Quarter Share: A Trader's Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper (5 page)

***

Pip led me up a couple of levels and down a passage. At the foot of a stairway—they called them ladders on the ship I reminded myself—he paused. “Don’t touch anything. Just look. Pay attention to any directions from the bridge crew,” he said quietly to me before climbing the ladder. At the top, he used a formal sounding voice to announce us. “Request permission to enter the bridge.”

“State your business.” A woman at the top of the ladder spoke formally but smiled at him.

“Orientation for new crew member.”

“Granted.” She grinned at me as I stepped off the ladder.

Subdued lighting revealed a relatively large space with comfortable looking chairs bolted to the deck in key locations. A collection of nearly identical work stations formed a phalanx around the room. A doorway, with a real door, not a hatch, opened at the back of the bridge and revealed a small conference room. Panels and consoles flickered giving the area an odd radiance. I could see one screen that displayed what I took to be a Neris schematic with the orbital base and planetary surface plotted. A larger scale display showed the whole system with a blinking, blue path curving across it. It took me a few moments to register that there were actually ports facing forward and I could see that the ship nuzzled up against the outside of the orbital. I’d seen pictures of the station, of course, and watched it on shuttle approach, but I’d never been this close. It looked near enough to touch. I could see little scratches and blemishes in the surface finish and some kind of polarizing filter blocked the glare reflected off the orbital’s skin. I turned slowly realizing that ports faced aft as well and I saw the rest of the
Lois McKendrick
stretching out into the star spackled Deep Dark.

Leviathan never seemed so appropriate a term.

Gantry lights ran down the spine of the ship, illuminating the container tugs that wrestled the big, triangular cargo boxes ever-so-gently into place before locking them down. Twelve sections of containers extended into the distance. At the far end of the main spine, a small white light, twenty kilometers out, marked the stern post. In one instant, I went from feeling like I was crammed in a shoe box to something akin to a flea on a pachyderm. It was staggering.

Pip was watching my face. “You’ll get used to it. Do you still feel like the ship is small?”

I shook my head, unable to speak.

My tablet beeped. Cookie’s voice came over the speaker. “Your presence is needed on the mess deck, Mr. Wang. Number two urn is out of coffee.”

Chapter 4

Neris Orbital
2351-September-07

The duty watch stander woke me and Pip ending a long stretch of restlessness. I’d thrashed around the whole night unable to sleep knowing the ship would leave Neris Orbital and get underway for Darbat later that day. Pip slid out of his bed and slipped past me heading for the san. I chided myself for being nervous as I straightened the blankets on my berth and secured my loose gear. I had already been confined for days but now it would be different. We’d be heading out into the Deep Dark and I would be locked in. I stretched to straighten my pillow when a voice startled me. “Nice package, sailor, but would you mind moving it out of my face?” The sound came from the approximate level of my knees.

The voice, a woman’s voice, startled me so much that I fell into the empty lower berth under Pip’s, banging my head on the upper rail. She lay in the bunk under mine. Even as I struggled to my feet, I noticed how attractive she was with her dark skin and hair. She wore just a ship’s tee over an extensive collection of tattoos and blinking blearily she said, “You must be the new guy.”

I tried to stammer something apologetic but didn’t know what the appropriate comment might be. “C-c-c-call me Ishmael.”

She propped herself on an elbow and squinted at me. “You’re kidding, right?”

I shook my head, unable to think of anything else to say.

Pip, wet from the san and struggling into a fresh shipsuit, rescued me. “Beverly, stop scaring the help. Ish, get your butt in the san. We don’t have much time to get to the mess deck.”

The woman held up a slender hand to shake. “Beverly Arith, pleased to meet ya. Wake me for afternoon watch?”

I shook the offered hand, mumbling, “Ishmael Wang,” before retreating to the san.

Pip gave me grief all morning. “You’ve never seen a girl before, Ish?”

“She startled me. I didn’t realize anybody was there until she spoke.”

I’d known there were women in the berthing area. Tabitha Rondita slept on the other side of the partition from me, a nice woman and I didn’t mind her little snorty-snores through the wall. We all shared the san and that didn’t bother me. Bathing is bathing and everyone likes a little privacy when pooping. The shower and toilet stalls all had doors. I’d lived with my mom and she was not shy so seeing women in various states of undress was no big deal. All told, it felt like summer camp except we were adults and not giggly kids—supposedly.

When Beverly came through the serving line at lunch, Pip nudged me.

