ONE
Earth —Holloman Spaceport
Dave,
I hope you won’t be mad at me, but I hacked into your school files last night and accepted the job offer from Damascus Freight Lines for you. I know you were hoping something better would come in, and I’m sure it would have. However, Eileen’s husband is involved in a very nasty political fight and apparently his opponent has found out about you.
You have become “inconvenient” as the holo-dramas like to say.
Best Wishes,
Ben
Shaking my head, I deleted the email from my tablet and turned it off. Two days ago I’d been woken up by an alarm that my brother had set when he’d hacked my tablet to send me that. I’d immediately packed my duffel bag, dropped the keys for my tiny micro-efficiency apartment in the rent slot at the manager’s office with a note telling them I had left, and then spent the time since taking public transportation.
If he wasn’t willing to send that to me via the usual email or chat programs we used, then I knew it had to be serious. Then, last night, just before I’d boarded this bus, I’d gotten several emails offering me interviews with some of the better companies out there. The kinds of offers that the A students got. The kinds of offers the connected got. Not the kind that a prole with straight C’s were ever offered.
Maybe I could have gotten a better deal. But waiting around was no longer an option. Elies like her husband really had no problems with making proles who caused them issues to “disappear.” I wondered if she knew. I wondered if she’d care. Hell, I wondered if she even knew I still existed.
My dad used to tell me that the elies had the power to ignore anything that didn’t fit into their worldview and would quickly forget anything embarrassing or inconvenient. And if anyone would know, it would be him.
Standing up and stretching as the autobus came to a stop, I got my bag and looked around the bus. The single bum sleeping in the back —buried under his coat, feet tucked up on the seat next to him as he laid there —looked quite uncaring. They’d gotten on in Albuquerque when all the rest of the passengers had gotten off. I was suddenly reminded of a similar scene from my youth, though back then there had been other people on the bus. All of whom had quite studiously ignored the man and pretended he didn’t exist.
I was just glad I still had one of those jammers my brother liked to make, and that I’d activated it when I’d gotten on this bus in Amarillo, shutting down the cameras. I pulled it out of my pocket as I made for the exit and slipped it under the dash where no one would see it before I stepped off the bus. No one would know I’d been on it —well, no one who mattered at least —and no one would know when I got off. As for the guy buried under the coat in the back? People would think that this was probably the safest place to sleep if you were some homeless bum who couldn’t afford a bed. So no one would bother him, I was sure.
Getting off the bus and going inside the cargo terminal, I looked at the sign hanging from the ceiling, trying to make out just where the ship I was going to board was located. Holloman was in the ass end of the New Mexico district and if what I was seeing was any judge of circumstances, probably the most run-down spaceport of all the spaceports in the North American United Districts.
I looked over at the little Information kiosk, which was not only completely abandoned but looked to be in even worse shape than the dust-covered sign that was suffering from a severe case of display burn-in.
Shaking my head, I slung my bag, dumped a few now useless items in the trash, made my best guess, and started walking down the long corridor to cargo wing Echo and hoped I’d made the right choice, looking for another sign along the way. The people mover belts didn’t work, of course, and from the holes in them, I didn’t even think it would be safe to walk on one.
Eventually I came to the end of the hall, where there was another display showing that, yes, I had guessed correctly. Again, there was no one here, but there was a large button with a sign that said CALL BUTTON.
So I pressed it.
And then I pressed it again.
After the third try the display flickered to show someone in a uniform.
“What?” they demanded.
“I’m here to report to the CCS Iowa Hill.”
The door buzzed and I quickly grabbed the handle and pulled it open as the screen went dark. So much for security.
I stepped outside onto the tarmac and looked around. There was a line of ships several hundred yards away, gray steel boxlike constructions of several sizes. The Iowa Hill was a convertible container/breakbulk hauler of the old Argon Six design by General Ship Designs. So it didn’t take me long to pick it out of the lineup.
Looking around, I found a call box with a list of ships. Going down the list, I pressed the call button next to the Iowa Hill.
“Iowa Hill, what’s your business?” a voice called back almost immediately.
