Dry, No Lube Ch. 02: Pixy's Choice

Van Kleck blinked. "I'm a woman, ma'am. It's not in my file?"

Pixy brandished the tablet. "Nope, but whatever. Welcome to the ship, Ms Van Kleck."

"Lieutenant Van Kleck is a mutant, ma'am," diBiase snickered helpfully.

Pixy blinked. "Yeah? What kind?"

"I have a fifth lobe in my brain, ma'am."

"Huh." She'd met a few fivers before, but she'd never served with one. The joke was obvious. "So, if I ask whether you've got half a brain, the answer is no?" She leaned back and laughed, then shut it off when Van Kleck just sat there staring. "Because, you know, odd number? Not evenly divisible by two?" Pixy glanced at diBiase, but he was an idiot; she'd get no help there. The silence galled. "Um. What's it do? The extra lobe?"

The engineer shrugged. "I've got extended math reasoning, and I do test positive for slight mind-reading sensitivity. But there's an emotional and empathetic deficit." She sounded as if she was discussing the solar wind.

"Sounds that way," she shot back right away. "You're not, by any chance, from Terseus IIc, are you?" Pixy had had a weird obsession with that planet for years. People called it The Gas Giant, but she'd never figured out why.

"No, ma'am. IIb."

"Ah." Pixy licked her lips. "Is this your first real duty station?"

"Yes, ma'am, it is. I've only ever been in training before."

"Ah." Pixy leaned forward and folded her hands. "Sailors are simple creatures, Van Kleck. They're not assholes, but they're not always comfortable with uncertainty; they want to know where they stand." Van Kleck just stared back complacently. "Might want to stay quiet about the mutation."

Van Kleck paused. "Although I'm not sure I accept the premise that secrecy is necessary, I'll bow to your greater experience and knowledge of the culture of the ship, ma'am."

Pixy had stopped listening; there was no way a brand-new junior lieutenant would argue with the First Officer, so her response was immaterial. "Fine. So, you're an engineer, but we've already got one of those. I'm making you the acting Fifth Officer, in charge of safety and fire control. And, of course, you'll stand a watch, like if you were a line officer."

Van Kleck blinked. "But, ma'am, I'm not a line officer."

"Yes." Pixy and diBiase both shrugged; they'd been in the Fleet long enough to understand that these kinds of paradoxes were not uncommon. "Weird, huh? So, yeah, safety and fire control. It's mostly plumbing; should be simple for an engineer. You're relieving Mr diBiase here; he'll run you through the duties and responsibilities."

"You'll have to stand a watch too," diBiase pointed out smugly.

"Oh, absolutely." Pixy had taken that for granted. "That's a big one. We've only got three watchstanders available right now, and Klonmyre won't be doing any once we get underway. So, yeah. Can you mind a helm?"

"No ma'am." The response was precise and crisp.

Pixy stared at Van Kleck levelly. "Do you have common sense and functional hands?"

Van Kleck frowned. "I like to think so, ma'am."

"Fine. Then you can be trained to mind a helm. Mr diBiase will do it."

"I will?" DiBiase was not amused.

"You will. Make sure she can navigate, too; the basics are good enough." Pixy sighed and stared out at the stars. "Oh, and the gambling ring. Fifth Officer is always responsible for that." She trailed off as she caught Van Kleck' frown. "What?"

The engineer blinked. "Gambling is against regulations, ma'am."

Pixy shrugged. "So are lots of things. But you're responsible for running the onboard gambling anyway, Ms Van Kleck." She glanced up at diBiase, the two of them shaking their heads; poor naïve little waif!

Van Kleck shot to her feet, her blue hair brushing the ceiling. "I'm afraid I have to object, ma'am." She was very pale, Pixy noted, and extremely uptight; this one would have trouble finding someone who wanted her as a bedwarmer, despite the possibilities offered by her mutation. Pixy stared a moment, then shook her head. No way was she going to waste time on this kind of bullshit.

"Fine. Mr diBiase? Stay on the gaming."

"Aw, fuck, ma'am! It's so much work!" Van Kleck glanced over, her eyes wide at the response, but Pixy had been expecting it.

"Yes. So now I'll talk the captain into raising your cut to 2.5%, instead of 2%. Will that make up for it?"

DiBiase was still pissed and an idiot, but he could count. "3%," he countered.

"2.75%. Done." Pixy made a note on her tablet. "I doubt I'll have trouble with Captain Reye. Tell your bookies; I'm sure they'll pass on the risk to the crew. People will be pissed, but not as pissed as they'll be if we yank the whole system."

"Agreed, ma'am."

