Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy

by Joe Pace

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Y-yes, sir,” stammered Hall, following suit with a shaky salute of his own. The lieutenant was standing at ramrod attention, his feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind his back, gripping his own ceremonial hat. His broad accent marked him as a native of the Australian District, or perhaps New Zealand. He was unremarkable in height and build, nearly bald but for a graying fringe of stubble, with a square jaw that at the moment was set into a stern scowl as he surveyed both junior officers with narrow, ice-blue eyes. Worth felt a tingle of terror until the expression softened, slowly becoming a wry smile.

  “She is a right old dog of a barge at that, but I’m sure we’ll come to love her anyway. At ease, gentlemen.” Worth and Hall relaxed, if only a little. “You must be our new middies, right out of the womb. Lieutenant John Pott.” He held out a hand, and for a moment, Worth thought he meant to shake hands, before realizing he wanted their orders. She handed hers over, and Hall followed suit. Pott gave them a cursory glance, nodded, and beckoned to them with his other hand. “Grab your bags and follow me.” Without another word, he turned and left the observation deck, the midshipmen hurrying to trail behind.

  Pott led them along the labyrinthine corridors of Spithead with the casual ease of a frequent visitor. It was evening, and fairly quiet, especially with the Cromwell gone, and they encountered few other personnel until they arrived at a cramped warehouse that was buzzing with activity. Men and women in the light gray worksuits of able starmen emerged in a steady stream from the mouth of a round hallway, seized large plastic containers, and carried them back where they had come from. One of them, a strikingly handsome Latino who was even shorter than Worth, noticed Pott and stopped to touch his forehead.

  “No worries, Quintal,” Pott said, returning the salute. “Back to work with you.” The crewman nodded, and with the most fleeting of glances at Worth, returned to his labors. “That’s Matias Quintal,” explained Pott to the midshipmen. “One of our newly-assigned ables.” He leaned in a bit closer, and whispered roughly, “thinks he’s a bit much, hey? They’re good lads, most of them, right plodders, even the sheilas, but you’ve got to stay on them.” He winked at them. “Come on, then.” And he headed for the round doorway, dodging the crewmen, and once again Worth and Hall followed in his wake, lugging their heavy duffels.

  As soon as Worth set foot into the tubular corridor, she felt the floor sag ever so slightly beneath her. She lost her balance just a bit, and with her free hand grabbed Hall’s elbow. She steadied immediately, and let go just as quickly.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, a trifle embarrassed. Hall said nothing, and looked a bit uncomfortable himself. Lieutenant Pott was grinning at them over his shoulder.

  “This is the gangway to the Harvest,” he called. “Flexible polymer tubing. Takes a bit of getting used to, but strong as anything.” He rapped the waxy yellow wall, and it gave a healthy thrum.Then something barreled into Worth’s back, and sent her sprawling. She gave small yelp, more of surprise than pain.

  “Out of the way,” snapped a voice above her. It was one of the ables, this one tall and well-muscled, sweating from his work, a dark green container in his arms.

  “Oi!” barked Pott in return. “That’s an officer you just bowled, Lamb. Watch your step and your tone!” Hall was helping her back onto her feet, and Worth knew she was blushing fiercely, which she hated.

  “It’s nothing, really,” she said, straightening her jacket and trying to preserve what little remained of her dignity.

  “Like hell,” Pott growled. “This is His Majesty’s Navy and we do things properly. Right, Lamb? Apologize to the midshipman.” Worth wanted nothing more than for the whole thing to be over, but she knew that Pott was right. If the crew knew her for a pushover, they would never respect her, and she could never be an effective officer. She tried to stand a little taller, lift her chin ever so slightly, and look the able in the face.

  “Sorry,” he said, almost spitting the word. “Sir. May I go back to work now?”

  “Off with you.” Pott gestured, and the man disappeared down the gangway toward the ship, with his burden. The lieutenant shook his head. “A nasty piece of work, Saul Lamb. You’ll never love him, nor he you, but he’s a rip-snorting starman. Tough but fair, that’s the ticket with these fellows.” He crouched, picking up Worth’s hat from the floor of the tube. One corner was bent and the felt crushed, and Pott smoothed it as best he could before handing it back to her. She stared at it, wondering if all her excitement and anticipation from earlier that day would be as trampled, too.

