Out
A series about Mars
by Daniel
E. Machado
Chapter 14
"Ms DeSilva?"
"Yes, Briggs?" Blade’s gently wobbling
handtablet dangles velcroed to the wreath of analog gages surrounding bio-vat
three-seventy-five’s dedicated control terminal.
"You’ve got a secured post from
Atlantis Corp. You want me to pass it through to your tablet?" Reaching
out to flick her fingertip across the floating handtablet a tiny holo-frame
of Technician Briggs' face pops up at the edge of her already busy display.
"No. It’s probably just another mortality
projection on the priority experimentals. Are the micro filters purged
on three-eighty-six yet?"
"No, ma’am. One of the outlet manifolds
still won’t back-flush and right now there just aren't any
technical maintenance crews available to purge it manually."
"Pussy-ass whiners." She mumbles a
bit too loud.
"Say again, Ms DeSilva?"
"I said: Specifically, which manifold
is clogged?" Blade pivots herself away from vat three-seventy-five’s local
controls. "Show me!"
Command-com’s image immediately dissolves
into a full screen holo-schematic of bio-vat three-eight-six’s number nine
waste processors. Twisting in perspective the holo zooms in on the waste
processor's malfunctioning snarl of reduction tubing. All her bio-experimentals
require scrupulous waste cycles maintenance to keep them viably sustainable;
her priority experimentals quadruple so. Even minor disruptions have been
known to cause major disasters.
"We’ve had a preliminary team shoot
some x-rays and sonographics through the outer chamber wall. They can’t
really tell for sure, but it looks like maybe one of the experimentals
is hardening up between the reduction fins. They say it could be caused
by frictional heat, or maybe even one of the variants reacting with the
manifold's alloys. They want to adjust the purging agent and back-flush
it again."
"I see." Blade squints at her tablet
in frustration. The assholes are guessing, and hoping it’ll go away.
Vat three-eighty-six’s blockage lay situated mid-process
at a pressure conjunction where several artificial variants are used as
enzyme reactants to break-down most of the main variant's waste. The most
popular reduction reactant is a rather nasty recombinant of human gut coli.
As million yearold omnivores our bodies have developed extremely efficient
ways of disassembling a wide variety of the outside substances. And, while
the reactant remains completely artificial and totally void of communicable
pathogens, it still smells just like shit. And not just any old shit, but
rancid human shit. The waste-reactant’s foul stench has been known to penetrate
even the most secure environment suits causing entire cargo-pods to be
abandoned, their interiors exposed to vacuum for months before becoming
reusable. For these and many other equally disgusting reasons waste reactant
chambers are kept as sealed vaults built specifically to prevent the contaminating
stench from reaching any of the transfer pod's outside system and fouling
the recirculation scrubbers. God forbid a glob of reactant should ever
make its way into the ship. Corporate Command and Control has to virtually
threaten some of their crews with penalties and fines before many will
break into an unpurged waste reactant manifold.
"Briggs, if you don’t get those micros
back on-line in the next hour I’m looking at over a decameter of stunted
biotics. A decameter of some very expensive stunted biotics. At a conservative
estimate of about one-thousand US per cubic centimeter. That's about a
billion dollars worth of stunted biotics if you're slow on the math."
"Sorry, ma’am, but Command says
it can’t be helped. Things have gotten just a little extra busy up here
right now. If we break a loose crew right now we’ll be looking at the potential
for several other serious mortality situations. We’ve got crew six scheduled
to do a manual purge and repair on three-eighty-six right after they’re
finished recalibrating the heat exchangers on two-twelve."
The rash of intermittent heat fluctuations
coming from bio-vat two-twelve happens to be another billion dollar disaster
in the making, and also another of Blade’s top line priorities. Briggs
is well aware of this.
"Right." Blade minimizes command-com’s
image down into a tiny icon in her monitor box then calls up the slowly
oscillating colors of bio-vat three-eight-six’s toxicity readings. "Download
me all the tech addresses and schematics on three-eighty-six. And I’ll
need to see the maintenance archives from the last time manifold nine was
buttoned."
"Why?"
"Please don’t ask me stupid questions,
Briggs. Just do as I ask."
"Yes, ma’am."
