The passenger area of the gig was large enough to accommodate twenty crew. There was a central aisle with five sets of two seats on each side. At the front of the space was a door, or rather a hatch, presumably to the cockpit. There were four people all sitting in aisle seats in the middle so they could easily talk to each other.

  Koko noticed me and said, “Everyone. That’s Jayden.”

  “Hi,” I said and gave a small wave. They all laughed.

  “Koko, I didn’t believe it when Chief said you were bringing a greenie aboard, but now that I see her, I understand.”

  “Unfortunately uninterested, but a good companion. Wanted to get off world, so I asked the captain.” Koko gestured toward the male gnome who made the comment. He had a childish pudgy but pretty face. “Jokester’s Pip Pippin, ship’s engineer. Beautiful one’s Lee Dawningsun, navigator. Other one’s Lunkfleece, pilot.” The beautiful one was a fairy with bright pink hair and glowing blue eyes. The other was an orc with dark gray skin and pointy white teeth sticking past nearly black lips.

  “Also known as the ugly one,” said Pip. While certainly no example of pulchritude to my human eyes, Fleece seemed as attractive an orc as Pippin was a gnome. “Greenie makes you look like the middling one, Lee,” he added. The others seemed not to notice the engineer’s comments. I was quite sure I wasn’t more attractive than a fairy, especially this one. Lee made a small circle with her index finger and then flicked it upwards. Pip was pinned to the ceiling.

  “Hey, no magic!”

  “I think it is just an isolated reversal of the artificial gravity,” Dawningsun said with an innocent smile. “You should have been strapped in.”

  Koko looked up at Pippin pinned to the ceiling and then back at me. “These are the survivors of my last ship”.

  “Hi. Again.” Something was off. “Koko, I thought you said five survived?”

  “All of Simmons that made it was just a frozen brain and a bit of the right side of the head,” Pippin called down from the ceiling.

  “Very bad injury,” Lunkfleece added.

  “He still looked better than you, orc.” Pip made a distorted face and used his fingers to simulate teeth hanging out of his mouth.

  “Hear strange voice.” He looked around as if unable to detect the source of the voice.

  “Perhaps a small annoying bird,” Dawningsun’s musical voice chimed in and there was a lovely smirk of a smile on her face. She nodded towards Koko, who put her arms out, then she snapped her fingers and Pippin fell into Koko’s arms and was placed back in his seat. “They tried to reanimate the brain and put it in a robot body, but the procedure failed,” Lee said.

  “Sad times.” Pippin was strapping himself in quickly. “We should take a moment of silence.” All four bowed their heads in respect for the dead, so I did too.

  I stood up and started drifting towards the ladder down to the lower deck. Koko caught up with me. “Where’re you going?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be a dragoner after all. It was a rash decision. I should go back to the spaceport.”

  Dawningsun overheard. “We’re already off the ground. Didn’t you feel the launch?”

  I looked out the window and saw the dark, faintly red-illuminated surface of Bedford receding into the distance and bright stars filling the view more and more.

  “Greenie didn’t know we were already in space.” Pippin laughed and the others joined in this time.

  “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Neither did Pippin,” Lunkfleece said. “You not connected.”

  “Should I ask Starr to go back?” Koko offered.

  I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “No. I don’t ever really want to go back. I’d rather be the frozen brain.” They all stared at me in silence, and I realized how insensitive that was to their fallen comrade. “I’m sorry. I know you just lost your friend.” They all broke into laughter.

  “Once you lighten up and get your space legs, you’ll be fine,” Dawningsun said in a moment of sincerity. The friends resumed their conversation from before that I did not follow at all. I took a seat in an empty row and slid over to the window seat.

  The artificial gravity in the gig made it feel like we were flying level, but out the window I could see the dim red of Bedford’s sun cross my view as well as the shrinking dark spot of the planet, and billions of bright stars. The gig was lazily spiraling on its way up into orbit. While the others chattered away, I sat mesmerized. There were places on Bedford where you could see up into space from windows on the surface, but I was actually in space. Koko came over and sat beside me.

  “Circling around the ship to dock now. See it?”

  I saw something, but I couldn’t really wrap my brain around what I was seeing. Barely illuminated by the nearby star I could make out a circle of indeterminate size. “The only thing I see out the window is a ring of some sort.”

  “She called it a window,” I heard Pippin say and the others laughed. Tonight, I would have to access some courses on spaceship terminology.

  “That’s the ship?” I’d have to see if the schematics were available too.

  “Ring’s nine klicks around the outside. Space dragons are big.”

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  “How damaged was your ship?

  “Superstructure destroyed. Dragged the remainder of the ring with the last interceptor, which was damaged too.”

  “Why did you come to Bedford?”

  “Closest industrial port.”

  “Why is another dragoning ship here?”

  “Shallow Water lost an interceptor and took heavy damage. Captain Baha heard there was a functional interceptor missing a ship while undergoing repairs on Manhattan and bought it outright,” Dawningsun said, turning towards us.

  “Faster than ordering a replacement,” Koko added.

  “The owners authorized paying for three shifts working around the clock so it would be ready when they got here,” Lee continued. “It’s hard to catch a dragon with a missing interceptor and every day lost is money lost.”

  “See the pri-fly?” Koko asked.

  Along the ring there was a point where a tower rose to the outside of the circle. It appeared that was to be our destination. Nothing else on the ring looked much different from the rest.

  “You mean the little bit that sticks out with all the bumps?” Koko’s friends laughed at that too.

  “Tower’s twenty decks. Bumps’re interceptor ships and drones. Lost it entirely.”

  “There are bumps all around the ring too.”

  “Dragon oil tanks. Heavily shielded to prevent chain reactions.”

