The Starhopper's Handbook
Chapter 1
Persi navigated the massive lobby of the unfamiliar station. She watched as countless people quickly moved and shoved their way through the dense, heavy crowds. She had never seen so many non-humans. Shouting echoed from a nearby ship bay. It sounded like a dispute over fuel calculations. Thick, dark smoke billowed out from another bay a few hundred meters down. Alarms followed, but travel and commerce continued. She didn't know if interstellar stations were always like this or if this was just an especially frantic day.
Persi peered down at the documents she had been sent the paylang prior. Sol-Secondary, Epsilon-71. That was where she needed to be before liftoff. Persi had found this job a standard ago when browsing some less than legal forums. The pay was fine, and the accommodations were subpar, but that wasn't what Persi really cared about. The stint was long, the distance was great, and you couldn't beat the obscurity. That's what she was after–obscurity. Persi figured the ideal scenario for her was to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. She counted on finding this on the… what was it called again? Persi checked the documentation, searching for the name of the vessel she'd be spending the next few standards on. Dead Reckoning. Persi rolled her eyes. What an obnoxious name for a privateering vessel. It was highly irregular, really. How little information she had here. Persi had no way of knowing the standard procedure, but any work she'd done previously would've come with a stack of information, agreements, and dotted lines to sign. This was a one page document with scraps of useful information sprinkled among spelling errors. She read into the ship's information a bit. A Toren Carevall owned it.
Persi pondered over the kind of person that Toren could be. He was a criminal, after all. She wondered about the kind of childhood one endures to end up running contraband and untaxed trade for a living. Did he know his parents? Were they criminals too? Did they attend services like she and her parents did? The words she'd been looking for dangled above her head.
“EPSILON”
Written in New Latin Standard, followed by a dozen translations in far smaller fonts, the illuminated words hung above a spacious passageway. She stared down the corridor. This was a single concourse–of a single terminal–yet it was larger than any station she'd ever seen before. The scale of it all made her feel microscopic. Epsilon 71 she recalled, meaning there were at least 71 bays in this concourse alone. She choked down the knot in her throat. The uncountable crowd dwarfed her. She hadn't left her home solar system before, and the scale of the space in which she found herself made her wonder if she'd made the right choices that found her here. She batted these thoughts from her mind. Of course she made the right choice–it was the only choice. She decided against taking the train about to depart, making its last call. There was something about walking to the bay on her own two feet that offered her a sense of control in a position where she had none.
Persi could account for most of what she passed. A concourse of this size needed fueling gantries and maintenance crews to support them, food and bathrooms engineered for a dozen anatomies, and help desks for the lost and underdocumented. It needed low-tier CHR security in the name of peacekeeping, and currency exchange fleecing the baffling few that only valued physical tender. Fine. Those are fixtures of a place for passing through. What she didn't account for were the all-hour pharmacies offering the kinds of medications no doctor would prescribe. Glimmering hotels adorned with warm-toned bulbs that spelled out names like THE STARGAZER towered over the hallway that appeared more like a city street at this scale. Brothels, loan agencies, and guns-for-hire–these sights surprised her. These were fixtures of a place where people stayed. Entire lives took place here in the spaces between worlds–and nobody seemed to think that was strange.
“Hey beautiful, where ya headed?” a human woman's voice called out.
Persi tried to keep her head down when walking through the chaotic midpoint of the concourse. So it took her a moment to realize the query was directed at her. Persi met the woman's gaze with an anxious wordlessness. Her outfit was–in every sense of the word–breathtaking. A shimmering turquoise bodysuit glistened in response to the electrified bulbs of noble gasses in the window behind her. It appeared impossibly tight, to a degree that Persi felt a gasp forming in her lungs just looking at her. She was, however, indisputably beautiful. Persi envied her sleek platinum hair that framed the sharp, symmetrical face she wore. Her piercing blue eyes adorned with extravagant makeup made Persi feel like she was in the presence of a celebrity.
“Got a few? I'll make it worth your while,” she uttered, eying Persi up and down.
Naive to exchanges like these, Persi laughed. She laughed. It wasn't that she found humor in the questions or the woman who posed them–she was simply at a loss. The nameless woman started toward her, chipping away at the gap between them.
Persi realized she must've made a mistake somewhere to let this exchange go on so long.
“I'm okay. Thank you. Wellness be with you,” she said, after taking a moment to gather herself.
The woman fired back with a look of displeasure–akin to disgust, but closer to frustration.
