Quarter Share

We beat a hasty retreat, heading for the berthing area, both of us giddy with relief. Halfway there, Pip stopped and slugged me in the arm. “You knew!” he said while laughing.

“I didn’t know. Although when you said you’d talked about tankage and mass distribution, I had a suspicion.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s not on the handler exam, it’s on cargoman. When Mr. von Ickles started getting cute with the results, I got another little nudge. If you hadn’t passed he’d have been a lot more…I don’t know…straightforward about it. He’s not the kind who’d torture you like that. If you’d failed, I suspect he’d have said something when we stepped into the office. It’s not like a hundred people took the cargo exams today.”

“But why did Mr. Cotton give me the test? Why didn’t Mr. von Ickles just sit me down beside you?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” I never was that good a liar.

Chapter 15

Darbat Jump

2351-November-09

Two days later, just after lunch, we had another drill. This one was lifeboat but this time I was prepared. When the pingity-pingity-pingity alarm sounded, I knew where I was going and that I would be getting into a pod.

By the time the announcement came, “THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL. ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP. ALL HANDS TO LIFEBOAT STATIONS. ALL HANDS TO LIFEBOAT STATIONS. THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL.” I was halfway to the gym, which occupied the boat deck. I lined up with the other crew assigned to boat four, including Diane Ardele from the environmental section and Tabitha Rondita who had the bunk on the other side of the partition from mine. We spent about a tick getting everybody accounted for, before the boat supervisor, Second Mate Jillian Avril, opened the hatch and we all climbed aboard and strapped down. I had one bad moment when Ms. Avril closed the hatch, strapped down, and then punched the big red launch button. Nothing happened and I realized that the safety locks were still engaged and that she had only registered our readiness with the bridge crew supervising the exercise.

We sat there in the dimly lit boat for about five ticks and performed the required inventories of supplies and materials that we found listed on plastic covered cards. When we finished the inventory, Ms. Avril thumbed a communicator button on the bulkhead and reported, “Boat four, completed.”

Two ticks later the communicator chimed and we all clambered out of the boats and lined back up on deck. With everybody out of the boats and the hatches secured, the announcement sounded, “NOW SECURE FROM LIFEBOAT DRILL. SECURE FROM LIFEBOAT DRILL.”

The captain’s announcement followed almost immediately, “This is the captain speaking. Very well done, ladies and gentlemen. You set a new ship’s record of under eight ticks to get the ship evacuated in good order. It’s not something we ever want to do, but it’s gratifying to know we could if we needed to. Thank you, all. Excellent work. Carry on.”

***

We settled back into the familiar routine for the run to the jump point. I wouldn’t have to worry about studying for a while. I knew I had to go back to it eventually, but the roller coaster of the previous couple of weeks left me a bit dazed. I could only imagine how Pip felt.

Twenty-six standays out of Darbat we hit the jump point. For the three days leading up to it, Pip had been chewing on the bulkheads waiting for market data updates from the beacon. He’d no sooner siphoned the data dump off to the portable when we had to go to transition stations and deal with the jump. I thought he was going to come out of his skin in the ten ticks before we finally secured and he could fine-tune his stores deals and double check the data he’d used to fill up Mr. Maxwell’s container. I don’t think he’d been that keyed-up over taking the cargo exam. We still didn’t know for sure whether Mr. Maxwell would really fill a container with Pip’s manifest or not. The possibility that he might drove us mad.

Pip and Cookie fretted over the stores deals, endlessly debating how much of what to sell, and what to keep for Margary. They’d get into cyclical discussions where one would say something and the other would argue him around until they were both on opposite sides from their original positions, and still not in agreement. Whenever they got going, I went to the gym and ran a few laps. Eventually they hashed it out, but it took them almost a week after transition to reach a final agreement.

Of course, as soon as they got it settled, Mr. Maxwell came down to the galley.

“Mr. Carstairs, I have some new parameters for you. I assume you have the latest data from the jump point beacon?”

“Yes, sar, I’ve made some minor modifications to that manifest based on the current market situation. The problem is that our data on Margary is dated. A lot will have happened by the time we get there.”

Mr. Maxwell twisted his mouth into a wry grin. “Still, we must do the best we can, eh? You have a budget of ten kilocreds. Give me maximum probable return.”

Pip was already sliding away behind his eyes, already calculating. “Aye, aye, sar.”

I shrugged and headed for the gym. Pip caught up with me before I’d gotten out of the changing room.

“What do you think, Ish? Is he going to fill a container?”

“I don’t know. You’re the cargo expert. Tell me this. If you give him a hypothetical load, how accurate are the projected outcomes?”

Pip shrugged. “Not certain at all. We can project until we’re blue, but you only know for sure once you deliver the cargo. Until then, all you’re doing is guessing.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought. How often do we have empty containers?”

Pip considered the question for half a tick. “Most of the time there’s at least one. Our cargo assignments come from home office and they’re scheduling a lot of freight. With seventy-two containers to schedule, it’s hard to get a full ship all the time, or even most of the time.”

I nodded again. “Okay, so that leaves the creds. Where would Mr. Maxwell get ten kilocreds?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Ship’s discretionary funds probably.”

“What about the captain?”

He looked surprised. “What about her?”

“Would she have the money?”

“Personally? Possibly, but she can’t make that kind of deal. She’s limited by mass just like everyone else. Captains have a large allotment but a container is six hundred metric tons. No captain has that much.” Pip shook his head. “No, the only way we can do this without running up against company regs is if it is part of the regular cargo.”

“Okay, so how does that work? You just got done saying cargo assignments come from the home office. And that the captain can’t take on a container full of private trade goods.”

“That’s what I meant by discretionary funds. Each ship has the ability to obtain cargoes on the spot to maximize their own load. The ship has funds to permit the buying and selling of cargo on speculation in addition to the straight freight-for-hire contracts setup by headquarters. The ship’s Cargo Division usually handles that. The share amount in our pay really comes mostly from that. The more speculation we do, and, of course, the more successful it is, the bigger the share becomes.”

“And if we lose on the deals, the share shrinks?”

“A share is, technically, a share of the profit-no profit, no share. The company gets the owner’s share on all freight. The skipper gets the captain’s share. Those are standard percentages. In our case, Federated takes a twenty percent share. They have various contract arrangements with the captains but typically, they get a ten- percentage share. The rest is put into a pot, carved up, and allocated based on the number of crew and the total number of shares represented.”

Pip was good at this math, but I fell far behind his explanation. “Wait. Give me an example.”