“I found myself stranded on a planet my star chart said was Eridi III. The locals called it Haven.
“Now I’m an industrious sort, mind you. So I didn’t let any grass grow before I started looking for employment.”
“Employment as what?” interjected the chief.
“As a pilot, of course,” he responded. “That’s what I do; that’s what I am. You won’t find a better pilot on this end of the spiral arm.
“Anyway, I was having trouble finding anyone to seek employment with. It turns out that Haven was a very insular society. They don’t have a tremendous amount of contact with other worlds and then it always comes through the theocracy. Religion controls everything there.”
Argentine understood the type of society Barry was describing.
As an officer in the Chezden fleet he had been required to study the spacefaring capabilities, militarization, and technical abilities of other civilizations they might clash with.
Theocracies were the worst.
The reputations of most societies in the Galactic spiral arm were seldom representative of their populations as a whole. That is because the only interaction outside worlds would usually have with any given civilization would be through its space presence.
For example, the worlds of the Barbary Alliance were known as being crude, vulgar, and merciless. 99% of the population on those few planets were no such thing, but since most of their space presence was made up of opportunists and pirates, such was their reputation.
Conversely many planets, like Shannon’s Home and Serenity, formed very professional space fleets that were unfailingly polite and fair in their dealings with the outside world. Argentine knew from personal experience that wasn’t representative of their cultures. It still made him mad to think about how he had been swindled there, but that was a story for another day.
The spiral arm was teaming with civilizations. Some were militaristic while others were almost totally based upon a trading economy. Of them all, however, the theocracies were the worst.
In the true theocracies the priests of the one religion ruled everything. So when you met the High Priest Captain of a trading vessel and endured his disdain for all infidels you can safely bet it was a true representation of his society.
What kept everything from boiling over was that as common as populated planets were, no one culture dominated the space lanes.
Most of the space holovids children grow up watching give a very inaccurate depiction of stellar empires.
First of all, most ‘empires’ are made up of one or two planets located within the same star system. There were exceptions and the People’s Republic of Chezden had been one of them. But compared to the largest empires that claimed over 1,500 stars they were still puny. And of course, nobody knew if there might not be larger empires; the spiral arm was made up of billions of stars.
Even a massive fleet like the one that had been built by the People’s Republic, however, was still outnumbered 1000 to 1 when compared to all the combined starships of the other empires, republics, trade associations, and independent planets of the spiral arm.
The other reality that kept things confusing was that there are no real borders in space.
The stars claimed by the People’s Republic were spread out and diffused among 100 other political sovereignties. Many of them were single system empires, but not all.
This made for an incredibly intricate political dynamic.
Add to this the fact that spaceflight was expensive.
Most ships were owned by planetary governments. Often, but not always, that meant military. Usually it simply meant that the line between military and trading vessels was blurred. What’s the difference between a government-owned armed freighter and a military ship that hauls freight? For that matter, an armed corporate ship could fight as well as some navies he’d seen.
The investment to build a ship, let alone a fleet of ships was usually too large for anything but a government or a large business consortium.
That’s not to say that there weren’t smaller independent groups or families plying the space lanes, but their ships were usually older and sometimes even decrepit. Independent freighters like the current incarnation of the Pelican were not common, but certainly weren’t unheard of.
For an individual to own or control a ship, especially one in great condition, was.
“When I finally located the holy offices of his winged servants I tried to apply for a job and was promptly arrested as a heretic.”
Sami gasped and Argentine realized she was totally engrossed in his story.
“Apparently it was sacrilege to claim an ability to navigate the heavens of the one true god if I wasn’t of their faith. They sentenced me to death.”
“So you stole a ship and escaped,” Sami added somewhat enthusiastically.
Barry grinned, tilted his head and said, “Well yeah, that’s almost kind of exactly what happened.”
Argentine wasn’t buying it.
“Almost what happened?” he reiterated.
“Well yeah, sort of.”
When nobody said anything he continued, “There were some other things that happened in the meantime but I don’t want to bore you.”
“Oh please. Bore us,” said the chief.
Based upon the looks everyone was giving him Barry thought it best to elaborate.
“Well, there did end up being sort of a case of mistaken identity.
