Union Hall, but I suspect she’ll be back on a ship within a few months. My father owns two ships now. I grew up analyzing trade and traffic patterns on the galley table on his first ship.”
I knew I was gaping, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You
He smacked me playfully. “Not all ships are like this one, buffoon. Dad and Mom are the owner-operators of a small hauler over in the Sargass Sector. It’s small, just a few hundred tons. They run light freight out to the hydrogen miners and asteroid prospectors. We kept up on the trade data from the surrounding area because sometimes it was actually cheaper to take a jump over to Deeb to pick up something the clients wanted than to go all the way in-system to trade on Sargass Orbital. Depending on the orbits, it could be as much as three weeks into Sargass, but only four standays out to the jump. Deeb maintained an orbital that was usually only eight standays in on the other side. We could get to Deeb, do the trade, and be almost all the way back before we could have made it to the Sargass Orbital.”
“So, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you still working with your father?”
Pip didn’t answer right away and when he did, he sighed first. “He casts a big shadow. I wanted to get out from under it. Aunt Annie is my mother’s sister and helped me get onto the
“But if you grew up on ships, how could you have been fooled into the scrubber?”
Pip looked embarrassed. “I was playing the part of a wide-eyed innocent. I didn’t want them to know I was an indie brat So, I pretended I’d never been on a ship before. The scrubber thing got out of hand, but I couldn’t get out of it without letting on that I was playing with them.”
“What tangled webs we weave…” I quoted.
“Something like that.”
“So being an indie brat isn’t a good thing?”
“Not to professional spacers. There’s a bias and it can get pretty ugly, so don’t bring it up, okay?”
“But you’re a professional spacer now.”
“Right. Some professional. I’m still on quarter share after more than a full stanyer.”
“Well, if you picked a specialty…”
“But which one? I really don’t like environmental, and I just don’t have the chops for engineering. I’m an analyst, not an engineer. I’ve tried the cargo exam, but I just can’t seem to pass it.”
“Why not cook? You seem to do well with the inventory and accounting.”
“True.”
“I’m pretty sure Cookie would help. He likes ya and the two of you seem to work well in the galley.”
He nodded. “But I don’t know much about cooking. I didn’t even know how to make decent coffee.” He cast me an evil glance out of the corner of his eye.
“Bah, just look at it like a trade problem. Recipes are easy to come by and cooking is just imagination and technique. You’ve got plenty of imagination and the technique will come if you practice. Running the mess is more about getting the best food for the budget and that’s what trading is, isn’t it?”
I saw in his eyes that something clicked. I could practically hear the gears turning. “You know? That might work.” He smiled at me. “For a greenie, you’re darn clever.”
I smiled back. “Just trying to do what I can. You’ve been helping me so much the least I can do is repay the favor.”
“Well, this might be the answer I needed, Ish, thanks again.” He paused for a moment. “Dangle’s knees, I need to unwind a bit. Maybe get in a little workout and then have a nice sauna before sack time. Let’s head down to the gym.”
“The gym?” I didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him. “Are you telling me that after all this time, you didn’t tell me this ship has a gym?”
Chapter 7
Neris System
2351-September-16
You would think that I’d be observant enough to realize that all the passages I walked past, through, and around each day on my way to and from the mess deck should lead somewhere. Truthfully, I always felt just a bit lost on the ship. When I didn’t have a guide like Pip, I stayed on the paths I knew.
The gym occupied most of the deck directly under the crew berthing. Compared to the areas of the ship I’d seen, it was huge. The overhead was twice as high, and my spatial sense told me that we occupied an area almost as large as the galley, mess deck, and berthing areas combined. I looked at Pip incredulously. “Is this normal?”
“What?”
“This!” I waved my hands. “All this space. Man, I thought we used every cubic meter for cargo. We’re living in a cracker box up there but down here, it’s so spacious. What gives?”
Pip chuckled. “Oh, not all the ships have a gym this big, but Federated freighters over forty kilotons do. We’re lucky that way. Even the smaller ships have some kind of exercise facility. It helps if the crew can blow of excess energy on long trips. Otherwise the walls really start to close in.”
“Ya think?” I punched him playfully in the arm. “What else haven’t you told me?”
“I’m sorry I don’t get what you mean,” He playfully laughed while rubbing his shoulder.
“Oh yes, you do. What else about this ship don’t I know about? First, it was the view from the bridge, Now this. What else is there? A holo theater and a zoo maybe?”
“I’m sorry. I just thought you’d figure it out with your tablet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Pull up the ship’s menu, doofus. Look at the schematic.”
It took a heartbeat for me to realize what he was saying. My brain kept arguing with itself.
The ship consisted of a long, hollow spine with cylindrical structures on each end. The wedge-shaped cargo containers locked onto the spine and each other, six per section and twelve of those ran the length of the ship. The aft housed the main boat deck, along with some reactor/generators and the kicker engines. The schematic even labeled them as “Dynamars Auxiliaries” with an energy output rating that didn’t mean anything to me, and the fuel requirements to run them. It showed we were at eighty-five percent capacity.
The forward cylinder was a bit larger than the aft. The bridge perched on the highest level. Under that were the officer’s quarters, then the crew’s deck, including places I was already familiar with along with areas I hadn’t seen before like storage areas and various operational closets. I already knew the galley’s pantries and coolers were extensive, but the schematic detailed every one of them, including some I hadn’t even seen yet.
The gym level took up almost the entire width and length of the middle of the bow section except for the very front of the ship where the locks were. A row of lifeboat pods ran along either side. Looking around to compare my surroundings with what I saw on the schematic I realized that there was a catwalk running around the perimeter above the pods and I could see a couple of the crew running laps.
Below us were some more engineering spaces, including environmental, more power generation, and the field generators that created the solar sails and gravity keel that provided our main propulsion.
“Man, I feel like an idiot,” I mumbled out loud as I kept discovering new ways to look at the ship.
Pip clapped me on the shoulder. “No, I’m sorry. I forget you’re so green. I should have given you a real tour, but come on.
He led me to the changing room and showed me where to get a towel and work out gear. I was even able to buy some running shoes that were better than anything I’d had on Neris.
“They’ll bill you for it, but they’re yours to keep. Just grab an empty locker and palm it. You can store all that
