Though Hell Should Bar the Way - eARC Read online

  “I’m Ellie,” Woetjans said, “but nobody but my family calls me that. Blood family, I mean. With the Sissies, I’m ‘Chief.’”

  She threw her shoulders back on the bench. “Two questions, you said. What’s the other?”

  “What the bloody hell do you want from me?” I said, not letting my voice change from when I asked her name.

  Woetjans looked blank for a moment; then she began laughing. Her laughter was loud enough—and harsh enough—that people were turning to look at our booth.

  The drinks came. Woetjans downed half her gin, then smiled at me.

  “Okay, kid,” she said. “I want to know what you’re doing here. You’re not like anybody I’ve seen before. Just tell me what you’re up to.”

  “You want it straight?” I said. “I was in the Academy, but my dad was Dean Olfetrie. He was bribing politicians and Navy House bureaucrats to rob the RCN blind. So I dropped out of the Academy, did some scut work, and took the first decent job I was offered. Which was by Captain Leary, who brought me here.”

  I sucked my lips in, then said, “Are you shocked? Want me to buy my own dinner now?”

  “I guess your old man isn’t the first crooked outfitter I’ve heard of,” Woetjans said. “The cable you replaced the first day out was from a reel marked with the right size, but there was a ring around the hub to make up for the cable’s smaller diameter.”

  She drank again, then thought about it and emptied the glass. She held it high, which I took as a silent request for a refill. “Go on, kid,” she said.

  “Maybe it was Dad doing so much work with the RCN,” I said. “I don’t know. Both Junior and I wanted to be RCN officers, though. He was killed at New Harmony.”

  I frowned as I tried to focus my mind on a past that had changed completely since my father’s death. “Look,” I said. “I know I don’t seem like an RCN officer, but I could’ve been one.”

  I was trying to put words to things I’d thought for years but hadn’t been willing to say even to myself—because it’d seem like whining. “My brother had the look, I know what you mean,” I said. “He partied and he was everybody’s drinking buddy—and if you passed out trying to drink along with him, he’d pull your girlfriend sure as lead sinks. But my navigation was better than Junior’s and I could take him apart on the tactical simulator, even when I was twelve and he was an Academy graduate!”

  The server did indeed arrive with a gin, and a peppermint candy that Woetjans cracked with the back of a spoon. The bosun put half in her cheek and sipped at her drink. She said, “Barnes said you did a good job rerigging Dorsal B.”

  I shrugged. “Barnes and Dasi could’ve done the job in half the time,” I said. “I’ve watched them work.”

  Woetjans smiled broadly. The server, arriving with our meals, shied back, though I’m not sure she had anything to do with Woetjans’ expression.

  “Barnes and Dasi’ve been working rigging for a long time,” Woetjans said. “Either one could be bosun on a cruiser if he wanted to. Besides, Barnes was laying back to see how you’d handle the job.”

  “You could be on a battleship, Ellie,” I said. “Why aren’t you?”

  Woetjans laughed again. “I been on a battleship,” she said. She cut a big bite of fish, guiding it to her mouth with both fork and the tip of her knife. “My first tour as an able spacer was on the Renown. Didn’t like it worth a damn—seemed like the admiral was always looking over my shoulder. Transferred to destroyers, then got a slot as bosun’s mate on a courier ship—the Aglaia. Best luck I ever hope to have.”

  The ragfish was pretty good, though bland to my taste. The peppers were strands of bell pepper, not the hot pepper I’d expected.

  “You liked the courier ship that much?” I said to keep the conversation going.

  “It was bloody awful,” Woetjans said, shoveling the rest of her fish into her mouth. “You not only have extra ship’s officers, you got the passengers like as not nosing into your business. But that’s where I met Six, and I been with him ever since.”

  I was taking longer to finish my meal than Woetjans had. For that matter, I still had half a glass of wine and she was ordering her third gin. I said, “Because of the prizes?” I said. “I guess all the crew who’ve served with Captain Leary are pretty rich by now.”

