Back on Ormon Three, chief freight comptroller Gemi Westland logged out of her workstation and gathered a few things into her satchel. If she hurried she would be on time but still she went across to Rachael’s desk on the way out. “Hey, time to call it a day.”
Rachael looked up and nodded but said, “A couple more hours. Just want to get these inventories compiled.”
Gemi hesitated not sure whether to push or let it be. Rachael had lost her husband just a week ago but here she was back at work. Had the Company demanded that or was she filling the new void in her life with work?
They remained in their awkward silence for a moment, then Gemi said, “Alright, but don’t forget you have my number if you need anything. Anything at all okay?”
Rachael tried for a smile and turned back to her data entries.
Gemi thought, “Poor woman’. She hadn’t really known Jurgen, hadn’t even been certain of his name before the funeral two days ago. Massive cerebral embolism, died very unexpectedly. He had also been a CSL employee but something to do with ship software configuration or something. She made a mental note to have Rachael’s data checked, there was no way that she could be doing error-free work. Then Gemi felt bad about thinking that, but she still knew she would have the entries double checked.
She left the local offices of CSL Freight and made her way hurriedly down to the tube station. She reached the thoroughfare and stopped, the evening peak of pedestrian traffic flowing around her like she was a rock in a stream. She hesitated. Left would take her home where she should go, right would take her to the city centre and the upmarket restaurant district. Left would take her to Robert and the kids in their small, tidy, satisfactory home. She had a good job and a husband who worked hard and helped raise the kids and sometimes remembered to tell her he loved her. Turning right would take her to her guilty pleasure and him. She knew she shouldn’t, but already her feet were headed right.
Her job could lead to citizenship if she continued to meet her key performance indicators. She was chief of the Ormon Sector, why risk it for this silly fling. She caught a reflection of herself in the glass panels as the escalator took her down to the city bound line. She was still slim and attractive, dark hair pulled up into a professional bun, dark business suit stylishly cut. The thing was, Crister Holloman reminded her she was attractive. He told her how beautiful she was.
It had started some months ago when Holloman had been ushered into her office by her very flustered assistant. Citizens did not come down to the local office unless something was wrong. Direly wrong. Career endingly wrong. Gemi had not even had to be told he was a Citizen. The cut and cloth of his suit, the confidence of his step, and the air of entitlement spoke volumes. Gemi was on the verge of panic herself, and then he smiled, all his personality focused solely on her. He had explained that he needed her help, a consignment of SinoTech parts had gone missing. They were shipped with CSL Freight but had gotten mis-labelled somewhere and it was going to be his neck on the line if they didn’t turn up. He was so different to any other Citizen she had come across. No threatening or demanding. No blaming her for a stuff up. He was so charming.
It had taken days to sort out the missing items. Someone couldn’t have made it more difficult to screw up if they had tried but in the end she had tracked them down. Crister had insisted he take her to dinner afterward, just to say thanks. She didn’t know why she had lied to Robert about working back for a demanding client when she accepted the invitation, but then she did know really if she was being honest with herself. One thing had led to another and she had ended up in Holloman’s bed. That was another thing that had been amazing. The stims he had given her were like…wow.
And now he was back on a quick stopover, but she knew it was coming to an end. The sad tone of his message. The fact he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stay long, preferring his real life far from lowly temps and boring freight consignment offices. She was glad and terrified and heartbroken all at the same time. She had always known it was just a fling. Robert was kind and good and didn’t deserve her infidelity. If only he had even bothered to suspect a tiny little bit. Just be a bit jealous of the hours she gave to some client.
Gemiexited the tube and caught the elevator up to the surface level. As always, a private hire car was waiting to auto-pilot her to the restaurant. She walked in boldly, feeling a million dollars as the maître d’ made a small fuss of her and ushered her to the table where Holloman waited. It was not like anyone she knew would ever be here to question who she was meeting.
Holloman rose graciously and waited until she was seated. “Hello you,” he said.
“Hello yourself,” she replied, smiling.
He pushed across a little package wrapped in finest linen and secured with a tiny bow. “A thank you for all that you did to help me out.”
She put her hand on top of his over the present. It would be something exquisite and very, very expensive she knew. It would also be a farewell.
Kell woke trying to scream but choking on the spider climbing into her mouth. She bolted upright in the narrow cot, clawing at her face and coughing violently. Just another dream.
