The Bright Black Sea

Original Manuscript Edition

A Golden Age Inspired Interplanetary Adventure

Copyright 2015 Charles Litka

Smashwords Edition Version 1.0

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This manuscript edition presents the complete
author's version of the story. While every effort has been made to
eliminate errors in the text, we live in a quantum universe, so
some may have escaped notice. Updated versions will be issued to
correct errors brought to my attention. Contact information is
available on my blog.

Background information, maps and charts, and a
character list for
The Bright Black Sea
can be found and
downloaded from my blog. In addition, information on my other
novels, upcoming works, and contact information is available as
well.

C. Litka's Works with Words
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'You'll see my ship safely – and profitably, mind you
– around and back, won't you, Litang?'

Captain Fen Miccall's voice was faint, barely heard
over the hum of the machines he lay under, keeping him alive.

'We've done it often enough, Captain,' I replied. I'd
circled Azminn's planetary belt twenty-nine times and some of my
shipmates had made the voyage more than a hundred times.

'An evasive answer,' he whispered, watching me with
half closed eyes.

'Ah, yes,' I had to admit.

'Yes, it's an evasive answer, or yes, you'll see her
around?' he asked, summoning a ghost of his old fire. Well, it was
his beloved ship he was entrusting to me – Neb help him...

Nothing to do but, 'Yes, I'll take her around and
return her to you – with a profit – in six months,' adding, with
all the confidence I could muster, 'I promise.' Neb help me...

'Do that, Litang,' he said faintly and closed his
eyes.

'Get well, Captain,' I muttered, and began to edge
away. 'And fair orbits, Sir.'

'Fair orbits, Captain,' he whispered and started to
cough, gasping for breath.

We left him behind 37 hours later. All the healing
technology of the med-center failed to keep Fen Miccall on this
side of the event horizon – dying less than a day later, after a
long and eventful life, his actual age lost in his hidden past.

May you live in interesting times is an ancient
curse
– said to go back to Terra itself. As curses go, I
thought it innocent enough, until Miccall appointed me acting
captain and times got interesting.

I'd been the
Lost Star
's first mate for five
years and, like most first mates, I'd a master's ticket tucked away
in my sock drawer for the day in the (distant) future when I'd be
offered a ship of my own. So when old Captain Miccall's heart
suddenly gave out, my acting appointment might've seemed a simple
matter of course, filling in until his heart and health could be
repaired and restored. But it had caught me completely off
guard.

You see, my predecessor at first mate, and mentor,
Illynta Tin, was still onboard, semi-retired as one of the pilots.
With nearly 150 years of service in space – ten times mine – I had
assumed she'd be appointed acting captain. And if not her, one of
the half dozen old hands with as many or more years in space, who
also, no doubt, had the required Guild ticket in a drawer. So when
I was offered the berth by Captains Miccall and Vinden, the ship's
co-owners, I was taken aback, but hadn't the courage to
decline.

Oh, I could do the job, at least aboard the
Lost
Star
. As Captain Miccall's fiery energy waned, he'd left more
of the day-to-day running of the ship to me, so I knew what needed
to be done. And I knew the crew would carry on just as they had
under Captain Miccall. Running the ship was not an issue. Rather,
it was the sudden burden of being solely responsible for it, the
crew, and its profits which made times
interesting
for me.
Life and death decisions would be mine now, rather than Miccall's.
And while I'd no reason to expect anything but a routine passage
around Azminn's planetary belt, it was space travel, after all, and
things can happen. I was far from sure I was ready for that
burden.

Still, as I said, turning the berth down required
more courage than I could summon and so I became Wil Litang,
Captain (Acting) of the
Lost Star
. A day later, I took the
Lost Star
out of Calissant orbit bound for the planet of
Redazle, one of the 21 planets in our star's human-habitable
planetary belt.

Azminn is one of nine stars in the Nine Star Nebula.
The nebula was formed when the Ninth Star, a super massive giant
star flung off much of its mass before trying and failing to go
super-nova. It collapsed into the black star – the Ninth Star –
leaving a super dense lens-shaped nebula of gas, asteroids and
eight daughter stars, each surrounded by dense rings of planets. In
all, the eight stars governed by the Unity boast 211 human
inhabited worlds. In addition, there are said to be hundreds of
human inhabited planets within the
drifts
– the vast gas,
dust and asteroid shell that makes up the Ninth Star Nebula.

I managed to find Redazle, and make orbit, without
incident. Two radio-packets from Captain Vinden awaited us. The
first reported Captain Miccall's death. The second, reaffirmed my
acting appointment until our return to our home port world of
Calissant, where presumably, though politely left unsaid, a more
senior member of Captain Vinden's Night Hawk Line would be given
permanent command of the
Lost Star
. Which, at the time,
suited me just fine – the sooner I could hand over the captain's
responsibilities and return to my comfortable berth as first mate,
the happier I'd have been.

Arriving in Jornvan's planetary orbit a month later,
we heard the first whispers that the system's Import-Export
Exchange Market on Pinelea, was a bit unstable, something not
unusual. Interplanetary trade is inherently unstable. This time,
however, it was said, in hushed tones over strong drinks in the
dark dens where ship's captains, agents and shipbrokers gather, it
was
really unstable
.

