heavy elements from their outer cloud, which they call Sutā Ringu.
I don’t do much socializing. Meijaps left Japan because they thought it was too open. They don’t like halfbreeds. I’m a quarter. Then I have that red-gold hair over my eyes. They think I’m hideous, and some sort of freak. If I leave the docks, I put my hair up, wear a hat or hood, and don’t try to speak Nippon. I did that once and they were very, very offended.
There wasn’t anything I needed, so I stayed aboard ship for the short layover.
Next we were through to Earth, where we dropped some of everything, and picked up more stuff.
It was wine again, and exotic liquor. To me, liquor is something you drink or mix with a drink to get drunk. Some people insist on weird stuff. In Earth system, we picked up some Penderyn au Cymru whiskey from one small part of Britain, that was aged in honey-sweetened charred oak barrels for twenty-seven years and packaged with a small bottle of spring water from a particular spring, that you were supposed to mix in, I’m told, three ml per serving of 44.36 ml of the whiskey.
I suppose if that’s what works for you and you can afford damned near Cr1000 a bottle at our end, and similar prices elsewhere, enjoy.
We drove around Earth’s Oort cloud instead of going through-system. Traffic is too heavy, as are the transit charges. Then there’s all the rules and policies that they have in-system and would have outer if they could get away with it.
Still, the ship had a decent vid library. I caught a couple of comedies and a ground chase action flick. They had good audio. I took in some classics I’d always meant to hear. Eh. They were okay, mostly. I guess I’m not suited for The Arts.
I took care of second shift food, which was all of three people plus myself, mostly warming what first shift had cooked, but I did electrosmoke some salmon and grill ribs for the meat eaters.
Almost a month later we jumped back into Caledonia.
At which point I had to help dump waste tanks, refresh atmo and water, clean cyclers, all the sweaty, grubby maintenance you never see in vids. It’s not glamorous. It’s work.
Twenty-seven days in cross-space is draining. I was going to have to do that again, too, because I needed to get to the other side of this system.
I have intra-system experience (which is different from an intra-system annotation for deep space, which I obviously have, too). But, it’s a different community. Those legs are longer because of how the Jump Points speed everything up.
Then there’s the new phase drive that the Freehold is starting to use on warships, and a handful of civilian craft. It’s a billion credits or more to equip a ship right now, or rather, was when I wrote this. It’s slowly getting cheaper, but that will change everything around again when it’s more common. I’d never been on one in use.
But, I was either going to have to cross to the other side and try for an intra leg, or go around the long way again. Traffic was flowing to the Freehold again, with lots of inspections and tags that were a pain in everyone’s ass. Still, it was something.
I knew this station, but had only been here twice. It’s gorgeous. New Liverpool isn’t very original for a name, but the structure is amazing. It’s six rows of spokes with a long outer ring over all of them. One end is enclosed and has emgee zones for lab and recreation. Three of the spokes have trees and vines climbing up inside, and one has a waterfall. It starts at barely .1G but is at a full G at the bottom, which means it looks like the water is racing, and the Coriolis force pulls it into a spray on the far side, so there’s a clear garden under a falling wave.
It has every shipfitting function imaginable available on call with tug and sled response if you need it. Ships can dock attached, by umbilicus, by tether or in slow orbit. There are huge floodlights and reflectors for work zones. And there are clubs, hotels and bunkies,
I don’t do much socializing. Meijaps left Japan because they thought it was too open. They don’t like halfbreeds. I’m a quarter. Then I have that red-gold hair over my eyes. They think I’m hideous, and some sort of freak. If I leave the docks, I put my hair up, wear a hat or hood, and don’t try to speak Nippon. I did that once and they were very, very offended.
There wasn’t anything I needed, so I stayed aboard ship for the short layover.
Next we were through to Earth, where we dropped some of everything, and picked up more stuff.
It was wine again, and exotic liquor. To me, liquor is something you drink or mix with a drink to get drunk. Some people insist on weird stuff. In Earth system, we picked up some Penderyn au Cymru whiskey from one small part of Britain, that was aged in honey-sweetened charred oak barrels for twenty-seven years and packaged with a small bottle of spring water from a particular spring, that you were supposed to mix in, I’m told, three ml per serving of 44.36 ml of the whiskey.
I suppose if that’s what works for you and you can afford damned near Cr1000 a bottle at our end, and similar prices elsewhere, enjoy.
We drove around Earth’s Oort cloud instead of going through-system. Traffic is too heavy, as are the transit charges. Then there’s all the rules and policies that they have in-system and would have outer if they could get away with it.
Still, the ship had a decent vid library. I caught a couple of comedies and a ground chase action flick. They had good audio. I took in some classics I’d always meant to hear. Eh. They were okay, mostly. I guess I’m not suited for The Arts.
I took care of second shift food, which was all of three people plus myself, mostly warming what first shift had cooked, but I did electrosmoke some salmon and grill ribs for the meat eaters.
Almost a month later we jumped back into Caledonia.
At which point I had to help dump waste tanks, refresh atmo and water, clean cyclers, all the sweaty, grubby maintenance you never see in vids. It’s not glamorous. It’s work.
Twenty-seven days in cross-space is draining. I was going to have to do that again, too, because I needed to get to the other side of this system.
I have intra-system experience (which is different from an intra-system annotation for deep space, which I obviously have, too). But, it’s a different community. Those legs are longer because of how the Jump Points speed everything up.
Then there’s the new phase drive that the Freehold is starting to use on warships, and a handful of civilian craft. It’s a billion credits or more to equip a ship right now, or rather, was when I wrote this. It’s slowly getting cheaper, but that will change everything around again when it’s more common. I’d never been on one in use.
But, I was either going to have to cross to the other side and try for an intra leg, or go around the long way again. Traffic was flowing to the Freehold again, with lots of inspections and tags that were a pain in everyone’s ass. Still, it was something.
I knew this station, but had only been here twice. It’s gorgeous. New Liverpool isn’t very original for a name, but the structure is amazing. It’s six rows of spokes with a long outer ring over all of them. One end is enclosed and has emgee zones for lab and recreation. Three of the spokes have trees and vines climbing up inside, and one has a waterfall. It starts at barely .1G but is at a full G at the bottom, which means it looks like the water is racing, and the Coriolis force pulls it into a spray on the far side, so there’s a clear garden under a falling wave.
It has every shipfitting function imaginable available on call with tug and sled response if you need it. Ships can dock attached, by umbilicus, by tether or in slow orbit. There are huge floodlights and reflectors for work zones. And there are clubs, hotels and bunkies,
Similar Books