Slipping a soft spongy bud from her
tool vest pocket up into her ear Blade's hand then slides down her neck
to activate the disposable microphone adhered just to the side of her larynx.
The thin disk of transparent plastic always reminds her of a used dermo-patch.
Pressing it gives barely detecting snap. Her right thumb down against her
handtablet's security-puppy Blade locks the tablet onto remote then zips
it into her jumper's thigh pocket.
"Command-com?"
"Yes, ma’am?" Briggs voice
comes from deep inside her ear.
"Remote commcheck. How’s my throat
mike?"
"Good, Ma’am. And those addresses
you requested are in your working data cache."
"Thanks. I’ll call you if I need anything."
"Good luck, Ms DeSilva." Briggs’
voice seems to reflect a hint of admiration.
"Thanks."
Pulling herself out along one of the
zero-g slide rails Blade twists her hands out one at a time, applying long
slow pulling strokes as she glides through the twisting labyrinth of access
chambers. The rail slides through her hand as her body twists and swims
out through the different chambers. Grip, pull, then slide as the rail's
smoothness slips like seconds through your fingertips. Slide then nudge.
Pull then glide. Kick.
Once free of the vat's cluttered succession
of maintenance chambers Blade lifts her head out into the main passage-ring,
hanging there for a moment to re-orient herself before kicking across to
one of the personal equipment lockers at the pod's core. It never ceases
to amaze Blade how easily her mind creates stable horizons down in the
bio-vats’ instrument clutter. But, out here in the passage ring, an empty
doughnuts fifty meters across and nearly three-hundred meters wide, all
directions seem like down. So following a time honored practice that has
served her well these past two years Blade grabs an anchor hold and takes
a few seconds before she jumps. The last thing she needs right now is for
somebody to find her free-fall wallowing out in the middle of the passage-ring
like some back flipped tortoise. Quickly pulling her tablet from her thigh
pocket Blade again thumbs on vat three-eighty-six’s toxicity readings.
"DeSilva!" Blade’s name echoes
around at her from the ringed cavern. Glancing around the passage area
Blade tries unsuccessfully to backtrack the echo's bounce. Then she notices
a man’s figure floating near the passagering’s inner horizon at about a
hundred meters out. The figure's hand moves up to his neck. A moment later
shift commander Bob Spence’s voice jumps into her ear.
"DeSilva, what’s this I hear about
you going into a reactant vault and breaking open an unpurged manifold?"
Bob Spence, both an Atlantis Corp shift commander and Blade’s immediate
supervisor, doesn’t sound as if he’s much in the mood for a whole lot of
bullshit this afternoon. And if Shift Command himself is out here pounding
the pipes then something serious must be happening.
"Well." Blade watches the man’s disapproving
body language float just above one of the core's mission critical vats.
"Mister Spence, if I can get manifold nine’s maintenance hatch open and
the equipment organized for a manual purged then maybe when crew six finally
gets in there they can still effect repairs before my main variant falls
critical. I have some very expensive variant dictating my time-line issues,
sir. And so far they seems to be showing absolutely no interest in the
maintenance crew’s competing priorities." An extended silence fills Blade’s
ear-bud as she watches his tiny figure hang motionless in midair. Blade
knows Mister Spence to be a competent command supervisor, one not taken
to snap decisions unless absolutely forced into it.
"You sure you know what you’re
doing here, specialist? This isn’t exactly part of your legal job description
you know." His voice crisp in her ear comes followed by the passagering’s
soft mimicking echo.
"My legal job description is to maintain
one-hundred-and-thirty-six of Atlantis Corp’s class-B experimentals at
an optimally viable condition until delivered to corporation officials
in orbit around Mars." Another silence follows as Mister Spence digests
Blade's words for their convection.
"I want you fully suited. And take
one of the substitute grunts from the heavy maintenance rotation down there
with you. Briggs’ll have him meet you at three-eighty-six’s waste reaction
bay with purge and clean-up equipment. Need anything else?"
"Yah, deodorant." A faint chuckle
rumbles deep in Blade ear.
"You’d better get moving if you
want to accomplish something more than fouling up my ventilators. Luck,
specialist."
