Dry, No Lube Ch. 03: Disrupted

Pixy did not look up from her manual. "Nothing familiar?"

"That's not it." Potrek shook his head with the familiarity of a man who does that a lot. "Everything's familiar. Constellations repeat to an alarming degree." He glanced again at her uniform. "You sure you're qualified as a bridge officer?"

She stuck her tongue out at him, still without looking. "Fuck you, sweetie." She always used star plots.

"I wouldn't say no," Potrek shrugged, getting a thin smile in return. "Once you see enough stars randomly distributed," he went on, "the patterns sort of make themselves. Then you can add in the back-constallations, for when you're on the far side... I mean, the same patterns recur again and again."

Pixy nodded. "Like a fractal."

Potrek's head jerked back as if she'd slapped him. "Bite your tongue. Do you even know what a fractal is?"

"No." Pixy admitted it with no shame. She'd been faking it in conversations with smarter people for many years now. Every now and then, one of them was bound to notice. No biggie. "So, no idea where we are."

He shrugged. "As near as I can tell," he mused, "we're near the Utari worlds."

Her head snapped up. "Utari." She had to fight to keep the excitement out of her voice. "No shit?"

"None at all," Potrek agreed. "Waste disposal has been working just fine lately."

"Ha ha motherfucking ha." She thought about it. "Still no idea how fast we're going, though? It can't be more than .79."

"About that," Potrek nodded. "I think, anyway. Why? Is Utari where you're going?"

"Maybe." She had no idea. No clue at all how the galactic geography looked around here. No inkling where the Pulver might be. "Hopefully." And then came one of those events that proves the universe has an excellent sense of timing.

The hatch hissed open, showing the gawky figure of a young Tygon with a bad hairstyle. Both lieutenants frowned, as did the other officer present, the mousy little Junior with the funny name. The Tygon, whose name Pixy hadn't bothered learning, was the civilian contractor who worked for the robot buttfuckers as an alternative to joining the Service. Which made him the only lifeform permanently aboard.

Pixy had trouble imagining a worse fate.

The youngster consulted his tabslate. "Which one of you is Lieutenant Pfeiffer?"

"Pfeiffer," Pixy snapped back. "The P is silent."

"Whatever." The Tygon shrugged. "They tell me you're up next."

Pixy blinked, trying to avoid the little flutter of excitement in her belly. Finally. "Who's 'they,' and what's 'up next?'" she barked anyway. There were appearances to be maintained.

The Tygon looked at her as though she were simple. "The robots," he said slowly and loudly. "Your ship is the next stop."

Excellent. "When?"

"Soon." He rattled a form sheet from the back of his tabslate. "Here. Fill this out. They'll transmit it to your ship at 2200 hours."

Pixy glanced at her watch, a monstrous device about a centimeter thick. Two hours. She took the form and glanced at it. "What the fuck?" she demanded. "I only get fifteen words?"

"Take it up with management." The Tygon shrugged, a gesture he clearly did often. "It's a tight shot. Low-beam, compressed data. They can't send much." He met her gaze with supercilious defiance in his golden eyes; she realized, too late, that he was drunk out of his mind. "I usually just tell people to pick the single most important thing they need to say, and go with it." He glanced around the room. "2200, lieutenant."

"I heard you the first time."

The Tygon nodded, then produced a second sheet. "Junior Lieutenant Donskoi? That you?" Pixy watched as the mousy man in the corner just looked up and nodded. "Okay. It's your stop too." He handed over the sheet. "Same shit I just told her."

"Sure."

"Be ready, you two. The robots don't like dropping out of lightspace any longer than they have to."

"Fuck the robots," Pixy muttered, but he was out of her awareness long before he was out of the wardroom.

"Well." Potrek sniffed; he'd been aboard longer than she had, and sounded resigned. "Congratulations."

"Right." Pixy was staring over at the mousy officer by the galley, trying to hide her surprise. "Hey. You're going where I'm going?"

He looked over at her, his eyes measuring her dully. "Sure."

She blinked. He was a Junior Lieutenant, two grades lower than her. Granted, this was the wardroom and they were all just passengers, but still. "What was that?"

He got the point, at least. "Sure, ma'am."

