"Honestly I'm feeling kind of torn about this now," Jace admitted. "Don't get me wrong, I'm beyond grateful for the free upgrade to a level-one jump. The sooner we can get this shipment to Ganvis Station the better. But I'm going to regret missing out on eighteen days of eating food this good."
I blushed but didn't respond, so Sarah jumped in and embarrassed me some more.
"Amanda definitely spoils us," our cute engineer stated with a grin. "It almost feels wrong, eating this good on a freighter."
"Thank the captain," I said, in an attempt to deflect the praise. "She spoils us by stocking the ship with the quality supplies."
The boss smiled as she sipped her drink, then responded "Only when we stop at Ecclestone's World, where the good food's available cheap."
That brought our passenger's mood down as he sighed, "It's like I said. They've got food to waste there, that's why it's so cheap. Meanwhile folks are starving back on Deveron-8."
"Hopefully this shipment will help," I responded quietly.
"It will," Jace stated.
The four of us were sitting around the table in the ship's mess, enjoying a very nice dinner. The only one missing was Jenny. She was 'resting' in her cabin, though I had a feeling she was hiding to avoid the chance of our passenger figuring out she was an AI or android.
She hadn't been in there the whole flight, for the first three hours or so Jace kept to his cabin while the rest of us relaxed in the lounge. My girlfriends and I got some quality cuddle-time in, and we talked a bit about what to expect when we reached our destination.
Like she'd planned, Rebecca made some enquiries before we left Port Ecclestone. She even sent an FTL ahead to the port at Deveron-8 to confirm things like port fees, cost of fuel, and so on.
Pretty much everything she learned fit with what Jace told her. Most of the folks the boss spoke with hadn't been to the Deveron system themselves lately, but all of them had heard the same thing. The planet was suffering from drought, the government was in disarray, and shipments leaving that world had dried up. So nobody wanted to go there because it sounded like trouble.
Collectively, most of the advice she received could be summarized as "Don't take the job. If you take it, charge at least twice the usual rate and make sure you're well-armed. And even then, we still don't recommend visiting the Deveron system."
The only exception to all that doom and gloom was the information she got back direct from Deveron-8.
Apparently the port authority there wouldn't confirm or deny anything regarding a drought and they didn't report any unusual conditions at the port. However, Rebecca said the prices they quoted her were almost double what they were in the past. Both port fees and fuel costs were inflated, which suggested trouble.
So with all that in mind, it was no surprise Jace had trouble finding a ship to take the job. And no wonder he was soliciting ship crews in restaurants, after all the normal channels dried up.
"Thanks again for the great meal," Jace said as we all finished up with dinner. "And like I said, I'm really grateful you folks took this job. I can't thank you all enough for this."
Rebecca tried to play it off as no big deal, "It's a job."
Once again Sarah got up to take care of the cleaning, but I gave her a hand this time. The conversation continued behind us while the two of us were doing the washing-up.
"It's none of my business but I was wondering how come your other crew member doesn't eat with the rest of you?" Jace asked. "I noticed that at the restaurant where we first met too, she was sitting with you but didn't eat anything."
Rebecca had a sip of her drink then replied in a level voice, "You're right. It's none of your business."
Our passenger got the message and let that topic drop as quick as he brought it up.
Then the captain asked, "Anything we should expect when we reach Ganvis Station? Any surprises, or any particular trouble we should be aware of?"
"Not that I know of," Jace responded. "Folks are hungry and stressed, so they might be a bit more ornery than usual. And they're probably not going to be that friendly at first. It's a small close-knit community, they don't tend to open up to outsiders all that fast."
"They won't be violent or anything like that though," he quickly added. "And when they find out we're bringing them food and seed and irrigation gear, they ought to be grateful."
I glanced over my shoulder and asked, "They know we're coming right? You let them know you're bringing all this stuff back for them?"
Jace shook his head, "Not as such. I figured I'd surprise them. I ah, I'm not exactly on good terms with some of them? I told you all I left to go see the stars right? That didn't particularly endear me to a lot of folks back home."
"Well that can't possibly go wrong in any way I can think of," Sarah commented with a grimace.
Rebecca just frowned for a few seconds before responding, "You're hoping to buy your way back into their good graces with this shipment?"
Our passenger shook his head again, "I don't really care if they like me or not. The bottom line is they're my people, it's my home, the place I grew up. My family are there. If they want to run me out of town that's fine, as long as they take the shipment first. They're hurting, I just want to try and help them out. Ok?"