For her part, Bev just smiled, nodded, and moved on.

“NOW HEAR THIS. SECURE ALL LOCKS. STOW ALL GEAR FOR DEPARTURE. DEPARTMENT HEADS REPORT TO THE CAPTAIN’S READY ROOM.”
A countdown timer ticked on my tablet showing the stans and minutes until we would get underway. Remembering the size, and assuming the mass of the ship, I found it difficult to believe that we’d be moving at all, let alone sailing out of the system on nothing more than pressure from the sun on an electronically generated field.

We’d had a particularly robust lunch that day and many people sat around afterward to catch up with each other. After the sparsely attended meals I’d grown accustomed to while docked, it seemed crowded and noisy. Even some of the officers stayed for a bit, chatting.

After the lunch clean up, Cookie took me and Pip aside. “Gentlemen, we’ll be doing dinner differently today because of departure. The captain has scheduled pull out at 16:00 and we’ll still be maneuvering at 18:00. We’ll be doing bento-boxes for the evening meal. Mr. Carstairs, you know the drill. Mr. Wang, it’s important that we have plenty of coffee, but make certain the urns are secured. We may get bumped a bit and I want to keep things under control.”

I nodded my understanding. Each of the urns had a lid that made them spill-proof once locked. A simple system of curved pipes kept the pressure normalized inside without violating liquid integrity. “Two urns or three, Cookie?”

He thought about it before replying. “Load and prep all three, but only brew two. We can hit the button on the last when needed.” Obvious and logical, I should have thought of it myself and I made a tally on my personal mental midget list.

All the preparation talk made me a bit nervous and Pip noticed. “It’ll be fine, Ish. We might get a little bump, but usually it’s nothing. We just don’t want hot stuff splattered around if we happen to get a rough tug skipper. Once we get pulled back and the sails are up, it’ll be smooth again. You’ll think we’re docked.”

There was nothing I could do about what was going to happen to the ship. The professionals would be working that end of things. To distract myself, I obsessed over the minutiae of keeping the urns full. I ground enough coffee for six full batches, throwing the extra into an air-tight and dropping it in a chiller to keep it as fresh as possible. The trick was in the timing. With everybody on board again, I assumed they would consume an amazing amount.
The Handbook
told me that everybody should be at their duty stations about a half-stan before the actual departure, so I figured we needed to have the most brewed about a stan before. Accordingly, I timed the urns to be full at 15:00. I needn’t have worried so much, but it kept my mind occupied.

Bento-boxes turned out to be the ship board equivalent of takeout, finger food that wouldn’t make a mess while eating. Cookie drew on his ancestral heritage and made up a couple of variations of spicy fillings. We spread the mixture over flat bread rounds, folded, rolled, and then wrapped them in clingfilm. Pip, Cookie, and I set up a production line. Forty-five crew needed a hundred and twenty of these little buggers. I thought it would take a long time, but it took less than a stan once we had a rhythm going. We’d done them at a rate better than three a tick. I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised considering Cookie did two for every one that Pip and I completed. Spread, roll, wrap, stack—a mindless, but oddly social task. The three of us gathered around the prep table and worked side-by-side to prepare for the evening meal.

I thought we’d put them in paper bags for easy carrying but Cookie had a better idea. He pulled out a stack of stamped, creased cardboard sheets and quickly formed one into a box with a clever folding lid. He repeated the action slowly for me to watch. I mimicked his moves and produced an identical box. It was as if I’d been born folding them. Even Cookie seemed impressed by how rapidly I caught on and he left the folding to me while he and Pip filled the boxes: two rolls, one piece of fruit, a cookie, a package of sliced vegetables, and small cups of dressing for dipping. The condiment was the only thing that might have spilled, but each container held only a few milliliters. With the lids closed, the boxes stacked on each other and I noticed small indents that kept them from sliding apart—clever and then some.

“What about drinks?” I asked. “I assume people can’t come down for coffee, can they?”

Cookie pointed to large insulated containers under one of the counters. “You’ll be delivering. Fill one with black coffee and the other with light and take a pocket full of sweetener packets.”

As the clock ticked down to pull out, the mess deck crowd thinned. I was able to prep and secure the urns with two fresh and full, and one on standby. We stacked the boxes on trays and placed them in the coolers. Cookie had it down to a science. While Pip certainly had been through it before, I marveled at Cookie’s expertise.

