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“It's not about the ship and any report I made,” I interrupted. “I applied to be the sheriff on New Haven.”
The captain stopped so abruptly that I almost felt sorry for him. He turned and peered at me, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and the dawning realization that he might have spent the last several minutes arguing about entirely the wrong thing.
The bridge went quiet. The communications officer stopped pretending to study his console, and the first mate looked at me with open interest. Suddenly, every pair of eyes in the room was on me.
“That Dragonii colony?” the captain asked, looking perplexed.
“Yes.”
“You applied to be the sheriff on New Haven?”
“That's what I said.”
“When?”
“Recently. After we left Kessara Station.” I shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious under the collective attention. “I'd heard they were recruiting. They need security personnel, and I have the experience. I was ready for a change.”
“A change.” The captain repeated the words as though I had announced that I intended to spend the rest of my life raising decorative space mollusks. “You're going to leave a functioning merchant vessel with a regular salary and settle on a remote, small, agricultural colony?”
“One with air that doesn't suddenly vacate the area and a regular salary, as well as free housing I’ll own."
The first mate made a noise that might have been a cough. I suspected he was hiding a laugh.
The captain gave me a long, unimpressed look. “I hope you're happy there, Korvak. I genuinely do. You'll have plenty of dirt, fresh air, and agricultural work to admire, assuming you aren't too busy policing whatever passes for civilization on that colony. I'll let the Empire know our next station stop so they can arrange their pickup.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Don't thank me yet. If they start asking for the ship's logs, I'm forwarding every communication directly to their office.”
“That's probably where they would belong anyway.”
His expression suggested that I had not improved matters. I took that as my cue to leave before he remembered another reason to be irritated with me.
The bridge doors closed behind me, and I returned to my security duties with a curious feeling in my chest. New Haven had been a possibility when I'd submitted the application. A distant colony, a job that might suit me, and a chance to do something useful with the years I had left in my career. I hadn't expected the Dragonii Empire to take an interest, let alone arrange to collect me from a merchant vessel.
Still, I wasn't about to start celebrating until I knew what the communication meant. It could be nothing more than routine administrative procedure. Perhaps the colony had a standard process for recruiting Dragonii personnel, and the Empire was simply making sure I arrived where I was supposed to be.
That was the sensible explanation.
I clung to it for the rest of my shift.
A few hours later, my wrist comm chimed with an incoming message. I was in the security office, reviewing the next watch rotation, when the screen announced that the transmission originated from New Haven.
I opened it.
The message began with a cheerful greeting in letters large enough to make me wonder whether someone had mistaken my comm for a public information display.
HOWDY, NEW PARTNER!
I leaned back in my chair. “Oh, this ought to be interesting.”
The message was from Bob, New Haven's infamous artificial intelligence whose code was based on the Mylos’ very own Xeranos. Even out here, a long way from the colony, I'd heard stories about him. Apparently, Bob had a personality large enough to fill several star systems and a habit of involving himself in matters that most AIs would consider outside their assigned responsibilities. Some people found him charming. Others found him exhausting. A few had reportedly experienced both reactions within the same conversation. Freighter captains, especially. News of how the quirky sentient AI required the captain to listen and respond to what humans called a knock knock joke had already spread far and wide. Apparently, failure to show appropriate amusement was proof you had no sense of humor and therefore were suspect.
I snorted, almost sorry my current captain wouldn’t be having a go. I’d love to see him try to pull the stick out of his ass. I started reading, eager to see what else I could learn about the colony, as well as Bob from how he wrote his communication.
Bob congratulated me on my successful application and welcomed me to New Haven. He informed me that arrangements had already been made for my transfer, my travel, and my arrival, and that I needn't concern myself with the tedious details because he had taken care of them all.
I grinned at that, having a feeling the tedious details were about to become very detailed indeed. That feeling turned out to be correct. According to Bob, a ship would meet me at the next station stop and take me to another station. From there, I'd catch a second ride to yet another station, where a final ship would collect me and carry me directly to New Haven. He explained the route with such enthusiastic confidence that I read it twice to make sure I hadn't accidentally signed up for a grand tour of the entire sector.
