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War's Oversight

Chapter 02

Sarah slid the plastic tray containing her lunch onto the table in front of her, and then settled herself onto the worn bench which passed for seating in the colony's mess hall. Around her, empty tables and a scattering of empty trays told her that she'd missed most of the crowd who gathered for the "traditional" mid-day meal. She raised her left forearm slightly and glanced down at the screen of her wristcomp. Fifteen forty-one hours local time, she mused. I'm not late - I'm just at the mercy of whoever instituted the half-hour lunch. She began unwrapping the sandwich on her tray, which was tiny compared to what she'd have preferred to have for lunch.

She remarked to herself that she could almost remember the taste of real roast beef on a sandwich of light, moist bread, as fresh as if the former had come from a slaughterhouse overnight and the latter had been baked that very morning. What she held before her unimpressed eyes was made of some kind of flatbread, and clearly had processed meats and cheese on it. On an impulse, she picked at a small edge of lettuce leaf which strayed out from the body of the sandwich and it came away limp. I'll be lucky if this wasn't frozen for weeks or months before it made its way planetside, she thought.

She bolstered her courage for a moment, and after closing her eyes and imagining the sandwich in her hand transformed into a culinary work of art fit for a diplomat's brunch, she opened her mouth.

"Palmer!" a voice called from across the hall.

Whatever illusion she had woven for her senses was instantly dispelled, and on opening her eyes again Sarah was greeted by not one, but two sights not overly pleasing to the eye. Her sandwich, she saw, was still as small and as processed as it had ever been, and was slowly warming to a temperature where the processed mayonnaise would start to separate. Her work supervisor, on the other hand, was making an attempt at warmth by smiling broadly and starting to plant his backside on the bench seat opposite hers. She reflected with a thin smile that she and her supervisor would not be separating until they had a chance to discuss what needed discussing.

To forestall having to make a salutation, she bit into the sandwich and waved with a free hand to welcome him to her table while she chewed. "You late for lunch as well?" she asked, brightly.

Bayer - identified by the patch on his utility suit - shook his head. "I figured I'd stick around and at least welcome you back," he replied. "'Least I can do with all of the deskwork I'm doing," he added, with a grin.

She gestured at the sling that supported his right arm, setting her sandwich down for a moment and then cradling her cup of coffee with two hands. "It was your own damn fault, Rick," she pointed out, good-naturedly. "That drilling rig you took out to site 2 wasn't supposed to be moved with the hardware deployed, after all. If you'd taken your time it wouldn't have gotten stuck, and then you wouldn't have fallen off the rig while trying to rock it loose."

Rick tried to spread his arms in a comical shrug, failed, and winced as he settled his right arm back against his chest. "I was trying to save time," he explained. "And besides," he added, "I got the core samples back on schedule, didn't I?"

She swallowed a sip of coffee and then shook her head slightly. "Two weeks on light duties in the Comms. section, Rick. You're lucky that Lieutenant Woods didn't ask too many questions and was just glad to get you back in one piece. We're probably going to be behind schedule for a month, now."

Rick snorted derisively. "Woods," he muttered. "That prick was glad because he didn't have to fill out the reports on me getting killed." He gave a mock pouting frown. "I'm sorry that we can't all be trained professionals in the service of the Earth Confederation Militia."

She chuckled. "They wouldn't take you, Rick - and I'm too smart to enlist."

Rick smiled. "So I'm accident-prone. I'm the first to admit that," he agreed. "And why am I your supervisor again?"

Sarah sipped her coffee again and pondered for a moment. "Because ... you and I have exactly the same job and the same seniority," she explained, "and we are the only two people working in our department." She had explained this to him so many times that it was almost a joke between them. Almost. "It's just that you know how to stroke Woods' ego and I'm not prepared to do so."

Rick cast his free hand in a vague gesture. "So I know how politics works. So what?" he asked. "It's not astrophysics to know that some minor functionary like Woods wants to feel important." He paused, and nodded slightly. "And if we're talking qualifications for service, they probably ought not to have taken Woods, either. But I guess they'll let anybody in." His humor retreated. "But you're certainly smart enough and reliable enough to make a decent soldier, Sarah. Even in the Militia, you'd get out when the war is over and you'd have enough money to go wherever you wanted. You could go Logistics, maybe, or even Medical."