“It turns out that one of their prophets bears a resemblance to me. You know, same eyes, same hair, same skin complexion… I found the confusion… beneficial.”
“You gained your freedom long enough to steal a ship,” Sami concluded.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Barry said.
When no one else said a word he changed the subject…
"What is the name of this ship, anyway?"
"This is the Pelican," Sami responded to his non sequitur.
"Pelican? You mean like the ugly bird with a big fat jowl hanging from its beak? That kind of pelican? What kind of ship name is that?"
"Stop trying to change the subject," the chief said.
"I'm not changing anything. I just can't believe someone would name their ship after a fish eating, cross eyed bird."
"They're not cross eyed," giggled Sami.
"Are you sure?" Barry asked. "Have you ever checked?"
"Get back your story," the chief insisted.
"I'm sure it throws fear into your enemies," Barry mumbled. Then, "I thought I was finished with my story."
"No… You said pretty much. I want to know the rest of what you didn't say."
After a moment Barry gave an exaggerated sigh...
“Of course you have to understand that it wasn’t easy getting ahold of the ship. It took some time.”
“How much time?” asked the chief.
“Well, they use a different calendar, of course. But I don’t think it was more than 17 months standard…”
“So in other words, based on a lie, you went from being in prison to living one of the highest lifestyles the planet could offer and bilked it for as long as you could. Do I have that just about right?” the chief finished.
Barry sighed and said, “More or less.”
“So what happened? Why are you on the run?” Argentine asked.
“You see, they confusedly thought that the prophet was supposed to be celibate. Not that the highest religious leaders minded; as long as I supported their edicts and propped up their rule they were happy to let me be my own man, so to speak.
“It just became rather hard to hide once women started popping up pregnant. That’s when everything went all to pot. How was I to know their religion opposed contraception?”
Argentine resisted the opportunity to respond with the obvious.
“Women?” Sami asked. “How many?”
Barry had a pained expression on his face and Argentine interjected, “I don’t think it makes any difference at this point.”
�
�At least now everything’s hunky-dory,” Barry said. “Now that I’m rid of their ship and with you they won’t have any way to track me.”
Argentine and the chief a shared a look.
With a frown on his face Barry said, “We are free of my ship, right?”
“We’re coasting along beside her,” said Sami.
“I suggest we… get out of here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Assessing Needs
En Route to Tiffany’s Planet
It was Sami’s idea (naturally) that Barry be hired as the pilot. She’d insisted that the skills he’d displayed were remarkable. Argentine thought insane was a better word but had more or less relented.
“This is a trial gig for you,” he said. “You still owe us for your rescue. We’ll provide room and board but nothing more for the next few systems on our journey. If you do a good job we’ll talk about you becoming a full member of the crew. Are you up for that?”
“Brilliant! That’s a blinding move on your part. You won’t get gobsmacked; I’m as good as I say I am. For the next fortnight or two I’m your man. Consider your challenges aced!”
Argentine looked at Sami.
“He means, sure, he’s up for it,” she giggled.
ΔΔΔ
“So how many more crewmen do we actually need?” asked Argentine.
Both he and the chief were sitting in his cabin trying to figure out the next step. Using their newly acquired star charts they were now en route to a medium distant planet that was home to a high tech civilization.
Argentine figured that with everything they were leaving behind it would be a good time to use Sami’s skills to give them some distance.
“I could definitely use another engineer or two,” said the chief. “Rory and I could use a little help on the engines but it’s mainly the ship’s maintenance that we can’t cover. Without those extra hands the environmental support, infrastructure, and ship’s electronics are going to start degrading quickly.”
“Which means we need an Environmental Specialist.”
“Yeah, and let’s not even talk about damage control.”
“What about ore extraction and refining?”
“We could train our new engineers for that, but it would be nice if at least one of them had some rock hound experience.”
Like most People’s Republic ships, the Pelican had served a dual purpose. It was a warship but it was also designed for prospecting.
The most valuable resource in the spiral arm wasn’t jewels or water or energy… It was the so-called Transition Metals. Gold (Au), Platinum (Pt), Palladium (Pd), Cadmium (Cd), and Rhodium (Rh) were extremely important to electronic and manufacturing processes and relatively rare in nature. For reasons physicist still didn’t totally understand, some star systems held these transition metals in relative abundance, but most didn’t.
