Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

“Let me get you a shipchip,” the youngster said. He touched a control panel, entering a sequence so fast that Arhos couldn’t figure out the placement of sensors on the unmarked surface. Something bleeped, and tiny disks rattled into a bin below the panel.

Arhos looked at his and wondered how to activate it.

“Voice,” the young man said promptly. “It’ll project a route from your position to the location you name—for the low-security areas, that is. If you need access to the high-security areas, you’ll have to get it reset. That’ll be in ship admin, which it’ll guide you to. I mean, I will, that’s where you’re going first, but any other time—”

“Thank you,” Arhos said. Behind him, the rest of the team murmured appropriate thanks as well.

They were passed from desk to desk in the admin bay, collecting ship’s ID tags, access cards for a variety of spaces, and a new set of shipchips. Then someone came to fetch them to the admin offices of the 14th Heavy Maintenance Yard.

“We don’t have slideways, but we do have lift tubes,” they were told. “Don’t try to hitch a ride on the robocarts—they’re programmed to stop if they sense extra mass.”

They spent the first several days looking over the inventory, and discussing their plan with the senior technician, a balding master chief named Furlow.

“I think Headquarters has its nose up its tail again,” Furlow said at the first meeting. “Rekeying all the weapons guidance codes? That assumes the people doing the job are competent and loyal.” He gave Arhos a sideways look. “Not that I’m saying you aren’t, but it’s too big a job to go without hitches.”

“You’re probably right,” Arhos said. “But I’m not going to pass up a contract . . . it’s how we make a living.”

“Yes, well . . .” A heavy sigh. “I know you’ve got clearances from transcendent deities or something, but on my watch, these weapons are my responsibility and I’ll have one of my people with you.”

“Of course,” Arhos said. “We don’t want any misunderstandings either. This is the protocol we were sent—I’m assuming you have the other part—”

“Yes, sir, I do.” The chief took Arhos’s version and peered at it. “Scuzzing waste of time, but it’ll work. How long did you tell ’em it’d take?”

“Five minutes per weapon, an hour to retool between types. That’s what it took on the racks they mocked up for us to bid on.” Arhos allowed himself to smile. “We were one minute faster than the next fastest on each, and a solid ten minutes faster in retooling. Then when they had us work on a patrol craft, we were able to work that fast even in tight situations. We weren’t told what your inventory was, of course. We’re just supposed to do it until it’s done. Then when the other ships return from deployment, we’ll do theirs as well.”

“I imagine,” the chief said, “that there weren’t many people that wanted to spend a standard year or more out here in Sector 14.”

“Not that many,” Arhos admitted. “Fleet had a lot of contracts to hand out for this work, and most of ’em were either bigger, smaller, or in more popular places. We happened to fit the profile for this one—and we performed well in the test series.”

“Umph.” The chief didn’t look any happier, but at least seemed slightly less hostile. “Well, you have your work cut out. We store the weaponry for all of Sector 14. There’s no rear supply depot out here, because of security concerns—Sierra Station gets a fair bit of civilian traffic, and we know some of it’s Bloodhorde agents.”

“We’d better get started, then, hadn’t we?”

The chief still didn’t move. “It’s not going to be that easy. This thing is big, but not big enough to hold inventory like that in convenient arrays. Weapons and guidance systems are stored separately, and since the guidance systems are compact, we’ve squirreled them away wherever they’d fit. It’s not anything like the way you worked on that patrol ship. At least we have an automated system. Let me show you some video.” He ran his hand over the control panel on his desk, and a display came up on the wall. “That’s one of the inventory bays in which guidance systems are stored.” Racks rose from the deck to the overhead, the familiar pattern of automated inventory systems controls along the vertical rails. “Because the guidance systems are small, and most of the time we’re not restocking the warships, we fit them in by size, not by type.”

“So we’re going to have to go through there and pull them out one at a time?”

“Not quite that bad. One rack at a time, though. This bay, right now, has . . .” The chief flicked another control that brought up a display on his desk. “Eight thousand two hundred sixty-four ASAC-32 modules. But they’re on at least eight different stacks, and I’d bet that someone has moved at least a few of them when restocking other goods, and hasn’t bothered to update the file.”

“Won’t your automated system do that?”

“So-so.” The chief wobbled his hand in the age-old gesture. “High-security items have a tracer that sounds off if they’re removed from that hold, but not if they’re moved a few meters. We’d have spent all our time rekeying the tracers—we’re always having to move things in and out.”

“So you know they’re in there, and you probably know where most of them are, but . . .”

“But not all. Which is why it’s a stupid idea, thought up by someone who’s never seen a big repair inventory.” The chief grinned. “I hope they’re paying you a daily allowance, and not by piece, or you’ll be here forever and earn nothing.”

Arhos wasn’t sure that prospect would bother the chief, but it certainly bothered him. He had worried that the job wouldn’t take long enough—that he’d have to stretch it out—that they wouldn’t need to wander over enough of the ship to find the self-destruct. Instead . . . they would be here far too long, and although they’d have wide access they might be too busy to use it.

“I wonder if someone leaked this problem to Burrahn, Hing & Co., and that’s why they didn’t bid on this job,” he said, and watched the chief’s face. No flicker, but . . . but someone had to have leaked it. Damn the Bloodhorde! “At least we are getting a per diem . . . but it’s going to be a bitch.”

Arhos eyed his partners and gave a meaningful glance at the gray cylinder on the table between them. Fleet would expect them to disable the simpler scans of their compartment; Arhos had not concealed the device. Now he turned it on. Telltales blinked hotly: it had detected signals it could not fog. He’d expected that. Right now, it was important for Fleet to think its more delicate scans worked here. What lay concealed within the familiar cylinder, under the Morin Co. seal, was for later use, and more private conversations. His partners would know that, and would interpret what he said in the light of the caution now necessary.

“We have a problem,” Arhos began, when the team had assembled. Quickly he repeated the chief’s explanation of the way weapons guidance systems were stored on Koskiusko . “It’s going to take a lot longer than we thought. It might be better to start with the weapons on the warships, since they’re in the arrays we know—”

“But our contract states that we should begin with the DSR,” Losa said, playing up beautifully.

“Yes, but they didn’t tell us the whole story. With this arrangement, there’ll be a lot of dead time—we’ll be waiting around while they figure out where some of the weapons are. I’m considering whether to discuss a restructuring of the whole job.” It would be difficult, with a signed contract; he would have to prove that Fleet had not provided necessary information. He wasn’t sure he could trust that Chief Furlow to give evidence, if it came to that.