"Thanks, command." Rotating herself
through a slow zero-g pirouette Blade cocks her legs in against the passage-ring
wall and kicks out into a stretched extension as she flies weightless across
the passage-ring to the cargopod’s central core. As she nears the center
section's padded convex wall Blade pulls her body into a tight balls and
rotates her arms around to flip her orientation. With a soft thud her legs
cock in to absorb her body's motion as her fingers grab down into the webbed
collision padding. Two meters for the core's main equipment locker.
Not bad. Blade grins as she
enters the hatch.
Once inside the locker bay Blade quickly
finds an appropriate sized environment suit and starts the arduous task
of redressing. She's almost finished suiting-up and has just locked down
her gloves when her handtablet chimes a livelink. Quickly merging her suit's
system with her handtablet Blade shoves on her helmet and snaps it locked.
"DeSilva here."
"Hi, Mommy!"
"Mommy’s working right now, Honey.
What do you want?"
"Well, cousin Fred says I can go
with him and cousin John up to the ship's bridge if it’s okay with you.
Is it okay, Mommy? Please?"
"Is Fred right there, Sweety?" A tiny
holographic Roselene nods back quickly from the room hanging just beyond
Blade's faceshield. "Well then let me talk to him; okay?"
"Hi, Blade." Fred leans over,
removing Roselene from the chair as he slips himself in front of their
cabin terminal. "John says the Captain’s allowing small bridge tours.
Specifically small educational bridge tours. So it seems the only
way I get to go up on the bridge is if Rosy here takes me along as her
guardian. What do you say?"
"I say perfect. We’ve got a small
situation brewing up here and this shift just might take me a little bit
longer than usual."
"Yah, right. So what else is new."
Fred gilt trips up a grin with a roll of his eyes.
"Fredy, anybody ever tell you you
sound just like a neglected wife?"
"Well that’s graduated for you!
My mother always told me about you men!" Fred smiles back defiantly
into Blade’s mock glower. "So it's oaky with you if I use Rosy as my
ticket onto Captain Movlinka’s bridge?"
"Just as long as you don’t let her
touch anything. Mid-orbit’s a real lousy place to get kicked off the ship,
and I might miss her if she got spaced."
Fred glances away from the terminal,
his face split open in a double-wide grin.
"You should see the look on your
daughter’s face." Then he says off to the side. "No, honey. Nobody's
going to throw you off the ship. Your mommy’s just teasing." Then back
at Blade. "Aren’t you, Mommy?"
"We’ll see." Blade squints at his
image. "You two just better both pay attention. Now I’ve got work to do
so I’ll see you both around supper time."
"Speaking of which. When is supper
time?"
"On second thought, you better call
me later."
"Got’it. If we don’t hear from
you by 20:00, then plan on eating something without you?"
"Probably." Blade giggles. Another
thing that never ceases to amazes Blade is how the occasional well timed
giggle effects Fred’s continued level of good-natured cooperation. Grinning
back he gives an acknowledging nod. "Thanks, Fredy. Where's Roselene?"
"Here I am." The girl smiles
bright as she crawls up into Fred’s lap and waves. "By-by, Mommy. I
gotta go to work now."
"By-by, Sweety. You two be good; okay?"
"Okay, Mommy." Roselene reaches
up, her tiny holographic fingers wiggling at her from just outside Blade's
helmet.
A double-blink up at the top left
corner of Blade's faceshield closes out the call. Then with her tongue
Blade reaches out and flips her helmet's tongue-toggle down into the corner
of her mouth. Eyes dancing around her faceshield interior Blade cycles
through the environment suit’s control settings. Several sensors placed
around the edge of Blade's faceshield register the light glinting off her
eye which places a cursor on her helmet’s multi-graphic faceshield display.
Blinking one eye, or the other, or occasionally both, Blade works her way
around activating the suit's basic functions.
As she proceeds through various functions
she smiles to herself. Using graphic cursors and blinking left and right
instead of direct touch or tapping out code beats on a display pad are
two very old input techniques dating back to an awkward little hand-held
device people used in the billions back before the Millennium. It still
tickles Blade every time she thinks about using a computer device called
a mouse. Techno-types are notorious for their extreme flights of
whimsy, but this particular name always seemed especially silly to her.
Back home on Earth there are even wacko data coops that still use them
religiously as part of some historic commune that insists all technological
advances should have ended at the Millennium.
