They won’t be leaving without me, that’s for sure.
Once my shift ends, I return to my cabin and take a shower. Now that we’re berthed and connected to the space station by umbilicals, I can take a real shower with water, for as long as I damn well want, in my private head that’s attached to my stateroom. Sure, it’s tiny, and an all-in-one, but it’s mine and I don’t care that I’m practically standing on the toilet when I’m in the shower.
One of the perks of my rank.
Most of the crew have to share facilities and rack space. Only the captain, his XO, myself, and McMurtry down in Engineering get our own private cabins. The others are bunked together in four rooms that hold six racks each, with a full head for each room.
I haven’t had to share quarters since I graduated and received my ether-jump nav certification. Again, perk of the rank. All captains want their nav well-rested and at the top of their game. Plus, I need a dedicated nav terminal in my bunk, since during jumps I technically don’t get to go off-duty.
After my shower, I throw on civvie clothes and head down to the mess for breakfast. The food isn’t bad on this ship. At least the guy who does most of our cooking, a human named Gentry, knows his stuff in that department. He’s also got my eggs ready for me when I walk into the mess. I like them scrambled a certain way and taught him how to do it my first day on board.
Hey, it’s the only thing I can cook, and it’s how my mom taught me to cook them. It’s sort of a personal thing, okay?
Shut up.
“There you go, Davies,” he says, sliding the plate over to me.
“Thanks, man.” I grab several of the protein strips that sort of remind me of bacon, and a couple of pieces of Onyx toast made from a grain that’s kind of like wheat but naturally sweeter.
And coffee. Ooooh, yes, please, the coffee. I head to my usual spot at the far corner of the room and sit to eat. When McMurtry walks in, the short Onyx scans the room and gives me a nod when he spots me. Then he gets in line to grab his chow. Sure enough, he walks over and sits across the table from me.
“Good jump,” he says as he scratches the top of his head with the end of his prehensile tail. He can be ornery, but the reason he’s tolerable is because he also has this side to him—encouraging and nice, even.
I nod. “Thanks.” It’s just him and his quirky ways. He says the same thing to me every time we arrive somewhere. I mean, maybe it’s an Onyx thing, I don’t know, but he always says at least one nice thing to everyone on the crew every day, so it more than makes up for his sometimes irascible moods.
I wish more humans were like him.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucking lonely right now if they were.
* * * *
After breakfast, I enjoy the luxury of taking a long nap on a full tummy before I wander back up to the bridge to see if there’s any word yet on our retrofit schedule. Only the captain and Zorbja, our Chel’ldar XO, are on the bridge.
“Ah, there you are,” the captain says to me. “I was going to summon you.”
“I’m off-duty. I didn’t know I was needed.”
“Not exactly needed, but I wanted to discuss our schedule with you…”
Nearly an hour later, I’m the only one left on the bridge, while Captain Xhogrhan and Zorbja head down to engineering to talk to McMurtry. The retrofit crew is supposed arrive in a couple of hours to talk to me.
I mean, it’s not like I have much else to do right now.
I climb into the captain’s chair and spend my wait time catching up on my reading on my tablet. I’ve been working on a novel and haven’t had a lot of time to read lately. That’s one ofmyquirks, that I don’t mind watching vids while mid-jump, but I don’t like getting absorbed in a book. It’s easier for me to pull myself out of a vid than a novel.
Even when docked, we always keep someone on watch on the bridge to monitor the systems. Yes, I take my fair share of those watches, too, when I’m not on shore leave. Even though, technically, I could beg off doing them altogether. While we’re mid-jump, I’m basically on dutyallthe time. Unlike the rest of the crew, who take shifts. I take naps and sleep, but I have a special console in my bunk where I can tap into the nav system at any time and verify our course trajectory and projections. Only when we’re securely docked, or not in an ether-jump, do I truly get to go off-duty.
That’s not a complaint, either. It’s part of the gig, and the pay is damn sure worth it.
It’s not quite lunchtime when I finish that novel and then sit back to download and read an informational brochure about the space station. Meanwhile, I realize I’ve been spinning my stylus through my fingers the whole time. I use it to tap my way through the guide.
The space station is a Maxim Colonies facility, and it’s also the commerce base from which they conduct business with the Pfahrn. Mostly mining, but some other industries as well. Apparently, since the Pfahrn are a relatively new species to join the coalition government, Maxim Colonies’ scientists are eager to learn as much as possible about them.
I can’t blame them, either. It’s no secret the company built its fortune on patents for a variety of things and in a wide swath of specialties, from medical to mining to agriculture, and beyond. Why wouldn’t they want to be one of the first into this sitch, too?
Maxim Colonies has already started building a lucrative agricultural trade relationship with the Pfahrn, mostly plants, but apparently studying some of the fauna from the planet, as well. None of that is my area of expertise, though.
I mean, all of that sort of goes over my head, right? I deal with the concretely abstract world of quantum mapping and multi-verse physics, man.
