Trade Secret

by Sharon Lee

  “Seeli Gobelyn, Admin and Reserve Chef.”

  Hesitant, then came, “Dyk Gobelyn, Chef, ’ponics and Supplies,” who knew of all things that Iza’d sat him too high, with only the kids properly belonging below him. For his goodness, Dyk did mutter low on the ears when he nodded at Grig, saying “’Serve, next.”

  Well, that was clear. Someone had given Dyk an order he didn’t like, but he’d come back to the ship when, like any of them ’cept the two youngest, he might have had honest work anywhere in good space, long as he didn’t need Liaden tickets. After all, he had his investment, and then Grig began and had everyone’s attention, not just hers.

  Cold. Accurate. Sounding so much like an Arin it had to be on purpose, the first part, and then nodding expansive and calm to Dyk, relaxing maybe, but sounding then amazingly like Arin’s Jethri, whose voice was yet too young to be Arin’s, and maybe never would be.

  “Grig Tomas. Chief Medico. Chief System Engineer. Reserve Pilot. Warehouse and Reserve Chef.”

  The first part, the “Chief Medico” and “Chief Systems Engineer,” that had been said, spiteless, but right to Iza. “Reserve Pilot,” that had been said to Cris mostly, and to Paitor, and then to her, for all that it ought to be a lie. Grig Tomas had been Arin’s pilot besides being his cousin, and Arin, who had been a damn fine pilot, put Grig above him in a pinch. Warehouse and Reserve Chef, that had been to Dyk alright. And Dyk knew like Grig did that half of his skill was learned from Grig.

  That was the thing about Grig. He knew things. Lots of things. Grig was older’n he looked, had small-ship flying time and he’d been a board pilot for a couple of middling cruise ships, too. That older-than-he-looked stuff—the man was always busy with something, getting certified, accredited, studying, reading, collecting, knowing. He’d been part of Jethri’s orbit when the boy’d needed steadying, and it was hard to know what he knew because he stayed busy, and knew what he knew because he’d flown the route. Thing is that Grig could probably run the whole darn ship by himself if he needed to, and ought to be something up the ladder on the pay scale and on the crew call.

  Mel was patient for a change, like he’d just learned something. When he did speak, it was low and respectful, like he’d learned something too when he’d been off-ship working the yards and such.

  “Mel Gobelyn, Technical Mate, Reserve Medico and Reserve Warehouse.” Mel nodded to everyone, and so did Zam, right behind:

  “Zam Gobelyn, Assistant Admin and Reserve Supplies.”

  Seeli spoke up then, reminding the whole crew, and Iza too:

  “There’s also my son, Travit; he’s a general trainee with ten week’s experience, trip-berthed in Seven A when he’s not with me.”

  Khat almost hurt her neck when she stopped herself from searching everyone on that. Seeli’d made no secret of her and Grig’s being a pair for the long run, nor of her and Grig sticking with the ship. What was missing here was that last name: would be Tomas if Seeli was willing to travel off-ship with him if need be and Gobelyn if she was staying no matter what—or if Iza, lacking a vote of the crew, had formed a major opinion. Not having that name yet, that was a sign that deciding hadn’t been finished, which Khat couldn’t measure as a good thing.

  Ship’s airflow became suddenly loud, along with the sound of breathing and the little sounds people just sitting make. Cris in particular was making sounds as he sat the reserve board—that in part because he had to check it in sequence, chording the nonessentials, and in part because he was nibbling on the edge of saying something that wouldn’t quite come out.

  “Proposal on Precedence,” he finally managed, which turned all the heads at once—it was one of the few things that had to be dealt with immediately since ship’s command structure needed always to be clear, and if he was challenging Iza’s rating of Grig—

  Iza sat straighter, smiling countenance gone all gamble-face. Around the room others sat taut and quiet as well, but no one called the point. Grig sighed, very gently, since someone needed to recognize the call, and did so just before Khat could open her mouth to accept it.

  “Captain, crew has need to discuss a Proposal on Precedence. First Mate begs attention.”