“Fifth Engineer Walker reporting,” I replied.
“Great, get your butt over here!”
I waited a moment to see if anything else was going to be said —like maybe how to get there without walking across the concrete in the middle of a summer day in hundred-plus degree heat?
Shaking my head, I started the very long trek across the hot concrete. At the school I’d gone to, when we’d done our training cruises, one of the guys had walked out onto the tarmac while looking around and thirty seconds later was facedown on the concrete getting jacked up by spaceport security.
Nothing like that happened here.
Then again, who’d want to be out in this heat if they didn’t have to be?
It was a long, hot slog and the only reason I wasn’t covered in sweat was the complete lack of humidity. When I got to the ship I saw that loading operations were going on, so I went over there.
“Hey! Drink this before you die!” someone from the loading crew said and tossed me a bottle of water. They had good aim as it hit me square in the chest and then fell to the ground as I completely missed the catch while trying to get my wits back. Bending over, it took me a minute to grab it, then standing up I moved into the shade of the ship. I opened the bottle and drank the entire contents before I took another step.
Next time, I’d see about wearing a hat.
When I finished, I looked at what was going on. Large cargo containers were being slung in through the side hatches, which had all been folded open and were touching the tarmac. I’d never seen a heavy cargo hauler up close on the ground. Most of the newer classes were just too big to land. The Argon class was the last design of GSD that had that ability.
“Yo! Walker! Get over here and report in!”
Looking over, I saw an older guy wearing a shipsuit and a headset waving at me. So re-slinging my bag I made my way over to him, making sure to avoid the moving loaders and not walk under anything that might crush me if it dropped. Something we’d been warned long and loud about back in school.
“Fifth Engineer Walker, reporting in, sir,” I said and saluted.
“Great, and don’t bother with that saluting stuff, you’re in the real world now. I’m Chief Mate Ian Parks, or just ‘Chief’ to you onboard. Captain Roy is up on the bridge checking the gear. Go see him first.”
I nodded.
“Welcome aboard, Walker,” Chief Parks said and stuck out his hand.
“Thanks, Chief,” I said shaking hands, then went up the crew stairs into the hold and started moving forward past the stacked containers. I stepped through the open hatch and looked at the faded direction arrows painted on the walls. The ship wasn’t dirty, but it was definitely old. Older than me, maybe even older than my parents.
I dropped my bag outside the bridge and stepped inside. There was a team of people in there, but only one was wearing a shipsuit. The others all looked like techs from a ground support company.
“Fifth Engineer Walker reporting, Captain,” I said, and saluted just to be safe.
“Oh great, you’re here. Welcome aboard, son,” he said, coming over to shake my hand. “Look, I’ve got these guys doing a systems check on all the running gear and a systems update on the nav consoles. Make sure they do what they say they’re doing, sign off when they’re done, and don’t spend any money without checking with either me or Parks first, got it?”
“Umm, yes, sir,” I said, eyes wide.
“Thanks! I need to go check with Briggs, our chief engineer. Oh, what’s your first name, son?”
“Dave.”
“Great! After they’re done, I’ll get someone to show you your billet and log you into the ship’s systems.”
I watched as the captain departed and then turned to look at all of the ground maintenance guys who had all turned to look at me.
“I used to work for Siemans and I’ve done this job at least a dozen times,” I said. “So yeah, not an elie, I work for a living.”
“What port?” the guy who looked like the lead asked.
“Boca Chica. Bill Evans was my boss.”
“Why’d you leave a nice job like that for a place like this?” One of the other guys laughed, motioning to the outdated ship.
“Obviously for the medical plan,” I said and several of them snickered as they all went back to work.
* * *
It took them two hours to finish up and I watched as they ran each of the tests and buttoned up the panels, not a single one of which had obviously been installed when the ship had first been commissioned. They all packed up their gear and then filed off the bridge as I went over the paperwork the lead handed me to sign.
“Seriously, why’d you leave a sweet gig like Boca Chica to fly on a scow like this?” he asked in a soft voice.