  Worth followed Pott in silence as they trudged down the remainder of the long gangway, Hall alongside, staring down, clearly lost in some thoughts of his own. At regular intervals crewmen passed them, and Worth made it a point to avoid their hustling bodies and their eyes. In a few moments, they arrived at the main hatch of the Harvest, and Pott stopped them with a raised arm.

  “Left step, now.”

  “What?” asked Hall.

  “Your first step on your new ship,” Worth answered him, “should never be with your right foot. Bad luck.”

  Pott smiled at her. “Your father tell you that?”

  “Yes.” She blushed again. Stop that!

  “I served under Captain Worth some years ago, as a middie myself,” Pott said. “Only a short local cruise, the Jupiter run, but long enough to know he was a top-notch officer.” He stared at her. “I look forward to seeing if you measure up.”

  Worth loved her father, worshiped him, but found herself feeling the tiniest hint of resentment toward her accomplished name, and for the first time, the expectation that had always been more of a challenge now felt like a burden to bear. Clenching her jaw tight, she stepped across the threshold onto the Harvest, left foot first. Hall did the same, somewhat more diffidently, and Pott beckoned for them to continue to follow him. They did so, down a close, cramped hallway lit only by the orange emergency tracking lights along the seams where the floor met the walls.

  “Something else my father told me,” Worth ventured, “is that Navy crewmen meet a certain standard. If Lamb and some of these others are so…nasty, as you put it, why are we taking them into space with us?” The look he returned was not unkindly, though there was the hint of amusement at her innocence.

  “Not the ship you wanted, and now not the crew? No disrespect to your father, of course, but while Captain Worth could handpick his jacks, this ship and this commander weren’t exactly at the top of the list come assignment time.”

  “For them,” muttered Hall darkly, jerking a thumb back toward where the crewmen were working, “or for us?” Worth remembered Hall’s deflated comments at the viewing platform. He’s as disappointed as I am, she realized.

  “Funny thing about ladders,” Pott said icily, all trace of good humor gone, “so many of them seem to start at the bottom rung.” He tapped the breast pocket of his jacket, where he had placed their orders. “You’re in the King’s Navy now, lad. Best leave that petulant attitude ashore, both of you. This is a rowdy lot, to be sure, but they work hard, and it’s tough enough to maintain discipline without spoiled, sulking officers. Understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” they both replied, stung by the rebuke.

  From there, the remainder of the evening was given over to their initial orientation on the Harvest. In the weeks ahead they would come to know her intimately, her every rivet and electrical subsystem, but now they were strangers, and Pott began by escorting them through each section of the ship in turn. They visited the cavernous main cargo bay, where able starmen were hurriedly erecting the strange constructs that Pott revealed to be hydroponic vats, but did not elaborate further. The galley and the officers’ mess were next, where Pott explained that the midshipmen would take their meals in the common mess belowdecks, with the crew.

  “Another reason to get along with them,” the lieutenant said. “Otherwise they can make your life fairly miserable. R
emember, there are nine of them and only two of you, and some of them have been in the service since before you were born. They’ll salute you, but if you come over as if you know a damned thing, they’ll laugh at you in their cups. Better to listen, to learn, and to earn their respect through work and not rank.”

  In the Surgery, they met the ship’s surgeon, the elderly, white-bearded Zoltan Szakonyi, who chased them out so he could continue his own preparations. They passed then through the cramped engine room amidships, the domain of the boatswain, Thomas Peckover. Responsible for the massive gravity sails that powered the deep-space drives of the Harvest, Peckover was thoroughly professional in his description of how the sails functioned – and utterly devoid of personal warmth or charm. During the entire hour he spent showing his guests the sail housings, and the complicated rigging used to manage the massive but delicate crystalline sails, he never smiled once.

