“No, I mean the whole ship.”
He bipped Cookie on his tablet and asked, “Can I have permission to show Ish the way to the bridge?”
Cookie’s response came right back. “As long as you don’t get in the way up there, permission is granted. But don’t take too long, the crew will be back aboard in three stans and we’ll need more coffee.”
Pip led me up a couple of levels and down a passage. At the foot of a stairway-they called them ladders on the ship I reminded myself-he paused. “Don’t touch anything. Just look. Pay attention to any directions from the bridge crew,” he said quietly to me before climbing the ladder. At the top, he used a formal sounding voice to announce us. “Request permission to enter the bridge.”
“State your business.” A woman at the top of the ladder spoke formally but smiled at him.
“Orientation for new crew member.”
“Granted.” She grinned at me as I stepped off the ladder.
Subdued lighting revealed a relatively large space with comfortable looking chairs bolted to the deck in key locations. A collection of nearly identical work stations formed a phalanx around the room. A doorway, with a real door, not a hatch, opened at the back of the bridge and revealed a small conference room. Panels and consoles flickered giving the area an odd radiance. I could see one screen that displayed what I took to be a Neris schematic with the orbital base and planetary surface plotted. A larger scale display showed the whole system with a blinking, blue path curving across it. It took me a few moments to register that there were actually ports facing forward and I could see that the ship nuzzled up against the outside of the orbital. I’d seen pictures of the station, of course, and watched it on shuttle approach, but I’d never been this close. It looked near enough to touch. I could see little scratches and blemishes in the surface finish and some kind of polarizing filter blocked the glare reflected off the orbital’s skin. I turned slowly realizing that ports faced aft as well and I saw the rest of the Lois McKendrick stretching out into the star spackled Deep Dark.
Leviathan never seemed so appropriate a term.
Gantry lights ran down the spine of the ship, illuminating the container tugs that wrestled the big, triangular cargo boxes ever-so-gently into place before locking them down. Twelve sections of containers extended into the distance. At the far end of the main spine, a small white light, twenty kilometers out, marked the stern post. In one instant, I went from feeling like I was crammed in a shoe box to something akin to a flea on a pachyderm. It was staggering.
Pip was watching my face. “You’ll get used to it. Do you still feel like the ship is small?”
I shook my head, unable to speak.
My tablet beeped. Cookie’s voice came over the speaker. “Your presence is needed on the mess deck, Mr. Wang. Number two urn is out of coffee.”
Chapter 4
Neris Orbital
2351-September-07
The duty watch stander woke me and Pip ending a long stretch of restlessness. I’d thrashed around the whole night unable to sleep knowing the ship would leave Neris Orbital and get underway for Darbat later that day. Pip slid out of his bed and slipped past me heading for the san. I chided myself for being nervous as I straightened the blankets on my berth and secured my loose gear. I had already been confined for days but now it would be different. We’d be heading out into the Deep Dark and I would be locked in. I stretched to straighten my pillow when a voice startled me. “Nice package, sailor, but would you mind moving it out of my face?” The sound came from the approximate level of my knees.
The voice, a woman’s voice, startled me so much that I fell into the empty lower berth under Pip’s, banging my head on the upper rail. She lay in the bunk under mine. Even as I struggled to my feet, I noticed how attractive she was with her dark skin and hair. She wore just a ship’s tee over an extensive collection of tattoos and blinking blearily she said, “You must be the new guy.”
I tried to stammer something apologetic but didn’t know what the appropriate comment might be. “C-c-c-call me Ishmael.”
She propped herself on an elbow and squinted at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head, unable to think of anything else to say.
Pip, wet from the san and struggling into a fresh shipsuit, rescued me. “Beverly, stop scaring the help. Ish, get your butt in the san. We don’t have much time to get to the mess deck.”
The woman held up a slender hand to shake. “Beverly Arith, pleased to meet ya. Wake me for afternoon watch?”
I shook the offered hand, mumbling, “Ishmael Wang,” before retreating to the san.
Pip gave me grief all morning. “You’ve never seen a girl before, Ish?”
“She startled me. I didn’t realize anybody was there until she spoke.”
I’d known there were women in the berthing area. Tabitha Rondita slept on the other side of the partition from me, a nice woman and I didn’t mind her little snorty-snores through the wall. We all shared the san and that didn’t bother me. Bathing is bathing and everyone likes a little privacy when pooping. The shower and toilet stalls all had doors. I’d lived with my mom and she was not shy so seeing women in various states of undress was no big deal. All told, it felt like summer camp except we were adults and not giggly kids-supposedly.
When Beverly came through the serving line at lunch, Pip nudged me.
For her part, Bev just smiled, nodded, and moved on.
“NOW HEAR THIS. SECURE ALL LOCKS. STOW ALL GEAR FOR DEPARTURE. DEPARTMENT HEADS REPORT TO THE CAPTAIN’S READY ROOM.”A countdown timer ticked on my tablet showing the stans and minutes until we would get underway. Remembering the size, and assuming the mass of the ship, I found it difficult to believe that we’d be moving at all, let alone sailing out of the system on nothing more than pressure from the sun on an electronically generated field.
We’d had a particularly robust lunch that day and many people sat around afterward to catch up with each other. After the sparsely attended meals I’d grown accustomed to while docked, it seemed crowded and noisy. Even some of the officers stayed for a bit, chatting.
After the lunch clean up, Cookie took me and Pip aside. “Gentlemen, we’ll be doing dinner differently today because of departure. The captain has scheduled pull out at 16:00 and we’ll still be maneuvering at 18:00. We’ll be doing bento-boxes for the evening meal. Mr. Carstairs, you know the drill. Mr. Wang, it’s important that we have plenty of coffee, but make certain the urns are secured. We may get bumped a bit and I want to keep things under control.”
I nodded my understanding. Each of the urns had a lid that made them spill-proof once locked. A simple system of curved pipes kept the pressure normalized inside without violating liquid integrity. “Two urns or three, Cookie?”
He thought about it before replying. “Load and prep all three, but only brew two. We can hit the button on the last when needed.” Obvious and logical, I should have thought of it myself and I made a tally on my personal mental midget list.
All the preparation talk made me a bit nervous and Pip noticed. “It’ll be fine, Ish. We might get a little bump, but usually it’s nothing. We just don’t want hot stuff splattered around if we happen to get a rough tug skipper. Once we get pulled back and the sails are up, it’ll be smooth again. You’ll think we’re docked.”
There was nothing I could do about what was going to happen to the ship. The professionals would be working that end of things. To distract myself, I obsessed over the minutiae of keeping the urns full. I ground enough coffee for six full batches, throwing the extra into an air-tight and dropping it in a chiller to keep it as fresh as possible. The trick was in the timing. With everybody on board again, I assumed they would consume an amazing amount. The Handbook told me that everybody should be at their duty stations about a half-stan before the actual departure, so I figured we needed to have the most brewed about a stan before. Accordingly, I timed the urns to be full at 15:00. I needn’t have worried so much, but it kept my mind occupied.