4 Salas 1117: Gimisapun – Tlianke/Hinterworlds (1103 A000000-B Lo Ni As Ba 603 Na M0 V M2 D)
We dropped back into normal space several hours earlier than expected. I was actually up in the passenger lounge but felt the familiar vibration of a tumble. I immediately excused myself and headed for the bridge.
“Status?” I asked as I entered, pulling off my Captain’s jacket climbing into the Captain’s seat. Saahna was just ahead of me and was busy fastening her harness.
“My apologies, Captain,” said Do’rex, tentacles flying across his console. “It appears that my tumble estimates were off.”
I shrugged. “Don’t worry, it happens.” I pulled up communications. “Gimisapun, this is the Free Trader Grayswandir, requesting approach clearance.”
“Welcome Grayswandir,” came the almost immediate reply. “Welcome to Gimisapun. Sending approach vector.” A string of data followed and Do’rex flipped a tentacle to indicate he has seen it.”
“Thank you, Gimisapun,” I replied, then clicked off and switched to the shipwide channel. “Welcome to Gimisapun, everyone. We should be docking in about 2 hours. Passengers, please begin preparations for arrival. Crew, please be at your stations.”
Almost immediately Jami pinged in. Another minute or so passed before Varan pinged in from the Gunnery suite. “Sorry…” he said, “Sorry. Wasn’t expecting to need to be here.”
“It’s OK,” I said, shrugging even though he couldn’t see me. “We all got caught by surprise by this one. Anything we need to worry about?”
There was a pause. “There’s a heavy freighter ahead of us vectoring towards the station. Starport. Asteroid. Whatever. And a Scout/Courier just dropped out of Jumpspace behind us. No one seems to be at combat output.”
I nodded. “Good. Thanks. Keep us informed.” I clicked off and looked down at Do’rex and Saahna. “Everything looks OK?”
Saahna turned back to look up at me and frowned. “There’s probably two-dozen ships lined up in front of us to get into the station. We may be out here for a while.”
“We are 27th in line to dock,” Do’rex added. “It will probably be about three hours before we touch down.”
I shrugged. “We’d spend that much time or more coming in from the Jump-point in a non-belt system. We’ll handle it.” I opened the shipwide comms and informed everyone of our schedule. A few minutes later, Shelly pinged me.
“Those two LSP passengers are wanting to know if we can land earlier. They apparently have some kind of time-sensitive contract to sign.”
I shrugged. “Unless they can declare an emergency or something? No. We’re docking in the order we dropped in and, being on a Main, there are a lot of ships here. Nothing we can do.”
I heard the sigh of exasperation as she responded. “Yeah, got it. I’ll… let them know.”
“Tell them if they’re that desperate to dock faster then they can call their contact and see if they can pull some strings.”
There was a pause. “They don’t like that idea either.”
“Welcome to a Free Trader,” I told her. I clicked off and turned to Do’rex. “Any way we can cut in line?”
He clicked. “Not that I can see. All we can do is wait on landing clearance.”
I shrugged. “Got it.”
—
It was actually only just over an hour later before we got clearance. Do’rex boosted us forward and through an opening that had been cut in the side of an asteroid. The asteroid was rotating to provide the semblance of gravity so we didn’t have a gravity field, natural or artificial, for our gravitics to work against and we obviously couldn’t use our fusion drive inside of an enclosed, habitable space. So we were reduced to cold-steam jets to get us into position. But, Do’rex quickly maneuvered us into position above our designated docking bay and lowered us to the pad. As soon as he killed the drives, an iris closed over us, and air started rushing into the bay.
I opened the shipwide comms. “Attention everyone. We have landed on a rotating station, and we cannot adjust using internal gravitics. Everyone needs to be seated and ready for a sudden shift in inertia. Please let us know when you are ready, so we can disengage internals.
There was a long pause, but, eventually, everything on my console turned green. I hit the switch to cancel internal gravity and inertial compensation. Immediately I felt pulled forward in my seat as the asteroid’s rotation made itself apparent.
