Summer's End, page 9
Next was another seven-day trip, which took us into the asteroid belt.
We spent the next six weeks going from place to place in the belt before the captain docked us at a commercial “rest and relaxation” hab named the Coyote Ranch. Its primary clientele were belt miners and other workers from the processing plants in this section of the asteroid belt. The only time one of the larger cargo haulers like the Iowa Hill put in was when they were delivering goods. Half of the cargo we’d picked up in the last month was actually destined for the Coyote Ranch, most of it being foodstuffs, but some of it was also replacement parts or things they sold.
We wouldn’t be taking anything with us when we left, but instead of turning us around after the twelve hours it took us to unload and rebalance, the captain gave us all three days of shore leave.
Personally I couldn’t wait.
“Okay, I got your test scheduled, you can show up anytime in the next few hours,” Dot said to me as we secured the engineering systems.
“Test?” I said, looking at her a little confused.
“Yeah, you know, the Engineer Fourth exam? The one you’ve been studying for?”
“Wait, here? Now?”
“Of course now, you passed a thousand hours last week. With us being on duty with no time off the last two months, you’ve been racking up the hours.”
“I thought you had to go to, I don’t know, some major orbital, or a planet or something, to take the test!”
Dot laughed. “Nope. All the larger habs and orbitals have a testing office, and not just for ship’s tests, but for anything you can think of. Most of the folks working out here, they may not get to a major orbital for years, maybe decades.”
“But I’m not prepared!”
Dot raspberried at me. “You’ve been doing the practice tests for over a week now and I’ve seen your scores. That’s more than good enough. I sent the address to your tablet. I’d suggest showing up in your shipsuit, then the whores’ll all leave you alone ’cause they’ll figure you’re working.”
I nodded and then had a thought. “I better check my bank account to make sure I can pay for this.”
“Just make sure you’ve got the current access code to get back onboard. I don’t think anybody’s going to be on the ship until we leave.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m thinking of getting a room myself. Any advice?”
“Don’t gamble, and stick to the girls in the brothels, they at least won’t roll you or sell your kidneys,” she said with a laugh.
“Right, stick to the brothels,” I said while rolling my eyes. I thought I might see if Hank and Chaz wanted to do a meal sometime over the next few days. But other than that, the idea of just walking around someplace that wasn’t the Iowa Hill was uppermost in my mind.
Heading back to my cabin, I got my pistol, a spare magazine, put on my holster and slung that inside my shipsuit. Then checked in with the local branch of my bank, which did have my current balance.
I had to stop and look at it a moment, I’d never had this much money before and no bills or tuition that needed to be paid. Yeah, there were definitely jobs that paid more, but living onboard the Iowa Hill was effectively free. After that thought had settled in, I locked my tablet and grabbed the credits I still had left over from our last stop at Coeus Station.
I noticed the tablet then that I had from the guy I’d killed back there. I really had no idea what to do with it. I’d taken the time to completely wipe it and reset it. Tablets weren’t cheap and I was keeping it as a backup for mine, if anything happened to it. I probably should’ve just tossed it in the trash someplace, but the idea of throwing one away just seemed a bit too wasteful. But now, now I was thinking maybe I should sell it, so it couldn’t be traced back to me. Maybe on the black market where no one would ask any questions.
But I didn’t know if this was the place for that. I’d have to ask somebody.
Leaving my cabin, I signed out of the ship and went straight to the testing place Dot had signed me up at.
I was a little surprised at how long it took me to find the room where the tests were administered. Apparently Coyote Ranch was a lot bigger once you got inside than I’d thought it was. Adding to that difficulty was their putting the testing room in the least attractive space in the entire hab, which was a smelly and noisy place right by the hab’s main engineering department.
It was actually more than one room, and there were other people there taking tests, though for what I had no idea.
Checking in, I told them what I was there for, paid the fee, then they gave me a key to a locker in which everything on me was secured —including my pistol, which they didn’t even bat an eye at.
That done, they sat me down at a terminal in the back, logged me in, and left me to it. The test was three hours long, or at least that’s how long you had to do it in. I did it in half that, then spent another half hour going over my answers on the harder questions, just to make sure I hadn’t made any stupid mistakes.
When I was done, I pressed the FINISHED button and someone came and got me from my test station. Then while I emptied the locker and put my stuff away, the computer graded the results. Ten minutes later I was told I’d passed, I paid another small filing fee, and they sent the results to my company, the ship, and then the licensing bureau of my choice. Which of course led to a dilemma: which licensing bureau did I want to use? Right now I was registered with Earth, but did I really want to continue with that?
Especially as it could lead to people finding out that I wasn’t quite dead.
I decided, after thinking about it for all of one minute, to go with Mars. Then I got a wild hair and paid an extra twenty to have it sent to Ceres as well. That done, it was time to celebrate, which first meant going back to the ship, putting on something other than my shipsuit, and doing . . .