"Ah." She nodded, wondering with great rapidity whether she'd said or done anything humiliating while he was around. "You've got orders for the USS Pulver?" But of course he must; GP ships didn't usually travel in company, not on garbage runs. That meant some other officer was leaving soon, or already had. Please, let it be that cunt van Kleck... "Well. I'm Pixy Pfeiffer, the Second Officer. A pleasure." It wasn't, though; weaselly little fucker should have introduced himself days ago, she thought irrationally. "You are?"

"Donskoi. Ma'am." He licked his lips, and in an instant Pixy knew him. Or knew the type, anyway; a scrounger. A scavenger. A kid who knew where all the bodies were buried. She nodded.

"You're prior service." It wasn't a question, so Donskoi didn't bother nodding. "Supply guy, right?"

Donskoi cocked his head, then decided it was safe to answer. "Sure."

She nodded. "I like prior-service guys. We'll talk later, Mr Donskoi. You've got packing to do."

"Sure, ma'am." He arched an eyebrow, deciding whether she was dismissing him from the room or merely from her mind, and decided it was the second one. So he kicked his feet up, fished his tabslate back out of his cargo pocket, and calmly went back to whatever it was he'd been doing.

Pixy looked at the fifteen-word form, frowning as she wondered what she ought to include. She had a satchelful of priority mail for the crew, and because she was nosy she'd read most of it; there were some important bits of news in there, as well as a series of rumors and dispatches she'd received while on her course. Her brows knit, she stooped to her own tabslate and tried a few messages.

Pfeiffer is returning. Federal government is declaring war on the Cathos Vremein, effective immediately.

Pfeiffer is returning. President of Tygon Conference was assassinated last week. Temporary government in turmoil.

Pfeiffer is returning. Sceviour's new arm successfully recloned; medical readiness orders to follow by midbeam.

Pfeiffer is returning. Warrant Officer Filbric's fourth wife has had a new child. Mazel Tov.

Pfeiffer is returning. Bringing along new officer. Federals imminently at war with the Cathos Vremein.

Pfeiffer is returning. Emergency safety recall on all Mark XV interphase torpedoes. Possible unstable detonators.

A moment later, she nodded briskly as she decided; the most critical message she could think of:

Pfeiffer is returning. Sublieutenant Amisuul better be moved out of my quarters before I arrive.

She copied it onto the form, then dropped it into the message-traffic slot beside the oven.

* * *

0100 saw her on the bridge, frumping cross-legged on the deck among the robots, reaching up to the console to push the throttles morosely forward only to watch as one of the machines pulled it silently back to its previous setting, every time, smoothly and efficiently. "You're an asshole," she told the robot.

"I protest, human woman," it replied.

"Go fuck a butt," she muttered, getting disgustedly to her feet. The 4B4 robots were the gold standard for reliability and reaction time, but did they really need to look like that?

"If you wish, human woman."

"No." Pixy gave the thing a metallic slap, which made her feel not even a little bit better. "Not mine. Fuck someone else's." She scanned the thing up and down; it really was extraordinary, with the arm servos and the Central Connector. They really, really did look like they were getting some. Well, giving would be more accurate.

The facelessness made it even worse.

She stalked toward the lift, feeling as she always did that she ought to say goodbye or something. People spent their lives alongside robots; they were a part of everyone's lives, but you needed to be careful about anthropomorphizing the damn things. As a girl, she'd had the usual robau-pair to help raise her while her parents worked; an older model, from back then they'd still been trying to make them look human. The only time her father had ever really gotten mad at her had been when she named the robot.

It bothered her a little, now, that she couldn't remember the name. Dad's punishments had always worked pretty well, considering.

She stalked toward her little berth, wondering how soon she should pack. The jaded little Tygon had come back around midnight, bearing in his scaly green claws an information sheet. "Ever ridden the circuit before?"

"Not this far," she'd admitted; she'd never had a ship leave her more than three or four light-years behind. "Any idea when we get there?"

He'd blinked at her. "Shit, man," he'd whined. "I barely know my own name anymore, y'know?" The info sheet had been a bit more intelligible, advising her that at some future point she'd be summoned to the docking ring, where one of Pulver's shuttles would hopefully await her. She was to be packed and ready whenever that happened, which meant she had to be packed and ready... well, now. So she'd be living out of her duffel case. Indefinitely. But "probably not for very long," according to the Tygon.

Gee. Thanks.

She flung herself onto the bunk, sighing, reminded of life as a junior lieutenant, and then as a sub, or even as a cadet before all that: hurry up and wait. Nobody telling her anything. The awesome weight of Fleet tradition and practice crushing her, reminding her in no uncertain terms that she was powerless to do anything but be that one tiny, necessary cog, manning a Service ship, moving the Wars along.

