“That’s quite a job.”
“Yes, but I have six weeks and there is quite literally nothing else I can do. No parties. No newsfeeds. No correspondence. No meetings. No classes. No walks on the quad. Nothing except smoke cigars and get drunk, or work.”
“While smoking cigars and drinking,” Kusunoki said.
“Well, yes. Of course.”
As a passenger liner, Jewel of Space could and did maintain 0.8 g acceleration, and so there was near normal gravity except during maneuvering. Both Ansen and Kusunoki knew from their previous voyages neither was bothered by zero-g, so there were no pills to take against weightlessness sickness on hyperspace transitions or when flipping the ship mid-transit.
As the occupants of the Owner’s Suite for the passage, they were invited to sit at the Captain’s Table in the First-Class Dining Room, which they did regularly once Ansen discovered the bourbon served at the Captain’s Table was a better brand than that available otherwise.
Ansen spent many of his waking hours in the First-Class smoking lounge, smoking cigars and drinking bourbon, and working on his decision tree. The computer graph grew and grew, as he and Kusunoki in their evening conversations revisited every decision they had considered and added more. His goal was a complete map by the time they reached Doma, with all the historical precedents annotated, to assist the conference in its deliberations.
There is nothing to match the food served at the Captain’s Table in the First-Class Dining Room of a luxury liner. Between the food, the drink, the cigars, and the work on the decision tree, the six weeks passed swiftly.
The shuttle down to Doma from the Jewel Of Space delivered them to the Doma shuttleport in Nadezhda. As they debarked, they were greeted by a young man in a light khaki uniform with “The Dachas” embroidered on the breast.
“Professor Ansen? Professor Kusunoki?”
“Yes,” Ansen said.
“I’ll drive you to The Dachas, sir. This way, please.”
Ansen and Kusunoki followed him through the terminal and out the front door. It was a beautiful day, of the sort for which Doma is famous. Temperature in the mid-70s, a clear blue sky, and a cool breeze blowing, just enough to wave the lush tropical foliage back and forth.
Porters followed with their three trunks. As they walked down the sidewalk, Ansen signaled to the porters on one trunk.
“You there. Set that right here, please.”
Ansen pointed to a spot to the edge of the broad walk. The porters were confused, but set the trunk down where indicated. Ansen walked over to the trunk and sat down.
“Have a seat, my dear.”
To the consternation of the driver and the porters, Ansen and Kusunoki sat on the trunk, holding hands, while Ansen smoked one of the lovely Earth-import cigars he had pulled from Westlake’s gift trunk back on the ship.
To the driver, Ansen said, “I have been in motion constantly for the last six weeks. For just a few minutes, I simply want to sit still.”
He looked around with interest, then to Kusunoki said, “Lovely place, isn’t it, my dear?”
“Absolutely beautiful,” she said.
Earth
Stardust made her hyperspace transition into normal space about ten percent farther from Earth then the published system periphery, just as they had in Jablonka. No sense in taking chances with a thousand containers – 2.2 million tons – of fernico aboard.
The gunnery and bombardment consoles were manned, but not powered up at the moment.
“Mr. Stodden, what have you got?” Captain Heller asked.
“Nothing nearby, sir. Not way out here,” radar operator Karl Stodden said.
“Send our arrival announcement, Mr. Oconnell, and request arrival instructions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Flip ship and lay in a course for the planet, Mr. Asnip.”
As Stardust had been decelerating for the last month, and the hyperspace generator was tied in with the engines, she emerged from hyperspace with her bows pointing away from Earth. Flipping ship with that much mass of cargo was a slow business, and it was several minutes before Stardust was pointed in-system.
“Ship flipped and course laid in, sir.”
“Get us under way, Mr. Asnip. Gently, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Commander John Rebori had the current watch on Earth’s northern approaches in the frigate ENS Moses Lambert, of which he was the first officer. It was nearing the end of their four-weeks-on/two-weeks-off rotation. Some of that two weeks off would be spent in transit to Earth and back, which always ticked him off. It used to be four-weeks-on/four-weeks-off, which was a different thing altogether. But they were short of ships, and this looked like it was going to become the new normal.
So he was not in a particularly good mood when the Stardust’s arrival announcement came in. He also suffered from the ESN’s institutional arrogance, the by-product of being the only navy in space, and never having been seriously challenged.
“Moses Lambert here. What’s with you, Stardust? Miscalculate your hyperspace transition?” Rebori asked with barely concealed contempt.
“Stardust here. Just taking it easy with a couple million tons of fernico aboard, Moses Lambert,” the answer came back.
Huh. Clearly they didn’t know how to space that big bastard. Then again, it was a colony freighter, a bunch of spacer wannabes, so what could you expect.
“Well, call us again when you hit the system periphery, Stardust. You know, sometime next week.”
“Boy, this guy really has his attitude on sideways, sir,” Oconnell said to Captain Heller.
“That’s not unusual, I’m afraid, Mr. Oconnell. Picket duty is not a popular assignment, and, at the same time, the ESN has more than its share of jumped-up junior officers. His captain is probably a commander, and may well be worse. We’ll see.”