Well, doing something. A beer or two would be in order and definitely something nice to eat, followed by a day or two of not seeing anybody that I worked with.
Two hours later and I was finishing up a nice chicken dinner and a glass of wine that the waiter had recommended. That done, I settled up the bill, left a nice tip, and just went for a walk. I hadn’t gotten a room yet, there really wasn’t any rush. The place was really one big hotel with rooms everywhere. Some were fancier than others; some even had windows that looked out into space.
Not that I could afford one of those.
There were two other things that there were apparently a lot of, all over the hab. The first was casinos, they were literally everywhere, and in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They even had ones that advertised just how cheap they were. Obviously catering to spacers on a budget, or ones who didn’t want to get in trouble.
The second was brothels, though none of those looked to be exactly “cheap.” As I walked by one of them and noticed the young and attractive women inside looking back at me with a smile, I started thinking that maybe Dot was right. I hadn’t had any female companionship since . . . since, well, since far too long.
“So, what’s a young man like you looking for tonight?” an older woman, who obviously worked here asked, coming up to me.
“A nice young woman to spend some time in bed with,” I replied, smiling back at her.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place. Rooms are included, but anything beyond that is between you and the young lady you’re entertaining.”
“Any discounts if I want to spend more than just an hour?”
“That would be between you and her.”
“Ah,” I said with a nod and looked at the dozen girls who were all looking back at me now. They were all incredibly attractive, and all dressed to show it all off.
“Never been to a brothel before, have you?” she asked in a soft voice.
“Nope. But I work on a cargo ship now, so . . . ” I shrugged and hoped I didn’t get too badly skinned. I walked over to a brunette who I found very attractive, mainly because of the slight Asian cast to her features.
“How much for the night?” I asked.
“Four hundred an hour,” she replied, looking me up and down.
“Two hundred an hour for eight hours,” I told her, which was several weeks’ worth of wages for me.
“Why would I agree to that?” she asked with a predatory smile.
“Because I can see that there’s not a lot of business going on tonight? I’m no genius, but I’m sure one of you will take it. Besides, maybe I want to make you work harder for the tip,” I said and smiled right back at her.
“Oh, I think I’m going to be getting a lot more than the tip tonight!”
The other girls all giggled then, but she took my arm in hers and led me off. “So you’re a sailor on a cargo ship?”
“Yup, got in earlier today.”
“First time?”
“Working on a ship? Yup. But not . . . ” I said and smiled down at her.
She laughed again, and I had to admit it sounded good. I’m sure she was just as experienced at her job as I was at mine.
Several hours later I realized she was a lot more experienced at her job than I was at mine. Come the morning when she turned me loose I gave her a very large tip and thanked her for a truly wonderful time.
Then I staggered back to the ship, got the entry code right on the third try. Went inside and collapsed into my bunk and slept for the next twelve hours.
* * *
When we pulled out of the Coyote Ranch hab a couple of days later, I was still feeling pleasantly mellow. I showed the captain my certificate verifying my passing the test and he made it official and sent a message to the company, informing them of my promotion as well.
“Congratulations! Nice to see you’re interested in improving yourself, Dave!” he said, shaking my hand.
“Thanks Captain.”
“So, are you going to take the third-class exam as well?”
I nodded. “As soon as I can. I also want to get that gravity panel refurbishment certification like Chief Briggs does.”
“Well, at the rate we’re bouncing around the ring here, I suspect you’ll have the hours soon enough. I have to warn you, we don’t have a bunk onboard for a second engineer.”
I gave him a wry grin as I shook my head. “I think it’ll be a long time before I go for Second.”
“That’s good, because I’m hoping we can hold onto you for a good long while. The crew all likes you; you obviously don’t spook easy, and know how to handle yourself in difficult situations.”
“Heard about that?” I asked looking a little embarrassed.
“Oh, let’s just say that I put the vectors together and came up with the correct course. You didn’t involve the ship, and you were onboard when we left. Can’t ask for more than that —well, other than to suggest that you might want to be a little more careful about where you go when you’re by yourself.”
“Oh, I think that’s been made more than clear to me,” I replied with a rueful grin.
“Great! Well, keep up the good work and I’ll be sure to let everyone know at dinner tonight that you’ve been promoted.”
“Thanks again, Captain!” I said and, shaking hands again, I left his dayroom and went back down to Engineering to get back to work.
Sure enough, the captain did announce my promotion to fourth engineer, but it turned out that I wasn’t the only one taking a test back at the Coyote Ranch. Chaz had finally been promoted to able spacer, which was a pretty major test as I understood it, and I found out later it had taken him two days, as there was a practical as well as a written test.
We all shook hands and Chaz and I both got congratulated.
“Two days, that must have been one hell of a test,” I said to Chaz when we all sat back down.
“If I’d stayed and finished my schooling, it would have only been a day,” Chaz replied.
“But you would have been stuck with ore haulers,” Hank put in. “Now, you got the full ticket.”
“Full ticket?” I asked.
