Dan typed away on the ancient desktop computer in his new office. He paused and reread what he'd just typed. Not seeing any errors, he hit print and stood. He stretched and looked out the tiny office window across the Norfolk shipyard.
The others, long conditioned to office work, looked uncomfortable by his standing. He blushed and went to retrieve the papers he'd printed with a sigh. He sat back down and started reading them again, scanning for typos and errors before he decided to submit them for inspection.
He'd been on this new job for less than a week and he was already bored. His new CO, Senior Petty Officer Larson, was what his dad always called a glad hand, an overly friendly sort. He was overjoyed to have Dan in his department. And yes, they had a job for him, an important one at that. And he was perfectly qualified for it.
It didn't matter. This was the military and they didn't need to justify their actions, but the logic of his new assignment made it harder for him to complain.
His current assignment was to update the protocol manuals. Most were hopelessly out of date. Dan remembered from his own orientation onboard his first ship, nearly ten years ago now. The ship's protocols manual blossomed with notes in the margins. He was frequently told to ignore this section or that. Technology had changed. Mission parameters had changed. New orders and protocols had been issued. Keeping the old manuals up to date simply wasn't high enough priority.
So why not have the sailor who had just come off an active assignment as a gunner officer update that manual? It was the perfect excuse to not put him back in a ship, or let him see any top secret material. Madsen had been right, or so it appeared. Dan had talked to a few of his old crew since they got back, and it was the same everywhere. About a half dozen were working the shipyards in one capacity or another. A dozen or so had been transferred to Pensacola and at least that many were on one of the West Coast bases. Jensen was in Corpus Christi, which suited him fine since he had family nearby. Not one had an active duty assignment onboard a ship. Not one had the same classification as they had onboard the Cambridge.
Dan shoved the thought down. He tried to focus on the manual he was editing but his mind kept drifting to his new room on the base barracks. In the top drawer of his dresser was his consortium slate, waiting for him at the end of the day. It had a new feature, a bright metallic purple band, heliotrope, across it's back.
They had seen a smattering of banded slates onboard the Corelean, mostly carried by tech workers. He hadn't understood until his final day on Shoshone Station that these were anything other than decorations. Bakala had presented him the purple band, a thin strip that attached under the lid and ran across the back, as a final parting gift. It was a hyperspace relay, allowing his slate to connect to the consortium system regardless of wherever he was, anywhere in the known universe according to Bakala.
Command would probably flip if they knew he had such a device on base, but it was the only way he could stay in contact with Bakala and he wasn't about to give it up. So he kept it quiet and used it only in his off hours.
He shook his head and looked at the clock. Off hours didn't start for three more hours. Three more hours of typing a couple pages, printing it, editing it, retyping it. He rose and went to the coffee pot. He wasn't a big coffee drinker, but he had a suspicion he was likely to become one before his next enlistment period was up.
He watched the other petty officers working at their computers, their bellies showing. He wondered how they passed PT every year. As he sat he thought, when my next enlistment period is up and they ask if I want to re-enlist? He was starting to suspect the answer to that.
Dan wasn't the only one taking the transition hard. He shared a barrack with several of the old crew, including Whitman. He arrived home that afternoon to find the man sitting on a couch in the shared lounge, staring straight ahead. His fists were clenched. Several sailers were gathered further back, oblivious. Davies, a fellow munitions ensign and fellow Cambridge crew, was the only who seemed to notice how tense Whitman was. He shared a worried look with Dan, who hung back.
Whitman exploded suddenly, leaping to his feet and kicking out at coffee table with a shouted profanity. He turned and stormed out the door, leaving the rest of sailors watching his retreating back in shock.
Davies followed with Dan hard on his heels. They found Whitman around the corner, leaning up against the barrack house and starring back at the shipyard. "Damn it," he swore as they came up and he banged his fist into the wall. "Damn it."
"What's got your goat?" Davies asked.
"Everything," Whitman growled. "Fucking everything. Damn dock work. We're ensigns, trained munitions crew." He shook his finger back and forth between himself and Davies. "And we're doing dock work. We should be on one of the ships. Out at sea. Not here, not doing fucking dock work."
"It ain't so bad," Davies said.
"Oh, bullshit. Remember Abrams? The first guy to flunk out of DAC?" DAC stood for Defense Ammunitions Center, the basic training for handling artillery in any branch of the service. "He's now my CO."
