Read The Science Officer for Free Online

scraped the bottom of the bowl with his spoon. Not bad. Not as good as he could do, but about normal for a fleet vessel, which was pretty good for a pirate. “What’s on your mind?’
    Javier watched the ground between then start to open.
    “Well, sir,” Yu said, now a crewman addressing a Centurion instead of two guys having lunch, “what’s a Science Officer actually do?” He sipped from a bulb of something. “I mean, besides raise chickens and vegetables and stuff.”
    Javier thought about it for a moment. Two weeks had already passed. He was already falling back into Fleet routines.
    Yuck.
    “Today,” he said, “I’m going to calibrate the new sensor array they stripped off of my ship, off Mielikki . Engineering and Damage Control finally got everything wired two shifts ago.” Javier drank some tea , wincing at the taste. “Eventually, they’ll strip out your old ones and free up hull space.”
    Yu was entranced. “Are they that much better than ours?”
    Javier considered the launch dates of Storm Gauntlet and Mielikki . “Yu,” he smiled to take the sting out of the words. “ Mielikki was a probe–cutter outfitted for survey work. My survey pod is probably six or eight times more powerful than yours. Storm Gauntlet is a warship. Shoot things and move on. I’m used to sitting on the edge of a system for two or three days, plotting the moons orbits for planets on the far side of a sun, before I jump closer.” He took another drink. “Much better.”
    Yu nodded to himself and dug into his food. “Sounds good, sir,” he said between bites. “Let me finish this and I’ll escort you to the bridge.”
    Javier was careful not to let the scowl reach his face. Yu was doing his job. All that squank about honor and ransom didn’t stop the Captain from assigning him a minder and escort, everywhere he went.
    Could be worse, though. At least Sykora had kept her distance.
    Ξ
    Javier knew better than to ascribe it to luck. Even bad luck.
    Just as he settled into his new workstation on the bridge, Sykora entered and moved to a space facing him from across the bridge. She was wearing a pistol this morning. Unusual. And had a nice clean field of fire at him if she wanted. Not unusual.
    Javier decided not to say anything to Yu. She was probably a good enough shot that there wouldn’t be any collateral damage if things got out of hand. Not that he was planning to do anything stupid today. Not here.
    He watched the Machinist’s Mate settle in to the workstation facing his, mirroring Javier’s display so he could watch and learn.
    Javier decided to find the silver lining and pulled out the headphones. He handed them to Yu as he pushed a few buttons to change Yu’s display to a training mode, with his own screen in a corner.
    Yu got a panicked look on his face. “What happened?” he whispered.
    Javier grinned. “Put them on,” he said, “and start working your way through the training simulations.” He settled into his chair and toggled through options. “I’m going to be calibrating for the next three hours, and eventually you need to know how all this stuff works, if you’re going to keep being my sidekick.”
    Yu relaxed, strapped himself in, and went to work with the sort of single–mindedness he had shown in the bio–scrubber. Not much verve, but lots of enthusiasm. Javier had had worse Yeoman working for him, back in the day. He looked over as the Captain emerged from his day cabin and relieved the Gunner from the watch.
    Sokolov speared him across the bridge with all the seriousness one could put into being The Captain.
    “Mr. Aritza,” he said, Commanding Officer addressing a junior Centurion on a new deck. “Are we ready to proceed?”
    Javier had to resist the urge to salute or something. Too much of Fleet was coming back to the surface. He didn’t want to be that guy any more. A glance at Sykora. Or lunch for the black widow in the corner. “Affirmative, Captain,” he said, crisply.