Chaz grinned at me. “Deck hands have a completely different way of dealing with things than Engineering does. It’s easy to specialize and only be rated as an able spacer on, say, an ore hauler or a cargo ship, but not both. You go to something else and you’ll find yourself busted right back down to ‘ordinary spacer.’”
“But this is a cargo ship, not a hauler,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but I did most of my schooling for ore haulers and have a fair bit of experience on them. Then I have all the stuff I’ve learned here, and a fair deal that Hank’s been teaching me about military ships. So I got to take the big test that covers all of them. Though a lot of the ore hauler stuff got waived due to prior experience, or it might have run three days.”
“Huh, I had no idea. What about the mates?” I asked, nodding toward Pam.
“They’re like you: typically they go to college and learn navigation, leadership, shipping rules and regs, and ship handling.”
“There’s also a lot of overlapping and specialties in the spacer category with both the ships officers and the engineering staff,” Hank said.
“How’s that?” I was curious as this wasn’t anything I recalled them mentioning in college.
“Well, I’m certified for Environmental. I’m also certified as a ship handler, though the Iowa is just a bit outside of my weight class.”
“Huh, I had no idea. What’s the reason for it?”
“Because some ships have a lot of able spacers on board, but not that many mates or engineers. So training up the spacers to handle a number of specialty jobs frees the others up. Legally I could fly this ship, if the captain or one of the mates were giving me commands, whereas legally you couldn’t do it, because you don’t have the experience or the training.”
“It’s mostly the navies,” Pam said, surprising me by speaking up. “Most navy ships don’t have that many officers, but they’ve got lots of enlisted. So the enlisted have to learn the jobs and get the ratings. Our bosun there has what, ten different specialty certs on top of your able spacer rating, isn’t it, Hank?”
Hank nodded. “It’s why I can stand watches in Engineering and was able to help Dot with her engineering tasks when we were shorthanded.”
“Here in the belt, a lot of the smaller ships have no officers onboard at all if they’re short haulers,” Pam continued. “Or they may have one captain and one engineer, who make the decisions and supervise if they just can’t call for help when something breaks.”
I looked at Chaz and Hank, who both nodded.
“The belt’s pretty populated,” Chaz said. “Most of the mining outfits are large operations, and even the small ones are rarely working in an area by themselves. So if you need a rescue here in the belt, you’re a lot more likely to get one than when you’re flying between planets.”
I nodded; it all made sense. People flying here in the belt would also be moving at lower velocities because they were making shorter trips, so they’d be easier to catch up with, unlike a ship hauling in open space, where the distances meant you got up to some high velocities by the time you flipped and started your deceleration. High enough that, in some cases, no one would bother trying to get to you, assuming anyone even could.
“So, where are we off to next?” I asked. The Iowa Hill was running light now —we had only about a third of our cargo hold filled.
“Now we do the parts run,” Pam grumbled.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Chaz said with a grin.
“What’s ‘the parts run’?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of small outfits out here that make specialty equipment for habs. Shipping it to Ceres so it can be used in their hab construction can be an expensive proposition for some of the smaller outfits. So Ceres hires a freighter to come through here every four months or so and pick up all those shipments.”
“And we’ll drop off most of the cargo we’ve currently got along with way,” the captain said from the other table. I guess he’d been following our conversation. “That’s why most of what’s left are half-size TEUs.” TEUs were Twenty-foot Equivalent Units. “It’s all spares or specialty stuff that those places ordered from Coeus when they found out that the ship the Ceres Hab Company hired was coming out of there. It’s actually one of our more regular runs. Damascus Freight has a ten-year contract with Ceres Habs and several of our ships make this run at least once a year.”
“So how many stops between here and there?”
“About one a week for the next four months,” Pam said.
“That many?” I looked back at the captain.
“We sail for about a week, then we dock at a hab and wait for the locals to deliver their stuff to us, then we go to the next pickup,” he said, looking back at me. “Layovers can be anything from a few hours, while we load, to a couple days if we have to wait for someone to show.”
“And we always have to wait for some people to show.” Pam sighed. “It took at least five months the last time we came through.”
“Yeah, that was a bad one,” the captain said with a nod. “But the folks over at Killian’s did have a blowout and going over there and helping them out was the right thing to do.”
“Actually that was kinda fun,” Pam said with a smile. She turned back to me then. “Remember how I told you that everything you can think of, you’ll find out here in a hab somewhere?”
I nodded.
Pam grinned at me. “Well, get ready for an education. Belters are weird!”
“Oh? And like Adonises are not?” Chaz retorted with a grin of his own.
“Compared to some of these people, we’re positively high culture,” Pam retorted, still grinning.
“Be aware that some of these places won’t allow you to bring a firearm aboard, if we dock at any of them long enough to grant leave,” the captain warned me.
“They won’t?”
“Nope. Some of them are worried about leaks and the destruction of expensive equipment, because they’re fairly small, poor, and remote. While others just have issues with firearms.”
