Chapter Three

As soon as I plugged my personal data cube into my pad's processor receptacle, the screen on the wall came alive. An image of the Dragon House logo appeared in exquisite detail, then an image of my immediate supervisor onboard ship resolved.

Elia Riles, Bosun of the Bridge, spoke her recorded message to me:

Welcome aboard the Odysseus, Spacer-designate Ishmael O'Connor penDragon. If you have any issues with your quarters or supplies, please consult CWO Ross. We are here to train you and despite what you may have heard in creche or at the Academy, in space each ship is its own world, and each crew their own society. We work together for the benefit of all because that is the only way humans can survive in the Universe. That cooperative spirit is expected to extend to all your shipmates, as best you can. Save any impulses you harbor toward exploitation and domination for our competitors and enemies. The House of the penDragons has survived all these centuries by being faithful to each other. Remember, we are all creche-mates! We are the Spacers of the House of Dragon! Work in keeping with that spirit and we will all live long and prosper. Report for duty at 1300 sh.

Stories in the creche about spacing included lurid accounts of space pirates and horrible alien creatures...and the constant watchfulness required against the machinations of the other great trading houses: the Kai-bad Cartel, Rodriquez-Miller GmbH; Swiss Re, the enormous re-insurance cartel...oh there were plenty of other Houses working the lanes of the Milky Way, sending their own ships spinning off on orbits of a hundred years or more. And there were dangerous planets with hostile life-forms, although at the time I first shipped into space no one had heard of the Ones.

The Academy taught us celestial navigation, processor engineering and a million other subjects. They also drummed into us night and day the need for cooperation among crew...that officers were there to lead by example and promote the professional growth of their crews. That crews worked together for the survival (at the least) of all. One profound error in space can be the last for all aboard. A constant-fusion reactor running at 300 gigawatts is not a toy.

On board ship, however, the culture was somewhat different. At least, on aboard the Ody, as the crew called her, life was quite relaxed, almost to the point of casual; yet, despite this feeling, the work that should have been done was done, and more besides. The Ody was an old ship, requiring constant monitoring and complicated replacement schedules. The ship's processors could keep track of these requirements, of course, but with a ship as old as the Ody, a human still had to initiate the programs and allocate energy resources manually. Of course the latest generation tenners are self-healing, but the ship I was on had been built before that sort of technology was even dreamed of.

In order to maximize our efficiency, which was the only real factor we could control when it came to the long-term profitability of the ship, we had to keep everything running within specs and safety limits, within the budget or below. Constant data streams were feeding our processors from House systems all over our arm of the galaxy, and these data determined where we would be a decade hence, or perhaps fifty years hence...or further into the future. Who really knew all the machinations the Strategists cooked up? Who knew what long-term strategic decision had just been made that would send your ship to a scrapper or a used-dealer and yourself a thousand lightyears away? The House employed thousands of people and used millions of processor-hours modeling possible futures that could change a spacer's life in nanoseconds.

In any event, the atmosphere aboard the Ody was helpful to a newbie like myself. And so, eight ship hours (8 sh) later I reported to the Bosun of the Bridge, the person ostensibly in charge of ship's operations from moment to moment. The only officers who could issue ship-wide commands were the Captain, of course, the Executive Officer, and the Bosun of the Bridge, of which there were usually four or five on a ship our size. All other Commands had to clear a ship-wide order through the Boson or one of the general officers, who either would buck the order upward or take it upon himself to approve it. Obviously the incentive here was for communication and team-resolution of problems, with just enough authority to handle emergency situations without delay.

Bosun Elia Riles was gray-haired, face deeply lined, but she still had a spacer's slim figure and delicate grace in low-g environments. Her eyes glittered with Erulian prostheses which I had only heard of but never seen. They were much more beautiful than organic eyes, being grown of diamond-crystals laced with biosensors. Hers were tinted green, and they shone like two rose-cut emeralds. She smiled old-style carbonfiber synthetics, colored a creamy-white that reminds one of pearls instead of the latest syns of cell-mediated tissue generation. Those are real teeth, for all purposes, made of the same stuff as the originals, sure to last a hundred years or more with good care. I made the Bosun to be somewhere around two hundred and fifty, based on the age of her prosthetics. I strode with as graceful a space-walk as I could manage and came to a perfect halt in front of her console. I gave her the salute I had seen other Ratings give noncommissioned officers. She waved me to a chair, then remembered to return my salute.

"We don't go in for that saluting stuff all that much here," were her first words to me. "But I suppose on your first shift report it's a reasonable formality. Just don't get all 'Space Navy' on me, okay?"

"Okay." I leaned back a fraction of inch in my seat.

"You're going to learn more this year than you learned in all four years of Academy. And that's not to disparage the Academy, it's just that there you learned theory. Here you learn the real thing. This is not a simulator. If you overload the reactor, it will melt down and leave you with no power, no propulsion and no life support. If you were to miscalculate a course you could cost us a generation's worth of profit. We like to say here that there is no unimportant job—just unimportant people. Don't let yourself become unimportant, because onboard a spaceship, anything unimportant gets jettisoned as soon as possible. We don't carry dead mass!"

"Yes, ma'am. I understand."

"I'm sure you do. You're a good student, Ish, by your record. Not the best at any one thing, but pretty darn good at them all. Very high economics score! Ever thought of the Purser's Office? No? Well, don't rule it out, son."

I cringed at Riles' mention of the Purser's Office.

