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

by Jay Allan

  Gregor laughed but I didn’t get the joke.

  I looked puzzled. “Snakes? I’ve not seen any animals creeping around the Lois, are there usually snakes and mice and such?”

  Gregor roared and Diane blushed. “On most ships yes, but not the way you’re thinking.”

  I was still completely confused. “Okay, I’m sure I’m missing something.”

  Gregor stepped closer to me before speaking quietly, “Some vessels have a liberal policy on fraternization.”

  I was puzzled for a moment then enlightenment hit me. “Oh, you mean…?”

  They nodded.

  Diane shrugged. “I like men as well as the next girl, but engineering berthing isn’t even my fifth choice for a romantic interlude.”

  Gregor nodded. “Those partitions are thin.”

  I blushed thinking about Tabitha and her little snorty-snores, grateful that there hadn’t been the sounds of fraternization as well. I was also glad that we had made it back to the ship and we each went our separate ways before I had any more opportunity to think about fraternization and Diane.

  Pip was reading in his bunk when I got there. “Hey, how was the show?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing to write home about. Change of pace from you and Cookie, but let’s just say, when they release it on holo-cube, it’s not one I’ll be buying.”

  He nodded and went back to his reading.

  I was almost asleep when Bev came in from her pub-crawl. “Hey, boy toy.” She greeted me playfully, but didn’t say anything else before falling into her bunk still fully clothed and started snoring softly.

  I could feel Pip looking at me. I glanced over and he mouthed “boy toy” with raised eyebrows. I just groaned, shut off my light, and rolled into my blankets.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gugara Orbital: 2351-December-11

  Having the duty was almost a relief. I admit I liked being able to come and go, and I enjoyed getting to know some of the people I’d only seen in the mess line. The only drawback was that I felt compelled to take advantage of being able to leave, even when I didn’t have a good reason to go. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed the day out and about on the station, but it still felt good to take a bit of refuge in the ship.

  Pip joined us for breakfast, and other than a few waggled eyebrows in my direction, didn’t mention the boy toy incident again. After he ate, he rushed out. “Gotta see a lady about a belt,” he said waving as he left.

  When he was gone, I settled into the comfortable routine of port-side mess deck duty. Cookie and I split the omelet duties and I helped him make the soup stock for lunch by peeling the onions and carrots. I hung around and he gave me pointers on making biscuits. By the time he was finished showing me his tricks we made too many for lunch, but he smiled and explained, “We’ll have traditional biscuits and gravy for breakfast tomorrow. They’ll be perfect for that.”

  After lunch, I settled into a chair on the mess deck with my tablet and a fresh cup of coffee. I started looking over the food handler information. It didn’t look any more difficult than the cargo handler, but I remembered how the actual exam had taken some less than straightforward twists. I tried to think about what the steward exam might do along those lines. I hadn’t realized before just how pleasant the mess was to relax in. The seats were unpadded but still comfortable, even though they were bolted to the tables. The coffee was close by, and Cookie’s rummaging in the kitchen and occasional humming made it seem homey. Occasionally somebody would stop by for some coffee or one of the pastries that Cookie left out while we were in port. Sometimes they’d stop and talk, other times they just nodded and continued on their way. I found it an exceptionally pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

  Dinnertime rolled around and Cookie put together a baked pasta dish with beefalo and a soft white cheese made locally on Gugara. I took a couple of loaves of Cookie’s yeast bread to make garlic loaves, grilling them before chopping them into rough chunks and tumbling them into a towel-lined basket on the serving line. Set up, service, and take down were easy. I finished cleanup by 1900 and ran a few laps in the gym before ducking into the sauna.

  When I got back to the berthing area, Pip was waiting with a bundle of belts draped off the side of his bunk and a huge grin across his face. “My gods, how many did you buy?” I asked in amazement.

  “Eighty.” He beamed. “Well, eighty-one, actually.”

  “What? How’d you do that?”

