Kagen
“THIS IS YOUR QUARTERS,” Melie told him. “As the Crew Green, you get 3-B. You’ve been Crew Green before.”
Kagen nodded. “For two months. But I remember the drill. First out of bed, scrub the head before anyone else is awake, respond to all alarms, make sure the crew unit is secure; if there’s an emergency, make sure everyone in the unit is in shipsuits. I am Green, I am expendable.”
Melie said, “You and me both. When you’re crew, you never get to forget what it means to be Green.”
“You’re doing Green duty in Crew One?”
“That’s not the half of it. You’re probably going to be Green for six months, until one of your current Blues decides not to stick it out for the next promotion. At which point you’ll bump up and the new Three Gold will jump at the chance to be Two Green. But me? I’m looking at up to three years as One Green, because Joze is only two years in as Two Gold. And there are only two of us. With three years left on his eligibility, he’s not going to leave until he makes first mate or runs out his clock. And I don’t move up until he makes officer or leaves.”
“And we have a brand new first mate who has five years to promote to captain, and a relatively new captain.”
Melie nodded.
“But you’re Crew One.”
She grinned. “That I am. And you know I’m sticking. I want to make captain here. But either way, I’ll qualify as captain and do the licensing, and if I run out my clock, I’ll buy my own ship. And I could be the one who’s in the right place at the right time to be captain here.”
“So you did the full Crew Two run,” he said.
She nodded.
“Any advice?”
“Probably not any that you need. Most of the crew in Two is not pushing for captain. Most of them haven’t done the investments. They love spending time in rec, and spending their downtime on the fun worlds having fun. So you study like a beast for the exams, and you take them every single time you’re eligible. Aim to step-promote every year—if you go faster, you won’t have as much money saved up. Do all the owner-recommended investments, live cheap, and at bare minimum you’ll get out of here with enough money to make a good down payment on your ship. What you do from there is up to you.”
“And best case...”
“Best case, you become my first mate, and when I move on to my own ship, you become Longview’s captain.”
Other members of Crew Two started coming in. They would wash before their meal, then go up to the Mess Hall to eat together.
Kagen knew the people in Two, but only as an underling. As Green, he was still an underling, but now he was their underling.
Mash was the new Two Gold, Taryn was the new Two Silver, and Lindar, Porth, and Aya were all Blues. Each of them touched fingertips with him as they came in, and each said, “Welcome to Two, greenie.” Each then touched fingertips with Melie and said, “Do well in One.”
It was the way all crew got welcomed into a new unit, and the way all promoted crew left. It always seemed casual, but it wasn’t. The words were precisely the same, and they hid the motivations, prejudices, and passions of those who said them.
Incoming crew frequently knew—or at least knew about—their seniors. Existing unit crew knew about the reputations of incoming juniors. But living with them in the close quarters of the unit, eating with them at every meal of every day, spending recreational or study time with them, they would be forced into a closeness that Kagen found difficult to manage.
He had dealt with the issue by burying himself in study, working for promotion points, and taking every grade exam the instant he became eligible. It let him avoid people as much as possible, and the distance he kept had made it easier for him to keep the distance necessary to be effective in Gold. He’d never had friends he had to discipline, because he didn’t have friends. No one ever accused him of favoritism, because he didn’t have favorites.
He hoped that same would work to his advantage in Two.
Mash, as the new Gold, said, “Present your connector.”
Kagen reached out with his right hand. The pale circle of luminescent ink—something exclusively used by the crew of the Longview—marked the location of embedded data-transfer nanoclusters that allowed the instant exchange of information.
“Your Level Two Green Packet and Orders,” Mash said, and the two clasped right hands. Their connectors linked up, and Kagen instantly had full access to his orders, his room assignment, the crew-level promotion sheets of the people in his unit, and his schedule.
“I’m missing my list of recommended investments,” he said.
Mash’s face darkened, and his gaze flicked from Melie back to Kagen. “You’ll get them when you need them, greenie.”
Mash, he realized, was a man who needed to be the biggest bull in the room.
Kagen didn’t miss the expressions on either Melie’s or Mash’s face as they stared each other down.
“So. You’re sticking me with your... protégé?” Mash asked, and his emphasis on the word suggested a relationship considerably less professional than mentor and student.
Melie stared right back. “Are you already failing at your job requirements as Two Gold?”
She outranked him. She clearly didn’t like him. He clearly didn’t like her—this was information that had never filtered down to Crew Three.
If Melie had time to force the issue with Mash, his dislike for her would get itself transferred to Kagen with the same speed that his Green packet had arrived.
And Melie wasn’t going to be around to help him deal with Mash. She was going to be in her own unit, busy dealing with her own stint as Green.
The Dream flickered before his eyes. Mash could ruin him—Kagen had never sabotaged anyone in Three, because he didn’t like or dislike his underlings. But he knew how sabotage could be accomplished easily within any portion of the three years Mash could remain as Crew Two Gold.
Kagen had to side with his crew leader, no matter how much he didn’t want to.
“Not a problem,” he told Mash. “I wasn’t planning on wasting my money gambling on something speculative anyway. I just wanted to see what was on the sheet.”
He saw the look of shock on Melie’s face, the look of satisfaction on Mash’s.
And in the moment he said it, he realized that he had no other way to get the recommended investments if Mash didn’t pass them to him. Packets were coded. No crew member could share his or accidentally pass it to someone else.
Mash would hold Kagen to his word... he’d said that he wasn’t interested. Mash—biggest bull in the room—would remind Kagen of his words if ever he tried to recant. So Kagen would lose up to three prime years of building his capital to buy his ship that he could not get back, and the early years were the most important. Compound interest made early investments vastly more profitable than investments made late.
And just as bad, if the look on Melie’s face was any indication, he had just murdered all hope of her recommending him again as the two of them moved up the promotion ladder. He’d just spit on her for championing him in front of a man who was not just her subordinate, but her enemy.
Third, he’d put himself on the wrong side of the career fence, marked himself to those others in his unit who were on the promotion track as light crew who didn’t understand the value of this ship, this job, this opportunity.
Worst of all, he knew why he’d done it. The pathetic voice of We that still wailed inside of him, that still bent before trouble rather than standing against it, had cried out that he was about to be destroyed.
And he had listened.
He’d betrayed his ally, had sided with his enemy, had claimed We over I.
He would have done anything to have that moment back. But the moment was gone, the damage done.
He’d made an unrecoverable mistake.
A man who could not hold onto his principles against the threat of disapproval was not a man who would ever be captain. Not of th
is ship.
Not of any ship.