Parley by Jamie McFarlane

Author:Jamie McFarlane [McFarlane, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781500937614
Publisher: Createspace
Published: 2014-08-23T17:00:00+00:00

CONVOY

“Tali, you and Jordy will be in BR-3 tonight. Sorry for the close quarters.”

“Wouldn’t have expected any different,” Tali said.

“You can keep your gear in your room or if you want, I can give you access to the armory. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to review our stock with you. I still have access to the Navy’s quartermaster if we’re missing anything.” Marny stood up, clearly looking to get moving.

Tali stood with her. “If you want to help, we’ve got a pretty decent stack of gear.”

“I’ll help,” Tabby offered.

I watched as the three of them disappeared from the room.

My HUD flashed an incoming comm request.

“Hoffen,” I answered.

“Lou Buggentower, Stevedore’s Union. We’re outside ready to load. Are you good to go?”

“I’ll be right out.” I walked down the hallway quickly and passed through the airlock.

A stout man in a white uniform handed me his credentials. I scanned them with my HUD. They checked out.

“Love these little cutters. Don’t take but a few minutes to load. Even faster to unload. Anything going in the bunk rooms?” He asked.

“No it should all fit in the cargo holds.”

“That it will. Any special weight distribution?”

“We’re pretty even. Ideally, heaviest on the inside about half way up. More forward than aft. Is that doable?”

“Whatever you like. It’s not a very heavy load, so it won’t matter a lot,” he said.

I should have thought about that. I knew where I wanted the weight, but didn’t think about the fact that the mass/volume ratio was low. He could load it any way he wanted and we wouldn’t feel it on the ship. I felt like a newbie, which of course I was.

“You got a tablet you’re crossing these off on?” he asked.

“Sorry, I’m pretty new to this, why would I do that?” He’d already outed me as a newbie, I might as well not add on.

“Heh, you are a greenie, then. Captains like to keep track of what they’re loading and match it up with the manifest. That way if anyone says they didn’t deliver a crate, you can prove if you got it all or not.”

“Frak, that makes sense,” I said.

“Record it with your HUD. Make sure you catch every crate’s serial number. You can go over it once you’re sailing.”

“Thank you, Mr. Buggentower,” I said.

“No problem. Everybody has a first day.”

Sterra's Gift – 001, he said. “It’ll come up right there.” He pointed to what looked like a MAG-L track ten meters away from Sterra's Gift. A flatbed train, forty meters long, filled with crates of different sizes slid along the track and stopped in line with the ship.

Two squat robots rose up off the far end, flew up next to the crates, and slid long metallic fingers under them. In concert, the bots lifted, using arc-jets similar to what our suits used and flew to us at a break-neck pace. Lou looked at his tablet and over to the containers and checked off the two serial numbers. I recorded it. I could see how a tablet that was running the same software he was running would make this quite a bit easier.

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