Transference Station by Stephen Hunt Page A

mission her customary tour was the last thing that the captain wanted to do, but it was a skipper’s duty. Yes, duty. She kept on telling herself that her sacrifice wasn’t solely to keep Calder Durk out of the aristocratic woman’s path. Lana met a lot of people like the professor in her years crossing the galaxy. Bored, old money types from the heart of the alliance. You lived long enough through all those life extension treatments, and the cushion of compound interest inflating your bank account balance excised the need to struggle with actually making a living. All the excitement and strife of real life… removed and reduced. Seen everything, done everything and collected the t-shirt. So the Professor Sebbas of the world made up for it by searching for danger in the border systems… placing bets on risky offworld ventures as though they were tossing chips across a casino’s tables; signing up for virgin colonies; even getting involved in third world conflicts… anything to feel the fission of something new. And as for Sebba satisfying her jaded palette with the variety of someone as new to modern civilization as Calder Durk; well, the favour Lana was doing the prince-in-exile was the same one she’d extend to any of her crew. Although you’d have to be pretty damn bored and world-weary to find the novelty of Zeno, Skrat or Polter enticing. Yes, Calder was certainly better off in the engine room helping Chief Paopao. The new man on board could take a leaf out of the chief’s book for this trip, and stay safely locked up behind multiple layers of armour and shielding. Well outside of the orbit of this woman’s gravity field. If Lana could keep her tour up long enough, maybe the albino-nailed harpy would reach her treatment limit and end up having her cadaver pickled in a life support unit like DSD, then she would discover how alluring she could make herself to Lana’s poor, innocent crewmen.
    Sensors at the end of the bay detected Lana’s presence and flipped a series of arc lights thumping into life high above them, revealing a line of boxy cargo shuttles, each a dozen times larger than the professor’s exploration vessel. They were sitting on launch rails, tilted down towards individual launch tunnels for each craft. ‘These are our freight lifters. For a mission like this we’d go down first in our control shuttle, set up a landing beacon, and allow them to come in on autopilot. Any trouble on the way down – super-weather system or atmospheric interference and the like – and we’d take over the flight and guide the freight lifters in manually using telepresence.’
    Professor Sebba examined the thirty-odd vessels with a quizzical look that seemed a permanent part of her demeanour around Lana. The Rose ’s previous crew had painted the cargo lifters’ hulls with ship art, abstract ornamentation streaked with wear, part camouflage pattern and part Monet. But the illustrations were old and flaking now, too much drop burn, and nobody on board with the talent or time to lay new art down. Well, fuck her. I’ve got enough trouble keeping our engines maintained, let alone hanging off a cargo lifter with an airbrush and a couple of gallons of re-entry resistant paint. Still, it was a shame. Their faded grandeur was a standing reproach to Lana’s time as commander of the vessel.
    ‘They’re large enough, I suppose,’ said Sebba, grudgingly.
    Lana gritted her teeth. ‘Six hundred tonnes apiece fully loaded.’
    ‘Yes, that should do.’
    Should? Shit, what’s she want here? A fucking fleet jump carrier full of marines to trot after her? ‘Normally,’ said Lana, ‘when I’m setting out for a world, I like to know a little more about the real estate than just a set of jump coordinates.’
    ‘I haven’t written up the full survey study yet,’ said Sebba. ‘Paperwork is not what Abracadabra Ventures are interested in.’
    ‘Look,’ said Lana, ‘I get that DSD isn’t going to have a heap of