[Nano] Corsair
Nov. 1st, 2009 01:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeNanowrimo! Welcome to the madness that is me doing Nanowrimo. I'm debating whether to post excerpts of this story up for people's perusal or just code it into my website and post the link when it's done, but here. So you can read and laugh at me when I tell you that I completely forgot to give the main character a last name until I needed to know it. So much for prep work.
Anyway. Here you go, I need an icon for this somehow, and god I need to go to bed.
[The man on the screen is smiling. Round-faced, dark close-cropped hair and dark hazel eyes. Up close they're more like light cinnamon. Sprinkled with turmeric. He has a tan that looks more like a sunburn after the sunburn gave it up as a bad job. His smile brightens his whole face and makes him look like less of a thug. The camera adds ten pounds. He's pretty scrawny.
"Hey there, Valerie-girl. Just thought I'd drop you a quick line here, while I could. Hope you're doing all right. Not much going on out here, there's."
Incoming message. She stops the letter and opens the other one.
The man on the screen is not smiling. His face is narrow and pinched, older. He is wearing a uniform that sits high, has a high collar and that itches him in places he can't scratch on camera. He is reading off a card, though he's used to it; his eyes flick up to the camera every few words as though giving her the courtesy of looking her in the face. But it's a recording. They can't see each other's faces.
"Captain Reynolds, good morning. My name is Simon Ainsley and I am sending to you on behalf of Bishop Securities with an offer of employment. We have reviewed your exemplary flight record and your record as a captain and have deemed you qualified…"
She has to stop the letter just to laugh at that. She's never heard of Bishop Securities.
"… for a position within our fleet," he continued. It had to be her imagination, but she thought he sounded a little bit pissy that she had laughed at him. Or maybe he just didn't think much of her record personally but was forced to read this out to every candidate.
"We are looking to expand our operations by five ships, and we are approaching captains who own their own ship and have an established crew. You are in good standing with the Messenger's Guild and bonded; your bond would transfer over to our company upon the sealed contract should you choose to accept our offer. Your flight record shows that you are familiar with our main routes as well as the routes to Alcubierre and Enterprise stations. You graduated at the top 2% of your class from the Campbell Academy, which is a strong predictor of expertise, and you come highly recommended."
But recommended by whom?
"Your duties would include your current courier duties as well as relaying your own observations and updating the company on the status of political and flight activity through the course of your assignments, in order to provide us with the latest and most accurate information on the safety and progress of messenger routes for the good of the company and your fellow pilots. More details are attached in text form, and our contact information is listed. We look forward to working with you, Captain Reynolds. Good journey."]
Captain Valerie Reynolds splashed cold water on her face from the antique-style basin on her pedestal. One of the luxuries of being Captain, she supposed; you could wake yourself up in a manner more planetary, cold water to the face and brushing your teeth with paste and rinsing with water instead of using the sonic brush.
Though she still used the sonic brush. It reminded her that she was in space.
Underthings, shirt, short coat in case she had to go in one of the colder sections. Belt, boots, all laced up. Thumb brushing the last of the dirt from the toe, not that it was dirt. Some sort of food smudge, maybe. Her clothes might not be formal or fancy, but they were clean and pressed. She was the captain. She had at least some modicum of dignity to maintain.
Valerie squared her shoulders and rolled her eyes ceilingward before she stepped out of her quarters. She hadn't thought about that in years.
Gray hallways bordered by gray moulding and lit by low-level lighting that was slowly coming up. An approximation of natural lighting, as close as you could get in deep space. Scientists of both the material and the mental variety said it was better on the crew, and she couldn't disagree that she felt better when under the UV light that approximated a star than under harsh artificial lights. It was still a bit eerie to feel a sunrise in a narrow ship's corridor.
The floor was soft red carpet, soft by industrial standards at least. The walls were gray by her order, since this was a ship of business and not pleasure, but she did allow some luxuries. Moulding and edging to soften the walls and stairs, faux wood rails along the stairwells. Somewhere between worlds, like a luxury ship had swallowed a military go-fast ship and coughed up her baby. The crew quarters were narrow and semi-cramped, but efficient. The bunks had enough room to sit up without cracking your head, which was at the very least better than the military ships. The food was at least somewhat real, food stores taking up half her storage space, or at least it felt like it. Which reminded her that she hadn't had breakfast yet. Breakfast was a protein bar in her cabin, but somehow she had missed that this morning. Past the galley, then.
