H2LiftShips - A Back Story - Sample Chapter

-Happy Family-

Everywhere she looked, it was gray. And black.

The ruby-red laser flashed once, twice, pushing the flat, nano-spider fabric out, a spinnaker filled with photons, pulling the ship with it.

The Lunar sentients; humans, simians, canines, or octopuses, seldom went out or left their cozy caves for a walk-around. If they had to work in the airless dust to service the ammonia generators or solar cells it was not for pleasure.

Just get out, do the work and scurry back to the safety of home.

Quonset huts clustered around the cave openings, storing equipment or used as dormitories for the gig-workers, resting between short shifts.

The scenery was an unending gray against a black, cold sky, except during the Lunar day, when it was gray, overly bright, and hot. The only colors were those imported by the sentients from that distant blue and white rock, filled with water, clouds, plants, and cities shining against the firmament.

Her spacesuit was a little tight in the wrong places and too loose in others. Humans seldom had their own spacesuit. Everything was modular and shared between similar-sized humans and primates. Canines had their own shared suits. The octopuses never shared, they were much too picky about their environmental wet suits. To tell the truth, everyone who had worn a suit left their own private aroma as a mark of ownership. Putting it simply, they stunk, and there was no way to escape the odor as long as the helmet was on. Taking the helmet off in this situation was not a great solution, so she left it on and shut down her olfactory nerves as best she could.

Graciela enjoyed her time alone, away from the tiny dorm rooms of the Academy. Even her parent’s Solar Sail cargo ship had more sleeping space than her current rock room.

This wasn’t the first LiftShip launch she witnessed, but the first after entering the Academy. She mulled over her situation; Someday, soon, I’ll get my own ship, maybe join up with family in the Asteroid Belt.

Who was she kidding? She knew deep in her soul the real reason she was going through all this pain. And math.

If I ever get a ship, I’ll show those irritating family elements what a real Captain can do!

The ship continued up, above the edge of the moon, moving away from even a hint of gravity, into the solar stream.

Graciela flipped the helmet telescope into view as the ship pulled on its lines to change the spinnaker to a triangle, angling against the sun to move along a vector. She plotted the path in her mind for practice and thought, probably heading toward the Lagrangian boost cannons before punching out. Those massive lasers, hanging forever between Earth and Luna, were required for any ship delivering fresh supplies to the far-flung inhabited rocks in the Belt.

After a grueling year of work and study on Luna, she had risen to the rank of Second Lieutenant, which gave her status but little else. Modern LiftShips had minimal crews, with most of the rank-and-file jobs being taken over by the non-human sentients. Not that she had anything against these genetically modified animals, the other primates, canines, and octopuses who became the traveling companions on most cargo ships.

Soon it would be time for a career decision. She could always sign onto one of the military rockets, but that involved little skill. They were a passenger on a flaming tube with little else to do but enjoy the ride. She much preferred the LiftShips, slower, elegant, requiring skill to optimize tacks against the sun, sailing to distant points in space.

After all, she had spent more than a few years sailing with her parents on the small cargo ship they owned. It was a relief being accepted at the Luna Academy. The atmosphere on her parent’s ship was getting a little rough before she left. A lot of drinking, arguing, and not much profit. Her mother preferred snide comments and passive-aggressive action as a reaction to her father, who liked to drink and play cards with the crew. Her parents seemed to get along well enough while she was growing up on the ship. They had their rough cycles, but it was bearable before she left for secondary school on Ceres. Her parents rarely visited during school holidays. They were traveling from mining camp to mining camp, bartering and selling goods. Once she got back on board, things took a turn for the worse.

There she was, back on the family ship, fresh from school, and that year with her parents seemed to stretch on, even if it counted as a single EarthYear. It seemingly ran the distance from the farthest reaches of the Asteroid Belt to the inner core. Finally, at a stop at some nameless mining colony, an update to the ship’s bioGel network flashed the acceptance A-mail she was waiting for. This was her ticket to an independent future, as a cadet leading to a commission as Second Lieutenant.

The Lunar Academy did not barter like the mining colonies. They wanted real money, upfront, ΞStandards, a lot of them.

