Mutiny in Space Read Online Free PDF Page A

errors, space debris, and a thousand other hazards.
    To summarize, everything in space wanted to kill us, and we were always aware of that.
    We spent a lot of time in space because the
Rusalka
took unusually long trips, and we would spend three or four weeks in transit at a time. Everyone called human-inhabited space the Thousand Worlds, but only something like one to five percent of stars had planets capable of supporting human life. So human-inhabited space really ought to have been called the Hundred Thousand Worlds, but I suppose that was too much of a mouthful. To get from one colony planet to another, the
Rusalka
had to hyperjump through ten or twenty or even thirty barren systems first, like a kid jumping over a stream using stepping stones.
    However, just because a system was barren didn’t mean it was uninhabited. Sometimes enterprising merchants set up refueling platforms, or the sort of space stations where they offered goods and services that were illegal on most of the Thousand Worlds. Miners dug out rare ore from asteroids, and a few enterprising colonists carved out tunnels on barren moons and built elaborate hydroponic setups. There were a lot of little colonies out there like that, usually founded by religious fundamentalists or political extremists of one kind or another.
    There were also a lot of dead little colonies like that, because, as I mentioned, space is dangerous.
    In addition to the natural hazards, pirates also liked to set up shop in deserted systems, along with slave traders based on one of the Prophet worlds. Sometimes the pirates worked for themselves, sometimes they were government-sponsored privateers, and sometimes they were Social Party revolutionaries.
    So in addition to maintenance and repair, we spent a lot of time in weapon and self-defense drills. I discovered that I wasn’t a very good shot in real life despite my years of experience playing shooters. It was a bit of a letdown, to be honest.
    Corbin had a lot of friends among the crew. He had been with Starways for a long time and served on a bunch of different ships. Our executive officer was a man named Robert Hawkins, and he looked the part of the dashing captain from a movie. Apparently he and Corbin had served together in the Coalition navy before joining Starways, and Hawkins took it upon himself to teach me how play poker. The ship’s computer operator was another old friend of Corbin’s, a man named John Murdock. He was taciturn, sullen, and ill-tempered, but very good at his job. Whenever I needed something from him, he produced it with no more complaint than a sour glare.
    The youngest technician on the ship had been Corbin’s previous apprentice, and he was named Arthur Rodriguez. He was in charge of cargo robotics, and he was close enough to my own age that we became friends. We spent a lot of time playing video games in our off hours in the technicians’ lounge. I won the racing games, but he always won the first-person shooters. Our favorite game was
Gunno-Tatakai
, probably because we were equally matched and both tended to win about half of the time.
    Overall, I liked working on the
Rusalka
, and I got along with most of the crew. They were nothing like my mom’s friends, which I appreciated. I don’t know what Corbin had told them before I came aboard, but none of them ever said a single word about the bombing or my family.
    There was only one fly in the ointment… but it was a pretty big fly.
    We all hated the captain.
    Captain Thomas Williams looked the part of a sober starliner captain— tall, a bit paunchy, with a magisterial gray beard and a dignified bearing. If he was in a movie, you would expect him to stand stoically upon the bridge while the ship went down and the women and children headed for the escape pods. The first day I met him, I expected him to stop and make a speech.
    Instead he scowled at me and glared at Corbin.
    “What’s this?” said Williams. “He looks like you, Mr. Rovio. You