  “I found Drus right where you said.”

  “Drus?”

  “Yeah, Drus Martin. That’s the woman you met. You were right. That rack of belts was spectacular. I talked to her near closing and told her I wanted to buy a bunch to take off-planet for trade and asked for a wholesale price. We haggled for a while until the market closed. I helped her pack up and push her grav pallet while we continued to barter.” Pip paused to chuckle. “She’s a salty old bird, but I’ve gotta give ya credit, you know quality goods when you see them, Ishmael, old boy. At one point, I mentioned that you and Bev had bought eight each yesterday. I forget how it came up. Something about the price she could take before her husband would beat her or something.”

  I snorted. “She used that same line on us.”

  “Anyway, she stops and says, ‘Butchy looking fem? Black leathers and an attitude with a skinny boy toy in tow?’”

  I groaned because Pip was enjoying this way too much.

  “I told her, ‘Yeah, that’s them.’ By then we’re at her storage locker on level five and she opens it up to move the bench in for the night. Gods, Ish, that place was stuffed with belts. She points out like three bales rolled up against the bulkhead. There had to be three or four hundred of them. She says, ‘For the woman and her boy I will do this. Pick any eighty, and I’ll let you have them for four hundred, final offer, but you have to take them off-station.’”

  “Wow, that’s incredible. But wait, I thought you said you got eighty-one?”

  He nodded. “I did. While I was picking out the belts, and you probably know as well as I do that there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch, she was busy at her bench. I didn’t think too much about it. I was busy pulling out different versions and trying to keep track of how many I had selected. All the while I wished I had enough money to take them all. The leather smell made my head spin. It was amazing.” Pip talked so fast, I thought he might tangle his tongue and strangle himself.

  “So anyway, after about a quarter stan, I gave up trying to pick and choose and just started adding at random until I had eighty and we signed the chits and transferred the funds. That was so much less nerve-wracking than dealing with cash. So, I’m bundling up the belts to bring back when she hands me the one that she had been working on. ‘Your friend, he was a nice boy,’ she says as she gives it to me. ‘This is for him,’ she says.”

  Pip pulled a single belt from the bunch and handed it to me. It was exquisite. Expertly crafted premium leather with an ivy vine pattern running the full length. I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. Looking closer I could see some lettering in the middle of the vines in an ornate script that blended with the curves of the vines and leaves it read, “Boy Toy”.

  Pip was killing himself with laughter, but I didn’t care. The belt was beautiful and she’d made it just for me.

  “Wait,” I said, “you got eighty belts for four hundred creds?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s just five creds each!”

  He nodded again. “Yup.” He grinned obviously inordinately proud of himself.

  “What if we can’t sell ‘em on Margary?”

  He shrugged. “I hope we don’t sell them all. We’ll need to let a few go to get some capital, but these are going to be worth a fortune on St. Cloud.”

  I stood there dumbfounded while leaning on my bunk, turning the supple leather over and over in my hands. My fingers traced the textures that the old woman, Drus, had pressed into it.

  After a few ticks I remembered something. “What about the rugs
and robes idea? I saw some of those at the flea market and you’re right about the mass, although they were nice. The fur was much softer than I’d expected.”

  “I added them to the list for the empty container. They took up the last of the cash and the final mass allotments almost perfectly. I still believe they’re the right cargo for Margary and thought the ship may as well get some advantage from them.”

  “You think he’s actually going to do it?” He knew I referred to Mr. Maxwell.

  Pip shook his head. “No, I doubt it. That’s a lot of creds to gamble on the advice of someone of my rank.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. Maybe it’s a trial. See what you can come up with, but not actually follow through. As you said, that’s a lot of creds.”

  “I’m relieved actually. If he’d done it and it went badly, I’d feel really guilty about reducing share.”

  “Yeah, but the flip side is that if it goes empty, it doesn’t contribute anything.”

