by Sharon Lee
He was a very good cargo master all the time and just about a decent warehouse-grade in-system pilot, on an average day. He knew it and the Pilots Guild knew it . . . and his certificates were perhaps, maybe, just a little, on the wrong side of the reup date. With luck, he could point to the routes they’d been on and sweet talk the rules and get this part done.
It would be a long walk from here to Skaller Three if he couldn’t.
• • • • • •
The Pilots Guild office was bigger than he’d expected, given the overall size of the station. It was crowded, and it was also noisy. His plea went to the first person who recognized what he was saying. Not that his Trade-talk wasn’t good, but an on-going lament from someone claiming a stolen first class license and jacket had a couple of people’s attention, and there was some other ruckus to be heard through an open door to another room, some of it the lilting sound of Liadens speaking at speed. Doubtful ID seemed to be the gist of the situation, and he guessed he wasn’t supposed to know about it.
“Pilot, you have a date issue here . . .”
He’d caught the attention of a uniformed woman hurrying past the desk, who’d listened to him, looked at his info, and looked at him, suspiciously. Her name tag read Sterna and her rating was . . . First Class Provisional. A Jump pilot.
He nodded.
“I’m on Fringe Ranger.” He jerked his head in the general direction of the docks, “and they don’t give me much time to . . .”
She looked up; her mouth was borderline grim . . .
“So why haven’t you taken this to Second?” she asked. “You’ve had ten years.”
He grimaced, tucked his annoyance away where it wouldn’t show—it was a good question, after all. Not really her business but . . . there, straight was the best answer.
“No time for hobbies, Pilot. Started in with cargo twenty Standards ago—just exactly what I wanted to do. The third class, that was an afterthought; it’d be useful to me, in my work. Hard to carve out the time, truth said, but I did get it, and I was right—real useful to have.”
She blinked, then, grudgingly, smiled.
“There’s a reminder for me. Not everybody wants to be a master pilot!”
She waved at the noise around them.
“Here’s our problem. You showed up here in the Guild Office in person. If you’d filed from your ship, I could’ve given you a flight-length extension, so you could get your cargo settled. Since you came in, that means a re-test to fresh up the ticket.”
She frowned, her nose wrinkling slightly.
“You’re not looking for up-grade?”
He shook his head, and she nodded.
“You’d never know it, with all this drama going on, but we’ve got the resources available right now to do your physical, and the sim. Take a few hours. Then we’ll see what the boss wants to do about a ship-test. How’s that?”
It was fair, Chirs thought. More than fair, from her point of view. Unfortunately, he doubted Captain Jad would waste a day, waiting for his cargo master to freshen up his pilot’s license.
“I was hoping to be able to rent a local to do some transfer that’s come up . . .” he said, omitting the potentially troublesome news that the ship at the dock couldn’t open the main internal hold.
Sterna sighed a real sigh then.
“Oh, dreamer, dreamer, dreamer. Codrescu Guild Hall is hosting the annual members meeting. You’ll have noticed we’re a little pilot-heavy, and they’re all here on business. I doubt you could hire much more than a hand cart and a part-time handler right now.”
Chirs sighed, and turned his hands palm up.
“Right,” Sterna said. “Sometimes the route flies you.
“Let’s see what we can do about your first problem, then we’ll know what we can do about the second. Can’t always cut corners, Pilot.”
• • • • • •
He’d done well enough on the sim tests to see that he could pass a live-board test—and to see that he was rusty and ought to get more ship time. But there, the line’s officers had been promising ship time, too . . .
Chirs shook his head. Past was past. Right now, he needed to focus on the fact that, despite all the unruliness caused by pilots with too much off-board business to do, Sterna had managed to put together a live-board test for him.
“We’ve got a local switch-tug that can use some side-work, but isn’t certified for the higher class ships. We’ll give you a testing key and the captain will let you get your two hours in—enough for you to pick up another couple years of cert. You in?”
“I’m in,” he said.