The captain's frown deepened as she asked, "You figure after we've delivered the goods you're going to try and catch a ride with us off-world again? Maybe ask us to take you back to Port Ecclestone?"
"No ma'am," Jace responded. "I spent every last eck on this. I couldn't afford to buy you dinner, much less a return trip. I expect to be stuck at Ganvis Station, all I can do is hope my folks will have me back."
Sarah and I had the galley all tidied up by that point, so we joined the others at the table again. We still had almost two more hours in jump ahead of us, then we'd be working again. So the four of us had some coffee as we relaxed and waited.
After a few quiet minutes Rebecca spoke up again, "We're not going to have any trouble offloading your cargo are we? I mean, there'll be folks there who can get all those containers off my ship? Grav-assist manipulators, or old-fashioned lift-trucks?"
Our passenger shook his head, "Shouldn't be a problem. We're talking about a farming outpost, every farm there's going to have equipment that can handle it."
"How are you going to handle that?" Sarah asked. "Do you have a contact you're going to talk to when we arrive? Or just put the call out and see who shows up to help unload the ship?"
Jace replied, "I figured when we're on the ground I'll go talk to the mayor. Let the folks in charge make the decisions and handle the arrangements. They'll know what to do with the goods, whether they want to stockpile it in town then distribute it that way, or if they want to send containers out as-is to some of the farms."
"Actually captain, I'd like you to accompany me for that meeting if you don't mind?" he added as he looked to Rebecca. "I'm sure the local leaders will be happy to meet the woman responsible for bringing this aid to Ganvis."
While he was speaking Jenny emerged from her cabin and joined us at the table. She didn't comment on anything yet, just sat down and listened.
Meanwhile Rebecca frowned as she considered Jace's latest request. After a few seconds she decided "All right. Amanda, Jenny, you two will come along. Sarah, you'll stay with the ship. We'll keep you updated."
She obviously couldn't say it in front of our guest, but it was obvious having Jenny with us meant our AI would be monitoring us remotely through her android body while her main self stayed on the ship with Sarah. It was a bit of extra insurance, like if anything happened Jenny would still be in contact with the ship even if me and Rebecca didn't have access to a comm.
"Very well captain," our AI responded.
I nodded as well, "Ok boss."
That was about all anyone had to say on that subject, and the rest of the trip was fairly quiet for everyone on board. When the time came we were at our posts again, while our passenger went back into his cabin for the landing. Sarah was with her engines and Jenny joined me and Rebecca in the cockpit.
The ship dropped out of jump on schedule, and I immediately started verifying our location while the captain monitored the sensors for any nearby trouble. Fortunately everything was clear, and we were a little over an hour out from Deveron-8.
Rebecca kept manual control of the ship while she asked me, "Do a long-range sensor sweep Amanda, see if anything interesting comes up? And Jenny, monitor comm frequencies. Let us know if you hear anything unusual."
"Ok boss," I replied as I began the sweep.
It only took about ten seconds, then I was looking at a world with not a lot of traffic going on around it. There were a handful of orbital platforms and maybe a dozen ships, and a few dozen small satellites. Most of the smaller objects were in high geostationary orbits, a handful were in lower faster orbits. Same with the ships, they were spread out with a few in low orbit, a few in high orbit, and the rest in between.
"It looks quiet," I reported. "A dozen or so ships in orbit, a few platforms. Nothing like the activity at Ecclestone's world, or Rolandan-2."
Jenny added, "There's very little comm traffic. Not even much in the way of ground chatter."
Rebecca thanked us both as we continued the final stretch of our approach. Nobody from the planet or any of the ships or orbital platforms contacted us, we just sailed past the other craft while the captain kept the ship under manual control.
I was keeping one eye on the sensors, but I couldn't help looking out the windows at the world below us.
It was divided into two major landmasses, separated by a lot of blue-green water. I didn't have to ask to know it was either saltwater or it was contaminated some other way that made it unusable for agriculture. My eyes were mainly on the continents anyways. Even from orbit the yellow-brown terrain looked dry and dead.
All too soon the ship started to shudder and rattle as we hit the upper atmosphere. I quietly braced myself while the descent got even rougher as we got into thicker air. I could tell we were heading for the larger of the two landmasses, and it looked like it was about mid-day down there. It was evening for us on the ship, so we'd have a bit of an adjustment to make.
The groans and shaking from the ship got worse as we continued our descent, and like I noticed on take-off our heavier load made the flight feel even rougher than usual. Like the engines were struggling against gravity while the belly of the ship was straining to stay attached to the rest of it.