Pixy smiled grimly. "I know." She turned back to Van Kleck. "So, yeah. Welcome aboard, Ms Van Kleck. You can meet the captain at dinner."

* * *

The closing of that final torpedo scar, plus the slowly meandering end of the interior upgrades, meant the Pulver's time in the Basin was winding down, the slew of administrative details competing for Pixy's time at long last ebbing. Even Amisuul seemed to be coming around; he hadn't needed her help at all when swapping fifty minifuses and 20 mg of Crystal for a gross of heat shields and a blowjob. "Easy money, Pixy," he bubbled, returning with the ebullience of a fellow who's done a difficult job well. "Went fine." She looked both ways at the docking bay to make sure no sailors were watching, then kneed him swiftly between the legs. "The fuck?"

"I've told you before, Mr Amisuul, never to use my first name," she hissed. "We're not buddies." She glanced down at his crotch. "Tygons don't have balls, anyway. That didn't hurt."

"Still." He adjusted himself. "It's disrespectful, ma'am."

"I've never made any secret of my disrespect for you, Mr Amisuul. So, um, the Crystal moved?"

"No problem, like I said." Pixy had been careful to keep control of the onboard drug trade when she bullied Amisuul toward her other supply duties. This afternoon, before giving the Crystal to the Tygon, she and Chief Koster had carefully cut the drug by a whopping 25%. It was a risk, but she'd dealt with the other ship before and its supply officer had seemed like a moron.

Plus, if anything did go south... well, Amisuul would be there to take the fall. Naturally, she'd told the Tygon she'd only cut the Crystal by 5%. "How was the blowjob?"

"Ehh. They've been better." Spoiled, that's what he was; it was always like this during repairs. The crew got plenty of unfamiliar sex and a wide variety of the kinds of contraband that always floated around these kinds of places, and they always took it for granted until they were around three or four light-years away. By then, any little snort of Bump or Crystal, any handjob from any willing new crewmember, would be a priceless commodity.

Pfeiffer with the drugs, Amisuul with the whores, and diBiase with the gambling: that was the holy trinity that had kept Pulver from anarchy under Captain Crick. And the three of them had already met to make sure the profits would continue to flow under Captain Reye.

She gave Amisuul a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, much against her better judgement, but she wasn't an idiot; she did understand how hard this was for him. Some people were cut out for supply, other people weren't; it took a sense of flexible ethics that Amisuul, despite his lasciviousness and overall sense of amorality, did not have. He was not cunning, not guileful. "Cheer up," she advised him, installing a fake smile on her own face. "We'll have a First soon, and then I'll be back to work in the supply shop. You can go back to lounging with your whores and... what else do you do around here? I can't remember."

"Cute, ma'am." He sighed. "Excuse me. I need to go brush my teeth," he muttered.

"What?"

"You know." He waved vaguely at his mouth. "You might enjoy the taste of dick, ma'am, but I do not."

She stopped him in mid-stride, hauling him around to face her. "You're serious?" Her purple eyes blazed. "Motherfucker, you were supposed to receive the blowjob, not give the blowjob!"

"What's that?"

"I told you to set it up with you getting head, you stupid fucking defective alien twit! You gave?" She was reeling, the story would be all over the basin by now, that any supply officer could head on over to those imbeciles on the Pulver and fleece them comprehensively. "Oral, plus twenty of Crystal? You're joking."

"I..." He swallowed, and not for the first time that day. "I thought..."

"It was a gross of heat shields, not a gross of fucking human sex slaves!" She smacked him across his face, the fang hurting her palm, but she was far too enraged to notice. "Thank god we cut the Crystal by a quarter," she told him viciously.

He went bright red. "What's that?"

"Yeah, fuckwit. Only 75% of that Crystal was actual Crystal. Thank god, too. And Buddha and even fucking Elon Musk." She was doing the math in her head, engrossed, not even noticing his growing rage.

"But, if they'd found out..." He glared, really mad now. "They'd have killed me."

Pixy matched him glare for glare. "Look at it from my perspective," she replied sweetly. "Recall my assessment of your duty performance, Mr Amisuul. I begin to think that having you eliminated in a drug deal for some bad stim would actually be a net benefit to this vessel. See how that logic works?"

He glowered, but in fairness there wasn't much else he could do. Her pat on the shoulder this time was far less companionable. "All's well that ends well, Sublieutenant Amisuul. Thanks for the heat shields," she tossed over her shoulder as she strode off.

* * *

A docking alarm jolted Pixy out of a Klonmyreless nap, the intertube shouting at her. "Incoming shuttle, Ms Pfeiffer."

