hurry or going to a war. Even though
Up Yours
was going directly from the Hive to the Aerie in seventeen days (a sunclipper would have taken four months and at least one
flyby of Venus or Mercury), it was seventeen very long days. Plenty of work but no griping (except within your skull). Plenty
of time off and exercise facilities, but no locker room socializing. Plenty of pizos but you’d better bring your toves with
you. Myxenna might have added plenty of midshipmen and ensigns but no fraternizing; Dujuv might have added plenty of food
but no variety.
Jak spent his spare time trying to pass the correspondence version of Solar System Ethnography, or asleep, or in brief, necessary
bouts of peacekeeping between Myx and Duj.
They went on replacing panels in the tubes. The lecture on the Principles and war law ended, and was followed by short interlude
lectures before the next long one.
Jak had rather enjoyed the two-minute interlude of ship’s history, at first, but it played at least twice per shift, and now
he knew it by heart.
It was intended to make sure that you dakked why it was an honor for a crewie to serve on a battlesphere in general and
Up Yours
in particular.
Up Yours
was a
Nuts
class battlesphere, almost five hundred years old, one of the largest warships in the solar system, though it lacked the
sheer speed and better ablative armor of the more modern
Like So Not
class battlespheres. Fourteen battlespheres in all, a quarter of all those existing, made up the main line of the Hive Spatial.
Up Yours
had been named, like all battlespheres, for a message of defiance from an important historical human commander, in this case
Ralph Smith’s message to the Rubahy during the desperate fighting on Titan. She was the third battlesphere of that name, the
first having gone completely dead to communications at far above solar escape velocity, and continued ballistically up out
of the solar system, never to return, too fast for any ship to catch, presumably with its crew unable to get the quarkjets
back on.
The second had instantly become white-hot plasma in the suicide crash of a Rubahy fighter pilot during the Seventh (and so
far last) Rubahy War. After a respectful few centuries, a Hive Spatial orbicruiser had been named after the fighter pilot,
and
Tree Bowing to the Storm
was now regarded as a “good luck” ship, though traditionally it never served in the same fleet or task force as
Up Yours.
Jak followed his sprite down the poorly lit tube, swimming in the thick gas that had been injected to make maneuvering easier.
I always wondered why Spatial crewies couldn’t wait to hit port and stayed off the ship as long as possible. I thought it
must be the harsh conditions, and now I speck they just wanted to get away from the loudspeaker.
That was seditious; good thing that Jak never talked in his sleep.
He fitted yet another panel into yet another square, passing the old pitted one back to Dujuv, who airswam away with it. Tube
maintenance was to spaceships what painting had been to sea ships; you didn’t get done, you just got to do it somewhere else.
Crewies on sunclippers rotated through a variety of jobs to provide cross-training and ward off deadly boredom, but crew on
Up Yours
spent weeks or months of the same duty every shift. This might not be a bad basis for the required paper in his Solar System
Ethnography course; merchant crewies were a recognized ethnic group, and one possible paper topic was to compare a recognized
ethnic group with a similar, identifiable sub-category of people within the Hive.
Jak turned and handed off another rough panel to Myx, accepting a smooth one in return; he placed the smooth one carefully,
released the special grips from it, and let it self-fasten into place. The soft glow of light in the tube was pleasant, and
the swimming gas, designed to be sticky and thick, made maneuvering easy in free fall. Since the panels couldn’t be
Up Yours
was going directly from the Hive to the Aerie in seventeen days (a sunclipper would have taken four months and at least one
flyby of Venus or Mercury), it was seventeen very long days. Plenty of work but no griping (except within your skull). Plenty
of time off and exercise facilities, but no locker room socializing. Plenty of pizos but you’d better bring your toves with
you. Myxenna might have added plenty of midshipmen and ensigns but no fraternizing; Dujuv might have added plenty of food
but no variety.
Jak spent his spare time trying to pass the correspondence version of Solar System Ethnography, or asleep, or in brief, necessary
bouts of peacekeeping between Myx and Duj.
They went on replacing panels in the tubes. The lecture on the Principles and war law ended, and was followed by short interlude
lectures before the next long one.
Jak had rather enjoyed the two-minute interlude of ship’s history, at first, but it played at least twice per shift, and now
he knew it by heart.
It was intended to make sure that you dakked why it was an honor for a crewie to serve on a battlesphere in general and
Up Yours
in particular.
Up Yours
was a
Nuts
class battlesphere, almost five hundred years old, one of the largest warships in the solar system, though it lacked the
sheer speed and better ablative armor of the more modern
Like So Not
class battlespheres. Fourteen battlespheres in all, a quarter of all those existing, made up the main line of the Hive Spatial.
Up Yours
had been named, like all battlespheres, for a message of defiance from an important historical human commander, in this case
Ralph Smith’s message to the Rubahy during the desperate fighting on Titan. She was the third battlesphere of that name, the
first having gone completely dead to communications at far above solar escape velocity, and continued ballistically up out
of the solar system, never to return, too fast for any ship to catch, presumably with its crew unable to get the quarkjets
back on.
The second had instantly become white-hot plasma in the suicide crash of a Rubahy fighter pilot during the Seventh (and so
far last) Rubahy War. After a respectful few centuries, a Hive Spatial orbicruiser had been named after the fighter pilot,
and
Tree Bowing to the Storm
was now regarded as a “good luck” ship, though traditionally it never served in the same fleet or task force as
Up Yours.
Jak followed his sprite down the poorly lit tube, swimming in the thick gas that had been injected to make maneuvering easier.
I always wondered why Spatial crewies couldn’t wait to hit port and stayed off the ship as long as possible. I thought it
must be the harsh conditions, and now I speck they just wanted to get away from the loudspeaker.
That was seditious; good thing that Jak never talked in his sleep.
He fitted yet another panel into yet another square, passing the old pitted one back to Dujuv, who airswam away with it. Tube
maintenance was to spaceships what painting had been to sea ships; you didn’t get done, you just got to do it somewhere else.
Crewies on sunclippers rotated through a variety of jobs to provide cross-training and ward off deadly boredom, but crew on
Up Yours
spent weeks or months of the same duty every shift. This might not be a bad basis for the required paper in his Solar System
Ethnography course; merchant crewies were a recognized ethnic group, and one possible paper topic was to compare a recognized
ethnic group with a similar, identifiable sub-category of people within the Hive.
Jak turned and handed off another rough panel to Myx, accepting a smooth one in return; he placed the smooth one carefully,
released the special grips from it, and let it self-fasten into place. The soft glow of light in the tube was pleasant, and
the swimming gas, designed to be sticky and thick, made maneuvering easy in free fall. Since the panels couldn’t be
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