Death of a Starship Read Online Free PDF Page B

interesting night, or at
least informative. He’d left the library a little too quickly, but
eventually discovered the ident chip in his arm entitled him to
meals at the unrestricted dining halls scattered throughout Powell
Station.
    It was the first time he’d moved
unescorted through the public areas of the station. “Public” was a
relative term, of course. Powell Station was an Imperial Navy base.
Deep Navy, no cooperation with the Imperial Guards or civilian
contractors here. Well, except perhaps for Froggie and Old Anatid.
Their status had never been clear to him.
    Even among uniformed Naval
personnel, Golliwog still stood out. He was about two meters,
fifteen cents tall, with that certain bulk about him that came from
hormone treatments, muscle grafts, and a hideous investment in
physical training. But Golliwog could tell from the way other
people carried themselves, the way they walked and moved and how
their arms swung, that he could have torn any of them limb from
limb – even the hard men and women in the dirtside fatigues with
the black-on-blue decorations sewn above their pockets. And most of
the people he passed clearly saw the same thing. Golliwog moved in
a current of muttering silence, always a few decimeters more space
around him than the people he passed among gave each
other.
    He decided he liked the
effect.
    Now he was in front of Dr. Yee’s
office, counting the passers-by who turned into the corridor, saw
him standing there, and remembered sudden business elsewhere that
didn’t take them too close to him. He was up to seven when the
hatch said, “Come in, please,” and slid back.
    Dr. Yee had never been one of his
surgeons. Golliwog’s relationship with them had been clear. He was
meat, they were talent. He had only ever talked to them to respond
to assessments or answer factual questions. “Does this hurt?”
hadn’t generally been one of those questions.
    No, Dr. Yee was – had been? – his
cognitive template engineer. She had come and gone through the last
eight years of his training, loading routines into his internal
systems, testing his effectiveness, tuning his reflexes and pain
tolerance.
    Golliwog didn’t hate or love very
much in his life, but Dr. Yee had always brought a certain
enthusiasm to her stressing of his systems. Golliwog found himself
wondering what last preparations she had for him now, before she
signed him over to the Naval Oversight agent.
    The doctor’s office was much like
Yee herself – dark and compact, with glittering, dangerous edges.
He walked through a shadowed space where spider-armed machines
lurked in silhouette. A hatch ahead stood open, overbright, so that
Golliwog had to step from the dangerous shadows into the light of
her presence.
    Shuddering, he went.
    ‡
    It was a while before she bothered
to take note of Golliwog. He stood before her desk and patiently
watched. Dr. Yee was wearing a uniform, rather than her usual lab
coat and surgical smock. Golliwog studied her insignia. Navy, of
course, cream white against her space black skin. Captain, which
was a surprise to him. She’d only ever been referred to as “Doctor”
within his earshot. But her branch insignia indicated intelligence,
not medical.
    More interesting to Golliwog were
the service decorations he’d never seen her wear before. Yee, all
one meter, fifty-five cents of her, was orbit drop qualified. She
also wore the tiny red skull of a Marine pathfinder. A hard woman,
in more ways than he’d ever imagined, even in his bloody, miserable
dealings with her. And in wearing this uniform, she wanted him to
be very clear on that.
    With a sort of fascinated dread, it
dawned on Golliwog that she was the senior agent of Naval Oversight
who would be managing him on this mission.
    “ Figured it out,
did you?” She glanced up at him. “I know you can go almost seventeen
minutes without breathing. Yet even with that much control, I could
hear the catch when you realized who your supervisor