The Bright Black Sea Page 4

  Chapter 04 Passage to Calissant

  Sleep was not on the charts. I undid the flap of my hammock, snagged my magnetic soled slippers off the bulkhead and curled up to slip them on, setting the hammock swinging wildly. Reaching over my head, I grabbed the edge of the shelf and swung myself out, my slippers latching on to the deck. As captain of this packet, I suppose trousers were optional, but I slipped a pair on anyway, and pulled over a sweater as well since the Lost Star is a rather cool climate ship.

  Ship climates tend to reflect the climates of their home worlds and the Lost Star's seemed to echo the long winters of its home port of Primecentra, though it likely goes further back in its history than that. There are hot ships too. I know an ex-spaceer beachcomber by the name of Sunny Day who claims that in a moment of mutual desperation he signed on as a pilot aboard the Starbound, a Hareau (Amdia system) based interstellar freight liner. Hareau is a world on the inward side of the human inhabitable range and the ship maintained a 40C environment. Sunny claims that after spending four days as a sopping wet human sponge, he adopted a new uniform consisting of slippers and a large towel which he carried to dry off occasionally. He admitted this new uniform met with some initial resistance, but having embarked on a 135-day interstellar voyage, the rest of the crew had little choice but to grin and bare it. He sailed aboard the Starbound for seventeen years, his tenure ending only when the firm's chief operations officer came on board for a voyage back to the Amdia system and decided that 135 Sunny Days was going to be too many and sent him packing downside. Sunny claims that by that time, every other ship was now too cold and too confining, so he retired to the beaches of Belbania. I've never seen Sunny in anything but sandals, but whether this buttresses his yarn or the yarn serves to justify his sartorial preferences I've yet to decide.

  Anyway, shuffling over to the built-in table/desk, I scooped a tube-spoon full of cha leaves from the canister and carefully pushed them into the clearsteel mug. Screwing on its cover, I connected the drinking tube to the water faucet and punched up a half a liter of boiling water which pushed down the mug's piston bottom that keeps the beverage accessible. As the cha leaves slowly unfolded in a lazy reddish swirl I debated what to do next. Too restless to stay in my cabin, I slid open the door-panel and slipped out into the dimly lit passageway.

  It was the last four-hour watch of the ship's day – 20 to 24 o:clock. 24 o:clock corresponds to mid-summer's first light on Calissant and the start of its day. Since Calissant's capital city of Primecentra, is our home port, we keep Primecentra time aboard ship so this was our final night watch – the subdued lighting in the passage is a conceit, but useful in marking the passage of days without natural sunrises and sunsets. Azminn is always off to starboard when in passage since we circle the system anti-rotation wise, so we mark night by dimming our passage lights and limiting the view-panels to the port side view of the nebula laced sky. Since we were not under power, only the subtle hum of the fans and pumps of the environmental units kept the big silence of space at bay. Over this faint hum, a static laced voice drifted down the passageway.

  I'd kept my first mate's cabin on the crew deck, one deck above the bridge deck. No point changing it for a voyage. Having been fitted to carry passengers, the Lost Star has 28 cabins between the two accommodations decks, passenger deck above and the crew deck, more than enough to accommodate our current crew of 11 even with using empty cabins as lockers for our Guild trade goods. Half a dozen meters away, the light from one of the surplus cabins, a radio lounge, spilled out into the crew deck's small commons lounge. I walked over and looked in.

  In the tiny, isolated, world of an interplanetary ship, sharing yarns and gossip with other spaceers on ships in radio range is a constant off duty past time. Our chief engineers, Riv D'Van and his partner Lilm Ar'Dim, Dyn zerDey, our environmental engineer, plus our young love birds, pilot apprentice Molaye Merlun and apprentice systems tech Kie Kinti, were gathered around a holographic view of a cabin much like ours showing spaceers bemoaning the emergency pay scale that the Guild had recently agreed to. The bulkhead view-panel displayed a chart of the ships in range and a second one with thumbnails of the spaceers on each ship involved in the radio mesh. Pinelea and Calissant are two of the seven prime worlds of the Azminn system and in normal times, more than a dozen ships might be in conversational radio range. The chart showed only five ships, three small planet traders meandering along, a passing Pinelea Prime Line packet bound, like us, for Calissant and a Kylsant & Co. tramp decelerating for Coristant. The company looked up and nodded as I stood in the doorway. Riv indicated an empty space with a sweep of his hand, but I shook my head No. Too restless. I heaved myself off the door frame and moved on.

  I crossed the lounge to the access well and hesitated. Up or down? Company, or not? I decided not, and stepping off, grabbed a pole with my free hand and pulled down to send me upwards. I drifted pass the passenger deck and swung off at the awning deck, dark, quiet, and seemingly deserted. The jungle garden was dark, the bachelor birds asleep in their rocky nests. Only after I'd walked into the nebula lit space did I see Illynta Tin in one of the lounges, her face faintly illuminated by the book on her lap.