"Unscheduled, too," she yawned; it was her job to know when shuttles were due. The plot repeater showed her an incoming contact closing at around five meters per second. The tube buzzed again.

"Should I wake the skipper, ma'am?"

"No." It was 0236. He struck her as a man who liked his sleep. "I'll deal with it. Hold it up at the Blue Point and don't let it approach until I call you from the docking ring."

A pause while Pixy maneuvered herself to the edge of the bunk, sighing; she was not always a sprightly waker-upper. She was reaching for her back meds when the intertube spoke again. "They want to know why we want them to hold."

"Really." Must be important. "Yeah. Try telling them we want to check their gravity calibration, that we're running pressure tests. If that doesn't work, fuck, just tell them I'm not dressed yet." She brooded a moment. "And yes, wake the captain."

The kid who emerged from the docking ring when Pixy came shambling up was the kind of senior Lieutenant who had been promoted far, far before his time, probably because he'd been born to the correct people. His excellently cut uniform looked like it had cost a lot. He glanced around, too well-bred to have ever been aboard a ship this filthy, but also too well-bred to comment about it. His eyes crinkled into a smile when he caught sight of Pixy. "You're not Captain Reye."

"Nope." She was cranky, and rich people always made her obscurely rebellious. "He's on his way; we've been very busy. What's going on?" She came to his mid-chest, the kid a little too tall for the docking ring. She glanced through and saw the kind of well-appointed shuttle that only admirals got. "And, more to the point, who the fuck are you?"

His eyes widened. "I'm not sure there's a reason for such language, Lieutenant..."

"Pfeiffer. Don't like it? Leave. Or come with me; I'll take you to the wardroom, so that you can do... what, exactly?"

"I'm on an errand for Admiral Tshorr herself," he announced, and when he drew himself instinctively to his full height his expensive hair style brushed the ceiling.

"Well well! Admiral Tshorr!" Pixy pretended to be impressed. "So, what? Does that mean I should tell my captain to suck your dick? Are you important?" She smacked the wardroom hatch open, revealing the memorable sight of Amisuul, lounging in his underwear on one of the sofas. "Hi, Rocky," she said smoothly; she detested using first names, but she sensed it might piss off Tshorr's guy. "This is Admiral Tshorr's errand-boy. I see you're already dressed to receive him."

"Nice to meet you, sir." Amisuul showed no urge to move. "I'm out of clean clothes. Do me a favor? Tell the Admiral we need new wash modules for our clothes. I'm sure he can pull some strings."

"Um. The Admiral is a woman." The man was looking around for a clean-ish place to sit.

"Disappear, Mr Amisuul," she said curtly. "We need the room."

"Oh. Aye aye, ma'am." The Tygon got to his feet and stretched his scaly green body. "Where should I go, ma'am?"

"Go? Hell, I don't know. Somewhere else, Sublieutenant Amisuul." She was already pulling out the coding table; she'd seen the well-dressed lieutenant's briefcase, and admirals' aides did not visit GP ships in the middle of the local night in order to chat. She nodded at the man. "We'll need the table?"

"Yes." He was looking around, perched in a chair with the minimum possible portion of his ass on the cushion. "Will the captain be long?"

The pun was obvious. "Not really. About five, six inches." Amisuul chuckled as he made his way through the hatch. "No, I'm kidding. Who knows? See, the thing is," she went on with relish, desperate to put this asshole in his place, "he's the captain. So, like, he's in charge of this ship. Meaning, he shows up when he fucking wants to." She jerked her head at the sideboard. "Tea?"

"Please."

"Get it yourself." Pixy was powering up the table when Reye came through the door in his workout clothes. The admiral's guy stared at him blankly. "Good evening, Captain," Pixy said pleasantly, and the speed with which the lieutenant flew to his feet gratified her deeply. "Captain Reye, this is Lieutenant... well, shit. He didn't bother introducing himself, sir. From Admiral Tshorr's staff."

"Lieutenant Klaus Pickles, sir." The salute was rigid.

"Rising," Reye said automatically as he returned it.

Pixy could not stop herself. "Is that your real name?" she blurted.

He paused long enough that she could ponder her own lack of manners. "It is, Pfeiffer," he replied in a measured tone. "I'm here to deliver the Admiral's orders regarding an upcoming operation."

"How 'upcoming' is this operation supposed to be?" Pixy was on him like a terrier. "We're still resupplying, our hull's not finished, we're short on officers and chiefs, and we haven't even started taking on ammo yet."

"Some of those deficiencies will obviously be fixed, posthaste," Pickles replied with a politician's smile. "I believe most of those issues have been in your daily report, sir, and the Admiral is mindful of them. She'll do her best with the Yard Office to make good all your critical shortages. But, in the meantime..." He rolled his chair to the coding table and inserted the briefcase. "Your orders, sir." He backed discreetly away.

