“That makes sense,” I said. “But why are there so many ships docked at the station? Shouldn’t they all be heading down into normal space?”
“Overwatch stations like that usually get used as transshipment points,” she explained. “Bulk cargo shipping is a pretty competitive business, especially the short-haul runs between colonies in the same cluster. I don’t really get the details, but apparently a lot of the time it makes sense to drop off cargo at a central location where other ships can pick it up. They do that in the Gamma Layer, because that way the big bulk cargo ships don’t need to have a hyperspace converter.”
“The Hoshida system is the main trade port for a dozen or so minor colonies,” a crewman I hadn’t met yet put in. “Of course, that’s all local trade. The Square Deal specializes in longer runs, including a lot of dark colonies where the captain has local contacts. Ah, but a girl your age probably isn’t interested in all that. I’m Dustin Shaw, but everyone calls me Dusty. Welcome aboard, Alice. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
He was the first man I’d seen who didn’t look like he could break me in half with one hand. He was barely taller than Naoko, and his face was so odd it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. He looked old. You never saw that on Felicity, even in historical vidshows. It was supposed to be too traumatic for sensitive young kids, or something.
Funny, but it didn’t seem gross or scary to me. He was obviously healthy. He had all his teeth, and his short brown hair didn’t have any gray in it. He just wasn’t bothering with cosmetic mods to bulk up his muscles or hide his wrinkles.
The ER system said he was the ship’s quartermaster. Did that make him an officer? Better safe than sorry.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said. “I’m interested in everything, actually. What’s a dark colony?”
“Now didn’t I just say everyone calls me Dusty? That includes you, kiddo. Save the ‘sirs’ for when there’s paying customers around.”
“Oh. Um, thank you, s-Dusty. Sorry, I’m still getting used to things. I figured it’s safer to be too formal than not formal enough.”
“That’s usually a good bet,” he agreed. “Just don’t turn into a suckup. As for dark colonies, that’s what we call places that are trying to stay off the grid. See, there’s a good half-million systems in the average sector, and this far from Earth that’s almost all uninhabited space. The Kerak sector has about a thousand officially catalogued colonies, but they’re concentrated in forty-odd tight little clusters.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Well, you’ve got to remember the Outer Sphere wasn’t all colonized at once. The first few colonies grabbed the garden worlds, and some of the sweet industrial spots like the Imris system. The second wave mostly wanted to be close to an established colony, and pretty soon every cluster had at least one big industrial system. At that point it made sense for anyone trying to make money to stick close enough to be part of the freight network. Ships that can use the Delta Layer are thirty times faster than the bulk freighters in the Gamma Layer, but they’re also three or four times more expensive.”
“So the dark colonies are places that don’t care about money?”
“They’re people who want to get away from civilization,” Mina said.
“Exactly,” Dusty confirmed. “Pirates, bootleggers and survivalists. Religious cults and utopian dreamers. Transhumanists, uploaders and transformationists. All the weird and wacky folks that no one wants as a neighbor. Whenever a group gets fed up with being suppressed and harassed on their home world they pool their funds to buy some industrial gear, and pay someone like us to drop them off in an empty system way out in the middle of nowhere.”
“A good open source database has all the designs you need to build a colony,” Mina observed. “Of course, they’re not as good as more modern designs, and there are always things that aren’t in the database.”
“I get it,” I said. “We’re basically making customers, right? They want to keep their colonies secret so they won’t get raided by pirates or taken out by some government that doesn’t like what they’re doing. But they still want to have some trade with the outside world, and who better to trust than the guy who already knows where they are?”
“Looks like you’ve got some talent for this, kid,” Dusty said with a smile.
Naoko came hurrying into the room about then. “Alice! Good morning, my friend. I hope you slept well, for I fear we have a very busy day ahead of us.”
“Looks that way,” Dusty agreed. “Twenty-seven paying passengers, all headed for Zanfeld? Looks like the rats have woken up and started jumping ship.”
“I’ll leave the political speculations to you, Dusty. All I know is twenty of those passengers seem to be emigrating, and none of them know how to prepare a proper cargo manifest. I’m sure they’ll be no better at stowing their household goods, and you know how these Hoshidans are about their households. It’s going to be a nightmare getting them all aboard. Please say you’re available to help out!”
“You can always count on old Dusty, kid. I’ve got a few irons of my own in the fire here, but I’ve got time to help sort out our passenger problems.”
“Thank goodness! Alice, I want you to shadow us today so you can learn how to handle the passengers. I saw that you finished your classes already? Do you feel confident about supervising a crew of cargo bots?”
“Sure, that’s easy,” I assured her. “But I thought cargo distribution was more complicated than just moving boxes.”
“It is,” Dusty said. “But I can handle that part. We’ll set up a receiving station in bay fifteen to take whatever they bring in and containerize it properly, and then I’ll see about fitting it into the first mate’s loading plan. I don’t suppose you speak Japanese?”
“Yes, that’s one of my native languages. I’ve also got Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, French, Esperanto and Newspeak, if it comes up.”
“Good, good. I’m sure we’ll have errands for you, but for now let’s get this planned out. Naoko, why don’t you start laying out cabins while I fab up a security checkpoint and some packing bots.”
The preparations took up the rest of the morning. At first I wasn’t sure why taking on twenty-odd people was such a big deal, even if they did expect to pick their own cabin layouts. But then I got a look at the cargo lists they were sending us, and I saw the problem.
I also got kind of mad. Each of these people had dozens of techs and companion androids listed as ‘cargo’.
“Naoko, tell me we aren’t doing business with slavers,” I protested.
“Is Mina a slave?” She replied.