“Why didn’t you say anything before I decided?” Gertrude asked, putting one hand on Morgan’s shoulder.
“I don’t want you taking a worse job for me,” Morgan replied, “And the only good one we had in common would be bad for Haru.”
Gertrude hugged Morgan, “Oh you silly girl. Don’t worry about it too much. We can still talk back and forth with video messages. Besides, with ten months off in a stretch I’m sure we’ll get overlapping time off more often than you’d think.”
“I hope so,” Morgan said. “I guess I’d better accept the offer then.”
“Valeyard is a good choice,” Emily reiterated.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Morgan said, taking a moment to compose her own message accepting the offer.
“Here goes,” she said, reaching out to push the send button, only to have the screen flash away to an incoming message just before she got there.
“Gah,” she said, jerking back her hand.
“Who is it from?” Gertrude said as Emily picked up the uplink.
“Takiyama.”
“I can’t,” Morgan said, meaning she couldn’t look, but not quite being able to get it out. She covered her eyes with her hands, hyperventilating at the thought of what she had nearly done. Even a second later. . .
“I’ll read it,” Emily said.
Emily read it. Then again. For long seconds she said nothing.
“Well,” Gertrude demanded, ignoring Morgan whose hands were still clasped over her eyes.
“It’s a crewman first class slot, cargo loading and bay maintenance. That’s a lot of heavy work, but it isn’t as bad as hydroponics or radiator duty. The pay is better than normal for the position too.”
“Really?” Gertrude asked.
“Yes, it says something about unusual expertise on the ship’s equipment.”
“You mean?” Morgan said, peeking out between two of her fingers.
“They’re offering you a job on the Shining Triumph of Earth. Takiyama’s Flagship, and one of the last Earth built vessels in existence,” Emily answered, sounding impressed.
“The name is a bit of a mouthful,” Gertrude said, “But never mind that, congratulations Morgan!”
“Most of the crew calls the ship Steve, apparently,” Emily said.
“Who names a starship Steve?” Morgan said, laughing.
PART 3: THE LONG BLACK
CHAPTER 13
We spend so much of our lives looking forward. I’ll do this when I grow up, we’ll go there next year, once I get that raise we’ll. . . the list is endless. How often does ‘then’ become ‘now’ and what we want doesn’t happen, or it does and we find it isn’t what was hoped for?
- Shelby Davron, from her seminar “How to Live in The Moment When You’ll Live for Centuries.”
YEP. MORGAN WAS LOST. Less than three hours on Takiyama Station – also known as TS1 or simply ‘the station’ – and she was completely lost.
It wasn’t her fault, not really. The station was one of the oldest in orbit of Zion, and had a rather convoluted history. A history that naturally resulted in convoluted architecture.
That architecture, and the story behind it, was one of the more fascinating tidbits about the company Morgan and Gertrude had dug up after accepting their positions.
Originally TS1 had been known as ‘Isa Shipyard’ and had been one of the very first facilities outside Sol to build anything larger than a shuttle. Instead of dispersed ‘dry’ docks, as had been the norm in Sol and therefore the rest of the galaxy, TS1 had been built as a massive hollow sphere, honeycombed with docking slips that could actually be sealed off and pressurized to allow work without sealed skinsuits. The atmospheric requirements for this had been staggering, as well as the sheer tonnage of metal to build the exterior shell.
The sealed slips hadn’t been used most of the time in practice, but for certain incredibly intricate installations and repairs it had been a noticeable time saver, giving them an edge over their competitors. The money had come rolling in, especially from the systems closer to Zion than Earth.
A hundred or so Earth years later the larger shipyard in orbit of Bountiful, Zion’s largest moon, finished its first major expansion, allowing it to work on twice as many hulls at the same time as Isa Shipyard. The end result was a forgone conclusion. The station changed hands a few times in the intervening centuries, the longest stretch seeing the shipyard repurposed as producer of luxury yachts, but the infrastructure slowly became so old that the station simply couldn’t fabricate the newest components and designs.
It was then that Takiyama had bought the station. It wasn’t useful as a shipyard any longer, true, but the station was still large and made an excellent cargo depot. Several of the smaller docking slips had even been sealed permanently and converted into massive cargo storage areas and barracks for the crews to use in between their delivery routes. Parts of the fabrication areas were sectioned off and divided up into offices, officer apartments, and leisure facilities and the existing corridors were rerouted and modified as necessary.
In other words, any semblance of order and pattern to the station’s layout was decades dead.
Morgan pulled up the map again on her uplink, the three dimensional hologram helpfully placing a blinking dot on the diagram to tell her where she was.
Another dot showed where she wanted to go – the block of offices assigned on the station to Steve’s officers and senior crew while in port.
What was missing was the route connecting the two. Despite being the finest and latest military tech (of ten years ago) the poor little computer intelligence of her uplink had tried for almost a minute to give her a route before glitching out in an error and giving Morgan the digital equivalent of a shrug.
Morgan’s instincts for finding her way, honed over long years in the mines, had failed her just as thoroughly. Sighing she made a best guess and started out again. At least they would be expecting some amount of confusion, wouldn’t they? She could hardly be the first person to get lost in the massive station.
