“Gilded cage,” Zoya said.
Dorion shrugged. “You’re free to live anywhere you want. There are private rentals in-system here. Mostly short term contracts but there are longer term units available. With your ship and skills, you can live practically anywhere in the Western Annex. You could go back to Dark Knight if you wish.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Naturally, we’d prefer you to live on-station and we’ll do almost anything to encourage you to do so. If you don’t like this one, we have several units. Some have different floor plans but the same basic amenities. You can each have a single if you want it. I just picked this one because you were living together on Dark Knight. After a patrol, you might prefer to get away from each other. Would you like to see a single before you get moved in here?”
Natalya looked at Zoya with a raised eyebrow.
Zoya sighed and looked around the space.
“Oh, I almost forgot the best part,” he said. He left the bedroom and went back to the central area. Crossing to a bulkhead, he tapped a key and the wall opened. “Armorglass. Twice as strong as your bridge,” he said. “Opacity is controlled electronically. I don’t understand the physics myself, but you can adjust this to be anything from this size and crystal to—well—pretty much anything you like. This is the default setting. All the suites have this feature but I think this one has the best view. The outside is silvered, so you can see out but nobody can see in.” He offered a little chuckle. “Not like there are many people out there to look.”
Zoya and Natalya stood transfixed by the view. Beyond the armorglass, the station structure extended only slightly and it framed the Deep Dark beyond. As they watched, an Unwin Eight packet drifted across the field, navigation lights blinking brightly against the soft colors and sharp points of light beyond. The view took Natalya’s voice away and she felt a tightness in her chest. With an effort she dragged her gaze away and turned to Zoya.
Zoya looked back and said, “We’ll take it.”
Chapter 7
CommSta Bowie
2366, April 2
NATALYA WATCHED AS the tech put the finishing touches on the new navigational system. He glanced up at her and grinned. “Woulda been better if you’d let us upgrade the Mark Fourteens to Mark Eighteens.”
“You’d still be upgrading. The fiber network won’t support them,” Natalya said. “I’m right on the edge as it is.”
He nodded. “I wondered about that. The fiber looks new.” He paused and shrugged. “Newer, anyway.”
“Came with the Mark Fourteens. Got the package for scrap value and spent weeks rerunning the cables.”
His eyes went wide. “You ran all that cable? By yourself?”
Natalya shrugged. “All eighteen kilometers of it.”
“Eighteen kilometers? The ship isn’t that big.”
“Twenty meters length overall. Eight deep and seven at the beam,” she said. “And yeah. It looks a lot smaller inside than out. Over half the ship is engineering or mechanical space.”
“And you fly this out there?” His grin made her grin back instead of bridling at the insult.
“Ships like this made stations like that possible.” She nodded at the dock outside the bridge.
He nodded. “No argument.” He finished working under the console and snapped the cover back into place, then stood and wiped the surface down with a cloth from his pocket. “I heard about these Scouts. Everybody has, of course. Never thought I’d see one, let alone work on it.”
“It’s a labor of love, I guess,” Natalya said, not sure how to respond.
“It’s a priceless work of art,” he said. “You have any idea how many of these are left?”
“At least one,” she said. “We ready?”
He gave her a short laugh and nodded. “Fire it up. You should like the new interface, and you won’t have any trouble with High Line regs either. The database automatically firewalls the ‘unapproved’ destinations when you’re in one of their systems.”
She looked at him with a scowl.
He held up a hand. “You can still use them. They just hide from inspections.” He looked around the tiny bridge. “A ship like this? I’d expect to get boarded a lot.”
“Because they think we’re violating some regulation?”
The tech laughed and shook his head. “Just to get a look at her from the inside.”
Natalya dropped into the navigator’s seat and brought up the new system. “It looks better, but I can’t put my finger on why.”
“A lot of it is cosmetic. The user interface tweaks are mostly font and contrast. Try plotting a course from here to Mel’s.”
She started laying out her path only to have the system fill in interim jumps for her. “That’s slick. What parameters are driving this?”
He pointed to a clock icon at the top. “Least time based on the ship’s drives and power curve. Click it.”
She clicked and the icon changed to “CR” while the new plot mapped itself onto the chart display. “CR?”
“Credits,” he said. “Least cost.”
“More jumps is cheaper?”
“Shorter jumps use less power,” he said.
“Of course,” Natalya said.
“The system default is set so the capacitors aren’t ever below fifty percent. Recharge cycles aren’t as heavy or as long. It accounts for maintenance costs on both the fusactor and the drives as well as fuel for course adjustments based on ship averages. Right now, they’re factory defaults but the system will track historical data going forward. You’ll have a more accurate estimate within a few weeks.”
“Slick,” she said. “I suspect that adds up over the course of a month.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure how much for this ship. The Unwins report at least a five percent improvement in expense costs over the older model consoles.”
“Do they care?” she asked.
“Of course. Cutting down on expenses means they earn more. Five percent doesn’t sound like a lot but in raw numbers that’s a nice chunk of change.”
