Motherload | Page 2

didn't amount to much, really: was Sally sure we had enough life support to get us through the situation? (Yes, batteries should last for weeks on standard power rations.) Were there any expected escorts out, or challenges coming in, during our anticipated down-time? (A small trader named Pocky or Ponte or something was outbound from Deegman right now, but we would most likely be up and running again before it reached the system starjump point.) Would our bosses back on Deegman give us crap over all this? (Probably.)
I was hungry, so I heated up a frozen meal after the meeting broke up and followed Sally down to Engineering with it. Her domain was a cramped space of pipes, cables and creepy shadows; not to mention a nagging bang-BANG-zap-hiss from the small atmosphere exchange unit, underscored by a discordant two-toned hum that set my teeth on edge from both the drive system (on idle right now) and the power plant in question. I bumped my head painfully on a projecting bolt while climbing over a large duct to get to Sally's desk, and swore blue thunder.
I hated this job, truth be told. Oh, not the temporary reassignment to Engineering so much: I had minored in Ship Systems in higher-ed, and had maintained a partial interest in civilian-class defense boats -- of which our tiny Dame Minnie was one. And not because I'd be helping Sally out: true, I preferred working alone on my Primary assignment, but then we all did -- Sally with her engines and systems; Genness monitoring and maintaining comm and computers; Bayern with whatever it was he did all shift (no one was quite sure, even him); and me, with my defensive systems and combat sims. Besides, even though Sally had fifteen years on me, she was in really great shape, had a sexy potty-mouth when she was pissed-off, and a good brain at all times. I didn't expect anything to come from my personal observations, because she and Genness had been together since about a week after we left Deegman, and he was younger than me, danged handsome, quiet, and in great shape himself; while I was short, kind of fat, and prone to complaining and getting the horns when I was bored -- which can happen a lot on extended picket duty.
And this was exactly what irked me the most about this job: it was mine.
Three months before, the big corporate freighter I'd been signed to was hauling Fleet supplies, and it had just arrived on Deegman when the news caught up that its parent company had been bought out. They have SOPs for these sorts of things, one of which is to immediately downsize the crew. I got a good reference, a crappy severance, and the ax. My luck running to type, the piracy problem in Rilltule started getting bad right about then, and the big outfits just stopped coming. Traffic from privately-owned ships was up for a while, but even that started tapering off. I was left sitting on my ever-widening posterior watching vids, running scenarios on my tiny wrist comp, and filling my face with the spicy fried food the locals seemed to love. Deegman imports almost everything it needs, which means almost everything it has to offer is at robbery prices. Six weeks and my savings started getting tight. By ten weeks I was facing homelessness -- which is one harsh prospect on a vacuum-wrapped planet, believe you me.
An acquaintance of an acquaintance tipped me to the fact that the mining interests on Deegman had gotten together in secret and bought a used Bechel, which they wanted to crew and launch in the next couple of months. As a privately-owned vessel, it fell outside the boundaries and direct control of the Deegman Security Corps, which was more police force than military body, anyway. SecCorps had Deegman and the other inner-system settlements covered nicely with a moderate collection of mismatched orbiters and transports, and they did a respectable job of keeping the peace. They had nothing for command and control of Rilltule's jump point on the outer edge of the small system, though -- exactly where pirates had been hitting. One old Bechel wasn't much of an improvement on that situation, but they had to start somewhere, I guess.
I wasted no time and applied, and while I might not be much to look at, my resume is a killer. I was hired on the spot. Sally said later that she had quit her previous position on a medium-size freighter a couple weeks before this, over advancement issues, and had already been signed to Dame Minnie's first run by the time I showed up. Genness told me he'd been knocking around town for some time, and had been on starcouriers before that. Bayern flew