A few turnings later found Morgan on the inside edge of the hollow sphere, looking through a transparent aluminum window opening onto the main hold. The row of windows ran the length of the corridor, giving a spectacular view of the mostly empty hold.
Off to one side Morgan could see the shuttle they’d come up in, just a few levels up and a few hundred meters off to one side. Seeing it was somewhat depressing, since she’d been wandering the station for at least an hour and was still within easy sight of where she had started.
Farther in were several of the company’s freighters. They certainly looked impressive, not that Morgan had a lot of experience to judge them by. Not counting two shuttle rides she’d only ever been on one ship – the Pale Moonlight – and had never actually had the opportunity to see what it looked like from the outside, or even a picture of it. She’d studied ship design in school, but that was no substitute for personal experience.
Morgan leaned up to the window, trying to make out the name written on the freighters.
“The window can zoom,” a rather gruff and slightly off sounding voice said from behind Morgan.
Turning around Morgan found herself facing a rather nondescript looking man, his coveralls’ nameplate reading ‘Brown.’ Looking closer Morgan realized her first impression was in error – the man’s neck was a mass of scars, and Morgan realized the odd note in his voice was because his voice was actually artificial, provided by a small cybernetic implant in his throat.
Realizing she’d been staring a bit too long Morgan cleared her throat.
“Could you show me?” She asked.
Instead of speaking the man gestured to the wall in between two of the panes of aluminum. There was a small control panel that Morgan had missed on her first glance at the wall.
It only took the work of a moment to pull up the display controls.
“The left one,” the man said.
Seeing no reason not to, Morgan
did as he suggested. The freighter seemed to leap forward until it filled the whole pane. Judging by the size of the cargo hatches it was a monster of a ship, certainly longer than five hundred meters, perhaps even closer to a thousand.
It was bulky, thick, and worn looking. The paint job was grey, but clearly redone many times over the years with slightly different shades of grey, giving it a very mottled appearance.
It was the prettiest ship Morgan had ever seen.
The design was different than the gate hoppers Morgan had studied. It was vaguely mushroom shaped, which was the biggest clue as to the ship’s purpose. That type of design was only used on vessels designed to travel outside the gate system, most often to reach asteroid belts and other places without enough of a gravity well to allow a ship to leave subspace. It was also used in military vessels, especially the large carriers.
The head was one big mass of armor, designed to absorb impacts from stray particles and interstellar dust while traveling sixty kilometers per second, then filled with water to absorb incoming radiation. Particle impacts hadn’t been as big a problem originally – Earth was inside the so called ‘local bubble’ with particle densities way down from the rest of the galaxy. None of the colonies shared the same favorable conditions, however. In fact many, including the Parlon system, were even higher than the galactic norm.
The back of the freighter flared back out again to fit stupendous fusion engines. Engines of that type were even rarer than deep space ships – they were powerful enough to accelerate the ship up to max cruising speed in mere minutes, but unlike the gradual acceleration of an EM drive it required fuel in addition to power. Morgan was surprised to see a civilian vessel with them – even the asteroid runners didn’t need the high acceleration. Having the fusion engines meant the ship could also turn around and decelerate in a few minutes, minutes when the engines would not be protected from oncoming particles. It was an extravagant solution to the problem, modern design simply incorporated a double-ended approach with mushroom heads and EM drives at both ends, since even doubling the armor and engines needed was still cheaper than building even a single fusion engine. And that was before maintenance costs.
Between the armored head and the engines was the core of the ship, the long hull that held the crew spaces, engineering, the normal stuff any spaceship needed. Most of it wasn’t visible, however, because of the cargo bays. It looked like the ship was completely encircled with modular cargo bays, a thin lattice framework extending out and around them on all sides to secure the bays and hold things like the ship’s sensors and arrays. There were a number of heat radiators visible, fairly small fins that individually weren’t very good at dissipating waste heat. What they lacked in size they made up for in numbers, as well as the many other spots that looked like they held retracted radiators.
Having retractable radiators in a civilian design was also unusual. The retractable radiators themselves were easier to repair and maintain, but the machinery to extend and retract them were harder to maintain and repair. Most vessels had between two and four massive and intricate radiators, since many small ones also increased the amount of maintenance required.
There were a few other hatches dotting the sides of the freighter, too small to be cargo hatches even if they had been on the modular bays rather than the lattice framework surrounding them. They were also too large to be a crew airlock, they almost looked like. . .
“Is that a military ship?” Morgan said, turning to the laconic newcomer. There wasn’t much doubt, not with that many odd design choices.
“Formerly. The name?”
Morgan hadn’t looked at the name closely yet. She’d been too busy taking in the design.
It was a little hard to read, since the lettering wasn’t all in the same shade of black any more than the hull had been grey, but after a moment she made it out.
Shining Triumph of Earth, Vessel 5.
“That’s Steve?” Morgan said, almost not daring to believe her luck. This beautiful, powerful ship was going to be her new home, her new job.
“Yep. Welcome aboard.”