“Fucking spiders,” she said collapsing back and regaining her ragged breath. 05:10 hours ships-time, so just over an hour to the start of A-shift. She lay for a while, curled up on her side, lonely and unrested, with all thought of sleep having fled. She rolled out and padded into her rec-room where only one screen was lit, Ashi8. He was lying on his couch, dressed in T-shirt and coveralls peeled down to his waist, reading something on his tab. Crew protocol was basically that if someone’s screen was up they were open for company.
Kell said, “Join chat,” and waited for comms to link. “Hi Ashi.”
“Hey Kell,” said Ashi8, looking up. He was doing some maintenance on his emergency vac-suit, the familiar tools and patch-kit and neck ring lubricant laid out alongside a fancy ceramic-plate vest and other more exotic components Kell didn’t recognise.
“Whatcha working on?” she said.
Ashi8 dragged the old vac-suit over the other things to cover them from sight. “Just routine maintenance. This old company issue stuff is pretty dodge.”
For a moment, Kell wondered about the items Ashi8 had there, but then did not push the subject. He obviously had some of his own gear but it was his prerogative as to what he brought on board within his small personal cargo allocation. Bringing kit so he did not have to solely rely on the crappy company-issued survival gear wasn’t a bad choice.
Ashi8 put aside his work and looked directly at her. Well, directly at the camera really.“Can’t sleep?”
“Bad dreams. I need a cup of char, want one?”
Ashi laughed at the tired old joke of the impossibility of simply making a crewmate a brew. “No, I’m good thanks.” He picked up his work again, but looked at her and asked, “Was it spiders again?”
Kell was glad that Ashi8 was on line and no one else was around. He was the only one she felt confident enough to tell about her nightmares. Each crew member had to submit a confidential report each week on the observed behaviour of the others, which could easily affect the future employment of both the observed and the observer. Stazi reports they were called. Kell made a mental note to look up the origin of that name too.
“You okay Kell?” said Ashi8.
“Yeah miles away, or still half asleep or something,” she said, before commanding the dispenser to brew a Lady Grey.
“Lady Grey, very la de da,” he teased.
Kell waited for the hot drink and curled up on her crash-couch, feet tucked beneath her.
“How many trips you done Ashi?”
“I don’t know, lots but some were sub-light. Not that it makes any difference, they are all locked in a tin can doing the daily rounds regardless of whether you are travelling FTL or sub.”
“I am going to end up a lot further from home at FTL.” She absently swirled the tea in the mug for a moment, watching the miniature whirlpool, her hair hanging down around her face, her expression hidden from Ashi8.
“Yeah, where is home?” he asked.
Kell, looking up, deflected the subject. “So if you have done lots of hauls, then they were either short hops or you started very young.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“How old are you? Not more than mid thirties.”
“Justturnedthirty. My birthday is one week after yours.”
“How did you know that?”
“I looked you up on the Company profile. No secrets in cyber space, you know that.”
“Looked me up eh?”
“Checked you out,” he said.
Kell blushed, and let the silence hang for moment. She hid her face behind her mug and said, “So you have been spacing since you were pretty young. There are laws against child labour in some parts of the galaxy.”
“My parents travelled extensively and I started out with them. They have just retired on Io. Got themselves a condo with a pool and freedom to wander around at will. Living way back in the original Sol system amongst the Remainers.”
“Wow, old school.”
The lights came up slightly brighter and the wall strip chronometer flashed.
“Time for scrubs and some breakfast before another day of toil,” Ashi8 sighed, swinging his legs off the couch. He paused and looked directly at Kell. “Don’t let the dreams get you down. We all get them in the small dark hours. Space has an insidious way of slipping into the bones.”
“Even you?”
“Sure. I’ll tell you about my nightmares sometime if you promise not to laugh. And not put them in your weekly psych report.”
“Only if you promise the same,” Kell said.
“The Company will never know.”
“Mother is probably parsing every critical phrase out of every conversation.”
“Good luck with that. All the company will learn is that every spacer is half crazy and the really good ones are fully off the chart,” Ashi8 said.
Kell said, “See you after shift?”
“Sure. In the meantime, let me tell you what I do to keep the dreams at bay.”
“Okay.”
“I review the logic of all the safeguards built into the system.”
“Does it work?” Kell said.
“Sort of helps. Logic will never trump emotion but it gives you something to think about when you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.” He laughed, standing and hoiking up the coveralls that threatened to slip down off his narrow hips. “I’m off for a shower ‘n shave before Computer Eight starts ordering me about for the day. Care to join me?”