Meanwhile as we got lower I could make out more details in the terrain below and ahead of us. The uniform yellow-brown started to give way to other features. There were dry riverbeds, some small gorges here and there, scattered hills and vales. The predominant feature though was seemingly endless flat plains.
Now and then I'd spot a square or circle of green amid the endless yellow and brown, indicating locations that actually had water. Likely coming from deep groundwater irrigation systems, owned by the fraction of a percent who could afford the equipment to tap into the deepest aquifers.
When we were down to the last couple thousand metres above ground level I could even make out some random buildings as we passed above them. They were all standard prefab-type structures, either dull grey blocky squares or faded metallic hemispherical domes.
And at long last our destination came into view ahead of us. Ganvis Station was barely a village, I counted a couple dozen structures in a random haphazard arrangement. Like the other buildings everything at Ganvis was made of the same basic prefabs. Some were bigger than others, some were a blend of the two basic types, but everything made use of those same ubiquitous building materials.
Another couple dozen lonely structures were scattered further away, those marked individual farms and homesteads. And about half a kilometre west of the main cluster of buildings stood a well-weathered wind farm, which likely supplied most of their power.
Rebecca altered our trajectory slightly when she spotted what appeared to be a poorly marked disused landing pad on the south side of the community. The actual landing went as usual, though our engines kicked up a tremendous amount of dust and the actual touch-down came with a harder thump than our previous landings.
With the ship safely on the ground we all went through our landing checklists. The only exception was the ship's power-plant. Rather than shut it down the boss ordered via intercom, "Sarah keep the power-plant running on stand-by. There won't be any ground power to tap into here and I don't want to drain our emergency reserves while we're waiting to offload the cargo."
Our engineer responded, "Aye-aye captain. Bear in mind our fuel is down to twenty-two percent. Lift-off and landing with such a heavy load cost us a fair bit, along with the level-one jump."
"Understood," Rebecca replied. "Set an alarm or something please Sarah, if we get down to twenty-percent I want to know about it."
I frowned, "We're not going to run out are we?"
The captain shrugged, "It's not critical, but it is something to be aware of. We'll burn a few percent just getting back into orbit empty, so wherever we go next better be a place we can refill the tanks. And we won't be getting there any quicker than jump-0."
"So let's not waste time," she added as she got out of her seat. "Let's get this cargo unloaded so we can get off this rock."
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"Honestly I'm feeling kind of torn about this now," Jace admitted. "Don't get me wrong, I'm beyond grateful for the free upgrade to a level-one jump. The sooner we can get this shipment to Ganvis Station the better. But I'm going to regret missing out on eighteen days of eating food this good."
I blushed but didn't respond, so Sarah jumped in and embarrassed me some more.
"Amanda definitely spoils us," our cute engineer stated with a grin. "It almost feels wrong, eating this good on a freighter."
"Thank the captain," I said, in an attempt to deflect the praise. "She spoils us by stocking the ship with the quality supplies."
The boss smiled as she sipped her drink, then responded "Only when we stop at Ecclestone's World, where the good food's available cheap."
That brought our passenger's mood down as he sighed, "It's like I said. They've got food to waste there, that's why it's so cheap. Meanwhile folks are starving back on Deveron-8."
"Hopefully this shipment will help," I responded quietly.
"It will," Jace stated.
The four of us were sitting around the table in the ship's mess, enjoying a very nice dinner. The only one missing was Jenny. She was 'resting' in her cabin, though I had a feeling she was hiding to avoid the chance of our passenger figuring out she was an AI or android.
She hadn't been in there the whole flight, for the first three hours or so Jace kept to his cabin while the rest of us relaxed in the lounge. My girlfriends and I got some quality cuddle-time in, and we talked a bit about what to expect when we reached our destination.
Like she'd planned, Rebecca made some enquiries before we left Port Ecclestone. She even sent an FTL ahead to the port at Deveron-8 to confirm things like port fees, cost of fuel, and so on.
Pretty much everything she learned fit with what Jace told her. Most of the folks the boss spoke with hadn't been to the Deveron system themselves lately, but all of them had heard the same thing. The planet was suffering from drought, the government was in disarray, and shipments leaving that world had dried up. So nobody wanted to go there because it sounded like trouble.
Collectively, most of the advice she received could be summarized as "Don't take the job. If you take it, charge at least twice the usual rate and make sure you're well-armed. And even then, we still don't recommend visiting the Deveron system."
The only exception to all that doom and gloom was the information she got back direct from Deveron-8.
Apparently the port authority there wouldn't confirm or deny anything regarding a drought and they didn't report any unusual conditions at the port. However, Rebecca said the prices they quoted her were almost double what they were in the past. Both port fees and fuel costs were inflated, which suggested trouble.