• • • • • •
The switch-tug was called Beeslady, under the command of owner and Third Class Pilot Giodana Govans. She’d clearly been purpose-built to handle one project—now long done—then sold off to the scrap-yard, where she was duly bought and unscrapped by someone with more guts than gudgeons.
She was a serviceable ship, solid to Chirs’s eye, but rough. There’d been no need to blast clean the welds and joins, so they hadn’t been; the work was thorough though, and the nameplate was neatly done in Terran and transliterated into both Trade and Liaden. The call letters were clear, the lights bright and accurately timed. A surprising array of antennas spider-webbed the hull.
Inside, the control deck was the tiny ship’s whole; two seats in front of the surprising dual control panel—one standard and one indecipherably custom—a berth to the left of the controls with a combination head and shower beside it, a galley of sorts to the right. He’d seen cabins with more room than this, and Captain Govans apparently lived aboard! That sense of a homeplace was reinforced with the scent of—must be coffeetoot, baked breads, and spiced yeast quite at odds with the transparent overhead canopy and front ports showing cold stars as gleaming as the ceramics of the station’s outer panels.
“We gets you some credit here, Mister Pilot. Beeslady done this kind of work for a bunch of folks, been thirty years and some.”
The pilot—captain that would be—was small, skinnier than him, and barefoot when he was introduced at the freight gate. Her hair was short and colorless and her uniform the soft sheen of old cloth, long used. For all that she was Terran her diction was her own . . .
“Cargo master, good job that to be, and knowin’ what a pilot knows, that’s bonus for all an eny, I betcha, ain’t it?”
He’d agreed and she pointed him to the seat—
“In luck, that’s you are. ’at seat got less than ten hours in it, ought’n be fine and dandy—saved for two years for it! Sit, make it fit, and then we get you to stand up and start the test with a sit down. I don’t go easy on no one—this place out here’s nowhere to be easy ’boutn. We’re quick and tidy; I got all standard latchlocks and we’ll have you test a couple, like you’re ’sposed to. Don’ worry—if you’re up to it, you’re fine.”
He sat, found the seat a high end fit and wondered if was one of those things that were said to have dropped out of a hold. . . .
“Mr. Chirs, here we go. Sit and do.”
He’d seen the outside of the ship and the first fifteen minutes were taken up with checking gauges and comm lines, being sure of clearances, and he’d done that all in sim not two hours before so he was fresh. The pilot sat at her board and he saw that she wore it more than sat at it; there were pedals and switches in odd places and once away from the station’s light artificial gravity she clearly fit it perfectly. His own seat was comfortable, and the two screens good.
“First mission is to take us out to Yard Three; it’s netted so you gotta look sharp. Mind the cross-traffic; keep a special close eye on Flingwagon down there on the cruise docks.”
Flingwagon was tied tight and going nowhere; the cross traffic consisted of a couple space-suited figures attached to an antenna rig and a two person jitney. The netting, now, that was a new one to him, but the little ship’s manual controls were relaxing to operate after the broken lift work on his own ship, and he en
tered the area with no problems, the markers obvious and with plenty of clearance.
Captain Govans had him rotate the ship, pull it to a dock, leave the dock and rotate it again, lock to centered mass of metal stanchions, every bit of it copied to his test-key.
“Now take us out twice as fast, and go high on the station so the rotation’s under you, spinward.”
Not as easy as it sounded; the net looked more like a tunnel at this speed, and he had to spin the ship and . . .
“That’s the slow way, but it’ll do. We’re looking for doin’ at all ’stead of best ’fficient, ’specially in the nets. Gotta know Beeslady got no big meteor shield, so we won’t bounce if you hit ’em.”
He mentally allowed that she was right—all he wanted was the certificate. He listened in to the port chatter, some of it aimed good-naturedly at Beeslady.
“Hey ’Lady, you running in your sleep?” And . . . “Hain’t the way you showed it to me, slowship . . .” “Gonna take you a long time to Jump Point that way, ain’t it?”
