Torl's Journey

Torl awoke to the sounds of the landing bells. For a moment, he did not remember where he was. Then it all came rushing back in. He quickly got up and went to check on Seala. She was sitting up, with a big smile on her face and color back in her cheeks.

“You did it, Torl. I knew you would, but I got so weak there at the end that I didn’t think I would make it. Then I lost track of the whole outside world.” she hesitated.

“Then I remember you giving me some food and drink. The next thing I knew, I woke up here.” she rubbed her head and looked at him.

“Oh, no. You’re hurt.”

Seala jumped up and rushed over to him. Torl had almost forgotten that he had been burned. Fortunately, the flamers cauterized a wound when they made it. That combined with his administrations before he slept had set the wound well on the way to recovery. This morning, it just felt like another bruise. But he let Seala push him back to his sleep station and clean and bandage it, while he summarized the events of the prior day for her.

He didn’t tell her however about Lia, or the generator. He figured that Lia had earned the right to surprise her daughter and he wanted to know more about Lia himself before he let anyone know about the device.

By the time he was all bandaged, and they had each visited the refresh unit, cleaned and dressed again in their old clothing, the ship had docked and the all clear had sounded. Torl took Seala with him to speak to the old man in the command center, Farnle was his name.

When they arrived at the control center, Farnle was haggling with someone at the port over the value of the ore they had on board, and the cost of fuel for the ship. When he noticed Torl’s presence, he told the person on the other end that he would have to speak to the captain before agreeing to such outrageous fuel costs. Then put the com unit on mute and turned to Torl and Seala.

His eye widened a little at the sight of Seala, but he controlled himself and the surprise was quickly gone from his face. “Can you tell me where we are going so I know how much fuel to purchase, …sir?”

“You will learn the destination once we have undocked. You should take on as much fuel as we can accommodate. I assume you got a fair rate for the cargo, and we can afford to fuel up fully.”

“Sir, if we purchase that much fuel, we will not have much left for new cargo… Unless you have other funding sources. We must purchase cargo that is how we survive, unless you know of somewhere we can raid. But that may be a problem with no remaining soldiers.”

Torl thought about the man’s arguments for a moment, he was right, they needed to purchase cargo to avoid suspicion. The port authorities most likely already knew that this was a pirate ship, but it would not do for them to think that he intended foul play in the near future. He would need to come up with some additional funds, because he had no idea how much fuel would be needed to get to their destination.

“Purchase the fuel; I will come up with funds for the new cargo. This is a farming planet right?”

“Yes, sir. But they also produce some very marketable art and jewelry.”

“I think we will want to go with food stores for this trip. My guess would be that this will be desirable where we are going.”

“No offense, sir, but I think we wore out our welcome back on Sheltered Six, and there aren’t any other mining planets near here. Unless… Are you planning to take us to the asteroid belts?”

“Just do as I said, I need to go speak to the old captain for a bit. When I come back, I want to know how much funding is needed to fill the cargo bays.

He turned to Seala and asked if she wanted to come with him or watch over Farnle? She indicated that she wanted to watch the master controller work. So Torl turned back to Farnle and told him that Seala was the new first officer and was to be treated as such.

“Yes sir. Welcome on deck ma’am..”

With that, Torl left the deck and went to the captain’s quarters. He reprogrammed the captain’s quarters to his thumbprint and persona, then reactivated the door. Once inside, he accessed the captain’s console and reprogrammed the first officer’s quarters to accept both his and Seala’s persona and thumb prints from the system records. Then he began going through the captain’s files, looking for accounts and credits. A captain like this one would have numerous accounts spread across many planets; hopefully he had one on Silius Three. Eventually, he found what he was looking for, a list of banks and accounts. Sure enough there was an account on Silius Three. Now to get the access codes…

Torl walked over to the captain’s cot and looked down at Captain Relos. The face was filled with pain and fear, his eyes glazed over as he appeared too lost in thought. He bent over the cot and spoke to the man. “Relos? Captain Relos? Can you hear me?” No response, spittle began to run from the side of the captain’s mouth. “I’m sorry captain, but I must have some access codes stored in your mind. Since you can’t or won’t respond, I must search your mind for the codes. I am sorry for doing this without your permission, it is necessary.”