Small wonder she'd risen so quickly once she'd finally made sublieutenant, once she'd gotten a few scattered opportunities to take the kobel by the horns and show what she could do. Pixy Pfeiffer was not a woman who shied away from responsibility. She soon earned a reputation as a reliable, competent officer who got things done quickly and efficiently, if not always legally or ethically. But in a Fleet that prized mission accomplishment over everything else, she was valued.

The first clue she'd had that people were talking about her was when she'd been offered the job as Second Officer aboard the Pulver, a fairly impressive post for such a new lieutenant; for all that Pulver was just another GP Service Fleet vessel, she was assigned to the Outer Command, where time pressures were immense. At the same meeting where that job had come to her, there'd been an extremely unusual offhand comment from the commander who headed the Outer Personnel Office.

"Oh! Hey!" she'd said as Pixy was about to get up and leave. "I almost forgot. Something else came through... that is, I was told to mention it." She was fluffing through a series of form sheets until she found one, heavily highlighted. "I'm sure you won't want it."

"Ma'am?" Pixy had sunk back into her seat, still dazed; she'd been expecting a Third Officer's billet, like she'd had on an acting basis on her last ship. Weapons and morale, meaning weapons and whoring. Fuck that.

The commander had shrugged with elaborately staged unconcern. "It's a billet as an assistant fourth officer," she rapped out airily. "Well, more like a fourth-in-waiting; the incumbent is going back to school soon." Fourth Officer. Commo.

Pixy frowned. The fuck? "Ma'am... I mean, you're just now cutting me orders as a Second Officer. Why would I want to be a Fourth?"

"Right?" The commander smirked, as if they were sharing a joke. "It's just that it's aboard a higher-priority vessel, the Indomitable."

"The what?" Pixy had blurted, very confused. "That's the flagship for the whole Outer Command, ma'am."

"I know, right?" Shrugs all around; either the commander was a good little actor, or this really had taken her by surprise. "And a Combat ship. You're Service." She rolled her eyes. "Probably a fuckup, lieutenant, but I was told to mention it."

Told by whom? Pixy had been too junior, then, to ask, but she'd wondered every day since. At the time, the thought of serving aboard a Combat vessel had seemed to define insanity; asshole officers, serious sailors, no drugs, and the everpresent risk that the Antareans would swing by some dark day and blow your ship inside-out. No way; there was a reason she'd chosen Service in the first place, though her scores had been good enough to get her nearly any branch she'd wanted.

And, for awhile, the choice had been a great one. Lots of fun, stimulating crewmates, easy leadership, decent chow, good extra money; it had been a lovely war, right up until Captain Crick had taken over the Pulver. Then it had just been work, work work, and stress, and then at last the horror show that Fleet had dryly labeled Detached Engagement #447, where Pixy had surprised herself by acting gallantly, even heroically.

There'd been murmurs since then, knowing glances, eyes flickering down at her chest. In her early years they'd done that to catch a glimpse of a misbehaving nipple; now, they just wanted to see the Silver Cross And Bar.

Times changed.

She sighed again into her pillow, the circuit ship droning on around her, and she gave a whimper as the fucking interphaser went once more, tickling at the bitter end of her new cochleas. Fucking shitbag robot pilot, flying by algorithm instead of by feel. Sleep came late, but at least it came.

* * *

The smell rolled through the hatch along with the gravity, pungent and sharp after so long away, and yet as familiar as her sister's hug. Pixy couldn't stop herself from closing her eyes and smiling, just for a moment, while trying hard to preserve her dignity after the fucking catastrophe Junior Lieutenant van Kleck had made of the docking.

Wait. It was Sublieutenant van Kleck, now; Pixy had the woman's promotion orders in her mailbag.

Pixy had not been pleased to see her. The woman had made herself an insufferable shitty mess since the day she'd come aboard. She had one of those "I'm an engineer and you are not" personalities that clashed hard with Pixy's own way of looking at the world; people uncomfortable with ambiguity, she'd noticed, tended to antagonize her. And van Kleck had certainly done that; as acting First, it had been Pixy's duty to welcome her aboard, place her in the right job, figure out where she'd go at general quarters, and generally see to her professional development.

But van Kleck had pissed her off. So Pixy had simply tortured her.

