The Bright Black Sea (4 page)

I stepped into space and with a thrust up on a
handhold, dropped down one level to what we refer to as the 'awning
deck' – the former social deck of the passenger section. It
includes a small library and a media theater, the dining saloon and
a small bistro stocked with self-serve boxed meals and beverages.
Both the saloon and bistro open on a spacious commons area lined on
two sides and the ceiling with grid of two meter square holographic
viewpanels that give the illusion that the deck is open to the
black marble sky of the nebula. Chairs, lounges and low tables are
arranged under a thin fabric awning and hanging lanterns. The
fourth bulkhead has a rock garden under a bank of warm lights, home
to lush green foliage and cheerful bachelor birds who flit amongst
the foliage and occasionally fly about the deck. As I entered, half
the crew was sitting or floating about at ease, talking, reading or
playing cards about the twilit commons.

'Skipper,' said Riv D'Van, our chief engineer,
looking up as I walked over to his group. 'Cargo onboard?'

'Aye, let's clear this orbit.'

'Not going to replace Uzi?'

Uzilane, our second pilot had decided to remain on
Pinelea, his home world. It's easier to find employment on a world
you know well, so I couldn't blame him. Better the beach you
know...

'I don't think we need anther pilot for the run home.
Do you?'

'I'm not the one who'll be standing double watches.
But I can't say we'd make very pleasant company for someone
new...'

'That's what I'm thinking. Let's clear.'

Without Uzi, only Illynta Tin and myself were fully
qualified pilots. However, our apprentice pilot, Molaye Merlun has
been aboard for two years and was fully qualified to go before the
Guild board and get her Guild pilot's ticket when we reached
Calissant, so we weren't in bad shape. She didn't need me looking
over her shoulder. I'd have to pilot a watch and stand another with
Molaye when under power, but that'd be only four or five double
watches over the course of the run. I could do my desk work as
easily on the bridge while
attending
Molaye's turn at the
helm as in the office.

'In a rush to get home, are we?' said Riv, studying
at his cards.

'Aye. I want things settled.'

Riv tossed the magnetic cards to the table and rose.
'In that case, Skipper, let's get this packet on its way.'

'Hey Riv, we can play this hand out...' protested
Eljor Pantin.

'Haven't time. I've got to get my reactors wound up.
Captain's orders,' replied Riv, heading for the well with me.

We heard Eljor utter a quiet curse as he turned over
Riv's discarded cards.

'You have to know just when to break orbit...' Riv
laughed quietly besides me.

I left Riv at the bridge deck while he continued down
to his engine room, and began the process of getting the ship
underway for Calissant and its uncertain fate.

Sleep was not on the charts. I undid the flap of my
hammock, snagged my magnetic soled slippers off the bulkhead and
curled up to slip them on, setting the hammock swinging wildly.
Reaching over my head, I grabbed the edge of the shelf and swung
myself out, my slippers latching on to the deck. As captain of this
packet, I suppose trousers were optional, but I slipped a pair on
anyway, and pulled over a sweater as well since the
Lost
Star
is a rather cool climate ship.

Ship climates tend to reflect the climates of their
home worlds and the
Lost Star
's seemed to echo the long
winters of its home port of Primecentra, though it likely goes
further back in its history than that. There are hot ships too. I
know an ex-spaceer beachcomber by the name of Sunny Day who claims
that in a moment of mutual desperation he signed on as a pilot
aboard the
Starbound
, a Hareau (Amdia system) based
interstellar freight liner. Hareau is a world on the inward side of
the human inhabitable range and the ship maintained a 40C
environment. Sunny claims that after spending four days as a
sopping wet human sponge, he adopted a new uniform consisting of
slippers and a large towel which he carried to dry off
occasionally. He admitted this new uniform met with some initial
resistance, but having embarked on a 135 day interstellar voyage,
the rest of the crew had little choice but to grin and bare it. He
sailed aboard the
Starbound
for seventeen years, his tenure
ending only when the firm's chief operations officer came on board
for a voyage back to the Amdia system and decided that 135 Sunny
Days was going to be too many and sent him packing downside. Sunny
claims that by that time, every other ship was now too cold and too
“confining”, so he retired to the beaches of Belbania. I've never
seen Sunny in anything but sandals, but whether this buttresses his
yarn or the yarn serves to justify his sartorial preferences I've
yet to decide.

