by M. D. Cooper
The mad dash to make their cargo presentable had been far more hectic than their normal endeavors. Masking the origin of cargo within the Inner Stars was relatively simple—especially since shipping crates seemed to range hundreds of light years from their origin worlds, and it wasn’t uncommon to see cargo from one world in crates bearing labels from half a dozen others.
But out here there would be no Inner Stars crates or cargo, and they had only rudimentary information about nearby systems. The crew had decided that, rather than screw up some nuance, the best bet would be to leave off all markings.
It looked extremely suspicious—which the inspection team’s curious glances confirmed—but there wasn’t much they could do about it now.
“I saw that your ship has been to Naga in the past,” Mary said as they walked down the corridor amidships toward the ladder that would take them down to engineering.
“Yeah, we noticed that too,” Jessica said, her tone neutral and conversational. “We picked up the Tulip just a few years ago—we’re still working out some good trade routes and saw this system on the logs. You’re a long way out, but sometimes that’s where the best opportunities lie.”
Mary nodded. “We’re always looking for new ships to make runs out here. What do you have onboard?”
The contents of the cargo was something they had spent no small effort sanitizing. Tech was risky because both software and hardware was filled with information belying its origins—even with the most generic of components—and so most of it was floating in the void half a light year back.
Food was less risky, provided certain isotopes were extracted. The end result was a cargo that consisted mostly of melons, dried foodstuffs from various worlds, and some rare gems and minerals—though anyone looking too closely at those would realize that their radiological signatures were from the Orion Arm, not the Perseus Arm of the galaxy.
“Oh, you know, a bit of this and that. Stuff that we hope your folks will like, at least enough for us to buy some good return cargo,” Jessica replied.
One of the inspection team members laughed—Lana, if Jessica had interpreted Mary’s rapid-fire intros correctly. “We have slime, do you need any slime?”
“Never know,” Jessica grinned. “Some people want slime. There’s a buyer for almost anything.”
“I would imagine that they’ll be far more interested in credit—ship like this,” Pete said.
“We’d never argue with hard credit, either,” Jessica said. “But there’s not much profit in hauling credit from one system to another. Never know what might look good to our buyers.”
They reached the ladder, and Jessica slid down the rails first, before turning to watch the inspection team descend more carefully, passing their scanning equipment down to Mary who had followed Jessica down.
Jessica couldn’t help but notice how both Lana and Pete were taking long looks at her. She had wondered how much she would stand out. Cargo had proposed that he meet with the inspection team, but the crew agreed that Jessica was better at smooth-talking visitors like this.
That had surprised her. Jessica had seen Cargo work a mark more than once, and he was good. That the crew thought she was better was no small compliment.
Jessica remembered it well. Aldebaran had been their second stop on the quest to find Finaeus, and had been one near-disaster after another.
For some reason, Cheeky had misread the station’s lane designations and came down the wrong approach. They had corrected quickly enough, but the port authority had sent a team to examine their nav systems—claiming they’d flag Cheeky’s record if they weren’t allowed on the bridge.
Cargo had acquiesced, and when they arrived, Cheeky had been so flustered about her mistake that she lost control of her enhanced pheromone mods. The inspection quickly devolved into the station’s team pawing all over Cheeky—as well as Cargo, who had been on the bridge at the time.
It took Sabrina rapid-cycling the air on the ship and switching over to backup filters to get the situation under control. One of the inspectors had threatened to file charges of manipulation, but the others calmed him down. In the end, they had all gone out for drinks.
Even Cargo had gotten lucky that night.
Back in the present, the Hermes Station inspection team had finally all reached the base of the ladder and Jessica led them through the doorway into the engineering compartment. Inside, Nance waited with her hazsuit’s clear helmet firmly attached and a stoic expression on her face.
“Folks, this is Nance, our engineer and bio. Nance, this is Inspector Mary and her team, Pete, Lana, and Rory,” Jessica said, hoping that she had properly identified Lana and Rory.
No one contested her name assignments, and Mary nodded amicably.
“Nice to meet you, Nance,” Mary said. “We’ll need to look at your antimatter containment, and I’d like to see your flow regulators as well. We like to make sure that you’re able to fully shut down your reactor and do a clean startup.”