  “That’s where the money is,” said Pippin, also paying us attention. “Dragon gold.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “It depends on the market, but a full load is worth a minimum of forty million marks.”

  “How much will I get?”

  “Greenies get paid?” Pippin asked as if shocked by the idea.

  “Didn’t they tell you a percentage?” Dawningsun asked.

  “No. Stupid of me maybe, but I just wanted to get away from Bedford. There’s nothing for me there.”

  “You’re going to be a treat on this voyage,” Pippin commented.

  Koko said. “She gets half a percent. You ship, you’re obligated to a year service to get anything.”

  “Not bad greenie. Koko’s good word. She generous soul,” Lunkfleece said.

  The four of them suddenly stood up and started walking back towards the ladder. I guessed we must have rendezvoused with the main ship and so followed them. I could still access the planet with my CCP, but things would be a lot easier once I got ship access to alert me to what was going on.

  We followed the same procedure after gathering our bags as entering the gig from the spaceport, except there were seven of us now. The gig’s air lock could accommodate a dozen people comfortably and we all moved from it together into Shallow Water’s air lock, which was the same size. When the hatch opened, a young man, tall and fit, black haired, and somewhat haggard looking awaited us. I thought he might be quite handsome with a good night’s sleep.

  Chief Starr entered the ship first, followed by someone who identified himself as Ship’s Pilot Elijah Mapple, then Koko and her friends. I brought up the rear.

  “Greenhand, Jayden Herman, requesting permission to come aboard,” I said.

  “Well, Greenie?”

  “Second Mate?”

  He held his wrist in front of my face. “See the single gold ring around my cuff? It means third made. Learn it.”

  “Yes, Third Mate Flax.”

  “Second mate is two rings, third mate is one ring, and captain is four rings.”

  “I understand, Third. Four is captain, three is chief, two is second, and one is third.”

  He looked into my eyes until I started to feel uncomfortable, then said, “Permission granted. Your quarters are oh-eight-five-twenty-seven-L.”

  “Thank you, Third.” I entered the spaceship and headed straight ahead with no idea where I was going, then I stopped and turned around. “Third Mate, how do I get there?” He stuck out his arm towards me with his palm flat, shook his head, then walked down a corridor leading away to the left. “And Koko said Bedford was unfriendly,” I said to no one.

  I walked a little way before I put my bags down and stopped to think. Koko and her friends had abandoned me. Should I just start trying doors at random? I tried my CCP, but general access was denied. I noticed a gray stencil on the white wall outside a hatch read 010-17-42-A. I walked further down the hall and found 010-18-42-A. I turned right and came to 010-18-43-A. I returned to the airlock and then went the direction the third mate had gone. He must have been going somewhere and maybe this was the way to a different level. I appeared to be two levels off. Eventually I came to a dead end at 010-1-1-T. So far, every hatch had been labeled as an S room, but here on my right is a sign next to a door labeled L.

  Unlike every other hatch I had seen, this one had a giant red wheel on it. It could be turned with some difficulty, so I did so and I could feel the door come loose in its gasket. It was a big heavy door and for a second, I worried it might lead to vacuum, but if it did, there was no way I would be able to open it anyway, because of the air pressure. Maybe I didn’t know anything about spaceships, but I was from a world without an atmosphere, so I did have vacuum training. So, I pulled the hatch open, and it revealed a shaft with a ladder inside and the number 010. I reached in for the ladder rung and felt a strange sensation; my hand was floating. The shaft had no artificial gravity. I grabbed the rung and pulled myself inside. My hair kept going and wrapped around my face in a stringy cloud. Was this shaft permanently weightless? I kept hold of the ladder just to be sure and turned around to close the hatch.

  I carefully climbed downwards and came to another deck labeled 011. Apparently, the decks went the other way. I was a little more confident now that nothing would change, so I let my feet float and pulled myself up three decks with my hands. At deck 08, I undogged the hatch and came out into a hallway that looked much the same as the lower one. Koko was waiting for me.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me?” I said with some anger in my voice. “Up there, I mean, not here.”

  “Test. Had doubts I was right to speak for you to join the crew. Not too late to send you back.”

  “But you’ll tell me things in the future?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Warn you if there’s danger, yes, but it’s better to figure out things for yourself. I tell you and people may think you know something. Wrong. Space is deadly and you know nothing. Think first. Always.”

  “So, I passed your test?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “Didn’t expect you to climb up a vertical access trunk. Supposed to find an elevator.”

  “Oh. I just came across that shaft first. It’ll be easier once I my CCP can get guidance from the ship.”

  “No. Passengers let the computers tell them everything. Crew know. Rely on computers and when the computers fail so do you. On duty your access will be limited until you prove you don’t need it. Study during off hours. Understand?”

  “Yes, First Gunner.”

  “Just, Voko.”

  “No more Koko?”

  “Off duty or with friends.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “To your quarters or back to Bedford?”

  “To my quarters. Really. I’m staying until you kick me off.” I waited for her to lead me there for a moment before realizing I was supposed to get there on my own. Since I was starting at the corner of a deck, it was pretty easy to walk past the compartments watching the numbers increase until I needed to turn and then eventually, I came to 08-5-27-L and the door opened to me.

  The room was five meters square and seemed enormous after my tiny efficiency on Bedford. On the right was a desk and a large bed. To the left was storage. Through a door, about a third of the space was taken up by a bathroom that actually had a bath as well as sink and toilet.

  “Greenie’s get the smallest berths.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s huge. The bathroom is literally larger than where I was living on Bedford. I’ve never even used a bathtub before.”

  “Understandable why you don’t want to go back. Now, to duty. Drop your bags, go to the issue room for a ship suit, and then report to engineering for your first assignment.” She gave me the compartment numbers and disappeared down a passageway. This time I found the elevator, which was labeled elevator instead of with an alphanumeric.