88: Apprentices

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The Education jaunt was a relief on one way – it made writing to Aunt Shorin easier. I didn’t have to try to come up with stuff that I could say that wouldn’t raise questions or confusion, or tell her something I wanted to keep to myself, like Yamin being a captain. I could just tell her whatever I felt like about whatever I was learning or doing that day.

We learned a lot about stars and their planetary systems. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was always taught to people our age, or if it had been added in for us because it would be important to know for colonising the Dragonseye. I kept those thoughts to myself; I was already in a group of strangers (being on the blue shift now, when my other Education jaunts had all been on the green shift), there was no reason to have everyone think I was weird. No reason not to either, I guess; I probably wouldn’t have to see any of these people again. But still.

And then our little trial period was over, and Yamin asked me if I wanted to stay on as his apprentice, and I said yes, and absolutely nobody was surprised. And writing to Aunt Shorin got hard again. We started doing it a couple of times a week instead of every day. There just wasn’t enough to say to each other, and my literacy was really good by now, anyway.

When I came back, it was with longer, more irregular hours. Yamin explained that inter-shift meetings, like those between all four captains, almost always happened around the green-blue shift change or the violet-red shift change; this meant that everyone could arrange their schedules so that meetings didn’t fall in the middle of their sleep time, and meant that no particular shift ended up more inconvenienced than any other. So it meant that sometimes I’d just have to come in a bit early of shift to attend meetings, and sometimes I’d have to come in right on the opposite side of the day.

Not that I was meeting with all the captains, of course. I mean, some of the captains were sometimes there, but I was meeting with the other apprentices.

I was pretty nervous on the first day that Yamin lead me to a big meeting room on the trolley level. The room itself, like most of Administration’s general use rooms, was pretty nice; a rectangular table big enough to seat at least twelve people took up most of the space, with a terminal and projector screen against the wall at one end and a little snack and beverage station at the other. There was enough room to move freely around the table, which was nice, and the wall opposite the door… the wall opposite the door had something that I’d never seen on the trolley level before.

There were long, dark curtains hung so that they could be pulled to cover the wall. At the moment, they were open. And behind them was an enormous window, showing space.

The meeting room doubled as a viewport. We could look out at the stars while we had meetings.

I needed to make a good impression, so I stopped myself from just staring in stunned awe and focused on the eight people already in the room, all sitting at the table. I didn’t know any of them, but it was obvious just by looking that the three other captains and five other apprentices were there. The apprentices were all older kids or very young adults, so they were easy to pick out; a couple of them wore jumpsuits like me, but the others just wore casual wraps. A girl, two boys, a brennan, and one whom I couldn’t tell, which might mean they were any one of those and didn’t care about gender fashion, or might mean that they were something else entirely. I supposed that I’d find out. As I expected, I was the youngest by a long way – everyone else in the room was at least fourteen or fifteen.

Imagine if I’d done this when I was eight. My parents had been right; it had been better to wait.

The older three were obviously the captains, judging by their age and clothes and body language. They dressed in plain jumpsuits with muted colours, like Yamin. I could tell who Captain Red was, because I already knew that she was the youngest; she must be the woman in her late twenties or early thirties with the single sleek waist-length braid and impatient eyes. The other two, a tired-looking man with very thin grey hair and a brennan who looked almost exactly like my dad in a jumpsuit with a shaved head, must be captains Green and Violet, but I didn’t know which was which.

“Everyone,” Yamin said, “this is Taya. Taya, these are Captains Red, Green and Violet,” (Violet was the one who looked like my dad), “and Mana, Dimun, Sem, Aevor, and Huspi.”

I nodded politely to everyone, desperately trying to memorise all the names on the first try. Aevor, a mid-teens boy in casual clothes and an obnoxiously bright pink bandana, rippled his fingers at me in a low-effort wave. “Welcome to the chaos.”

Mana, the girl next to him in a faded red jumpsuit and plain, unbeaded braids, frowned at me critically. “How old are you?”

I crossed my arms. Mana looked like the youngest of the lot, probably about fourteen. “Does that matter?”

“It doesn’t,” said Sema, who was obviously the oldest apprentice. He looked to be in his early twenties, and had the look of someone who is tired pretty much all the time. He waved vaguely at the empty seats.

The captains were clustered around one end of the table, and the apprentices spread out over the rest. I sat between Dimun and Huspi, who were either older kids or very young adults, and both looked somewhat wary and stressed about something. Possibly about being older kids or very young adults.

