by M. D. Cooper
She could imagine him flipping through the plas sheets, checking before he answered. Cargo hated making mistakes.
Cargo muttered something and the bridge’s net flashed with an image of Cargo’s avatar doing something very unpleasant to a representation of Brand.
The regular drop point was an out of the way FTL jump point that Brand’s people used for trading with other ships. Most of Brand’s people and ships were somewhat less than welcome at the more reputable stations, such as Trio Prime.
Sera told Cargo she’d be making the rounds and passed the active monitoring of the bridge’s net to Trace.
When Sabrina had been a private yacht, the main deck was where the owners presumably threw their parties and spent most of their time. Now it was the freight deck. The cargo hatch was on the port side and from there Sera walked into the main corridor, which ran from the bow to the stern engine shielding. The various freight holds were located off this corridor. Some had normal air and gravity, some were refrigerated and some had low, or even no gravity.
Also along the corridor were the lifts and ladders to the other decks. Sera walked towards the bow of the ship and slid into one of the vertical ladder shafts which ran through all the decks. From there she opened an access hatch to a maintenance tube. Inside the hatch were some knee and shoulder pads that she slipped on. It wouldn’t do to scuff her leather.
The tube ended in a sealed inspection port. Sera opened it and peered out at the newly installed sensor equipment. The workmanship looked good. Everything was straight and attached firmly. The exterior indicators all showed green.
Beyond the array Sera could see the space elevator that carried cargo and people between the surface and the station. Seeing it reminded her how far humanity had fallen from the glory it once held.
Millennia ago, when mankind had first set out to cross the stars, they had no faster than light technology. Interstellar travel was made possible only by utilizing fuel scoops. Ships had vast electrostatic funnels that spread for kilometers in front of them, allowed the gathering and compression of interstellar heavy hydrogen. The hydrogen, typically Deuterium and Tritium, was burned in nuclear fusion reactors to produce the thrust that pushed the ships between the stars.
Such trips took decades or even centuries.
With the considerable effort and expense required to get to even the nearest stars, mankind strove to make the most of all available resources. Technology and engineering made impressive advances as societies demanded better use of raw materials.
The space elevator at Trio was an example of the different sort of technology humans once had. In present times, few worlds could afford to build elevators to their space stations. The materials were just too expensive and the process took too long. A ship’s GravDrive was more efficient in the short term. However, over centuries of use, the elevator would use much less power to achieve the same volume of transport. It was another example of the long-term approach that humans once took, as opposed to the current mindset which was decidedly short-sighted.
It was all because of FTL. Mankind had always suspected—at least once mankind knew the significance of 299,792,458 meters per second—that some method of exceeding the speed of light may be possible. Many postulations of wormholes, space-time folding, alternate realities, and slipstreams were proposed. The actual FTL method encapsulated the ideas behind some of those theories, though it turned out to be much harder to harness than originally hoped.
Before FTL, each star system was isolated from the rest of mankind, but once a trip between two stars was reduced to a matter of weeks and not centuries, everything changed. Traveling to an uninhabited star to mine asteroids was something that could be easily achieved and mankind’s attitude toward conservation and efficiency disappeared within a century.
Trace injected a long yawn into Sera’s thoughts.
Trace didn’t agree.
Trace didn’t respond. It was an old conversation, one they performed out of habit more than anything else.
Leaving the observation point and her musings, Sera backed out of the maintenance tube and, after taking off the knee and elbow pads, climbed down to the engineering deck. This was the domain of Skeez, the ship’s Tech and Nance, the Bio.
The ladder shaft deposited her in the corridor that ran between Tech in the ship’s aft section and environmental in the bow. It was nearly more pipe and conduit than corridor. She and Flaherty had spent many a day hauling equipment through these tight spaces back when they were first refitting Sabrina. Sera was somewhat startled as her AI automatically flashed the date range of the memory in the upper right of her vision. It had been over ten years ago. Somewhere in the last few months she had passed her ten-year anniversary with Sabrina without marking the occasion. No wonder the ship had been a bit snippy with her lately.
Sera chided Trace for not reminding her of the occasion, nor for clueing her in on the cause of Sabrina’s poor temper.
Trace was unrepentant.
Trace inserted the emotion of mild surprise, followed by a pout into Sera’s mind.
Sera laughed and her avatar made a face at Trace’s.
Trace was a highly advanced AI; far more than any other AI on the ship, including Sabrina herself. Even many station and planetary AI were below her level
Just like humans, AI had their pecking order. Normally the ship’s AI was at the head of the pack, but Sabrina certainly suspected that Trace was more powerful than a human’s internal AI should be. It upset the orderly hierarchy the AIs’ preferred and it caused some small acts of jealousy on Sabrina’s part. Trace would sometimes reciprocate by hiding dates like their ten-year anniversary with the ship.