  'Sorry, Illy, I didn't see you there. I'll find somewhere else to brood...'

  'Oh, you can brood here all you want. I don't mind,' she replied glancing up.

  I settled in a chair near hers and warmed my hands on the mug. 'I've been thinking of Captain Miccall, why I ended up captain and how I haven't a clue as to what to do next.'

  'You're thinking too much. Fen and Hawker appointed you captain to take the Lost Star around the sun. Neb knows what lies ahead of us. Just have to wait and see. I doubt we'll have any say in the matter.'

  'And they're both dead, now,' I sighed. 'Why me? As first mate for almost half a century, you're far more qualified. Plus, there's the old gang, all of whom I suspect have master’s tickets tucked away as well.'

  'As I've told you before, as first mate, you were first in line for the berth. And well, appointing you wouldn't upset the balance.'

  'Not sure I chart that.'

  'We're all getting old and we get along quite comfortably. None of us cared to risk our comfortable berth by changing things. You knew the job, but were new enough not to try to make changes. Fen felt you'd see us around without upsetting the rhythm of our little society.'

  I considered that. The Lost Star has a pretty elderly crew. Half of them have been spaceers for well over a century, and they set the tone for the ship. You either fit in, like me, or you moved on. 'So you're saying my lack of ambition got me the post.'

  She chuckled. 'Aye, that, and five years as first mate. Fen knew we could live with you and handle you if your appointment went to your head.'

  True enough. The gang did their jobs just as if Miccall was aboard and I just let them go about doing them. Nor was I afraid to ask their advice when I needed it. I was filling a legal requirement, not replacing Fen Miccall. I didn't try.

  Miccall was one of those larger than life characters you cross orbits with occasionally. That was clear even though I only knew him in the quiet autumn of his life, taking his ship around Azminn twice each year. The peace and pace of his last half century had not always been the case. He could, when in the mood, spin countless yarns of his early years aboard the Lost Star, the type of tales that warrant my old spaceer claims prefix. Pirates, assassins, smugglers, hidden robots, moon kings and asteroid miners all played their parts in his wild tales. And, I might add, all without showing up in the official log – I've looked as captain. And while many of these stories, I hope, lay well beyond the event horizon of reality, there seemed a vein of truth buried within them. The vague, artificial ordinariness of the official ship's log actually confers a sense of authenticity to them.

  'I'm not a lifer. I had it all worked out – another fifty times around the sun as first mate, several years as captain of some little in-system ship, and with a pile of credits and the title Captain Litang to ca
rry with me the rest of my life, was the extent of my ambition. It still is, I think. It's just that now, I've a whole lot more responsibilities that I'd have chosen... Though I suppose with the prospect of being paid off looming, I needn't be too concerned.'

  'Nothing wrong with that attitude. I've avoided being appointed captain for a century.'

  'Why?' I asked. I always wondered why she didn't have a ship of her own, but never dared to ask. You'd not find a more competent, level headed, spaceer in all of the nebula. She'd been my mentor, looking out for me and bringing me along in my profession these last fifteen years. Five years ago she decided to semi-retire and just pilot, so she talked Miccall into appointing me first mate in her place. I owed her a great debt.

  'Not worth the headaches. The Lost Star pretty much runs itself, so you can't judge what a ship's captain's life is like solely on your experience. I've served on ships that drove the captain to drink and half around to the far side of the Ninth Star. Never felt the need to take that chance. Like you, in that way, I guess. Besides, it's hard to go backwards once you're a captain.'

  'Hopefully acting captains can go back.'

  'Still want to?' She hit the mark with that question.

  'Don't know, anymore. I thought I was about to be superseded on Belbania, and was surprised how it stung. All I'd done to that point was to moan and groan about how I couldn't wait to return to my old berth. If Vinden was still alive, I'd know where I stood. But now, with the Ministry, who knows? Does it even matter?'

  'Neb knows. Vinden would've kept his ships running one way or another but with the Ministry or even Vinden's heirs.... Well, in six days we'll have a better idea... '

  We sat in silence for a while with our own thoughts. I snagged my drifting mug and took a sip of cha.

  'It is strange to think that in the span of two years, all four of the Four Shipmates have died,' I said sometime later.

  The Four Shipmates as they called themselves were Captain Miccall, Owner Hawker Vinden, our late co-owners, plus Vinden's niece, Purser Onala Min, nee Vinden and her eventual husband, Pilot Martindale Min, who owned Min & Co. our shipbrokers, agents and bookkeepers. The Mins had died in a space boat crash on Calissant two years ago.

