“Their ships?” Nathan inquired, a bit surprised by the inference of multiple spacecraft.
“These teams usually have at least two or three small ships. One harvester that collects material from the rings and delivers it back to your ship, and one or two cargo shuttles to haul equipment and workers, as well as to ferry some of the harvested material back to Haven for resale in order to collect your payment and theirs. I have instructed them to use at least two ships for hauling back to Haven, as I expect you will require significant resources with which to purchase the supplies you desire.”
“Sir,” Jessica interrupted. “I’d recommend we send Ensign Mendez and Sergeant Weatherly back to the ship with them. I’d feel better if Enrique kept an eye on the harvesting operations in my absence.”
“Very well,” Nathan agreed. “Tobin, can you take two of my people back with you?”
“Of course, Captain. I should return to Haven within a few hours at the most. Meanwhile, might I suggest that you spend some time in our street markets. Perhaps try some of our local cuisine. You may find something you wish to purchase for use on your vessel. I’m sure Jalea will serve as an adequate guide in my absence, as this is not her first time on Haven.”
“You don’t mind?” Nathan asked Jalea, not wanting to assume her assistance would be so forthcoming.
“It would be my pleasure, Captain.” Jalea smiled, placing her hand on his forearm to lead him toward the street market.
Vladimir watched as they strolled past him, a smirk on his face. He looked over at Jessica, who bore a suspicious look that somehow made Vladimir’s smirk magically disappear. Sensing the tension, Vladimir decided to follow Nathan and Jalea, along with Danik.
“You two head back to the ship with Tobin,” Jessica ordered Enrique and Sergeant Weatherly. “I need you to handle security on board while I’m down here. Who knows how many of these workers you’re gonna have running around the flight deck. So keep your eyes open, and recruit anyone you need from the crew to help you. Do not let them beyond the flight deck, understood?”
“No problem, Jess,” Enrique answered. “Come on, Sarge, let’s mount up,” he told him as he climbed into the vehicle.
— 3 -
Nathan and Jalea strolled casually down the crowded promenade, with Jessica, Vladimir, and Danik close behind. The wide lane was paved with something similar to concrete, the exact composition of which seemed a bit rockier than what was widely used on Earth. There were vendor booths lining the streets, with small shops of varying types directly behind them. Some of the booths were independent of the shops, while others were merely extensions of the businesses behind them.
The crowd was thick with all manner of people, some buyers and some sellers. There were women shopping for their families, with men standing by their sides. There were crews from various ships, all looking to buy needed goods and services. They all had the same, impoverished look about them, as if they had always been forced to make do with not enough.
Nathan had grown up in a family of means. They had been one of both wealth and power for as many generations as they could trace. His father’s father had been a prominent politician, as had his father before him. Nathan knew that it had been a point of contention between himself and his father. Like all good sons had done since the time of the great bio-digital plague, Nathan’s father had expected him to follow in his footsteps and serve in elected office. But the changes that the Data Ark had sparked back on Earth had made the concept of the family line-of-succession obsolete in most circles. Structured education had once again replaced long apprenticeships in all the industrialized nations on Earth. Nathan, having grown up in such an environment, had therefore felt little compulsion to continue the family trade. In fact, he had grown to despise everything about it.
Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Nathan fought to control his excitement at all of the new sights, sounds, and smells he was experiencing. The setting, although familiar in its design and intent, was at the same time completely foreign to him. Despite the fact that most people spoke Angla, there was still a dizzying array of languages being spoken. Haven was a community of migrants who came and went with the work. Jalea had told him that less than ten percent of the population was actually born and raised on the little moon. Those that were rarely lived out their lives here. Instead, most sought escape to more prosperous worlds with the prospect of brighter futures.
Every direction his eyes wandered they caught glimpses of the cultural diversity that was Haven. Of even greater fascination was that these people had come from different worlds-from different star systems. His world had only begun to regain a sense of global community a century ago when the Data Ark had been discovered. So the idea that such a thing could exist on an interstellar scale was truly amazing. It actually gave him hope for the future of humanity. They had known that humans from Earth had built thriving civilizations on what was then referred to as the Core Worlds-systems within fifty light years of Sol. There had also been about a dozen lesser fringe worlds in development at the time the plague had swept through the core. But to his knowledge, there had never been any human colonies established beyond one hundred light years from Sol, let alone over a thousand. There had been some indications, through news footage stored in the Ark’s data banks, that a wave of unauthorized colonization attempts had occurred during the early days of the plague. Scholars studying the data had theorized that such attempts had occurred as the infrastructure of the core systems collapsed, and people that were yet uninfected had simply tried to flee-hoping to start over on pristine worlds. There had been dozens of habitable worlds charted by deep-space exploration vessels and by long-range detection systems. But again, they had all been within, at most, a few hundred light years.
Yet still, here they were, walking amongst humans who were the descendants of those very refugees that had fled the core so long ago. It was mind-boggling. Nathan wondered how the scholars back on Earth would react to this revelation. He wondered how it would affect his own history professor, Bill Jenkins, with whom Nathan had become close friends during his time as an undergraduate. They had spent many hours discussing just such theories, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. Nathan was sure that being out here, witnessing all of this, would have delighted old Professor Williams to no end.
As they wandered farther through the crowds, they moved beyond the common trinkets and wares commonly found nearest the spaceport. They came upon a small booth selling some sort of cooked vegetable. It had a peculiar yet enticing aroma that drew Nathan to it. The smell of the vegetable as it seared in the large iron skillet of hot oil made his mouth water.
“What is this?” Nathan asked Jalea.
“That is called pompa root,” she said. “It is cooked in the oil of the tekatta.”
“Tekatta?”
“A small animal that lives in the ground. They are many on Haven. The farmers despise them, as they damage their crops.”
“And what is that?” he asked, pointing to a stack of small, cooked, squares of an off-white substance. They were almost tan in color, and also looked like they had been seared in similar fashion.
“It is called molo. It grows in great abundance here.”
“Is that the tan stuff we saw all over the place as we flew in?”
“I believe so, yes. It is a fungus that does very well in the long darkness that befalls Haven once every orbit. It is used in most of the local dishes eaten here on Haven. It is very nutritious, although some do not care for its taste or texture.”
An old woman behind the counter offered Nathan a small dish with a taste of both the pompa root and the molo, topped with a thick orange gelatinous sauce. “A taste for you, sir?” she offered.