SHIP'S LOG: USCS FREE ENTERPRISE TSV-101701
ENTRY FOUR: EARTH DATE 20 APR 2225
REPORTING: RORY BUCHANAN, CAPTAIN
Without a ship, we wouldn't be able to work, and thus we would have no income. But thankfully, that issue more or less resolved itself. I was ordered to report to Personnel, where I met with a Senior Executive. He informed me that, due to our continued inability to meet deadlines and the loss of a crew member under my command, I was to be relieved of duty. I protested, noting that such tight deadlines were specified based on the performance of the smaller, faster Harbinger ships, and not the larger and slower Argosy-class vessels.
And then I recognized the executive. He was the one that Lewis had seen in the nightclub! We had some leverage, after all [Admin roll, total 15] . I said "It's not like I was hanging around in some seedy speakeasy on the lower decks, snorting cocaine with a bunch of Dolls. I mean, even if I had your salary, I couldn't afford that without some kind of illegal dealing on the side."
His face went pale. "You can't prove anything!" he protested. Then he realized he had stepped into the trap. In return for our silence, I was given command of another ship. The Harbinger class ship Free Enterprise needed a captain and crew, and had twice the maneuver and hyperspace speed of the Dawn Treader. I would miss the old girl, but perhaps we could earn a little more money, not just on each mission but also by virtue of being able to perform more missions per year.
When the negotiations were concluded, I took a shuttle down to Boston for my other meeting. Knight met me at the downport, accompanied by a tall, handsome fellow with an easy smile. His hair was in dreadlocks, and he wore engineer boots and a fatigue jacket over his regulation coverall. He introduced himself as Glenmore Garvey, but asked me to call him "Glen". Leah had previously referred to her friend as "Gigi", so I thought I would be meeting a woman. Now I realized where the nickname had come from.
We rented a conference room so I could interview our applicant. It was clear that he got along remarkably well with Knight, and that they had been friends for a long time. His credentials were impressive - ICO certifications for Power Engineering and Mechanical Maintenance, licenses for Cargo Loading and Pressure Suit Handling, and most impressively, a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Knight had earned her Masters degree there, in the same discipline. She left the Institute to follow her dream of adventure among the stars, while Glen continued his education.
I offered him a position on our crew without hesitation. He seemed eager to get off of Earth and out among the stars. A full share of our profits, his own cabin, and a chance to work with a dear friend was enough to convince him to accept. I welcomed him to our crew.
AFTER-ACTION REPORT
SUBMITTED: 26 MAY 2225
Our mission was to transport colonists and equipment to a fledgling startup colony. Congress is a garden world orbiting Kappa Ceti, a star not unlike our own Sun. Its size, gravity and atmospheric pressure were similar to Earth.
Its sole colony was called "Wilson's Last Gasp", a darkly humorous commemoration of its founder. Elias Wilson had been a Scout for the ECSA, the Extra-Solar Colonization Administration. He had died tragically from prolonged exposure to the carbon monoxide that is abundant in the atmosphere of Congress. The colony had been established a little more than a year ago. Its primary purpose was nickel mining, and because the atmosphere was unsuitable for raising Earth-standard crops or livestock, the colonists supplemented their small hydroponic farms by fish farming.
The briefing was delayed while we waited for Lewis to arrive. After a half-hour had passed, I sent the crew to track him down. Evans found him passed out drunk in a shady Startown hostel. I confined Lewis to quarters once more, this time for good cause. His confinement would last until we were ready to launch.
Our deadline was May 19th, and I had been able to negotiate for 25% above the standard bonus. From the beginning, circumstances seemed to impede our ability to complete the mission on time, even with a faster ship. Our cargo was not loaded at the designated time, apparently due to labor issues. I tried to get things moving, but union rules are union rules. Glen spoke to some of the dockhands he knew, and the following day the hold was loaded with supplies for the colony, as well as 30 RORO cryotubes. These roll-on, roll-off tubes contained the passengers bound for Wilson's Last Gasp. They were loaded into the forward cargo bays and connected to the ship's power grid. Desh, Evans and Glen could monitor the colonist's vital signs during the journey. Upon landing on Congress, they would be revived to join the other settlers.
I had expected that we would be ready to go the following morning, but once more we were the victims of misfortune. The delays we had experienced over the past two days had developed into a full-blown strike. It would be a full week before the strike ended and we were able to lift off. Lewis found his brief confinement had turned into a much longer punishment, and I hoped it would lead to more professional behavior on his part.
Chun laid in a course to the hyperspace point. It was 80 Mkm away, a mere two days of flight time. During the trip, Aldel announced a contact. Sensors were showing that we were being followed by a gunboat, but we could not corroborate the reading with a transponder ping. Was it a pirate, following in our wake to conceal itself? Or were the sensors just malfunctioning? She did a thorough diagnostic of the Enterprise's sensors, and announced that they were in perfect working order. It was a tense two days as we waited to be ambushed and boarded.
Fortunately, the anticipated attack never materialized, and on May 2nd, we arrived at the hyperspace point. Desh assisted us into the tubes, and 19 days later we were awakened upon arrival in the Kappa Ceti system. Nobody was affected by hibernation sickness, and we set about our duties without delay.