He waited a moment longer to see if his words had gotten through, but there was no indication that they had. He braced himself and reached out to touch the captain’s mind, and recoiled immediately. The captain’s mind was filled with self-loathing, the part that was Relos and the part that was the pirate captain loathed one another and his mind was splintering. This Torl had done when he broke the mind block and released the blocked memories and personalities of Captain Relos. Torl’s heart became heavy, and the memories of all the things he had done recently that he would never have considered doing just a year earlier. It would take a long time for Torl to heal himself and learn to live with what he had done. He could only imagine what it must be like for Captain Relos dealing with so many years of life as a vile pirate captain who had done almost indescribably evil things to people. Relos might never recover, the evil one might win. Or perhaps worst of all, the two parts of his mind might split and leave the man insane. Was it really better that Torl had broken the mind block? Or would it have been kinder for him to simply have killed the man?

Torl shook his head, he did not have time to focus on this now, the codes were necessary to allow them to purchase stores and leave dock without unwanted suspicion. He steeled himself again and reached once more for the captain’s mind. He focused on the pirate captain’s persona and pushed the need to access his accounts, someone might have stolen from him, and he must check his accounts. It worked, the pirate captain’s persona became completely paranoid about the accounts, and the access codes floated up to the surface of his mind. Torl quickly gathered them into his mind, and released the contact. He went back to the captain’s console and connected to the local account. Torl was very impressed with the balance, it must be quite profitable to be a pirate captain, there was nearly enough here to purchase another ship. If the other accounts held as much, the captain was very wealthy indeed. Torl wondered how many people had been robbed or killed to create so much wealth. Another question for later.

He took a few minutes to reactivate all the monitoring and security systems that he had disabled during the ship take over, and did a quick check to make sure the crew was where they should be doing what they should be doing. Everything appeared to be okay, but he should probably try to pick up some security staff and maybe another crew member or two so he would have some people who were not part of the previous regime on board.

He returned to the command deck to find Seala eagerly looking on as Farnle explained something about the navigation control system to her. No doubt she would be able to navigate the starship by the time they reached Sharing Six. He cleared his voice, and a startled Farnle spoke formally. “Captain on deck!” Seala smiled and walked over to greet him with a hug.

“Torl, it’s so neat seeing these systems and how people operate them from the outside. I sensed this navigation thing when I was… You know… But it is really cool to see. Look, you can press this and a hologram of the current system is projected.” As she spoke, she pressed a virtual button and sure enough a holographic image of a solar system with a large blue sun, and twenty three satellite planets was projected in the air. The third from the last planet had a bright white ring around it, indicating that this was where they were located (planets were counted from the outer most to the inner most planet based on some logic that had been lost in the years since star travel began, presumably it was because the planet closest to the sun, especially the larger ones like this one, were too hot to hold an atmosphere). “Look we are right here” she pointed to the planet with the white ring around it.”

Torl smiled at her excitement. Oh to be young again, and so resilient. Less than a full day since she had been drained to complete exhaustion running the ship’s engines, she was excitedly bouncing around the ship’s command center. Torl himself, felt pretty drained still. “That is very cool, but you should be careful about pushing buttons without asking Farnle first, we don’t want to start the launch sequence by accident.” He smiled and winked at her to make sure she knew he was teasing her. She smiled back and rolled her eyes.

“Farnle, how are the negotiations going?”

“Sir, I think pretty well, we will need an additional 4,000,000 credits to fill holds 1 and 2 with food stores, as you requested. I also found a deal on a warehouse full of mid-range jewelry that might turn a nice profit, if you can arrange another 2,000,000 credits”.