  Woetjans laughed, but without the enthusiasm that’d rattled the windows before. “Most of the Sissies, they’ve got maybe a pot to piss in, kid,” she said. “They’re spacers. The ones who’ve got more—Pasternak’s got a regular manor back in Wassail County where he grew up—it don’t do them no good. It don’t do me no good, except if I want to take a kid to dinner to learn what makes him tick, I don’t worry what the tab’s going to be.”

  She paused and pursed her lips. “We Sissies are all spacers,” she said. “Every single soul who stuck with Six is that, and you don’t need money to be a spacer. If you signed with Six to get rich, you’re a bloody fool. You’re more likely to lose your arm or your ass than to get rich.”

  “I joined to be a spacer,” I said. “I’m learning to do that. I’ll never be the astrogator that Captain Leary and even Cory are, but I’ll be better than I am now. And eventually I’ll be pretty good.”

  I shrugged. My glass was empty, so I held it up the way Woetjans had hers. “I know there’s risks,” I said. “They told us not to open the coffin when they shipped Junior back for burial. Mom thought that meant his body’d been torn up and maybe Dad thought that too, but I heard the gravel rattle when I shifted the coffin a little. Junior’d been burned so bad they had to ballast the coffin before they sent it back. But he’d been a spacer, and I’m going to be a spacer.”

  My wine came. I took a deep draft, I guess to cool myself off. I’d gotten pretty hot talking like that.

  “That stuff any good?” Woetjans said.

  “It’s all right for me,” I said. “I’m not much of a drinker. But I can tell you, my fiancée’s father wouldn’t use it to clean drains. Ex-fiancée.”

  “Toss it down and let’s get out of here,” Woetjans said. “We’ll find a place near the harbor and really tie one on if you like.”

  I didn’t—I peeled off when the bosun stopped at a place on the harborfront. But I went back aboard the Sunray, feeling that it’d been a good evening. My astrogation was improving faster than it ever would have if I’d stayed in the Academy, and I’d gotten through another test.

  I guess the tests would keep coming till I died. Well, that was all right.

  CHAPTER 13

  My last watch before Saguntum was in the Power Room. Captain Leary believed that an officer had to know the whole ship, not just the rigging and how to astrogate. One of the things Pasternak’s list had directed me to buy on Hansen’s World was a flow pump. This wasn’t the big unit which sucked water into the reaction mass tanks; it was a relatively small pump submerged in the tank to feed the fluid to the plasma thrusters or to the antimatter converters for the High Drive, depending on which we were using at the time.

  “Got a job for you, kid,” said Pasternak when I reported. “You and Gamba are going to be replacing the flow pump, and I don’t mind telling you that it’ll be a bitch of a job.”

  It was that in truth. Pasternak had run the tank down lower than he said he liked, but me and Gamba, a Tech 4, had to wear air suits working inside in four feet of water to remove frozen bolts.

  Some time in the last few years, the Sunray had filled its tanks with water which was either contaminated with something more corrosive than salt, or which perhaps wasn’t water at all. Any fluid which would feed through the lines became reaction mass so far as the propulsion units were concerned.

  The pump was supposed to be a sealed unit, but Pasternak said it had been running hot ever since we lifted from Xenos because of a corroded rotor shaft. The lock nuts (the bolts were welded to the tank) had long given up any pretence of having corrosion-resistant coatings.

  When we got the pump loose, I released the short line t
hat clamped me to the inflow grating in the tank floor. Without those tethers, we’d have been bobbing like corks in our air suits. I opened the faceplate and called, “We got it loose! We’re ready to haul it out!”

  I expected somebody to bring a chain hoist above the open lid of the tank. Instead, a tech named Evans leaned over the side and gripped the output pipe. It had been unhooked from the manifold.

  “Keep outa the way,” Evans said. He tilted the pipe to make sure the pump really was free of all the bolts, then slid it toward him in the tank. Finally he lifted the pump hand over hand until he could rest it on the lip.

  “Now, you boys just sit there and you can put the new one back on,” Evans grunted. He swung the pump to the deck and disappeared for a moment.

  “Bloody hell,” I said to Gamba, who’d also opened his helmet. “I know what that thing weighs!”