“Of course,” Nance said. “Reactor is already offline—we shut it down when we were ten-thousand klicks out, per your regulations.”
“We saw that,” Mary replied amiably. “Not everyone is so respectful.”
Jessica leaned against a bulkhead while Nance showed the inspectors the ship’s antimatter bottle, and allowed them to examine the flow regulators.
Lana placed a tamper lock on the bottle, and when they completed their review, Mary gave Nance a quizzical look. “Jessica said you were both engineer and bio, was that correct?”
“It is,” Nance nodded. “We run a full hydroponics system on this ship. Plentiful baths and showers on long trips make for great incentives when you want good crewmembers.”
“That’s unusual,” Rory said. “To have full hydroponics on a ship like this, that is.”
Nance nodded. “Yeah, but it’s one of the things that made a job here appealing for me. I like to manage the tanks as much as the engines.”
Mary glanced to Jessica. “Mind if we examine your bio-systems too? It’s not strictly necessary, but Nance here seems like a conscientious sort, and if they pass muster, we can lighten the biocontaminant restrictions.”
Nance led the inspectors out of the engine compartment and down the corridor to the environmental systems bay.
Even though Jessica had been aboard Sabrina for a decade, she had only been in the environmental bay a few times. Nance guarded it with the fierceness of a mother bear and Jessica had no desire to get on the bio’s bad side.
“Wow, this is extensive,” Pete said as they walked amongst the tanks, filtration systems, and oxygenation mats.
“How big is your crew again?” Mary asked.
“Six right now,” Jessica replied. “We can handle a lot more, though, just haven’t found the right folks yet.”
“I’ll say you can handle a lot more. You could have a hundred people aboard and they’d still get to draw a full bath each day with this setup,” Lana said.
“Ship used to be a yacht,” Nance supplied. “That’s what the previous owners told us, at least.”
“Doesn’t look much like one,” Pete said.
Jessica didn’t furnish Sabrina with a reply. Instead she watched as Pete leaned over one of the tanks.
“Lot of these are low. You’re missing a lot of biomass,” he observed.
“Yeah,” Nance said while casting Jessica a worried glance. “I had a bad pump with a bum sensor. It tripped up the flow monitoring systems and I didn’t realize we had a problem till there was a full red-algae bloom underway. Last time I buy a pump at Ra—Herschel.”
Pete laughed. “Yeah, don’t buy shit at Herschel. Those farmers have never met a tolerance requirement that they didn’t blatantly ignore.”
“You know,” Mary said, her tone pensive. “One of our local companies may be able to help you with this, with what we have going on down on Marsalla.”
“On Marsalla?” Nance asked.
Mary shot her a skeptical look. “Yeah, the photosynthesis plant energy research going on down there.”
“Oh, the retinol work you’re doing, of course,” Nance said borrowing from Finaeus’s comment and recovering quickly. “I’ll admit that it’s interesting, but I didn’t think it was ready for commercial application.”
“It’s been tricky—from what I hear,” Mary began. “But they’ve finally worked up stable microbes that utilize both chlorophyll and retinol simultaneously to generate energy. They can operate with lower levels of oxygen, and adapt better to different stellar spectra. It could make terraforming worlds under red and blue stars take a lot less bio-tweaking.”
“That does sound rather interesting,” Nance said aloud, replying to Mary’s statement. “I’ll look into it. I will need to pick up more biomass either way. I’ll certainly want to give it a look.”
“Place looks tip-top,” Lana announced from the far end of the compartment. “If our station’s environmental systems were this clean I’d take showers over sonic cleans a lot more often.”
“Great,” Mary said. “We’ll just need to look over any organic cargo you have, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
Jessica saw both Pete and Lana glance over at her purple hair and resisted the urge to sigh. She couldn’t be the first person they had ever seen with purple hair.
Jessica led the inspection team back up the ladder into the port-side passageway. She stopped in front of Port-Side Hold #2. Normally they transported produce in stasis—a capability they never advertised in the Inner Stars—what with stasis being lost technology there.
Finaeus had assured them, however, that stasis would be in common usage in Orion space.
Jessica certainly hoped that would be the case as she switched off the stasis field and gestured for the inspection team to enter.
While her team entered the hold, Mary remained in the corridor with Jessica. “Takes a lot of power to run stasis that long. I can see why you have that extra reactor.”
