Patreon or PayPal Me keeps this site and its author alive. Thank you. |
Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 33: Cooper 83
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 266
“The Captain has decided you’re not a passenger,”, the second mate said, “and since we don’t have stowaways that means you’re a shiphand level one. You do what anyone tells you to do, and when you’re not doing that, you scrape rust off the hull, and make sure you vacuum up ALL of the dust. Hear me, Terri?”
“It’s Brian.”
“No, until you’re a sailor its worm, which is short for space worm. They are a nasty, acidic, metal eating tiny little pain in my posterior. So that should work for you.”
Over the next two weeks, Brian got intimately familiar with almost every part of the ship save for the officers’ cabins, and he scraped by hand, and vacuumed with a hand pump, the rust dust which would otherwise get into people’s lungs. He also was given more meaningless prank jobs than he could recall, but his unfailing good cheer and calm had gradually put a halt to that.
They had first thought he was a crazy man when he said he was from a different dimension. But he had been crazy good at being brave so that was a big mark in his favor. Still, he was a complete noob. Yet as he performed task after task without complaint (although with numerous questions), and he came to be certain that the second mate had been a drill instructor sometime in his past, he found another home. He missed Tommy and Derek and Vashti at the manse, and William and Hans and servants at the Tell chalet, and Paul and Annie at Umak Tek, and his old colleagues at Seven Hills Bible College where he had taught programming, but this was the new place he had been put, and it suited him well.
The crew was used to talking with each other, sometimes with rather barbed comments, which might or might not be a joke. Brian did not participate, and soon no one spoke to him that way.
As they came into Venus’ orbit, the second mate brought him to a tired looking man who studied him quietly.
“I hear you have been exemplary in your pursuit of your tasks, that you have shown skill in all relevant basic Ship Hand areas, have defended the ship, and that you have driven mad half of my crew with questions, Ship Hand Level Five Cooper. In response, by the powers vested in me by the owner of The Energetic and by the Shipper’s Guild, it is my pleasure to promote you to the rank of Sailor Level One. As such your pay will almost double, increasing by eighty percent; you will have the right to take liberty at planet ports if your superior officers deem it acceptable; you are admitted into the Shipper’s Guild as a member in good standing, and you are able to order any Ship Hand on the ship.”
“Thank you, Captain.” The second mate ushered him out as the Captain yawned as if dreadfully sleepy.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