Kell suddenly had no idea what she would have said if that were a real possibility. Instead she did say, “Too far to travel. Might consider it if you were next door in M4 or M6, but M8- that’s like in the slums. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that district for all the tea on Ceraspian.”
Two or three other screens flickered to life as the crew in the other modules wandered into their respective rec-rooms for breakfast. Ashi8 and Kell shared a look and simultaneously disconnected.
Frank tasked Kell to M-deck and she took the cart to pick up the spares and tools on the way.
‘Oh goody, more work in here.’
The spider habitats were designed to be off loaded in pallet-sized, sealed and self contained units ready to be placed in their new ecosystem and then opened and left as the core habitat from which to spread. To open one required the manual removal of the top-plate fasteners using the power driver and there was no way Kell was touching a single one of those screws. Air flow was pumped in through a triple layer filter, allowing fresh, contaminant-free air in, and no tiny baby arachnids out. Feed, in the form of mealworms, was fed pneumatically into the spider habitat from the tanks where the worms bred and lived. Moisture was collected, filtered and recycled within the container. The only external connections were for power to run the pumps, heat and lighting, and data and control feeds. The whole unit looked solid enough to be run over by a truck as the Company certainly wanted the delicate little inhabitants to reach their destination safely despite multiple freight handling nodes.
Despite the harshness of space, conditions inside the giant cargo modules was uniformly sterile, consistent and gentle on components and circuitry. If there was one thing that mechanical and electrical devices liked it was constant operation and environment. Circuit boards hated heating up and cooling down, bearings liked to run in constant lubrication. Everything to do with the safe and efficient transport of the cargo mostly just hummed along day in day out. Occasionally a fan motor blew a bearing, or a filter became clogged but generally Frank knew well ahead of time through a subtle warning vibration or a tell tale data feed. There were three multi function maintenance ‘bots, or embees, in each module, to manage the work that barely kept one of them busy. They could even maintain and repair themselves. And still, despite all that, here Kell lay under one of the spider enclosures, torso wedged in beneath a feed tank, her legs sticking out in the aisle.
“Disconnect the power cable at the socket,” directed Frank from Kell’s tablet, “and then loosen the three mounting screws.” The maintenance robot parked beside her leg helpfully extended in one of its flex-arms with the small power driver for the screws and illuminated the spot to apply it.
“Bloody ‘bot could could do the job by itself quicker and easier,” Kell muttered.
Employment codes dictated that the Company provide crew with ‘meaningful employment’ each day-cycle. This, in Kell’s not so quiet opinion, did not constitute meaningful employment. She worked the fan body off its mount, getting a face full of dust for her trouble and passed it out to the robot in exchange for the replacement component. Once installed, Frank ran it up and measured the rate of flow.
“Fan function restored to within 98% tolerance. Close up and please proceed to next allotted task.”
Kell wormed her way out of the cramped space and clipped the access panel back into position as the robot gathered the tools and motored off under Frank’s silent bidding. Out of habit she gave the panel a good thump to check it was secure. She grabbed a swig of water from the flask in her cart and opened a protein bar.
“Next task overdue in four minutes,” said Frank, “Please proceed to allotted task.”
“Yes, alright, don’t get your diodes in a twist,” Kell replied, chirping the rubber wheels on the deck plating as she followed the directions on the cart’s display panel toward the stern.
The Q–deck airlock was located aft next to the larger loading dock and freight elevator. There was a second lock forward up on A-deck but that would be scheduled for another day. The ship cycled the lock under Frank’s supervision as Kell observed from behind the inner door, recording cycling time, pressurisation and seals. All okay. Manual controls had been removed from all Company ships many years ago after too many crew had succumbed to the haunting call of the void and simply stepped out. Kell entered the results and turned to the escape pod.
The pod, like the lock, was only operable under automatic command of the ship’s computers. Escape pods, which were not cryo equipped, were only included because of labour regulations but they did offer another limited duration emergency shelter beyond that of the crew accommodation module. Pods were another low maintenance priority item in the Company’s view. It was clamped with explosive bolts to the outside of the rear of M5, and entered through its own narrow hatch in the bulkhead. Again no manual controls and access was via permission from the ship-mother.
“Access escape pod,” Kell said.
“Access denied,” replied Frank’s synthetic voice. “Escape pod operation not required at this time. Testing seals and integrity of clamp firing circuits. Record indication status.”
Kell logged five greens and a yellow.
