But it’s not exciting, for whatever definition of “exciting” you want to have. These three colonies are well established and protected; Huckleberry’s the youngest and it’s nearly a century old at this point, and Phoenix is the oldest and best defended of any of the Colonial Union planets. So you’re not exploring new worlds by trading there. You’re unlikely to run into pirates or other bad people. You’re not meeting strange new aliens, or really any aliens at all. You’re shipping food, ore, and gadgets. This isn’t the romance of space. This is you and space in a nice, comfortable rut.
But again, I didn’t give a crap about any of that. I’d seen enough of space and had the occasional bit of excitement; when I was on the Baikal, we were pursued for four days by pirates and eventually had to ditch our cargo. They don’t chase you anymore when you do that because then you have nothing they want. Usually. Sometimes when you ditch your cargo they get pissed off and then try to send a missile into your engines to register their displeasure.
So, yeah. As Harry Wilson suggested, excitement can be overrated.
Anyway, right now I didn’t want exciting. What I wanted was to work. If that meant babysitting the Chandler’s navigational system while it crunched data for a run that it had done a thousand times before, that was fine by me. At the end of the stint I’d have the blackball off my career. That was also fine by me.
The Chandler itself was your basic cargo hauler, which is to say a former Colonial Defense Forces frigate, repurposed for cargo and trade. There were purpose-built cargo haulers, of course, but they were expensive and tended to be built and used by large shipping lines. The Chandler was the sole ship owned by its small consortium of owners. They got the obsolete frigate that became the Chandler at an auction.
When I did my research of the Chandler before the interview (always do your research; I didn’t with the Lastan Falls and it cost me), I saw pictures of the frigate at the auction, where it was sold “as-is.” Somewhere along the way it had gotten the living crap beat out of it. But refurbished, it had been doing its run for almost two decades. I figured it wouldn’t accidentally spill me into space.
I took the shuttle ride with Secretary Ocampo and his aide (whose last name I finally learned was Briggs; that came from the crew and passenger manifest, not from the secretary), and said good-bye to them at the ship. Then I reported to Han and my immediate boss, First Pilot Clarine Bolduc, and then to Quartermaster Seidel, who assigned me quarters. “You’re in luck,” she said. “You get private quarters. At least until we hit Erie, when we take on some new crew. Then you’ll get two roommates. Enjoy your privacy while you can.”
I went to my quarters and they were the size of a broom closet. Technically you could fit three people in it. But you wouldn’t want to close the door or you’d run out of oxygen. I got to pick my bunk, though, so I had that going for me.
At evening mess Bolduc introduced me around to the other officers and department heads.
“You’re not going to be running any scams in your spare time?” asked Chieko Tellez, who was assistant cargo chief, as I sat down with my tray.
“I did a thorough background check,” Han said, to her. “He’s clean.”
“I’m joking,” Tellez said, to Han. She turned back to me. “You know about the guy you’re replacing, right?”
“I heard a little about it,” I said.
“A shame,” Tellez said. “He was a nice guy.”
“As long as you’re willing to overlook corruption, graft, and bigamy,” Bolduc said.
“He never did any of that to me, and that’s what really counts,” Tellez said, and then glanced over at me, smiling.
“I can’t tell whether you’re joking or not,” I admitted.
“Chieko is never not joking,” Bolduc said. “And now you know.”
“Some of us like a little humor,” Tellez said, to Bolduc.
“Joking is not the same thing as humor,” Bolduc said.
“Hmph,” Tellez said. It didn’t look like she was particularly put out by the comment. I figured she and Bolduc ribbed each other on a frequent basis, which was not a bad thing. Officers who got on okay were a sign of a happy ship.
Tellez turned her attention back to me. “You came over on the shuttle with those State Department mucky-mucks, right?”
“I did,” I said.
“Did they say why they were on the ship?”
“Secretary Ocampo is going on vacation on Huckleberry,” I said. “We’re headed that way so he and his aide rented a couple of spare staterooms.”
“If I were him I would have just taken a department ship,” Bolduc said.
“He said it wouldn’t look very good if he did,” I said.
“I’m sure he’s actually worried about that,” Bolduc said.
“Seidel said that Ocampo told her that he wanted to travel inconspicuously and without having to feel like he was dragging his title around,” Han said.
“Do you believe that?” Bolduc asked. Han shrugged. Bolduc then turned to me. “You talked to him, yeah?”
“Sure,” I said.
“That sound reasonable to you?”
I thought back on what Wilson said about Ocampo being in love with the sound of his own voice, and thought about the shuttle ride, after the polite conversation was over, listening to Ocampo dictating notes to Vera Briggs. “He doesn’t strike me as the kind who prefers to be inconspicuous, no,” I said.
“Maybe he’s just screwing his aide and wants to be inconspicuous about that,” Tellez said.