  Khat remembered to breathe, wondering if she’d been left out of a premeeting discussion somehow, and watching the hands of those who had them above the table, and the faces of others: some nerves here, of a sudden.

  Properly, if with an edge, came Iza’s return: “Are you acting as joint ref on this, Grig Tomas?”

  Grig shook his head side to side, showed palms up.

  “Not unless needed, Captain, just getting the move on. Crew ought to be set before Jump if there’s something to change.”

  Iza nodded, made an open channel hand-sign, and said, “Station’s yours, Cris Gobelyn.”

  Cris nodded, to each of them, and motioned sorry on delay as he stood away from the monitors so everyone could see him clearly.

  “Captain,” he said with a nod, and then, “family.” He looked down at his hands as if surprised to see them still forming delay and sorry, and laughed, letting the smile fade into a wry grin.

  “If we hadn’t been quite so pressed for time,” he offered diffidently, “I’d have had time to do this with some discussion so no one would be surprised. Couldn’t happen that way, so here’s the thing.”

  He made a quick motion encompassing the room and the people.

  “We’re all here, and that’s great, and we’re all able to do our jobs. That’s really good—we’ve all got confidence there. Might be some got a little more on their day sheet than others, but that’s always the way. There’s changes—looks like stinks run is spread out some but it’s a chore that’s sixty percent easier now than it used to be, I think.”

  He paused, looked to Iza, and then to Khat. His grin got obvious for a moment, then flitted away.

  “Ship’s changed, though, that’s my point. I figure that it’s not quite the ship we know yet, and we’re not the same crew as was doing things together as we were before.”

  Cris looked to Seeli, made a see you motion and went on.

  “So, Admin, it’ll be hard to schedule everyone until we know how this crew flies this ship. Captain, it’ll be hard to be sure of where’s the blind spots for local, just like we got to make sure the clean sheets we have will go as far as the catalog tells us. A lot of the changes here go across all my jobs.”

  Finish said his hands, and he summed up quickly, touching left hand to right palm with each point.

  “Red—change to the ship systems, from controls to vid sensors to locks.”

  “Orange—change to maintenance specs and expectations.”

  “Yellow—change to trade hardware, podlocks, stasis systems.”

  “Green—restructuring of crew-missions.”

  “Blue—change in personnel experience levels, training, and competencies.”

  He paused, and hit the final point with an audible slap to the palm:

  “Violet—as my time off-ship was spent as a backup and reserve officer on a large vessel and my actual board time was minimal, I suggest Khat—with numerous recent high-grade commands to her credit—take over first mate duties at least until our shakedown is complete. I should assume my primary role as technical officer and maintenance director and be placed in reserve pilot mode as well as retain my other reserve roles. I can best serve the ship and crew by helping us know the ship as well as we can.”

  Khat closed her mouth firmly, seeing the truth of it. She was not going to shout out for her own promotion, though. Even a temporary one . . .

  The sharp laugh was from Iza, and it was followed by a thin smile and a small shake of her head, as if she’d not quite expected this bit of a proposal when there’d been so many other possibles.

  “Pilot math there, son. I appreciate it and wouldn’t have suggested it if you hadn’t—but there, I’m for it. Show of thumbs and we can declare it done!”

  Thumbs up all the way around, and there it was:
Khat Gobelyn was first mate on the ship she’d grown up on.

  Iza waved them up and about, charging the lot of them with their duty:

  “Let’s get us away from this smelly mudball and get Paitor his new run. But one thing you all have to remember: as good as this ship is, we’re owed from a promise and a payout to get in line for something better.”

  Here she stared at Grig, and then at Seeli.

  “You’ll be in the chair rotation more regular than I thought, Grig Tomas. You and Seeli are gonna work, we’re fine with that. But Travit Tomas now, Travit’s call on this ship is ship-born passenger. My chair ain’t his, and that stands until he’s on his own way! Too much of Arin’s nonsense about you still, unless Uncle’s shipyard ain’t a myth, after all. You hear from that side, I need to know it.”