As she neared the end of the corridor, and the closed hatch that led into the environmental section, Sera smelled a foul odor. It grew stronger when she cracked the hatch open and stepped through. The space was filled with tanks that grew many of the chemicals the ship needed. Nance was standing by tank seventeen while Skeez bent over the control unit.
Nance was in the hazsuit that was her profession’s uniform. Environmental systems covered everything from waste treatment to air purification. The best way to filter air and waste was to use plants. Even so, the concentrations of various chemicals often built up high enough to be lethal to an unprotected human. Bios were never far from their hazsuits.
Nance went a bit beyond that. Normal hazsuits either were basic affairs worn over regular clothing, or were the more adva
nced versions that fit snug against the wearer’s skin, lowering the chances of snagging and tearing in extreme environments. Sera had purchased the more advanced units, even though little aboard Sabrina really called for them. Nance determined that even those suits weren’t good enough and had saved her own funds to purchase top of the line self-contained hazsuits.
The suit she wore was skintight and over a half an inch thick. It had the effect of softening her curves and giving her body a smooth, flowing, liquid look. Rather than a detachable helmet, the suit covered her head with the same thick, tight material as the rest of her body. Her eyes were covered with two protruding lenses and below that two tubes ran from her nose to the air tanks and re-circulator on her back. A spherical protuberance covered her mouth and jaw that allowed air to pass through so she could speak. It also connected to the re-circulator on her back.
Sera didn’t keep track, but Cargo said he hadn’t seen the Bio out of her hazsuit since she bought it over two years ago. Nance claimed she rarely took it off because it was too difficult to get back into if she needed to.
“The control unit’s shot, isn’t it?” The filter muffled her words, which Sera had always thought a shame, as Nance had a beautiful voice.
“Lookstobe.” The Tech replied as he straightened. “Its preg uztuned an H V tigh n tircuit cooked s’time tcycled.” The words raced from his lips so fast, they could have been a single syllable.
Nance’s smooth globe of a head cocked to one side. “Could you say that in common, please?”
Skeez pulled a greasy lock of hair from his face. “Why? You can understand me when I talk like that.”
“I control whether your toilet flushes. Humor me.”
“Fine, power regulator was tuned a half volt too high and its control circuit cooked last time it cycled. Happy?”
“How in god’s great black space did that happen?” Sera said as she approached, signaling her nano to deaden her sense of smell.
“Piece of junk tank control unit I bought on Rattlescar blew while it was cycling the tank. The algae in tanks five and seven bloomed out of control as a result.” Nance’s tone conveyed her disgust with the smell and the knowledge she would have to clean it up.
The nano could only deaden her smell so much. Sera pulled a cloth from a pocket and covered her nose with it. “Ripped off at Rattlescar again, eh?”
“Seems that way, I don’t know why I ever buy parts there.” Nance frowned. Or Sera imagined she did. The lenses on the hazsuit suit were tinted so Sera couldn’t even gauge emotion by looking at the woman’s eyes.
Cheeky often bugged Nance to just talk over the Link so she could be more expressive. In response, Nance took to using an avatar on the ship’s net. Her avatar wore a hazsuit suit as well.
Cheeky started using an avatar at that point as well. Hers was naked.
“Overall efficiency will only be affected by a quarter of a percent over the next hundred days.” Skeez said and then threw his head back and roared what had to be a line from a song—something he often did, as he was usually doing five or six things simultaneously.
“Found a new…old album onstation?” Sera asked.
“Great stuff, Earthmetal prelunar, Listeningtothree-albumsatonce…liking thisonethough. Takesmymindoffthe… smell.” He looked to Nance. “Donworrybout thetanks. You-canjust pullthemout ofthecylce.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.” Nance’s voice conveyed distress. “I like things at their peak efficiency when it comes to filtration.”
Skeez nodded absently, looking a bit green from the smell. Nance may be fanatical about her job in environmental, but none of the crew complained about it. Sabrina had the cleanest drinking water of any freighter this side of the core.
Nance sighed. “Then I guess I’ll have to pull this tank out of the cycle. If I can get a new control unit in the next twenty days, I’ll still be able to recover the contents.”
“You could just vent it all,” Sera said.
Nance closed the cover on the control unit. “I would, but the dump tube for this is port side and since we’re on station grav it would be sure to splatter them. Last time I did something like that we got fined.”
Sera chuckled. “I remember that, you nailed the stationmaster’s observation window didn’t you.”
Nance chuckled. Through her suit’s filter it sounded like she may have been choking. “Yeah, they made us clean it and my CERA cert wasn’t valid in that system, so Thompson had to do it. He still brings it up from time to time.”
Sera looked to Skeez. “Nothing you can do about the unit? And slow down a bit.”
