“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I was handling street rats on Old Earth long before you were born. Or was it built?”
“Born, sir,” I told him. “I had a mother, at least. But I barely remember her. I was a baby when the Federation Navy dropped me off on Felicity. So I really don’t know what I am, sir, or what I’m supposed to be good for. I just know the matrons were sending me to have my enhancements pulled out so they could brainwash me, and if that didn’t work they’d probably kill me. Sir.”
“Hmm. Well, you’ve already risked your own safety to help one of my crew, so I can hardly send you back now. Naoko is offering to share her cut of the profit on those flowers with you, and if the deal comes off as planned that should be more than enough to cover your passage. But there might be another option for you, if you’re ready to work.”
My breath caught. “Yes, sir. I can work. Whatever you want me to do, sir.”
“Good. I normally run a small crew, because things are more profitable that way. But it can be useful to have an extra hand around to handle whatever odd jobs come up, and as you’ve seen Naoko has her limits. We’re supposed to deliver those presence blossoms to a collector on Wirtan Station, but we’ve got several other stops to hit before we get there. Make yourself useful along the way, and I might be willing to hire you on as our new cabin girl.”
“Thank you, sir! I, yes, please, I promise I’ll do whatever needs doing. Um, what does a cabin girl do, sir?”
“Whatever needs doing,” he said. “Including a lot of training, so she’ll be qualified to move up to a regular crew position eventually. It’s an old tradition, used for training up new crew members in regions where there aren’t any trustworthy certification authorities.”
I felt my jaw drop. “That… that’s perfect, sir! Thank you so much for giving me a chance, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“See that you don’t. Naoko, why don’t you and Alice head down to medical and get yourselves checked out? I assume there are bugs and things in this swamp you two were trudging around in?”
“Gnats, midges, mosquitoes, leeches,” I confirmed.
“Leeches!” Naoko squeaked. “Why would anyone purposely put leeches in their biosphere?”
I shrugged. “Because Old Earth had them?”
“It still does,” the captain said. “There are plenty of swamps that never got nuked, and the bioweapons mostly target humans. But that’s a topic for another day. Get yourselves checked out, and then Naoko can set you up with a cabin and essentials. After that I suggest you get some rest. We don’t have any passengers at the moment, so Naoko can give you a basic orientation tomorrow.”
I waited until we were safely down the hall to stop and heave a sigh of relief.
“He’s kind of scary,” I said. “What’s his name?”
Naoko gave me an odd look. “Dan Sokol, but you should always call him ‘Captain’ or ‘Captain Sokol’. You aren’t connected to the ER network, are you? Why not?”
“I don’t even know what that is,” I admitted. “Something else we didn’t have at the orphanage, I guess. Sorry I’m such a noob, Naoko. I’ll try to learn quick.”
She smiled, and put her arm around my shoulders. “It’s quite alright, Alice. You’re a very clever girl, and I’m sure we’ll have you caught up in no time. I’m glad my captain decided to give you a chance. I was hoping that would happen.”
“Thank you for helping me, Naoko. Seriously, I probably owe you my life.”
“You saved me as well, little Alice. At this point there’s nothing for it but to declare eternal friendship, and continue to render mutual assistance as needed.”
My smile was back. “You’re right, Naoko. We’ll just have to be friends. So, um, I thought it was morning?”
“At the spaceport, perhaps. By the ship’s clock it is now twenty-one hundred, so we’d best get to medical before the doctor becomes too impatient.”
She led me down a corridor to another lift, which took us deep into the belly of the ship. There was a big waiting room right off the lift, and a medical bay much bigger than I could imagine a freighter crew needing. There must have been twenty private treatment rooms, and dormant medical robots sat everywhere. Naoko confidently led me down a hall to a larger room full of mysterious equipment, where we found another man waiting for us.
This one wasn’t quite as tall as Captain Sokol, although at two hundred centimeters he still towered over Naoko and me. He wasn’t as massively built as the captain either, but he was completely bald and his eyes were both cybernetic. It made him look intimidating, and the sterile white bodysuit and lab coat he wore didn’t help.
“Alice, this is Doctor Misra,” Naoko said. “Doctor, this is Alice Long.”
I bowed. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor.”
“Yes, yes, charmed I’m sure. I hear you’re auditioning to join the crew? Well, let’s have a look at you. Sit here, please, on the diagnostic couch. Are you receiving that connection request?”
I sat gingerly in the odd-looking chair he’d pointed to. It was comfortably padded, and adjusted itself to fit my size perfectly. But it was packed full of equipment that I couldn’t identify.
“Connection request? Oh, I guess I’m getting a lot of those. Let’s see, that all looks like bot chatter, and those are all old. Do you mean the one coming from that box over there, that says ‘Diagnostic Handshake’ in the header?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your enhancements include radio direction finding, but you don’t even have a basic connection manager program? Interesting. Yes, please accept that connection if you can.”
There were a lot of sensors looking at me now. Feeling a little nervous, I accepted the connection and immediately found myself bombarded with data. The medical bay wanted to know if I had any of a thousand different software packages running. Did spacers usually have medical programs on their implant computers? I guess that made some kind of sense.
I didn’t have any of the programs it was looking for, really. But I had one that was eager to pretend it was a copy of Galsoft Medsuit Pro 17.4, so I let that run.
“Ah, here we go,” the doctor said. “Naoko, why don’t you get out of that armor and onto the other diagnostic couch. I doubt there’s anything wrong with you, but we can let the automatics make sure of that while I look this over.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
Naoko’s armor unwrapped itself from around her, hundreds of components unlocking and shifting around in complicated ways until she was standing there in just a thin jumpsuit. The armor continued to move as she stepped away from it, arranging itself for storage. Wow, that must have been an expensive feature.
“You haven’t been taking proper care of yourself, have you young lady?”
I turned my attention back to the doctor.