Van Kleck woke up within her first week to find herself assigned as Fifth Officer, a job for which she was totally unqualified with duties in which she was absolutely uninterested. She also discovered she'd picked up every possible additional duty aboard the ship, from Mess Deck Officer-in-Charge to Sanitation Officer, each with its own compliance regulations and specialized testing and certification exams. Then, when she'd tried to go over Pixy's head to get assigned to the Engine Room (where, strictly speaking, she probably belonged), van Kleck had had the temerity to suggest that Pixy was favoring the Engine Room's actual Chief Engineer, Sublieutenant Klonmyre, just because Klonmyre was Pixy's bedwarmer.

Van Kleck was right, of course. But that was when Pixy had assigned her all the additional duties, in an attempt to keep the annoying fiver out of her hair. She wondered just what had gone down in her absence.

"You need to study the middle chapters of the Piloting Manual, Ms van Kleck," she'd said sweetly as the engineer had struggled to hold the shuttle on course during the transit. "The ones about rule-of-thumb compensation and the Ullmer Principle applied to low-grade solar winds." Engineers, she'd noticed in the past, often made poor shuttle pilots. They didn't like the unpredictability.

"Umm." It was the very first thing Pixy had said to van Kleck since she'd left the circuit ship. "Welcome back, ma'am."

"Thank you." Pixy wondered whether she'd talked Captain Reye into letting her into the Engine Room; with a new First due anytime, he hadn't made her appointment as Acting Fifth permanent. The thought had been troubling Pixy for some time; replacing the solid Klonmyre with the stellar test scores of van Kleck was exactly the sort of thing that looked good on paper, that a new First would probably do out of hand.

For all she knew, van Kleck was Chief Engineer already. But she'd be damned if she asked the woman, least of all while she was nervously trying to hold course. Pixy sighed instead. "Just try not to collide with the ship, Ms van Kleck. I'm sure the captain would appreciate it."

"Aye aye, ma'am," she replied crisply enough. "Oh, and I'm to relay a request that you report to the First Officer as soon as we dock, ma'am."

Pixy let the silence stretch painfully thin, let van Kleck know she resented an instruction so basic, that obviously she'd report to the First fucking Officer, that that was what people did when they came aboard. At last, as van Kleck looked nervously over her shoulder, Pixy nodded curtly. "Noted."

"Ma'am." Van Kleck was transparently curious about Donskoi, dozing with his hat pulled low over his eyes; Pixy had watched her size him up at once, take in the campaign badges left over from Donskoi's service as an enlisted sailor, mentally note the fact that the new guy was not an engineer, and immediately dismiss him as a competitor. Some officers were like that, always judging their peers, wondering how they could get ahead of them. Pixy had little patience for that. She knew, automatically, that everyone else was shittier than she was; why bother worrying about it?

Pixy was thirsting for information, but van Kleck was frustrating her. It would have been so much better if Amisuul, or even diBiase, had come to pick her up; those were friends, of sorts, the kinds of men whose brain she felt she could safely pick during the transit. How bad were things aboard the ship without her? Was the new First an asshole? Who was Donskoi replacing?

A sudden harsh alarm stirred her; Pixy glanced automatically over at van Kleck in the pilot's seat, certain she'd have no idea what the alarm was. She wasn't disappointed. "Gravity," Pixy growled. "That's the particle alarm."

"I know that, ma'am." The fiver had found her zen again, verbally, but she still hesitated over the controls.

"Gravity," Pixy repeated, tempted to reach out and do it herself. "You need to dampen the Lerbal Effect. Now." Just behind them, the circuit ship was preparing to go lightspace as van Kleck stumbled toward the safe point. Even without getting sucked along with the robot ship, the shuttle was in for a rocky ride without the damping. "Turn off the fucking gravity!" Pixy barked suddenly, and the stupid bitch finally worked the levers.

Pixy ignored the flutter of nausea that always accompanied zero-gravity for her, feeling the harness against her shoulders as she rose out of her seat. A crashing noise from behind the flight deck told of an unprepared Donskoi, but when Pixy glanced casually around to check on him she wasn't surprised to see him looking back with the casual inscrutability she'd already noticed in him. He bobbed up near the ceiling.

The stern monitors were already showing the circuit ship glimmering, getting ready for the move; the Lerbal wave would be propagating any moment now, and Pixy popped her harness and kicked lightly at the deck to waft her backward out of the seat; she was hovering not far from Donskoi, watching, as the wave struck.