The first thing I noticed about the Cassandra was that it was not a fast packet—or if she was then she had just barely squeaked in under the upper limit for her class. Fast Packets did not run cargo. They ran passengers. Their holds were intended for luggage and food storage.
After a brief review of the ship’s public log, I realized Grace had found an untapped market for small volume, high priority shipments. The log was sketchy about what, exactly, he carried. That wasn’t unusual. No indie trader talked about their cargo unless it was something everyone already knew about or was so thoroughly licensed that it was worthless to anyone but an authorized vendor. I assumed it wasn’t drugs or Security would have been all over him at every opportunity. They for sure wouldn’t have released me into his custody without using it as an excuse to inspect his ship. Whatever it was had to have low resale value otherwise Mimir (or one of her sister ships) would have paid him a visit a while ago.
I followed Grace in through the lock, bracing myself for that first whiff of ship’s air.
Every ship had its own characteristic odor. No matter how good your scrubbers were, you were breathing recycled air. Mimir hadn’t been too bad. Her air filtration system would have been too big and distributed for anyone to manage when she was fresh out of the yard and it only got worse as she aged. I’d gotten used to the faint skunky bouquet of her elderly ventilation system. She’d been head and shoulders above Ifrit, who’d stunk like a swamp and had gone on to gas her remaining crew a few years after I’d gotten out.
Cassandra smelled a clean gym locker; a bit like industrial cleaner and the faintest tang of human sweat. That would never pass muster on a planet or an orbital, but was exceptional for ship air. I wondered if the atmosphere regulator was what the special bots were for. If so, then I could see why Grace was so desperate to keep them in peak condition.
“Normally I’d start with a facility tour,” Grace said and gave me a frank once over. “Instead, I’ll ask if you need to visit medical? I’m worried that you’ll fall down soon.”
I wondered how bad I looked.
Ha. Silly question.
I looked bad enough for the most apathetic security agents in the sector to accept that I’d been medically out of my mind when they found me based on no evidence at all. I looked bad enough that a stranger was going to make me see a doctor. I closed my eyes against the memory of cold and a vast, strangely comfortable emptiness against my bare skin.
“Yeah," I rasped. “Yeah, okay.”
Medical was located on the midline of the ship, as close to the center point as could be, which gave me the chills. Military ships put their medical facilities there to keep wounded as far away from the hull as possible. Civilian vessels still kept medical on the center line, but placed the clinic closer to wherever the atmosphere generator was. Able-bodied crew could be expected to get themselves to a mask or an emergency airsuit. Medical, on the other hand, often lived in the same envelope as Environmental, in case of a full hull depressurization so the injured would be protected by the redundant atmosphere generators that protected the Environmental crew. However, on military ships the clinic would have its own isolated air system, independent of the rest of the ship.
There was a single medic there when we arrived; a tall, androgynous sort with light golden skin and a crest of blue hair braided back from their face. They had the same elongated look to them as Grace did—and me, too, for that matter. Xe appeared to be another low-g native. I wondered if Grace was hiring that way on purpose. It made a certain amount of sense. Low-g natives had fewer health problems during long hauls. So long as you didn’t need a person to lift heavy objects, it was an ideal way to staff a ship.
“Doc, do you have a sec for a quick check up?” Grace gestured towards me and ‘Doc’s’ vivid yellow brows went up, up, and up. “This is Sinope Ananke, prospective crew member; she/her pronouns. Sin, this is Doc; ship’s medical officer, xe/xir.”
“I’d have a sec even if I didn’t, Captain," Doc replied, setting down the datapad xe’d been engrossed with when we arrived. Xe scanned me with a neutral, thin-lipped expression that made xe look like some kind of tropical bird. “You look like you’re in rough shape, sailor.”
“I’ve had a bad couple of days.” That was putting it mildly.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to leave you two alone for a moment," Grace interjected. “I’ll need to get those revisions we talked about together. You’ll find my office at the intersection where the corridor t-intersects. Please join me once you’re done here?”
