Chapter 106 Crew Evals

We were two days from our exit of subspace at the trading station. My first officer brought me a data slate with a request for crew promotions and bonuses for the recent two-week cycle. That was how Kara Briggs ran the ship, in 14-day cycles. If you wanted a shift change, then you had to wait out the current cycle. If you had a bonus or a pay increase coming, you had to wait for the current two-week cycle to end. Surprisingly Suruchi adopted the same time segment for her small hospitality staff.

I was considering eliminating all the passenger cabins on deck six to install power generators for weapons. We would keep only the luxury cabins on deck seven. That was Julie’s latest suggestion in our VR sims as I tried to figure out how to add some offense to the Void Phoenix. The idea was shelved for now as deck 6 was being used as storage.

I quickly tapped confirm on the first seven bonuses and paused at a promotion. Normally this was just a crew member here and there having completed a series of certs for a tiny pay increase. I was perplexed by the name and the promotion. Fiona Agave had completed the certs to be a grade 1 life support engineer. Fiona was an entertainer. A very good and charismatic singer. I asked Kara about her. She had been at university for electrical engineering and had dropped out when her singing career took off. She had breezed through all the certs and just finished the practical under the Chloe bot’s supervision. Kara had already informed Gwen that Fiona would be joining her. I approved the promotion.

I admit I didn’t value the hospitality staff much in the crew. They were hired as a cloak to hide the Void Phoneix behind. Having passengers gave me an excuse to travel the stars freely and was somewhat profitable…well, financially neutral due to my exorbitant salaries. I looked at the staff that Suruchi oversaw on a terminal at my captain’s station on the bridge, the pad still in my hand.

Personal Director

Suruchi Lozano

1000

Chief Steward

Dora Kiernan

80

Ship’s Doctor

Dr. Will Swain

120

Ship’s Doctor

Andie Niaz

210

Assistant Steward

70

Singer

Fiona Agave

140

Comedian/Entertainer

130

Agricultural Steward

Miguel Asuni

110

Master Chef

Cori Deane

240

Bartender

Edmund Asir

90

Steward Bot Technician

60

The two doctors were on her list because they oversaw the SNAIL treatments and the health of the entire crew. Miguel was essentially a botanical researcher for me and maintained the promenade with my science officer, Dr. Abraham Zaire. Cori…well, she was an essential member to maintain crew morale. And Edmund was my resident spy. Suruchi was handling all the ship trade and was a pseudo-alien relations director. For the most part, Dora was Suruchi’s assistant after her last assistant left at Anderson Research Station. Now with Fiona as part of the engineering team, I guess I could consider the hospitality staff was engrained as part of the ship’s family.

Suruchi did have three personnel openings that were currently unfilled. Gabby was handling the steward bots, so I guessed we could eliminate the position. I made the changes and alerted Gabby of a small pay jump. She had already been servicing all the steward bots anyway, so she was not surprised.

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I turned back to a patiently waiting Kara. She had gotten used to me getting sidetracked mid-task. The next promotion was one I had known was coming. Luna had completed all her certs for being a Battle Suit technician. They were not difficult certs, but she was just 14. She was basically living in Marine country on the ship, and they treated her like a daughter. She wanted to become a Marine herself, which her parents blamed me for.

The generic battle maintenance cert had been insufficient to deal with our Bagers and Gorilla suits, so Julie created some additional modules. That is what Luna had just completed. She was now officially a crew member and getting paid as much as a marine. She would be under Abby’s supervision, so I notified her. I was sure the Marines would have a massive party for her to celebrate becoming an official crew member. I also sent her congratulations and asked her, now that she was a technician, if she would continue getting her engineering certs for battlesuits.

A technician basically ran the standard maintenance on a suit and switched load outs as needed. A suit engineer ran diagnostics and repaired the suit’s damage. She replied back, ‘Hell ya, and oorah!’. Maybe she would be satisfied with servicing the Marine’s suits over becoming an actual m\Marine. That concluded my time on this bridge shift, and I went to get some conditioning in.

I got to wrestle with our newest Marine, Mozzie, the Tirani bear man. There was a bet on the match. I would immediately work on his custom Badger battle suit if I lost. If he lost, then he had to do double shifts of guard duty on the bridge. It might have been fair if I had been in a combat suit. Instead, he dislocated my shoulder, tearing small muscles when I refused to yield. It would take four days of visits to Doc to get it healed. I would have to wear a special harness during the day that assisted me and monitored the healing process. Since I had been in the muscle enhancement program, I had thought I could make Mozzie. After the bout, I doubted I would ever be able to match Mozzie. His muscles were like steel cables.

Even soundly defeating me, I found that I liked the bear man. He was very friendly when he wasn’t wrenching your arm out of its socket. I could see why Abby wanted him on her team. He had some leadership qualities, worked hard, and picked things up extremely quickly. Rather than just make him a Badger suit I decided to make him a Badger and Gorilla suit in concert. Not only was I working with the larger size, but his shoulder and hip joints had different ranges of motion than a human.

