“Inexpensive medic LFG,” a general posting goes out from Optoblia, a Rapwego, another race of resource hunters in the civilized galaxy. There are many others in the station looking for a group in the field, she is hoping to find a group that would take her in long-term for resource hunting. It took many cycles to get through the Grand faction medical courses, but she is well accepted and feels prized in the field. There are other medics around looking for a job for now as well, but she didn’t have many obligations other than to the Grand faction for the loans like millions of others.
She sits at a noodle booth taking a quick lunch after flipping her wisdom coin, and she is poor enough to just eat cheap for the day. At least in this case she isn’t making it in her small dorm room, and has others around her. This noodle booth is close to the transport station and she waits for jobs to roll in.
Not long after sitting down to eat and wirelessly dialing into the network, she gets three invites. Each are offering low credits, one for a mining expedition, one for a pod hunting squad, and one for a good-will group where her costs would be taken care of, but it would be a long-term trip, posted as a just in case to let anyone know. After looking at the options, she verifies her specs, or record sheet required to join groups as a medic for legal reasons after a few hundred years of fraud. An implant is required that all medics sign off to get, it shows the owner their statistics as far as the Grand faction is concerned.
She is proud of her specs, not exactly at the top of her class, but it took her years to get where she is now. They are Grand faction regulated and trying to commit fraud is not only hard but it is illegal. The implant also takes vital signs and the Grand faction has a distress beacon built into it. She only has 300 faction credits to her name, after lunch 270, and needs many millions to pay back the training loans.
She looks at her spec sheet before sending it off to the invites.
Name Optoblia Otiquagu
Race: Rapwego
Str 6
Dex 7
Con 8
Int 12
Tech 10
Height 1.5m (5 feet)
Registered Lang: Rapwego, Galaxy common, Grech, Limpfod
Current supplies: coagulant paste x2, coagulant injector, short-field medical scanner, “universal” translator, small hand blaster
Training: Hand blaster, medical scanning, mechanical engineering, biotech engineering, pod engineering
Medical training: Rapwego, Human, Grech, Limpfod, Naste
Credit rating: Moderate
At least, this is what she is willing to tell others. Moderate status for her race is ten at her age, especially right out of medical training. Moderating mentors keep track of the statistics during the training. She is brand new off of the transport, right out of training and she mostly just has the gear given right after training is complete. The coagulant and injectors help wounds keep from getting worse, dull pain, prevent blood loss, and keep bones and muscles in place for full medical treatment when possible. Some species can handle pain better than others.
She is decent with other languages which took quite a while, especially the Grech, their language is a lot more primitive than the rest of the species around this side of the galaxy. She just hopes she might not have to deal with a group of them in a batch, they tend to not… pick up after themselves. Culturally they do not always use waste disposal units. It is recommended by quite a few to only join whole teams of them, as far as a squad goes only in emergencies.
The mining expedition is of all Grech, so she slides it out to be an unlikely choice. The pod-hunting group is promising, having a human engineer and Rapwego pilot. The long-term trip has just a Limpfod pilot and the rest was a bot crew. She wouldn’t get used to anything with that, they needed an engineer more than a medic. She looks through some more options.
After a while of looking through options, she can’t find any other group that is willing to pay a share and still a minimum and will have some stuff for her to do while on the job. She sends a message to that captain and sends her spec sheet. She sometimes had issues with humans, and during training things didn’t end well with one of them, perhaps with this crew that has a Rapwego pilot, they might be more familiar with her species and how they should act.
A human she dated at the Grand faction training facility said that her species looks a lot like a rabbit from his planet mixed with a humanoid. After he said that, she looked up these rabbits on the network. She didn’t see it, maybe in the head shape a little.
It doesn’t take long for her to get a reply to tell her which dock to get to if she accepts. She does a last look-through for that amazing job with no risk and extremely high reward, but they don’t fall into her lap within twenty minutes of eating, so she chooses this crew and sends a message that she’ll be at the requested dock within the hour, she does have a lot of walking to do.
The smell of stale air and thousands of people pushing around is irritating to her senses. The training is on a faction planet with no recycled air and real food and water, it has her worried about field training, but that is where the credits are. On planets there is so much competition for jobs even being an intern is highly competitive around the galaxy. The danger of fieldwork has many medics choose a plain life, eventually, when she gets her field stats up, she’ll see if she has enough from the jobs to get the loans paid off.
Pushing and shoving through crowds and avoiding some of the more offensive-smelling food booths if she possibly can, she makes it to the docking bay and finds the dock with the crew for which she is looking.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
A dirty haired Rapwego is outside of the dock with a patch over one eye and an ear missing with a metal plate where it should be. It looks like he hasn’t been through the shower in days. “You Opt?”
She answers, “Optoblia O, yes, are you the pilot?”
“Yup, the name is Proablew A and I’m pilot of the Pluto. This gal has been good to me and she’ll treat you right. You able to get right to it? Meet the crew?”
With a possible option left to her, she takes the decision out of her of logic and irritation, and turns her body to toss her wisdom coin. The coin tells her to follow what she is up to. She leaves a lot up to the coin without regret.
He asks, “You still follow the old ways?”
She nods and doesn’t give it a second thought, she follows him into the ship, the Pluto.
She is eager to meet the crew, hopefully, there isn’t anything strange going on that she’d have to deal with. As her first crew she is also worried, as a medic there isn’t really a one-size fits all when it comes to treating each crew member, especially of different species, but she’d need to learn on the fly also, no one medic can know it all. She has some notes, but no humanoid could remember it all. Hopefully, during training, she took down enough info for most species. The medical scanner is helpful but it doesn’t have everything she’d ever need in the data.
She nods with a little vigor and one of her ears meanders around her shoulder. She pulls it back and follows the pilot onto the ship.