  As a junior member of the crew I was rarely present when the Four Shipmates gathered aboard us to yarn and carouse, so most of their yarns came to me via Captain Miccall's reminisces or second hand from the older members of the crew who knew them far better. Still, when you saw them together you'd know they shared a past. A past, as I've said, that gets very sketchy, painted in yarns of outlandish danger and adventure for decades prior to their arrival in the Azminn system. Illy, Riv and Lilm, Dyn and our chefs, Barlan and Saysa Dray all came to the Azminn aboard the Lost Star, but the desperate adventures of the Four Shipmates – if they exist at all – lay deeper in the past.

  'All their outlandish yarns – all the dangers they faced – if one's to believe half of 'em, anyway. And now, just that quickly, they're all dead.'

  'All our stories end in death, Wil. It's a port of call for all of us,' said Illy, softly, out of the darkness. 'They're gone, but their stories live on. We know them by heart.'

  'Aye, and the old Lost Star as well – the one thing that tied them all together. If the ship could talk, or if its log isn't as fictional as I believe it is, we'd know a lot more about them.'

  'They knew the secret of keeping secrets – never telling them. I doubt we'll ever know the true story of the Four Shipmates. Still, we've a hundred yarns we can spin when we run out of our own. And, for the next six days, the ship that served them so well for so long.'

  Six days to Calissant. Nothing left to do but be patient and see where that three of stars I drew takes us. It was out of my hands now.

  I let the silence run on until my mug of cha was empty.

  'Thanks for the company, Illy. I think I'll be pushing on...' I said, rising.

  'Any time, Wil,' she said quietly.

  Approaching the edge of the well I happened to look down and catch the swift movement of a small white shape slipping out of sight against the shadow laced shaft at my feet – Ginger, one of the ship's cats.

  'I see you Ginger. And don't you dare,' I warned her as I stepped off into space pushing up to start my drop. She was sitting on the ceiling of the deck below, waiting in ambush. She lives for the hunt.

  Unlike the dogs, cats don't require magnetic pads to get around in free fall – their claws provide enough of a grip. They go about in free fall making no distinction between deck, bulkheads or ceilings, often leaping bulkhead to bulkhead down a passageway, making dodging cats a not infrequent event aboard the ship.

  Officially we have seven cats, and I'll admit to having seen only six together at any one time, but unless they've learned to teleport and change the color of their spots, I have to believe there's more than seven cats.

  Miccall was fond of cats, so the ship was and remains liberty hall for them. Ginger is one of our three general purpose cats who will come to anyone, when in the mood, but there's also engine room cats, a tribe of nearly feral cats living in our no. 4 hold, and I suspect, Dyn has several in his inter-hull realm as well. I pretend to believe there are only seven and turn a blind eye to their suspicious variety, but do I really have a choice? The cats are even less in awe of me than everyone and if there are as many of them aboard as I suspect, I'd be wise not cross them.

  Ginger is a large, Neavery Snowshadow cat who, as I mentioned, lives for the hunt. Unfortunately, (for her, not for us) there's little to hunt aboard the ship. Like all the cats aboard, she's long since resigned herself to the fact that bachelor birds are too alert, smart, and agile to be worth the trouble of hunting, especially since they possess sharp pointy beaks with a cheerful willingness to use them. She has the scars to testify to this. Still, she or one of the other cats will sit for hours near the jungle garden watching the birds fly about, just to unnerve them, I suppose. Never works. Sooner or later – as the cat begins to doze, one of the bachelor birds will make a sudden lightning feint towards it just to see it jump. Jungle life aboard the Lost Star.

  With bachelor birds so iffy, Ginger hunts the crew instead. A thumping landing on a victim's shoulders, a stifled scream, a curse and she naps, purring. But she has her pride, and having called her out, she was casually licking a paw as I drifted down. I meowed a greeting. She ignored me.

  And I suppose, as long as I'm cataloging the ship's fauna, I should include the bachelor birds as well. That's not their actual name. What it is however, and which of the 200 odd planets of the Nebula they originated on is a mystery unlikely to be solved, since they've now been aboard longer than any of the present crew. They're called bachelor birds because they all look exactly the same, old and young, male and female. They could be phoenixes for all we know as they keep their private lives well hidden in the dense foliage and nooks of the rough rocky wall defended with the sharp point of their beaks. They're a bright green with darker green trim around their necks and wings, some 8 cm long. Still, they're cheerful, cocky birds, who'll sit on your shoulder and chat quite musically, when, like the cats, they're in the mood.

  As I've mentioned, a ship is a tiny world, and all these touches of life, dogs, cats, birds, plants and gardens serve to keep the cold endless void beyond the hull plates at bay.

  Leaving a disappointed Ginger behind, I dropped down past the crew deck to the bridge to keep the watch, Myes Qilan and Lili Chartre company. I stayed for an hour into the next watch with Molaye and Kie before those love birds drove me crazy and I was weary enough to sleep.