Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  I’m pretty sure I blushed then. “But I don’t know anything. Pip knows how everything works.”

  “And he proceeds on the basis that things must always work as they have, despite what his intelligence tells him.” He raised an eyebrow. “Did Pip know the coffee was bad?”

  I nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “And his advice to you was to keep your head down and your mouth shut, was it not?”

  Again, I nodded. “But—”

  Cookie smiled and held up his hand to stop me. “But me no buts, Ishmael. Yes, you have knowledge he did not. And he knows things you don’t. The difference is you use yours to help us all. That is what I look for in a shipmate.”

  “This is unfair. He’s helped me so much and I don’t want to come in here and leapfrog over him.”

  “Then perhaps you can help him in return. You could be a good influence.”

  I thought about that as I rinsed the pot. “I don’t know that I can, but I’ll try.”

  “Good. Now, what specialty do you think you’d like to pursue?”

  “Specialty?”

  “Ishmael, you could be an excellent cook, but I’m afraid if you took that path your talents would be wasted. You need to consider all possibilities. Engineering, perhaps? Environmental? Maybe you’d like to become a deck officer or cargo specialist?”

  “Wait, Cookie, you’re going too fast for me.” I waved a soapy hand in the air to stop him. “Why would I want to do one of those things? Can’t I just be a cook?”

  Cookie smiled and gave a little shrug. “How you spend the time is, of course, up to you. As for cooking, it’s my life and I love it. My pleasure comes from creating the best meals I can and making life more pleasant for the crew. You would make an excellent cook, Ishmael.” He paused and considered me with pursed lips for a heartbeat. “But I suspect you would find that it loses its challenge rapidly.”

  “You might be right but I’m not even certain what the other choices are.”

  “Look in your handbook, young Ishmael, and consider that your feet are already on a path. It might be wiser to select a branch before one is thrust upon you by circumstance.” With that, he strolled out of the galley.

  I stood there considering his words and he startled me by poking his head back through the door. “And we’re out of coffee out here. Please brew a new pot before you go.” With a playful grin and a wink he left once more.

  Chapter Six

  Neris: 2351-September-16

  Pip was the closest thing to a friend I’d had since Angela Markova. It was weird. I’d only known him a couple of weeks. Granted, they were long weeks and we’d been working together almost non-stop every day. In many ways it felt like he’d taken me under his wing, but he also seemed—I don’t know—adrift might be a good word. After Cookie’s visit I had a hard time looking at Pip the same way. Of course that same conversation also made me look at Cookie differently. He was taking the role of a wise uncle. I shied away from the notion of father since I wasn’t completely sure what that really meant. As for Pip, he became the rascally younger brother and Uncle Cookie had made him my problem.

  Day nine out of Neris, I stayed late to help Pip clean up and to talk. The galley was the only place we had that approached any level of privacy, and even there we were interrupted by people dropping in at odd hours to grab a cookie, make a sandwich, or ask me to brew another urn of coffee. Cookie’s discussion weighed on me all day. Pip must have noticed because he started in on me as soon as Cookie left for his card game.

  “Okay, Ish. What gives?”

  I knew better than to play dumb, but I didn’t want to confront that particular problem head on. “The walls are really starting to close in. There’s no privacy. We work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep. It never ends. Not to mention that every time I turn around somebody's looking for more coffee.”

  Pip grinned. “I warned ya about that. You’re the caffeine god now and it comes with a terrible price.”

  I knew he was teasing, sort of. “I know, but you’re in your second stanyear. I’m barely into my second week. How do you cope?”

  “Ishmael, my boy, it’s all about the journey. In this business, you never get there, wherever there is, so you better enjoy the trip. As an allegory for life, I kinda like it.”

  I looked at him, perhaps a bit strangely. It was so unlike Pip, I wondered who he was channeling.

  He looked a bit embarrassed and gave a half shrug. “I got that from the second mate on the Duchamp. Just before she threatened to put me ashore on Arghon.”

  I laughed. “So you were a troublemaker.”

  “Let’s just say, I got off on the wrong foot with that crew. The Duchamp had just put into Arghon and the Lois came in right behind it. Word got around the docks that there was a woman on the Lois who wanted to get into environmental but there weren’t any openings. By that time I had a miserable reputation and I really was afraid they were going to strand me. Alvarez, she was the second mate on the Duchamp, talked to Mr. Maxwell, and I gladly traded my space there for the opening in the mess here.”

  “Wow, luck was in your pocket that day, huh?”

  He chuckled. “So it would seem. I never did find out why Mr. Maxwell was willing to take the trade, but that enjoy-the-ride speech was the last thing Alvarez told me before she kicked me out of the lock. It stuck with me. I’ve fit in better here, certainly. It feels more like I belong. I think part of it is because I’ve taken a different approach and I’m enjoying the ride, as it were.”

  I nodded and we worked on the pans in comfortable silence for a time.

  “Cookie was here last night.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “That’s odd. What’d he want?”

  “Odd isn’t the half of it. He wanted me to select a specialty to pursue.”

  Pip snickered. “Great gods and small piscatorials, you haven’t been here a month and he’s already planning your future?”

