Owner's Share by Nathan Lowell

Author:Nathan Lowell [Lowell, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2014-02-28T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Six

Diurnia Orbital:

2372-December-30

When the grav trucks arrived with the cargo, I began to appreciate why the ship had a reputation for being difficult to fill to full capacity. I had hoped to pick up half our rated mass, but with around 1200 cubic meters of cargo space, I realized it would take a cargo of gold, or perhaps uranium, to fill it. As it was, the grav trucks wheeled up with what looked like a mountain of two meter cargo cubes. The cargo wranglers began stacking them in the hold with dazzling efficiency.

The cubes had indents and dimples that let them lock together and the cargo hold was precisely tall enough to allow the handlers to stack two of the big cubes one on top of another. I had them stack the higher density load against the outside bulkheads, and the lighter density one just inside, leaving the corridor down the middle that opened into engineering.

It took the crew a bit more than a stan to wheel it in, stack it up, and lock it down. I told their crew chief how I wanted it done, and then stood back. With the ladder lowered out of the way for them, the four loaders looked more like twelve as they performed an intricate choreography.

When they left, I went through and checked the tie-downs, making sure the cubes were locked to the deck. The heavy cubes filled most of the cargo hold, leaving only five meters of open space in the forward end. The lighter cubes stacked in a single height row just in front of the heavier ones, giving me a relatively even distribution of mass down the length of the ship as well as side to side. I supposed I would get used to planning the load distributions for this hold eventually. What I’d do with single cubes or short shipments, I had no idea.

I also realized I needed to get passengers into the ship soon. While these cargoes had nice priorities, the total revenue for seven hundred metric tons wouldn’t yield much share value.

Ms. Arellone watched the process from the upper deck, and came down the ladder as soon as I put it back in place. She surveyed the load out and smiled. “Are we really rated for nine and a half metric kilotons, Skipper?”

“That we are, Ms. Arellone.”

“This is going to be a fast run, isn’t it, sar?”

“Yes, it is, Ms. Arellone. Shall we get on with it?”

She grinned, and scampered up the ladder as I sealed the lock in preparation for getting underway. I used the repaired console to log the action at 1040. We’d be able to leave any time after 1240. I kicked off a canned message to traffic control and orbital security indicating that the lock was sealed in preparation for departure at 1330.

It felt like maybe we were beginning to get a handle on things. I hated thinking that because I dreaded finding out just how wrong I probably was.

As I trudged up the ladder with that depressing thought, I realized that there must be more to the ship than showed.

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