Cold Welcome: Vatta's Peace: Book 1 by Elizabeth Moon

Author:Elizabeth Moon [Moon, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780356506296
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2017-04-12T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

MIKSLAND

DAYS 42–48

When the general wake-up went off, Ky had showered and dressed, and the ’fresher had finished a second round of cleaning and cycling. Her uniform looked clean but worn, the fabric scuffed where her PPU had rubbed on knees and elbows. The PPU itself showed only minor damage outside, and on the inside no longer smelled of too many days of continuous use. She put the new clothes she’d worn the day before into the ’fresher and pinned her insignia to the shoulders of the utility jumpsuit. If it made Jen Bentik feel happier, it was worth looking as if she thought the Slotter Key personnel would fail to recognize her.

Down the passage she heard the bustle of others waking up, hurrying to and from the showers, and readying their bays and rooms for inspection. She let Marek and Staff Sergeant Chok take that. Breakfast was hot cereal with a sweetener stirred in. Not that different from the gruel they’d been eating, but more of it, and it tasted better.

“Lunch will be soup,” Gurton told her. She had Betange with her this morning. “And if the bread isn’t out by then, it will be by supper.”

“Sounds great,” Ky said. “Good work.”

“We’ll get started on the inventory as soon as the bread’s rising; Master Sergeant’s sending us two more helpers.”

Ky took a working party up to the surface to clean the two huts and bring down anything they might use. When they were done, she stayed behind to lock up and shut down the generator. That allowed her privacy to call Rafe on the cranial ansible and explain where they were now.

“Can you call every day?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet. Let’s say at least every ten days, just in case I have to come back to the surface to make contact in privacy.” If she did, she’d have to turn on the generator and electricity; that made secrecy difficult.

By the time she got back down, the others had opened all the doors they could, including three on the left arm of the T-intersection before the door that closed the corridor off.

“That one won’t open to the same code,” Yamini said. “We could pry it open, but Master Sergeant Marek said not. He thinks it might lead to something dangerous.”

“We can leave it for now,” Ky said. “At least until we’ve explored what we can open.”

The first door on the left side opened into a small clinic. Ky had Lundin check it out. “Most of the meds are missing,” she said. “Anything that would be considered dangerous or easy to abuse; I imagine they take those along when they leave. But there’s plenty of stuff for headaches, stomachaches, wound care. Nutritional supplements, too. And an older-model medbox for serious injuries. If it’s all right with you, Admiral, I’d like to check everyone’s health status, get baseline weights, and so on.”

“Excellent.” Ky marked off “clinic” on the clipboard she now carried with her. “If you can open the clinic after lunch, I’ll pass the word.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.