Nathan Lowell - Quarter Share

Company planets suck. I signed. What else could I do?

Three days later, a courier delivered the urn containing my mother’s ashes. I placed it on the coffee table. She’d liked coffee, and we’d spent a lot of time sitting there with our feet up, talking-mugs of fragrant brew in hand.

That was it. Nobody else showed up, not my mates from the enclave, not company people, not Mom’s colleagues from the university-nobody.

To be fair, I didn’t have a lot of friends to begin with. I’d read about best friends in novels and such, but I’d never actually had one. Angela Markova had been the closest thing when I was a kid, but she left Neris when her father took a job with another company at the end of fifth form. I’d never really found anyone to take her place.

Something about being booted off-planet made you an instant pariah-no need to add water. I’d seen it before when people ran afoul of the company. Within ninety planetary days, I’d have to be gone. Nobody would bother to reach out to me in the short time I had left.

For more than a week I went through the motions of what would be considered a normal life. Eventually, the voice in my head stopped saying, “I can’t believe she’s dead,” and shifted to, “Now what am I going to do?”

In a month I was supposed to start at the university. Growing up with a professor, I really didn’t have a choice. We’d had several long, and occasionally heated, discussions on the subject. I hadn’t wanted to make a decision about what to do with the rest of my life with so much of it left ahead of me. Over time, I’d come to believe there might be some value in getting a degree in plant biology. If nothing else, signing up for college had gotten my mother to stop bugging me about it.

As a company planet, the University of Neris restricted enrollment to employees and their families, but even so it had a surprisingly good curriculum and one of the best biology departments in the quadrant. Its reputation was bolstered by being on a planet full of granapple vineyards. The university’s standing, combined with the corporate incentive provided to dependents of university staff, made U of N a good option.

I just didn’t know what to do with myself when that option expired.

By the end of the second week, it became clear that I had a serious problem. Passage off-planet cost more than I had-a lot more-several kilocreds more. I couldn’t afford to buy passage, and I couldn’t stay. NerisCo would repatriate me to the nearest non-company system, Siren, but they would charge me for the ticket and I’d start my new life deep in debt.

I needed work that would pay to get me off-planet. Unfortunately, I could only see two options left: enlisting in the military, or signing on with one of the merchant vessels that visited periodically. The Galactic Marines recruited aggressively on Neris. There were always kids looking for any way to get out from underneath the company, but I knew I could never be a marine. I lacked the soldierly instinct and that whole killing and dying thing wasn’t for me, so my only real choice was the Union Hall. I confess I really didn’t want to go there either, but beggars have few choices.

The next morning, I gathered my courage and trammed over to Neris Port. It was one of those perfect, bright, warm days when the soft breezes carried the spicy, tart smell of granapples out of the vineyards and into every corner of the town. The delicate bouquet covered even the hot-circuit board smell of the tram. It made everything seem too cheerful and pleasant. I hated it.

The Union Hall occupied a refurbished hangar at the edge of the shuttle port. When I stepped in out of the sun, the cavernous hall felt cool and smelled faintly of an institutional-grade floor wax. My footfalls echoed from the far wall as I walked past a row of data terminals and a long counter with five workstations, only one of which seemed to be in use. Aside from the functionary behind the counter, a slightly scary looking older fem with an artificial left arm, I was the only person there. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the light level, and by then I had reached her station.

“Whaddya want, kid?” Her voice bounced off the ceiling.

I crossed to her position at the counter, noted her nametag said “O’Rourke.” I smiled tentatively at her and said, “I need to get off-planet.”

“Son, this is the hirin’ hall. The ticket office is down thata way. Just keep goin’. Ya can’t miss it.” She smiled a bit nastily I thought and pointed with an artificial finger.

“I can’t afford a ticket. I need to get a job that will give me transport.”

O’Rourke looked hard at me. “Ya need a lot more’n that, I’d wager. Ya lookin’ to hire onto a ship?”

I nodded dumbly.

“Ya ever sign The Articles before, kid?”

I could hear the capital letters in The Articles as she spoke the words. I shook my head.

O’Rourke rubbed the back of her neck with her good hand and cast a why me look up at the ceiling. Finally, she sighed. “Okay, kid, everybody has a story. What’s yours?”

I didn’t know how much to tell her, so I gave her the rough outline. “I was supposed to start at the university next month. My mom is-was-a professor there, but she died in a flitter crash. Now the company says I have to get off-planet because she’s no longer employed, and I’m no longer a dependent.”

O’Rourke stared for a moment but then something changed in her expression. “Good story. Where’s yer card?”

I pulled out my identification and slotted it into her reader. My particulars popped up on the display. O’Rourke examined it, scrolling and tsk’ing as she scrolled. She’d only checked through date of birth, and education level, before starting to shake her head. “Forget it.” Her voice was not unkind but she also didn’t look at me. “No specialty and you’re just barely eighteen. Technically, I could offer The Articles, but we got no open berths for quarter shares just now.”

I wondered what language she was speaking for a half dozen heartbeats before she noticed my complete lack of comprehension. She explained again, slowly, “You’re old enough to be contracted, but ya need to have a ship willin’ to hire ya-give ya a berth-before ya can get a job. With this skill level, that means somethin’ entry-level, what we call a quarter share, and nobody’s got an open one on file.” She pointed at the data screens mounted on the wall. “We have three ships in port now, and two inbound over the next week or so. Only one with a postin’ is the Cleveland Maru but that’s a full share berth and you’re not qualified.”

I examined the crawl carefully and it seemed to confirm what she had said. The listing showing CleveMar had an AG2 position, whatever that was.

“What’s all this stuff mean?” I pointed at the display. My brain had already shut down, although I hadn’t realized it, and my mouth engaged without conscious control.

She considered me for a tick, and then shrugged. “Sit down, kid. I’ll show ya a few things.” She took me to one of the data-port alcoves and demonstrated the use of the terminal. It allowed spacers to scroll through the various jobs, ships, and companies. I’d seen help wanted posts on NerisNet before, but this was a whole different bag of granapples. The display showed ship names, company affiliations, size, cargo capacity, propulsion systems, and even a list of the berths. The default setting showed only the openings, but with a little manipulation, I could find out how many positions of each kind were on every ship.

After a few ticks of walking me through the controls, O’Rourke went back to her place at the counter. I could see what she meant about the open slots. I went through each ship’s particulars. Her summary of the situation seemed to be depressingly accurate. As large as the ships were, they didn’t need a lot of crew. Out of that small number, the entry-level quarter share ones accounted for only a tiny fraction.