“We run a restaurant, gentlemen,” he reminded us regularly. “The customers don’t have any other choice, but we owe them our best just the same.” Finally, we completed the preparations and Cookie declared us ready. Pip and I collapsed into chairs at one of the mess tables to wait.

A few minutes later, the speakers announced,
“PULLOUT IN THIRTY TICKS. ALL CREW TO DUTY STATIONS. SET NAVIGATION DETAIL. SECURE FOR PULLOUT. SET READINESS LEVEL YELLOW.”
For Pip, Cookie, and myself the mess deck and galley were our duty stations. We just sat and looked at each other.

“Do we need to strap in or anything?” I looked from one to the other.

Cookie smiled but Pip guffawed.

Our boss cuffed him playfully. “It is a fair question, jackanapes. Have you been around so long that you forgot your first pull back?”

Pip had the decency to look abashed. “Actually, no. My first time was on the
Marcel Duchamp
. I was a wiper in the environmental section and they strapped me into the scrubber.” He looked both angry and embarrassed. “Bastards left me in there for three stans.”

Cookie winked at me.

Pip just groaned. “It took me all trip to get the stench out of my hair. And I never did live it down. That’s why I took the transfer to here.”

This was the first time Pip had offered any information about himself. Thinking back, I realized I’d known him less than a week but it seemed like a lifetime. I already had trouble remembering what life had been like before the ship. “When was this?” I asked.

“Last stanyer. I’m into my second year at quarter share. Don’t laugh.”

“Why would I laugh? Isn’t that good?”

Cookie chimed in, “Yes, it’s very good, young Ishmael. Considering the alternative is to strand Mr. Carstairs on a company planet in the middle of nowhere.”

I thought of the hapless attendant whose berth I’d taken on Neris and wondered if he had found another position.

“Well, I should have moved up to a half share by now.” Pip’s tone betrayed an undercurrent of bitterness.

Cookie tried to soothe his pique. “And you shall. But all in good time.”

“ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR PULL BACK. ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR PULL BACK.”
The squawk box in the overhead made me jump with the sudden announcement.

Unconsciously I held my breath. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the edge of the table. Cookie smiled and Pip just lifted his coffee cup off the table. Somewhere I felt, rather than heard, a thump from the front of the ship, and my inner ear told me something had happened.

The speakers squawked again.
“ALL HANDS, PULL BACK COMPLETE. TUGS CAST OFF IN THREE ZERO TICKS, MARK.”

“That’s it?” I exclaimed.

“We’re underway, Mr. Wang,” Cookie said with a smile. “Rather uninspiring, isn’t it?”

It was definitely anticlimactic, but it cast a new light on Pip’s story. Based on his reaction, he’d been quarter share for a long time and perhaps he had transferred out of embarrassment. I planned to have a heart-to-heart with my new friend because there was more there than he was saying. My speculation must have shown because he suddenly became very interested in examining his coffee mug.

Cookie told stories of pull backs where the tug captain hadn’t had so deft a touch. He showed me a scar where he’d been thrown against a steam pipe stanyers before. “Usually, though, they’re like this,” he assured.

Over the next three stans the speakers gave periodic status reports until finally all tugs released us and were on course out of the system. As I had suspected, we had a lot of mass to get moving. The kicker engines, all the way aft, pushed us for only the first few clicks and after that, they were secured until we reached the jump location. After we’d gotten clear of the orbital, we ran up the field generators deploying the huge sails and the gravity keel. The ship picked up the solar winds which pulled us out of the Neris’ gravity well. The outbound leg was scheduled to last twenty-two days before we hit the gravity threshold and jumped into the Darbat system.

At 18:00, the usual dinnertime, the captain called down and gave Cookie the go ahead to distribute dinner. A few crew, who had no navigational duties, came to the mess deck and sat together over their bento-boxes, talking quietly among themselves. Meanwhile, Cookie, Pip, and I set off to feed the other thirty odd people scattered around the ship. By 18:30 we had completed our rounds and returned to the galley to clean up.

At 20:00 the speakers came on one last time.
“SECURE FROM NAVIGATION DETAIL. SET THE WATCH FOR NORMAL OPERATIONS. SET CONDITION GREEN THROUGHOUT THE SHIP. SECOND SECTION HAS THE CONN.”

I punched the button to start the last urn brewing and drained away the oldest pot. By the time the captain and bridge crew showed up, they had fresh coffee and Cookie had put out a tray of pastries.