So with all that in mind, it was no surprise Jace had trouble finding a ship to take the job. And no wonder he was soliciting ship crews in restaurants, after all the normal channels dried up.
"Thanks again for the great meal," Jace said as we all finished up with dinner. "And like I said, I'm really grateful you folks took this job. I can't thank you all enough for this."
Rebecca tried to play it off as no big deal, "It's a job."
Once again Sarah got up to take care of the cleaning, but I gave her a hand this time. The conversation continued behind us while the two of us were doing the washing-up.
"It's none of my business but I was wondering how come your other crew member doesn't eat with the rest of you?" Jace asked. "I noticed that at the restaurant where we first met too, she was sitting with you but didn't eat anything."
Rebecca had a sip of her drink then replied in a level voice, "You're right. It's none of your business."
Our passenger got the message and let that topic drop as quick as he brought it up.
Then the captain asked, "Anything we should expect when we reach Ganvis Station? Any surprises, or any particular trouble we should be aware of?"
"Not that I know of," Jace responded. "Folks are hungry and stressed, so they might be a bit more ornery than usual. And they're probably not going to be that friendly at first. It's a small close-knit community, they don't tend to open up to outsiders all that fast."
"They won't be violent or anything like that though," he quickly added. "And when they find out we're bringing them food and seed and irrigation gear, they ought to be grateful."
I glanced over my shoulder and asked, "They know we're coming right? You let them know you're bringing all this stuff back for them?"
Jace shook his head, "Not as such. I figured I'd surprise them. I ah, I'm not exactly on good terms with some of them? I told you all I left to go see the stars right? That didn't particularly endear me to a lot of folks back home."
"Well that can't possibly go wrong in any way I can think of," Sarah commented with a grimace.
Rebecca just frowned for a few seconds before responding, "You're hoping to buy your way back into their good graces with this shipment?"
Our passenger shook his head again, "I don't really care if they like me or not. The bottom line is they're my people, it's my home, the place I grew up. My family are there. If they want to run me out of town that's fine, as long as they take the shipment first. They're hurting, I just want to try and help them out. Ok?"
The captain's frown deepened as she asked, "You figure after we've delivered the goods you're going to try and catch a ride with us off-world again? Maybe ask us to take you back to Port Ecclestone?"
"No ma'am," Jace responded. "I spent every last eck on this. I couldn't afford to buy you dinner, much less a return trip. I expect to be stuck at Ganvis Station, all I can do is hope my folks will have me back."
Sarah and I had the galley all tidied up by that point, so we joined the others at the table again. We still had almost two more hours in jump ahead of us, then we'd be working again. So the four of us had some coffee as we relaxed and waited.
After a few quiet minutes Rebecca spoke up again, "We're not going to have any trouble offloading your cargo are we? I mean, there'll be folks there who can get all those containers off my ship? Grav-assist manipulators, or old-fashioned lift-trucks?"
Our passenger shook his head, "Shouldn't be a problem. We're talking about a farming outpost, every farm there's going to have equipment that can handle it."
"How are you going to handle that?" Sarah asked. "Do you have a contact you're going to talk to when we arrive? Or just put the call out and see who shows up to help unload the ship?"
Jace replied, "I figured when we're on the ground I'll go talk to the mayor. Let the folks in charge make the decisions and handle the arrangements. They'll know what to do with the goods, whether they want to stockpile it in town then distribute it that way, or if they want to send containers out as-is to some of the farms."
"Actually captain, I'd like you to accompany me for that meeting if you don't mind?" he added as he looked to Rebecca. "I'm sure the local leaders will be happy to meet the woman responsible for bringing this aid to Ganvis."
While he was speaking Jenny emerged from her cabin and joined us at the table. She didn't comment on anything yet, just sat down and listened.
Meanwhile Rebecca frowned as she considered Jace's latest request. After a few seconds she decided "All right. Amanda, Jenny, you two will come along. Sarah, you'll stay with the ship. We'll keep you updated."
She obviously couldn't say it in front of our guest, but it was obvious having Jenny with us meant our AI would be monitoring us remotely through her android body while her main self stayed on the ship with Sarah. It was a bit of extra insurance, like if anything happened Jenny would still be in contact with the ship even if me and Rebecca didn't have access to a comm.
"Very well captain," our AI responded.
I nodded as well, "Ok boss."