Her executive officer's door was closed. Either he was sleeping or he was already on the bridge or about the ship; he maintained an open door policy to the crew in case there was an issue that needed resolved. A nod to her third-shift pilot in the hallway, another corner, and she could suddenly hear the noise of the mess hall. Her shoulders relaxed. Breakfast, the smell of reconstituted bacon and egg powder. From her times planetside they tasted just like the real thing.
"Captain?" Her galley officer's eyes narrowed at her. "You forgot to eat breakfast again, didn't you."
Her eyes opened wide. "I thought that's why I was stopping by here."
"Hmph." Whatever else he might have said was kept behind thinned and pressed lips as he bundled together a biscuit sandwich for her. She declined the napkin and smiled, wolfing it down as she sprinted out again by the coffee station.
By the time she reached the stairs she had finished it and was licking her fingers.Trotting up the steps for two levels, buoyed by the smell of coffee. Valerie took the third set of stairs at a more sedate pace, but still walked at a good clip down the hall to the bridge. Eliot handed her the thermal mug when she clipped the edge of the steps down to the bridge.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it." His expression didn't flicker. "It's extra-strength. Rough night?"
"Strange dreams." She shook her head; he didn't need to bother with her dreams or any reason she might not be a hundred percent pre-caffeine. "How are we doing?"
"Good," he nodded at the small room in front of them. Pilot and navigator chatting quietly at their stations, the communications officer with that half-distracted expression that was a sure sign the half of her head that Valerie couldn't see wore an earpiece. There were some communications officers who had the jacks installed directly into their cortex, but Valerie avoided hiring those on one pretext or another. She didn't trust anyone who would want that much information beamed into their own brain.
There were arguments to be made for not trusting the Tommies either, but she was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept that was older than her grandfather. She hadn't decided yet.
Radar stations were eating breakfast over their consoles. Valerie sighed, and Eliot nodded as she walked over to them. "I already…"
She stopped in mid-stride. Everyone looked up and over at her, including Tanner and McDermott, who choked down the last of their food and squirreled their trays away. "Sorry, Captain." "Sorry."
Valerie shook her head. "I don't want to hear from maintenance about how they had to fish out egg powder and moldy biscuits from inside the terminals, okay?"
Mutters of assent. Valerie shook her head some more as she went back up to stand beside Eliot, who was not smiling or laughing in that way he had of expressing emotions without moving a muscle in his face. She still hadn't figured out how he did it. Possibly he had psychic powers.
"I don't want to hear it from maintenance," she repeated, sotto voce, to him.
He shook his head, held up his hands. "I understand."
Of course he did, but that didn't mean he wasn't laughing at her on the inside. Well, she could live with that. She had for years.
Valerie wrapped her hands around her mug and drank her coffee while the stars flew by. At this stage of the trip there wasn't much for her to do, not when everything was going well. Which didn't happen as often as she would have liked, but often enough to matter. They coasted along except for tiny bursts of the engines, course corrections to allow for changes in trajectory as determined by the navigator and pilot. Occasionally there would be some excitement like a ship in distress, or a conflict, space pirates on their way to a station. She contacted the station and had them correct around it. They were only a courier ship with no weapons. Their mandate was get to their destination on time and without incident.
Her coffee was getting cold. "Any news?" And beneath that was the question of, was there anything interesting going on.
Her pilot and navigator on-station, Paul Kelstrom, craned his head back up at her and grinned. "Not unless you count the …"
"Shut it," Tanner pointed a finger at him, laughing. "No one wants to hear that shite."
Eyebrows shot up all over the tiny room. It was a small ship. Rumor traveled faster than light, sometimes, but no one had heard anything scandalous about Reagan Tanner.
"Paul?" Eliot said. "Is there something you want to share with the rest of us?"
"Ahh…" He shut his mouth and shook his head, nothing.
Valerie and Eliot exchanged a glance. It didn't seem to be affecting the morale of anyone who knew what was going on, which in this room was only two people, so she didn't see the harm in letting it slide. It wasn't as though she wanted to know the intimate personal details of everyone on the ship.
"Captain Reynolds…"
Crash Kedrick lifted her head and took her earpiece down, rubbing the soft spot behind her ear. Either she was new to communications or she had used an earbud and lapel device before. Valerie hoped it was the latter, considering the extensive experience her CV had displayed.
"Captain Reynolds, there's some news bulletins you should hear."
