Read Online Ride The Rising Tide (The Maxwell Saga) by Peter Grant - Free Book Online

tight knot. The picture was surrounded by a circle of golden rope, with the name ‘LCS Hebe’ in a scroll at the top and the ship’s motto in another at the bottom.
    “ Pretty–looking thing, isn’t she?” a spacer said behind him.
    “ I guess so, if your tastes run that way,” he replied thoughtfully. “Trouble is, most of those Greek goddesses were pretty fickle creatures. Any man messing with them often bit off more than he could chew!”
    “ You don’t say? I guess my ex must have taken lessons from them!”
    Chuckling, Steve looked around the cavernous docking bay. It was almost empty, with only half a dozen spacers having disembarked from the cutter on which he’d just arrived. They were moving purposefully towards the exit to the bay, logging themselves aboard at the duty desk on the way.
    He waited at the airlock until his trunks, toolkit and carryall were passed through by the baggage handling equipment. He lifted the smaller trunk into the depression sized to fit it in the lid of the larger, wheeled trunk, and the toolkit into a similar depression on the lid of the second trunk. He picked up the carryall, then activated the tracking unit clipped to his belt. The trunk tower obediently followed its signal as he turned towards the duty counter, the base trunk’s electric motor humming gently.
    He stopped at the counter, dropping his carryall and fishing in his pocket for the order chip. As he took it out, he came to attention. “Spacer First Class Steve Maxwell, come aboard to join, PO,” he announced himself to the Petty Officer Second Class seated behind the desk, whose nametag read ‘Higgins’. He handed over his orders.
    “Welcome aboard. We’ve been expecting you since yesterday. What kept you?” The NCO slotted his chip into the console and scanned its contents briefly.
    “ I was supposed to come up to orbit on the Elevator yesterday morning, but they had a problem with our personnel pod. Wouldn’t latch to the cable. Their traffic queue was pretty full, so they couldn’t fit in a replacement pod for the next eighteen hours. They put us in transient barracks overnight and lifted us early this morning. I caught the shuttle from the Elevator terminus to the Cargo Terminal in Lagrange–2 orbit, and got there just in time to catch your liberty cutter. I’ve got my date– and time–stamped tickets, in case I need to prove any of that.”
    “ Fair enough. Keep them until your Divisional Officer says you’re OK, but I don’t see how they can hold you responsible for delays like that. You’ll be tired and hungry. Mid–rats are in the mess hall — but of course, you’ve only just come aboard. You won’t know where to find it. I’ll get hold of PO1 Garza from Engineering and ask him to send someone to take you there, and to your quarters.” He tapped commands into his console.
    “ Thanks, PO. Engineering Department, you said? Why would he be looking after a small craft pilot?”
    “ Only bigger auxiliaries have dedicated Flight Operations Departments. The Goddess class are the smallest general–purpose transports in the Fleet, at half a million tons. We’ve got only a hundred crew, so functions are consolidated into half a dozen larger departments rather than a bunch of small ones. It’s more economical in terms of supervision and admin overhead, I suppose. Anyway, Flight Ops is part of Engineering. PO1 Garza supervises the pilots.”
    “ Makes sense — although a hundred crew is still two and a half times more than a merchant freighter this size would have.”
    “ Yeah, but a merchie relies on shuttles and robots from a Cargo Terminal for a lot of its freight–handling, and uses outside maintenance. We have to transship supplies to and from Fleet bases and vessels using our own resources, maintain our own small craft, and handle things like damage control. That’s why we need the extra personnel.” The NCO returned the order chip to Steve. “I’ve copied your orders to