Sliding Void by Stephen Hunt Page B

announced the chief. ‘It is my fault, really. I ask for extra help and this is my punishment. One of Rex Matobo’s favours, only the learning of a few sim episodes away from planting an axe through one of my reactor plates for fear it’s possessed by demons.’
    Calder was going to point out that one of the sim sessions had been Hell Fleet , but on balance, he didn’t think that would reassure the man. ‘Calder Durk at your service, chief. I’ve left my axe at home.’
    Paopao made a curious sounding tutting under his breath. ‘I count my blessings.’ As Paopao reached down to tap the control table, Calder noted an animated tattoo wriggling under the chief’s left forearm. With the officer’s shirtsleeves rolled up, Calder watched a crimson phoenix with a missile clutched in its talons growing small as it orbited a moon, before rushing out and smashing through a number four. That’s the unit insignia of the Fourth Fleet . So, Zack Paopao had done Hell Fleet the hard way – in real-time, rather than via sim. He remembered Zeno’s prohibition about questioning the crew about their lives before the ship, but where was the harm in trying to bond with this hermit of the drive rooms?
    ‘You were in the fighting fourth?’
    Paopao grunted dismissively. ‘If you had been on real jump carrier, not that public relations joke that Zeno carries around, you would know deck apes usually call it fleeing fourth.’
    ‘Public relations joke?’
    ‘Fleet has PR hacks attached to show’s design team, as well as technical aides from navy. Icons on a bridge’s warfare boards might be one hundred percent accurate in show, but all else is recruiting poster puffery. It’s called fleeing fourth because no alliance fleet has retreated more or lost greater number of lives in action.’ Paopao jabbed angrily at the control table before his fingers encompassed the three robots he expected to hop to his orders.  ‘Plasma realignment on number five tokomak. Full repair instructions are logged in the local queue on level two. Go.’ He turned back to Calder. ‘Officers call it fleeting fourth, however. For fleeting tenure of careers there. Which is why I am here. Look around, boy—’ his hand encompassed the ECHO core, ‘—on your joke show, there were four hundred and twenty six ratings and officers in carrier’s drive rooms, working three shifts across twenty-four hours. Numbers are right. Details always are – but never spirit. What do I have? A crew of oilers. And now you. Rest of them float around Gravity Rose , issuing directives like they are in court of Han Emperor. And where do orders end up? Here, mostly. But you will see. You will see where real work is done on this vessel. You with your sword and your two sims and your fighting fourth.’
    I left my sword behind, too . ‘Where do you want me to start?’
    ‘Over there,’ said the chief. He pointed to a thick curtain with woodblock prints from the Confucian Analects hanging down to make a wall in front of a compartment off the central atrium. ‘Instructions inside for you, too.’
    ‘We’re getting ready to make a jump,’ said Calder, walking away from the command table. ‘To somewhere called Transference. That’s what Zeno says.’
    ‘Big world,’ said Paopao. ‘Old world, too, with large station in orbit. More station than orbit, these days. Lots of traffic. Captain Fiveworlds always finds cargo at Transference.’ He laughed. A raw, bitter sound. ‘Not always legal cargo. But then, Transference is not always a legal place.’
    Calder didn’t like the sound of that. He had imagined his new life as a peaceful exile. That was the point of exile, wasn’t it? Your old existence ripped out from under your snowshoes while you were banished to some distant village on a faraway shore where catching a fish in an ice hole was news most weeks. That old fraud Matobo the Magnificent hadn’t passed him from the frying pan to the fire, had he? Besides, Calder had