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A few minutes shy of three bells in the forenoon watch Jack stepped off the shuttle at the dry dock. He was dressed in his number one uniform, and walked smartly through the lobby to the main office, but an unfamiliar lieutenant was already at the counter, talked heatedly with the bored receptionist. Not wanting to intrude, Jack stepped over to a window on the far side of the room and gazed out of it.
He saw parts of three slips, one of them open to space, and Neva IV itself, miles below. Dockyard craft glid between the slips and other parts of the base out of view from where Jack stood.
A door slammed and Jack turned around at the noise. The unknown lieutenant had left. Jack approached the window.
“Yes, lieutenant,” said the woman behind the counter. She was still flushed and flustered from her previous encounter and Jack privately crossed his fingers.
“Good morning,” he said. “I am O’Brian, of the Roth. I received a message that she was ready for pickup.”
“Yes, lieutenant,” said the woman, less coldly this time. She tapped at a tablet then slid it across the counter for Jack’s signature. “Roth was pressure tested at 0300 and is ready to go.”
Jack signed the tablet and touched his ID to its reader, then slid the computer back across the counter to the woman, who continued. “Follow the blue line on the floor two thirds of a mile to slip 16, or catch the blue shuttle in the lobby.”
Jack’s exercise in the preceding days had been limited to a single, leisurely walk across the base grounds, plus his trysts with Candy, and although he had certainly worked up a sweat with her he felt somewhat out of shape. He therefore elected to walk, following the blue line out of the office and down one of the several corridors that opened off of the lobby.
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