A day and a half later, when Stardust reached the published system periphery, Oconnell retransmitted their arrival announcement.
“I have a Commander Patrick Viebey, sir. He demands to speak to the captain.”
“Put him on, Mr. Oconnell,” Captain Heller said.
“You’re live, sir.”
“Captain Heller here, Commander Viebey. Go ahead.”
“What the hell’s your problem, Heller? You know you’re supposed to send an arrival announcement when you transition.”
“We did send the arrival announcement immediately upon transition, Commander. Thirty-seven hours ago. Lieutenant Commander Rebori instructed us to send it again once we reached the published system periphery.”
“Why are you transitioning so far out then, Heller? There’s a reason for a published system periphery.”
“We have green crew, Commander, and over two million tons of fernico aboard. It seemed prudent to allow plenty of safety margin.”
“Yeah, I suppose if you don’t know how to space a ship, you have to tip-toe around to keep from breaking it. Your form says a thousand containers of fernico, Heller?”
“That’s correct, Commander.”
“How many crew and passengers do you have aboard?”
“Two hundred forty crew, no passengers.”
“Two hundred forty crew, Heller? What’s up with that?”
“It’s more like forty crew and two hundred green trainees, Commander. It was some corporate type’s great idea to pack in green trainees to the deckheads and see if they learned anything.”
“Oh, so Stardust’s not a spaceship, it’s a kindergarten. Is that it, Heller?”
“Something like that, Commander.”
“All right. You’re cleared for passage, Heller. But keep your nose clean from here in.”
“Yes, Commander. Thank you.”
Heller signaled Oconnell, who cut the connection. The first officer walked up to Heller’s seat.
“Wow. That guy sure is obnoxious, sir. Made me want to fire up the weapons consoles.”
“Now, now, Bryan,” Heller said. “We’r
e just a peaceful, unarmed freighter, remember. It’s not our time. Not yet.”
“Well, when we unmask this ship and come back here, I hope we run into Commander Viebey again.”
“So what have we come up with for ideas about liberty? We’re only a week out now, and we gotta tell the crew something,” Lloyd Behm said.
“My issue is we may have to fight our way out of the system if something goes wrong. I don’t want to have half the crew down drunk and be short of damage control parties if that happens. We need to be able to fight this ship until we’re out of here,” Abby Swogger said.
“How about we tell everyone no liberty on-planet, but as soon as we transition to hyperspace on the way back, we’ll have on-board liberty in Cylinder Three for three days, and then a day to transition, and then on-board liberty in Cylinder Four for three days? But no leaving your cylinder during that period. That’ll allow us to keep the officers out. We’ll just sequester half the crew spaces at a time,” Shannon Gaffney said.
“OK, that could work,” Behm said.
“But no fraternizing,” Swogger said. “That can get out of control fast. And I’m serious about spacing anybody who takes advantage. Don’t anybody doubt that for a second.”
“I’ll take it to the exec and see what he says. We may get shut down there, and then the details don’t matter.”
“So what do you think, sir?” the exec asked.
“I think it’s probably a bad idea, but it may be less bad than all the alternatives,” Captain Heller said. “We can’t let people loose on the planet. Hell, Bryan, half the bridge was ready to swim vacuum to get their hands around Viebey’s neck just from a five-minute radio conversation. We put a hundred or more ratings down on the planet and they get drinking, there’s no keeping our secret.
“At the same time, I worry about things getting out of hand. Bryan, you and I have both been around the block enough times to know how badly this can go. And what about people who don’t want a big party? Who just want to sit in their quarters and have a beer?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, sir. It seems to me we need an internal police force – you know, an MPs sort of thing – to break up anything that gets out of hand. That’s what we would have on planet with the Shore Police. As for the other, sir, I think we could limit this to lower decks in each cylinder in turn, and let people swap around bunks to get themselves on the side of the line they want to be on. All the quarters are pretty much the same anyway. Then MPs patrol the landing at the boundary.”
“Well, I think we need to do something to blow off some steam once we get free of Earth. People are pretty stressed at the moment, worrying we could be found out. So I’ll leave it up to you and Senior Chief Behm to figure it out. Err on the side of caution, because this already sounds pretty stupid, but I don’t think we can go on five months spacing without some relief, and planet leave isn’t in it.”
“We’ll figure it out, sir.”
Lloyd Behm and Abby Swogger were meeting privately in Behm’s office just outside the Chief’s Mess. As senior non-com, he was the go-to guy for problems below decks, and that often meant private meetings. Like this one.
“OK, so the exec got it past the captain. But that means it’s on us to make it work, Abby. Coupla ideas there I think are pretty good. We find out how many people want to party, then let people re-bunk to separate them out. Bottom decks get the party, upper decks get a couple beers in quarters, hopefully everybody’s happy.”
“Scuttlebutt I’m getting is nobody wants planet leave. They’re all afraid somebody else will get drunk and spill the beans, and they’ll all end up in prison.”
