the navigation chamber and general living areas. As they swam back toward the bridging chamber, Alysha signed, /I wish I could see Hood at work with my own eyes, instead of through a camera./
/Trust me,/ Sar said, /you wouldn’t wish for it in any situation where it was possible./ At Alysha’s sharp glance, the Naysha added, /But it is an incredible sight./
Which would have to satisfy her, Alysha thought. She didn’t relish the idea of being exposed to currents that could snap her spine or shred her against a filtration screen.
* * *
The cross-departmental skullbash was held in one of the rooms attached to the recreation hall. Intended for small performances and tabletop games, they were often pressed into service when the official conference rooms were unavailable, or when someone was trying for informality. Alysha arrived with a plate of cookies she’d requested from the genie, which in itself had been more of an adventure than she’d anticipated: thinking of Laelkii’s homemade cookies, she’d requested chocolate chip and been asked, politely, which of the three thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine “basic” chocolate chip cookie recipes she’d preferred. Caught off guard, she’d blurted, “The healthiest,” and gotten something that looked... a little more substantial than anything Laelkii had ever made. Chagrined, and too tired from her long day to experiment, she’d wrapped them and gone in search of Jae’en’s gathering.
The recreation hall was still in use, though not as heavily as it would have been earlier. Ideally, a Fleet ship’s three shifts were equally populous; in reality, the night shift still had fewer people, mostly because the ship’s senior officers worked the first two and that put most all the training officers (and the personnel in training) on duty during the ‘day’. Alysha was not surprised to find few people using the pool, or the exercise mats, nor to find the conversations subdued. So when she stepped into the right room and found it full of lights and people chatting and laughing and the smell of coffee and chocolate and tea, she stopped abruptly, clutching her tray.
“Oh, here she is!” Jae’en exclaimed. “Come in, alet! We were just talking about you. Got tipped into the pool with the Platies, did you?”
“You met Algae!” one of the other lieutenants said, grinning. “I named him.”
“Did not! I did!”
“You certainly did not!”
“Now, now. It was a team effort!”
Valery, looking pained, sidled over to her and whispered, “The first woman, that’s Serra FindaWrench. Next to her is Daven Ulregard—“ He continued, describing faces and names while the others cheerfully argued. There were nine people in the room, not counting herself, which meant only one of their number was missing.
“You brought cookies!” Jae’en said, taking the tray from her. “Oh, by the way everyone, this is Alysha Forrest, our newest newbie lieuie!”
“All hail the newbie!” everyone called back obligingly, and Alysha couldn’t help grinning, and though she didn’t bow she managed what she hoped was a regal nod of her head. From the scattering of laughs, she’d succeeded.
“What are these?” Jae’en said as he peered at her offering, one ear flopping.
“And where’d you come from?” someone called.
“And where are you going—“ someone else mused, and got slapped in the head. “Ow! Hey! That’s no way to treat a philosopher!”
“Those are chocolate chip cookies,” Alysha said. “I think. And I came from the Diamondwing. And I am going...” She looked around and pointed. “To that chair.”
“Aww, you can’t be tired already!” That was the first woman who’d spoken, Serra, a Tam-illee foxine with a gray pelt over an otherwise completely human face. Her uniform tag had the inevitable engineering emblem; Tam-ley’s culture had a habit of producing engineers, when it wasn’t producing reproductive medical specialists. “You just got here a day ago!”
“Yeah, we would have thought the sweet, sweet luxury of your new palatial quarters would be all that is soothing,” a Harat-Shar pardine said, dropping into the chair next to hers and emphasizing the words with an undulating hand motion.
“Might be if she spent any time in it.” Jae’en picked up a cookie and tried a nibble. “But I have it on excellent authority that she’s been logging lots of time in the water environment.”
“Like how much lots?” someone called from the coffee pot.
“Like over six hours!”
A pause, then the room erupted into laughter and friendly jeering. Alysha got a few pokes in the side and claims of ‘over-achieving’, but she was surprised to find it all good-natured. She looked over the table at Jae’en, who grinned at her over his mouthful of cookie and waggled his eyebrows. So… he was the one who liked to help the new people fit in… and enjoyed it, from the sparkle in his eyes. She saluted him with a cup of something that looked like coffee but smelled like it had chocolate in it, and herbs, and something else. Whatever it was, it was a stimulant, and her first sip of it put the fur up the back of her neck. More ribbing now, and she accepted it with a grin.
Jae’en was still chewing one of her offerings. “What in all the name of the winds is wrong with these cookies?”
“You’re still eating one,” Serra pointed out.
“Maybe he can’t believe it, so he keeps eating—“
“I think they’re... good for me.” The Aera eyed Alysha. “Did you bring something healthy to the skullbash?”
Abrupt silence. Into it, Alysha said, “Um... sorry?”
The room exploded, and this time she laughed with them, and ducked when Jae’en mimed throwing the half-eaten round at her.
Amid this riot of sound and merriment, the hiss of the door opening was almost inaudible. Almost. Alysha glanced up and felt her smile stiffen on her face, for there was Mike Beringwaite.
Had he changed? Or had she? Both, maybe. It had been a year and a half since their meeting at the Quickwater Preserve where they’d done their leadership retreat as ensigns... a year and a half since Beringwaite had gotten their exercise thrown by his recklessness, and where she’d allowed it to happen instead of stopping it. That history made it hard to evaluate him fairly—not just because of his behavior, but because she regretted her own actions, and her inability to get through to him.
On the surface, he looked good; unlike some of her peers, he hadn’t allowed his departure from the Academe and its more rigorous routine to put him off his exercise regimens. Human, her age—mid-twenties now—with short light brown hair and tanned skin, an impeccable uniform despite the late hour, and the same ferociously focused dark greenish-hazel eyes.