  “Humor can be overrated,” Pott observed as they clambered up the long, narrow companionway leading from the engine room to the command deck. This was the interior of the slender fin that rose up from the hull, midway between the Harvest’s broad shoulders. It was just cold enough that Worth could see her breath. “Even if human warmth is wasted on him, Peckover is extremely competent. Don’t sweat the climb, by the by. The tower lift should be functional again soon. Something about power conduits. Just one more item on the punchlist for our lovely old girl.” The ladder ended in a hatch that Pott slid aside, and beyond was a snug, poorly-lit, circular room. “This,” Pott said, “is the conn, the command center. We just call her the Quarterdeck.”

  It was smaller than Worth had expected, but if she had learned anything in the last couple of hours, it was that her expectations were all but worthless. It seemed like every story her father had ever told her involved the sprawling, shining bridges of sleek battle cruisers, where the lifts were never off-line and the crewmen were never rude pricks. Why would he tell me stories like that? she thought. He had been a midshipman once too, right? Surely Captain Worth had served on boring science vessels, or grimy cargo carriers. What was it Pott had said? Funny thing about ladders...

  She tried to look at it dispassionately. Everything was the same ugly gray-black she had seen throughout the ship – had they never heard of paint? – with a wide viewscreen that dominated the forward wall. There was one chair in the middle, slightly raised -- the command chair -- with others arrayed nearby.

  “You’re the Navigator, Hall. This is your pilot’s station.” Pott patted the back of one of the chairs near the screen, directly in front of and below the command chair. The captain’s knees would all but brush his back. Hall sat, ran a palm across the top of the instrument panel, its displays all dark, then took the manual nav-stick almost lovingly in his hand.

  “Can’t imagine you’ll need that much,” laughed Pott, clapping a friendly hand on the midshipman’s shoulder. “Even an old girl like the Harvest flies mostly by instrument panel. And you, Worth – you’re over there, at Operations.” He pointed to the front left corner. She sat, too, though not quite with the same reverence Hall had shown. She knew from the Royal College that navigators were a breed apart, talented and high-strung, with a sort of manic reverence for their equipment. Operations officers were more pragmatic. Instruments were tools, no more. And that’s why command officers come out of Ops and not Nav, she thought. Her father, of course, had been Ops.

  It was after eleven by the time the two tired midshipmen made it back to their berths belowdecks. 2300, Worth corrected herself. Navy time. The Harvest was not a big ship, and most of her tonnage was taken up by her spacious cargo holds. The captain and the other senior officers, “including me,” Pott had explained, had slightly roomier quarters on the main deck, nearer to the command center. Down here, in the section of the Harvest’s belly nearest her fat bow, was where the midshipmen would bunk, sharing a corridor with the able starmen and other lower-ranking crew members such as Yancy Waugh, the boatswain’s mate, and Orpheus Crutchfield, the sergeant in charge of the Machrine detail, among others. Worth mumbled an exhausted good night to Hall before slipping into her quarters. She knew they would be tiny, and for the first time that night, her expectations were met. The lights came on automatically as she entered, illuminating a small bunk with drawers underneath, and a narrow closet. There was a multi-use panel on the wall, currently dark, and Worth activated it with a touch, dropping her bag on the bed. It chirped to life, displaying its various functions.

  Standard fare, she thought as she cycled through the options. She could communicate with other crew members, watch vids, study ship specs, or choose from a variety of static images to bring some personalized décor to the room. With another touch she selected the mirror function, and watched as her own face leapt into view. She knew she was exhausted, that she must look awful, but the girl in the screen looked so sad, so deflated, in such stark contrast to her buoyant excitement earlier that day, that she nearly burst into tears. Purple lines sagged under her eyes, her skin waxen and gray in the dim light, her hair an unkempt, mousy brown, but the worst was the disappointment in her rounded shoulders, her drooping chin, her flat gaze.

  You’re on a starship! she cried silently, forcing herself to push her shoulders back, thinking of her father. This was what she had dreamed of since childhood, what she had always wanted and worked for. Seizing her hat from the wall hook where she’d left it, with every intention of putting it on and trying to recapture the magic from her family’s living room, all she could see was the corner where the hat had been crushed during her encounter with Lamb. It was too much to bear. She threw down the hat, turned off the screen, and sat on the bed, ready to give in and weep.

