There's a whole series of these; while each one can stand alone, I think that if you like Pixy and her people, it's probably best to read all the rest. You'd definitely benefit from reading Desperado, of which this is a direct continuation.
Enjoy!
* * *
Pixy waited impatiently, eyes welded to the chrono above the Main Dock with the shuttle sticking off the side of the
Desperado
like a stubby little dick. "Five minutes," she muttered to the Boarding Officer. "Five fucking minutes, I want that thing off the ship." It felt like a cancer, like a useless appendage. She turned irritably to her deputy. "Fuck. Where's your buddy Mr Delmer? He and the captain are overdue to be aboard."
Welson blinked at her through his old-school glasses. In the two months she'd been aboard he'd never impressed her even once, but then the man who gets assigned to be Deputy Executive Officer on a Fleet frigate in the farthest reaches of the whole goddamn galaxy is not exactly likely to be the brightest sublieutenant in Fleet. He'd just signed off from Delmer's voxbox. "He says he's enroute, ma'am."
"With the captain?"
"I'll check."
"Check? Jesus H Buddha, you fucking shitbird. His entire job now is to get Captain Ledecki from Point A to Point B. What the hell else do you think I wanted you to vox him about, the size of his turds?" She held herself back from smacking the guy, aware that as long as Ledecki was aboard, corporal punishment was a no-no.
And aware, too, that subcommanders weren't supposed to smack sublieutenants.
Her own voxbox buzzed at her belt. She glared down at it. "Yeah? Pfeiffer here."
"Hi!" It was her steward, irrepressibly energetic, her voice pitched high enough to make everyone at the Main Dock grimace. Pixy turned the volume down. "Remember, you've got that FD hearing at 0900. Petty Officer Hume?"
Fuck. Pixy had forgotten completely. "Yes, Juno, obviously I remember," she lied. "I'll be there, you whiny little bitch. You don't need to keep nursemaiding me." She had not the faintest clue why the unfortunate Hume was about to get a Fleet Directive from the XO, but clearly he (or she? Or it?) had done something bad. Juno, who was also the ship's legal clerk, would tell her what the right punishment was. "I'll be there. Did you post the Officers' Call in the wardroom at 0930 like I told you to?"
The pause from the voxbox was enough to give everyone time to look away; everyone aboard knew it didn't do to piss off Juno. "You don't need to keep nursemaiding me. Ma'am," came the icy reply. The older hands nodded knowingly at each other; Juno had been a steward for a long time. The last XO, Jedwin, had pissed her off frequently. And now Jedwin was dead, a suspiciously sudden and unanticipated "fall" out the airlock that looked like an accident. Or suicide, the Big Step some people took out into space when they were just sick of it all.
Pixy owed her job to that unfortunate encounter with the airlock. No, more than just her job: this slot was an incredible opportunity for her. Senior officers didn't usually transfer from Service to Combat, and when they did they lost a few years while they made the connections and gained the experience needed to become an XO, then a CO. Pixy had short-cutted that by taking a gig out in the middle of nowhere after seducing an Assignments Officer with several antique dildoes.
Pixy was a woman who did what she had to.
But she was also a woman who made the most of her opportunities. Already the
Desperado
, with its vapid crew under a captain who spent all her time prepping for Parcheesi tournaments, had been whipped into a ship she'd felt comfortable taking into an encounter with an enemy spyship. And blowing that ship to smithereens. Now the captain was off to her next tournament, taking along the First Officer Pixy loathed, and things were definitely looking up. Way, way up.
If only her fucking Deputy would start acting like a fucking Deputy.
"So, Mr Welson," she told him now, the captain safely on her way with Delmer; the launch clock read 3:44... "your next task once the shuttle leaves is going to be to go apprehend Petty Officer Hume and bring him to my dayroom."
"Her."
"What?"
"Her, ma'am." Goddamn, Welson hated her. She could see it in every glance her sent her way, though in fairness she'd never been anything but hateful and dismissive toward him. Where subordinates were concerned, Pixy believed in tough love: she loved to be tough. Some just couldn't handle it. "Hume is female."
"What the fuck ever. It changes nothing. Wrae Juno is setting up the FD sheets right now. Give me ten minutes to get back to my office and familiarize myself with the charges, then have Hume at my hatch. Comprehend?"
"Aye aye, ma'am." He kept himself from giving a public eye-roll, which was something. "What should I do about the midshipmen? Do they come to the Officers' Call?"
"Oh! Them." Pixy had forgotten, the three youngsters frothing out of the hatch from the shuttle just moments ago on their Academy cruise. "Sure. In fact, why don't you be their babysitter? Keep them out of trouble." She chuckled. "That should be a full-time job, Mr Welson." Good. She'd been wondering what she could decently do with him, a job that wouldn't be too obviously a slight. He was Delmer's main crony.
"Aye aye, ma'am." It came out as a surly mutter and Pixy turned to wipe the sneer right off his face, but now Golightly was peering down the corridor toward the captain's suite. He cleared his throat.