Fortunately, Graciela had a supply of rare stones and unique Asteroid jewelry. Gold-infused diamonds, rubies, and nuggets of complex metal alloys would sell on Luna for cash. She knew that she could not depend upon her dysfunctional family for funding and had tucked away a few ΞStandards at every stop. It was her private fund, a ‘tax’ off the top for the unpaid work managing cargo.

Sure, it meant up-charging her parent’s cargo on the side, but she considered it her right and a bonus for work well done. That was the advantage of having a drunk father and a self-absorbed mother. They appointed her chief negotiator and, after years, she was an expert. She always tried to receive the best exchange for the goods and collected enough so that no one would notice the skim.

The ship was in a low orbit around Ceres, the largest asteroid in the Belt and the location of her high school. Graciela was in her cabin and her mother, Pilar, stood defiantly in the entrance.

Graciela acknowledged her mother’s presence, if for no other reason than to clear the passageway, “I’m all packed and ready to go.”

Pilar had a look of disapproval. Graciela had seen that passive-aggressive look too many times and thought it was clear that this was not what her mother wanted to hear.

“What are we going to do when you leave? I can’t handle the cargo and your father by myself.”

Graciela, knowing that she had to arrange everything before she left or risk having the nuclear family implode, explained, “I’ve already found a replacement, his name is Haesus, and he comes highly recommended with extensive experience. He will replace me as the logistics manager.”

“But he won’t know which wine I like, although your Dad’s vodka is easy to figure out.”

Graciela almost laughed, thinking, I knew she couldn’t get past a sentence without some sort of attack line.

No response from Graciela, so she continued. “What if he doesn’t get along with Octopus?”

“It will be fine. You know Octopus only cares about math and navigation; I’m sure he can’t even tell us apart.”

Graciela thought back to her time spent with the octopus and the years of study before going to secondary school. She became fond of the octopuses, with their three brains, multiple hearts, eight arms, and beady, horizontal pupils, even though it appeared that they were in a world of their own.

She appreciated the help the ships’ octopus gave her. Its university training and love of learning was evident in its broad and detailed knowledge base.

Despite the time spent with her tutor, she never could understand what drove them to sign on to Solar Sail ships. She did feel some sort of bond between them, even though it was obvious that they preferred calculations to interactions with terrestrials and seemed too attached to their sextant.

Her education from the octopus included learning color language and Morse code. Audible words sounded out with a sucker vibrating against a diaphragm worked for communication too.

“You know we can’t trust a stranger with our cargo. You must stay and help us!”

Graciela had a response at the ready, “I’m sure you will be fine. You had no problem when I was at secondary school.”

“Yes, that was a mistake. We should have continued your homeschooling, you could learn everything from the bioGel, and the octopus was an excellent teacher.”

That was the last thing Graciela wanted. She had convinced her parents that low-gravity based studies on Ceres was required by law, a law she invented, in order to go to secondary school. They would not fall for that ruse a second time.

“Well, I’m sorry. I’ve already put a deposit at the Lunar Academy, and it’s not refundable.”

For her parents, losing money was worse than letting her go back to school. And she knew which buttons to push to get her way.

A final desperate phrase was tossed out for review, “I never should have let you skim profits from our sales. I knew it would end badly.”

Graciela looked up from her packing. Guess I didn’t hide that little scheme as well as I thought.

“In any case, the die is cast, and I’ve already booked transport.”

Pilar knew that continuing this argument with her head-strong daughter would be a waste of valuable air, “OK, it looks like you are determined to continue your education.”

She tried one last-ditch effort, “Your father never had Academy education, and look how successful we are.”

Graciela had no response to that, or one that wouldn’t come off as rude and ungrateful, so she continued to pack.

Pilar waited, and waited. “Here,” she said as she reached into her pocket and handed Graciela a bioGel chit. “I’ve saved some ΞStandards, I knew you wanted to train at the Academy to continue your education, even though it might break up your family.”

Graciela accepted the chit and ignored the rest, “My Air is Your Air, mother. I will use the money well and honor our heritage and family.”