“That is after selling our cargo, and taking on a maximum load of fuel, correct?”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, make the deal. I’ll move the credits into the dock account. Also, post listings for two security specialists, level 4, a nav specialist to assist you, and 2 techs to help with the other ships duties. They must be available to ship out by lunar rise. Standard rates apply. You and I will do the interviews for the nav and techs, Seala and I for the security specialists. When you have the notices posted join Seala and I in the first officer’s quarters, we will take a short tour of the dock stores this afternoon.”

“Yes sir, will the crew be allowed dock leave then?”

“Sorry, but I don’t think that would be a good idea with an early departure tomorrow . You will accompany Seala and I but the rest of the crew needs to see to getting the stock on board and preparing for departure.”

Farnle looked pleased, he must have agreed with the decision. “Yes sir.”

“Seala, will you accompany me, I would like to relax a little before we go to the dock this afternoon.

Seala smiled as she joined him, and they walked out of the command center. Seala talked all the way back to the first officer’s quarters about what she had learned in the command center while he was dealing with Relos and resetting the ship’s internal systems. When they reached the first officer’s quarters, Seala stopped, waiting for Torl to open the door. Instead, he told her to press her thumb to the panel. When she did the door slid open smoothly, and she giggled. “How did you set the lock without me being here to provide my print?”

“They apparently took our prints when they brought us onboard, I just pulled it from the file and used it to encode the door. You can now open any door on this ship, be careful not to open an outside door when we are in space.” He smiled and winked at her again. Again she rolled her eyes and smiled back. “You should go through the former occupant’s things and see if you can find anything useful. We will be buying some clothes while in the dock, so get rid of the old clothing to make room, but check the pockets first, there is not a lot of storage on ships, so she likely stored her valued items throughout the cabin.”

With that Torl sat down at the terminal and went to work transferring the funds to the doc account and checking on the postings he had asked Farnle to make. They were already up. He checked the doc account again and saw that the funds had already been transferred to the doc supply station to pay for the supplies. Then he checked the load master’s logs and saw the entries indicating that they had taken on a full fuel load and were loading bays 1 and 2 with food stores, and bay 3 with warehouse contents (presumably the jewelry, but it would be detailed when it was loaded). He noted that bay 4 was still empty, but that should not be unusual since they had brought in a full load of ore, and were leaving with stock that had a higher value based on volume. All appeared to be in order. He wrote a quick routine to continually scan these items and send him an alarm if anything changed in content or volume.

Finally, he checked to see what stores and services were available in the port, they could not risk going through customs, so they would have to stay in the dock stores. He found ten clothing stores of various types, and twenty five different eating establishments in addition to the usual lot of souvenir shops, bars and entertainment facilities. Satisfied that they would be able to come up with some clothing and other personal supplies and have a relaxing meal that did not come from a regenerator, he transferred a few thousand credits into a port use account with thumbprint access for both he and Seala. Having taken care of his self-assigned duties, he got up and went to help Seala go through the contents of the room.

She had already found several items of jewelry (a couple looked to be valuable), a blaster with three spare charge packs, a stun gun and a tangler, in addition to a couple of credit pouches packed full of credit chits. Apparently, the former first officer had preferred to keep a fair amount of cash available and wanted to be sure she could defend it, or blast her way out if need be.

They didn’t find much in the way of personal items in the cabin, Seala found a small box filled with carved ivory animals that they could not identify, but most everything else they found loose in the cabin or in the security locker was a weapon, credit chits or items that could be easily converted to credit chits. The captain’s cabin was filled with expensive art, jewels, and the finest cloths and furniture, indicating he saw the cabin as his home and wanted to be as comfortable as possible. The first officer had obviously not felt the same way. She probably had a home somewhere where she kept the things she truly valued. That conclusion left Torl again wondering if he had killed one who did not need to die. Maybe he could have just captured her, and she could have been rehabilitated. No, she had genuinely tried to kill him; he had no choice but to kill her. Would he ever be able to return to a life where kill or be killed was not the rule?