This instability is a result of Unity policy. The
Unity, which governs the worlds of the Nine Star Nebula, requires
that planets maintain their interplanetary import and exports
strictly in balance. This policy prevents older, wealthier, and
more populated planets from carving out economic empires within the
Unity. Whatever advantage this has in securing political stability,
it means that interplanetary trade is anything but stable, since
any change in the exports or imports of one planet, every crop
shortfall, change in fashion, or rise or fall in demand ripples
through the entire interplanetary trade forcing every planet to
re-balance their trade. The Import-Export Market serves to dampen
these ripples by quickly finding new exporters or importers to step
in to take advantage of the disruptions. Occasionally, however,
these small ripples combine to form a rouge wave of disruption that
knocks interplanetary trade completely out of its orbit – sometime
for years. These disruptions are tolerated because interplanetary
trade accounts for only a thin sliver of a planet's total economic
activity, which is little comfort to a spaceer out of work and none
to a tramp ship's captain trying to find enough cargo to produce
the promised profit.

On arriving in Sanre-tay orbit – 93 days out from
Calissant – we found a radio-packet awaiting us from Min & Co,
our shipbrokers and accounting firm. It informed us that Captain
Vinden had been killed in a needle-rocket racer accident and that
we were now owned in trust by the Ministry of Probate on Calissant
– commonly referred to as the
Ministry of Death
– until the
ship's heirs could be identified and the assets passed to them.
Until , we'd be managed by Min & Co acting for the Ministry.
Life just kept getting ever more interesting.

Adding to this blow, was the fact that the
Import-Export Market had indeed collapsed under the weight of a
series of unrelated economic upheavals on half a dozen planets and
there was a tidal wave of collapsing trade spreading around the
planetary belt from the Pinelea quarter.

Outbound from Calissant we'd been ahead of this
economic tidal wave and our business unaffected. Sanre-tay lays on
the opposite side from Pinelea in the planetary belt, so we now had
to sail back towards Pinelea and Calissant and into this black hole
of trade. It didn't take long to find that the inbound cargoes we
normally collected were either much reduced or non-existent.

And to make everything even more interesting, Min
& Co sent word that as a result of this catastrophic trade
decline, the Ministry of Death was paying off Captain Vinden's
ships as they returned to Calissant rather than risk losing credits
by keeping them in operation – a fate I couldn't avoid, though I
tried. I spent an extra month tramping amongst the planets between
Sanre-tay and Saypori, taking any opportunity to make a little
profit for as long as possible. Eventually, however, I had to take
onboard the much reduced inbound containers of our old customers –
we'd need them again, someday – and with delivery deadlines
looming, turned the
Lost Star
for home and the beach.

If there's a platinum asteroid in this drift, it's
that I now have something interesting to write about. I've long
wanted to write a plain and unadorned account of the life of a
spaceer aboard a tramp ship in the 40th millennia of the Nine Star
Nebula Unity. The problem is that the life of a spaceer – at least
in the planetary trade I'm familiar with – is perhaps a little too
plain and unadorned – one planetfall much like every other, one
passage little different from the next. (Which, I might add, is the
way you want them. You don't want excitement in space.) But now, by
setting this life against all the interesting events of the last
four months and the uncertainty of the future, I can, perhaps,
craft a story of sorts.

I intend to avoid spicing up my account with the
familiar myths and memes of the Nebula. You'll not find lawless
asteroid miners from the deep drifts, cut throat pirates, ruthless
smugglers, deadly assassins or homicidal robots blasting their way
into this account. I've no intention of tossing in drift dragons,
ghost ships, quantum storms, black matter reefs, or any of the
other nonsense invented by old spaceers and space fiction writers
to enliven their tales. I've worked aboard space ships for twenty
years and have yet to be able to spin such a yarn without first
adding the disclaimer, I once knew an old spaceer who
claimed
... And just to be clear, that's as close as I care
to steer to pirates, drift dragons, sinister robots and the like. I
believe I can paint an interesting picture of life and work within
the tiny, restless world of interplanetary ships without resorting
to fiction.

But enough palaver. I'll launch my account from
Belbania orbit – 175 Days out of Calissant orbit – with what I've
come to think of as “The Belbania Affair”.

The Belbania Affair can be said to have begun with
the receipt of a radio-packet from Min & Co. ordering
us
to remain in Belbania orbit pending the
arrival of another of the late Captain Vinden's ships, the
Comet
King
. No explanation offered.

Normally extra days in Belbania orbit would've been
welcomed – not that we ever clear Belbania in a great hurry. Nobody
hurries on Belbania. It's a soft world, mostly warm seas speckled
with green islands complete with white beaches, lush volcanic
peaks, friendly, easygoing and often naked people. But I was up
against delivery deadlines. And times aren't normal. And the lack
of explanation left me uneasy. And I couldn't shake the feeling I
should've missed that radio-packet and left Belbania orbit as soon
as the last lighter cleared.

The
Comet King
arrived two days later and I
drifted down to the ship's landing stage to await the arrival of
her captain, Zelbe Jann. Azminn, our sun, faintly haloed in dust
and gas, hung low over the vivid blue and white arc of Belbania,
flooding the landing stage in ruddy light through the clearsteel
hull as I restlessly paced, occasionally glancing at the
Comet
King
, a bright silver dagger in the marbled night sky three
kilometers off.