  No.

  Her small mouth screwed up in a defiant scowl, her smooth brow knitted with anger, mostly at herself. At her sides her hands clenched fistfuls of thick gray blanket.

  No.

  She was a Worth, a daughter of the Royal Navy, a commissioned officer of the King, and she would damn well not crawl under the covers and cry over a damaged hat. With a sudden fervor, she opened her bag and searched through the contents until she found what she was looking for. Didn’t think I’d need this on the first night. Opening the small black folding case, she set about working to repair the hat. The kit included a card-sized instruction pad, and she consulted it carefully, mimicking the movements shown, fighting through the clumsiness of fingers new to the task and the fog of fatigue. If I can just make this right…

  The morning came early, and yet the chime of her alarm found Worth already awake. She had slept without dreams, at least none she could recall, and despite the short hours, felt rested. Her eyes were drawn to that cockaded hat, hanging on its hook. Perhaps not as crisp as it had been once, but it was more than serviceable. Like the Harvest herself…not perfect, but a start.

  It was not long before she was up and dressed, in the snug gray pants, white shirt, and blue jacket that was the midshipman’s working uniform. In the closet of her quarters hung the dress blues from the night before, and Worth vowed to store her disappointments there as well. The bottom rung is just the first one, she thought as she made her way down the short corridor to the common mess. It was a narrow room, with polymer aluminum tables, benches that folded down from the walls attached. At the far end was the dispenser array, fully automated. Once, she knew, there had been cooking staffs on board ships, working around the clock to prepare meals for their crew. In antiquity, in the era of sailing ships on the open ocean, there had been actual fires in the galley, which made her shudder. What it must have been like, surrounded by dry wood and pitch and canvas, knowing that the slightest inattention or mishap could lead to an all-consuming inferno.

  There were no fires on the Harvest, just the usual range of selections that the nutri-computer would process and deliver, currently set to the breakfast assortment. Worth punched in the code for toast and coffee. She had never been much of a morning eater, and wasn’t sure her stomach could hand
le anything heavier on this particular morning. Despite her newfound resolve from the night before, she remained nervous, with a persistent fluttering just behind her navel. In less than two minutes a slot opened and a tray emerged with her toast, just the right amount of black, and a steaming mug of coffee. She cupped a hand on the drink and felt its warmth. It was chilly on the ship.

  “Cold?” The voice startled her, but she managed not to spill her coffee. It was Saul Lamb, the able-bodied starman who had bumped into her the day before. He was in a plain white short-sleeved shirt, tight across his chest, and brown working-pants. He wasn’t smiling, but neither did he seem unfriendly. His black hair was clean and neatly combed, though his cheeks were dark with new growth.

  “A bit,” Worth replied. “They warn you at Greenwich about the temperature on board, but I never really thought about it until now.”

  “Colder on the other side of the hull,” he grunted. “Excuse me, sir.” He had moved to within a foot of her, and Worth realized she was blocking his access to the dispenser.

  “Oh. Sorry.” She scooted out of the way, and Lamb spent the next few moments silently obtaining his breakfast, which turned out to be a single banana. He peeled it deftly, looking vaguely simian with his long arms and unshaven jaw. He took a big bite, and scowled.

  “I had a real one once,” he said thickly, his mouth full of the yellow fruit. “They still grow them on Ganymede, in them big greenhouses. Fruit for the nobles, you know. Like as can’t get them here on Earth.” He shoved the rest of the banana in his mouth, as if he couldn’t finish it fast enough. “Anyway, that was with Strickland, a right old bastard but a good captain, merchant service and all.” He finally swallowed, sparing Worth the ongoing spectacle of him talking while he chewed, his mouth wide open. “Made some money with him, we did. And he gave us bananas at Ganymede, for work done right.” His laugh was a bark, moist and mirthless. “Thought he was doing us a favor, old Strickland. All he done was ruin bananas for us. After the real thing, these synthetics are like insulator caulking.”