Providence - Max Barry Page 0,12
an engagement. I don’t know if they want to redo it.”
She shook her head. “That’s a great finish for them. That’s like gold.”
He hadn’t considered that, but she was right. Beanfield was much more aware of public relations than he cared to be.
“I haven’t opened my personal messages yet. Every sync, I tell myself I’m going to save them. I’ll open, you know, ten a day, so I won’t run out before next sync. But then I start thinking, what if we sync again tomorrow? So I open everything and have nothing left. Sorry, did you want coffee?”
“No, I’m good.”
She smiled. Beanfield wore her Service jacket unzipped most of the way down the front, a standard white tee beneath. “You need to get yourself a vice, Gilligan. You’re too perfect. It makes me suspicious.”
Jackson entered and took her usual seat, the one farthest from the door. If Gilly or Anders tried to sit in the same place more than three times, Beanfield would camp out in it before they arrived. Anything that looked like a rut, Beanfield was all over. But there was a captain’s exemption, apparently.
“Captain,” said Beanfield, which Gilly echoed. Jackson nodded. Sometimes Gilly thought Jackson was reading something on her film when she wasn’t. She was still inscrutable to him, even after two years. “We synced.”
“We did,” Jackson said. “And there’s news.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll fill you in when Anders gets here. Where is he?”
“Medical,” Gilly said. “He might be a few minutes.”
Jackson looked at Beanfield. Gilly wasn’t totally across everyone’s roles and duties, but he had figured out that whenever Anders did something bad, Beanfield was in trouble. “I’ll ping him,” Beanfield said.
“While we’re here,” Gilly said, “can we pull up the last engagement? There was an interesting attack pattern variation.” Jackson shrugged, so he spun up a projection of their last battle. Points of light and stats coalesced on their films, appearing to play across the table. “You see the ripple here?” The salamanders closed in an arc, as usual, but their line wobbled, with sections moving in and out. “I’d love to know whether any other crews have seen that.”
“We’re in a sync window,” said Jackson. “Find out.”
“It wasn’t very effective,” Beanfield pointed out. “They didn’t get any closer than usual.”
“The battle did actually take eight seconds longer,” Gilly said. “That’s almost a whole standard deviation.”
“Only because some of them stayed out of pulse range.”
“That’s still longer.”
“So?” Beanfield said.
“They’re learning.”
“They’re always varying their tactics,” Jackson said. “That’s not new.”
“But it isn’t random. Almost everything they try is more effective than before. It’s steady improvement. And that shouldn’t be possible, because we leave no survivors. They have no feedback on each tactic they try.”
“This feels like a question for back home,” Jackson said. “Or the ship.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “It’s just curious.”
“You’re curious,” Beanfield said.
“All right,” said Jackson. The salamander cloud vanished. “Anders can catch up in his own time. We have an all-hands from Len, but let me give you the spoilers. We’re going into VZ.”
VZ was Violet Zone, an area devoid of beacons and relays. Ships that went into VZ couldn’t sync at all.
There was a moment of silence. Beanfield said, “How long?”
“It’s situational,” Jackson said. “Depends on what we find. You know that.”
“There must be an estimate.”
“Listen to Len,” said Jackson, and keyed a video.
Len’s upper half appeared above the table, looking more somber than usual. “Evening, monkeys. Hope you’re well. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: Strategic Command is sending you on a trip to VZ. All expenses paid, but it’s going to be a long one. Preliminary estimate is six months.”
He thought he’d misheard. Beanfield said, “Six months? Six months with no sync?”
It was funny: They’d talked about VZ before and the joke was that Gilly would love it, since there would be no interviews, no one badgering him to record clips for his feed, just