melworks

DIRTY JOB
Crewman Jab stood in the corridor outside Playroom 4, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. Further down the corridor, the entrance to Playroom 6 opened and a trio of drunken crewmen staggered out. They reeked of booze and perspiration. One crewman had his shirt on inside out and back to front.
They staggered past Jab wearing the happy grins of the truly plastered and indecently satiated. Jab hated them all with the white-hot fury of an exploding star.
Gloves secured, Jab replaced his facemask over his nose and mouth. From a compartment on his tool belt, he drew out a fresh pair of safety goggles. They were the cheap kind that would disintegrate in a couple of hours. Something similar would happen with the plastic cap Jab slid over his hair.
The new guys assigned to Custodial Services always snickered when they saw Jab in his uniform. He never said anything, merely gave them the option of not wearing the protective gear. After all, it wasn’t required. Most chose to forego the gear that first day and all of them regretted it. The next day they would usually don the cap, gloves and eyeware with the thousand-yard stares of battlefield veterans who had seen and done horrible things.
Properly outfitted, Jab punched a code into Playroom 4's control panel. Immediately, the room’s systems went into diagnostic and analysis mode. Inevitably an alert was triggered. There was matter in the theater that would need to be physically removed.
Jab hoped it was just a bottle of fake-wine, but he didn’t get his hopes up. He’d been working Custodial on the Inanna too long.
He opened the theater door and, instantly, the smell hit him. Jab reeled back, and felt the facemask tighten around his mouth and nose. It released a powerful blast of lemon freshness, right into Jab’s nose and mouth. His sinuses felt like they were on fire.
Reluctantly, Jab stuck his head into the room.
What he saw, oozing on the diamond-patterned deck was not a bottle of fake-wine.
Not by a long shot.
Jab stepped out of the room and the door sealed. His facemask seemed to relax, although it kept pumping lemon-scent into his nose. He pressed the Playroom’s computer interface.
“Computer?”
“Yes, Crewman Jab?” The voice of the Inanna’s computer always sounded vaguely grandmotherly to Jab.
“Who was the last person to use Playroom 4?”
“Commander Sykes.”
“I knew it,” muttered Jab.
“I did not understand that statement, Crewman Jab,” fretted the computer.
“Computer, connect me with Doctor Vogel.”
A moment later, the voice of the Inanna’s Chief Psychiatric Officer emerged from the intercom.
“This is Doctor Vogel.”
As usual Vogel sounded calm and tranquil. Jab suspected she was heavily self-medicating. How else could the woman deal with all the lunatics on this tub?
“Doc, this is Jab. I’m at Playroom 4. Commander Sykes has been misbehaving. Again.”
Vogel sighed. “Thank you for informing me, crewman. I’ll deal with it.”
She severed the comm-link and Jab scowled.
Sure, she’d deal with it. Just like she had the other eleven times their resident coprophiliac went off his meds. Like cleaning up the spooge wasn’t bad enough!
Jab called it in to his supervisor, an annoying wunderkind fresh out of the Academy.
“Drury, the Brown Terror has struck again.”
“Oh geez,” muttered the teenager. “You let Doc Vogel know, Jab?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Thanks. Take your time cleaning that up. Okay?”
Sure, thought Jab. Cause I really want to linger cleaning this crap.
He put another facemask on, layering it over the one he was already wearing, then pulled his personal blazer out of his tool belt. Officially, you weren’t supposed to fire a blazer inside the ship, but there was no way Jab was cleaning that mess up with his hands. They’d never said anything the other times he used the thing to sanitize the Playrooms.
Actually, Jab sort of wished that someone would make a fuss about him using the blazer. That Lt. Commander Zara would burst in on him with a couple of her goons and drag him off to the brig.
It’d be a nice change of pace from cleaning up other people’s shit.

WELCOME TO SPACEFORCE
Commander Sykes was dead.
Crewman Jab and the rest of the Custodial Service’s team didn’t bother attending the memorial service. It was being piped over the Inanna’s internal comm-circuits anyway.
“Why are we watching this crap?” asked Church. He was new, recruited from some dull as dishwater farm-world, fresh out of Basic.
“We got no choice,” said Jab, pulling the tab on a fake-beer and taking a sip. It tasted like recycled cat piss, but boozing it up on-duty was the one rule kept hard-and-fast all over the ship.
“It’s on every comm-circuit,” Ensign Drury explained.
Most of the custodial crew was gathered in Drury’s office. Everyone had been encouraged to watch the memorial service, unless you were working essential services. It was a tight fit, but nobody minded.
Any excuse to slack off, thought Jab.
On the monitor, the captain was reading the standard memorial speech as prescribed by Spaceforce Command. It was the usual nonsense and Jab was pretty sure Quid could have skipped it and just fired the coffin-torpedo into the void. That was the only reason anybody was in the shuttle bay in the first place, to make sure Sykes was dead and gone.
“How’d the commander die anyway?” asked Church.
Glances were exchanged among the custodial crew.
“There was an accident in one of the playrooms,” said Ensign Drury.
Jab was sure Drury believed Sykes’ death was really an accident. If the kid thought someone had killed the commander, Jab was pretty sure Drury’s head would have exploded from shock.
“Beer’s gone,” Crewman Tora announced. “Who wants to make a run to the duplicator?”
“I’ll go,” said Jab. “Church, gimme a hand.”
Church slouched out of the tiny office, following Jab. The corridors were quiet and still, down here on Z-Deck.
Jab glanced at the younger man. “You really want to know how Sykes died?”
“Sure,” said Church.
“He was killed by a faulty robo-whore.”
Church gaped. “Really?”
“That’s the official story,” said Jab.
“What’s the unofficial story?”
“Somebody rewired the robo-whore to kill him.”
“Holy crap! Who?”
Jab shrugged. “Most people think it was Lt. Commander Mahendra.”
Church frowned. “Which one is he?”
“The chief engineer,” said Jab.
“The guy with the artificial ears?”
“That’s him.”
“Why would he kill the commander?”
Jab snorted. “If you met Sykes, you wouldn’t be asking that. That guy was seriously fucked up. Half the crew would have shoved him in an airlock while the other half fought to press the purge button.”
“He was that bad?”
“Yep.”
“But, if he was killed, why isn’t there an investigation?”
“Because, everybody’s glad Sykes is dead,” said Jab, bluntly. “Especially the senior officers. They had to work with him every day. Poor bastards. We’re all pretty sure they’re covering for Mahendra.”
Church stared at Jab. “But that’s . . . ”
“Standard operating procedure,” said Jab.
“Are you serious?”
“Serious As an attack of space-crabs.”
“Holy crap!”
Jab patted Church’s shoulder. “Welcome to Spaceforce.”