“Don’t they get reimbursed when they dock here?” Natalya asked, looking up from the display.
He shrugged. “They might if they docked here. Almost all of them have home ports outside of Ravaine.”
“Why’s that?”
“No idea. I’m not on a conversational basis with many ship captains. It’s not something I’ve asked and they haven’t volunteered. They’ll dock here once in a while for system upgrades. They get refits done out at the yards sometimes. We’ve got a good repair dock on the other side of the station here so they can get routine maintenance done. Some of them don’t even do that.” He shrugged again. “No accounting for taste, I guess.”
Natalya made a mental note to ask Dorion about it. “What about the new ships?”
“Not in rotation yet. We won’t know for a while.”
“When do you expect them?”
“Dock gossip says the first cohort will be coming out of the yards in August or September.”
Natalya secured the console and stood up. “So we’re ready to go?”
“The comms gang hasn’t upgraded your array yet. They’ve been waiting on a module from home office to handle the encryption for you. That should be done by the time you’re finished with training.”
Natalya suppressed a sigh. “Speaking of which, I’ve got a hot date with a cold fish.”
He grabbed his satchel and led the way down the passage and off the ship. “More training?”
Natalya sealed the lock and nodded. “Company-approved communications protocols in social engagements outside the company.”
He snorted. “That’s the name of it?”
“Afraid so.”
“Sounds charming,” he said.
“It’s probably less charming than it sounds, but I don’t want to break a rule because I didn’t know about it.”
“Good point,” he said. He paused and looked at her a bit sideways. “If you ever need a social
engagement within the company?”
Natalya looked at him trying to decide if he was asking her out or not.
“Buncha techs and dock monkeys hang out at Stay Frosty most evenings. You get bored, you’d be welcome.”
“What do the dock monkeys call techs?” she asked.
“Techtards.” He grinned. “We don’t get many pilots or ship crews, but we don’t discriminate.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Doherty. Jeff. They call me JD.”
She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, JD. Natalya.”
He gave her a lopsided grin and shook her hand. “Maybe we’ll see you at Frosty?”
“Much stranger things have happened.”
He nodded at that. “Well. I need to get going. Systems to break. Code to wreck.”
She laughed and watched him scoot down the dock. “Much stranger things,” she said to herself.
Chapter 8
CommSta Bowie
2366, April 7
NATALYA AND ZOYA TRUDGED the last few meters down the corridor toward Dorion’s office. “Did he say what he wanted?” Zoya asked.
“Nope. Just be here at 1100.”
“If it’s another stupid training requirement, I’m going to scream.”
Natalya grinned at her. “I’ll scream in harmony.”
“You’d think we’d never attended the academy. I swear we had that fraternization talk as second-year cadets.”
“And third,” Natalya said.
“Maybe he’s going to finally put us to work.”
Natalya stopped a couple of meters from the door. “Speaking of which. Does this station seem a little off to you?”
“Off? How?” Zoya shrugged. “The only station I’ve ever spent any time on is Dark Knight and that still seemed strange to me when we left.”
Natalya looked up and down the passageway. It seemed to go on forever in a straight line. “How many people have you seen here?”
“Not counting the dozen or so at Frosty the other night?”
Natalya nodded.
Zoya frowned. “Four? Five? We’ve only had two different instructors doing the training. Dorion. The concierge, Ellis. What’s his first name?”
“Tim,” Natalya said.
“I guess it’s not too surprising nobody’s here,” Zoya said. “Most of the crews must be out.”
“Well, and according to JD, most of them don’t live here anyway.”
“True,” Zoya said. “It explains one thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“How that palace Dorion set us up with was available. I haven’t even heard another person walking down the passage who wasn’t coming to see us.”
“That is odd,” Natalya said. “I never noticed.”
“You have to admit, that apartment is a long way from normal.”
“I’ll give you that,” Natalya said. She nodded down the passage. “Best see what he wants. It’s the least we can do to earn our daily crust.”
Zoya chuckled and fell into step as they closed the distance to Dorion’s office.
They found him seated behind his glass-topped desk. He looked up when they entered. “Good,” he said. “I’ve got some plans I want to go over with you.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Natalya said.
He grinned. “Yeah. Sorry. Good morning. I’m excited and want your feedback.” A large panel display on the bulkhead lit up with a ship model rendered in three dimensions. “Touch screen. Spin it. Look it over. Tell me what you think.”
Natalya crossed to the screen and spun the ship. “What is it? It looks like a pillbug.”
Zoya reached around Natalya and turned the ship so it was bow on. “What’s the scale on this? Either those ports are huge, or this ship is really small.”
“It’s really small,” Dorion said.
Dimension arrows appeared along the various axes of the display.
“That’s smaller than the Peregrine,” Natalya said. “What is it?”
“Latest iteration of our communications harvesting vessel.”
“Got a deck plan?” Natalya asked.
A schematic of the inside of the ship replaced the model on the screen.
“Can you walk us through this, Brian? I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” Zoya said.
