Chapter 45 Day 71 It's A Small Nebula
The days have slipped by with hardly a mark. The drones went to pieces and then back together again shiny and new – the engineering workshop fabricating and replicating new parts for the drones while Rafe, Kie and Lili fabricated advanced sensor chips and control modules for them. And for the less mechanically inclined, we've refurbished several cabins and helped Dyn re-plumb some water and sanitary lines between the hulls as well.
Min never said anything more about the true log nor a fifth shipmate, and as far as I know, has yet to further explore either the qi or the fabric of what the Shipmates left behind. I'm certain she hasn't abandoned her plans, but seems to be taking a more relaxed and thoughtful approach to her search. Not that she has any choice at the moment. Zilantre will be the first test of what her future plans look like. I've no idea what they are.
Our relationship is cordial, but there are limits, likely for the best. We mostly talk ship business when alone, though with others, we can talk more about ourselves and our lives. I think the gang's come around to accepting that we're merely shipmates and partners in the operation of the ship. They had to see, on reflection, that we'd be fools to be lovers even if it were a possibility – as lovers, I'd look to be some sort of a knave and she, a fool. She was no fool.
We're fast approaching the Anjur Passage, a little more than half way to Zilantre. The passage is a thin section of the Helgot Drift, a vast shell of dust and asteroid reefs that half encircles the massive Ninth Star. Over the last 20,000 years, the passage has been cleared of all of the known large asteroids and meteors by the Patrol Navigation Section, allowing ships to traverse the drift at interstellar speeds.
Gas and dust are found everywhere in the Nine Star Nebula and the drifts are merely heavier concentrations laced with reefs – thick clusters of planet to fist sized rocks – and streams of rocks and thick clouds of dust. At low interplanetary speeds, the rocks and dust present a fairly minimal danger to navigation, especially if you've a chart. But at interstellar speeds, which greatly compresses distances and makes mostly empty space a whole lot denser, a ship, unless it has several far ranging drones ahead of it, runs the risk of finding itself unable to avoid a meteor stream and must chance running through it and risk striking a rock that can't be dodged or destroyed by the shipboard anti-meteor missiles. Without the Anjur Passage, we'd have to decelerate and pick our way through the drift, and accelerate again on the far side, using far more fuel and making the voyage significantly longer.
Because it's a fixed point of navigation between Azminn and Aticor, we're now encountering Azminn bound ships within radio range every couple of days. This evening I was sitting with most of the off duty and awake crew members listening to Illy, Lilm and Myes playing their strings and wind instruments with Riv occasionally singing rather risqué choruses, when I got a call on my com link. It was from Molaye on watch.
'We've got first contact with an approaching ship,' she said. 'Not in com range yet, but will be shortly.'
'Thank you Molaye. You can make the announcement.'
That announcement broke up the concert. Even with the approach to Anjur, contact with other ships are rare and fleeting and would be entirely absent on our Anjur to Zilantre run until we neared Zilantre itself. The crew hurried to the various radio rooms and I retired to my cabin where I called up the com panel on my desktop.
I stared at the screen with a start when the ship's ID code became readable, The Crimson Star of the TriStellar Line bound for Sanre-tay. Last time I heard from my sister, she was captain of the Crimson Star, though it was in an Aticor planetary run at the time. The official, and the unofficial gossip channels opened up as soon as radio signals reached us.
'Greetings Lost Star. Litang here, captain of the Crimson Star. You wouldn't happen to be the Lost Star of the Night Hawk Line by chance?' asked a voice and static laced image from the official channel, which I recognized even through the static of the connection as my sister, Celin Litang. 'And is Wil Litang still on board?'
'Aye, formerly of the Night Hawk Line. I'll connect you to Captain Litang...' said Molaye before I cut in.
'I have it Molaye,' I said grabbing the channel and switching it to a private connection. 'Celin, I can't believe we're meeting like this. It's indeed, a small universe!'
'Well met, Willy! It is wonderful to see even your fuzzy face this deep in the middle of nowhere, so far from your usual orbit. And was I hearing right, did she just say Captain Litang?' she exclaimed.
'Ah, yes she did. Captain Miccall died about a year ago. But what are you doing here, big sister? Last I heard you'd settled into a nice, steady Aticor planetary belt run.'
'Don't change the subject Willy. Tell me all, since this link won't last half an hour and you've more of a tale to tell than I have!' she exclaimed, adding, 'I'm going to need time to realize my little brother has grown up to be a ship captain, and decades ahead of the schedule you'd charted for me the last time we crossed orbits...'
Celin is twelve years older than me and has been a captain for almost two decades with the vast TriStellar line that runs liners in and between the Azminn, Aticor and Apier systems. She'd been mostly operating in the Aticor system for the last five years. The last time we'd been able to get together was seven years ago when her Azminn run ship was refitting and she was home on leave when the Lost Star happened to call on Faelrain.
We tried to catch up with as much as our news as possible in the short time we'd be able to punch through laser communications due to our combined velocities and the ionized shells about our ships. I gave her a brief account of my appointment and our current situation and she updated me on hers – she was bound for Sanre-tay for the same reason we were fleeing it – the collapse of trade in the Azminn system. The Crimson Star was a smaller ship than the usual TriStellar interstellar liner on that run, part of the adjustments the shipping companies were making due to the trade collapse. Our precious minutes flew by and too soon the static was taking her away from me. Over this static at the end, she promised to send a radio packet to Zilantre for me with suggested agents and prospects of work in the Aticor system. We wished each other fair orbits while we still had a signal and talked until it faded away.