“Testing onboard O2, generators and scrubbers.”
Kell entered green, yellow, and a red respectively just to see what would happen.
“The status does not correspond with my reading. Please confirm and re-enter status.”
Kell entered the correct green, yellow, green.
Frank intoned, “Please ensure care with status results input. Incorrect results may lead to breach of employment contract and subsequent penalties. Please perform visual check of lock seals.”
Kell put on her good girl face and did as she was told. There was a minor leak around the upper hatch and the re-certification plates read two years overdue, which she entered in the comments field. She wondered if anyone had ever used an escape pod and made another quick note in her little book of things to research. It could only be jettisoned at sub-light speeds and then the solo occupant would be left adrift with slim chance of rescue in the sparsely populated shipping lanes. Once any residual motion imparted on the pod at launch carried it beyond the lane, the chance of detection and salvation fell to infinitely small percentages. Kell shuddered, ‘Worse than spiders.’
“Pod due ongoing maintenance at terminus,” came Frank’s emotionless tone, before moving on to checks on the freight elevator.
“The only damn thing that actually breaks in this ship is my entertainment unit. The screen’s on the fritz, would you believe it?” Kell complained.
Zen2 watched on across the link from her CAP. “Not part of the ship’s maintenance cycle to keep our CAPs serviceable. Loose connection or no vid feed?”
“Don’t know yet. Screen self tests okay. I’ll tap the vid feed into the ship’s status display. Yep, video out is okay. Must be a loose connection or a dodgy cable.”
Kell rummaged in the small locker below the unit, blessing the previous occupants who had left a collection of common spare parts over the years. She made a length of cable from two shorter ones and fed it up behind the screen to the socket.
“Hey success,” she said as the image of Humphrey Bogart reappeared on the screen.
“What are you watching?” Zen2 asked.
“Some old doco about Earth. I’ll watch the rest later now you’re here.”
“Speaking of faults,” Zen2 said, “I had an interesting one today. The escape pod software had an update.”
“And?”
“Just unusual, that’s all. We are FTL so no comms for Company link and anyway this sort
of thing is usually done in port or on turn-servicing.”
“Did you query Mother, perhaps she had a backlog of minor tasks and she just got around to it?”
“Yeah I did, and that is the truly odd thing. Mother had no record of that software reload.”
“And Frank, sorry I mean M2’s foreman?”
“Same. The computer concurred that there was no change to the escape pod code.”
“That is odd I guess. What was the change?” Kell said.
“No idea. I’m not a coder so it is just numbers to me. But the pod’s logged a change to software registered today at 13:00.”
Kell pictured the diagrams of the pod from the brief induction training pack they had been given. The escape pods, for all their age and faults, were seriously robust. A really basic lifeboat shaped like an old fashioned flying saucer mounted with the base, and the lower hatch, snug against the end of the module cylinder. A small reaction thrust engine and a nav system designed to keep the craft in the ‘shipping lane’. A beacon and a single comms channel, food, water and a g-couch. A life support air recycler and environmental control unit so you didn’t asphyxiate or freeze to death too quickly. “Do you think your pod still serviceable Zen?”
“Yes, checks out. All status green. That was how I noticed the change. Fluke really. M2’s foreman had me doing the checks on the airlock and the escape pod…”
“Yeah, my Frank had me doing those recently. Sorry, go on.”
Zen2 said, “Anyway I was at the pod doing the checks and the onboard systems scrolled up briefly and logged acceptance of the software. Then it all went back to standby mode. I reran the status checks twice and got greens across the board and reported it in the comments fields and it drew no flags, so I suppose it’s okay.”
“If Mother and M2’s computer all agree it’s okay, then I guess it’s okay,” Kell said. “Still, it is a bit weird. Do ship hosts or module computers ever glitch? They must do sometimes I suppose. Not that there would ever be any Company record of that.”
“No. And we are talking about independent computers.”
“I’ll query the M5 computers tomorrow. Not sure if I can get into the escape pod tests because Frank has already had me do those checks.”
“Sure but don’t lose any sleep over it. It was a curiosity, that’s all.”
“Can I ask you something?” Kell said.
“Of course.”
“Should I be worried about this gyres transit?”
“We’ll be fine,” said Zen2. “The ship is sound and Mother will not do anything to endanger the cargo.”
“But stuff happens sometimes?”
“Gyres are unpredictable, but we will be right, you wait and see. Something interesting to put in your log-book.”