JessicaRae

Yall went long enough without a chapter, so I'll ask for forgiveness in exchange for another chapter lol

I locked everything up where it was and made the trip back to my quarters, where I quickly stripped and stepped into the shower. It was already after eighteen-hundred hours and I wanted to make sure I was presentable and punctual. With steady hands, I pulled the shaver from its spot on the shower rack and went through the motions of removing every trace of stubble from my face. 

The slight twinge of the laser-based shaver combined with the pulsating waves of sonic force from the waterless shower were highly effective in cleansing my body of the sweat and muck from my hours in space and then my afternoon in the hangar, but it definitely left me pining for the relaxation provided by a real water bathing experience. Despite my occupation, I hated being grimy. I wasn’t very strict about maintaining cleanliness in my workspaces, but the feeling of being dirty was not fun. Maybe it was an effect of the dysphoria. 

My clothing choice was actually rather easy, despite the occasion. I only had one outfit suitable for any sort of formality. The black pants were just as tight as last time I had worn them and the uncomfortably form-fitting grey top with its dull blue trimming and high neck still didn't feel great to wear, but it was the best I had. Since I’d bought the getup for a Torgal Corporation event that required all contracted employees to attend, it hadn’t seen much use and I had no intention of buying any other expensive formal wear until I could actually enjoy the experience.

As was my right as a ship owner and status as a licensed solo captain, the breast panel of the shirt bore a silvered brooch showing my space wings and the name of my vessel engraved in the plate that sat below them. I wasn’t one for pomp and circumstance, but I was proud of what I had. 

The clothes felt stuffy once I pulled everything on, but the occasion being what it was and the location, nothing else would do. I braved a look in the large bathroom mirror. Despite everything seeming to be in order, something within me still told me that it was all wrong. Not trusting my own feelings, I asked Vox.

“Well, Vox, how do I look?”

“Suitably dressed for the occasion according to my knowledge of current fashions for men of similar age group, though rather uncharacteristic for women of the same age group. Notification: the regularly scheduled percentage of daily pay has been deducted from your primary financial account to the account labelled under transition savings.” Once the brief flash of dysphoria passed, I had to take a moment to question for the third time of the day how much sentience my personal AI assistant actually had. 

Her apparent insight into my feelings and the pointed remark about my savings account being one step closer to its goal was almost too close to understanding and empathy than any computer program should be capable of. Perhaps it was time to run another SAI test to check for it. I fully believed that I treated her well enough, even not knowing of any sentience, but law mandated that any sentient AI be given rights as a digital being. 

“The station time is now one eight four five.” 

I nearly cursed. It would take several minutes to get to the other side of the ring where the lounge was And I really didn't want to make a bad impression by being late. “Thanks, Vox. Lock up behind me, I’d better get going.” 

“Farewell, Adresta.”

I kept up a long stride as I all but raced across the promenade as soon as the lift dropped me off. The clothes were itchy and the high neck felt almost suffocating. I was reminded of yet another reason I strongly disliked the outfit. I pulled at it even as I shouldered through the dinner time rush crowds. Checking my holopad didn’t help either, I was dangerously close to only being on time, a cardinal sin in the rushing world of business. 

The host of the lounge was a well dressed older man that raised an eyebrow at me as I approached, breathing somewhat hard. I took a deep breath and steadied myself before I committed any further embarrassment. 

“Soren Matson, here for a reservation under Erickson?”

The other eyebrow rose to join the first on the face of the man behind the host stand. “Of course, Sir. If you would follow me, I will show you to Captain Erickson’s table.”

He led me through the fancy lounge. Despite what the rest of the station looked like, the Sindiri Lounge showed no sign of wear and tear. This was the restaurant of choice for the elite of the station and any important visitors to the station. Not many of the residents aboard could afford to eat there more than once or twice a year. 

Real crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, highlighting the plush leather seating and speckled granite tables that caught and reflected light not only from the chandeliers, but the starlight coming in from the massive transparent aluminium windows that made up the entirety of the dome overhead.  It was stunning to behold and easily told why this was the best view on the station and why this was the chosen location for the most expensive restaurant. 

