Read Online The Rise of Earth by Jason Fry - Free Book Online Page B

forenoon watch, afternoon watch, first dog watch, and second dog watch.”
    Vass frowned. “Is that right? Wouldn’t that be twenty-eight hours?”
    â€œNicely done, Minister,” Tycho said. “Most dirtsi . . . um, visitors don’t notice that. The dog watches are two hours each.”
    Vass craned his neck to peer around their cramped surroundings. “Even with the watches, there can’t be enough room here.”
    â€œEach crewer gets half a meter,” Tycho said. “You get used to it. I thought it was cozy when I was an apprentice.”
    That had been true . . . eventually. But first there had been nights spent hoping the crewers around him couldn’t hear him sniffling—or, worse, the glassy-eyed middle watches in which he’d made mistake after mistake and been corrected by glowering, gigantic men and women who’d been rated able spacers decades earlier. How many times had he sworn that this was the last day, that tomorrow he’d ask to see his mother and plead for her to send him back to Darklands?
    â€œBut you said your quarters were elsewhere,” Vass said. Tycho noted with amusement that they’d struck a tacit agreement to ignore his still-fuming sister.
    â€œNow they are. But as apprentices we slung hammocks belowdecks with the rest of the crewers. You stay here, learning your trade, until you’re rated able spacer and made midshipman.”
    â€œI see. And how long does this apprenticeship last?”
    â€œAs long as it needs to. I was read in on my eighth birthday—that’s the usual practice—and needed a little over two years to make able spacer. And now are you ready to see your cabin, Mr. Vass?”
    â€œA moment more, if you please. How many crewers from this level will be promoted to the bridge crew you talked about?”
    â€œNone of them,” Tycho said. “Bridge crews are drawn from the family.”
    â€œThat’s not always true,” Yana objected.
    â€œWell, sometimes a bridge crew needs to be filled out while the younger members of a family are still apprentices,” Tycho said. “In a situation like that, a captain might go down the ladder to fill a position, but everyone knows it’s temporary.”
    â€œDad came up from belowdecks,” Yana pointed out.
    â€œBy marrying Mom. He only spent as long as he did belowdecks because Grandfather insisted on it.”
    The bells clanged again.
    â€œMy sister and I are due on the quarterdeck,” Tycho said apologetically. “Yana, I have to run communications with Perimeter Patrol. Perhaps you could show Mr. Vass to the top deck?”
    Yana nodded and led Vass aft, heading for the rear ladderwell. Tycho climbed up to the quarterdeck, blinking at the bright light.
    â€œYou’re late,” Diocletia said, without turning. “I trust you managed to give Minister Vass a simple tour without causing some kind of incident I’ll have to deal with?”
    Tycho just sighed.

7
SERVANTS OF THE UNION
    S pirits lifted aboard the Shadow Comet once the privateer reached her long-range fuel tanks and accelerated away from Jupiter. Tycho filed the signed articles for the cruise and waited for Vesuvia to confirm that she’d archived them alongside centuries of similar documents amassed under generations of Hashoone captains.
    It was spooky to think of all the records in Vesuvia’s memory banks, reflecting all the people who’d spentanywhere from days to decades aboard the Comet . Mr. Sier and three other crewers, for example, had just made their first appearance in those files. Tycho and Yana’s first cruise was in there too, of course, along with Carlo’s, and their parents’, and Huff’s. And those of countless other crewers and retainers, middies and captains. The records contained the names of dirtsiders who’d washed out after a single cruise and spacers who’d arrived centuries ago and now