As they finished searching the cabins and clearing space for some clothing in the first officer’s quarters, Fiegal was announced at the door.

“Well Seala, are you ready to go shopping?”

Torl asked as he walked over to open the door. Seala stuffed one of the credit pouches into her skirt, before turning toward him and saying that she was ready. Torl smiled to himself, she was making sure she had money for shopping. That was smart.

She didn’t know that he had taken care of that, so it was perfectly logical. He picked up another of the pouches and handed it to Fiegal.

“We’re going shopping, you should be rewarded for handling things efficiently and not making me watch your every move. Get yourself something nice.”

Torl was not willing to risk leaving the navigator alone with the ship, even though he believed he could be trusted. Best not to tempt fate. Without a navigator, the ship would not leave.

“Yes sir, thank you sir.”

With that they left the ship. The port was a large self-contained city in its own right. Most of the workers lived outside the port, but otherwise it was self-contained. There were hotels, brothels, bars, restaurants, clothiers, even grocery stores and all sorts of specialty stores. Of course all the prices were exorbitant, but there was not much that could not be had in a star port. Torl guided them to a clothing store he had picked out in his earlier research, based on the fact that it carried the clothing normally worn on a space ship (efficient one piece garments with plenty of pockets and zip seals rather than the buttons and belts preferred off ship). It would be quite normal for starship crew to shop here. They could buy a couple of outfits elsewhere for when the trip was over, but they needed to keep that type of clothing to a minimum to avoid questions, because starships, especially cargo ships like the one they were on were known to have very little space for storage of things not used in flight. Most crew members did not have any civilian clothes. The less attention they brought to themselves the better. Torl had found their identification credentials in the captain’s safe, but he would rather not have to show them to suspicious port authorities. They already stood out wearing the off world cloths they had on when they were abducted, but they had no others so that could not be helped.

At that first store, Torl and Seala purchased a couple of outfits each, and changed into one before leaving. Now they looked the part. They spent the next couple of hours wandering around acting like crewmembers with a mid-day free. They bought a few small items, Torl and Seala purchased some civilian clothes to wear when they reached their destination, and they had a nice sit-down meal. Farnle spoke of previous trips to this planet, and the unusual customs they had here, such as belching at the table if the food was good, this was apparently considered to be a compliment to the chef and serving staff. Seala thought that was quite funny, and did her best to make sure everyone in the restaurant heard her compliments on the food and service. She particularly enjoyed the way it made Torl wince every time she did it. Finally, Farnle mentioned that it was probably time to return to the ship and see if there were any applicants for the positions they had posted. Torl agreed and they returned, to Seala’s great displeasure.

As soon as they re-boarded, a crew member rushed over to them and stated that the port officials wanted to speak to the captain, and were getting a little perturbed that they had not yet produced him. Torl handed his bundles over to the crew member and instructed her to escort Seala to the first officer’s quarters and provide whatever assistance Seala required. Then he and Farnle headed for the command deck. On the way, Farnle mentioned that the best way to handle these port officials was to bark right back at them. Onboard the ship the captain was undisputed dictator, and they had no official authority over how he ran the ship. They usually wanted to act as though they had great authority, and you needed to be careful not to let them think that you believed they did.

So, when they reached the command center Torl had Farnle contact the port and inquire as to why they needed to speak to the captain, indicating that he was a very busy man and might not be able to speak to them for some time. They responded with a firm statement that if they did not speak to him about an old debt he had left on a previous visit, the ship would not be allowed to depart the following morning. Farnle put them on mute, and turned to Torl.

“I have been chief nav on this ship through 8 trips to this planet, to the best of my knowledge we have left no debts behind, the captain liked this port a lot because they didn’t ask too many questions as long as you didn’t cause a riot or something. My guess would be that they are looking for a bribe. Maybe the captain took care of that quietly, I’m not sure. I recommend you speak to them, and tell them that you acquired the ship from its’ previous owner recently and know of no debts for which you would be responsible. That should get them to negotiating price at least.