Anyway, shuffling over to the built-in table/desk, I
scooped a tube-spoon full of cha leaves from the canister and
carefully pushed them into the clearsteel mug. Screwing on its
cover, I connected the drinking tube to the water faucet and
punched up a half a liter of boiling water which pushed down the
mug's piston bottom that keeps the beverage accessible. As the cha
leaves slowly unfolded in a lazy reddish swirl I debated what to do
next. Too restless to stay in my cabin, I slid open the door-panel
and slipped out into the dimly lit passageway.

It was the last four-hour watch of the ship's day –
20 to 24 o:clock. 24 o:clock corresponds to mid-summer's first
light on Calissant and the start of its day. Since Calissant's
capital city of Primecentra, is our our home port, we keep
Primecentra time aboard ship so this was our final night watch –
the subdued lighting in the passage, a conceit, but useful in
marking the passage of days without natural sunrises and sunsets.
Azminn is always off to starboard when in passage since we circle
the system anti-rotation wise, so we mark night by dimming our
passage lights and limiting the viewpanels to the port side view of
the nebula laced sky. Since we were not under power, only the
subtle hum of the fans and pumps of the environmental units kept
the big silence of space at bay. Over this faint hum, a static
laced voice drifted down the passageway.

I'd kept my first mate's cabin on the crew deck, one
deck above the bridge deck. No point changing it for a voyage.
Having been fitted to carry passengers, the
Lost Star
has 28
cabins between the two accommodations decks,
passenger deck
above and the
crew deck
, more than enough to accommodate our
current crew of 11 even with using empty cabins as a lockers for
our Guild trade goods. Half a dozen meters away, the light from one
of the surplus cabins, a radio lounge, spilled out into the crew
deck's small commons lounge. I walked over and looked in.

In the tiny, isolated, world of an interplanetary
ship, sharing yarns and gossip with other spaceers on ships in
radio range is a constant off duty past time. Our chief engineers,
Riv D'Van and his partner Lilm Ar'Dim, Dyn zerDey, our
environmental engineer, plus our young love birds, pilot apprentice
Molaye Merlun and apprentice systems tech Kie Kinti, were gathered
around a holographic view of a cabin much like ours projected from
a console in the center of the cabin showing spaceers bemoaning the
emergency pay scale the Guild had recently agreed to. The bulkhead
viewpanel displayed a chart of the ships in range and a second one
with thumbnails of the spaceers on each ship involved in the radio
mesh. Pinelea and Calissant are two of the seven prime worlds of
the Azminn system and in normal times, more than a dozen ships
might be in conversational radio range. The chart showed only five
ships, three small planet traders meandering along, a passing
Pinelea Prime Line packet bound, like us, for Calissant and a
Kylsant & Co. tramp decelerating for Coristant. The company
looked up and nodded as I stood in the doorway. Riv indicated an
empty space with a sweep of his hand, but I shook my head 'No'. Too
restless. I heaved myself off the door frame and moved on.

I crossed the lounge to the access well and
hesitated. Up or down? Company, or not? I decided 'not', and
stepping off, grabbed a pole with my free hand and pulled down to
send me upwards. I drifted pass the passenger deck and swung off at
the awning deck, dark, quiet, and seemingly deserted. The jungle
garden was dark, the bachelor birds asleep in their rocky nests.
Only after I'd walked in to the nebula lit deck did I see Illynta
Tin in one of the lounges, her face faintly illuminated by the book
on her lap.

'Sorry, Illy, I didn't see you there. I'll find
somewhere else to brood...'

'Oh, you can brood here all you want. I don't mind,'
she replied glancing up.

I settled in a chair near hers and warmed my hands on
the mug. 'I've been thinking of Captain Miccall, why I ended up
captain and how I haven't a clue as to what to do next.'

'You're thinking too much. Fen and Hawker appointed
you captain to take the
Lost Star
around the sun. Neb knows
what lies ahead of us. Just have to wait and see. I doubt we'll
have any say in the matter.'