"Anyway. Your console is right here, next to this one. You're Bridge Auxiliary, which means you verify every ship's order, see that the master log processor provides you with a summary at the beginning of your shift and then match the final tally at the end of your shift to make sure you've reviewed each order and verified its receipt by the Command responsible. Of course, most of those orders are coming from me, so if you don't understand an order, you're going to be right here to ask for some help implementing it. During our quiet times, and there are many, we can discuss the reason certain orders are given and the protocols for certain routine emergency situations."

"Routine emergency? The Academy said there were only two conditions in space: all nominal and emergency."

"Well, around here, if we thought every little glitch was an emergency we'd be at Red Alert all the time. So we save 'emergency' for such things as the total destruction of the ship and all aboard her, or some other really big disaster. Otherwise, most emergencies are conditional emergencies. Once they're resolved, they turn out not to be a big deal. Of course, a little emergency can turn into a big emergency. But usually, if that happens, you've only got seconds to live anyway, so we don't worry too much. If we screw up real bad we're all going to die. So don't screw up."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll do my best not to."

"Of course you will." Riles paused. "But you'll screw up anyway. And your shipmates will save your bacon, just as you will save theirs."

"I understand."

"See that you do. We don't need heros. If you think something's wrong, talk to someone about it. Don't wait until for an unmitigated disaster to mention you think something might be wrong. Better to be told you're an idiot than prove it by overlooking a fault in the ship."

I took my seat at the console next to Bosun Riles and began my first tour of duty on the bridge of a real interstellar ship. Today, so many years later, I cannot tell you what happened that day...nothing of consequence, obviously...but that first moment, seated at the auxiliary controls of the Ody, I remember how I felt: filled with power, awed with responsibility, gnawed by doubt, glowing with pride...emotions whirled around me like the rings of Acturus III, chaotic whirling ice-gas clouds, if you've never seen them.

At first the work seemed overwhelming. There was so much to do I thought I would be constantly in catch-up mode, but after about thirty shifts in the 'Ox', as the auxiliary chair was called, with Riles or one of the other bosuns who normally 'rode the Ox' showing me the board, I soon began to learn when I could relax, what required instant action, how to organize myself to survey the streams of data without being bogged down in useless detail...in short, how to do the most basic job of a non-commissioned spacer.

There were the 'non-emergency' emergencies, of course. Each bosun would explain, as their fingers flew over the input screens and they murmured orders into throat mikes, what they did and why they did it that way. They were uniformly calm and precise men and women, rarely raising their voices while working. The one trait all the bridge crew shared were 'restless' eyes. They scanned their data streams unceasingly, tapped various data readouts while talking to you about your creche days.

Standard shift at the console was four hours. Research had demonstrated the optimum work shift for humans at ship controls spanned no more than six sh and no less than three. Crew were given twelve off-duty sh, although some of that time was spent in training or other duty-related activity. There were emergency drills at various times which required all hands to duty stations. As nearly as possible, however, crew were kept to the ancient Earth-standard twenty-four day. Interior lights were dimmed or darkened on that schedule, although one's own pad could be either full dark or full light or anything between, of course.

Chantilly's own planetary day was eighteen Earth-hours long, but the creche and the dorms at the Academy were run on ship hour time anyway. In many ways life aboard the Ody was disappointingly similar to my life on planet, except for the .3g which made me feel almost buoyant, and the occasional acceleration-vector changes.

A spaceship is designed to accelerate in any given direction, but given the difficulty of realigning fusion/plasma jets, the acceleration vector was changed using small impulse jets mounted on all sides. Since 'gravity' was provided by acceleration, all decks (floors) were oriented along the thrust axis. When the ship accelerated in a straight line the crew would be standing or seated and feel this as if it were 'gravity'. This makes walking and moving around inside the ship much easier, and helps the human inner ear keep our brains oriented, thus avoiding the main cause of nausea in low-g environments. Deceleration simply causes one to feel a bit lighter, or acceleration a bit heavier. All vector and speed changes are announced by the ship's systems before hand, and counted down in the time-honored if slightly old-fashioned manner.

Certain areas of the ship may be oriented differently, according to function. So the factory modules, which are fully automated and virtually independent in function are not necessarily provided with decks or bulkheads to accommodate human requirements. The nanoassemblers work best in a zero g environment and are magnetically isolated from the ship's movements.

From the above description one might think voyaging in space to be all dull routine. At the time I started as a spacer perhaps three or four House ships might be lost each trimester, the 120-standard day cycle the House uses for reporting purposes. Out of hundreds of ships that is not a large loss, but each ship represented several dozen to over two hundred people dead, and enormous economic loss. But sailing the cosmic sea is dangerous work and only the best, raised from birth for the task, can survive.

Aside from the obvious dangers of technical failures, there are many hazards in space. Any long voyage subjects the ship to various conditions, from intense gravitational fields to deadly cosmic ray streams; a single stray asteroid or comet could wreak havoc; cruising too close to an imminent supernovae or black hole were obvious dangers; everything from worm holes to asteroid fields presented their various dangers. And then there were the onboard dangers: radiation, EVA accidents, equipment failures and, from time to time, encounters with planetary conditions that threatened crew members. Most spacers survived to return home and retire in comfort—but not all. Many left their corpses on strange worlds or orbited forever in the depths of space.

Still, for the first six weeks aboard the Ody, nothing of any import occurred, except that I was slowly absorbed into the crew, became one member of the team and learned my job as a Spacer 1, to which I was promoted at the end of my six week evaluation. All five of the other Bridge 'Oxes', along with Riles and CWO Rossin, threw a party for me in the Enlisted Crew's Club. Even Alistare, whom I had not seen since our boarding, attended. I received my rank tattoo with great pride: a single hash mark on my right cheek.