We reached the end of a lap and paused at the top of the ladder. “One last question. Who’s the Training Officer?”
“The third mate, Mr. von Ickles. It’s in your tablet.”
“Thanks, Sandy. I appreciate it.”
Chuckling, she headed down the ladder with a
I took a couple more laps before heading for the showers and the sauna.
The next day I experienced my first transition. I’d been through a jump before, but I didn’t remember much about it as I was pretty young when Mom and I arrived on Neris. According to the countdown timer on my tablet, transition would occur sometime in the middle of the afternoon watch. We had already furled the sails and retracted the gravity keel. The kickers, the auxiliary engines in the stern, were on something called
Sure enough, about 14:00, as Pip and I were finishing clean up, the announcement came.
I looked at Pip. He shrugged. We stowed the cleaning gear and settled at one of the mess tables.
“It’s no big deal,” Pip said conversationally, apropos of nothing.
“It can’t be too traumatic, I did it as a toddler, and I don’t remember a thing.”
I don’t know what I expected-some kind of sensation at least, perhaps a flicker of the lights, or some kind of trilling in my brain. Pip shrugged with a grin. “Told ya,” was all he said as Cookie called to him from the galley.
“Mr. Carstairs, I have those figures we needed…”
He waved and I pulled out my tablet to message Mr. von Ickles for an appointment to talk about my education. I knew him, at least by sight, of course. Everybody comes through the mess line. It seemed like I’d no sooner hit send, when Mr. von Ickles walked into the mess deck. He nodded to me, grabbed a mug of coffee, and sat down at my table.
“How can I help you, Mr. Wang?” I didn’t know how he’d even had time to read the message, but I plowed ahead. “I’m interested in moving up to half share, sar. Is there anything I need to do? File an application? Notify you?”
He sipped his coffee. “Not really. It’s just like
“Oh yes, sar. I’m just thinking ahead. I don’t plan on leaving the galley anytime soon. I just want to expand my options.”
“That’s good to know. This is the best coffee this ship has ever had.” He grinned at me and then focused back on my question. “What test will you be taking?”
“Engineman, sar,” I told him and I felt compelled to add, “First.”
“First?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, sar. I’m…uh…planning to pursue all four of the half share ranks.”
He blinked. “Really?”
“I’m not sure what I want to do for the rest of my life, sar. About the only thing I know is I like life in the Deep Dark, and I want to do what I can to stay out here.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “Why not pick a specialty and take it up to full share? It’s more money.”
“Well, eventually, I will, but like I said, I don’t know which division I’ll like the most and until I figure it out I want to maximize my employability. If something should happen, and I find myself ashore for some reason, I want to be able to get back on a ship as quickly as possible, and not have to wait for a berth. In the amount of time it would take me to get up to full share, I could have at least two half share ratings.”
“Makes a certain amount of sense.” He sipped his coffee thoughtfully.
“For me, I’d rather be underway, even if it’s not my favorite position, then to wait planet-side for a preferred one.”
“True enough. But would you be able to do a job you hate for weeks at a time?”
“Sar, I have no idea which ones I might like more than any other. Until I get to actually do them, there’s no way I can tell.”
He nodded.
“That’s another reason I want to diversify. So I can try them out. Once I’m rated in each, I should have a pretty good idea what the jobs are like and then I can pick. If I don’t like something I’ll know enough not to pursue it. Going through the test should give me some indication, won’t it, sar?”
He leaned back in his chair and tapped the tabletop with a fingertip while he considered. “Yes, Mr. Wang. It probably will. It’s certainly an interesting approach.”
“Do you foresee any kind of difficulty, sar?”
He shook his head. “Only the time it’ll take to get through all four exams. We only offer the tests once a quarter.”
“Is there any limit on the number of tests I can take in a single period?”
He looked startled. “Could you be ready for more than one at a time?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, sar, but three months is a long time, and I’ve seen the half share curriculum. It doesn’t seem like it would be that much compared to, say, a university program.”
He smiled and gave a short laugh. “No, I suppose not, but at the university, you’re not working ten stans a day in addition to going to school.”
“True enough, but here I’m not drinking my nights and weekends away,” I countered with a laugh of my own.
Mr. von Ickles grinned at that. “True enough, Mr. Wang. True enough.”
He stood and headed out into the passage. At the hatch he paused for a tick and looked back at me. “Engineering is a good place to start but look at cargo as well. There’s a lot of turnover with cargo handlers. The work is a bit boring and relies more on muscle than mind at the lower ratings. If you’re trying to maximize employability, then having your cargo rating is a good step.”
“Thank you, sar. I appreciate the tip.”
He nodded and left me to ponder. I was still sitting there when Pip came out of the galley. “Problems? I heard you talking with Mr. von Ickles.”
I shook my head. “Actually, no. He wasn’t exactly supportive, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. What’s up with Cookie?”
Pip ran a hand through his cropped dark hair. “We’re good, but I need to find a computer. I don’t want to run my sims on the ship’s system just yet. The equations are getting complicated enough that I need to get some substantial computing cycles.”
“You wanna borrow mine?”
“You have a computer? You brought one aboard?” He gaped at me with his mouth half open.
I looked up at him with a shrug. “Yeah. Is there a rule against it?”
He shook his head. “It’s just that they mass so much and most people don’t want to burn quota on something they can get using the ship’s.”
“Oh well, see, I didn’t know that was available here, and it was my mom’s. I thought it might be useful for studying and stuff and it has more processing power than my peeda.”
