The ship now known as Shays Rebellion was over one hundred and fifty years old. It had been made during a period of vogue for mid-sized transport ships, one of two million such ships manufactured in the Caravan II line from Interstellar Alchemy. Its slight resemblance to a camel was part of a general desert theme for the old Caravans. The color of the hull, which had been called “desert sandstone” on the brochure, was another part of it. ISA’s ships were renowned for their ability to hold together and keep flying forever with minimal maintenance, and as a consequence, they had been in great demand.
ISA had folded a scant three decades after this particular ship was made, as a direct consequence of having met the demand for mid-sized transport ships too perfectly, and with ships that could hold themselves together and keep flying forever with minimal maintenance.
The ship now known as Shays Rebellion had not always received even minimal maintenance. The innate similarity between “desert sandstone” and the color of rust seemed much more pronounced now, due to the massive pitting and scarring of her skin. There were large rectangular patches where parts of the outer hull had been replaced, and the new piece had not been perfectly integrated by the increasingly sluggish and ill-mannered colony of repair nanites that dwelled within her superstructure.
Her inner workings were in marginally better shape, if only because most of them had been replaced at one point… or at several points. This brought its own problems, though… while all the original ISA systems had been designed to work flawlessly with each other, the piecemeal replacements had all been purchased, scrounged, or jury-rigged from whatever was available at the time. The necessary hacks and patches to make them work with one another had all been implemented by different owners at various points in the ship’s life, and none of them were documented.
The ship’s interior had been retrofitted for various reasons several times as well. While the ship’s original plan had all the electrical conduits and channels for water, waste, and other fluids as integral parts of the bulkheads and decks, the expanding or partitioning of various compartments had necessitated creative re-routing, resulting in less elegant and archaic solutions, like cables and pipes, being laid in.
Given the tendency of pilots to view ships as extensions of themselves… and to view other ships as extensions of their pilots… it was somewhat understandable that Dick’s pride took refuge in the precision of his skill, and his textbook-perfect, always on the mark landings.
It was also understandable how being bounced into port in a manner that only emphasized the Rebellion’s resemblance to space junk left him feeling wounded.
“When we get refueled, you can lift up and put her back down right before we take off,” Lilliana told him as she watched the crew… minus a dozen stevedores, who were preparing the Rylean cargo for deliver, and minus those who knew the full extent of the Rebellion’s current problems… disembark on a view screen.
Dick grumbled something incomprehensible. He was staring out through the crysteel canopy, down at the huge dotted outline which represented their berth. They were nowhere near the center of it, and badly skewed, besides.
“It’ll be like correcting their error,” Lilliana said, and that cheered him up a bit.
“I’m all here,” one of the Nicks announced as the third rejoined them in the foremost compartment. Galatea, Leo, Regan, and Handy… an unassuming young woman who appeared to be crabwalking, due to the fact that her lower limbs had been redesigned as arms as part of a zero-gravity genetic package… were already present. Everybody who knew the truth of their situation was now on the bridge.
“Good,” Lilliana said, somewhat absently. She was still watching the monitor, counting heads. “Okay,” she said, looking up. “Everybody who knows what’s up is here, and everybody who doesn’t is either off the ship, or busy digging out the cargo that was supposed to have been ready before we got here.”
“Bite me,” Leo said.
Lilliana simply smiled at him.
“I hope you enjoyed that, Mr. Parda,” she said. “Because I’m putting Rule 28 into effect, starting now.”
“Oh, please,” Galatea said. “As if this ship of fools even has that many rules to guide it.”
“To be sure it does,” Regan said. “Rule 27 is the line forms to the right o’ your door.”
“Rule 28 isn’t called that because it’s the twenty-eighth rule,” Lilliana said. “It’s called that because that’s how long it lasts: twenty-eight hours. It’s an emergency measure that allows me to assume direct command of any ship personnel for up to one standard day at a time.”
“Hold on, now,” Regan said. “Don’t ya already have direct command, like?”
“I do, Bard,” Lilliana said. “The difference is, when Rule 28 is in effect, you actually have to listen.”
“Hey, we always listen!” Regan protested.
“And obey,” Lilliana clarified. “On pain of termination and forfeit of bond.”
“Oh,” Regan said.
“I assume the first unbreakable order is silence,” one of the Nicks said.
“Your word’s good enough for me,” Lilliana said. “As is Handy’s and Dick’s. Though yes, that should be taken as an order.”
“Hey, now… what’s my word, then?” Regan demanded.
“A hideous lie, like everything else that comes out of your mouth,” Galatea said.
“That’s just not true,” Leo said. “Some of them are delusions. What’s fun is trying to pick out which are which.”
“An’ after I saved your soul from the gamblin’ ghouls of Asteroth VII, ya go an’ say somethin’ like that,” Regan said. “If it weren’t beneath me dignity, I’d pop ya one.”
“I see what you mean,” Galatea told Leo.
“People!” Lilliana said. “Here’s the deal: we’ve got twenty-eight hours to get this ship refueled somehow, and we’re going to do it, any way that we can.”
“If I may ask a question,” Galatea said. “Why isn’t Mr. Shays here for this conversation? Surely as the ship’s owner, he has both the right and responsibility…”
“Daniel only recognizes responsibility to himself,” Lilliana said.
“But surely he’ll realize a grounded ship is no profit to him or anybody,” Galatea said. “He must have enough funds to purchase new fuel.”
“Right,” Lilliana said. “Which he’d take back out of our future profits, with interest. I’d sooner tell the crew we’re not flying than tell them we are flying but they’re not getting paid.”
“But Mr. Shays must…” Galatea began, but Lilliana cut her off.
“Look,” she said. “This isn’t the Commonwealth, and ‘Mr. Shays’ isn’t your daddy.”
“That is not fair!” Galatea
“Isn’t it?” Lilliana said. “Who exactly do you think is going to do anything about that? You ran away from the GCC to join the real world because you were sick of being treated as a child at the age of thirty-two. It’s time to start acting like an adult, and the first step is to quit looking for the nearest authority figure to fix everything.”
Galatea’s mouth opened and closed, but she said nothing.
“We can get out of this,” Lilliana said, addressing the group now. “We’ve got out of worse… in fact, we got here getting out of worse. For once, nobody’s out to get us… nobody’s trying to kill us. Our only obstacle is financial. We need one and a half million credits’ worth of gold, and we need it by tomorrow.”
“Are you proposing that the nine of us each earn one hundred and sixty-six thousand credits in a single day?” Galatea asked skeptically.
“No,” Lilliana said. “First, there’s seven of us… it’s polite to treat a practitioner of the clone lifestyle as a single person regardless of the number of bodies. Second, that makes it closer to two hundred and fourteen thousand credits. Third, I’m not proposing anything, I’m ordering it. This will happen. Rule 28, people. Get to it!”
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