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Engineering, Ejoq, and I'll cover gunnery
duties until the crisis is over. Any questions?"
There were several, but they didn't amount to much, really: was Sally
sure we had enough life support to get us through the situation? (Yes,
batteries should last for weeks on standard power rations.) Were there
any expected escorts out, or challenges coming in, during our
anticipated down-time? (A small trader named Pocky or Ponte or
something was outbound from Deegman right now, but we would most
likely be up and running again before it reached the system starjump
point.) Would our bosses back on Deegman give us crap over all this?
(Probably.)
I was hungry, so I heated up a frozen meal after the meeting broke up
and followed Sally down to Engineering with it. Her domain was a
cramped space of pipes, cables and creepy shadows; not to mention a
nagging bang-BANG-zap-hiss from the small atmosphere exchange

unit, underscored by a discordant two-toned hum that set my teeth on
edge from both the drive system (on idle right now) and the power
plant in question. I bumped my head painfully on a projecting bolt
while climbing over a large duct to get to Sally's desk, and swore blue
thunder.
I hated this job, truth be told. Oh, not the temporary reassignment to
Engineering so much: I had minored in Ship Systems in higher-ed, and
had maintained a partial interest in civilian-class defense boats -- of
which our tiny Dame Minnie was one. And not because I'd be helping
Sally out: true, I preferred working alone on my Primary assignment,
but then we all did -- Sally with her engines and systems; Genness
monitoring and maintaining comm and computers; Bayern with
whatever it was he did all shift (no one was quite sure, even him); and
me, with my defensive systems and combat sims. Besides, even though
Sally had fifteen years on me, she was in really great shape, had a sexy
potty-mouth when she was pissed-off, and a good brain at all times. I
didn't expect anything to come from my personal observations, because
she and Genness had been together since about a week after we left
Deegman, and he was younger than me, danged handsome, quiet, and
in great shape himself; while I was short, kind of fat, and prone to
complaining and getting the horns when I was bored -- which can
happen a lot on extended picket duty.
And this was exactly what irked me the most about this job: it was
mine.
Three months before, the big corporate freighter I'd been signed to was
hauling Fleet supplies, and it had just arrived on Deegman when the
news caught up that its parent company had been bought out. They
have SOPs for these sorts of things, one of which is to immediately
downsize the crew. I got a good reference, a crappy severance, and the
ax. My luck running to type, the piracy problem in Rilltule started
getting bad right about then, and the big outfits just stopped coming.
Traffic from privately-owned ships was up for a while, but even that
started tapering off. I was left sitting on my ever-widening posterior
watching vids, running scenarios on my tiny wrist comp, and filling my

face with the spicy fried food the locals seemed to love. Deegman
imports almost everything it needs, which means almost everything it
has to offer is at robbery prices. Six weeks and my savings started
getting tight. By ten weeks I was facing homelessness -- which is one
harsh prospect on a vacuum-wrapped planet, believe you me.
An acquaintance of an acquaintance tipped me to the fact that the
mining interests on Deegman had gotten together in secret and bought a
used Bechel, which they wanted to crew and launch in the next couple
of months. As a privately-owned vessel, it fell outside the boundaries
and direct control of the Deegman Security Corps, which was more
police force than military body, anyway. SecCorps had Deegman and
the other inner-system settlements covered nicely with a moderate
collection of mismatched orbiters and transports, and they did a
respectable job of keeping the peace. They had nothing for command
and control of Rilltule's jump point on the outer edge of the small
system, though -- exactly where pirates had been hitting. One old
Bechel wasn't much of an improvement on that situation, but they had
to start somewhere, I guess.
I wasted no time and applied, and while I might not be much to look at,
my resume is a killer. I was hired on the spot. Sally said later that she
had quit her previous position on a medium-size freighter a couple
weeks before this, over advancement issues, and had already been
signed to Dame Minnie's first run by the time