“Good. So at least we won’t get a buncha grief about that. But five months is a long time to keep people bottled up aboard ship without ’em letting off any steam. One thing we do need, though, is the equivalent of Shore Police. We need everybody to know there’s a limit, and we’re gonna enforce it. Then hopefully we don’t have to. I want you to take that. Put a force together. Figure out who you want, talk to ’em, sign ’em up. Some people who have prior, maybe.”
“I’ll run some filters past the ship’s personnel files and see what I find. You want some big guys, right? Maybe some police service or MP or something?”
“Or a job as bouncer in a bar. Whatever. Some big guys everybody knows you don’t wanna mess with. That oughta hold the lid on right there.”
“All right, Lloyd. I’m on it.”
Stardust had performed her flip halfway in from her hyperspace transition, and was now decelerating as it approached Earth.
“We have orbit instructions from Orbit Control, sir, and the Orlov Group Cargo Center has a shuttle schedule for us.”
“Transfer the orbit instructions to Navigation, Mr. Oconnel. What’s our shuttle schedule look like?”
“Pretty good, sir. There are twenty five cargo shuttles actually standing by. They said don’t even bother to spin up, they’ll meet us on orbit insertion.”
“Outstanding. All right. Let’s get into orbit and start offloading. Send the Cargo Center our container map, Mr. Oconnel. We want to make sure they only take the containers we’re here to offload.”
“Yes, sir.”
A thousand containers takes a long time to unload, especially if they’re loaded with fernico. The big cargo shuttles could only take four of the 2200-ton containers per trip, and it was three hours round trip, so it took a day and a half to unload and reload Stardust. The container map indicated which containers to unload, and which containers remained latched to the freighter.
Once the shuttles had dug down to Stardust’s core on one band of containers, they began bringing outbound containers up. They latched those to the empty portion of Stardust’s container racks, then picked up more fernico containers for the trip down. The outbound containers were lighter, and there were two thousand containers brought up before loading was complete.
At least that was the usual procedure. But for this trip there were a hundred containers that came in on Stardust, right up against the core of the ship, and stayed for the return trip.
“Shuttle OG-197 here. That looks like it to me, Stardust. Can you confirm?” shuttle pilot Megan Welch asked.
“Confirmed, OG-197. That’s all we got for you. One thousand fernico inbound,” Oconnel transmitted.
“And two thousand miscellaneous outbound for you. Hey, what’s with all the through containers, Stardust? You guys got another stop?” Welch asked.
“Negative, OG-197. We’re pre-stocked for both directions, and we brought along a lot of spares. Stardust is pretty new, and we wanted to make sure we could get home.”
“Roger that, Stardust. Well, you’re good to go. Happy spacing.”
“Thanks, OG-197. You, too. Stardust out.”
“All right, Mr. Oconnell. Do we have a departure window?”
“Yes, sir. We’re actually good to go right now.”
“Transfer departure instructions to Navigation. Mr. Asnip, you may proceed when ready.”
“Yes, sir. Laying in course now.
“Course laid in.
“Bringing engines up to ten percent.”
Gravity finally returned, though only .05 g. Stardust’s crew had been dealing with weightless conditions aboard the ship for the last day and a half as the shuttles unloaded her. They were getting pretty tired of cold meals and sleeping strapped down to their bunks by this point, but it was pretty standard fare for freighter crews.
“Coming to course zero mark ninety on the planet.
“Steady on course zero mark ninety on the planet.
“Bringing engines up to eighty percent.”
Gravity slowly increased to .5 g throughout the ship as Stardust accelerated.
“Engines steady at eighty percent.”
“Excellent, Mr. Asnip.”
Stardust looked a lot bigger for the trip back. With twenty-one hundred containers latched around her circumference and down her length, she was a lot bigger volume going
back to Jablonka than she was with eleven hundred containers coming in to Earth, but she was actually a lot lighter. The Earth exports heading out to Jablonka weren’t even close to half the weight per container of the fernico loads.
After a week in transit to the system periphery, heading out the way they had come in, Stardust was approaching the system pickets. The ENS Moses Lambert had been rotated out, and the ENS Joshua Kanapkey was on station.
“Transmit our departure announcement, Mr. Oconnel.”
“Transmitting, sir.”
“ESN Commander Tamara Wilhite requesting the captain, sir.”
Here we go again, Heller thought.
“Put her on, Mr. Oconnell,” Heller said.
“You’re live, sir.”
“Captain Heller here, Commander Wilhite. Go ahead.”
The voice that came back was cool, calm, and professional.
“Wilhite here. Good morning, Captain. I show Stardust inbound one thousand fernico, outbound two thousand miscellaneous, customs declared and fees paid. Two hundred forty aboard, no deletions, no additions. Bound for Jablonka.”
“That’s all correct, Commander.”
“Very well, Captain. You are cleared for departure. Good spacing. Wilhite out.”
The connection broke.
“Well, XO, it appears the ESN has some professional officers after all,” Heller said to Bryan Jones.
“There was always a rumor to that effect, sir. I could never confirm it, though. Not until now.”
There was no need to play it safe with two thousand containers of miscellaneous cargo aboard. Stardust no longer had over two million tons of cargo aboard. It was more like half a million tons, despite double the number of containers.
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