I nodded and Doc flapped a hand at him. “Yes, yes. Go. I’ll send her on to you.”
Doc waited until Grace was gone and the lock was closed behind him. “A few bad days, hmm? More than that, I’d think. Arm, please,” xe said.
Xe accepted my hand and turned it over so xe could gently pinch the thin skin of my forearm. Xe released it and watched in disapproval as the skin flattened. “You’re dehydrated for a start. It’s not bad enough that I think you need intravenous fluid, but I’d like you to drink as much water as you comfortably can for the rest of the day—electrolyte water, if possible. Are you experiencing any abnormal symptoms?”
“I’m very tired.” I thought about it and added, “I’m also cold all the time.” I’d been watching the ambient temperature and it wasn’t matching up with how I felt. The air felt warm to me, but the shipnet reported that it was actually on the chilly side in the clinic. That meant my core temperature was low.
“Lie down on that cot there. I’ll run you through the sniffer. You didn’t trip biohazard scanners in the main lock, but that doesn’t mean your immune system isn’t depressed or fighting off something that isn’t on our blacklist. I’ll do the substance check while we’re at it. Is that something you consent to?” Doc indicated a low, flat table without visible restraints. I resisted the urge to look underneath.
I nodded. Xe wouldn’t find anything on a drug test, unless Holliday had been doing something to the food and, if that was the case, then I wanted to know about it. “Sure. That’s fine.”
I’d come aboard to see what Grace would do, given a chance. I knew now that I could get free if he tried to contain me so I really didn’t have any reason not to find out if he really was as good as he advertised himself. So I lay down on the table—and nothing happened. No restraints snapped out of the table. Doc didn’t inject me with a paralytic. The only thing that happened was a whirrrrrr sounds as the diagnostic equipment spun up. I worked hard to control my breathing as a scanner head rolled over me and shone a narrow band of lasers down the length of my body. I wasn’t sure why having my good faith repaid was more terrifying than being betrayed, but it somehow was.
Doc made a thoughtful noise. “Well, I can tell you why you’re cold. I’m not seeing any serious problems, cancers or the like, but you’ve got almost no body fat. In fact, I think you might have recently lost some muscle mass.” Xe tapped xir long, delicate fingers against the side of xir tablet without looking at me. I could feel xe choosing xir words with care so I took pity on xe.
“I don’t have a metabolic condition or an eating disorder. Give me your recommendation, please.”
That earned me a droll look from the good doctor. “All right, I’d like you to put on weight. Start slowly, please. Recovering from privation is an incremental process. Just add a little to whatever portion size has been normal for you lately. Increase it every week. If your stomach hurts then take a break and come back to your meal later. It’s likely that it will have shrunk and if you push things then it won’t be pleasant for you. Eat several small meals a day of anything you can keep down. Other than that, just rest when you’re tired. I’ll have more detailed plans for you if you choose to stay with us, but that’s advice you can take with you.” Xe watched me repeat my impression of a newborn faun getting up off the scanning table. “Is it all right if I touch you to help you?”
I couldn’t help it. I flinched. I truly did feel more comfortable with xe once I’d put myself on the table and nothing had happened, but my body had a visceral reaction to the idea of being touched that bypassed my conscious mind all together. It was stupid. There was no real reason for it—except the way I could sometimes still feel hands bunched in the fabric of my jumpsuit.
“No.” I dropped my gaze, ashamed of my reaction. “Thank you, I’m all right.”
“Of course,” Doc sounded sympathetic, which just made me feel worse. “I don’t think you have any serious medical complications at the moment. You just need time to put yourself back together. I hope you choose to do so with us. You seem like an able crewmate.”
“Thanks," I dredged up a smile from somewhere. “You too.”
Doc preened at that and waved me off.
As I left, a soft vibration from my band alerted me that someone had entered me into Cassandra’s ShipNet. I broadcast the alert to my ocular and realized that Doc had made an identity tag for me with the usual polite cautions people needed for interacting with strangers.
My tag read; Sinope Ananke, Visitor, she/her pronouns.