“I was only a temp worker while I went to college. Once school ended, I got the boot,” I told him as I signed the last of it off. “Pay sucked, too —temps don’t get scale but still have to pay a fee to the union to work there. Only reason I even got that much was because my father’s in the union and I grew up around most of the guys there, so they all knew me.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Getting my daughter into the shop here cost me a month’s wages in bribes. I can just imagine what it woulda cost your dad over there.”
“More than it cost to go to a state college and get my engineer’s cert, that’s for sure,” I said with a nod and handed him the tablet back.
“Well, good luck up there in space. Though why’d you want to go there, is beyond me.”
“Thanks,” I said and shook hands, and watched as he left.
“Yeah, why do you want to ‘go up there’?” a woman asked from behind me.
“Ma’am?” I asked.
“Name’s Dot, Dot Briggs, chief engineer. I’m your new boss.”
She stuck out her hand and I shook it. “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said, taking her in. If I had to guess, she was in her thirties, definitely a lot younger than I’d expect someone who was a chief engineer to be. She was shorter then me, with short black hair, what appeared to be a solid build inside the loose shipsuit she wore, and had rough hands that made it clear she worked and not just supervised.
“Dot, just Dot. We don’t bother much with ma’ams and sirs onboard, this ain’t the Navy after all. So, tell me, what does bring you here? If your father was a union man, surely you could’ve found a nice safe job down here somewhere.”
“There aren’t a lot of jobs for power plant and grav engineers down here,” I said with a shrug.
“Still, I’d think there’d be better jobs with one of the big name shipping companies.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly an A student,” I admitted to her. “While everyone else got to spend their evenings studying, I had to work third shift so I could afford tuition.”
“I thought the proles got free tuition?”
“That’d be the doles, and definitely not for engineering degrees.”
“What about loans?”
“There’s a limit to what you can borrow and my parents made too much,” I said and frowned at her, “Look, Damascus Freight Lines made me the best offer, so I took it. You know how it is.”
Chief Briggs laughed. “Nope, can’t say as I really do, I wasn’t born here. I’m from Montana, the O’Neill colony, not the district.”
“Oh? Then why are you here?” I asked.
She smiled. “That’s personal.”
I just nodded. Most proles didn’t like to discuss private matters, unlike doles who never seemed to shut up about them.
“Well, go grab your bag, I’ll show you to your own personal broom closet and then I’ll introduce you to the boys.”
“The boys?” I asked, retrieving my duffel.
“Yup, we’ve got two Siz-gees onboard for main drive and grav power and one Piper APU.”
“We’ve got twelves?” I asked, surprised. “Where are they in their cycle?”
“The Iowa’s had two refuels, we’re about ten years from a new core,” she said, leading me aft out of the bridge via a different hatch than I’d come in.
“Think the company will replace the cores?” I asked as we walked down the corridor.
“Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the accountants. That’s the captain’s dayroom, there’s his quarters.” She started pointing to doors as we passed them. “These are the mates, kitchen, mess, cook. These last four are for dead heads. We bunk down by the engines, same for the bosun and the four ablebodied spacers we’re supposed to have.”
“Supposed to?” I asked as she came to a stair that was more of a ladder and started down.
“Damascus Freight likes to run light on the crew. We’ve got the captain, the chief mate, and a second mate. Add me and you to that, and that’s all the officers that this ship’s got. After that we’ve got the bosun, one ordinary spacer, and the cook.”
“Wait, there’s just the two of us in engineering?” I asked, surprised.
“Yup.”
“Isn’t that, like against the law or something?”
“The bosun’s approved to stand watches; his name’s Hank Smith. So now that you’re here, we’re covered,” she said, turning and leading me down a second ladder. I thought about that as we came to the bottom.
“Okay,” she said leading me forward. “I’ve got the chief engineer’s quarters, right here. You get the second engineer’s quarters, because guess what? You just got a promotion!” she said with a chuckle. “Bosun’s quarters are two down from yours and the rest are for all that crew that we don’t have.”
“What about the ordinary spacers? Where do they sleep?”
“With the bosun. It’s his current squeeze.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t anything like what they told us to expect.”
