Wanderer - Millennium by Simon Goodson

Author:Simon Goodson [Goodson, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910586310

After the beauty of jump space and the excitement, at times verging on terror, of the transitions, the journey through normal space to Brak’s Trading Hub felt like a non-event to Kaira.

It was smooth, routine, and disconcertingly they saw a number of other ships. By the time they reached the station traffic was heavy. Kaira found herself repelled slightly by each ship they came across.

“Do you think it’s always this busy?” she asked.

“Probably,” said Tarkus. “Anything with hub in its name tends to be somewhere with a lot of traffic, though I’ve seen a few truly huge stations with enough traffic to make this place seem almost deserted.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine you wanting to visit somewhere like that.”

“I certainly stay away from those places now. Apart from anything else, there’s not normally much profit to be made. If that much trading is going on then all the routes are pretty established. That means big companies or cartels have them all tied up.”

“But you visited them at some time?”

“We were a lot younger, and we thought we’d be able to find an edge and out-compete the bigger, slower organisations. We were wrong, but it’s one of those things you don’t know till you’ve tried.”

Kaira noted his use of the word we. He’d rarely volunteered information about his life with his wife, not without some form of prompting, so she was careful not to focus on that.

“After that you decided to stick to the quieter routes?” she asked.

“Not exactly. We focused on the more difficult routes. Some routes are quiet because there’s nothing to trade. We specialised in the journeys people had trouble cutting time from. Ones which were quiet because they were difficult but where there was a strong demand. It wasn’t just the money. The fact that they were difficult drew us in as a challenge.”

“So in some ways what we’re doing now is right up your street?”

Tarkus smiled slightly. “I suppose it is. I’ve been a little more cautious the last few years, I’ve stuck with difficult routes I’ve already figured out. In some ways it’s nice to try something new. Sometimes you drop into a rut without even realising it, until something shakes things up. Or someone.”

“Is that part of the reason you agreed to help me?”

Tarkus stopped what he was doing and frowned slightly. He was silent for a few seconds, then he nodded slowly.

“You know, it might be part of it. Not all of it and I wasn’t conscious of it, but helping you did give me a reason to try new routes.”

“So it wasn’t all down to me winning you over?”

Tarkus snorted. “Definitely not! Now let me focus on getting docked. It’s pretty busy around the hangar bays, and I don’t want to pick up any fines for straying out of our approach zone.”

Kaira nodded, and fell quiet. She certainly didn’t want to be the cause of Tarkus making any mistakes. She stared ahead at the station which had stopped being a small dot, had passed through being a fuzzy shape, and was now dominating most of her view.

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