Тим Пауэрс - Bugs and Known Problems

Grinning, Woetjans pushed off the platform, grabbed the first line ten feet below with her left hand, and pushed off again. She half-turned her body in the air so that she could catch the next line with her right hand instead. Woetjans was as fit as anybody, but this afternoon’s workout was going to have her aching in the morning and no mistake.

Two jumps later, she rotated her body again. She couldn’t afford to have a muscle cramp when she was high in the rigging.

Mckinnon watched with a desperate expression as Woetjans went past. He tried the same technique, kicking his body out from the shrouds and catching a ratline below. To Woetjans' surprise, the kid had the timing down already: twice, a third time—and then fifty feet above the hull, his hand cramped and didn’t hold. It tipped him over, though. He plunged head-first toward the thick steel.

Woetjans leaned out and grabbed him. She caught him around the upper arm and swung him free between the two sets of shrouds.

Mckinnon flailed and tried to reach the aft ratlines, but Woetjans kept him too far out. Any input Mckinnon had in his current physical condition would make things worse. They were dangerous enough as it was.

Woetjans resumed climbing down in ordinary fashion until she could set the kid on the hull and stand beside him. He tried to brace to attention, but the pain made him massage his left arm where Woetjans had gripped him. She’d thought she might’ve dislocated his shoulder, but apparently not.

"Ma’am, what next?" he said in a husky whisper. If she hadn’t been able to see his lips, she wouldn’t have known what he was saying.

Cheeky little bastard , Woetjans thought. She felt her lips smiling.

"Next…" she said. She glanced around. As she’d expected, the twenty odd spacers who’d been on the dorsal hull while this was going on were all staring at them.

If the kid had dropped on his head, every one of them would’ve sworn that it wasn’t Ellie Woetjans' fault; but they’d be wrong. She’d been showing off, and she’d already known that Mckinnon was the sort who wouldn’t quit .

"Next," Woetjans repeated, "you get to the sick bay and see that you haven’t torn anything, then you’re off for the rest of the watch. Rudolf and Dimitrovic—" two senior midshipmen, among the present spectators "—you help the kid, all right?"

She didn’t really have any authority over the midshipmen, but she’d found that folks pretty much obeyed when Ellie Woetjans told them to do something. She’d have carried Mckinnon to the sick bay herself if there’d been any back-talk, but there wasn’t.

Woetjans watched the midshipmen stagger to the forward hatch. She hoped the kid had learned something. She bloody well had.

Woetjans was long off-watch, but she’d gone back to the running rigging of Dorsal A. It wouldn’t be past Runcie’s sneaky little mind to claim that she hadn’t completed the job the bosun—Marigny—had set her at the beginning of the watch, without mentioning that Runcie himself had taken her off it.

She’d just dropped down onto the hull when Rudolf came out of the forward hatch and strode over to her. He seemed concerned, so Woetjans said, "How’s the kid? I know he had a bit of a jolt there."

"Well, he says he’s coming right back out in a couple minutes," the midshipman said. "He doesn’t want anybody to think he can’t take it."

"Nobody bloody thinks that!" Woetjans said. "And if anybody does, send 'em to me and I guess I’ll convince 'em another way."

"Yeah, well, Woetjans…" Rudolf said, turning his head a bit aside. "Mckinnon’s kinda funny, I guess because of his grandfather. Which maybe you don’t know?"

"I don’t know a bloody thing!" Woetjans said. "So tell me, why don’t you?"

Has that bastard Runcie dropped me into something? Bloody hell!

"Well, you see, his grandfather’s Admiral Mckinnon, who was supposed to take over the Home Fleet—only Admiral Anston got Chairman of the Navy Board," Rudolf said. "They had a history. Mckinnon was posted Inspector of Supply and resigned instead. The thing is, Mckinnon wouldn’t be the first officer to make a comeback when an administration changes, and my uncle says Admiral Mack has a lot of friends still."

That bastard Runcie , Woetjans thought; not for the first time. She went back over the way she’d treated the kid. After a moment she barked a laugh.

"Ma’am?" Rudolf said. It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected.

"Look, kid," Woetjans said. "The only way I know to do a job is to just bloody do it. That’s training too, if that’s the job I got. So thanks for the warning, but I guess not much is going to change. Except I won’t push quite the same way on Mckinnon, now that I’m sure he’s going to give a hundred and ten percent."

Mckinnon with Dimitrovic behind him came out of the hatch. "So, kid," Woetjans called, strolling toward them. "The medic got you fixed up again?"

"The Medicomp checked me out and says I’m fit for duty, ma’am," Mckinnon said.

"Then let’s take a look at the Dorsal A lifting cables," Woetjans said. "And if I decide they’re worn, you and I are going to replace them. And I don’t mind telling you, that’s a bitch of a job—if you’re up for it."

"Yes, ma’am!" the kid said.

It was a bitch of a job for an untrained midshipman, even with a top rigger as the other half of the team. But they did it.

Woetjans was on boarding watch with Abnason, watching four spacers come across the extension catwalk from the quay. The huge bulk of the Sovereign loomed on the other side of Noyen Harbor. The Bulwark , third battleship of Force D, Admiral Vocaine commanding, orbited over Ciano. In two days the Renown would replace the Bulwark . The lesser ships of Force D, the Haywright District Protection Squadron, were either in smaller harbors or—two destroyers, and a miserable duty that must be—orbiting with the Bulwark .

"I recognize Mulcahy," said Abnason, a Tech Two, peering at the returning liberty party. "The other three’s riggers, aren’t they?"

"Balliol, Renzler, and I guess that’s Dowd," Woetjans said. "They’re aft-section crew, but I know 'em, sure."

You could tell the riggers easy enough by the fact that, though probably drunk out of their skulls, they strode along the catwalk without hesitation. Mulcahy, a Power Room tech, would’ve been in the harbor if his rigger friends hadn’t been helping him.

The liberty party paused for a breather when they reached the boarding ramp. It was the hatch itself, pivoted down to the starboard outrigger.

"Hey, who’s that?" Abnason said when he saw another spacer pounding along the catwalk behind the first four. The newcomer was shouting something.

"That’s Rudolf, one of the middies," Woetjans said. "What the hell happened to him? His tunic’s nigh tore off."

She picked up the length of pipe she kept handy and thrust it through her belt. "Come on, let’s take a look."

She started down the ramp. There were sub-machine guns and two stocked impellers in a locker behind them, but boarding watch in a friendly port didn’t require guns and Woetjans had never been able to hit anything she shot at anyway.

Abnason picked up his adjustable wrench and came with her. Something was up.

Rudolf stopped with the liberty party at the base of the ramp. They were chattering at him but he seemed to be too out of breath to answer. When he saw Woetjans loom up, he lifted his face to her and said, "Ma’am, we need the Shore Police! Some Sovereigns 've got Mack!"

The gabble from the little group picked up like so many chickens being fed, but Woetjans said, "Shut up, all of you! Rudolf, where they got him?"