The maître d’ led me through the maze of tables to a secluded and curtained-off private lounge where Echo, Captain Erickson and surprisingly, two additions sat. One was Morik, cargo master on the Ratatosk, and the other was a darker-skinned woman with tightly coiled black hair who sat next to the captain. Said captain rose from his seat to greet me as we approached. 

“Matson, glad you could make it. We only just got here ourselves. I must say, this lounge really is quite something! I’ve been on many stations in my time, but not many have such a clear view of a stunningly ringed world like Telemachus Four. Apologies for my earlier quick dismissal. Business at hand and all that, I'm sure you understand.”

I nodded at him and turned to thank the maître d’, but the prim and proper staff member had already left us, unseen. “I certainly can understand. Business is a fast-paced world, even out in this backwater.”

The captain grinned knowingly and motioned to the table. “Please! Have a seat. I believe you’ve met Morik, my cargo master, previously. Allow me to also introduce you to my wife and first officer, Mikaela Orzhov.” 

Noticing her darker skin, I realised that this was likely who Echo had been talking to for permission to leave the ship. I was curious as to the situation with the family, though. Echo had mentioned that her mother was station bound, but hadn’t mentioned anything about a stepmother.  

I offered a hand to her. “A pleasure, ma’am. You have a wonderful ship with some remarkable crew from what I saw today.”

The husband and wife beamed with pride at my compliments and Mikaela took the hand briefly. I pulled an empty seat from the table and put myself in it. The formal pants I wore rode up uncomfortably, but I forced myself to ignore it with polite company. 

Mikaela spoke up with a pleasantly smooth voice. “Thank you for the compliments. Callisto and Morik had rather high praise for your work today as well.”

Morik interjected with a jovial smack to the table. “Consummate professional. I can appreciate that in a tug man. Those manipulator arms on that ship of yours did fine and fast work with the fragile cargo. Very few stations out in the frontier worlds can brag such amenities in their yards. Even in the better equipped inner bubble, not very many pilots carry that level of care. Lazy louts.”

Myself and the others chuckled, but even as I did so, I was pushing down a slight redness in my face. “Well, that is why Mr. Kruger tasked me specifically with the job. The Oxide and I were happy to serve, though my ship makes up much of the ability there. I’m just a simple scaver.” 

“Nonsense!” said the captain. “I was monitoring the cargo deck visual sensors as possible while you lot were working and I was station side. I couldn’t have asked for a smoother job with such large and awkward cargo. Don’t sell yourself short, son, you did fine work. Matter of fact, Callisto here tells me you actually built the ship yourself! You must be quite the engineer even beyond your demonstrated talent for flying.

Again, my face flushed. I wasn’t used to compliments and praise like this. I’d had a couple captains treat me to a drink after a large job, but none had gone as far as this. The captain and crew seemed genuinely friendly as well, even excluding the bright-faced Echo. Most cargo crews were ragtag groups of civilians that were just as tired as their commonly old and run-down ships. The Ratatosk and her crew were something special, to be sure. 

Seemingly sensitive to my embarrassment, Captain Erickson changed the topic. 

“Well, I took the initiative and ordered a bottle of champagne to be delivered to the table. It was my thought that we could decide on an entree and then place the order, having the champagne to toast with before we start eating our evening meal. If that is agreeable?”

Everyone at the table nodded agreement. 

“Excellent!”

After a few minutes of deliberation, all of us except Mikaela decided on the chef's special, a prime rib roast served with asparagus spears and a baked potato. The captain’s wife ordered a salmon plank with sauteed green beans and rice for her meal. It scared me to think of what kind of scratch the captain must have been dropping on this meal. There weren’t prices listed in the menu, but that just reinforced the idea that if you were at all worried about prices, this wasn’t a place where you belonged. The captain seemed to pick up on my unspoken feelings though, because he quietly reassured me that this was his personal way of payment for a job well done. 

Once the waiter left with our orders, conversation picked back up with Morik turning to Captain Erickson (who politely asked me to call him Marcus for the evening). “So, captain, where next do the space lanes take us? I haven’t seen any manifests for onboarding new cargo yet.”