“There are some long runs out here,” Jessica said. “If we can deliver exotic produce that’s still perfectly fresh, we can charge top dollar.”
“Watermelon!” Rory called out, speaking for the first time since coming aboard. “I haven’t had watermelon in decades!”
“If you’re interested, we could sell you some of this at cost,” Jessica offered.
Mary shot her an appraising look. “Cost?”
Jessica quickly addressed the crew.
The rest of the crew agreed, and Jessica did some quick calculations in her head. “Well, we got them on a pretty good deal, but you’re right about stasis being pricy to run, so, by weight they’ll be forty of your local credits per kilo—if my math is right.”
“Forty!” Rory called out and Jessica wondered if she had gone too high. “What a steal!”
“A bit low, but it seems reasonable,” Mary said with a smile. “Glad to see you weren’t trying to offer a bribe, Jessica.”
“Glad to see you weren’t asking for one,” Jessica replied.
Mary laughed and waved to her team. “Rory, they’ll set aside a crate. Come pick it up after your shift.”
“You guys better,” Rory said with a stern look. “I’ll be back in three hours with the credit for twenty kilos worth.”
AN AFTERNOON STROLL
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Hermes Station
REGION: Naga System, Orion Freedom Alliance Space
Jessica stepped through the airlock and took in the sight of the docking ring’s wide sweep. Despite being on the far side of human space, it really didn’t look that different from most of the stations she’d seen back in Sol, or in the Inner Stars.
Fewer hawkers were present than on most Inner Stars stations, but there wasn’t much foot traffic nearby, and no other ships were docked in any adjacent berths. The station certainly was cleaner than many she had visited in the past, though that was most likely due to the low number of ships that passed through.
Signage pointed to the closest maglev and Jessica reached back for Trevor’s hand, grasping it tightly as they walked toward the platform.
“So, if Cargo is finding buyers for all our stuff, what are we doing out here?” Trevor asked.
“What?” Jessica asked, bumping her hip against his thigh. “Getting off the ship isn’t reason enough to go for a stroll?”
Trevor chuckled. “I’d stroll anywhere with you Jess, but I know you. You have mission-face.”
Jessica shot a wounded look at Trevor. “I do not have mission-face. This is my fun-afternoon-out-on-station face.”
“Sure thing,” Trevor said and kissed the top of her head.
“Not mollifying me that easily.”
“You stil
l haven’t said what we’re doing out here.”
Jessica shrugged. “Just getting the lay of the land, customs, behavior, see if there’s anything interesting to buy.”
“Like guns?” Trevor chuckled.
“Well, I don’t have to buy clothes anymore, you keep me buried in new outfits.”
“What can I say?” Trevor shrugged. “I have a gift for fashion—though mostly on you.”
Jessica glanced at Trevor, who wore a pair of tight grey pants, a blue shirt—which she knew he’d selected to compliment her coloring—and a long dark coat that tapered back into a tail that ended just above his ankles. The jacket was fitted and made his torso look like a massive triangle, which it largely was, given the width of his shoulders.
“Don’t know about that,” she replied. “You look pretty delicious yourself.”
“Are you kidding?” Trevor chuckled. “I’ll never be past that stage with my girl.”
“Such a big sap,” Jessica said with a smile that contained no displeasure.
“The sappiest,” Trevor replied.
“Still,” Jessica replied as they walked past a vendor selling a rather curious assortment of meats and pastries. “Keep an eye peeled for hot outfits and mean-looking guns.”
“When haven’t I?” Trevor replied. “But if you think we’re walking past that stall without giving the local cuisine a try, I’ll toss you over my shoulder and go over there anyway.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Jessica chuckled as she turned back toward the vendor.”
“We’ve fought before. I had to carry you out the ring.”
“I let you beat me. Not to mention the fact that I beat the crap out of just a few people before that fight,” Jessica said, her tone indignant.
“Well, I’m not going to fight you again, so we’ll have to let that one-time stand,” Trevor replied.
“So long as you don’t think you can beat me,” Jessica muttered as they reached the vendor.
“Welcome to Hermes!” the proprietor, a shorter man with mousy brown hair, said. “I saw you guys come off that new ship! Don’t see a lot of new ships around here. Where you from?”