  “Yeah, Evans is showing off for the new officer,” Gamba said. He was as overqualified for this job as Barnes had been to act as my helper in restringing a cable; his ears were the smallest I’d ever seen on an adult man. “Mind, he’s got a lot to show off. He’s thick as a brick, though.”

  “With Captain Leary on the bridge,” I said, “the rest of us don’t need to be brilliant.”

  Shuffling and heavy thumps indicated that something was happening on the deck above us; then I heard the squeals and bangs of a crate being broken up. Beaumont, a Tech 3, leaned over and called, “Just a second more. We gotta hook up the exit pipe.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I said. I wondered if Gamba and me would even be able to get out by ourselves. Maybe if I was strong enough to haul myself up from Gamba’s shoulders and then strong enough to pull him up in turn…but I’d use a rope or a length of cable for that, not just reaching down and grabbing him by the hand.

  “Stand clear!” somebody shouted. Then a new pump appeared over the rim and descended into the tank—faster than the old one had risen but still under control. It hit the water with enough of a splash that I was glad I’d closed up my helmet again.

  There’d been several techs skidding the new unit along the decking, but Evans had apparently decided to lower it alone. I wouldn’t get in his way about any bloody thing he wanted to do.

  Gamba and I walked the new unit over the to the mounting plate on its edge. The trick then was to align it with the bolts.

  Gamba grinned at me. “It’s on you now, kid,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “But look, you get over against the side, okay? I’ll come up and ask for help if I have to”—I couldn’t honestly think of anything a second man could do that would be useful—“but I don’t want to lose a hand if the pump moves while I’m between it and the bottom.”

  “Right, kid,” Gamba said with a serious expression. He at least knew to look like he was as concerned as I was. The corner of his mouth quirked. “Besides…” he said, “I think Woetjans’d pull my arms off if anything like that happened.”

  “I’ll be done as quick as I can,” I said and closed my face shield. Mostly to get on with the job, but I didn’t want to talk about me and Woetjans either. Mind, there was nothing to talk about anyway.

  I hooked to the grating again. My helmet still bobbed, but I could keep my arms and torso under water. I rotated the pump so that the flange was up on one of the four bolts, then used a screwdriver through another hole to crab the unit onto the remaining three bolts.

  Now was when I really could have used some help, but only if we could’ve communicated. I grabbed the outflow pipe with both hands and turned it carefully, like it was an analog clock. This would’ve been a lot easier if I were strong as Evans was, but I’m not sure I’d ever met anybody else that strong. I heard a click! and felt the pipe wobble.

  I straightened and opened my face shield. “Okay, Gamba,” I said. “I got it balanced here. Now we just need to line it up with the bolts and let it fall home.”

  Gamba grinned at me. “Keep your hands on the pipe, kid,” he said, “but you just feel. And make sure your boots aren’t in the way. Right?”

  “Right,” I said and shuffled back a boot’s length. I’d asked for help, not to have Gamba to take over. On the other hand, I was so exhausted that I didn’t really care.

  The pipe tilted one way and another, turning by equally tiny bits under my gloves. It suddenly gave and clanged to its seat. Gamba stepped back; he was breathing hard, so it hadn’t really been as easy as he’d made it seem.

  “Got the old nuts, kid?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. I reached for them. “Right here in my pouch.”

  “Leave ’em and throw ’em away when were out of this,” Gamba said. He held up a little net bag with four bright-finished nuts. “We’ll use these instead because we can. That’ll make it easier for the next couple bastards. Who won’t be us, I hope to hell.”

  It was a lot easier to snug the nuts up than it had been to crack them loose to begin with. That would’ve been true even if Gamba hadn’t given me a power wrench small enough to hold in my hand, instead of using the box wrench I’d taken them off with. As a matter of fact, the biggest problem screwing the nuts on was keeping hold of the wrench against the torque.

  Beaumont hooked a tubular ladder over the side. I climbed up behind Gamba. It was long past the end of the watch. I was wrung out, as I generally was since I joined the Sunray. I wasn’t complaining, but I’d never have worked this hard at a regular civilian job.

  I walked to the entrance of the Power Room and started to take off my air suit near the lockers there. The bulkhead was armored, like that of the bridge. It wouldn’t exactly withstand the blast of a ruptured fusion bottle, but it should redirect the fireball through the deliberately weakened vent plates in the exterior hull.