“Beeslady going to Codrescu azimuth, Pilot Third Class Chirs is PIC.”
He’d switched that to a broader band than he ought maybe, but no one said anything and they all knew what he was doing.
After a few seconds, the chatter started again.
“You take care o’that ship, PIC Chirs—she still owes me a tow and a tug,” and “That’ll do it, put some guy half her age in there and it’ll slow the whole yard down . . .” and “Don’t need amateurs in my space, Govans!”
The captain was quick over more chatter: “Don’ mind dem; most don mean nothin’ and some think dey’re better ’n dey are, as you kin hear. So’s everhead else hearnin’ too!”
Instructions then:
“Twenny clicks above station, then you gonna come down back along to the main arms and follow in over Flingwagon at ’spection speed and level, be so kind, headin’ hub to out.”
“That’s pretty close, I’ll need to . . .”
“You told ’em you’re PIC, and so less’n I pop the switch das da plan I know. You do what you need, I do what I need.”
And so what he did was rotate the craft when he’d hit the theoretical spot above the station. Next was to contact station Ops with the plan he’d been given, and with that go-ahead “You have any problem, you defer, PIC—Beeslady’s good close in but we don’t know you. Proceed.”
“Fumfingers! Dint have no need to tell you dat—we doin’ fine.”
Govans muttered and he realized she wasn’t duplicating his screens now, instead, she was watching where he was supposed to go and . . .
“Flingwagon, PIC Chirs here on Beeslady, I’m on a recert test and need to do a flyby. Kindly keep your RF and shield low and I’ll do the same . . .”
He glanced away from his screen, saw Govans nodding in the near dark of her seat, “Thas good, boy, thas how . . .”
“No permission here, Beeslady! Stay away. This is a passenger ship! You’ve got to stay fifteen seconds away and . . .”
“Docked!” Chirs knew those regs and once docked the distance regs were the same as for the station—maintain way as posted . . .
“Hold steady, boy! Steady steady steady steady steady on that course. . . .”
Steady was easy enough—the craft was tiny and nimble to manual controls, with the cruise ship glowing in dock light in the artificial below. This side of the ship was a nearly blank wall of hatches, antennas, and working rigs that the passengers would never see.
“Das stupid! Shootin’ plastic whipline in a place this crowded.”
Whipline was high tension restraint, printed with a bias that let it curl into a neat bundle when released but capable of being made into polarized nets and containment units. It was often used as a guideline to snake goods or tools across short gaps but had to be watched since it was invisible to most radar. Because of that bias to curl it could foul equipment and because of the high tension and near invisibility, it could slice a non-hardened spacesuit to pieces.
Nothing showed on his screen, but on the captain’s screen there were four bright lines . . .
“Gonna go where we was goin,’ just twenny-fi meters ta port. ’Lady’ll go where you point her, so point her good. I got good visual on this, and we’re recording, ’cause of the test here, and so . . .”
Chirs muttered under his breath and Govans laughed out loud.
“We alweys is right dere, duckin’ the big shots. Too bad we ain’t got a really big boat in here right now—hardly get eny, so I guess he’s figuring he’s the big mass in da’ orbit. Listen at ’em plainin’ left and . . . sumbith! Half speed and ten meters off tha’ deck, now!”
The ether was full of complaints from Flingwagon, with the bridge, security, and hospitality all chiming in, but Chirs ignored the complaints in favor of live orders and his own screen. Govans’s screen now . . .
He dared not look at it again, one glance showing bright tangles and tiny bunched pods almost as bright; and there, space-suited figures with no beacons.
Chirs eased the throttle even more, felt the response in his guts as the little craft responded neatly. Even his sensors were showing minute reflections this close—it was like they were flying beneath a flock of ghostly birds.
“Hazard!”
Govans did something and he had an overlay on his screen of whatever she saw.
