The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One Read Online Free Page B

insane.
    The HVMs were lethal, certainly, but they packed all their killing power in pure kinetic energy, so they were as safe to store as anything else on board and a damn sight safer than some. She was on her way to RFID the rest of the cargo tomake sure that it all matched her manifest when a call from across the zero-gravity deck turned her around.
    “Chief!”
    Corrin looked over her shoulder, frowning when she recognized one of her petty officers waving her over. “What’s going on, Jeffrey?”
    “Loader here don’t know where to store these things.” He pointed to a stack of crates a previous shuttle had offloaded.
    Corrin grimaced, shaking her head.
This shit is ridiculous. I like that they’re sending us all this stuff, but I’d like it better if they’d tag it with the right transmitters
.
    “What’s in it?” she asked, walking over.
    “Looks like more HVMs,” the petty officer replied. “But the staging numbers are all wrong, and I can’t find them on the manifest.”
    “Great.” Corrin sighed. “All right, we’ll have to pop the case and eyeball the contents.”
    The petty officer nodded and ordered the loader to back off and do just that. When the big machine popped the seals on the can, Corrin stepped up and yanked the sides down.
    “Those aren’t HVMs,” the petty officer said simply as they stared.
    “No shit,” Corrin replied, sighing. “Hang on, I’ll put a call in to the duty officer. Maybe they’ve got the manifest code for these things up on the bridge.”
    It wasn’t supposed to work that way, she knew, but mistakes happened even with the “miraculous” inventory management system and the most advanced computer networks.
    “Bridge? This is Chief Corrin. I need a data check on an inventory serial,” she said into her induction piece. “That’s right. Just came aboard a couple hours ago. Serial numberalpha-niner-dash-twelve-four-bravo-sixteen-three-two-niner…That’s right…I’ll hold.”
    She looked over the crate of munitions idly as she waited for the check to come back, eyeing the slim rocket-shaped items with only mild curiosity. “You know, PO, these look like they might be for the Archangels.”
    The petty officer glanced at the weapons for a moment, then scratched his head. “Well, they’re sure in the wrong place, if that’s the case.”
    “No shit,” Corrin snorted, then stiffened as the bridge contacted her. “Yes, I’m here, Bridge.”
    She nodded, then shook her head. “That’s fine, we’ll stock them aside until someone figures out what they’re for. You might want to check with the Archangels and see if they’re missing a shipment. These things might be for them.”
    With that, she signed off and shook her head. “What a cock-up. We’ve got shit being delivered here that even the bridge don’t recognize.”
    “What do we do with it?” the petty officer asked, eyeing the twenty crates sitting there.
    “Standard procedure,” Corrin replied, a little harshly. “Seal this one back up, and grab a couple Marines to stand guard on the shit until we find out what it’s for. If we don’t get an answer back before the last shuttle goes out, we ship it right back to the brass and let them figure it out.”
    “Right.”
    Corrin eyed the munitions until the petty officer sealed them back up, then went back to her job.

    Topside, in officer country, Ensign Lamont was stalking through the knee-knockers and door locks with her tablet in one hand and a computer’s location report in the front of her mind. Her prey wasn’t carrying his induction unit, and so she had to get ahold of her man face-to-face. Up ahead of her, she heard a familiar voice calling out and quickened her pace to catch up.
    “Hey, Lieutenant, how come you’re still on board?”
    As she passed through a lock, she saw Lt. James Amherst pause in midstep as he finished throwing on his flight jacket and glanced around to the speaker. When he saw Chief Sittler, the Archangels’