25 Isten 1117: Jumpspace
Well, I’ve actually been up for more than today, but this seems more like today’s log.
Saahna and I got up a bit before midnight. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to do more than clean up before heading to our stations. Ships are vulnerable during skimming and, while rare, attacks do sometimes occur. So, she needed to be in the Gunnery Suite. Just in case. I grabbed a coffee bulb and headed up to the Bridge.
Do’rex was already there, running through approach vectors on his console.
“You get any sleep?” I asked as I dropped into my seat and strapped in.
He flipped a tentacle. “No, I’ve been monitoring our transit. No problems.”
“Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I am fine. My sleep cycles are different from yours, remember? And I will have the entire week to rest while we are in Jumpspace.”
“OK, great. Thanks.” I got a final tentacle flip in return.
I looked out of the canopy. The gas giant loomed ahead of us; Do’rex had already opened the shutters and flipped us after decelerating in. I could see a narrow ring further out; we were already within it and close to the cloud tops. I checked the sensors. It looked like we were the only ones out here.
“Ready to start to skim on your orders, Captain,” said Do’rex.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
He clicked. “Starting skim.”
I opened the ship-wide comm. “This is Captain Kodai. We are starting our skim run. Anyone wishing to watch operations should tune to ship channel 7.” I clicked back off, then leaned back to watch.
There isn’t much to see, actually. Do’rex closed the shutters over the canopy before we entered the atmosphere, so the only thing I could actually look at was on the external sensors. And even that didn’t show much. We simply dropped deep into the atmosphere with our scoops open, pulling in methane, propane, other hydrocarbons, and anything else that happened to be there. Our purification plant extracted any deuterium or tritium that it could find to run the fusion plant, and compressed the rest to use as reaction mass or to run through the heat exchangers for cooling.
It took about an hour, but eventually all of our tanks showed full. Do’rex pulled the ship back up, and we were back above the cloud layer.
“Anything else, Captain?”
I shook my head. “Let’s head for Jump distance.”
Around inhabited worlds, Jump points are clearly defined; outbound ships head for a position 100 diameters ahead of the planet in its orbit, while inbound ships plot to arrive around 100 diameters trailing it. Gas giants used for refueling are different. Basically, everyone who is there is leaving (since there is usually no point in refueling before landing unless you’re just passing through), so any point 100 diameters away from the planet is fair game. Still, most ships follow the “100 diameters ahead” rule, and we were no exception.
It would take another few hours before we hit 100 out. I leaned my seat back and started reviewing our Jump calculations for the third time, wishing I could just go back to my bunk.
About 45 minutes after the skim ended, Varan came onto the bridge. “All of them are asleep,” he said with a sigh. “Finally. And hopefully they’ll all sleep late tomorrow.”
I looked over my shoulder to see that he was holding a beer out towards me. “Hey, no alcohol on the bridge.”
He continued holding the bottle. “That was Captain Anna’s rule. I can’t see you keeping it.”
I hesitated, then took the bottle and popped it open. “It was a stupid rule anyway.”
He laughed, then climbed up into the Captain’s chair. I felt a brief moment of annoyance, then shrugged. All of us were at least minimally qualified for every position on the ship; that sort of thing is kinda necessary on a Free Trader, so he knew enough not touch anything he shouldn’t. And I could have taken the seat at any time, I just felt more comfortable in my old position. And I didn’t want to reconfigure an entire console again.
“No wonder Captain Anna was always in a bad mood,” he said, settling in and looking around. “Looking sideways to watch the two of you would give me major neck pain in no time.”
“She never looked at us. Never took her eyes off her consoles. And not because she implicitly trusted us; she could just see what we were doing on her console and would immediately call us on anything we did wrong.”
“So why aren’t you up here now?”
“Hey, I’m used to this seat! No need to move for now.”
Do’rex was looking at me. “So… Captain. Can I… Are we allowed to have intoxicants up here?”
I raised my beer bottle. “Hey, as long as you get us to where we’re going, I don’t care what you’re doing.”
“Oh? Thank you, Captain.” He started unfastening his harness.
“Hey, stay, man, I got you!” Varan climbed back out of the Captain’s chair. “What do you need?”
“A stim-stick would be nice, actually.” Do’rex hesitated, then strapped back in. “It is rather late.”
Varan laughed. “I get that too.” He looked at me. “Want another?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Sure thing, Captain.” He jokingly emphasized the last word, then left the Bridge. A few minutes later, he came back with two bottles and a stim-stick. He handed one of the former to me and the latter to Do’rex, who clicked in response, took a bite of the stick, then immediately returned to examining his console.
Varan hopped back into the Captain’s seat, looked at us, then immediately looked away and pulled up something on its console. “Looks like everyone is asleep.” He frowned. “Except that lone passenger from Fugitak. Amada? She’s not in her cabin.”
“Check Engineering. Or Saahna and Jami’s cabin.”
I heard him tapping at his display. “Oh. Yeah. She’s… in the crew cabin?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
He was silent for a long moment. I looked over my shoulder to see him looking at me. “Is that a good idea?”
I shrugged and turned back to my console. “It’s Jami’s problem to deal with, not mine. As long as she does her job…” I stopped suddenly and checked my own readouts. Jami was in Engineering and ready for Jump, and I relaxed again. “As long as Jami does what she needs, her involvement with our passengers is her concern.”