Sarah smiled embarrassedly, a slight heat coming to her cheeks. "Now, you know that if I was_in_ the service, Woods would be trying to coax me into his quarters, right? At least as a civilian, all he can do is stare at my tits."

Rick quirked a smile. "Are you sure about that?" he asked. "The rules around fraternizing are supposed to work the other way, right?" He leaned forward slightly. "And besides, it's not as if you're bad looking, you know?"

Sarah smiled back at him in good humor, screwing up the wrapper for her sandwich into a ball and throwing it at him. He turned his head at the last second but still took the improvised missile on his ear. "Pig," she muttered, still smiling to show she wasn't offended. She polished off the last of her coffee, and started back in on her sandwich again.

Rick cast his gaze down at the table for a moment, his smile diminishing fractionally. "Actually, it was Woods who wanted me to pass along another assignment for you - something starting tomorrow."

Here it comes, she thought. She swallowed politely before canting her head at Rick. "So instead of sending me a message over the 'net, he sends you down to load extra work on me? How do I know you're not just giving the hard work to me and keeping the easy jobs for when your arm heals?"

Rick's eyebrows shot up and he shook his head in mock offense. "Not at all!" he protested. "Actually, Woods thought you would be better for this one because it's an overnight trip and you never seem to get lost out there."

Sarah groaned, and closed her eyes. "I'm five minutes into my lunch and you're telling me that tomorrow will be worse?" She opened her eyes to glare at him for a moment, taking another bite of her sandwich and chewing fiercely. "I get to arrive back here dirty and_sweaty, _and I've got to contend with waking up stiff and sore the day after tomorrow before I cart a bunch of rocks back here?"

Rick held up a hand - his left, incidentally, as it was the only one available - to gain a chance to explain. "Woods would allocate you a vehicle, but they're all being used either in Agriculture or Mining, for the time being. He promises that you'll just have to walk to the site. By the time you've finished up, there'll be a rover available to take both you and your samples back here."

He paused, lifting a finger in the air for emphasis. "He knew that this was a tall order, so he instructed me - " he said, putting that same hand to his chest, " - to handle your sample processing and analyses for the next three days. That'd let you off this evening, and you won't have to do a thing on the return trip from the site. You can catch up on sleep, if you want."

She sat for a moment, the last bite of her sandwich between a finger and thumb. "A rover pulled from Agriculture or Mining, just to help one of the two techs working in Survey?" She popped the remainder of her lunch into her mouth and deliberately spoke around it. "Woods isn't going soft, is he?"

Rick gave a lopsided shrug. "I guess he figured that was the only way you'd take the assignment."

Sarah's eyes narrowed as she finished swallowing. "What's wrong with the assignment, aside from the obvious?"

Rick wet his lips with his tongue, and looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Shit," he said. "Alright - it's site 16 he wants you to handle."

She looked at him levelly for a handful of seconds. "That's three days away on foot, Rick," she pointed out, putting some disdain in her voice. "Mountains and broken country besides, and on top of all that there're dozens of places where the dust never settles. What else was Woods hoping you would gloss over when assigning me this one?"

"Ok," Rick admitted, "can I go over this in detail? I promise I've done the math and everything will be as easy as I've said."

She considered for a moment, and then rose from her seat and picked up her tray. "I tell you what," she countered, "I wanted a beer when I got back, and since I'm gonna have tonight off, I'm thinking I deserve to have two beers. Give me your ration card." She held out her hand.

He hesitated for a moment, and then reached into a suit pocket to remove a coded transponder card no bigger than the palm of his hand - itself an anachronism in an age where fingerprinting and biometric data were ancient - and handed it to her. "So I guess I'm supposed to pay out of my own pocket for dinner?"

"After I get a shower and a decent dinner and some relaxation in," she assured him, "I'll meet you at your station in Comms. to go over the assignment." She tucked his ration card into one of her own pockets and stepped over the bench at her knees. "You go on break around 2500?"

"2530," he clarified, nodding with some relief at the prospect of her actually doing a hard job in the days ahead without further complaint.

"Fine," she said. She began walking for the exit and slowed just enough to look over her shoulder at him. "Don't worry about dinner, though, Rick - on a supervisor's pay, I'm sure you can afford it." She looked ahead again, so he wouldn't see the grin on her face.

Her lunch tray floated neatly through the air for a fraction of a second before landing softly on the reclamation table near the door.