I waited a few seconds, then opened the comms. “Welcome to Gimisapun. Passengers should gather their belongings and report to the airlock. Crew, please close your stations for arrival.” I shut down my own console down and climbed down out of my seat.
“That was a really great announcement,” Saahna said, looking back at me. “Really great.”
I shrugged. “It had everything they need to know.”
“You could have been a bit more supportive. It’s a bit disconcerting when ‘down’ suddenly changes.”
I shrugged again. “We’re Travellers. Deal with it. Besides, they’re unlikely to be with us next Jump anyway.”
She laughed at that. “Yeah… I get it. But you really need to work on your delivery a bit.”
I nodded. “Yeah, got it.” I climbed down and grabbed my Captain’s jacket. “Well, let’s get everyone off, shall we?”
It took a few hours but, eventually, all of our passengers and or cargo got unloaded. The Phose stopped by me and thanked me again for giving them the chance to leave, and I wished them luck. I tried talking to Kolm and Thompson, but they were more interested in getting their cargo off than in talking to me. Instead, I did a quick check of the ship and discovered that everyone else had already left. I grabbed my downpack from my cabin and headed outside.
Jami, Saahna, and Shelly were all still in the bay. Several cargobots were continuing to take cargo pods off the ship and carry them to storage areas. I found the dock steward and turned control of the ship over to him, then went to where they were standing.
“I’ll find us a place for the post-Jump meeting as soon as I can,” I told them. “Until then, feel free to make whatever plans you want for the week.”
Shelly seemed a bit confused. “So… I can just stay anywhere?”
I shrugged. “Anywhere you want. You’re on your own for that. Your share for last month should have been credited to your account as soon as we connected to the local net, so do whatever you want.”
She pulled out her comp, tapped on it a bit, then her eyes widened. “We get paid that much!”
I smiled as I shrugged. “You’re on the ship, you get a cut of what we make. Have fun.”
She looked up at me. “So I can…”
I shrugged again. “It’s your credits, you can do whatever you want.” I paused a moment. “Have fun.”
She was still staring at her comp. “OK, yeah… Thank you, Derek.”
“No need to thank me. You’re part of my crew. You earned it. That’s your pay.”
She shook her head. “OK… Well, thank you again, Derek.”
Jami interjected. “Yeah, yeah. He’s apparently good at this.” She gave me a smile then turned back to her. “Come on, let’s find a place to stay.”
I turned to Saahna, who was looking at me with a dubious expression. “Are you going to make a scene again?”
I shook my head. “Nope. We’re good. See you in a week. Well, see you in a few for briefing then I’ll see you in a week.”
She continued to look at me, obviously expecting something else. Finally, she shrugged and picked up her downbag.
“See you in a few then,” she said, turning and heading for the exit iris.
I turned back to the dock steward. “We good?”
She looked up from her comp. “Yeah, sure. We’ll get your cargo off then I’ll have the maintenance crew come in.”
“Know a good bar around here?”
She smiled slightly at that. “A nice bar or a good bar?”
I smiled back. “How about both? One for my crew meeting and one for… later.”
She laughed. “OK, sure. Most ships’ crews hit the Broken Claim. It’s down one level and about three corridors spinward.”
“And the good one?”
“Purple. Don’t ask. It’s about 4 levels down and five or six corridors upwards. A bit of advice? Don’t go down there unless you’re armed and comfortable with… aggressive personalities.”
I laughed. “Hey, my previous Jump I had an Imperial Knight try to kill a passenger and hijack my ship, then got threated by a planetary governor. I’ll be happy to just deal with a local thug for a bit.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she looked at me for a long moment. “OK. Yeah. Sure. Just be careful.”
“Are you going to be there?”
She sighed, indicating that it was hardly the first time she had been asked that. “Nope. Got my own plans.”
“Got it,” I said, swinging my downbag onto my back. “See you in 7.”
“Never can tell…” she said, turning back to her comp.