"I'm editing god damn protocol manuals," Dan said. "At least you are outside once in awhile."
Whitman shot him a look but didn't comment. "I don't get it. It's what that guy said, right, about bio-idents. Why does that matter, even? Don't they have their giant surveillance grid everywhere anyway?"
"Yeah," Davies said, "but what do they see when they look down on our planet? Seven billion ants, crawling on the surface. How do they know who is who? Which of those billion ants they should watch and which they shouldn't?" When Whitman didn't answer Davies went on. "They don't. They might have the grid but there's no way they have the manpower to catalog every one of us. But there are three little ants right here that have convenient little name tags. They know exactly who we are, and they can track wherever we go."
"Are they?" Whitman asked.
"Honestly, I doubt they are," Dan said. "But it doesn't matter, because they could be. And Command knows that. They have to be cautious. That's why we are all grounded and doing bullshit jobs."
"So fine, then just admit it and give us an out," Whitman said. "If I can't be on ship, travel, might as well be army, you know. Fuck. You know what's the worst part? I towed the line. Every day up there, I fucking towed the line. You all had a goddam party, fraternizing with them. Not me, not my crew. We stayed to ourselves. Even on the base ship, we stayed in our rooms. For what? They don't trust us anymore than they trust you."
"Could be worse," Davies said leaning against the wall next to Whitman.
"How so?"
"They've got poor Kleppie cleaning latrines, every day."
Whitman snorted. "What the hell did he do?"
"He wants to immigrate, go live out there among the stars somewhere," Dan said. "We told him to keep that quiet when he got back, but he didn't. His new CO thinks he's a traitor or something. They are bound and determined to make his final three months a living hell."
"Shit. Leave it to Kleppie."
They talked for awhile longer about nothing. Dan felt a strange kinship with Whitman, an unexpected feeling given their past.
"How much longer you got?" Davies asked Whitman.
"A year," Whitman answered.
"Nine months," Davies replied. He looked at Dan.
"Two years," Dan said.
"Rough, Oleson. Think of it like prison. Keep your head down, do your time. It'll be over before you know it. Then your free to do, whatever." With this last sage advice, Davies left.
Dan went inside and found his now cold take out and went to his room. He had little appetite anyway. He lay on the bunk in his room, his slate out. "System message, Bakala of the Corelean. I'm available whenever."
There was barely a pause before Bakala's voice was answering. "I'm available." Then his face was there, in a holo-projection above the slate. Dan sat his slate on shelf at the foot of his bunk and lay back. Bakala did the same, revealing his quarters onboard the Corelean.
"What time is it there? Am I interrupting anything?" Dan asked.
"No," Bakala replied. "It's second watch of the evening, perfected."
Second watch of the evening meant about nine pm, perfected meant they were using the consortium standard time, rather than a local time zone. Dan glanced at his clock. It was seven pm here, so their time wasn't too far off, thankfully.
"I've just been laying on my bunk, waiting to hear from my honey bear," Bakala said.
Dan snorted a laugh. "No, no, you are my honey bear, not the other way around." After a short, playful argument about who was the honey bear of the relationship, Dan asked, "So where are you now?" He knew that the Corelean was expected to go back on assignment but Bakala hadn't known what the assignment would be.
"We're orbiting Venus. They are building a floating city just inside the planet's atmosphere. The tech crew insists they must have a medical evac ship on site, just in case."
"Sounds exciting," Dan observed.
"No," Bakala contradicted. "It's deathly dull. The work ain't half as dangerous as the tech crew claims. The worst accident we've seen so far is a smashed thumb. And he didn't have to stay onboard. So we have no patients. By the watcher, the ship seems enormous without all you onboard."
Dan laughed. "I doubt that."
"And how is your job?" Bakala asked.
"I don't even want to talk about it," Dan groused.
"Good, because I'd rather not talk, just look at you," Bakala joked. He stripped off his shirt as he said. Dan gave a quick guilty glance at his door, making sure it was shut and then did the same. "That's the stuff," Bakala growled.
It was not the stuff. It was not anywhere near as good as having Bakala with him. But for Dan, it was good enough to forget the headache of his job for the day. They stripped for each other, talked dirty and watched each other please themselves. They tried, the best they could, to erase the miles between them and gain some sense of the intimacy they shared.