The captain took a sip of his water. “My current plan is to return to Centaurus. It has been too long since I saw my lovely lady in the home port. We could use a resupply for the ship, regardless. Lanier has been griping about low supply in the freezers for the last two weeks. I think the crew could enjoy some shore time as well. Not everyone got to get off early like Callisto here.” Despite the pointed words, Marcus’ expression towards his daughter showed affection with only a touch of reproach. “I do intend to entertain an offer we received from the Torgal corporation regarding the upcoming twelfth gen gate project before we depart, though.”

Having already known that such an offer existed, I was unfazed, but apparently Echo was not in on that loop and her eyebrows told a tale of surprise that turned into a gasp and wide eyes.. 

“Does this mean that I’m finally getting my chance?!” Her excitement was plain in her voice.

Marcus chuckled softly and calmly replied. “There is a lot of paperwork and preparation to come, but yes. As I promised, the third generation of Erickson Enterprises will come to bear on the new outer bubble gate project. There’s a lot of mining operations beginning to catch their stride out in the outer reaches beyond this system and it is a great opportunity for us to be the first major operation to serve the new space lanes.”

I nearly whistled in appreciation. What he was talking about was going to be a huge undertaking. Faster than light travel was a well-used technology by this point, with civilians even such as myself having the potential to own and operate an interstellar capable ship. FTL drives were not very fast or efficient, however, and even the biggest and bulkiest of civilian drives couldn’t go very far off of established lanes because of how much fuel they burned through per lightyear of travel. So, instead of building ships with obscenely large storage systems for the highly unstable fuels required to run the drives, a network of slipspace gates had been built. 

Where traditional stardrives used vast amounts of volatile antimatter fuel to warp space and time into a bubble in order to violate Einsteinian physics and achieve faster than light speed, the slipspace gates could, with an appropriate gate on the other side, drill a hole through space-time and open a wormhole to connect networked gates directly. This resulted in a method of travel that was exceedingly more efficient than traditional stardrives and made it so significantly more economical, smaller ships with less capable FTL drives could cross the same space in seconds, rather than potentially weeks of travel using traditional faster-than-lightspeed methods. 

The gates were enormously expensive and complex however, so it often took a government-sponsored expedition to head out to a location far from the closest gate and construct a new gate along with its accompanying power generation methods to expand the existing network. As politics and people spread out, the existing network was becoming overworked and many of the existing gates were of much older generations that operated significantly slower and with less power efficiency. 

When I was living and working with my former mentor, we had one of the biggest ships outside of dedicated freighters in the sector simply because it needed to operate so independently to get to stranded vessels. Additionally, the extra space was sometimes needed to take on evacuated crews when we encountered vessels too damaged to repair in-situ. 

So caught up in my thoughts, I apparently missed an entire conversation that happened after the captain’s declaration. I only came to when I heard my name being called. “Hm?” I said creatively.

“The champagne has arrived, Soren. Care to join us for a toast?”

I glanced around the table to see that indeed, flutes had been provided and filled from a bottle of champagne that currently sat in a bucket of ice.

“Of course, Captain, er, Marcus. I’d be glad to. Sorry, got lost in my thoughts, I guess. An expedition to build a new gate is quite the undertaking.”

He smiled at me. “Happens to the best of us. Now then, our tradition dictates that the most junior member of the crew at the table present the first toast, followed by a second from the first officer. Since the only ones here are senior members, it seems we will have to break from that somewhat. As my guest tonight, I was hoping you would honour us by presenting the first toast, Soren.”

I blew my cheeks out. I hadn’t been expecting any such request, but I wasn’t one to back down either. With a steeled expression, I stood, glass in hand. 

Having been caught unprepared, I drew upon and adapted a quote from a book I had once read. “To good business, new friends and future ventures! May the wind ever be at your backs.” 

“Hear, hear!” came the chorus that followed. We all took a sip and I sat as Mikaela stood. 

Her toast was even simpler than mine. “To Erickson Enterprises!” We all responded with a hearty ‘hear, hear’ and drank again.