  * * *

  There’d been one last bit of business at Kinaveral, and that was setting up that Jump list, and it looked like a bunch of someones had decided at the same time to flex just a little bit of energy, because there on the emergency where-to list was Vertville. Everyone but Iza . . .

  “I see some jokes just don’t get old, do they? I have to say, from technical viewpoints, from security viewpoints, Vertville makes some sense. Lots of ships go in there and some of the regs are kinda fuzzy. Not so hard to find a berth; not too hard to find a meal. And . . .”

  “Fourth best connectivity point in this quadrant, Iza,” Paitor said patiently, “and the three better are Liaden controlled. Really isn’t a joke even if . . .”

  “Oh, no, Paitor, still a joke. Arin’s joke on us, and on me, letting the kid play with make-believe routes and then having us run it. Commissioner has a lot of say, you know, and we’d needed a break, he said, so we did it—just like it was an accident. Damn fine joke the way he convinced all of you the place had some special sentiment for me, damn fine joke that he’d set up a commissioner’s meeting without letting hardly anyone know, and good, good joke that he happened to have lotsa old contacts there.”

  Then she’d turned colder than ever, and pitched it: “So we’ll go with the damn fine joke, so long as I ain’t sitting in the seat. Something makes us rush out, the seat decides to accept or reject the first punch. That one’s not mine.”

  * * *

  Khat sat second with Grig on the extra nav and Iza first. No one sat First on Iza’s board except Iza, and no one sat second there, either, in case her duty was elsewhere. Just ship’s rules—each ship and each captain had ’em. Khat had gotten used to sizing up a board in quick order and adjusting only enough to make her hands and feet sure—but Iza, Iza was getting firmly set in her ways and must have been a pretty problem on her out-shifts, fussing and . . .

  Khat cut that line of thought, which was not the way a first mate—acting or solid—should be thinking. Ship’s rules were ship’s rules.

  Too much time to think in the short holes between stuff: she couldn’t study something new, couldn’t just up and talk about what she or Grig’d been up to because Iza was never one for small talk on the working bridge. She did recalcs in her head, traded the least amount of text about meal shifts with Dyk now that they had Franticle dialed in for the second Jump.

  So, they’d hit Serconia as a waypoint, not really even having to talk to folks there, but it didn’t make sense to go for an uninhabited or frontier world on their first run of the new systems, after all. Serconia would mean an eightday Jump, and a layover for retests and checks, a few days orbiting there, and then Franticle. With the new approximate ingress and egress time on the Jump known, he could schedule his breakfasts per and get them a light lunch just before breakout. He pointed out a short-spot on her suggestions, and she nodded to herself and sent a query to Grig, who’d apparently been following along and had a whole grid of suggestions . . .

  Right, food schedules were never a problem for him—seemed like he could eat whenever there was food, but wasn’t much concerned about what it was if it wasn’t much—but now he was keeping an eye out for Seeli and the babe as well.

  Clock running numbers she saw, time to get to work.

  “The mark’s coming up on seventeen-point-five minutes, Captain. Protocol and checks will take us to three minutes even if we start at the point.”

  “Lead the way, First. You and Grig run it to the two minutes and then I’ll take Jump.”

  Chapter Nine

  Flight Deck, Gobelyn’s Market, Raising Serconia Three

  Serconia Three had not been quite where they’d all expected it when Jump broke, and the thing was, the numbers were good. It should have been Khat’s own shift by two hours but Iza’d allowed how she’d not been getting the right sleep on account of the new blowers were too damn quiet for a body to be sure they were running proper and so she might as well just sit right here anyhow and bring the Market in-system . . .

  And they all knew where Serconia ought to be: ships had rhythm and personality and the Market had always favored a little wide to port, high about a quarter sec, and with a proper motion bonus of about 20 percent over whatever it had been on Jump. Shouldn’t been that way, was what theory said, but they’d got so used to it that they always allowed for it right in the calculations and—

  “Well, frozen mud, will you look at that! Ain’t no wonder . . .”

