In Transit

You get that feeling don’t you, not only when people are tired but when they’re on edge, people holding their tempers in. That’s what it’s like here right now. We’re between ports, in transit to a backwater port, to do – most likely – backwater things. The furthest out into the Reaches I’ve ever been. The theory is we’ll be safer there. I hate theories.
     

I told you I’d tell you a little about the crew, so I’ll start with Frank Pak, 42, son of a mining-sloop helmsman and our ship’s captain. He comes from a little place called Sell-One, sounds like an instruction, doesn’t it? I met him in the military when he first joined up aged 17. I expected to be bunking with the normal type of callow little brat. You know what brats are like, all me, me, me. Only Frank was a serious kind of kid. The kind who thinks he has a lot to prove but isn’t quite sure who he’s trying to prove it to. His mother maybe, since she walked out on him when he was ten, left him behind more like. Odd how she took his brother with her. Frank doesn’t talk much about his brother. Never has. I think if they ever meet up, the bar they meet in is going to be rimed with frost, if you get what I mean.

Anyhow, I suppose the short version is Frank never really lived up to his potential, never tried to, though I’d never say that to his face. He got by, he never tried too hard, almost as if that was easier than trying and failing.
When his dad got himself killed, some insurance money was due and Frank decided it was time to leave the military and buy himself a little ship. So here we sit on The Nova. She’s always reminded me a little of her owner, a nearly-there ship, an almost-there-but-not-quite kind of a deal.

Is that cruel? I don’t like being cruel, not about Frank.

I’ll ramble on some more later (and apparently old RJ has a book extract link–try not to get too excited). That blip I mentioned, well it’s a long way out but it’s getting closer. No ID on it, which means whatever it is, it’s running dark. It might well be after us, for now with no jump-gate close, all we can do is sit. Wait and see what’s she’s after. She might be a pirate; she might be something military or something from the revolution. All of which is bad news for us.

Next up something else for you to digest if you’re in the mood. Politics, not my favourite, but RJ thinks you ought to know this stuff. A little rough draft extract from the beginning of our continuing adventures, or book 2, as old sour-face calls it.