Half Share

chief, is to call me whenever you see something that you don’t understand. I will never be upset if you call me over something that turns out to be nothing. We may not survive if you don’t call me on something that turns out to be serious, and we all know you don’t have enough training or experience to tell the difference yet. So don’t try to be a hero.”

“Okay, I can do that. I got good marks in Not-Hero in school.”

“Good! What do we need to do this watch then?”

“VSI and section walk through. We’ve already checked and there’s no routine maintenance. We just need to stay awake and keep clearing the automated integrity checks.”

“You forgot one.”

I thought back over the list, but I could not think of what I had missed.

“Study for spec three!” she said with a laugh.

I grinned back at her.

“Okay, Mr. Wang, you’re now officially the watch stander of record for first section. You will log me in as your assistant and we’ll see how it goes.” She got out of the console chair and waved me into it. I swapped the logs as she had instructed and that was it.

Halfway through that third week she stopped coming to work with me, and when I relieved Diane for my first solo shift, she said, “Welcome aboard, Ish.”

I felt like was finally a real member of the Foggy Bottom gang.

Chapter 12

DUNSANY ROADS SYSTEM

2352-MARCH-30

Watch standing soon became as comfortable a routine as mess deck had been, but there were several notable differences. First, I missed my daily repartee with Pip and Cookie. Second, after months of feeling like I had no privacy, I suddenly found myself alone for long periods of time. This was especially noticeable when the rotation took me into evening and mid watches. Brill, as section chief, stayed in her office during the designated business day which was 08:00 to 17:00. It was not like we would be getting any walk-in customers so I was never sure why. The ship’s normal business was done during those hours and she would occasionally have to attend a section head meeting.

In spite of being alone, I did feel like I was part of a team. Not the kind of team that Pip, Cookie, and I had been—where we were closely integrated and all working together to get the next meal out. Being in environmental was more like a relay race where I would take the baton, move it forward through the stans, and hand it off to the next runner. The good part of this new position was that when I was off duty, I got to know more of the other people on the ship.

One thing about working in the galley was that I would see people, they would disappear, and new people would show up as the duty sections rotated around the clock. Mess duty was like watching a kid on a carousel— every so often he would swing by on his carved horse, wave, and disappear around the bend again. Standing watch was more like riding the merry-go-round. You got to see the people riding the horses around you, talk to them, and get to know them a little better, but it was the people standing on the ground that periodically appeared and disappeared.

Tabitha Rondita was one of the people I got to know better. She was on first watch, too, but I had never really gotten to know her very well, in spite of the fact that for six months she slept on the other side of the partition from me. Rondita was an olive-skinned woman in her late thirties with black hair, dark brown eyes, and spectacular curves that her shipsuit seemed to emphasize. She was not fat—none of the crew seemed to be—but she was more rounded than most. While most of the other women aboard were slender and willowy, Rondita was what my mom would have called an earth mother type.

Most of the first watch seemed to hit the gym at the same time in the watch cycle. Many used it as a kind of pump me up for work period during the off part of the six-on- six-off-six-on section of the rotation. Tabitha would come in at the same time and climb on a rowing machine. I spotted her from the track as I did my laps and she would often row for as long, or longer, than I would run. We would smile and wave and after a few watch cycles started meeting up in the sauna with three or four others that included Mitch Fitzroy, the machinist from Propulsion section who slept in the lower bunk under mine, Arvid Xia, a wiper from Power, and Sean Grishan who was on the bridge crew with Tabitha.

They all knew each other pretty well, of course, but they only had seen me from the mess deck. They welcomed me onto the merry-go-round readily enough and I soon found out that they teased Sean about his knitting.

“It’s crochet. With a hook!” he would answer, no many how many times they would attribute his activities to the needle variety.

Arvid was a quiet, bookish guy who could sneak up on you with a pun faster than anybody I had ever met. Mitch was a nice guy, the archetype mechanic who really only lived for engines. Tabitha was the queen bee of the group and always complained about the size of her hips and thighs. Arvid and Sean seemed to enjoy them, though, as their eyes were locked to her whenever Tabitha walked out of the sauna. I am pretty sure she was aware of her effect on the guys, as well. Often she would stay in the sauna a long time until the others had practically passed out from the heat before she would stand up and languidly sashay out to the showers. Nobody ever said anything, but Tabitha clearly appreciated being appreciated.

My new schedule still allowed me the opportunity to see Pip, but we were no longer joined at the hip by identical duty cycles as we once had been. Because I had one day out of three completely off, we got plenty of chances to get together. Beverly was the one I rarely got to see during that time. She was on second watch, which meant she was almost always on duty when I was off. We had a few stans off at the same time, but I found that I missed her a lot. I felt awkward whenever I tracked her down when I knew we were both off. It felt like my moving out had somehow changed us. I supposed it had something to do with riding on opposite sides of the carousel.

Two weeks out of Dunsany Roads, Pip and I arranged to meet on the mess deck during his afternoon break and it felt almost like old times. “So, how’s the stores trading coming?”

“Really good!” he said with a wide grin. “Dunsany has some of the only beef cattle in this end of the galaxy. They are not beefalo hybrids but real cows. There are also a good number of chicken farms, so Cookie is dying to try out some new poultry dishes. They don’t have as big a fishery as St. Cloud, though, so we’re hoping to get decent returns on some of the fish down in freezer five.”

“Nothing like the coffee deal, I bet.”

“They do have tea in commercial quantities, but, no, no coffee.”

“Back on St. Cloud we were talking about textiles. Didn’t you say they have a big cotton and flax industry?” I asked, trying to remember what he had told me.

“Yeah. Last beacon data indicated a fair amount of silk production as well.”

“So, what do you think we can expect to find in the flea market there?”

He sighed and shook his head. “It’s always a dice roll. I’d expect to see cotton and linen fabrics in various permutations from yard goods to finished products. Dunsany is a Confederation port, not a company system. This is the first one we’ve hit since you’ve been aboard. Big companies still hold the majority of the production assets on- planet, but they don’t have the same strangle-hold that they do in the other systems. The Lois has a huge load going into Dunsany Roads, although some of it’s being re-routed.