Skeez grimaced, but spoke slowly. “I could fab a control, but I’d end up using more raw materials than a new control is worth.”
“Point taken.”
“You guys should go.” Nance said. “I’ve got to crack this tank to move its contents into storage. If I leave it in the tank for a couple of weeks the metal will pit.”
Nance removed the spherical filter from her face and the suit sealed up around her mouth, covering it smoothly.
Sera and Skeez didn’t hesitate a moment longer, if Nance was going to tanked air it was going to smell a lot worse than it already did, and they weren’t interested in finding out how bad it would be. They were out of the room and sealing the hatch in less than ten seconds.
“So how does the mass calculate?” Sera asked as they made their way through the narrow passageway aft to Tech.
“Pretty good, Thompson and Flaherty calc mass pretty good for RB’s.” RB was Skeez’s term for people with regular, non AI integrated brains.
Not everyone had super advanced AI like Trace in their heads, some people, such as Flaherty simply had a standard Link to the nets. Others had internal computers that assisted with certain functions, such as Cheeky’s special vector computation system, which augmented her brain for piloting.
Skeez was a level higher. He had a full integration between his brain and his AI. It was a long and risky procedure, often resulting in total failure or even a brain-dead human with the AI controlling the body. Skeez was a banner case, his integration had gone flawlessly and he and his AI were essentially a single entity. Whenever Sera thought about it in great detail she got thoroughly creeped out.
“How’s fuel looking?” Sabrina or even Trace could have told her that, but despite his unconventional brain, Sera liked to talk with Skeez. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming, so sometimes she had to push conversations along.
“D2 is good for another 100 light years or so. We don’t have as much Helium as I’d like, but I’ll set the power reactor to fuse H3, we can burn that in the drives.”
“Lithium?”
“Plenty of Lithium, Trio’s stellar medium is choc full of heavier Hydrogen and we scooped up plenty on the way in. Our outbound vector takes us close to the local star, once near it our v will be high enough that we can scoop without it slowing us down. We’ll get a good draw all the way to the jump point.”
“Excellent,” Sera smiled. Free fuel was always good fuel in her opinion.
“Make sure you let Cheeky know so she can plot accordingly. Everything else ship shape and good to go?”
“Sabrina’s as tight as your squeaky black pants, Captain.” Skeez said with a completely straight face.
Every now and then he completely shocked her with a keener awareness of his surroundings and the current gossip on the ship than she expected. Sera gave him a light-hearted scowl him and swung into a ladder shaft, climbing back up to the freight deck.
The aft ladder she used didn’t go up to the fourth deck where the bridge was, but ended at the rear of the crew deck, across from the wardroom. Sera stepped in to pour herself a cup of coffee and found Thompson and Flaherty eating their supper. Checking ship’s time Sera realized that it was the end of second shift; most of the crew would be calling it a night soon.
“Evening Captain.” Thompson said around a mouthful of his sandwich. Flaherty just looked up, nodded and went ba
ck to his meal.
“Hey guys.” Sera smiled at them as she poured a cup of coffee and hunted for fresh cream.
Thompson and Flaherty made an effective and efficient team when it came to managing the ship’s cargo. Neither of them talked much, but managed to communicate just about everything with grunts and gestures. They didn’t use the Link much to communicate either—Sera had checked the logs.
While Thompson had only been a member of the crew for a few years, Flaherty was an old friend Sera had known for decades. He didn’t even speak often to her. She knew he viewed himself as her protector, almost in a paternal way. They’d been through a lot and Sera had counted on him many times without disappointment.
Sera doctored up her coffee, bade them goodnight took the corridor to the bow, climbing the ladder that led to the top deck. This was the smallest deck on the ship, containing only the bridge forward, and a small observation lounge aft. The lounge had a magnificent view of the light flare from the engines when they were under heavy thrust and Sera had often sat back there, staring out at them as the ship cruised through space.
Cargo was on the bridge readying the reports that Sera had to sign before they could depart. Cheeky was also at her console, having added a tight halter top and very short skirt to her ensemble. She yawned and stretched as she stood.
“You just had to make a final course alteration right before bed.” She complained. “I had to plot it out and re-file with system traffic control.”
“Sorry about that, I didn’t think you’d already filed the report,” Sera apologized.
“When else was I going to do it, while I was sleeping?”
Cargo laughed. “I thought you had gotten all of your ‘sleeping’ in on your shore leave.
Cheeky smiled angelically at the man. “Jealous.”
Cargo couldn’t help it, as his eyes strayed down to the bold black print across Cheeky’s chest. It read ‘Got Milk?’ He sighed wistfully. “I might be.”
“Really?” Cheeky asked.
“No, not really,” Cargo grinned.
“You’re such a tease,” Cheeky said as she turned and left the bridge.