The intervening years hadn’t done anything for his attitude, if the uncomfortable pause around her was any indication.
“Alet,” Jae’en said, with a heartiness Alysha could tell was forced despite how briefly she’d known him. “We’re glad to see you! Have a cookie, tell us what’s going up—“
“Or down,” one of the others said gamely.
“—in your department.”
Beringwaite glanced at the Aera, then said, “I just came to talk to Ulregard.”
The wolfine straightened in his chair and said, “Um... yes? What’s on your mind?”
“One of my people’s been trying to get an answer out of Ensign Fren about scheduling a cross-departmental stress test of the equipment for a week now.”
“Oh, right. I’ll talk to him about it.”
Beringwaite said, “Do more than talk to him about it. I don’t want this hanging over my head any longer. Commander Chevitz’s been hammering me for it, and I’m tired of being blamed for your ensign’s problem.”
Ulregard put his ears back. “We’ll take care of it.”
“Great. Do that.” Beringwaite turned to go... and saw her. And stopped.
“Mister Beringwaite,” Alysha said, cautious, her voice quiet.
His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Just left. Which, she thought with a sigh, was an improvement on how he would have acted before. Silence was an immense step in the right direction from someone who’d preferred to make his opinions known as vociferously and abrasively as possible.
“Got some history there, Forrest?” Serra said, arms folded and one brow quirked.
“I’m sure everyone who’s run into Beringwaite for even one minute in the hall has history with him,” Jae’en said. “She’s Pelted. That automatically makes her bad people in his book.”
“Not all humans are like that,” Valery murmured, and since it was one of the few things he’d said all evening, everyone looked at him.
“Not all humans are alike,” Jae’en said. “No surprise there. Not all Pelted are alike either.” He wrinkled his long nose. “Just like not all cookies are alike. If you bring these again, Forrest, we might have to have... a discussion.”
Serra started laughing. “Fear, alet! Jae’en’s discussions are legendary!”
“Oh?” Alysha asked, curious.
“First he makes these round sad eyes,” the Tam-illee said, circling her fingers around her own. “And then his ears start falling down... and down... and down....”
“You’re all right until his lower lip starts trembling,” the Harat-Shar pardine from earlier said. “Once the lip starts, you’re done for.”
“No one can resist the lip,” Jae’en said modestly. “It’s one of my best leadership techniques. You should take notes, Forrest.”
“I am,” Alysha said, amused by the fact that she was.
The skullbash got down to business not long after, and she was surprised at how useful it was. A ship the size of a battlecruiser had many moving parts from a personnel standpoint, and though all the men and women in the room were supposedly her peers, Alysha could already tell from the kind of day she’d logged that opportunities to interact with them regularly would be rare... and as the alien liaison, those chances were even less frequent. She was nominally part of the Tactical division because of the Platies’ involvement with navigation, but she was expected to keep abreast of events in Engineering and Logistics because it was her job to report her constituents’ needs to those departments.
Beringwaite, she discovered, was one of their shift’s two Engineering section lieutenants, along with Serra FindaWrench, the Tam-illee. Serra was permanent engineering staff: her goal was a position as a starship’s Chief of Engineering, and she would advance through the ranks within the department until she reached that goal. Beringwaite, on the other hand, was on the command track; like Alysha, he was rotating through all the sections on his duty tours in order to understand them better. There was already some friction between career specialists and the command officers phasing in and out of their areas of responsibility... Beringwaite’s attitude wasn’t making it any easier, from Serra’s occasional scathing comments.
By the end of the session, Alysha was exhausted but glad she’d come. She was reaching for the platter of cookies she’d brought—nearly entirely devoured despite the cheerful disparagement aimed their way—when Jae’en said, “Oh, no, you don’t have to take those.”
Alysha looked up, blinking back her fatigue. “I don’t?”
“No. Everyone in the rec hall knows we meet in here.” The Aera was picking up discarded napkins and drinks and tossing them in the recycle chute. “People come for the leftovers. There won’t be anything left within half an hour of us leaving, and there’s a kind of unspoken agreement... we share, they take care of the trays and plates.”
For a moment, Alysha watched him tidy. They were alone, save for Valery, who seemed attached to the Aera’s side. Something about his comment struck her as strange, though it was taking her a while to work through her fatigue to pinpoint it. Then it came to her: “But isn’t this the gym?”
The Aera grinned. “Where people come to exercise? Alet, you don’t tell anyone about their indiscretions, and I won’t either.”
She nodded. “Is that why you won’t let anyone talk about Beringwaite?”
His hand paused above a napkin. Then he plucked it up and said, “Not much gets past you, does it, alet?”
“It wasn’t that hard to notice.” She started helping, smiling at Valery as she handed him the emptied coffee pot.
“Maybe I have opinions about how things should be done,” Jae’en said.
Alysha nodded. “I think it’s a good thing to discourage talk like that.”
He glanced at her. “You do, do you.”
Alysha said, quieter, “It doesn’t do anyone any good.”
One of Jae’en’s ears sagged. He looked at Valery, who said, “I t-think we have to say something.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” the Aera said. He nodded and finished, “You seem like good people, Forrest.”
“You too, aletsen,” she answered.
“And because of that, I’ll say... watch out for Beringwaite, all right? What you said—you’re right, it doesn’t do anybody any good, talking trash. For lots of reasons. I sure don’t want people wasting our time here dragging his name through the mud. We’ve got actual work to do before we collapse of exhaustion. But he’s got it out for Pelted, and I don’t think he likes women all that much either.”
Alysha blew out a breath. “I know. We’ve met.”
The Aera’s brows lifted. “Something we should know about?”
“I’m not planning on letting it become relevant.”
Valery murmured, “Good luck,” and seemed to mean it.