Indeed, hazard. A jumpship would never have made it, but the warning was sufficient for him to slow to walking pace and weave through a knot of strings and wires moving slowly away from the docks. The ship twanged once, twice, three times but he steadied the heading automatically. The hazard had vanished again from his screen, but there, some bits of wire flapped at the front screens and flipped across the canopy. Then they were past Flingwagon, the rest of the arm brightly lit by open ship bays.
“Beeslady,” he said into the mic, “hazard nearport, hazard nearport. We’ve been struck by debris and are returning to dock for inspection.”
“Sorry, Captain, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Hush dat, boy. Take us in an’ I’ll sign for you, sure.”
• • • • • •
Chirs sat close to dozing in an inner office, momentarily forgotten in the rush of the guild office gone on alert. There were two screens here, no doubt sharing external feeds with the station, and every third view on one showed a twin of his initial sighting of Flingwagon, except now there were traveling lights and numerous small craft about—whatever the station could raise to study the issue and clear the whipline.
The other screen was quieter, showing Borjoan’s Repair and Salvage’s scaffold rig nearly enclosing Beeslady and beyond, accidentally in view, Fringe Ranger, no activity at all but the normal dock lights.
An intern brought him a meal and lots of real coffee, and Guildmaster Peltzer himself stopped by to shake his hand, promising to quickly sort everything out, and not keep him overlong . . .
The doze had deepened into sleep. He knew this because he was dreaming about the creature with the wise eyes that he’d seen on Ranger’s dock, only that morning . . .
Here and now, in the dream, the creature was helping itself to the local vita-greens Chirs’d left untouched, all the while studying Chirs as if he’d been talking in his sleep. There seemed to be a matter of credentials to solve. He tried to explain that he had gotten that straightened around, but he was distracted by a flurry of pictures.
Pictures of faces.
Captain Govans he knew, and Sterna, and Guildmaster Peltzer, and the intern—Jon had been the name on his badge.
A man with a lean pirate’s face and black eyes like ice picks was a stranger, as was the sandy-haired woman beside him. A woman with slanted blue eyes, and green hair; a child’s liberally freckled face; a grey-haired man with an augmented eye; a—
Why was he dreaming the faces of strangers? Chirs wondered, and in the wondering woke up. Standing on the chair next to him, murbling over the greens with clear satisfaction was the creature
from the docks.
He sat up fast as the door to his little private space opened.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Sterna said. “Is Hevelin bothering you? Besides eating your dinner, I mean.” She bent forward to address the creature.
“You have perfectly good fresh greens in your own garden!” she said sternly. “You don’t have to steal from Pilot Chirs!”
There was a protest that Chirs felt more than heard, regarding both the greens and an exciting new friend.
“I don’t eat much grass, myself,” he told Sterna. “If he likes it, he can have it.” He frowned. “Seems he just said it was good.”
She laughed, lightly.
“Did he show you faces?”
He blinked.
“I thought that was a dream.”
“It might have seemed like that,” she allowed. “Especially if you’re not used to talking with a norbear.”
“Don’t think I’ve ever . . . encountered a norbear, previously.”
“Well, you have now. It’s a pretty small club. I’ve only met two. Hevelin . . . travels with Guildmaster Peltzer, and helps him with guild business. They’ve been together for ten Standards, since back when the guildmaster rode circuit.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“I wish I could figure out how he opens the doors. On the other hand, Hevelin more or less gets what he wants.”
Chirs had the feeling that Captain Govans’s face had come back to view, then faded into another, similar face, accompanying a sense of sadness.
“Yes, he was on Beeslady,” said Sterna. “But he’s new here, Hevelin. This isn’t his regular route. He wouldn’t have met Marg Addy—she lived here her whole life!”
The sense of sadness pervaded the room, radiating from the nearly expression-free face of the norbear.
“Yes, it is sad. I really don’t think Pilot Chirs has met many of your friends. Now, I need his attention; maybe you can talk to him later.”
Petulance? That was the feeling Chirs had as the norbear reached over, patted him on the knee, and jumped down, taking care to gather up the greens in their packing and carry them away with him, through the open door.
