Lou Corlin wasn’t sure what he’d find when he got down to IT for his work shift. Given that he was troubleshooting for the hardware help desk, a day could start so quiet you were expected to find work for yourself to do, and then become so busy that you literally couldn’t keep up with the caseload pouring in. In fact, he tended to dread shifts that started too quiet. They’d come to feel too much like a setup for something unpleasant.
However, he hadn’t expected to find Juss Forsythe waiting for him. No, correct that — he hadn’t expected to find Juss just standing there waiting, as opposed to delivering some balky piece of hardware from one or another department.
“Hi, Juss. Don’t you have something to do?”
Juss knew him well enough to recognize it was a joke rather than an implied reprimand. “Thought I’d let you know Sprue seems to be getting the hint.”
“That’s good. Especially right now, poking your nose into matters that don’t concern you are not exactly conducive to good health and safety.”
“You sound like you’re actually worried about him.”
“Hey, he’s a Shep. A pain in the keister most of the time, because he’s got this drive to show everybody he’s the smartest guy in the room, and make sure you can’t miss it. But when things really get hairy, he’ll pitch right in and do his level best, with none of the shenanigans.”
“Yeah, that’s a Shep for you. Like a male version of the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead.”
Lou recognized that nursery rhyme, although he wasn’t sure where he’d heard it. “I just wish he didn’t take a hint of information that’s not for general release as a challenge to his personal skills in social engineering. If he’s not careful, one of these days he’s going to poke his nose into something that’s a whole lot bigger than he realizes, and he’s going to get into more trouble than he can get back out of.”
“You think so?”
“There’s a lot going on right now, and I’m getting the feeling that some of it is being kept under wraps for very good reasons.” Lou shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Right now we’re in a very precarious position on a number of fronts. I’m hearing rumors of a major breakthrough related to the diablovirus, which suggests there’s just enough uncertainty that official announcements are being delayed until they’re sure they’re not just raising false hopes. And there’s been a huge spike in communications traffic lately, especially from two or three departments up in Sciences. Any of them could be big enough that someone who got caught poking his nose into it would not be trusted to keep quiet without measures being taken.”
That quieted Juss’s usual cheerful expression. “Yeah. Anyway, I’m supposed to be picking up a couple of items, so I shouldn’t stand around visiting.” He retrieved his phone, pulled up a message with the work order numbers.
“Let me go get them. They shouldn’t be too hard to find, if the overnight crew filed them properly.”