The room went quiet. Valerie crossed over to her station and put on the secondary earpiece, nodding at Kedrick to start the feed. No one liked the sound of this, yes, but Valerie had her communications officer monitoring not just ship to ship communications in the area but also news feeds, shipping lane reports, and everything that came across a signal and was open to anyone with a receiver. News bulletins came across a variety of feeds; this one had been vetted by the Guilds and was reliable. Which meant that if there was something Kedrick thought Valerie should hear right now, it was accurate and important. She couldn't think of more than a handful of things that were that important.
Kedric was right about the earpiece though. It rubbed more than usual. New equipment.
"… unrest brewing on the borders of the Protectorate of Kövell and Hourric-on-Hawking. There have been no reports of military action, but the number of suicide bombings in the last standard solar month have increased two hundred and fifty percent from last month. There is no word yet from the Protectorate on whether they will appeal to the Empire or if they are seeking reparations in the International Court at Sagan. Once again, reports of unrest…"
'Once again' was journalism speak for we're going to tell you what we just told you, and Valerie didn't think she was up for hearing that again. She handed Kedrick the earpiece back.
"This doesn't have anything to do with us," she told Crash. Told everyone when she lifted her head and addressed the bridge crew. "We will not be changing course or altering our plans in any way to accommodate this… maybe war, maybe not war. I assume that's what they were getting at?" Looking at Kedrick, who nodded. Her eyes were wide and worried, and Valerie cursed herself for not remembering. Crash Kedrick had been born in the Protectorate, though as she'd said later she had been raised elsewhere in the Empire from early childhood.
"We can put that channel on record, if you want," Valerie said. "They'll probably have regular updates, and even if we can't monitor the whole thing live you can scan it when you're off duty." It wouldn't add much to the lag time they were undoubtedly already experiencing as far as news was concerned.
"Yes, Captain."
She raised her head and looked around in a manner that sent everyone else bending over their stations and Eliot rolling his eyes. "This doesn't concern us," she repeated. "Our job is to carry the mail, and that's what we're going to do. Regardless of what one country is doing to the other, the people in both countries are still entitled to hear from their loved ones. Or banks and creditors."
There. That got something like a slight chuckle. Valerie moved back to stand next to Eliot and sighed, m,uttering to him again. "Not too much foot in my mouth, there?"
"Just a couple of toes, Captain," he said.
"Thanks."
Anyway. Here you go, I need an icon for this somehow, and god I need to go to bed.
[The man on the screen is smiling. Round-faced, dark close-cropped hair and dark hazel eyes. Up close they're more like light cinnamon. Sprinkled with turmeric. He has a tan that looks more like a sunburn after the sunburn gave it up as a bad job. His smile brightens his whole face and makes him look like less of a thug. The camera adds ten pounds. He's pretty scrawny.
"Hey there, Valerie-girl. Just thought I'd drop you a quick line here, while I could. Hope you're doing all right. Not much going on out here, there's."
Incoming message. She stops the letter and opens the other one.
The man on the screen is not smiling. His face is narrow and pinched, older. He is wearing a uniform that sits high, has a high collar and that itches him in places he can't scratch on camera. He is reading off a card, though he's used to it; his eyes flick up to the camera every few words as though giving her the courtesy of looking her in the face. But it's a recording. They can't see each other's faces.
"Captain Reynolds, good morning. My name is Simon Ainsley and I am sending to you on behalf of Bishop Securities with an offer of employment. We have reviewed your exemplary flight record and your record as a captain and have deemed you qualified…"
She has to stop the letter just to laugh at that. She's never heard of Bishop Securities.
"… for a position within our fleet," he continued. It had to be her imagination, but she thought he sounded a little bit pissy that she had laughed at him. Or maybe he just didn't think much of her record personally but was forced to read this out to every candidate.
"We are looking to expand our operations by five ships, and we are approaching captains who own their own ship and have an established crew. You are in good standing with the Messenger's Guild and bonded; your bond would transfer over to our company upon the sealed contract should you choose to accept our offer. Your flight record shows that you are familiar with our main routes as well as the routes to Alcubierre and Enterprise stations. You graduated at the top 2% of your class from the Campbell Academy, which is a strong predictor of expertise, and you come highly recommended."
But recommended by whom?
