When seen from the ground a large spaceship docking at a port can be a very impressive and awe-inspiring sight. On board the ship it is a non-event. The artificial gravity engines ensure that any gravitational shifts are minor. Most windows are located away from work zones, and the few sleeping areas that are anywhere near a window are typically filled with people whose presence is required at some station for the docking and/or offloading procedure. If it wasn’t for the occasional coffee in someone’s lap which had previously been blissfully coffee-free, most people might not even realize that the ship had come to a full and complete stop.
The Albright had come to such a stop above the atmosphere of a planet called Phllia, and it was with a grim determination that James followed a smiling Gareth to a shuttle being readied to take them to their work site. He had been added to Gareth’s work team- at Gareth’s insistence- with a simple grunt from the Boss, which Gareth refused to take as anything but a resounding yes. James had decided it meant no and steeled himself to spend his time lounging until he died from hunger aboard the cursed floating prison cell in which he found himself, but the more he thought about it the more he realized that the opportunity to blow the stupid thing up was better the longer he lived. Absurd as it was, it still bothered him that he hadn’t been able to detonate the ship- or even set his plan in motion. Come to think of it, he wasn’t entirely sure his original plan would have worked or whether ‘disabling the tractor beam’ even counted as a plan. On the other hand, living aboard the ship gave him a perfect opportunity to find its weaknesses and exploit them in spectacular style. To that end, joining a work crew seemed to be a good way to both pay for his living and learn the ins and outs of how the people on board functioned. It also carried with it a wonderful taste of danger, and it cheered him to consider that maybe he wouldn’t live that much longer anyway. In the end the decision mostly saved him the possibility of starving to death, which he’d not exactly been looking forward to, and he reluctantly accepted the noncommittal grunt as a yes before glumly following Gareth off to prop up the capitalist infrastructure.
Planetary Shuttles are ridiculous. Tiny, snub-nosed, and crammed with far too many seats for their size, they are a dreaded part of any job involving frequent planetary travel. The craft themselves were designed forty-five decades ago, give or take, and exclusively intended to be six-man vessels for diplomatic transport. The expansion of the Galactic Empire (and thus, for various obvious reasons, the decline of diplomacy as a rule) made the craft pointless and many people began to wonder why they’d been built in the first place. Gasocorp, in the second place, then repurposed the entire government fleet, carved fourteen seats and a cargo area out of the existing six-seat plan, and used them for crew transport. After the entire first batch of ‘upgraded’ shuttles crashed within a year due to overloading, the company did some math and found that by removing one seat and having the man who would occupy it stand, they could reduce crash probability to the breakeven point. The next wave was marginally more successful than the first and enormous bonuses were given.
As the largest man on every crew since he’d emerged from the backwater on which he’d been born, Gareth had come to accept that he would never find out what having a seat would feel like on a planetary descent. It was a given that he’d stand, despite the fact that he often had to stoop the entire trip and was no wider than any of the other men on the crew. His height was simply a quick, convenient way to decide who got shafted, and he accepted this logic. He smiled at James reassuringly as James quickly claimed a seat. That was the first time the boy’d moved with any sense of purpose since Gareth had yanked him from the fuel tank, and it made Gareth happy. Not that that was difficult. Being rescued from a life of slavery has a way of improving one’s outlook on life in general. The Boss got on and took his seat at the front of the crew compartment, signaling by two slaps of his hand on the metal bulkhead separating them that the pilot was clear to take off. The stubby craft slowly pushed off from the floor of the closed bay and only then did the pilot seal his private airlock. Everyone else took a deep breath. They’d know things were ok once they were on the planet, and not before.
Some of the men tried to play cards, but cheating was too easy. No one wanted to talk because in such close confines everyone hated everyone else. Gareth was the exception, but being the only one who wants to talk is worse than being talked to when you don’t want to be and as a result he’d quickly learned to keep his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself. James, on the other hand, only ever seemed to want to talk when he was irritated. Gareth saw him look over at the boss, next to the pilot’s cabinet, and look back at Gareth.
“Was that the copilot’s seat?”
“Copilot?”
“Aren’t there usually two pilots?”
“Why’d they need two?”
“What if something happens to the first one?”
“S’pose we’d all die then. Oh I see what yer drivin’ at. Another pilot’s ‘spensive. ‘Sides, where’d they put him?”
“I dunno.”
“So just the one.”
“Got it.” He didn’t look like he had it, not to Gareth. But talking aboard the shuttle wasn’t well-received. They were already getting dirty looks from some of the more irritable fellas in the crew, and while Gareth wasn’t scared he didn’t like the idea of getting in a fight the instant they touched down. Especially since they’d go after James rather than him. They knew better than to come at Gareth. On his first trip down he’d accidentally killed a man after too many swings of the lead pipe he’d taken away from and turned against his attackers. Everyone had been happy on the ride back because of all the extra room, and for awhile some of the smarter crewman had tried to trick the dumber ones into fighting with him in an effort to get the extra seat, but Gareth hadn’t enjoyed killing the man. In future fights he just concentrated on breaking body parts, rather than reflexive murder. Inside a cramped shuttle the sound of a man with a broken leg was agony, and since they weren’t murderers either the crews almost always tried to keep their injured around. So the fights had stopped, but that didn’t mean the new fella on board wasn’t subject to some discipline if he shot off a little too much. James looked up to ask another question and Gareth put his finger to his lips. As he did so he looked at the man directly across from James, a man with a a folding knife and some clear internal tension. He was flicking it open and closed- the knife, not the tension, though to be perfectly honest if anyone had suggested he was doing that as well James might have agreed. The man’s glare was impressive, and more than clear enough to get any number of messages across to James, who didn’t say another word. Smart lad. He’d do fine, Gareth was convinced of it.
All thirteen men aboard the shuttle lurched in unison, and James suddenly became aware that he was sick to his stomach. When the hatch opened and muggy air shot in- confirming their status as officially “landed”- James rocketed out of the shuttle and vomited on what looked like Not Road. Judging by the looks he got from the three locals watching this unfold, he had not estimated well.
It hit him then just how different planets could be from each other: grass might be road here. Life was now complicated. He decided once and for all that he better get a gigantic explosion out of this. Otherwise the work he’d have to do to adapt would all have been for nothing, and James hated doing things for no reason.