On May 22, we landed on Congress. Calling the landing facility a "starport" would be overly generous. It was merely a pad made of corrugated steel panels, likely salvaged from one of the colony's initial cargo containers. The flight control office was housed in another standard ICO can, with a radio transmitter mounted on the roof.
We were only three days late, despite the labor stoppage on Liberty Station. I supposed I could get used to a ship like Enterprise. Evans unloaded the cargo containers, while Desh and Glen supervised the unloading of the RORO tubes. Once the unloading was complete, I transmitted a message to the Company that our mission had been completed. The bonus payout, minus late penalties amounted to $26,675, which was $3811 per share, plus our standard mission pay.
We donned filter masks and headed to the colony's headquarters. Like all of the other structures, the offices were built from cargo cans, stacked next to or atop one another and welded in place. Windows and doors had been cut out of the sides.
I introduced myself to Harwood Turner, the colonial administrator. Though we were technically on shore leave, Turner requested our assistance. In return, he would provide us with accommodations and sustenance during our stay. His senior engineers had been struggling to restore the positive pressure systems that kept the outside atmosphere from infiltrating the facilities. Knight and Garvey gladly lent a hand, and a few hours later the pressure was restored and we were able to remove our masks indoors.
Turner showed us around the small colony, populated by around 150 settlers and workers. Like the spaceport control and town hall, each of the buildings had been made from an ICO cargo can. The larger 3-ton cans had been used for communal quarters, the physical plant and hydroponics bays, and the smaller 1-ton cans were used for outbuildings and other small structures. About a mile away, I saw a cluster of containers. Turner explained that they were the living quarters for the miners. He did not seem interested in taking us on a tour of the nickel mining facilities.
We tried to engage some of the workers in conversation, but their responses were as dull as their gazes. Whether it was merely exhaustion from hard labor, I could not tell. The foreman seemed more alert, but offered no more than a mere grunt of acknowledgement. They collected some equipment from the quartermaster's hut and shuffled back toward the mine.
There wasn't much to do here in Last Gasp, and we spent the next day exploring the small colony. We were not permitted to tour the mine. Turner muttered something about Company regulations and you know how it goes and blah blah. So we were actually excited when a maintenance crew requested our help with the colony's water desalinization system. In addition to providing clean drinking water for the colony, it was necessary for the operation of the fishery. We were able to lend our technical expertise and repair the pumps and filtration systems.
Later that evening, we were approached by an individual who identified himself as Parish, the community's scientific advisor. Like Desh, he was an android belonging to the Company. He asked us for information on the cargo and passengers we had brought to the colony. I explained that, to the best of my knowledge, most of the equipment as well as the passengers were intended to supplement the nickel mining operation.
For an android, Parish was rather cagey. In as many words, it seemed as if he was asking us to investigate further. After dark, Desh crept off to the shanty town near the mine. Androids generally seemed to be beneath the notice of most people, so it was unlikely that Turner or his associates would notice his absence.
Credit: Frank Indrisie, Leederville, W.A.
When Desh returned, he had shocking news for me. The mine workers were proles, clones grown in vitro to serve as expendable laborers. Technically, this was legal, as proles were considered property rather than sapient beings. All of them were sick. Desh brought some blood samples to Enterprise's medbay and discovered that they were being slowly poisoned by nickel carbonyl, a compound created by the interaction of nickel tailings with the carbon monoxide present in the atmosphere. Though the proles had been modified to breathe the air of Congress without the need for respirators, the toxin was being absorbed into their skin. It was shocking to realize that the passengers we had brought to Congress were not new colonists, but rather a new rotation of prole workers intended to replace those miners who succumbed to the toxic working environment of the mine.
Though nickel carbonyl poisoning could be remedied with oxygen therapy and the drugs Antabuse and Dithiocarb, the Enterprise did not have the facilities to treat 30 patients. We were able to sneak one of the workers aboard, and he responded favorably to the treatment. Desh collected the few supplies we had available, and returned to the shanty town to try and help the rest. Sadly, sixteen of the workers were too far gone to save. One unfortunate miner was suffering from lung cancer and pulmonary edema, and it was ironically merciful that the complete shutdown of his liver and kidneys would kill him first.
I was outraged. The working conditions were tantamount to slave labor, and these people were dying because the Company was cutting corners. All that would be needed was proper exhaust ventilation, air scrubbers and decontamination chambers, but the bean counters had somehow decided that it was more economical to grow disposable clones. I was appalled and disgusted. I wanted to choke Turner with my bare hands, so he could learn how it felt to be unable to breathe.
Desh reported his findings to Parish, and recommended that the science advisor find a way to obtain and install the necessary equipment, even if it meant misleading the Company into believing that the equipment was necessary for the ongoing operation of the facility and protection of the residents of the main settlement.
The next morning, we returned to the ersatz spaceport. Turner did not come to bid us farewell, but Parish did. They say that androids are incapable of emotion, but the First Directive meant Parish was more compassionate than Turner and the rest of the Company representatives here. It saddens me to realize that the most human individual on all of Congress wasn't even human at all.
-Captain Buchanan, signing off.