Everything came flashing up with a bright blue glow and a sudden stench of ozone, the dust motes dancing in the air as if they'd been woken up: charts, tables, coordinates, text. Pixy had never seen anything like this before; she'd spent her whole career in Service. Service ships didn't get secret orders. "What's all this, sir?" she whispered, glancing around to make sure Pickles was out of earshot.

"Lordy," Reye replied, frowning. "Do you people ever use this coding table?" He was twiddling knobs, watching the static come and go. "It's like nobody's ever touched it."

"No, sir, we touch it." She felt defensive. "We usually put the dishes on it when we eat in here."

Reye frowned as he fine-tuned the focus. "I'd heard you had a tendency to be acerbic."

"Oh." The paragraphs swam past her eyes. "Isn't that a type of wit, sir? My parents always said I was witty."

He ignored her as he reached the fourth subparagraph, the mission statement, and that's when he twisted around to frown at Pickles. "You're sure you found the right ship, Lieutenant?"

Pickles' expression gave a clearer reply than his mouth; his eyes said, "Decreasingly," but his mouth was more measured. "I double-checked, sir. And Admiral Tshorr was most insistent."

"This is a troop-transport order!" Pixy protested. "Manifests? Personnel data? What the fuck?"

Reye was more measured. "Transporting troops is not what GP service vessels do, Mr Pickles." Pixy was too shocked to even giggle at the name.

A pause. "Not normally, sir, no. I believe the Admiral was attracted by the idea that transports, well, look like transports." He leaned in and pointed to some sort of paragraph beside a star table. "See? The deception plan, there."

"Yes, I see the deception plan." Pixy was totally lost in streaming data, and leaned back shaking her head. "Something to add, Ms Pfeiffer?"

"Nope. Nothing at all, sir." She'd learned, long ago, that at times like this it was often best just to let someone fill her in at some future point.

"Good." Reye leaned on the table and turned back toward Pickles. "Then I'll say it. This is completely fucked up, Lieutenant."

Pickles brows flew up, his face the picture of innocence. "In what way should I advise the Admiral about your reaction, sir?"

"We're to ship an infantry platoon to some distant planet, deliver them there to do... I don't know, it doesn't even say..."

"It's classified, sir."

"And then wait randomly around in space to pick them up?"

Ah. That's what she was looking at. Pixy blinked at the star chart. "Where? There?" She pointed instinctively, her finger punching straight through the eerie blue data. "That's way, way out there."

Reye frowned at the chart. "Huh."

"It's a moon of the actual Flasbard homeworld." Pickles sounded excited, like a man who has just produced a rabbit from a hat. "Surprise!"

Pixy and Reye looked at each other. "Homeworld," she said, her voice a metallic sneer.

"Sure." Pickles was leaning back now, pleased by their reaction; his face wore the self-satisfied expression of a man who sends others into danger from a comfortable seat.

"I suppose," Reye went on quietly, "that the Admiral is aware the Flasbards are unlikely to just... well, that there are probably many ways in which they can register their displeasure at our presence."

"I'm certain she's aware," Pickles soothed, nodding reasonably. "Steps are being taken, captain." Reye waited for more, then sighed once he realized the man was probably lying.

"What's the mission?"

Pickles studied his fingernails. "Terraforming survey." The answer came far too fast to be true.

"Terraforming." Reye just stared. "A survey."

"Sure. With a security team."

Pixy could not restrain herself. "Why are we doing a terraforming survey of an enemy world? While the enemy is still in possession?" Reye nodded.

Pickles grinned wolfishly. "Never too soon to plan for the postwar environment," he said with a wink. "No, actually it's a goodwill gesture sponsored by some sort of charity out of Andromeda. Or maybe Capricorn?" He frowned as if it didn't matter, and of course it did not. "Anyway."

Pixy was bristling. "On an enemy homeworld."

Pickles nodded in satisfaction. "See? That's why the security team is going along." He shrugged, as though the whole thing made sense.

Captain Reye stared at the man. "Why us?"

Pickles spread his hands broadly. "Why, sir! Your ship is famous for its readiness and fighting ability."

"I wasn't here for that, and we lost twenty people in that fight," Reye said bluntly. He glanced at Pixy. "They're all new. So what's the real reason?"

Pickles smiled slightly. "Your modesty becomes you, sir, but the Admiral is very respectful of your ship's fighting record. You're also the only mission-capable ship in the basin with a cargo bay large enough to handle their shuttle. And you, sir, have experience as a transport officer."