The Pelican was equipped to not only extract and refine these ores, but more importantly, had the sensing equipment to find them – if they had someone that knew how to use the equipment.
This was the main reason that the Pelican had been assigned a six man security contingent instead of the standard two-man team - the refined ore made for valuable cargo.
“I’m assuming we also need to find a geologist,” Argentine reminisced.
“Yes we do,” said the chief. “If we can find one he or she should also be able to cover as our communications specialist. But I’m not holding my breath, Argentine. The kind of geologist we need isn’t that common.”
Argentine had already figured that out. Normal ship’s sensors fell under the skill sets of pilots and astrogators and the controls were tied into their stations. But prospecting sensors were specialized and typically tied into the communications station. In every navy they’d encountered all stellar geologists were communications specialist, but not all communications specialist were stellar geologists.
“What other skill sets can we not live without?” Argentine asked.
“We need someone with medical training,” he responded.
“What else?”
“Information technology. We got lucky with Barry’s ship. The protocols and logic chains were similar enough to ours to make conversion and downloading easy. We are not always going to be so lucky.”
After a moment the chief continued.
“Everything else falls in the luxury category, more or less. It would be nice to have a ship’s cook so everything doesn’t always taste the same but we could live without it. It also wouldn’t hurt to have a cultural attaché or someone with diplomatic experience, but other than that we just need manpower.”
“Yeah, well… We’ll just have to muddle through it on our own. Hopefully we won’t step on too many toes or violate too many taboos.”
"Really, a lot of it depends on what our long-range plans are. Are we looking to settle down somewhere? What are we doing?"
Argentine just grunted. He really didn't want to face that issue right now.
He also remembered something he'd been thinking about…
“Remind me to have the lieutenant put our crew through small arms training – just in case we do accidentally ruffle some feathers.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Playing Nice
Establishing Orbit
at
Tiffany’s Planet
Tiffany’s Planet circled Tiffany’s Star. It was another example of the original thinking so endemic to colonist.
Unlike most planets there were actually a fair number of ships in orbit… including what appeared to be two battleships.
Sami was literally jumping back and forth from her astrogator’s station to the communications station, covering both duties. Fortunately, Barry’s piloting of the ship into orbit had been routine.
“First, we’re being hailed,” Sami reported.
The entire bridge crew had been somewhat distracted by the images their individual screens were showing.
The planet was a relative beehive of activity.
There were at least three large orbital platforms that could be seen on this side of the planet and then an uncountable number of floating space docks, anchor points, and other structures that were probably industrial factories and the like.
Except for the Capital and a couple of other planets, the People's Republic of Chezden was nowhere near this sophisticated.
"First?" Sami said again. "We're being hailed!"
"Put it on open comm," Argentine finally said.
"What's the matter with him?" Barry whispered.
"Everyone's just amazed at how incredible this place is," Sami whispered back.
"What? This backwater dump?"
"This is Orbital Control. Identify yourself," came the voice over the bridge’s speakers.
"This is Argentine aboard the, uh… Pelican."
He'd realized at the last second it probably wasn't a smart idea to identify themselves as the P.R.S. Pelican. He'd just as soon nobody know that they were a People's Republic ship.
"We are requesting an orbital vector and docking coordinates," he continued.
"What are your intentions, Pelican?"
"Standard resupply, Control."
After a moment, "Be advised Pelican, I'm going to need to speak to whoever is in charge over there."
"This is Pelican, Actual," Argentine said. "Go ahead, Control."
"I'm guessing this is the first time you've visited our system," came the response. We don't show you in our database."
"Roger that, control. We're a first timer. Will that be an issue?"
"Negative, Pelican. But you're going to have to take a high orbit until a credit line can be established and docking fees agreed upon. If you can't pay, it's best you tell us now."
Argentine caught the chief’s eye and then said, "We are not broke and we're not rubes. As long as the fees are reasonable we should be just fine."
"Very good, Pelican. Prepare to receive orbit insertion instructions. Orbital Control out."
/> "Well, they seem like nice people," the chief ventured.
"A bit on the formal side," Argentine agreed. "But then if I had a set up like this I'd probably be a little bit careful about whom I did business with…"
Running With Argentine Page 8