073-1117 – Jumpspace

16 Salas 1117: Jumpspace

I did my usual rounds this morning. Everything seemed to be back to normal. Well, our current normal.

I went up to the passenger lounge to find it empty of anyone except Dr. Korvusar. I went over to her.

“So, I hope this Jump is meeting your expectations.”

She sighed and snapped her comp shut with a bit too much force. I could tell it was for my benefit. “Everything is as I expected, Captain. Including your atrocious wine selection and periodic interruptions. But please, how can I help you?”

“We’re discontinuing passenger service after Tlianke,” I said, flatly. “I’d offer you the position of ship’s physician, but we really don’t need one of those. So… where do we go from here?”

She frowned slightly, but I could tell she was more upset than she was letting on. “Why?”

“We don’t need them. And our efforts in taking care of them exceed what we get from them.”

“Oh? Are you planning on letting your Steward go?”

“No. Shelly can stay with us as long as she wants. Her reporting back to Boilingbrook about what we are doing should keep us in the minds of people there, which is probably a good thing if we really are one of these ’embers’ that you claim we are.”

She glanced around the lounge as I said that, then lowered her voice. “That isn’t exactly something you should be broadcasting, Captain. There are other factions with different priorities. And we call groups like you ‘torchbearers.'”

“Whatever. So… what’s a reasonable story for us to use to explain why you’re still here when we quit carrying passengers?”

“Oh? So this isn’t your way of kicking me off your ship?”

“I recently got the advice that I should try to hang on to what friends and allies I have. I’m hoping you’re at least one of those.”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Good. So, what excuse do I have for keeping you here?”

She shrugged. “You still don’t have a ship’s physician.”

“Which becomes much less important when we aren’t carrying passengers anymore. And I’d face a crew riot if I handed out any more shares.”

“Then don’t. The fact that I am travelling with you on an open-ended itinerary should tell you that I am in no need of income. Simply list me as your physician.”

“Can’t. I’d have to add you to the crew manifest, and the Merchant’s Guild won’t let me have an unpaid crewmember.” I paused. “Wait…”

“Something?”

“Working passage,” I said. “We’re allowed to have an unpaid crew member on board who does some job in exchange for passage to the next planet.” I frowned. “But after three month’s I’d have to convert you to a paid crewmember or drop you off.”

“Well, perhaps by then all of this will be settled?”

“Lucan’s fleets will barely have made it to Illesh Sector by then. We won’t know anything here for a few months after that.”

“Then if nothing else that gives you until late Sedis to come up with another plan. Or, perhaps by then you will be carrying passengers again.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“You never can tell, Captain. You never can tell.”

“That something else your computer models have shown you?”

“No, that’s something my time with you has shown me. You are adaptable, Captain. You will make whatever adjustments you need. Oh, by the way, I’m glad to see you have patched up your differences with Gunner Holt.”

I frowned. “Just how much of our internal issues do you know?”

“Enough to know that you may want to talk to your Steward Tharis. She is somewhere downstairs, I believe.”

I sighed and stood up. “It never ends.”

“Such is the burden of command, Captain. Now, before you go, would you mind bringing me another wine?”

—-

The crew lounge was empty when I went downstairs, but the computer told me that Shelly was in the cargo bay. I found her standing near the crate holding “Mikey.”

“Problem?” I asked as I came up.

She continued looking at the crate even though she must have heard the hatch as I came through. “We never had animals back home, you know.”

I stopped beside her. “Never thought about it, really.”

“Yeah. The closed environment in the floaters. It wasn’t practical to have a lot of other life forms around when you have to provide life support for everyone. There were a few. Some of the mega-rich had their companions, and we have a few public parks with a few animals on display in them. Mostly it’s people in school who go to those though; just to show us what animals actually looked like.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it that much,” she continued. “I had never been off Boilingbrook before this, so I hadn’t really thought about how it was elsewhere. Part of the reason I was doing this, you know? ‘Listen to the sky!'” She laughed, but not out of joy.

“The animals we have back home we take care of. The thought of just keeping one locked in a crate, just to be used for experiments, had never even occurred to me. When it came up to me I’ll admit, I screamed. Then I saw that it just wanted food. Then I saw how cute it was. Dirty, but cute.”

She turned to me, and I saw her eyes were wet. “I’m sorry if I made a scene yesterday, Derek. But… I just hadn’t expected that to happen.”

“I’m not a big fan of Director Morns and her corp either,” I said, shrugging. “But… it kinda comes with the territory.”

“What?”

“It’s fine. Look… You’ve got the Traveller bug. I can tell. And that’s great! There’s nothing better than seeing the galaxy, one planet at a time. But… It’s always different, but ‘different’ isn’t always fun and exciting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean every planet is different. You’re unhappy because Sitama is using this animal as an experimental testbed? There are planets where they would eat him.”

“What!”

“Yeah, some places don’t like fabricators. Or they have them, but if you want to be in the ‘in-crowd,’ you have to eat ‘natural’ food. You know, vegetables that were actually grown in the ground and meat that was once alive.”

“Seriously!” She gagged at the thought.

“Yeah. We talk about all being the same. Part of the Third Imperium. Or, the outskirts of it like out here. But… the Imperium doesn’t control planets; just the trade between them. Sure, everyone follows the latest fashions from Core and everyone watches Captain Spaceways, but for the most part, every planet is its own thing. ‘Imperial Culture’ doesn’t really exist. Well, not outside of the Starport and maybe the Startown around it.”

She was still processing my previous statement. “There are people who… eat actual animals?”

“Some places, yes. And if you’re going to keep Travelling, you’re going to run across one of them sooner or later. You’ll be on a planet where they only eat ‘natural food.’ Then on the next, they’ll execute you for accidentally killing a rodent. There are planets where you can only be intimate with members of the opposite gender and then others where you’re only allowed to be with members of the same gender. Planets where you can do business with anyone you want and others where you have to go through a designated intermediary for everything. That’s what makes this job so difficult, and what also makes Travelling so rewarding. Every world you go to is different. Good or bad, all you have to work with is that in two weeks you’ll be somewhere completely different.”

“So… we can’t do anything about Mikey?” She looked back at the container.

I shook my head. “It’s Director Morn’s cargo. If we took it or even interfered with it, she can send Customs or whoever after us. And the Imperium does not like it when people interfere with their trade. That’s what most piracy is, actually. Not ship battles and boarding actions like the net vids love to show, but just some captain is taking some of the freight they are carrying and selling it as their own. It may take a while, but they will catch up with you, eventually. And it never ends well.

She kept looking at the container. “I know… I just…”

“Yeah, I get it. But that’s the way the galaxy works.”

“Yeah, I know.”

We stood there in silence for a bit. She finally broke the silence.

“I wish I had my rig on when he came up there. At least I’d have some vids.”

“Gray tracks everything all the time, and she doesn’t dump recordings until we tell her to. Just ask her for her records from yesterday.”

“Really!”

“Yeah, sure. You’re part of the crew so she’ll give it to you.”

She started smiling. “And… can I use it on my netcast?”

I knew where she was going. “Yeah, sure.”

“And if I say something bad about Sitama Biogenics?”

“They booked passage from Gimisapun to Tlianke. They didn’t hire us to be spokespeople for them. Of course, we respect the privacy of our passengers and what they do in their own cabins is up to them. But, anything that happens in the common areas…”

She nodded. “Got it. Thanks, Derek!”

“Have fun.”