'And they're both dead, now,' I sighed. 'Why me? As
first mate for almost half a century, you're far more qualified.
Plus there's the old gang, all of whom I suspect have masters
tickets tucked away as well.'

'As I've told you before, as first mate, you were
first in line for the berth. And well, appointing you wouldn't
upset the balance.'

'Not sure I chart that.'

'We're all getting old and we get along quite
comfortably. None of us cared to risk our comfortable berth by
changing things. You knew the job, but were new enough not to try
to make changes. Fen felt you'd see us around without upsetting the
rhythm of our little society.'

I considered that. The
Lost Star
has a pretty
elderly crew. Half of them have been spaceers for well over a
century, and they set the tone for the ship. You either fit in,
like me, or you moved on. 'So you're saying my lack of ambition got
me the post.'

She chuckled. 'Aye, that, and five years as first
mate. Fen knew we could live with you and handle you if your
appointment went to your head.'

True enough. The gang did their jobs just as if
Miccall was aboard and I just let them go about doing them. Nor was
I afraid to ask their advice when I needed it. I was filling a
legal requirement, not replacing Fen Miccall. I didn't try.

Miccall was one of those larger than life characters
you cross orbits with occasionally. That was clear even though I
only knew him in the quiet autumn of his life, taking
his ship
around Azminn twice each year. The peace and
pace of his last half century had not always been the case. He
could, when in the mood, spin countless yarns of his early years
aboard the
Lost Star
, the type of tales that warrant my 'old
spaceer claims...' prefix. Pirates, assassins, smugglers, hidden
robots, moon kings and asteroid miners all played their parts in
his wild tales. And, I might add, all without showing up in the
official log – I've looked as captain. And while many of these
stories, I hope, lay well beyond the event horizon of reality,
there seemed a vein of truth buried within them. The vague,
artificial ordinariness of the official ship's log actually confers
a sense of authenticity to them.

'I'm not a lifer. I had it all worked out – another
fifty times around the sun as first mate, several years as captain
of some little in-system ship, and with a pile of credits and the
title “Captain Litang” to carry with me the rest of my life, was
the extent of my ambition. It still is, I think. It's just that
now, I've a whole lot more responsibilities that I'd have chosen...
Though I suppose with the prospect of being paid off looming, I
needn't be too concerned.'

'Nothing wrong with that attitude. I've avoided being
appointed captain for a century.'

'Why?' I asked. I always wondered why she didn't have
a ship of her own, but never dared to ask. You'd not find a more
competent, level headed, spaceer in all of the nebula. She'd been
my mentor, looking out for me and bringing me along in my
profession these last fifteen years. Five years ago she decided to
semi-retire and just pilot, so she talked Miccall into appointing
me first mate in her place. I owed her a great debt.

'Not worth the headaches. The
Lost Star
pretty
much runs itself, so you can't judge what a ship's captain's life
is like solely on your experience. I've served on ships that drove
the captain to drink and half around to the far side of the Ninth
Star. Never felt the need to take that chance. Like you, in that
way, I guess. Besides, it's hard to go backwards once you're a
captain.'

'Hopefully acting captains can go back.'

'Still want to?' She hit the mark with that
question.

'Don't know, anymore. I thought I was about to be
superseded on Belbania, and was surprised how it stung. All I'd
done to that point was to moan and groan about how I couldn't wait
to return to my old berth. If Vinden was still alive, I'd know
where I stood. But now, with the Ministry, who knows ? Does it even
matter?'

'Neb knows. Vinden would've kept his ships running
one way or another but with the Ministry or even Vinden's heirs....
Well, in six days we'll have a better idea... '

We sat in silence for a while with our own thoughts.
I snagged my drifting mug and took a sip of cha.

'It is strange to think that in the span of two
years, all four of the “Four Shipmates” have died,' I said sometime
later.

The
Four Shipmates
as they called themselves
were
Captain
Miccall,
Owner
Hawker Vinden, our late
co-owners, plus Vinden's niece,
Purser
Onala Min, nee Vinden
and her eventual husband,
Pilot
Martindale Min, who owned
Min & Co. our shipbrokers, agents and bookkeepers. The Mins had
died in a space boat crash on Calissant two years ago.