Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

“Lieutenant Garibaldi reporting for duty, commander,” Roman said. Sultana echoed him a moment later. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Permission granted,” Commander Duggan said. She had a sharp voice, biting off her words as if each cost her a credit. “Welcome aboard.”

Roman saluted the flag, then the starship’s crest of arms and finally the commander herself. Commander Duggan returned the salute slowly—he just knew that her eyes were crawling over them, looking for some flaw in their bearing—before nodding. He had the impression that they’d just passed a test of some kind.

“You both earned Firsts at the Academy, so I assume that you have the ability to follow orders,” she said. “I want you to understand something. You do not have the experience that comes with your ranks, not yet. We will be working on giving you that experience as rapidly as possible, both in manning your stations and in working with the enlisted crew. You will be at the bottom of the totem pole until you convince me that you can handle the responsibility. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, commander,” they said together.

“Good,” Commander Duggan said. “ Enterprise is the finest ship in Home Fleet, but we’re being detached for the Retribution Force. That means I am going to work you to death over the next few weeks. We’ve had to assign half our enlisted men to other ships to make up for shortfalls in personnel, so we’re drawing on newcomers from the Naval Reserve. The captain”—her tone sharpened—”understands that mistakes will happen in such an environment. But our tolerance of mistakes will fall sharply as we shake down and prepare for operations. By the time we depart the Solar System, we will have a working ship. And I will not hesitate to put you off the ship if you fail to measure up.”

She smiled, a most unpleasant expression. “Do either of you want to leave the ship now and save me the trouble of filling out the paperwork to have you reassigned?”

“No, commander,” Roman said.

“Oh, what a pity,” Duggan said as soon as Sultana had echoed him. Her voice hardened. “Put your holdalls in your cabin, then report to me in Compartment 667-565 in ten minutes. Consider finding it your first test. Try not to be late.” She turned and marched down the corridor, leaving them alone again.

Roman and Sultana exchanged a glance, and then both of them started trying to find Officer Country. It would have taken hours if he’d had to search, but a simple query from his implant to the ship’s computer provided helpful directions.

Once they got there, Roman found out that despite the starship’s colossal size, the cabin was small, barely large enough for both of them. It contained a small fresher and an even smaller food processor. He’d expected as much, though. Junior officers weren’t given large cabins until they were promoted several grades…he shook his head. This wasn’t how he’d expected to spend his first day on the Enterprise .

“So,” he said, once he had carefully stowed his holdall under the bunk, “where should we find her?”

A quick check revealed that the compartment number Commander Duggan had given them was useless. It didn’t match any real compartment number in the entire ship. Roman stared at it, feeling panic start to bubble up within his mind. How could he hope to rise to high rank if he couldn’t solve a simple puzzle? It seemed impossible to link the number she’d given them to anywhere on the ship…

It was Sultana who figured out the answer. “Computer,” she ordered, “locate Commander Duggan.”

Roman had to laugh as the ship’s computers helpfully provided the answer. Commander Duggan was waiting for them somewhere within the ship’s interior. They followed the directions through a maze of passages and internal tubes—passing hundreds of workers from the nearby Baxter Shipyard—and finally reached a compartment deep within the starship’s innards. Duggan looked up at them as they crawled out of the tube and smiled.

“You took your own, sweet time,” she said. “How long did it take you to realize that the reference was bunk?”

“When we compared it to the ship’s plans,” Roman admitted. “The numbering system was completely different.”

“A word to the wise,” Duggan said. “The ship’s official plans and the reality are somewhat different. The interior of the ship isn’t detailed on any database outside the ship and Navy HQ. Why do you think that is, I wonder?”

Sultana crinkled her forehead, perhaps guessing. “To prevent spies from learning how to navigate through the ship?”

“Nothing so elaborate,” Rosemary said. She looked totally at ease as she spoke, even though the noise of the drives was growing louder. “When they were building the ship, they discovered that some of the planned design was…imperfect. Enterprise was the first of her class, and there are always teething problems. In the end, they redesigned the affected sections and altered the interior to allow them to complete the ship.”

She paused. “It may interest you to know that the original design, if it had been built as ordered, would have suffered a catastrophic internal failure if they had ever brought the drives up to full power. Many of the bulkheads would have collapsed.”

Thank goodness for engineers, Roman thought. He leaned forward. “Commander… why didn’t they fix the problems right away?”

“ Enterprise was the largest ship in the Federation Navy when she was built,” Duggan said, sounding as if she was picking her words with great care. “Computer simulations only go so far when so many delicate compartments are involved. See what I mean about the importance of experience? An experienced engineer discovered the problem and reported it before they actually tried to install the internal systems. Now…”

Her expression turned savage, just for a second. “I have tasks for you,” she said, her implant dumping files into their implants. “All you have to do is follow the instructions— separately —and then report back to me. Good luck.”

Roman watched as Duggan scrambled up a ladder to an internal tube and wiggled through it, then he turned to look at Sultana, who looked as stunned as he felt. He opened the files Commander Duggan had sent to him and frowned. None of the tasks seemed complicated, which meant there was probably a sting in the tail for the unwary and inexperienced young officer. Some of the tasks promised to be boring—he had to check the filed FNRS-47 plans against the reality—and others made no sense at all, at least at first.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” he promised. “Good luck.”

“You too,” Sultana said.

Roman turned back to the internal tube. According to the plans loaded in his implant—the same plans he’d been warned couldn’t be trusted—the first place he had to check was only two decks down from his current position.

Over the course of an hour, he realized what the commander was trying to teach him. He didn’t know his way around the ship, not instinctively, and relying on his implants was asking for trouble. He got lost twice before he stopped listening to his implant and started to go by the markings on the bulkheads. Slowly, he realized just how the carrier’s open areas went together. It wouldn’t be long, he hoped, before he figured out the logic of the internal tubes as well.

The FNRS-47 files were particularly confusing. At the Academy, he’d been told that keeping up with the FNRS-47 files was important. Regulations clearly stated that there had to be an individual FNRS-47 form for each replaced component on the ship that accounted for its removal from stores, installation in the required unit and then removal and disposal once it had started to wear out. The Federation Navy designed components to be as durable as possible, but there was a strict pattern of replacement for every compartment in the starship, to the point where cadets had joked that ships were effectively rebuilt over the course of the year.