—
I stepped through the iris and down the short corridor leading away from the landing bay. Almost immediately, I was hit by a barrage of light and sound; dozens of holographic ads blaring at me advertising this bar or that hotel. I winced but headed on to the main corridor.
It was just as bad there, but most of the people walking up and down it seemed to be ignoring the cacophony better than I was. I guess they were used to it. When people think about low law-level worlds, most of them think in terms of how likely they are to get mugged there or how many weapons they can buy. They rarely think of how haphazard travel is when no one is organizing things, or how irritations that would have been shut down long ago in other systems are still around to deal with.
As a Free Trader… it was a wash.
I pulled up my comp and checked the local net. There was a lot of unwanted ads there as well, but I eventually found what looked like a decent place to stay. It was about five levels down, where the spin-induced gravity was a bit over half-normal–it was about a third here–and where the hotel promised isolation. I booked a room, then pinged the rest of the crew and told them to meet me at the Broken Claim in about three hours.
—
The place I wound up in was called the Chrysalis. The room was tiny but quiet. That would work for me. I dropped my downpack off then immediately headed back out to the Broken Claim
That turned out to be a good idea; the place was packed. I tried explaining to the bot at the entrance what I wanted, and a human eventually showed up and reserved a table for us. He also gave me a dampener to use for our crew meeting; the place was pretty crowded and quite noisy. A plasma-shred band was playing on the stage, making it almost impossible to hear even the person next to you. Not that the crowd here seemed to mind; they were dancing and, in one-third gee, they were bouncing off the ceiling as often as dancing on the floor.
The reservation didn’t kick in quite immediately, so I headed to the bar. The bot there somehow figured out what I was ordering despite the discord, and I soon had a basket of tama leaves and some minty-tasting thing that apparently passed for beer here. I then pulled up the hood from my shipsuit and activated its sonic dampener. It was deafening. I sighed. Was I getting that old?
I pulled out my comp and spent the next hour pinging our contacts to let them know their freight was here, advertising our cargo to anyone who may be interested, and advertising Tlianke as our next destination to start looking for new passengers or freight. I checked the boards and put in bids on several lots; mostly raw minerals and a few sets of refined metals. Tlianke was a high population/high law level world, so I tried to grab what we could best sell there.
A couple of frustratingly weak beers later, I closed out and headed for our now-open table. I put the dampener on the table and activated it. The sounds of the bar immediately dropped to an understandable but barely perceptible whisper. I sighed in relief and pulled my hood back down.
The first person to show up was Shelly. The bot at the entrance pointed her to my table, and she came over.
“Oh my gods!” she said as she sat down. “I didn’t know there were places like this! I got to my room, and my projector won’t shut off! It keeps displaying ads to me!”
I laughed, even though I shouldn’t have. “Yeah… any low law-level world? Look for a hotel that offers ‘isolation.’ You’ll be a lot happier.”
She shook her head. “I just followed Jami. I wish she had told me.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, well… Jami’s been at this for a while. I think she’s hoping for… other plans.”
She shuddered and shook her head. “Yeah. She was telling me about her… plans. Are all of you Travellers’ like this?”
I shook my head. “Jami is looking for some things, other people are looking for others. I like the ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before’ moments. Other people? They’re looking for… other things.”
She frowned. “The ‘I haven’t rutted this before’ things.”
“Hey, as long as she’s back on-board at the end of the week and doesn’t get us into too much trouble… she’s her own sophont. I’m not going to tell her how to behave.”
She looked down and nodded. “Yeah, I guess. I think I… I think I need to find another place to stay this week though.”
I shrugged. “You can stay in my room,” I said, smiling as I did.
“Derek!”
I shook my head. “Hey, you should know you can trust me by now. Seriously, if you want a quiet place to sleep tonight with no one bothering you? Drop by.” I flicked my room code over to her. “If I get out of line? Just tell Saahna.”
“Tell me what?” I heard as Saahna dropped into the seat beside me. I slid over.
“Just offering Jami a quiet place to sleep tonight.”
“With you?” She made a dismissive sound. “She hasn’t heard you snore.”
“Hey! I don’t snore.”
