Burnt Ice by Steve Wheeler

and whatever else she brought down in the main hangar. I assume that
you have a maintenance pod for your unit, Sirius?’
     
    ‘That is correct. I lock myself
to it when you are sleeping, as I only require a few hours to rest and recharge
my systems.’
     
    ‘You don’t sleep in a bed then?’
     
    ‘No, it’s not possible, and I don’t
miss it, Fritz.’
     
    ‘That’s stupid. Bed is the best
place in the Universe. I’ll get a drone to bring your unit up and put it in a
cabin.’
     
    Marko nodded at Sirius as he
passed her then walked down to the lower hangar deck and did the physical
checks of the additional craft. First, he checked out the landers. The two on
board were capable of sustaining a six-person section each. They were eighteen
metres long, six metres in diameter — the classic hourglass shape that had been
favoured by the Administration and the Gjomvik Corporations for the last twenty
years. All the propulsion and manoeuvring thrusters were located around the
waisted centre.
     
    Marko whistled a small
Administration drone to him. The sphere deployed from the engineering equipment
storage and hovered beside him on its little antigravity unit. As Marko walked
around the landers he spoke to the drone, pointing out areas and items that
needed attention. He keyed open the landing ramp from a fold-out panel at the
rear of the first craft, frowning at the mess of ration wrappers and empty
drink bottles exposed on the rear cargo section floor. Then he saw that someone
had left a combat pack hanging on a deployment hook. He walked inside,
gesturing at the mess.
     
    He lifted the pack off the hook,
opened it and shook out the contents, finding nothing of note except clothing
and a sleeping bag that was still sealed in its cover. Looking inside, he
sighed, seeing a personal toiletry bag. He realised that the person it had been
issued to was probably in a tank somewhere close by, in orbit. He left it where
it was and moved forwards, looking over the cockpit to find it in the same
state of disarray He decided not to bother looking in the galley, ordering the
drone to do it.
     
    Walking out and across to the
other lander he found the same story, except that at least someone had gone to
the effort of stuffing all the rubbish into a bag. Shaking his head at the lax
attitude of some fellow soldiers, he used one of the consoles on the hangar
deck to program a few of the housekeeping drones to start the work required,
then instructed the refuelling systems to top all the fuel tanks of the five
craft. With the little drone still following, he first walked around each of
the wasp-shaped skuas held in their deployment cradles, then opened their
canopy shields and climbed up into each of the cockpits.
     
    He found that the three craft had
sustained minor damage, with one of them having what appeared to be acid damage
on the canopy. Looking at the etched mess and realising that it was probably
some of the octopoids’ spat material, he smiled, walked down to engineering,
found a small interstate isolation flask, then returned to the skua and spent a
few moments getting a good sample by activating the flask and holding it over
the etched material. A globule lifted off the canopy and was then suspended
from the sides in the flask by the interstate field, which consisted of matter
on its exterior and energy at its core, with the surrounding space filled with
the interstate — neither energy nor matter.
     
    The flask employed the same
technology that allowed the antigravity devices to exist, but it didn’t have
the few fragments of quark material spinning at a high percentage of the speed
of light or the required power and control systems of an AG unit, so it was a
small and compact device. Sealing the flask by closing the interstate field,
then placing it on a workbench, Marko carried on inspecting the remaining
craft, ordering spares and replacements for them. As he walked around the
hangar, familiarising himself, he