These were the most important people in the fleet to me. If I became a captain, these were the people most likely to be my peers – them or previous apprentices, whom I didn’t have a plan for meeting yet. If I didn’t manage to become captain, then these were the people that I was going to have to influence as an assistant or a secretary or some such thing. It was probably a good idea to make a good impression on the captains too, since they would influence how well I did in this apprenticeship and what kind of job I would be able to get, as well as set up the circumstances that my generation would inherit. But the apprentices were more important.

“Welcome to the team, Taya,” Captain Blue said. “Now, let’s get started on current issues. We’ve got concrete flight time information now that the specific orbital distances and positions relative to Dragonseye had been decided, and we’ll hit orbit in almost exactly thirteen and a half years.”

“So we are stopping pretty far out, then,” Huspi said. Ke sat with kes hands folded on the table in a peculiar way that sort of reminded me of something, but I wasn’t sure what. One hand over the other, thumbs tucked underneath. “I thought we were going to get closer.”

“Analysis of the outer asteroids in the belt show a lot of unpredictable strays,” Captain Violet said. “We probably could find a safe orbit further in, but it was decided that we should be as safe as possible. The Courageous isn’t physically needed for most of the colony construction, so there’s no need to put the ship in any danger at all. We’ll be staying well out from the belt.”

“Most of the ships in the fleet don’t need to be physically close to the belt,” Mana pointed out. “Is everyone staying safely back, or is that a seat reserved for us poor geriatrics?”

Captain Red hid a smile. Captain Green, after closing his eyes briefly, answered, “Most of the ships are getting closer, yes. We’ll be sharing outer orbit with four others – ”

“Let me guess,” Mana cut in. “The Arborea, the Pillar…”

“The Dish, definitely,” Dimun said. “Even though they’re tiny.”

“And probably one of the ships on the edge of the fleet, staying back to keep an eye on us big klutzes,” Sema said. “In practice, it won’t be only five. Anybody not busy building the colony or gathering resources will be trying to curry a position closer to us when we launch again. It’s going to be chaos.”

“Perfectly regular chaos,” Yamin said, “that happens at every star. There are protocols to deal with that kind of political jockeying. Don’t worry about it.”

“Worry about the internals,” Captain Red said.

“Internals?” Aevor frowned. “Like what? It’ll be a tiny bit harder to fill up on resources if we’re further out, but not hard enough for it to matter. What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” Sema said, “is that if we’re too far out for travel to the colony to be convenient, we’re going to lose a massive chunk of our space-skilled population as all the engineers and pilots and surveyors abandon ship for somewhere closer to the most exciting project in multiple generations. The kids of today,” (he gave a tiny flinch in my direction as he said this, as if he’d automatically gone to glance at me but stopped himself,) “are all getting their heads filled with dreams of designing a whole civilisation. We’re training far more people in ship maintenance and design roles than we normally would, because of course that’s necessary for building a colony, but when we get into orbit, most of them are going to leave if the orbit is too far out. And then when they’ve finished building the colony, in six or sixteen or sixty years, they’re going to come back, all very suddenly, without having been living here and been getting integrated into ongoing work here. We’re going to have to be prepared for a sudden dearth, and later on a sudden glut, of such people.”

“I’m sure we have protocols for that, too,” Mana said.

“We do,” Captain Violet said. “But you’re going to need to be aware of them and ready to implement them.”

“Um,” I said. “What about virus?”

“What?” Captain Violet asked.

“Virus. It’s this old Earth technology that some of the ships are experimenting with. It infects people, like bacteria, and can spread around a ship, and apparently it used to cause all kinds of awful diseases. They say that the kind they’re working with now is safe, but ships working with virus are quarant – uh, anyone who’s been on one of those ships isn’t allowed on non-virus ships, in case they accidentally carry virus there. Just in case it’s still dangerous. My question is, if only five ships are hanging out on the outside to avoid stray asteroids and suchlike, why aren’t the virus ships also hanging back? We don’t want them anywhere near the colony, right?”

The captains glanced at each other. “I’m sure that that’s been taken into consideration and that the virus ships won’t be allowed contact with the colony if that’s what ships are currently doing,” Captain Blue said, “but they’re still likely interested in getting into the asteroid belt to gather resources for the trip to the next star. I’ll look it up and get you a specific answer. Any more concerns or questions about orbit? Or any other ship business?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“Great. Let’s break for now, then.”

“Enjoy work,” Dimun said to Aevor and Huspi, getting up. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’m actually not on until late shift, so I also have the chance to go to bed,” Aevor said.

“Only for a little nap, though. Not a long, luxurious sleep like me.”

Clearly they were picking up an earlier conversation. I was going to ignore it, until Aevor walked around behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Guess I’ll just have to spend the time imparting the most important piece of information we know to the newbie, then. Taya, are you ready to visit the best cafeteria on the entire ship?”

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