  I shrugged and handed him a pot to dry and stow. “More like, he’s afraid I’m gonna get bored as a cook and I need to be working on my next step now so I’ll be ready when the opportunity comes.”

  Pip nodded and gave me a rueful grin. “Yeah, he’s always after me to pursue something, too.”

  “So…?”

  “So, what?” He looked at me blankly.

  “What are you pursuing?”

  He looked a little sheepish. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  I crossed my heart, leaving wet, soapy smears on my shipsuit.

  He glanced over his shoulder before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Trade.”

  “What’s that mean? You’re going for cargo master?”

  “Shh, keep it down. No, I’m running some smaller deals of my own.”

  “You’re what?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the door before continuing. “I’m picking up goods in one port and selling them at the next. Private cargo. Everybody’s allowed to do it. It’s in The Handbook, section fourteen. So long as you stay within your mass quota and don’t break any Confederation regulations, you can bring almost anything you want aboard including trade goods.”

  I looked at him, dumbfounded.

  “It’s true. You can look it up.”

  “I believe you. It just never occurred to me.”

  He grinned. “Almost everybody does it to some degree. I’m just a little more serious about it than most.”

  “Then why the big secret?” He had me glancing over my shoulder as well.

  He looked at me exasperated. “What do you think got me off on the wrong foot on the Duchamp?”

  I shrugged. “I figured it was the scrubber incident.”

  He shook his head. “No, that was just the set up. When they found out I was serious about private trading, they started making fun of me. They teased me because I kept bragging about making a killing with private trade with just a quarter share’s mass allotment. I think they figured if I was too green to know about pull o
ut I must be clueless about trade as well. It didn’t take long before I was a laughing stock.” He stowed a tray under the counter. “The more I tried to explain, the worse it got.”

  I stacked the last pot in the drying rack and rinsed out the deep sink. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”

  Pip looked miserable. “It made my life difficult. Somebody was always ragging on me about what I had for trade goods and laughing at the things I brought aboard.” He sighed and looked a bit sheepish. “It sounds pretty petty now, but it was miserable to live through.”

  “So, you’re still trading, but you’re keeping it quiet.”

  He nodded with a little shrug.

  We finished the cleanup, and I went to prep for more coffee. I called back over my shoulder as I measured grounds into the filter.

  “So, how’s it working out?”

  He grinned wolfishly. “Well, I’ve only made a few hundred creds, but I haven’t lost any yet.”

  “Did you pick up something on Neris?”

  He looked at me like I was much stupider than I usually felt. “What do you think?”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  He lowered his voice. “Granapple brandy.”

  “What?” I tried not to laugh. I didn’t want to be like those on the Duchamp but granapple brandy wasn’t exactly a luxury good.

  “Grishom’s, thirty-years-old and aged in the cask. I have four, one-liter bottles.”

  I practically choked. “But that’s a hundred creds a bottle,” I said in shock.

  He nodded.

  I just stared at him but then I made the connection. “That’s why you weren’t on liberty when I came aboard?”

  He nodded again. “It took all my creds to buy them. I made one trip down when we made port to pick them up from my Aunt Annie. She’d found and held them for me.”

  “Aunt Annie?”

  “Anne O’Rourke. She’s the Union Hall Manager. You met her, didn’t you?”

  “Small galaxy…hey, wait. How’d you get them under your mass limit? You must have almost nothing on board.”

  He laughed. “Probably more than you. Four liters is only a bit over four kilos. Even with the glass bottles and presentation cases, it was under eight. How much mass did you bring up?”

  He was right. “Less than ten kilos.”

  I realized I could have done the same thing, except I didn’t know anything about private trading and didn’t have four hundred creds to spare.

  “What will they bring you on Darbat?” I found the whole thing fascinating.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. It depends on the market. Last one sold there went for two hundred creds, but a lot could have changed between now and then. I have a restaurant connection. He’ll give me a hundred and a quarter a piece. That’s my fallback.”

  “Nice margin.”

  Pip gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I doubled my money going into Neris.”

  “Wow! Really? What’d you carry?”

  “Computer memory chips.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Is there that much market for them?”

  “You wouldn’t think so, but yeah. I was able to buy a case back on Gugara for almost nothing. Neris Company controls all the cargo coming into the stores there and they apply a hefty tariff. It means company people pay much higher prices there than anywhere else. It really makes it hard to live there and difficult to save enough to buy a ticket off-planet.”

  “I noticed.”

  “It also means that a case of memory chips, without the tariff, can be turned around with a pretty good margin. It’s lightweight, high demand, and practically liquid.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I’m from a trader family. It’s in my blood.” He grinned.

  “You’re full of surprises tonight.” I raised an eye brow at him. “But what’s a trader family?”

  “Well, Aunt Annie has been a trader for going on forty stanyers. She’s been taking a little down time at the Union Hall, but I suspect she’ll be back on a ship within a few months. My father owns two ships now. I grew up analyzing trade and traffic patterns on the galley table on his first ship.”

  I knew I was gaping, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You grew up on a ship?” I tried to picture kids on the Lois. “How’d you get aboard?”