“What about… what about the rest of us?”
I didn’t turn but shrugged. “That’s up to you. Be discreet and don’t interfere with operations, and it’s fine.”
“OK then… sure. That’s… different. I guess.”
I did turn to look at him at that. “That was always Captain Anna’s policy.”
He looked at me in surprise. “Really? I thought…”
“You must have known about my escapades. And Saahna’s.”
He seemed surprised at that. “I covered up for you!”
It was my turn to be surprised. “What? When?”
“Well… Remember Kalimor?”
I thought for a moment, then smiled. “Oh yeah! Dawan!”
“I lied to Captain Martin about the time you spent with her!”
“Really? We weren’t actually keeping it that secret.”
“You were with her every night!” The conversation seemed to be angering him for some reason.
“Yeah, I was. And?”
“What about Saahna?”
I sighed but thought a few moments before responding. “Saahna and I know each other. Really well. We’re close. And we’ve got an arrangement between us. Sometimes she’s unhappy. Sometimes I’m unhappy. But we both know that, in the end, we’re always there for each other. What more is there?”
He frowned. “Stability?”
“We’re always there for each other,” I repeated. “What is that if not ‘Stability’?”
“I… don’t know.” He sighed.
“It works for us. All either of us cares about is that the rest of you accept it.”
I saw his brow furrow as he thought. I could tell he wasn’t happy with my answer. Fortunately, Do’rex intruded before he asked another question.
“We are at 100, Captain,” he said. “We can Jump at your command.”
I turned back to my console. “Then let’s get out of here.” I didn’t bother to make an announcement; the crew would be ready, and the passengers were probably asleep. But I did dim the lights.
Do’rex didn’t acknowledge the conversation we had been having. “Jumping.” I watched through the canopy as the faint glow appeared around the edges, as the stars faded into that amorphous gray background. Once the transition was complete, I hit the control to close the shutters.
Do’rex had been looking at his own controls. “Looks like a clean Tumble, Captain. Our transit should only take about six days. We’ll be at Boilingbrook ahead of schedule.”
“Nice job. And I’m sure our passengers will be happy.” I restored the lighting to normal, then unfastened and slid my seat back. “And I’m either up way too early or way too late; I can’t tell which. I’ll see all of you in a few hours.”
Varan grunted as I ducked under him. “Maybe I’ll just stay here,” he said, reclining in the Captain’s seat. “I have to be up before our passengers. Otherwise, they’ll never figure out the dispensers on their own.”
I waved over my head as I left the bridge. “Knock yourself out. I’ll show up… sometime.” I heard an amused click from Do’rex as the hatch closed behind me.
I went straight to my cabin. I immediately saw, in the dim light, that Saahna was already there, asleep. I stripped off my jumpsuit, tossed it into the refresher, and then climbed into the bunk beside her.
She sleepily moved over next to me as I settled down. “Sleeping late tomorrow… OK?” she mumbled.
“Sure,” I said, already falling asleep myself. “Night.”
“Night,” she replied.
—
I probably didn’t get out of my cabin until around 0900. I put on my Captain’s jacket and went up to visit the passengers. All of them were already awake, but didn’t seem to see anything unusual about my late arrival. I talked to the passengers, promised Kyla and Jeorge that I would give them a tour of the ship, then went back down.
Jami wasn’t in Engineering, and Amada wasn’t on the passenger deck. I assumed they were together. The Grayswandir‘s computer could have told me where they were, but it wasn’t that important. We were in Jumpspace; where would they go?
I finished my walkthrough and returned to the crew lounge to find Dr. Korvusar sitting to one side, reading something on her comp. I walked over and sat down in an adjacent chair.
“Next stop should be a bit more interesting,” I said. “At least there will be more than a few dozen people to talk to.”
“I found the privacy welcome, Captain,” she said, pointedly closing her comp. “There were far fewer people to come up to me and disturb my reading.”
“What brings you down to the crew deck then?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know it was forbidden, Captain?”
“No. Not unless we’re actually maneuvering or something. It’s just that the facilities are probably more comfortable upstairs.”
“They would be. If there weren’t a three and a five-year-old running around.”
“Yeah, you have a point.”
“I do.”
“I can’t turn down passengers, especially from a planet as small as Fugitak.”
She nodded. “I do understand that, Captain. I was not faulting you or your ship. I was simply saying that it was quieter down here.”
“Yeah, sorry.” I had apparently spoken a bit more loudly than I had planned. “Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“Understandable, with your Jump schedule being the way it is. I did my share of overnight Jumps in the Navy.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you did.” I paused. “You probably did all kinds of interesting things there.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes. I did.”
She didn’t say anything further. I waited a few moments to see if she would continue.
“Anything you can share?” I asked, finally.
She shook her head without looking up from her comp. “Not at the moment, Captain. I’ll have to think about what I can talk about. Maybe sometime.”
She fell silent again. I stood for a few moments longer and then returned to my cabin.
Saahna was no longer there. I changed back into my usual jumpsuit and vest, then checked the ship’s status via my remote. Everything seemed to be normal. Hopefully, this will be a quiet week.