  Iza was smooth enough, and there weren’t no alarms, but—

  “Grig Tomas have you ever seen the like—”

  They were looking at it, and Khat had already started calling out the numbers they could all see clear enough, with Grig doing a confirm on her numbers and watching the warn-aways, all of them checking their particular instruments to be sure they had clearances and the ship reporting all-clears over comm while the flight crew started screenwise.

  “Far as I can tell, Captain, we’ve arrived within a few percentage points of the set course; with a slow tumble.”

  “Yeah, we did, didn’t we?” the captain allowed. Then, “Kill the tumble, Khat, while we check the rest of these numbers—I’m going to have to start shooting straighter if this is what we get now!”

  The tumble was a bother, but not too bad since Iza’d allowed the gravity up a few points because of a kid on board. Without that they’d all be leaning into the back right wall of the ship by now, or tending toward it. But that shooting straighter and getting it right made Khat sigh.

  That would take practice and Jumps, Khat knew—the tumble might just have been an ambient flux they hadn’t caught on the way out, or one they’d caught on the way in, or a calibration they could adjust or a calibration they couldn’t. But Iza’d aimed them for clear space on the ecliptic, assuming a proper motion about right for a local asteroid, and instead they’d come up on the wrong side of the damn primary, giving them a retrograde orbit and more than trebling their chance of hitting nasty dust or grit or even boulders at speed. Didn’t really help that they were a quarter sec or more low, Serconia having a double cloud that would pump iceballs and gas clusters in at all angles.

  About then, the equipment started sorting out frequencies and getting radar returns and they were busy for a while, including a flurry of trade queries. Trade queries weren’t all that unusual for a ship just Jumping in, but Khat’s back brain was making notes, with some of them getting voiced and recorded and the others saved for her own recollection in quiet.

  * * *

  Khat’s notes took her striding towards Paitor’s trade office on break because it was no good bringing up the kid—that was Jethri’s, not Grig’s git—anywhere Iza could hear of it. They’d all got the security bulletin she’d drafted about the run-in with the Liaden punk claiming Jethri’d stole his kin—Iza couldn’t hide from that because Gobelyn’s name was in it.

  Khat couldn’t hide from it nor anyone else from the ship because Liadens were tricky, and it had been pure unplanned Gobelyn muscle twitch that she’d knocked the guidestars out of the lead pirate’s eyes by knocking him down thorough. She was sorry for the hangover on it, but it had been the right thing: roomful of Ter
rans with guns weren’t likely to let a couple Liadens get too overstrong in their attentions that far in the fringe. One wrong move could have left them licking vacuum from their shoes while word got out of an unfortunate collision of pilots unfamiliar with Terran routing orders . . .

  Khat shook that from her head. She didn’t want blood on her hands, no more than Jethri’d want it, and she knew he’d taken that suicide that happened on the ship’s apron as his fault, though damned if she could see it. So there: Jeth didn’t need any more blood on his hands and she oughtn’t be thinking about—

  Paitor stood in the sliding door, looking downpassage like he’d been thinking about something far away, or else avoiding the data screens hung all over his work room. He nodded, moved himself, and pointed toward the several seats, giving her a choice. The ship-to-shores were carrying on local talk and he’d got them tuned down, though a couple of the lines were open enough she could hear words she knew.

  “Hey, Khat, come on in and break in a chair, why not? I got a green one and a blue one that haven’t been sat on by crew yet; or you can help even out the red one or that yellow . . .”

  His mouth quirked into a smile: “Dyk tells me the yard did the same kind of mix anywhere they worked—him and Cris are thinking we ought to have all the same color seats in the same places if we can.”

  Khat harrumphed and shook her head, pulling herself into the back corner and taking up the blue with her back to the wall, “I dunno that seat-changing’s a problem, but if Cris is on it, then he’ll decide.”

  She shook her head silently, waving her hand at the new stuff: “Iza annoyed them like a wonder and a marvel both, she did, so we’ll hope it’s only stuff like seats that got randomized.”

  He settled into the red—by the pile of flimsies, data chips, and note-knockers right there, he’d already warmed that one up.

  “Come to talk about my sister, the captain?”

  She looked him in the eye and sighed. He looked back, so she went on.