"Attention for the captain!" he called, and everyone snapped to. Lina Ledecki came regally up the hallway with Delmer behind her hauling her duffel case, the brand-new Ship's Commendation sparkling at his breast. Pixy's doing, with the spyship, and rumor had it she herself was about to get a Bronze Cross to go with her two silvers. Ledecki waved lazily.
"At ease, everyone." She nodded pleasantly to Golightly. She always nodded pleasantly to younger male officers. "Thank you, Brantley." Pixy, as always, set her teeth on edge; she hated captains who used first names, and it bothered her that Golightly had a pussy name like Brantley to go with a surname that sounded like a strip club. "I'll miss you."
"Ma'am." Golightly's blush clashed with his orange Engineering uniform.
"And you, Pixy." She beamed at the XO. "Do let me know if anything goes awry, yes?"
"Of course, ma'am." Pixy let herself unbend slightly, smiling as pleasantly as she could.
"Naturally, I won't be answering my voxbox, but Chonny will get me all your messages."
"Ma'am." Pixy glared hard into the smug bearded face of the looming Delmer, knowing it would be a cold day in hell before she let any messages go through his conniving ass. He and Welson were muttering off to the side now, whispery like a high school clique at the Promenade, and Pixy suppressed an urge to smack them while simultaneously smiling at the captain. It took some doing.
"Safe voyage, ma'am, and, uh, bring home the trophy!" She had no idea what one competed for, in high-level Parcheesi.
"It's a cup, Pixy. The Celestial Cup." She sniffed, then nodded vaguely around at the whole Dock. "Farewell,
Desperado
. I'll be back soon." And then she was through, her cape swishing through the docking ring with the crew member from the circuit ship standing off to the side, pretending not to look at his chrono. Pixy suddenly grew impatient.
"Hey. You. Mr Delmer." The whispery pair broke off, staring. "You're traveling as the captain's aide. So why the fuck is she aboard the shuttle and you're still here?"
"Uh huh." He, at least, did not choose to dispense with the public eye-roll, and Pixy congratulated herself for the eightieth time on her success in getting him the hell off this ship, since the captain wouldn't let her kick his teeth out. His disdain for her background in Service Command had been sharply apparent from the first day they'd met. "I'll miss you too, Commander."
"Don't let the hatch hit you in the ass as you leave," she muttered. "And, while you're gone, maybe you should reflect on whether your continued assignment aboard this vessel is really in everyone's best interests." She gave him a mock-encouraging smile as she pushed him not too subtly through the docking ring, then raised her voice. "Good luck in the Celestial Cup, Captain Ledecki. Three cheers for the captain!"
The little knot of people assembled at Main Dock dutifully roared their encouragement, but Pixy was already thinking about the rest of her day. Because there were changes coming to the
Desperado
. Soon.
* * *
She watched Hume leave with no pleasure at all, the Captain's shuttle still a twinkle visible on the optical scanner outbound; Pixy did not believe in wasting time, especially on an FD hearing that was as cut-and-dried as this. Juno had done her homework thoroughly; she was always thorough about everything, the annoying little bitch, whether it involved legal research or making sure Pixy's uniforms were unwrinkled. Now, the little redhead sniffed. "It's fine, ma'am," she shrugged. "The penalty is set in stone for a 33A. You can't go less than three years in the clink."
"Yeah," Pixy grunted shortly, and she knew what was bothering her: this was the first time she'd had to do an FD on her own authority. Officers handled legal shit all the time, of course, but the Fleet Directives were the duty of captains, not first officers or even executive officers.
Unless the captain was off the ship.
Most of the time, the XO doubled as the ship's legal officer; whatever the XO said, the captain typically signed off on. It was the XO's responsibility to do an investigation, interview all the people involved, and work with the legal clerk to make sure everything was halal. But still, always, the commanding officer had the final say.
Today, that commanding officer was Pixy.
FD 33A was a simple regulation, regarding disobedience by enlisted sailors. It wasn't always prosecuted; most officers gave sailors two or three chances to decide to obey orders, or they just beat the shit out of them and called it good. But Captain Ledecki didn't like corporal punishment, so in just a few months aboard Pixy and Juno had found themselves dealing with three 33As already. Hume had gotten caught dealing drugs outside the semi-authorized market, had been told to stop, and had disobeyed. So she'd be getting three years imprisonment, starting the next time a circuit ship came by to get her; until then? Pixy had no idea what to do with her.
"Three years." Juno shook her head. "Worse for her clone, though." Fleet personnel convicted on an FD lost their clone, meaning no spare parts if anything went wrong in the future. Getting a clone was the one real, tangible benefit of enlisting; indeed, it was the sole reason why a lot of people joined up, along with plenty of food and a guaranteed wardrobe of sentient clothes. Now Petty Officer Hume's clone, whiling away the time on some Clone Farm planet somewhere, would be pulled out of her group and summarily liquidated. "Seems unfair."