“Then keep it moving?” She spat, with an inflection that made the phrase sound like a question.
Persi found momentum again, rapidly erasing herself from the encounter she inflicted on the woman. What a sorry start to her new life, she thought, chuckling again. Her interest was nothing more than a sales pitch, but still–Persi couldn't help but feel flattered. She called her “beautiful.” People didn't call her beautiful back home. They mostly called her “Persi” or “Persephone” if she hadn't yet had the chance to correct them. But the flattery didn't survive a second thought. She'd been picked out of the crowd because she looked lonely. Desperate. The woman was right, Persi thought. She was desperate.
Persi regretted not taking the train. 71 bays was a lot, to be sure. But it sounded like a manageable trek. But the distance from the Epsilon sign to her new employers was far greater than the width of 71 bays added together. After all, she hadn't accounted for the space to be interrupted so frequently by the likes of nightclubs and callhouses. She figured there must've been a way to get onto the train at this point. But the signage was unclear and overwhelming, and she'd sooner throw herself out of an airlock than ask a stranger for help. Distracted by idle thoughts of exhaustion, and whether anyone had died of heat stroke on a space station before, her steps were interrupted by an obstruction. A person.
“Sketha-roh!” they grunted at her through a polysynthetic breathing mask.
Persi didn't have to speak to Heptaphagean to know she'd pissed them off. She noticed the dozens of small canisters that had tumbled out of the person's grasp. Feeling awful, she bent down to help, gathering each chrome cylinder she could find. The countless shoes, wheels, boots, and appendages that drove by had kicked and scattered each container in a different direction. Still, she managed to snatch them up. Helping this stranger made her feel good, even though it was her fault they had dropped the canisters in the first place. When she had found all she could, she sought their owner.
Standing on the tips of her toes, Persi only now realized how much shorter she was than the average person here.
“Hey! Hello! Um, I have your uh, I have your things!” she shouted to no response.
She circled the area. She circled a few more times, each more frantic, more hurried than the last. She doubled back, walked a dozen bays in the wrong direction. All she found was the same endlessly flowing, uncaring swarm of people that seemed to come before. She hated that she had to do it, but she asked around. She approached the security guards that seemed to have nothing to do. She questioned the smaller vendors devoid of patrons. But no one seemed to notice where the Heptaphagean had gone, and her vague description of them proved unhelpful. She didn't know what to do with the containers–nor what they contained–so she dropped them in her bag, hoping she'd find their owner before departing. A feeling of unease washed over as soon as the canisters had settled on her person. Suddenly her bag carried a weight exceeding that of its contents. Not yours, not ours, not his. The doctrine played back in her head like a song she couldn't stop humming. She told herself these weren't her thoughts, but echoes of someone else's. She didn't find that self-assurance as comforting as the idea of returning them to their owner. But she was exhausted, growing weak, and almost late for work.
Not long after her failed search, having waded through an ocean of travellers, she had arrived at Epsilon-71. Following the anticipation that built inside her as the numbers began to climb into the upper 60s, relief came over her as she read the number “71”. She examined the ship that occupied its space, the so-called Dead Reckoning. As silly as the name was, Persi found some appreciation for it. A navigation technique used to estimate the unknown location of a vessel starting from a known location and working backwards with speed and direction. Dead Reckoning. Persi was a navigator afterall, and this was a nod to her craft.
Persi was no expert in engineering. Hell, she couldn't even tell you the manufacturer, but the ship looked fairly unassuming. It was, however, massive; at least by her account. Smaller than a commercial liner and larger than any personal vehicle, it sat squarely in the category of “huge.” Far from where she stood, behind the bulk of the vehicle, sat two massive jump thrusters–one looking worse for wear, the other nearly brand new. The hull of the beast wore a subtle shade of tangerine. The color choice appeared to be a fruitless attempt at hiding countless laps of burn damage. Looking around at the vehicles that occupied nearby bays designated for the same size class, it became abundantly clear that the ship she was about to board–soon to call home–was a piece of shit. Before she could make any more judgments about her new home and workplace, the inner door of the airlock gave way. Her nerves crept up on her. The outer door swung open. Her racing mind was brought to a halt by the person standing at the threshold. They couldn't have been taller than a meter, but their presence was palpable. The small creature removed their mask and hopped off the last step leading out of the ship.
“Howdy!” they shouted, much louder than they needed to.