She laughed as she pulled up the menu. “Keep telling yourself that.” She selected something from the menu, then looked up at Shelly. “And next time ask for an isolated room.”
Shelly smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, got it.”
I waved in her direction. “You’ll get used to it.”
The waitbot showed up at that point and dropped off our food. There was nothing local obviously–asteroid belts aren’t exactly known for their agricultural output–so everything was pretty much standard fabricator fare. Which meant tama leaves, of course, and beer. I also got an aldari mixed-cheese sandwich, since that was something mediocre enough that even a fabricator couldn’t mess it up. Saahna had another of her meat broth things, and Shelly had picked some sort of dish which seemed to be several different kinds of eggs wrapped in what looked like wilted seaweed. She looked at it dubiously, but pulled out her imager and took several images of it before imaging herself eating one with a smile on her face and a sound of satisfaction, before switching the imager back off and making a face.
“Gods, that’s awful!” she gasped, grabbing for her wineglass and downing it in one gulp. She immediately hit the summons button for the waitbot.
“Trying to mislead your audience?”
She shook her head, coughing. “Hey, I’m trying to make Travel look enticing, OK?”
I laughed. “Just don’t kill yourself doing it.”
The waitbot came over and gave her another wineglass, which she grabbed while pushing her dish away. The waitbot was about to pick it up when Do’rex appeared.
“You ordered mi’toni?” he asked, intercepting the dish before the waitbot could take it. He popped one of the eggs into his mouth before sliding into the seat beside her. The waitbot stood beside the table for several long seconds before deciding that it didn’t need to take it away and leaving.
Do’rex sat next to Shelly before taking another egg and putting it into his mouth. “I am impressed that you remembered me mentioning these.”
“What is that?”
“Mi’toni,” he said, picking up a third egg. “Raw takata eggs and kelam leaves soaked in brine and vinegar for several weeks. I had been telling Ms. Tharis that it was one of the things I missed from home. I’m surprised she was able to find it.” He clicked slightly. “Their template needs some work though.”
I gestured towards him with my beer. “Yeah, that probably goes for everything here.”
Shelly’s eyes were still watering, and she coughed. “I thought the pak’tmi I had tried was pretty good so I figured I would try another Vegan dish and I remember you mentioning that one.” She coughed again. “I’ll be more careful next time!’
Saahna and I laughed and Do’rex clicked in embarrassment. I waved a hand at him. “Hey, it’s fine. There’s any number of human dishes from Sol even that I can’t stand. But you have to try, right?”
Shelly gave one last cough. “Yeah… I guess.”
“Listen to the Sky, remember?” I asked her.
She flushed slightly at that. “You remembered!” She shook her head and looked down. “I haven’t been a good job at that lately, though. So much has happened, so many new things…” She laughed and looked back up at us. “I wanted to listen to the sky, but it’s been shouting non-stop!”
We were all laughing at that when Jami came up to the table. “Heya, crewies!” she said, dropping into the seat beside Saahna and forcing her and me to slide over. “How’s it going? Hey, I found us a bar for later.”
“Purple?” I asked, sliding over and pulling my food after me.
“Yeah!” she said, sounding surprised. “How did you know?”
“I got the same recommendation.” I shrugged. “Probably where they send all the new arrivals. Expect it to be overpriced.”
She shrugged. “Hey, a party is a party.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I guess. Well, have fun. Just… be careful. There’s no government and no law here, and pretty much everyone is a transient. So watch yourselves.”
Jami waved a hand in dismissal. “Not my first no-law. I’ll be OK.”
“Good,” I said, looking around. I turned to Shelly. “How about you. You OK?”
She gave me an irritated look and reached inside her jacket, pulling out a punch dagger and showing it to me. “We’ve got places on Boilingbrook where you need to be careful. I can take care of myself.”
I was a bit surprised but nodded. “Yeah, OK. Good.” I looked around. “Has anyone seen Varan?”
Jami shook her head. “He’s still annoyed at you.”