  He smacked me playfully. “Not all ships are like this one, buffoon. Dad and Mom are the owner-operators of a small hauler over in the Sargass Sector. It’s small, just a few hundred tons. They run light freight out to the hydrogen miners and asteroid prospectors. We kept up on the trade data from the surrounding area because sometimes it was actually cheaper to take a jump over to Deeb to pick up something the clients wanted than to go all the way in-system to trade on Sargass Orbital. Depending on the orbits, it could be as much as three weeks into Sargass, but only four days out to the jump. Deeb maintained an orbital that was usually only eight days in on the other side. We could get to Deeb, do the trade, and be almost all the way back before we could have made it to the Sargass Orbital.”

  “So, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you still working with your father?”

  Pip didn’t answer right away and when he did, he sighed first. “He casts a big shadow. I wanted to get out from under it. Aunt Annie is my mother’s sister and helped me get onto the Duchamp.”

  “But if you grew up on ships, how could you have been fooled into the scrubber?”

  Pip looked embarrassed. “I was playing the part of a wide-eyed innocent. I didn’t want them to know I was an indie brat; so I pretended I’d never been on a ship before. The scrubber thing got out of hand, but I couldn’t get out of it without letting on that I was playing with them.”

  “What tangled webs we weave…” I quoted.

  “Something like that.”

  “So being an indie brat isn’t a good thing?”

  “Not to professional spacers. There’s a bias and it can get pretty ugly, so don’t bring it up, okay?”

  “But you’re a professional spacer now.”

  “Right. Some professional. I’m still on quarter share after more than a full stanyer.”

  “Well, if you picked a specialty…”

  “But which one? I really don’t like environmental, and I just don’t have the chops for engineering. I’m an analyst, not an engineer. I’ve tried the cargo exam, but I just can’t seem to pass it.”

  “Why not cook? You seem to do well with the inventory and accounting.”

  “True.”

  “I’m pretty sure Cookie would help. He likes ya and the two of you seem to work well in the galley.”

  He nodded. “But I don’t know much about cooking. I didn’t even know how to make decent coffee.” He cast me an evil glance out of the corner of his eye.

  “Bah, just look at it like a trade problem. Recipes are easy to come by and cooking is just imagination and technique. You’ve got plenty of imagination and the technique will come if you practice. Running the mess is more about getting the best food for the budget and that’s what trading is, isn’t it?”

  I saw in his eyes that something clicked. I could practically hear the gears turning. “You know? That might work.” He smiled at me. “For a greenie, you’re darn clever.”

  I smiled back. “Just trying to do what I can. You’ve been helping me so much the least I can do is repay the favor.”

  “Well, this might be the answer I need, Ish, thanks again.” He paused for a moment. “Dangle’s knees, I need to unwind a bit. Maybe get in a little workout and then have a nice sauna before sack time. Let’s head down to the gym.”

  “The gym?” I didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him. “Are you telling me that after all this time, you didn’t tell me this ship has a gym?”

  Chapter Seven

  Neris: 2351-September-16

  You would think that I’d be observant enough to realize that all the passages I walked past, through, and around each day on my way to and from the mess deck should lead s
omewhere. Truthfully, I always felt just a bit lost on the ship. When I didn’t have a guide like Pip, I stayed on the paths I knew.

  The gym occupied most of the deck directly under the crew berthing. Compared to the areas of the ship I’d seen, it was huge. The overhead was twice as high, and my spatial sense told me that we occupied an area almost as large as the galley, mess deck, and berthing areas combined. I looked at Pip incredulously. “Is this normal?”

  “What?”

  “This!” I waved my hands. “All this space. Man, I thought we used every cubic meter for cargo. We’re living in a cracker box up there but down here, it’s so spacious. What gives?”

  Pip chuckled. “Oh, not all the ships have a gym this big, but Federated freighters over forty kilotons do. We’re lucky that way. Even the smaller ships have some kind of exercise facility. It helps if the crew can blow of excess energy on long trips. Otherwise the walls really start to close in.”

  “Ya think?” I punched him in the shoulder. “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “I don’t what you're talking about,” he said, and laughed while rubbing his shoulder.

  “Oh yes, you do. What else about this ship don’t I know about? First, it was the view from the bridge, Now this. What else is there? A holo theater and a zoo maybe?”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought you’d figure it out with your tablet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Pull up the ship’s menu, doofus. Look at the schematic.”

  It took a heartbeat for me to realize what he was saying. My brain kept arguing with itself. One side said, Oh for crying out loud. How could I be so stupid? Then the other side took over. How should I have known? It’s only been two weeks and I’ve been busy. I did what he suggested and blinked dumbly at the detailed map of the ship that appeared. I could rotate it around, zoom in and out, and even isolate systems like water, air, electrical, and data.

  The ship consisted of a long, hollow spine with cylindrical structures on each end. The wedge-shaped cargo containers locked onto the spine and each other, six per section and twelve of those ran the length of the ship. The aft housed the main boat deck, along with some reactor/generators and the kicker engines. The schematic even labeled them as “Dynamars Auxiliaries” with an energy output rating that didn’t mean anything to me, and the fuel requirements to run them. It showed we were at eighty-five percent capacity.