That was about all anyone had to say on that subject, and the rest of the trip was fairly quiet for everyone on board. When the time came we were at our posts again, while our passenger went back into his cabin for the landing. Sarah was with her engines and Jenny joined me and Rebecca in the cockpit.
The ship dropped out of jump on schedule, and I immediately started verifying our location while the captain monitored the sensors for any nearby trouble. Fortunately everything was clear, and we were a little over an hour out from Deveron-8.
Rebecca kept manual control of the ship while she asked me, "Do a long-range sensor sweep Amanda, see if anything interesting comes up? And Jenny, monitor comm frequencies. Let us know if you hear anything unusual."
"Ok boss," I replied as I began the sweep.
It only took about ten seconds, then I was looking at a world with not a lot of traffic going on around it. There were a handful of orbital platforms and maybe a dozen ships, and a few dozen small satellites. Most of the smaller objects were in high geostationary orbits, a handful were in lower faster orbits. Same with the ships, they were spread out with a few in low orbit, a few in high orbit, and the rest in between.
"It looks quiet," I reported. "A dozen or so ships in orbit, a few platforms. Nothing like the activity at Ecclestone's world, or Rolandan-2."
Jenny added, "There's very little comm traffic. Not even much in the way of ground chatter."
Rebecca thanked us both as we continued the final stretch of our approach. Nobody from the planet or any of the ships or orbital platforms contacted us, we just sailed past the other craft while the captain kept the ship under manual control.
I was keeping one eye on the sensors, but I couldn't help looking out the windows at the world below us.
It was divided into two major landmasses, separated by a lot of blue-green water. I didn't have to ask to know it was either saltwater or it was contaminated some other way that made it unusable for agriculture. My eyes were mainly on the continents anyways. Even from orbit the yellow-brown terrain looked dry and dead.
All too soon the ship started to shudder and rattle as we hit the upper atmosphere. I quietly braced myself while the descent got even rougher as we got into thicker air. I could tell we were heading for the larger of the two landmasses, and it looked like it was about mid-day down there. It was evening for us on the ship, so we'd have a bit of an adjustment to make.
The groans and shaking from the ship got worse as we continued our descent, and like I noticed on take-off our heavier load made the flight feel even rougher than usual. Like the engines were struggling against gravity while the belly of the ship was straining to stay attached to the rest of it.
Meanwhile as we got lower I could make out more details in the terrain below and ahead of us. The uniform yellow-brown started to give way to other features. There were dry riverbeds, some small gorges here and there, scattered hills and vales. The predominant feature though was seemingly endless flat plains.
Now and then I'd spot a square or circle of green amid the endless yellow and brown, indicating locations that actually had water. Likely coming from deep groundwater irrigation systems, owned by the fraction of a percent who could afford the equipment to tap into the deepest aquifers.
When we were down to the last couple thousand metres above ground level I could even make out some random buildings as we passed above them. They were all standard prefab-type structures, either dull grey blocky squares or faded metallic hemispherical domes.
And at long last our destination came into view ahead of us. Ganvis Station was barely a village, I counted a couple dozen structures in a random haphazard arrangement. Like the other buildings everything at Ganvis was made of the same basic prefabs. Some were bigger than others, some were a blend of the two basic types, but everything made use of those same ubiquitous building materials.
Another couple dozen lonely structures were scattered further away, those marked individual farms and homesteads. And about half a kilometre west of the main cluster of buildings stood a well-weathered wind farm, which likely supplied most of their power.
Rebecca altered our trajectory slightly when she spotted what appeared to be a poorly marked disused landing pad on the south side of the community. The actual landing went as usual, though our engines kicked up a tremendous amount of dust and the actual touch-down came with a harder thump than our previous landings.
With the ship safely on the ground we all went through our landing checklists. The only exception was the ship's power-plant. Rather than shut it down the boss ordered via intercom, "Sarah keep the power-plant running on stand-by. There won't be any ground power to tap into here and I don't want to drain our emergency reserves while we're waiting to offload the cargo."
Our engineer responded, "Aye-aye captain. Bear in mind our fuel is down to twenty-two percent. Lift-off and landing with such a heavy load cost us a fair bit, along with the level-one jump."
"Understood," Rebecca replied. "Set an alarm or something please Sarah, if we get down to twenty-percent I want to know about it."
I frowned, "We're not going to run out are we?"
The captain shrugged, "It's not critical, but it is something to be aware of. We'll burn a few percent just getting back into orbit empty, so wherever we go next better be a place we can refill the tanks. And we won't be getting there any quicker than jump-0."
"So let's not waste time," she added as she got out of her seat. "Let's get this cargo unloaded so we can get off this rock."
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