They hadn’t bothered with any of that on Mimir, just name, rank, and sometimes the Captain’s mark of favor, which could literally open or close doors for you.
The tag updated as I reviewed it to include ‘touch averse.’
My throat tightened and I had to stop for a minute to wrestle with inconvenient feelings. It was such a minor courtesy; telling people to keep their hands to themselves around me. I shouldn’t have been so affected by it, but I’d served so long on ships like Mimir, where a tag like that would have been taken as a challenge, that I’d forgotten how normal people treated each other.
I took a moment, got a hold on myself, and squared my shoulders.
True to Grace’s word, there was an open hatch at the end of the corridor. I could see the edge of a smart desk inside and a bit of Grace’s elbow.
He looked up from a tablet as I entered. “Good timing," he greeted me. “I’m saving my edits now. Have a look over this and tell me if anything looks amiss.” He handed his tablet over to me. There was a single mag chair in front of the desk. I sat down in it, noting as I did that it was several times more comfortable than even the best seats I’d had access to on Mimir.
Grace hadn’t been lying about the profitability of his outfit. Command and crew facilities were bottom priority on a commercial ship. It was where you first spotted the signs of age on a star ship. Cassandra was not new according to the commissioning plate displayed with pride on the wall behind Grace’s back so she’d been through at least one full retrofit.
I was impressed; impressed enough to give the contract my full consideration.
It was mostly boiler plate—and not bad boiler plate either. Grace had started with the Spacers’ Guild Standard-Preferred Contract, rather than Standard-Minimum, and he’d added extras here and there. Per Standard-Preferred, I wouldn’t be charged for atmosphere, food, water, medical care, or other physical necessities like basic hygiene products. That wasn't a common clause, but sometimes the corporate liners would use that to skew their rating with the Guild. They made it look like their base pay was high, but then slowly recouped their money through facility fees that the Guild had been incentivized to ignore.
Grace had offered me the berth for Driver First with a minor dock to pay to compensate for the fact that I didn’t have enough time in grade. I was certified through the Guild for the role, but I was coming from Driver Third rather than Driver Second. There was a pay increase scheduled for when I’d been with them for six months. The docked pay was still more than I’d made as Driver Third. Plus, I’d be drawing a full profit share as First rather than the inconsistent partial share I’d pulled with Mimir. There was even a signing bonus. It wasn’t a lot, but Grace had just dropped twenty deci-credits to spring me from lockup, so I was hardly in the mood to complain.
Per the contract, Grace would pay into my pension fund every quarter and he had an insurance policy in place to cover back pay in the event of ‘catastrophic business failure’; i.e. catastrophic space ship failure. Assuming we survived, we’d all have a little cushion to get us through to the next berth. If we were shipped out past the reach of the Spacers’ Credit Union then he’d put funds into escrow to pay out according to schedule until we returned.
I scanned through the contract, hoping that he hadn’t used those favorable terms to distract me from the all-important exit clause—but there it was, almost exactly as he’d quoted it to me. I kept looking, trying to find the knife hidden in all that legal jargon. There had to be one.
Didn’t there?
“What do you think?” Grace prodded.
I couldn’t find it. If there was a hook in the contract then it was hidden beyond my ability to ferret it out and I’d deactivated my auxilaries to conserve calories, so I couldn’t sic one of them on the problem. I only had my meager human faculties on hand and, so far, I couldn’t find the trap—or maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t one.
I didn’t really believe that, but it had just occurred to me that I couldn’t stay on Fjord for long either. The people here were alright, so far, and if I didn’t accept Grace’s hand then I might never get off Fjord in this lifetime. Even assuming Holliday’s people didn’t find me there, I was so far down the labor queue there was no guarantee I’d ever get off of it. Grace might not think so, but the big corporations around here had taken off when the mines started to play out and corporate headhunters would only travel so far to collect talent.
“This is acceptable," I said and ignored my dry mouth. “Do you mind showing me your workshop? I’d like to see the facilities.”