"Your duties would include your current courier duties as well as relaying your own observations and updating the company on the status of political and flight activity through the course of your assignments, in order to provide us with the latest and most accurate information on the safety and progress of messenger routes for the good of the company and your fellow pilots. More details are attached in text form, and our contact information is listed. We look forward to working with you, Captain Reynolds. Good journey."]
Captain Valerie Reynolds splashed cold water on her face from the antique-style basin on her pedestal. One of the luxuries of being Captain, she supposed; you could wake yourself up in a manner more planetary, cold water to the face and brushing your teeth with paste and rinsing with water instead of using the sonic brush.
Though she still used the sonic brush. It reminded her that she was in space.
Underthings, shirt, short coat in case she had to go in one of the colder sections. Belt, boots, all laced up. Thumb brushing the last of the dirt from the toe, not that it was dirt. Some sort of food smudge, maybe. Her clothes might not be formal or fancy, but they were clean and pressed. She was the captain. She had at least some modicum of dignity to maintain.
Valerie squared her shoulders and rolled her eyes ceilingward before she stepped out of her quarters. She hadn't thought about that in years.
Gray hallways bordered by gray moulding and lit by low-level lighting that was slowly coming up. An approximation of natural lighting, as close as you could get in deep space. Scientists of both the material and the mental variety said it was better on the crew, and she couldn't disagree that she felt better when under the UV light that approximated a star than under harsh artificial lights. It was still a bit eerie to feel a sunrise in a narrow ship's corridor.
The floor was soft red carpet, soft by industrial standards at least. The walls were gray by her order, since this was a ship of business and not pleasure, but she did allow some luxuries. Moulding and edging to soften the walls and stairs, faux wood rails along the stairwells. Somewhere between worlds, like a luxury ship had swallowed a military go-fast ship and coughed up her baby. The crew quarters were narrow and semi-cramped, but efficient. The bunks had enough room to sit up without cracking your head, which was at the very least better than the military ships. The food was at least somewhat real, food stores taking up half her storage space, or at least it felt like it. Which reminded her that she hadn't had breakfast yet. Breakfast was a protein bar in her cabin, but somehow she had missed that this morning. Past the galley, then.
Her executive officer's door was closed. Either he was sleeping or he was already on the bridge or about the ship; he maintained an open door policy to the crew in case there was an issue that needed resolved. A nod to her third-shift pilot in the hallway, another corner, and she could suddenly hear the noise of the mess hall. Her shoulders relaxed. Breakfast, the smell of reconstituted bacon and egg powder. From her times planetside they tasted just like the real thing.
"Captain?" Her galley officer's eyes narrowed at her. "You forgot to eat breakfast again, didn't you."
Her eyes opened wide. "I thought that's why I was stopping by here."
"Hmph." Whatever else he might have said was kept behind thinned and pressed lips as he bundled together a biscuit sandwich for her. She declined the napkin and smiled, wolfing it down as she sprinted out again by the coffee station.
By the time she reached the stairs she had finished it and was licking her fingers.Trotting up the steps for two levels, buoyed by the smell of coffee. Valerie took the third set of stairs at a more sedate pace, but still walked at a good clip down the hall to the bridge. Eliot handed her the thermal mug when she clipped the edge of the steps down to the bridge.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it." His expression didn't flicker. "It's extra-strength. Rough night?"
"Strange dreams." She shook her head; he didn't need to bother with her dreams or any reason she might not be a hundred percent pre-caffeine. "How are we doing?"
"Good," he nodded at the small room in front of them. Pilot and navigator chatting quietly at their stations, the communications officer with that half-distracted expression that was a sure sign the half of her head that Valerie couldn't see wore an earpiece. There were some communications officers who had the jacks installed directly into their cortex, but Valerie avoided hiring those on one pretext or another. She didn't trust anyone who would want that much information beamed into their own brain.
There were arguments to be made for not trusting the Tommies either, but she was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept that was older than her grandfather. She hadn't decided yet.
Radar stations were eating breakfast over their consoles. Valerie sighed, and Eliot nodded as she walked over to them. "I already…"
She stopped in mid-stride. Everyone looked up and over at her, including Tanner and McDermott, who choked down the last of their food and squirreled their trays away. "Sorry, Captain." "Sorry."
Valerie shook her head. "I don't want to hear from maintenance about how they had to fish out egg powder and moldy biscuits from inside the terminals, okay?"
Mutters of assent. Valerie shook her head some more as she went back up to stand beside Eliot, who was not smiling or laughing in that way he had of expressing emotions without moving a muscle in his face. She still hadn't figured out how he did it. Possibly he had psychic powers.