I brought Luna down to my robotics lab as I worked on the suit redesign and upgrade. She was fascinated but the process, and I think I got her hooked on engineering. It was fun having Luna in the lab as Zed followed her around. Zed was the puppy that Gabby had purchased when she was researching dogs for her wolf bot upgrades. Zed had taken a liking to Luna and now spent most of the day with her.

With my shoulder healing, I spent part of my days on the bridge and a lot of time in the robotics lab with Luna and Gabby. Gabby was still complaining about the Tirani steward bot she had built for Mozzie. It was finished, and she was just testing it now. She told me she programmed the bot to carry a small bouquet of purple grass inside the bot’s uniform. The grass was like catnip to Tirani, and I let the prank slide as I also needed some revenge on Mozzie.

I was working with Gabby in the robotics lab when Luna came down to help a few hours before we were due to exit subspace. Luna was laughing. The purple grass prank had worked too well. Apparently, he was so loud while testing his new bot that the neighboring cabins could hear him. The best part was that Mozzie wasn’t embarrassed in the least. The purple grass worked by lowering the inhibitions of the Tirani, and Mozzie just said he needed to spend some pent-up energy. He even offered to loan out his bot to any marine that was interested. Having seen the mating practices of the Tirani while Gabby was doing her research, I hoped none of the Marines took him up on the offer. At least we had a good pair of doctors on board.

With Luna, I began the run to build Mozzie’s Badger suit. We were still in the testing phase for the Gorilla suits, so building his now would be a waste of resources until all the bugs were worked out. Luna was fascinated with alien machines, and I knew she was hooked on becoming an engineer like Gabby.

I was on the bridge when we exited subspace in the system. As the reports rolled in, I watched the scanners update my station. I was curious if this system also had stealthed ships. The system didn’t have much value beyond raw materials. No habitable planets, and the planets with precious metals had too heavy gravity to use anything but bots to mine. The Tirani shared the station in this system with three other races.

The Tirani had seven of their mercenary frigates and twelve corvettes around the station. They were here for protection but could also be contracted out. That was their primary export, military power focused mostly on infantry. The Squirrel were one of the other races that maintained a presence here. The Squirrel were free traders but did not often allow others in their three inhabited systems. They preferred to trade at neutral stations. This was due to conflict with humans.

The Brotherhood had struck them a few times with exploratory fleets for the purpose of forcing technological development. It was also supposed to force the Squirrel race into isolation, but the opposite occurred. The Squirrel traveled wider and traded more than any other alien race I was aware of in the region to bring advancement to their homeworld. They were smart as well and concluded that humans were responsible for attacks on their homeworld even though the ships the Brotherhood had used were of alien design.

I wanted to do an information exchange with the Squirrel, and they didn’t trade with humans. My plan was to get acclimated on the station and then use Mozzie as an intermediary. Tora or Saabir would have been better, but humans had genetically engineered the Wren. I didn’t want to risk having them negotiate. Mozzie was smart but no engineer, so it could be a stupid move on my part.

The other two races on the station were the Mourau and Sydron. The Sydron were a quadrupedal reptilian race with a matriarchal society. They were exceptional asteroid miners, according to the Brotherhood data. The Mourau were humanoid and with enough surgery, could pass for humans. They were one of the first races humanity encountered among the stars, but they were not space-faring. Since they resembled humans and had a lower intelligence threshold than humans, they apparently got a pass by the Brotherhood as being a non-threat.

That was a mistake as they had spread among the stars as quickly as humanity had. They now had small enclaves such as the one on this station by purchasing passage on human ships. I now knew why it was allowed after reading the Brotherhood reports decoded by Edmund. The Brotherhood used the Mourau as information collectors in human and alien space. They were not part of the Brotherhood but a gear in their machine. The enclave on this station served as a middleman trader for races that were hostile to each other. I assumed they were making huge profits by playing both sides.

The plot was finally up, and there was a stealthed ship. Just one, and it was Sylvan. The frigging space elves were here. At least they were not yet aware of Void Phoenix’s disguise. I considered my options. I decided we would risk it, but all the crew that the Sylvan knew about were going to remain on board. I informed the crew of the space elf ship and to be prepared to depart anytime.

The station design was interesting as we approached. The top was a 28 square-kilometer solar harvester facing the sun. It kept the station dark except for a few arms that extended beyond the shield. I learned the reason why shortly as Haily informed me of the dangerous radiation coming from the sun. Our hull completely negated the radiation, but this sun was extremely active.

This time when we docked, half of our marines would be on duty the entire time, rotating 12-hour shifts to keep us on high alert. If all went well, we would be here for five days and then go and exchange for the subspace data I was seeking from the Squirrel.