  Pasternak gestured me to come over to his enclosed office across from the lockers. I closed the hatch behind me because of the racket. Four techs were guiding the lid back over the tank—using the travelling hoist. The Power Room was noisy enough at any time, but the clanking and shouts made it something out of Hell.

  “Six wants to see you on the bridge, kid,” Pasternak said.

  “Thanks, Chief,” I said. What I was really thinking was, “No bloody way!”

  I chuckled as I finished removing the air suit. I couldn’t even complain about it not being fair. I was a volunteer.

  * * *

  “There you are, Olfetrie,” Captain Leary said, rotating his couch at the console to face me as I entered the bridge. “Say, you’ve got a nice suit, right?”

  “Well, I’ve got a suit,” I said. “Several of them. But I left all my dress clothes in pawn in Xenos.”

  By now they’d probably have been sold. Well, I couldn’t imagine I’d ever again have entry to society in which they’d be required. I might’ve gotten a few extra florins if I’d flat sold them instead of pawning them, but at the time I did it I hadn’t really internalized how complete my disaster was.

  “They’re civilian,” the captain said, smiling. “And I suspect anybody else aboard would call them dress clothes.” He frowned across at the commo station and added, “Well, maybe not Adele.”

  Looking at me again, he said, “Anyway, the delegation needs an escort of five spacers when they present their credentials in Saguntum, and I need an officer to command the escort. You’re what I’ve got with civilian clothes.”

  “Ah…” I said. I had nowhere to go with the thought, so I said, “Yes, sir!” and shut my mouth.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met our passengers,” Captain Leary said. He grinned. “Except for the pretty one, right?”

  “Mistress Grimaud,” I said, nodding vigorously. “Though I don’t know precisely what her position is.”

  “If she’d told you…” the captain said, “she’d probably have lied. We’ll go down now—no, clean up and put on a suit before we do that. When you’re presentable, I’ll introduce you to the delegation. Director Jimenez seemed to be concerned that his escort would be a bunch of roughs who
’d embarrass the dignity of the Foreign Ministry.”

  His smile wasn’t altogether warm. “Personally,” he went on, “I don’t believe anything the RCN did could possibly lower it to the level of the Foreign Ministry, but I figure your experience will put his mind at rest.”

  * * *

  I thought of just changing clothes, but I knew I looked like something the cat had dragged in. Five hours working—and I mean working—in an air suit really takes it out of you. I showered before changing. It made me feel more human as well as cleaner, though I was still very tired.

  I came back, wearing my dull green jacket over gray tunic and slacks. “I knew you’d clean up nice,” Captain Leary said. “Doesn’t he, Hogg?”

  “Pretty as a picture,” his servant said, rising from the striker’s seat to take a good look at me. “I hope he can take care of himself.”

  “Now, Hogg,” the captain said. “It’s not going to be that kind of escort. They won’t be carrying weapons.”

  “I can take care of myself, Hogg,” I said. If he’d been a gentleman, I’d have said, “Master Hogg,” but he wasn’t. “But your servant raises a good point, sir: Who have you chosen for the escort?”

  The captain shrugged. “I figured I’d leave that to you, Olfetrie,” he said. “Pick any five you’d be comfortable leading on this business.”

  I started to protest, then caught myself. I wanted to be an officer; this was my job. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I suppose any of the crew, at least of the former Sissies, would stay solid if something went unexpectedly wrong.”

  “They’re all former Sissies,” the captain said. “Except for you, that is.”

  He was watching me. There might be a touch of amusement in his eyes. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t let me go too far wrong, though he’d said it was my decision.

  “The main thing we have to worry about is keeping Director Jimenez happy,” I said. “We’ll want clean-cut personnel, and people who won’t scare the civilians. Also with a bias toward smart rather than, say, quick. So—”

  I took a couple seconds to go over my choices one last time. “Sun and Barnes,” I said. “I say Barnes instead of Dasi, because I know him better and because Dasi’s nose is crooked from where it was broken. Wedell and Gamba, in both cases because I’ve worked with them and trust their judgment.”