22 Sina 1117: Kupakii – Tlianke/Hinterworlds (0101 C654352-A S 905 Cs K4 IV M8 D)
Today was pretty quiet. I checked the net and found that the last of my cargo offers had been accepted, and we had picked up another pair of passengers as well. These were a pair of LSP personnel who were being transferred to Gimisapun to join their mining operations there. They had asked for individual cabins, I responded that we only offered those to First Class passengers, and they immediately upgraded. So that was good.
We have life support for 12 passengers, but only enough hull space for 6 cabins since Captain Anna’s policy had always been that High Passengers got extra space and I hadn’t seen any reason to change that. So we can either carry 12 Middle or 6 High passengers. Or some mix. We would actually pull in more credits from a full load of Middle Passengers, and we had to pay the life support for 12 either way (because no one in starship design has ever realized that ships aren’t full all the time), but having High Passage as an option made us a more desirable ship. The Travellers’ Aid Society won’t send passengers to you unless you have facilities for High Passengers and I wasn’t about to not make that list. So, we sometimes had to take the less desirable choice.
I wasn’t going to turn down credits, either way.
With the two new Highs, Dr. Korvusar, and the two middles we had picked up yesterday that left 2 empty cabin slots. I was a bit surprised; given the populations of Kupakii and Gimisapun I would have thought we would be full by now. I assumed that Commander Winters had set things so that we showed up at the bottom of the list. I shrugged. We’ll have done well enough when we get out of here.
I went up to Vikkainisha for lunch. Gavin was there, and we talked briefly. He really wants out of here, especially with the new alliance with Boilingbrook. He’s afraid the Imperium will come in and annex the planet. I tried to explain to him that the Imperium has enough problems of its own at the moment, but he was still concerned. To be fair, I’m not sure what the Spoilsports are going to do; they do have at least one fleet of their own. They could make this their first conquest, but I have the feeling that they’re going to hold back until something decisive happens back in the Imperium. If Margaret declares independence or if Dulinor manages to defeat Lucan, then they may start setting up their pocket empire. Until then? They aren’t going to tip their hand.
I tried to explain this, without mentioning the Spoilsports of course, but Gavin seemed to expect a fleet of Imperial Marine transports to arrive in the system any day. At any rate, I promised to talk to him as we got closer to departure day.
After that, I just went back to my room. There wasn’t really anything to do here. Kupakii is one of those annoying planets that are just big enough to have things to do but not quite big enough for them to be readily available. I had found out that they have ski resorts in some of the southern mountains and a few other cold-weather sports closer by, but I really didn’t feel like going anywhere. Rarely for me, I was ready to get off-planet. I just headed back to my room and stayed there for the rest of the day.