  Pip shrugged. “True, but we already have a lot riding on this leg, our belts, the extra stores, if there was also a container that I picked. Man, that’s a lot for one lowly attendant to take responsibility for.” He grinned but I thought his smile looked a little wistful at the edges.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gugara Orbital: 2351-December-13

  The next morning we left Gugara en route to Margary. To mark the occasion, Cookie brought out a bucket of the Sarabanda Dark and I made one urn with it when we set the normal watch. He even had those little signs on chains like you see in coffee bars, one read, “Djartmo Arabasti” and the other, “Sarabanda Dark.” He laughed in delight when I hung them on the valves.

  It was a short trip, twenty-one days out to the Burleson limit, but Margary Station was only seven more on the other side. Durations are dictated by the placement of the system’s primary station in relation to the system’s center of gravitational mass. We had to get far enough out of the system's gravity well to allow the jump drives to bend space. The calculations were complicated and based on the ship's mass, the system's mass, the power rating on the drives, the distance we planned to jump, and I wasn't sure what else. In effect, it meant we needed to sail right out to the edge of the Deep Dark.

  Every system has a limited sphere where planets can support life. This habitable zone exists as a spherical shell around the primary star. Its location depends on the size and temperature of the star, but that area is usually deep in the system’s gravity well where the jump drives can’t operate. Normally, an orbital holds a geostationary orbit over a habitable planet, which means there is a long transit time between it and the jump point, twenty to thirty days was not uncommon.

  Margary was an exception because there is no suitable planet in the habitable zone. Margary Station is out on the edge of the system because it orbits the star. The bulk of the population live in an asteroid belt just outside the orbit of the second of two gas giant planets and the station was positioned to serve them. We didn’t have to claw all the way into the gravity well to get there or out again. As a result the run from Gugara to Margary was a short one.

  We were all in good spirits on the way out of Gugara. I felt relaxed and refreshed after my short excursions on the orbital, and enjoyed the new tasks in the galley working with Cookie. I found myself excited to start the food handler exam and thought about trying the ordinary spacer test as well. Pip still celebrated his deal on the belts and occasionally ribbed me with comments about boy toy, although never when Beverly was around. The stores accounting hadn’t been included on the trip into Gugara but the savings would be factored into the shares when we got to Margary. The total probably wouldn't amount to much, but every little bit helped.

  The second day out of Gugara, Pip looked up the Sarabanda Dark prices in Margary, trying to get a feel for whether they were rising or falling. Coffee is one of those volatile markets that operates as much on emotion as fact and he worried that reports of the bumper crop might drive the price down in Margary. The short run between the two systems counted against us on that score because it meant that information and goods moved easily between them. I was sweeping out the galley when Pip gave a strangled cry, “Aphrodite’s flimsy nighty!”

  He startled me so much that I dropped the broom and turned. He was pointing at his tablet his mouth gaping in disbelief. I crossed to him so I could see what was wrong and saw that the spare container wasn’t empty any longer. We pulled up its contents and found it filled with the exact list of items that Pip had given to Mr. Maxwell.

  Cookie came to look over our shoulders and simply gave a little, “Hmm,” before wandering off.

  Pip looked up at me, the stricken expression still painted on his face. “I don’t know whether I should cheer or cry.”

  I shrugged. “Well, your ideas are getting a good shake out, if nothing else.”

  “Yeah, but what if I’m wrong?”

  “Look, the ship has seventy-one other containers, right?”

  He nodded.

  “If this one had stayed empty, how many creds would it earn?”

  “None.”

  “Worst case is what?”

  “None of this stuff sells in Margary and we need to dump it to take on scheduled cargo. That would be a ten kilocred loss.”

  “I doubt that. Is that really likely?”

  He stopped to think for half a tick before speaking. “No. In fact…” he pulled up another manifest, “we’re scheduled to have two more empty containers when we leave.”

  “See. Okay, so then, the worst case is we drag it to St. Cloud. What are your projections there? Will that stuff sell if it doesn’t move on Margary?”