“Sure isn’t! But the smaller companies are all like this. We’re a freight hauler, pure and simple. Point A to B to C and so on and so forth. Anything needs fixing; we get it fixed at the next stop if we can’t fix it ourselves. You got any kind of space suit or pressure suit?”
I shook my head. “Couldn’t afford one. The prices here are more than I have in the bank. This” —I hefted my duffel bag —“is all I own.”
“I know a place at our next stop; we can get you fixed up with something that won’t leave you broke. ’Cause trust me, you need a pressure suit. Accidents happen and the last thing I want is for you to be stuck in a cabin while I’m out making repairs.”
I nodded at that.
“So when do we lift?” I asked.
“As soon as we’re finished loading. Even at a dump like Holloman, parking spaces cost a premium, so the powers that be at headquarters want us out of here as soon as possible. Now, stow your bag and let me show you the good stuff!”
* * *
The engineering deck was huge. The ceiling was a good twenty-five feet above us, going up to the bottom of the first deck, and to either side of the central aisle were the two SS12G PWRs, or “Siz-gee” Pressurized Water Reactors. Each one was capable of generating three hundred megawatts, their design actually based off of the same power plants that had run the nuclear missile submarines of the old United States Navy. On the starboard side, aft of one of the Siz-gees, was the Piper Auxiliary Power Unit. They were fusion based and generated a megawatt worth of power, not enough to move something this large, but more than enough for the rest of the ship’s systems, I was sure. The space aft of the port-side Siz-gee was empty.
“What used to go over there?” I asked, pointing at the spot as I took in the rest of the engine room. For the most part everything in here looked original. There really wasn’t any need to change the controls or the instrumentation if you weren’t changing the power plants. The display screens looked newish but were all obviously the same size as the originals had been. The turbines for generators looked new, or newer, but with design improvements they probably got replaced during the last refuel.
The Piper was new, of course. Or rather, newer than everything else.
“There used to be two fuel cell generators in here that did half a megawatt,” Dot —Chief Briggs, that is —told me. “It was cheaper just to buy and install the one Piper when they did the last refuel.”
“Why is it running? Aren’t we on shore power?”
“Nope. Shore power here takes too long to hook up and remove, and you pay through the nose for it. Plus we’ll need it for launch.”
“What, those aren’t big enough?” I asked, waving a hand at the two reactors.
“Max on each of my boys there is only two-seventy apiece, and we’re going to use every last erg of it to climb out of the gravity well. So the Piper will be picking up all the other systems onboard.”
“Wait, I thought they were rated for three hundred?”
“Yeah, well, apparently they ‘saved’” —Dot made air quotes with her fingers when she said that —“a little money during the last refuel and only put in enough to make two-eighty and, well, after ten years we’ve lost a little. As long as they’re above two-fifty-five they can supply enough to the drives to make top speed, but after that” —she shrugged —“we slow down.”
I nodded; it made sense.
“So why did we land if taking back off is so hard?”
“Because it’s cheaper to land and pay all the fees than to have it shuttled up to us, of course,” she said with a smile. “Faster too. Even if it is gonna take us an hour to climb out of the gravity well.”
I gave her another look. “Wait, we’re making point one gravity in this, right?”
“Yes, but the ship was only rated for one point five when it was built fifty-plus years ago and just sitting still here we’re at one, so the captain takes us up at a constant velocity, not acceleration, until we’re well out of the atmosphere.
“So, it’s slow.”
I took another look around the room. It was neat and orderly, not overly clean like the training gear I’d learned on had been, but I didn’t see any rust and not too much gunk.
“Where are the grav drives?”
“They’re on the centerline down through the middle of the cargo bay, but it’s best not to go back there while they’re loading. We’ve got two Jansen two-twenties and one of the original four Muller fifteen hundreds.”
I nodded and added the specs for those in my head and realized that there wasn’t a lot of “headroom” between the engine ratings and the gross weight of this class.
“So, where do I start?”
She smiled. “I’ve got a list all nice and ready for you. Let’s get your tablet slaved to the ship and I’ll send it to you.”
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