"I don't want to hear it from maintenance," she repeated, sotto voce, to him.
He shook his head, held up his hands. "I understand."
Of course he did, but that didn't mean he wasn't laughing at her on the inside. Well, she could live with that. She had for years.
Valerie wrapped her hands around her mug and drank her coffee while the stars flew by. At this stage of the trip there wasn't much for her to do, not when everything was going well. Which didn't happen as often as she would have liked, but often enough to matter. They coasted along except for tiny bursts of the engines, course corrections to allow for changes in trajectory as determined by the navigator and pilot. Occasionally there would be some excitement like a ship in distress, or a conflict, space pirates on their way to a station. She contacted the station and had them correct around it. They were only a courier ship with no weapons. Their mandate was get to their destination on time and without incident.
Her coffee was getting cold. "Any news?" And beneath that was the question of, was there anything interesting going on.
Her pilot and navigator on-station, Paul Kelstrom, craned his head back up at her and grinned. "Not unless you count the …"
"Shut it," Tanner pointed a finger at him, laughing. "No one wants to hear that shite."
Eyebrows shot up all over the tiny room. It was a small ship. Rumor traveled faster than light, sometimes, but no one had heard anything scandalous about Reagan Tanner.
"Paul?" Eliot said. "Is there something you want to share with the rest of us?"
"Ahh…" He shut his mouth and shook his head, nothing.
Valerie and Eliot exchanged a glance. It didn't seem to be affecting the morale of anyone who knew what was going on, which in this room was only two people, so she didn't see the harm in letting it slide. It wasn't as though she wanted to know the intimate personal details of everyone on the ship.
"Captain Reynolds…"
Crash Kedrick lifted her head and took her earpiece down, rubbing the soft spot behind her ear. Either she was new to communications or she had used an earbud and lapel device before. Valerie hoped it was the latter, considering the extensive experience her CV had displayed.
"Captain Reynolds, there's some news bulletins you should hear."
The room went quiet. Valerie crossed over to her station and put on the secondary earpiece, nodding at Kedrick to start the feed. No one liked the sound of this, yes, but Valerie had her communications officer monitoring not just ship to ship communications in the area but also news feeds, shipping lane reports, and everything that came across a signal and was open to anyone with a receiver. News bulletins came across a variety of feeds; this one had been vetted by the Guilds and was reliable. Which meant that if there was something Kedrick thought Valerie should hear right now, it was accurate and important. She couldn't think of more than a handful of things that were that important.
Kedric was right about the earpiece though. It rubbed more than usual. New equipment.
"… unrest brewing on the borders of the Protectorate of Kövell and Hourric-on-Hawking. There have been no reports of military action, but the number of suicide bombings in the last standard solar month have increased two hundred and fifty percent from last month. There is no word yet from the Protectorate on whether they will appeal to the Empire or if they are seeking reparations in the International Court at Sagan. Once again, reports of unrest…"
'Once again' was journalism speak for we're going to tell you what we just told you, and Valerie didn't think she was up for hearing that again. She handed Kedrick the earpiece back.
"This doesn't have anything to do with us," she told Crash. Told everyone when she lifted her head and addressed the bridge crew. "We will not be changing course or altering our plans in any way to accommodate this… maybe war, maybe not war. I assume that's what they were getting at?" Looking at Kedrick, who nodded. Her eyes were wide and worried, and Valerie cursed herself for not remembering. Crash Kedrick had been born in the Protectorate, though as she'd said later she had been raised elsewhere in the Empire from early childhood.
"We can put that channel on record, if you want," Valerie said. "They'll probably have regular updates, and even if we can't monitor the whole thing live you can scan it when you're off duty." It wouldn't add much to the lag time they were undoubtedly already experiencing as far as news was concerned.
"Yes, Captain."
She raised her head and looked around in a manner that sent everyone else bending over their stations and Eliot rolling his eyes. "This doesn't concern us," she repeated. "Our job is to carry the mail, and that's what we're going to do. Regardless of what one country is doing to the other, the people in both countries are still entitled to hear from their loved ones. Or banks and creditors."
There. That got something like a slight chuckle. Valerie moved back to stand next to Eliot and sighed, m,uttering to him again. "Not too much foot in my mouth, there?"
"Just a couple of toes, Captain," he said.
"Thanks."