“All right, take them off mute…. This is captain Torl, this is my first trip to this particular planet, perhaps you could enlighten me as to what type of debt I might have that I don’t know about.”

“Captain Torl? This ship has docked here a dozen times since we started keeping such records; Torl is not the name we have registered to this ship, so you must have acquired it from its former owner. It does not matter, when you acquired the ship, you acquired the debt. There is a recurring, outstanding fee due in the amount of 50,000 credits due to the port retirement fund based on a previous commitment. Do you understand?”

Torl looked at Farnle, who shook his head and indicated that this should be negotiated downward. “50,000 credits! That’s highway robbery, 2,000 would be much more realistic. Do you think because I acquired this ship recently that I’m wet behind the ears?”

“We might be able to see our way to reduce the debt since you are new, but 2,000 is ridiculous. Why don’t we say 40,000 and we won’t hold up your departure more than a day.”

The negotiation went on for several more cycles and eventually they agreed on 10,000 credits, which Farnle indicated was pretty good. Torl agreed to make the transfer when they gave launch clearance at lunar rise. Then the head port officer came on the line.

“Captain Torl, I see that you have posted several positions for your crew. I would like to discuss with you, what might have happened to your crew that you need new members. Can I board to discuss this with you?”

Torl felt his heart trying to jump out of his chest. He had not considered the possibility that posting the positions might raise concern. He had intentionally kept the quantity of postings low. This had to be another fishing expedition trying to get a little more money out of him.

“I am taking the ship on a longer run than she is manned for, so am willing to take on a few extra crew members. Not that that is any of your business. I’m sorry, but what happens on the ship is my business not yours. You are welcome to come aboard and have a drink, but I will not discuss ships business with you under any circumstances.”

Farnle smiled broadly, he approved of the response.

“I think you will have difficulty filling your positions with that attitude captain, but, since you are new, I may forgo putting your ship off-limits in return for a small contribution to the retirement fund. Say 1,000 credits?”

“Let’s say not. I can live without the crew, but you might want to speak to your vendors before you make my ship off limits, I still have an empty cargo bay on dock 4, that I might choose to fill once I have the appropriate staff on board.”

“Very well, I’ll allow applicants. But I will remember your attitude when you next return to our port.”

Farnle terminated the conversation stream, then looked at Torl and said “That was very well done. I thought you were new to this captain stuff?”

“People are people. If they think you can be taken advantage of, there will always be some who will try. Let’s take a look at those applicants.”

Four hours later, they had hired a nav spec level 3, two cargo techs, and three security specialists. It was amazing how many desperate people would apply to work on an obviously less than ideal ship. Torl ran background checks on all seven going through several levels of security most people did not even know existed, and determined that one of the techs and one of the security specialists had less background information than should have been present for someone their ages, the others all had blemishes, but that was to be expected of people applying for work on an old cargo ship that worked out world trade routes, everyone knew that these ships were either pirates or one step from it. That indicated that they were likely plants from either the port or some other agency Torl had no interest in allowing plants to travel with him. He left instructions to make sure those two were to report to him as soon as they had clearance to depart, but before they locked the hatches.

Early the next day, the two in question reported to him with confused and concerned looks on their faces. Shortly after they arrived at his office (the ship captain’s office), he received notification that they had received final clearance to depart. He then informed them that he had changed his mind and would not need them on this trip. He was sorry for the inconvenience, but that they would be escorted off ship immediately to ensure that the launch was not delayed. He sent the other two security specialists with them to escort them off ship, and used the ship’s monitoring system to watch them leave. The security specialist looked like he might try to resist, but when he saw the monitoring cameras following his movements, he appeared to change his mind and walked out without incident.

As the hatches closed and sealed, Torl sighed with relief and settled back into his padded seat, belting in for launch. He gave the order and felt the ship surge as they launched back into space.