“And me too,” added Saahna. “He didn’t clear the suite when we got close to the asteroid; I had to close everything down myself.”
I frowned. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I think he was in a hurry to get back to Carma and help her disembark. I caught him in the bay and called him on it. He… wasn’t happy about being reprimanded in front of her.”
I sighed. “I thought I had calmed him down.”
“Apparently not enough.”
I shrugged. “Well, we’ll worry about that later then. So… does anyone have anything?” No one seemed to.
“OK, let’s do this then so Jami can go see what the Purple is.” She flushed slightly but smiled as I pulled out my remote and tossed it onto the table.
“We’re heading for Tlianke next,” I said, flicking the subsector map out onto the table then tapping open the dot representing Tlianke. “It claims to be the subsector capital even though pretty much everyone out here is unaligned. High population, but a high law level too. We’ll need to be careful there. We’ll probably be picking up mostly metals and raw materials here. Not much else in a belt system. Should do OK on passengers too.”
“Dr. Korvusar still with us?” asked Saahna.
“As far as I know. I think we should just assume she is with us until she isn’t.”
Jami shrugged. “Well, she had our back against Commander Winters, so…” She paused suddenly, frowning. “Wait… I hadn’t really thought about it, but why was she backing us up? And Minister Trakon. How is it in the best interest of the Imperium to encourage an outside polity?”
I shrugged. “She’s putting more faith in those models of hers than we are?”
Saahna was shaking her head. “A lot more faith. She’s on our ship. No matter what she said the other week, we aren’t just one of many possibilities. There aren’t enough Naval Intelligence agents out there to assign someone to every one of their possible ’embers’; especially in a backwater like the Hinterworlds. She knows… something.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Well, we’re heading rimward anyway. Hopefully, that will take us away from whatever she thinks is going on.”
She frowned. “But what if her models predicted that?”
I laughed. “The Navy has computer models that can predict where a random Free Trader is going but misses the fact that an archduke will assassinate the Emperor and that his son will kill his brother.” She gave me a surprised look at that. “Oh, come on! You know Lucan killed Varian; that was just a bit too coincidental.”
“I thought you weren’t concerned with all of this.”
“I’m catching up. Especially now that I’m in the middle of all of it. But still… I’m not convinced these models can predict the details while, at the same time, miss the big picture.”
She frowned. “Unless… whoever was reading the outputs liked what they were seeing.”
I frowned in return. “Someone wants the Imperium to fall into a civil war?”
She shrugged. “Any number of people might. The Solomani would, obviously. And I can’t think the Hivers or the K’kree would care much. Nor would the Aslan, for that matter. The Vargr would probably appreciate it.” She paused. “And people in control of enough assets locally to set themselves up with a pocket empire probably wouldn’t either.”
“The Spoilsports,” said Jami, nodding.
I sighed, shaking my head. “I just want to fly my ship.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Saahna, sliding out of the booth. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I think I’m going to go check out this club Jami was talking about.”
Jami scrambled to get out of the booth as well. “Hey, you aren’t going without me. Captain!” She gave me a quick, sloppy salute then hurried towards the door. Saahna looked at us, shrugged, then followed.
“Well,” I said, turning back to Do’rex and Shelly, “I guess we’re done.”
Shelly frowned. “I guess I need to find another place to stay.”
Do’rex clicked. “I have an open bed suitable for humans in my accommodations. I am not using it.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Do’rex.” She patted his upper tentacle. “I’ll only be one night; just until I can find another place.”
“Of course.”
I smiled, even though I was unexpectedly depressed that she hadn’t taken me up on my offer of a room. Not that I had wanted, or expected, anything to happen, but it still bugged me.
“OK then,” I said, sliding out of the booth. “I’ll ping everyone in a few days for the pre-launch meetup. Until then, have a good week.” I nodded and headed off.
I was halfway back to my room before remembering that I had left the dampener on the table. I shrugged. Someone would figure it out. I thought about heading down to Purple with Jami and Saahna but decided against it. Instead, I just went back to my room and recorded this. Now? I’m going to sleep.