ISO A4 format - Freelance Traveller

Critics’ Corner
(Continued from page 27)
“Hmmmm. S’winnin’?” Dave asked as he pulled
off the plain white wrapper that always made the purchase
of an Everfresh such a mystery. He was pleased
to find that this time it was his favorite, Philly Cheese
Steak ; microfilaments in the wrapper heating the
thing through while he attempted to open it.
“The First Officer here has only eighteen, while
I’m down to two hundred forty one.” Tam replied,
slightly perturbed.
Milo won smartly in just two more throws.
“Throw like a girl, my ass!” Tam said, draining
the last of her Hephaestus.
Hertzog smiled, face reddening.
Murmisagli dug around in the Beer Locker for
some time, eventually coming out with a pair of large
green bottles of Robot Steam, with the image of a big,
rusty cog on the label.
“No more Olde Republic, but I think you oughtta
like the Robot here….Smooth and strong, like a
horse—or a robot, I guess.” she grinned, deftly popping
the cap from both bottles on the table edge before
passing one over to Milo.
She turned to Dave, who’d already eaten half his
sandwich.
“Dave, honey, J’like a beer while I’m up?” she
asked.
“Nah‘tanks.” the older Vasqes brother said,
“Don’t drink.”
The pair sat down at one of the battered tables.
Dave, sitting at a table near the door, finished his
sandwich then had a couple of smokes, since, as a
holdover from Pre-Atomic times, you couldn’t smoke
in a weapon turret. Once finished, he got up and left;
leaving Tam and Milo alone.
Hertzog took a sip of the Robot Steam, surprised
by its alcohol content; higher even than the Olde Republic
he’d passed up earlier. Rocking the folding
chair back on two legs, Milo pushed his crush cap
back, and, scratching the side of his aquiline nose,
asked “So just how does a ten year old girl come to
pilot a Starship?”
In the cargo bay, with all of the work of moving
and performing routine maintenance on the trio of
Mosquito Rigs finally completed, Brodie, Thom, and
the other roustabouts decided to forego going all the
way back to the Crew Lounge for their breaks, and
instead dug a roundball from one of the lockers for a
pick-up game of basketball; a half court, four on four
game loaded with more than its share of personal
fouls dealt-out, for the most part, by hard charging
Thom Vasquez to the point where it seemed as if he
were channeling the spirits of Atomic Era basketball
greats, Elvin Hayes and Bill Laimbeer simultaneously.
Tam took a chug from the wide mouthed Robot
bottle.
“My father—our father,” she corrected, “worked
for the Packet Service. Not one of those that’re run by
some Megacorporation, like Local Bubble, or Inter
System, but the actual Imperial Packet Service.
Twenty years and Daddy retired with a fairly generous
pension, as I understand. I was pretty young at the
time—five or six—so some of details are pretty
sketchy now.”
“At some point we’d moved off Holt and onto
some old junker Auspicious Venture-class merchanteer—just
like the Waffles, here.” She rapped on their
table with her knuckles. “Or almost, anyway.”
“We were all there of course: Mother, Daddy, my
Uncle Tiger, me, my sister Sarah, and my little
brother Henry—what an absolute nut!” she laughed.
“A merchant family! So you’re a Gypsy then?”
Milo asked before taking another drink of the Robot
Steam.
Tam grew stern and pulled away, “No Milo, a
‘Merchant Family’. ‘Gypsies’ are what they call us
when they’re reporting on something they don’t agree
with, or wanna sensationalize….” Tam accidentally
hit her bottle and it crashed to the deck, exploding..
“Oh fuck!” Tam fumed at her clumsiness as she
watched the cleanbot efficiently wrangle the mess.
In the next few minutes the pair was busy interrupting
one another as each tried to apologize to the
other, until they both started laughing at the ridiculousness
of it.
“Anyway, “ Tam continued, “by eight I was doing
little chores around the Black Betty. By ten I’d started
piloting her. Dad had originally wanted Sarah to pilot;
(Continued on page 29)
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