The first compartment is a walkway between walls at her left and right, walking by a couple of doors on each side.
The pilot knocks on the door to the left and no one calls out, so he twists open the wheeled door handle and slides open the door. This is to a mess hall or sorts. A large table and chairs formed into the floor were there, compartments of food are along the walls as well. Proablew lets her know, “This is the mess, obviously. Come in here for food, when we get a good haul, for the parties.” He says this last bit with a smile.
*
Across the hall, he knocks on that door. They both hear a call, “Yo?”
He asks through the door, “Anyone naked?”
“Would it stop you if we were?”
“With your nasty ass, Abso-fruit-ly,” He answers with a smile.
“Get in here you old Rap.”
The pilot's face goes serious and he puts his hand back to assure the medic, “It is all in fun, he doesn’t mean it.” It is a derogatory moniker to the Rapwego to be called as such.
The wheeled handle is twisted to slide open and two Grech are lying in bunks, the newcomers walk in and their faces look towards the door. In sync, they roll their legs off of the bunks, one closer and the other further from the pillows.
“What is this, lady rap?”
“Watch your manners Mal, we got a new medic for now, don’t run her off.”
With the most professional of manners, the Grech spits between his legs onto the grated floor. “Hey lady, name is Mal Koa.”
“Watch your manners you old bitch,” a quip comes from the other Grech, a female from the higher pitch in the voice. “I’m Mel Koa, nice to meet you. Thanks for the help.”
Optoblia looks over at them, they look alike, spitting image of each other, “Brother and sister?”
Mal says with a grown, “What you saying that all Gretch look alike?”
Knowing that the Grech often come in liters. It is a stereotype, but one that is well known through this side of civilization. She doesn’t skip a beat in saying, “Well, not usually, but you two, yeah.”
His frown turns upside down, “HA, I like her. Yeah, sure, we are in the same brood. Keep us alive and we’ll keep you alive.”
Optoblia nods and does a half-hearted wave as she and the pilot walk out of the room.
That covers the first couple of rooms. A crossroads intersection with a walkway left, right, and forward is shortly down the hall. Left and right have rooms down a small hall. They walk left and pass a first door, without knocking the pilot twists open the door and opens it to a small room. There is a bunk and desk. Multiple data pads are laying on a close by table and one is on the floor by the bunk. “My bunk. If I’m in here, knock when important, but don’t bug me unless it’s a big deal.”
He closes the door and they walk to the next one on this side and knocks on that one next. “Enter Proablew, I am decent.” The usual twisting open of the door and they walk in to a double bunk room. It's one occupant is a Limpfod, a nitrogen breathing humanoid with yellow skin and a rebreather over his mouth.
Proablew introduces, “Klua, this is Opt,” he snaps his fingers a couple of times forgetting the rest, then points to her to finish.
“Optoblia O, nice to meet you, Klua?” She ends in a question. She knows the Limpfods tend to have different names than most, their culture includes different things in names for identification.
He answers using some sort of computerized voice modulator, “Thank you Optoblia O, I am KL7UA, the crew calls me Klua and you may as well since you have joined it, I assume. I am the botanist on board and I am training to be a specialist in the field, there is a lot to it though and will take quite some time.”
Optoblia’s mouth grew into a smile, “Botanist? We have plants on board? Food or air?”
Klua answers, “Mostly for emergency food, but they are also here to help with the air quality on board, the other side is the botany and med bays, they take up a good bit of the ship. The specialist training takes up most of my time though, learning what we know of the pods is fascinating.”
Optoblia smiles again and nods, backing out of the compartment.
The two walk to the other side of the ship for two other compartments. One is the med bay with a bunk. After twisting open the door and opening it, the pilot walks in and shows her around. There is more equipment in the bay, lots of stims and anti-stims, a table scanner for a more thorough body scan, and compartments of other miscellaneous things to use on the job. Even a small compartment for bandaids, how primitive.
She walks over and presses on the bed, it is a little firm to her hands, but she still sits down. It is more firm than the planet-side bed that she has been sleeping in for years, but it isn’t the ground or metal plate of the ship floor, so she would deal with it. The last room is the botany lab.
She walks in and sees the luscious green growing in different sections. There are growing things sectioned off with soil and a hydroponic fluid that she knows is coincidentally also good for washing wounds, in a pinch anyway.
“Plant lab, as you likely guess, sections for air and food, don’t go grabbing stuff. This isn’t an area for a late night snack. I’ll yank your ears if you think you can sneak even a leaf away from these things. Klua is meticulous with these things. Even though he doesn’t breathe regular gas, he wants to make sure the rest of us are good. It saves power and processing of the rebreathers when possible.”
Optoblia asks, “So, you have a botanist and specialist on board? Does he usually stay on and give intel?”
The pilot answers, “Usually, yeah, his breathing gear is pretty fragile, but he would be a good grunt in a pinch. When he gets credits he usually sends them somewhere, we tell him to get a more sturdy rebreather so that he can come with us, but we can’t spend his money.”
The two leave the botany lab and make their way to the cockpit. She has seen a few ships, but rarely does she get to see the main flight deck of the ship she is taking. As a member of the crew she gets to see this one. She has no idea what all of the knobs and buttons do, but maybe she’ll eventually find out.
Four heavy chairs with straps are bolted to the ground reaching different pieces of equipment, navigation, radar, defense and weaponry, and of course, the steering stuff.
Proablew says, “I guess Kawuia L and Lioe G, other striker and engineer are on station for a bit, I expected them here already. A miperite and human, decent enough, the whole crew, I’d trust them with my life. Well, go ahead and check out the med bay and get comfortable, we will be off late standard time, we have a collection to add to.”