Her suit's external motion detector
flashes from gray to active and Blade quickly semi-opaques her displays
to find out what has just moved. Through the dimmed readouts Blade watches
a man floating cautiously head-first through the hatch. He hangs hesitantly
at the threshold for a moment, unsure of her faceshield setting. Glancing
over Blade winks up the volume on her external speaker.
"You my sub-grunt, crewman?" The suit
speakers give her voice a sharp amplified edge.
"Yes, ma’am." The man couldn’t look
more miserable if he were confessing to a murder.
"You lose the coin toss?"
"Sort of. Mister Spence says he’d
delete a one week wage penalties if I pull this duty."
"Did he also tell you that I’m a serious
bitch, and that I’ll put your ass in a sling if you fuck up on me?"
"Yah, he…" The man starts to mumble,
then realizing that her mic-amps are probably maxed out looks up startled.
"I mean, ah…"
"What’s your name, crewman?" Blade’s
helmet asks mechanically. The crewman feels at a complete disadvantage.
He can’t see her face. Can’t tell if she’s smiling or fuming.
"Smith, ma’am. Crewman Jim Smith."
"Well, Crewman Jim Smith, I don’t
mind it when somebody calls me a bitch. As a matter of fact, I rather like
the honesty. But the best honesty I like is honest work. And, Smitty?"
She leaves the question hanging, waiting patiently for a reply.
"Yes, ma’am." Smith finally asks with
a timid pinch to his brow.
"Smitty, you really really want me
to like you. Understand?"
"Yes, ma’am."
This much Smith does understand. Rumor
has it Bio-Transport Specialist Blade DeSilva more than makes up for her
blonde hair baby-doll face and great pair of tits by being a total to-the-bone
hard-ass bitch. So far predictions are proving more or less accurate.
"Well then suit up." As a long-time
expert at the slap-and-tickle method of productive manipulation and motivation,
Blade watches the crewman’s face twist up into a slow confused grin as
her gloved fingers spring up into the ASL gesture for "smile".
"Yes, ma’am." Pivoting the toe of
his zero-g slipper into a nearby hold Smith reaches into one of the nearby
lockers and quickly slips on a positive pressure e-suit with one long smooth
counter-balanced movement. Despite Smith's youthful appearance and felonious
circumstance Blade at least knows she’s dealing with an experienced spacer.
"Where's the equipment you were supposed
to meet me with on-site?"
"Anchored outside three-eight-six’s
waste reactant hatch."
"You were hoping I’d change my mind?"
Blade’s suit speaker reflects a certain flatness to her question.
"Uh-huh." Smith quickly tilts a nod
at Blade. Then with a twist of his glove-rings the man snatches his slowly
drifting helmet down over his head and clicks the neck-ring locked with
a sharp twist. Then without further sound or gesture the man cocks his
knees and kicks himself out through the hatch.
Hanging motionless in front of her
open locker Blade stares at the empty place where crewman Smith had just
been. Then with a kick of her foot Blade slams the locker shut and uses
the blow to propel her across the locker bay. By the time she pulls herself
out through the hatch crewman Smith has already crossed over to the outer
ring and is hastily preparing for a core deflecting lengthwise kick. Blade
winks Smith's icon over into her work-group box then converts it to his
helmet input. An un-wipeable grin spreads across the crewman’s tiny holographic
face.
"Mister Smith?"
"Yes, ma’am."
"Mister Smith, is it my breath?" Blade’s
tiny holo smiles suspiciously from the edge of Smith's helmet display.
"No, ma’am. I just didn’t want
there to be any misunderstandings between me and command-com later on.
I've been tasked to meet you suited-up at bio-vat three-eight-six with
the appropriate equipment for a manual waste purge. I think it’s probably
to my advantage if I do just exactly that, ma’am."
Perched across the ring against the
slightly rumpled smoothness of the collision padding crewman Smith looks
like a housefly on the wall as his grip lets go and he kicks himself through
a long snapping extension. Using his work-belt's tiny retros Smith flies
out through the huge vacant doughnut on a long gentle arc. The sight reminds
her of one of Fred’s old Buck Rogers archives.
"So, if you’ll excuse me, specialist."
Smith's voice breaks in on her quiet appreciation of the man's skill.
"Of course, crewman." She replies.
"I'll meet you there."