  He tapped keys, first on his tablet and then on the portable. He was in zombie mode so I went back to sweeping. Finally he spoke, “Yeah, actually, the market is slightly better on St. Cloud.”

  “Okay, so you see, it should be fine, and it’s not all riding on one throw of the dice, either.”

  Pip’s color started returning and he stopped hyperventilating as he focused on refining the calculations for St. Cloud. “Okay, you’re right. It’s just that I’d made up my mind that Mr. Maxwell was just testing me and seeing that container showing up full surprised me.”

  I nodded in response. “You ready for another shock?”

  He looked at me hesitantly. “What?”

  “If I were you, I’d start planning what you’d put in those other empties once we land in Margary, because I’ll bet Mr. Maxwell is down here the day after transition to give you that little assignment as well.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Pip said, but the color started draining from his face once more.

  “Well, maybe not, but at least figure out what to reload your container with, assuming it gets emptied in Margary and earns a bit of profit.”

  Pip gulped and started hammering on the keys.

  * * *

  Shipboard routine settled around us like an old sweater. The availability of the new stores worked wonders with the daily meals. For the first few days out of Gugara we had fresh greens and fruits. As they began to taper off, we still had an occasional urn of the nutty, rich Sarabanda to break up the monotony of the Arabasti. Cookie had ordered a bunch of canned fruit and he pulled a couple cases out of our trade goods to help me experiment with fruit crisps and cobblers. It was a lot of fun and livened up the luncheon preparation. The crew’s sweet tooth seemed to appreciate the desserts.

  I spent my evenings in the gym and sauna. I soon realized that I was in the best physical condition of my life. I spent my afternoon breaks alternating between studying for the steward exam and hanging out in environmental. I really wanted to get my hands dirty with some of the routine activities in that department to see if I’d like them.

  One day, about a week out of Gugara, I went down to find them dredging out sludge. The process wasn’t physically difficult. It smelled a bit funky, but nothing like you might expect. All in all it was just messy. The sludge that came from the water treatmen
t plant had been biologically stabilized to the point where it was practically sterile.

  As a normal part of processing, the sludge settled into the bottom of the water treatment ponds and even after the water had been pumped out, it was still wet, sticky, and slimy. We used mechanical scoops to load the sludge deposits into shallow metal containers, what the environmental gang called loaf pans. They were about a meter and a half long, a meter wide, and a half-meter deep. When full, we ran the pans through a combination freezer-vacuum compartment where the water sublimated out of it. After the loaves dried we knocked them out of the pans, wrapped each one in a sealant eerily similar to clingfilm, and stacked it in a storage space for disposition at the next port.

  One pond yielded about five of these large loaves. The pans were incredibly heavy when wet, but once dry, the sludge cakes had about the same mass and consistency as polyfoam. One person could lift one, but handling it was awkward because of its size and shape. As we were finishing up, Diane told me they would do it one more time before hitting Margary, but on the other pond. I confess it wasn’t as gross as I thought it would be, just grubby. I left them loading the last pans in the dryer when I went to clean up before heading to the galley for the dinner mess.

  As I got into the shower, the raspy buzz of the fire alarm went off followed by, “THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL. FIRE IN THE ENGINEERING BERTHING AREA. ALL HANDS TO FIRE AND DAMAGE CONTROL STATIONS. FIRE IN THE ENGINEERING BERTHING AREA. ALL HANDS TO FIRE AND DAMAGE CONTROL STATIONS. THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL.”

  I played the shower quickly over my head and zipped into a fresh shipsuit in less than a tick. In under two, I was trotting into the galley where I found Pip and Cookie working on dinner. Cookie called in and we continued with the preparations. I finally felt like I was getting the hang of it.

  * * *

  Nineteen days out of Gugara, and two before the jump into Margary, Pip picked up the data beacon and downloaded the current market conditions. He spent almost the next whole day revising and refining his models. The longer he worked, the gloomier he seemed.