Down time amounted to the time it took to take the chute from the station lounge to the cafeteria. No one looked comfortable. Not even the half dozen goons sucking blue goo like it was some kind of narcotic. Sam grabbed a plate of red cubes floating in an orange slurry and a straw. The label identified it as ?¢‚Ǩ?ì55-10-10?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, which was Solocor?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s terminology for 55% protein, 10% carbohydrate, 10% fat, and the rest a proprietary secret. If there was natural food, it was reserved for the system managers?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùnot the mooks in Solocor?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Venture Program. After a while, it got easier to pretend that real food came in primary colors and geometric shapes. It was never possible to imagine that the meal was satisfying. Sam searched for an empty table.
The chief goon, the one whose jumper had as three orange bands on his shoulder, came to her table. He must have spotted her three bands and felt obligated to move. Any mook with a profile that thrived on rules automatically fell into the security ranks.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìThey call you Sam.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù He set a mug of near-beer on the table and sat. Because they were more apt to follow the rules, goons got more privileges.
Either he was new to the company or stupid. No one sat with the wild engine jockey unless invited. Sam poked a cube with her straw.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìI hear ?¢‚ǨÀúSam?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ stands for ?¢‚ǨÀúSadistic and Malicious?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù he said. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI like that in an engine jockey. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m Laq.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù
The name on his ident read, Corinth Lathuniki. Unlike most in the flight crews, he had reach and mass over Sam. Even for a goon, he was in better shape than most. He?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d probably make a good sparring partner. Goons only fought professionally, and trained only with each other. Fighting always got Sam into trouble. One day, she?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d get it through her thick blonde skull to learn more social behaviors. Sam picked up his beer and quaffed half of it. Even though it was impossible, it tasted more like the real thing than the stuff served in the lounge.
He should have should have thumbed a report on his wrist pad. Instead, he slid her dinner to his side of the table and began eating, as if a trade was his plan all along.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhat do you want??¢‚Ǩ¬ù she asked.
He used her straw to slurp the last bit of orange gravy. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI like to meet my engine jockey before we leave base. I like to have that warm fuzzy assurance that we?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re going to make it to the next base on time and intact.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù
?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhat makes you think that would be me??¢‚Ǩ¬ù She had no crew, her engine pods were being gutted and overhauled, and no work schedule for the foreseeable future.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìWe?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re both unassigned. That means that we?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll both be shipping with the next available cargo.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù He looked at the table the rest of his squad shared. They were pretending hard not to watch. Laq grinned. His green eyes twinkled. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThey have bets as to which of us is going to flatten the other.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù
If she so much as thought about doing physical harm to the goon, the rest of his squad would be on her in a nano. Those kinds of odds weren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t entertaining. They were just suicidal. Losing her crew was enough trouble for one day. She finished the beer and stood.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìI?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m tired,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù she said. She checked her wrist pad. It was still routing information from her ship. She?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d have to go to the housing desk to get a bunk.
Half way to the door, the lights flickered. Empty tables and chairs shifted. Sam almost lost her footing and grabbed the nearest solid thing, which happened to be Laq.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìThat was not good,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù he said.
That was an understatement. It felt like a bump, but for something as massive as the station, it had to be one hell of an impact to feel anything at all. The cafeteria was silent. The faint sound of blowers indicated that the environmental systems were unaffected. The goons were all checking their wrist pads. If there was news, they?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d know about it first. Sam checked her own wrist pad. It was dead. That was not good.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìThe station is ok, but half of docking platform Beta is offline,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù Laq said.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìMy ship was hitched to B-8.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù Even though she was going to be reassigned. That hadn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t happened yet. What if something happened to her ship?
Laq studied his wrist pad, nodded, stared some more. What ever communications he received, they were probably coming through his implants, not as messages on the pad. Looking at the pad made it easier for whoever did the talking to see the mook at the other end. In unison, his squad got up and left the cafeteria. No one said anything.
Her own wrist pad reactivated. Report to dock A-3. Recalibrating. By the time she was on the lift enroute to the Alpha platform, Sam had a new ship and crew. By the time she reached the platform, she had the access codes and configuration specs for SF14735-18j, a slightly older model, but functionally identical to her last pod. Her crew, an assortment borrowed from other crews arrived as she did. There was no time for them to grumble about being pulled from other ships. They had an emergency assignment. Clear the rubble from platform Beta salvaging whatever they could.
As ships went, pods were little more than oversized engines strapped docking and towing apparatus with a bit of crew space stuffed within. Normally, to transport a cargo, two pods were used. The crew lived an operated within one pod and operated the other remotely. Super-sized cargos might require more pods, but still only required one flight crew, so stations typically had more pods than crews on hand. For emergencies like this, each pod went independently requiring its own crew. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case might be, there were plenty of crews to operate most of the pods associated with platform Alpha. As Sam saw when she piloted her pod around to platform Beta, that was because platform Beta was mass of wreckage with clusters of untethered cargo containers drifting towards and away from the station. The engine jockeys had to grapple the drifting containers as best they could since most had their junctions destroyed or damaged when the explosion blew apart at least one fully linked, full-sized cargo cluster creating shrapnel that destroyed half the platform and several adjacent clusters.
Sam and her crew worked through two shifts before they were ordered down. Other pods stayed out. After nearly four shifts without rest, Sam?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s performance in the pilot?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s web was waning, and Control knew it. Without a protest, she unlinked herself from the harness and pushed herself to the pilot?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s cabin. Her fingers fumbled for the latch. Whether or not there was a bunk on the station, this one was here, it was close, and it seemed clean enough. At least no one else was sleeping in it.