“Everything aft of the airlock is engineering. Tankage is under the deck and in the overhead. She can fly for three weeks without refueling. Galley, which we largely engineered from old Scout blueprints. New materials and advances in Burleson drives and fusactors let us cut the mass by a third and boost her rating to twenty BUs with a six-stan recharge cycle on the capacitor.”
Natalya whistled softly. “How many full jumps in the capacitor?”
“Just two,” Dorion said. “That’s still almost a third of the way across the Western Annex in less than a stan. Six stans later she can do it again, with short jumps possible within a few ticks.”
Zoya stepped closer and peered at the diagram. “Cockpit instead of a bridge, but there’s only one couch.”
“Only one pilot needed,” Dorion said.
Natalya looked at Zoya and read the look on her face. “You’re going to send solo pilots out for three weeks at a time in this?” Natalya asked, turning to look at Dorion.
Dorion sat down behind his desk and pursed his lips. “Tell me what’s wrong with it,” he said after several long moments of silence.
“You a pilot, Brian?” Natalya asked.
He shook his head. “Communications analyst, originally.”
“You called the Peregrine a matchbox, if I remember correctly,” Zoya said.
His face flushed and he looked down at his desk. “Yes. I did. No offense.”
“None taken,” Natalya said.
“This is smaller,” Zoya said.
“Not by much. It has about two-thirds of the volume of a Scout and only has a crew of one.”
Natalya nodded and pulled at her lower lip with a thumb and forefinger. “Scouts are rated for solo operation. That extra space matters more when you’re alone out there.”
“Why?” Dorion asked.
“You need room to move around. Room to stretch out. Pace, maybe,” Natalya said.
“You ever fly solo for three weeks at a time?” Dorion asked.
Natalya nodded. “Yeah. It’s better when you have somebody to talk to.”
Zoya’s gaze raked the schematic again. “Where’s the bunk?”
“Pilot’s couch doubles as bunk,” he said.
Natalya stared at Dorion who met her gaze with a bland expression.
Zoya turned away from the display and started to speak to speak but apparently thought better of it.
“You don’t like it,” Natalya said.
Dorion tilted his head to one side. “I beg your pardon?”
“This ship. This design. You don’t like it,” she said.
Dorion tapped the desk with his hands in a rapid pattering of fingertips. “Correct. I need your help to get this travesty pulled.” He offered them a faint smile. “Tell me what’s wrong in terms I can take to the board.”
“It’s too small,” Zoya said.
“It’s big enough for a single pilot,” Dorion said. “From a cost perspective, one pilot is cheaper than a crew of two.” He paused and gave a shrug. “No offense meant. That’s the board’s driver on this project. Keeping the costs down.”
Natalya looked back at the screen but she wasn’t really seeing the schematic. “Did anybody work up a two-seater model of this?”
“No,” he said. “The design parameters specified a single pilot crew from the start.”
“We haven’t been out yet,” Natalya said. She looked at Dorion. “We finished our training cycle two days ago.”
Dorion nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been dragging my feet because I wanted you to see this. I got permission to show you last night.”
Natalya nodded. “It’s a good design.”
> “It is,” Zoya said. “But it’ll kill pilots.”
“Literally?” Dorion asked.
“Probably,” Natalya said. “You’re already having turnover problems, right?”
His face blanked for a moment. “Why do you say that?”
“We talked about it before. I didn’t realize the scope of the issue,” Natalya said.
Zoya nodded. “Now it begins to make sense.”
“What does?” Dorion asked.
“The palatial apartment. The docking fee waivers. The paychecks. All of it,” Zoya said.
“How many systems do you serve?” Natalya asked.
“Twelve thousand and change.”
Natalya felt her eyebrows rise at the number. “How many ships to cover that?”
“Something over five hundred. Depends on the day and who’s quit lately.”
“What’s your turnover rate?” Zoya asked.
Dorion shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“It’s a lot,” Natalya said. “Most pilots won’t dock here even with the free docking, will they?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Dorion said.
“They have fewer than fifty docking rings that can take an Unwin Eight,” Zoya said. She glanced at Natalya. “Yeah. I counted the other day while you were getting the new navigation system installed.”
“Nobody but us lives in our wing. Right?” Natalya said.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Dorion said but after a moment he nodded his head.
Natalya turned back to the schematic. “This isn’t an engineering problem.”
“How so?” Dorion asked.
“It’s a management problem,” she said. “Why won’t they dock here? The Unwins?”
“They claim it’s too far away from their cargo points. They jump in, dump their data, and jump out.”
“You don’t believe them?” Zoya asked.
Dorion shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure that’s part of it. They’ll come in for routine maintenance. Sometimes one of them will dock with almost empty tanks and get a free refill.”
“What about the yachts?” Zoya asked. “You said some of the pilots kept their yachts here.”
“A handful. It’s more like a cheap place to store them than anything they use regularly. Jump-capable yachts aren’t that easy to park without incurring big fees. They get used infrequently and need station ties for maintenance.”
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