“You know who I am?”
“Only new hire up today for Steve. Easy.”
Morgan tried to compose herself as best as she could.
“Thank you,” she paused for a moment, then added, “Sir?”
“Second Lieutenant.” A shrug. “Call me Jacob. Offices are this way.”
Morgan followed him, sparing a moment to glance back at the enlarged picture of the ship. It was a majestic sight all on its own, but it was also the first time Morgan had ever seen something actually made at Earth before. She wasn’t quite sure what to think of that. Gratitude that mankind had spread to the stars, surviving whatever unknown catastrophe that had struck Earth? Sadness at its loss?
She had actually almost made it to the offices without the help – it was only three or four turns and a pair of ladders away – but Morgan was still grateful for the escort. He didn’t say anything as they walked, which was fine too. There were so many conflicting thoughts and emotions running through Morgan that she wasn’t sure she could manage even light small talk at the moment.
They were just outside a hatch prominently labeled ‘S.T.E.V.5’ when her uplink chimed that she had an incoming call. Not just an incoming call, but an urgent one.
The moment she accepted the connection Gertrude started talking, her voice raised and agitated.
“Morgan, please, I need your help.”
The call was audio only, but Morgan could still tell how upset Gertrude was. She glanced at Jacob.
“This might take a bit.”
“S’okay.” He pointed at the clock above the door. “Still have time.” He leaned against the wall, twisting his neck left and right, accompanied by startlingly loud popping noises.
“What happened, Gertrude?”
“I won’t let these people take care of Haru. Morgan I won’t. I can’t. I’ll quit first.”
When they’d left the shuttle Gertrude had gone first to the daycare facilities for the crew of the Daystar Fading instead of meeting her captain. It was an easy guess that was what had her upset, but why?
“G, you need to give me details. Is it the facilities? The employees?”
“Yes!” Gertrude said, her voice rising. Morgan knew that Gertrude wasn’t cryptic on purpose, but at least long exposure had helped her puzzle out the other woman’s meaning.
“Both. Right. Can you make a complaint? Ask to put Haruhi in a different ship’s childcare? They won’t be all the same, right?”
A bit of movement drew Morgan’s attention. Looking up she saw Jacob was shaking his head, a sad smile briefly on his lips.
Gertrude was talking again, so Morgan looked away.
“Oh, they aren’t. Of course the manager of the facility here is married to my captain, and anything I say about her will of course get back to the captain, and she’s not likely to take my side against her spouse. Besides, the childcare is structured around the ship’s schedules, so the round the clock care is only available while the ship is out.”
“Could we talk with them? Maybe the problem is something we can work through?”
“Morgan, I almost slapped that woman after less than a half hour. She sucks the joy out of everything around her. She stopped my tour five times to punish children for the tiniest of things, things that are normal for children. And the punishments! She raps them on the hand for minor things. She has this ancient bit of wood called a ruler she uses, and I heard her order one child to bed without dinner.”
That didn’t actually sound all that bad to Morgan, depending on what the punishments were for. However, she also realized her childhood interactions with adults on Hillman were considered child abuse elsewhere in the galaxy, so she didn’t point that out.
“What can we do then?”
“I don’t know. There have to be other members of the crew who take turns watching their kids rather than put them in the facilities here, but I don�
�t know any of them, and they don’t know me. I also don’t have anything to offer them – I don’t have a spouse who can take a turn wrangling kids.”
“You have me,” Morgan said, quietly. It was hard to say, but she meant it. “I can help.”
“Morgan, you can’t do that. I won’t let you give up your career – on your first day no less – for me.”
“Why not? You’d do the same for me if I was in your position.”
“It’s not fair to you. Besides, how would it work? You’d be without an income, and while childcare is included in my pay, food and everything else isn’t. Even with the renters in my house coving most of the bills for the house, I won’t be making enough to support all three of us.”
“Is there something the company can do? Something like this has to have happened before?”
Jacob cleared his throat, a rather jarring noise with the added electronic distortion.
Morgan turned to look, one of her eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression.
Jacob stepped closer so the uplink would pick up his words.
“Sorry. I try not to eaves. Heard anyway. It isn’t hard to guess the details. Single mother, new job.”
“And you have a suggestion?” Gertrude asked. Morgan could hear her annoyance, understandable given that she couldn’t know who was talking.
“Plenty of couples who both work for the Company. Easy enough to put them on ship’s with opposite schedules.”
“And you’d help us?” Morgan asked. “You’ll likely lose me from your crew.”
Jacob shrugged.
“Better to lose you for a bit than forever. You know old equipment. You’ll be back to Steve eventually. Let’s do talk to the captain.” Jacob turned and opened the hatch. He beckoned for Morgan to enter before adding for Gertrude. “She’ll call you back. Wait. Captain’s a reasonable sort.”
“I think we should listen to him, G. He’s the second lieutenant of my ship.”
“Okay.” Gertrude didn’t sound happy about it, but at least the tension in her voice had lessened. “I’ll take Haruhi up to our quarters and get some stuff settled in.”
The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1) Page 19