“Hey there,” Persi responded at an appropriate volume.
“What? Hang on.”
They removed four plugs of different sizes from holes on the sides of their head. Persi was not well-traveled, but she recognized this person to be Gnoecian. One of 20 or so billion semi-aquatic bipeds from the planet of Gnoecia, roughly 900 lightlaps away. She was disappointed in herself that she didn't know more.
“You must be Persi!” Their outstretched arm remained fixed and pointed towards her. She shook it like she would when meeting a human. She noticed a look of satisfaction on their face, as if relieved that they had performed the foreign tradition correctly. Persi didn't know how Gnoecians greeted one another.
“Yes. It's very nice to meet you. What's your name?” Persi desperately hoped her discomfort wasn't apparent to them.
“Call me Cal!”
Persi felt relieved. A normal name. Relief turned to guilt when she realized how terracentric that was.
“Your NLS sounds great, by the way.” Persi offered.
“My NLS? Oh. Yeah, everyone speaks Nelse. Can't get around without it. One of the consequences of working under a humanity-driven intergalactic trading system, we've all gotta make compromises to work with your archaic vocal organs.” Cal jeered. Persi got the impression that Cal didn't speak earnestly most of the time–a quality she wasn't used to in her peers.
“So, obviously, I'm one of the mechanics on The Reck,” Cal said, gesturing to his garb, which to his credit, was clearly that of someone who fixed things all day. Thick layers of grease, flux, and oil coated his once-red coveralls.
“And you're doing navigation, right? Very cool stuff. Baustin will probably want to meet you as soon as you're able, but I can show you around. And you, Persi–you've done interstellar travel before? What am I saying, of course you have! I'm sure Toren was impressed with you. He's very picky. Well, picky's not the word. Discerning? Exclusive, maybe? Either way, you get the idea. Something about you caught his eye. If Toren has any talent to speak of, it's finding good people. And I don't imagine you're an exception!”
Cal spoke like he could do it forever. So long as he drew breath, he could find something to say. He walked around the ship, making what looked to be the final checks before take off. Persi followed close behind, observing his work. She recalled the question in his monologue before distracting himself with his duties.
“Well, I have done work for interstellar vehicles before, but that kind of thing is typically done remotely these days. Of course, this isn't a typical vessel.”
Cal chuckled, “Right you are.”
He continued measuring, wrenching, and finagling. It looked like the kind of work you'd do to seem busy when there's little meaningful to do. His work began to slow when he thought of something new to say.
“So you've never been on an interstellar vehicle for navigation work? What about school?”
Persi pressed her lips together tight. She knew what was coming; and she dreaded it.
“No. I studied in-system. Venus has the best navigation school in the CHR.”
Cal hesitated, “Vacation? Study abroad? Visits with family or friends?”
Persi fell silent. Here it comes, she thought.
“So are you saying that you, Persi, personally, have never been to another star?”
“Well, no, but I'm more than qualified. I've done work like this before, I'm just never on the ship.”
Persi paused. She felt sweat seep from her palms.
“I actually think that my experience lends itself tremendously well to this job. I've been trained to work under extreme time constraints, and I am used to worrying about way more than one vessel.”
Cal listened, appearing skeptical.
“I'm sure you're qualified, I'm certainly not here to vet you.” Cal emptied his hands of his instruments, filling and closing his toolbag.
“But you aren't a Terrarian or anything, right? You aren't going to preach to us about how we should all go back to the planets we came from? That the resources our stars provide are all we deserve?”
Persi tried not to correct his misconception of what a Terrarian was, and tried even harder not to be offended, but instead answered his question.
“No. I am not a Terrarian. For one, I just told you I've been to other planets. A terrarian doesn't leave their home world. I wouldn't be standing in front of you if I were Terrarian.”
Cal struck a nerve with that last line of questioning. Persi hadn't ever known a Gnoecian before, but even she could tell from the look on his face that he knew it too.
“Have you met a Terrarian before, Cal?” She regretted her tone as it left her. But conversations like these had a way of setting her off.
“Not to my knowledge, no,” he responded.
Persi sank a little. Cal wasn't being cruel. He had no way of knowing the weight of the words he carried.
“Sorry, I didn't mean that like a ‘all untravelled humans are Terrarians’ kind of thing.”
“I'm sure you didn't.”
“I just don't know anyone who has never been to space before!”
“I've been to space, Cal. We're in space now.”
Cal chuckled. “I'm sure it feels that way.”