* * *
There were no empty seats in the quiet area, so she stood near the wall watching some of the riggers playing board and tank games, until a bench space opened up. As she slid into the empty seat, the young man to her right moved a few inches farther away. Jael tried not to let her resentment show. She was tired of being blamed for her father, for people and events over which she had no control.
But there were ways of dealing with emotional discomfort, and Jael used one of them now. She sat perfectly still, her back and neck erect, balanced. Closing her eyes halfway, she slowly erased the visual input from her consciousness. She let her inner mind see, without her eyes.
She was aware, with her inner eye, of the expressions borne on the faces of the riggers waiting in this place. Boredom. Nervous tension. Desire. Inward-turned senses. Outward eagerness that belied the darker feelings roiling within. She smelled the aura of hot fear and desire that marked a roomful of riggers, the way musky body scents marked the dens of animals. These riggers came from dens all over the continent to this spaceport: to wait in this lounge, to hope, to need and dread the chance to take a starship into space.
But Jael didn't want to think about them now, didn't want to think about the competition. She had better things to dwell upon: memories that gave her a shiver as her thoughts fled from the here and now. As they fled into the past, to the time of her first flight, not so very long ago—a training flight, the first of four . . .
She had been working with other riggers, but it had been different then—not the bitter competition she faced now. Riggers depended upon one another in guiding their ships through the currents, through the reefs and shoals of flight. It was by navigating the Flux—an other-dimensional realm of mystery and imagination—that starships physically passed among the stars. And in steering their ships, riggers had to work together, not just cooperatively as would the crew of any ship, but as artists meshed in psychic union. Joined by shared intuition and inner vision, melded in working unity, they steered their vessels. In the schools it was difficult and challenging, flying simulations from the libraries, navigating any of a thousand actual and imagined courses. In space it was doubly challenging, because it was real, and life was at stake—and in the conquest of the challenge, it was infinitely more rewarding than any simulation.
On that first flight and those that followed, Jael had left it all behind: the fears and needs, the problems of life back on the world, the family, the business, the reputation. All that disappeared when she entered the rigger's net and wove together the threads of real space, of the Flux, of her imagination . . . and crafted of it a world so cunningly real that the spaceship slipped through it as surely as it passed through the vacuum and weightlessness of normal-space. On that first flight, she and her crewmates had carried the ship through a magical undersea realm of tropical waters, warm and crystalline blue. And where were those crewmates, her fellow students, now? All gone, off among the stars . . .
"Listen up, people, I have some new openings here!"
For an instant, she wasn't sure whether the voice had come from her memory or from the outside. She widened her eyes, brought them into focus. A shop steward was standing in the center of the lobby, job slate in hand. He was calling out positions to be filled.
Jael shook herself to alertness and listened.
" . . . a two-rigger crew to make a fast run up through Aeregia Minor, with calls at Parvis III and Chaening's Outpost. We need a four-rigger crew for assignment with a passenger-carrying line; you'll have to go through the complete screening and testing on that one. And we have two seats for single-rigger jobs, one freight and one courier." The steward paused and looked around at the attentive, brooding faces. "Don't crowd, and don't apply if you're not qualified," he concluded, then turned and disappeared into the office.
Jael rose, along with at least half the riggers in the room. There was some crowding and jockeying for position at the half dozen ID readers, then she was in line. The woman ahead of her glanced back skeptically, but shrugged and said nothing. Frowning, Jael remained intentionally oblivious to any other glances, until her turn came to slide her ID bracelet into the reader niche. She drummed her fingers, waiting.
The screen blinked and displayed:
We're sorry. We cannot consider your application for any presently available position.
Jael stared at the words. For three months now, since her last flight, she had received nothing but rejections. It would have been one thing to lose out on positions if she'd been unqualified, but she was consistently being denied even the chance to prove herself.
"Hey, are you going to stand there all day?" complained a voice behind her. Turning, Jael focused her frown upon the voice's owner. "What'd you expect, anyway?" the complaining woman muttered sarcastically. "Why don't you try the other side? That's where you belong, isn't it?"
I don't know—what did I expect? Jael thought, turning away. Fair treatment? I don't know why. She returned to her seat with as much dignity as she could muster. A young man she recognized from rigger school kept looking in her direction; she did not return the gaze. But the anger kept bubbling back up. Why don't you try the other side? The thought made her tremble. The other side of the spaceport lobby was where the unregulated shippers hired riggers—riggers so untamable or unfit for society, or so desperate, that they would fly with virtually no legal protection, not even the minimal restrictions imposed on the registered shippers. It was there that her father had hired his crews. It was there that the family name had been turned from a name of pride to a name of derision. Never, she vowed.
But other words echoed in her mind, words she had heard someone mutter behind her back more than once: "Who the hell wants to hire a daughter of Willie LeBrae?" She hadn't responded to the comment; she never did. But that didn't stop it from hurting.
And that was the worst of it, really. Her fellow riggers, if anyone, ought to understand, ought to sympathize. Most of them knew the pain of rejection well enough. But it was as though they only knew how to cut deeper, how to make a wound hurt even more. There were those, of course, who just sat there, lost in their own worlds, neither harming nor helping. They barely stirred even to answer the calls; they were hardly going to rise to anyone's defense. And then there were her schoolmates—those whose trust she had gained anyway—but they were scattered like dust now, among the stars.
Jael was going to fly again, and join her friends out there; of that she was determined. Sooner or later they would have to give her a berth.
If she had to wait here forever.
(End of preview)
If you would like to read more, please visit your favorite ebook store for a copy of Dragon Space. (Also available separately as Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger.)
For a complete guide to Jeffrey A. Carver's ebooks, visit:
https://www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm
*****
About the Author
Jeffrey A. Carver was a Nebula Award finalist for his novel Eternity's End. He also authored Battlestar Galactica, a novelization of the critically acclaimed television miniseries. His novels combine thought-provoking characters with engaging storytelling, and range from the adventures of the Star Rigger universe (Star Rigger's Way, Dragons in the Stars, and others) to the ongoing, character-driven hard SF of The Chaos Chronicles—which begins with Neptune Crossing and continues with Strange Attractors, The Infinite Sea, and Sunborn.
A native of Huron, Ohio, Carver lives with his family in the Boston area. He has taught writing in a variety of settings, from educational television to conferences for young writers to MIT, as well as his own Ultimate Science Fiction Workshop with Craig Shaw Gardner. He has created a free web site for aspiring authors of all ages at https://www.writesf.com. Learn more about the author and his work at https://www.starrigger.net.
Books by Jeffrey A. Carver
Seas of Ernathe
&nb
sp; Star Rigger's Way
Panglor
The Infinity Link
The Rapture Effect
Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway: Clypsis
From a Changeling Star
Down the Stream of Stars
Dragons in the Stars
Dragon Rigger
Eternity's End
Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries
The Chaos Chronicles
Neptune Crossing
Strange Attractors
The Infinite Sea
Sunborn
The Reefs of Time*
*forthcoming
*****
Though All the Mountains Lie Between Page 8