The Command

Hair on guys, you could keep it. Looking at them one after another in her mind, like flipping pages in a magazine. Akhmeed, not her type. Ricochet wasn’t that fuzzy, but he wasn’t built either, his chest thin as a little boy’s.

She cocked her head, looking into her eyes in the mirror and smiling just the littlest bit. If she had to pick, she’d go for Mick Helm. A decent build. Not hairy all over. And he liked her, too. She was picking up something there, not just a work center supervisor trying to get somebody new off on the right foot.

When she shook the bottle again, it was empty. Fa-a-wk, she thought. She thought of going to shorts and a sports bra. Imagined the Porn King looking up from Hustler to check her out. No way in hell.

She was wondering where she was possibly going to get more Clin-ique when she heard a whoomp and a scream from back in the compartment. She dropped the bottle and ran to the door, looking the length of women’s berthing.

Smoke, lots of blue smoke … and yellow light, flames. Coming from the outboard stack of bunks, up against the hull. Coming from …

“Goddamn it,” she yelled, and grabbed the extinguisher off the bulkhead.

Her bunk tier was flaming black oily smoke. The heavy extinguisher almost dragged her arms off. But she towed it bumping and scraping across the terrazzo. Some black dude gaped in from the passageway. “Class Bravo fire,” she screamed at him. “Call DC Central. Call 211.”

“God, what is going on—”

“Cobie, what happened—”

The other girls had leapt from their bunks. Now they were yelling and screaming and rushing around. One was cursing, trying to get her emergency breathing device on over her head, catching it on her braids. Cobie banged the extinguisher down and pulled the pin. “Back off,” she yelled to Myna, who had the bunk below hers. She was trying to claw her bedding off, trying to get to something under it. “Get out of there! That’s a fuel fire. Give me a clear shot.”

“Fire, fire, fire in the Lezzie Locker! That is … right, sir… fire in compartment 3-382-3-Lima, after women’s berthing. Repair five provide. Fire in compartment 3-382-3-Lima, after women’s berthing. Repair five provide.”

The blaze was fierce, considering it couldn’t be thirty seconds old. It ate into the plastic bunk cover. Cobie couldn’t help getting a lungful, and started to cough.

By the time she and Ina had it out, spraying purple K powder and beating it out with towels, the compartment was opaque. Girls were staggering around coughing and gagging, arms full of tapes and clothes. Some had the transparent plastic bags of the breathing devices inflated over their heads, as if their brains were being eaten by alien jellyfish. She lowered the nozzle and leaned against a bunk frame, panting.

The repair party investigator edged through the door. She waved him over and pointed to her bunk. A total mess, burnt and dirty, with smoke marks smeared up the bulkhead. And covered with the gritty purple powder. She looked at her rack of tapes. The plastic cases were melted. Totally ruined.

All at once she thought, I could have been in there.

She turned abruptly, dropping the extinguisher, and bolted for the head.

Chief Forker got hold of her when she came out. Still sweating from throwing up, but she felt better. Now there was lots of khaki, including, standing in the door, the exec.

“That your bunk?” the paunchy chief master at arms asked. “Kas-son?”

“Yeah. Myna here’s in the middle, the girl in the lower must be on watch — she’s one of the auxiliarymen.”

“Were you smoking?”

“I was in the head when it started, Chief. And no, I wasn’t. I don’t smoke. Nobody smokes in the compartment.”

“Nobody? Ever?”

The chief’s bland disbelief enraged her. She grabbed his arm and towed him to her bunk. Pointed to the smoking mattress. “Smell that, Chief. Get your nose right down into it. That’s right.”

He looked up. “Lighter fluid?”

“Some kind of fuel. With a pretty high flash point.”

Forker peered suspiciously into the overhead. She could almost scream… “It wasn’t a leak,” she said tightly. “Somebody poured it here, or threw it, then lit it.”

A level voice said, “You’re saying, arson.”

“That’s right, ma’am,” she told the exec. “It’s just lucky there wasn’t anybody in one of these bunks.”

Hotchkiss looked grim. The other girls murmured uneasily. Forker looked at the door, seemed to be measuring a line between it and the bunks. He cleared his throat, as if they should all stop yakking and listen to him. “They came in, maybe with the stuff in a cup or something. Threw it, lit it, then left. You say you were where?”

“In the head.”

“See anybody come in?”

“I was looking in the mirror.”

Somehow he managed even to make a nod an insult. “Anybody else get a look at anybody didn’t belong in here? Well, o-kay… I guess we’ll have to investigate. But I wouldn’t count on getting the guy. If it was a guy.”

“What do you mean by that, Chief?” said the exec. Cobie saw she was getting angry, too. “They live in here. Why would they torch their own compartment?”