My business partner and I still get a good laugh about how different we are from each other.
Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr. is like a great deal like his famous fleet cousin – they love a challenge, and if decide they want something that they aren't supposed to be able to have, they don't do a lot of analysis. They just go get it, and if they have to travel back and forth in time (the cousin, at least three times in his long career) or wrap aluminum foil around Rustbucket 2 and tame a whole nebula of gem-jellies (that's Mark), that's just what has to be done.
Me? I analyze and pick my battles carefully. I'm an engineer by skill and by gift and mindset. Working as an engineer proper, I solve problems every day for people in ways they don't even understand, and working as Chief Operations Officer in a galactic shipping company is basically the same job with different tools. I build systems that work, and if the how and why of going outside of that doesn't make reasonable sense in terms of risk and reward, I don't do it.
This is why I was on the scene with the Crystal Sisters of the Shaatur System, and he was on the scene at the party to meet Admiral Vlarian Triefield. God is good. He knows how to keep people from getting killed, even though basically, it was the same calculation …
Let me break this down by way of analogy: 25 years ago, I was 25 and liked a pretty girl as much as anybody else. Mark was 24; same thing. But our scales of what was attainable were totally different. I would have taken one look at Admiral Triefield and said, “No way.” Her beauty? Undeniable. Her magnetic personality? Undeniable. The combination had her listed as in the Top 100 most fashionable and desirable women in the galaxy back in the day … and even now, actually, because for her, 80 is the new 40.
But my calculation would have gone something like this.
- She looks 30-35, but she's a full fleet admiral – that takes time, so she's got to be at least 60 (I was off by five years – she was 55).
- She's got to be part human, part a longer-lived race – but her age plus her genetic mix may make having kids to inherit what I am building dicey
- She's a full fleet admiral, and I'm a freighter captain just starting out – a boy to her, of much lower class. She is not about to give up her lifestyle to become the kind of wife likely to support me as I grind my way up.
- If things go right with us, she could be a ton of help, but at any time if things go wrong, she can eat me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – she's got the power of everyone she works with behind her, and the kind of people that enjoy grinding up little space workers for sport will be all in her ears
- I can find a mate in a more efficient way
Mark missed all of that. His only thought: “How do I get over there in the midst of all those captains, commodores, and admirals who want her, and get her – because once I shoot my shot, the others won't matter.”
He was right, as it happened. But the same thinking would have gotten us killed in the Shattur System.
Mark and I had split up for the first long series of runs in the company's history – he had acquired Rustbucket 2 and had plated it with aluminum or iron fluoride as need required in some of our newer territories to ship, and I had kept Rustbucket 1, our first ship, on more or less our old routes.
But even on our old routes, there were systems theoretically opened that no one had thought to settle – and the inhabitants of the Shattur System reached out to me one fine day when the course I had plotted passed a bit nearer than usual to the system.
Now they were some pretty beings, the Crystal Sister-Queens, and they had beautiful voices, like great glockenspiels or crystalline bells. Four of them appeared and had a beautiful message: they were welcoming humans and humanoids to that region of the galaxy, and also to enter and settle in the system. They had a reward to offer as well: each of their worlds had massive mines of gems that humans and other humanoids valued.
Each of the queens you see had charge of a different planet, a planet reflected in her appearance. The first showed video of her world – covered with green forests, with mines primarily of emeralds, with some of gold, rubies, and quartz mixed in.
The second –
– had charge of a rocky world, but with many light-colored flowers like an alpine spring showing among the deep violet rocks, and her mines were quartz, marble, amethyst, and garnet.
The third –
– had charge of a world covered in meadows and savannas, full of spring flowers
of many colors, and indeed, her mines had many kinds of gemstones: jade and topaz, carnelian and amethyst, peridot and alexandrite, the rare stone from the beryl family that shines green in Earth's sunlight, but other colors depending on the lighting … and under other suns, alexandrite's versatility is unmatched.
The fourth –
– had charge of a blue world of tropical oceans, and her island mines were of sapphire, lapis lazuli, aquamarine, and gold.
As I recall this, my imagination has me floating in the watering of the collective mouths of my bridge crew and myself at this very tempting offer.
However, I was doing what I do … turns out the presentation was triggered by passing within so many kilometers of a certain buoy. As I said, I rarely sailed that close to the Shaatur system, but because we were behind schedule, I had cut a sharper course than normal. Plenty of ships, however, used that route that I was on … and yet there was not a single living human or humanoid life form on any of those planets as of yet.
The Shaatur System had been known to humans for 20 years. One would think somebody would have taken up this tempting offer, even if they were too selfish to tell others, and there would be some sign of human activity. There was none.
Something was wrong. I didn't know what it was, but …
“No go, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “We're behind schedule and we have contracts to fulfill.”
The collective groan was immense, and inevitably, the old, “Come on, Captain Dixon!” was heard. But they knew me. I wasn't quite as personable as my partner Captain (Not J.T.) Kirk; if I said no, and you wanted to have a job, you had better not make me say it again.
This was and is always deeply resented by new people in the company because it was the opposite of what people expect – the racial history of Earth still has a certain legacy cost, especially with American crews. I am African-American, and people expect me to be more improvisational and intuitive and forgiving, while my partner who is White is expected to be the hard-boiled and ruthless rules man. But, that's not how it works. I'm a systems man in the 23rd century. I don't do wheels that squeak for no good reason; I replicate new ones and get on with things.
As captain then and now as COO, employees who try to loud-talk their way past doing what is required find out I'm exactly the same way with them – and that allows my CEO to be visionary and improvisational and intuitive and open new frontiers. As from the beginning, I run a tight ship, and Mark can get it to go where no freighters have shipped freight before because it is the very best it can be.
People who stay in the company, however, always learn to appreciate me, and the same went for my crews back in the day when they understood the how and the why. In this case, a fleet ship had gone to Warp 9 trying to get into communication range with us when they noticed Rustbucket 1 had stopped to listen to the Crystal Queens' presentation – another sign that we should pass on.
Captain Tarik Chalmers of the Anansi explained it for all of us twenty minutes later.
“Those beautiful queens have everything they say they have,” he said, “but what they don't have and love are synthetic diamonds, while there is not an ounce of carbon in that entire system. But, we'll take you, Captain Dixon, and remove all the water, calcium, and all the other trace elements in your body, and all you are is carbon to be crushed and molded. You know how they make more-or-less diamonds out of ashes after cremation on Earth? That's what the Crystal Sister-Queens are up to. Humans and humanoids – all carbon-based – are their seeds to make diamonds. Your ship is the fuel to fire and compress, and a handful of diamonds is the result when everything else has burned off. We just figured this out yesterday, but the memo has not yet gone out to everyone.”
“I found their invitation buoy, Captain Chalmers,” I said. “My little weaponry can't do anything with it, but I bet yours can. However, I bet your engineers can also hack the thing and reprogram it to include a warning, and if you do it subtly, it may be a while before the Crystal Queens know what is going on, which will allow the warning on both the official channels and the hacked one to have time to circulate while the fleet figures out its next move.”
Captain Chalmers grinned.
“Captain Dixon, I like the way you think,” he said. “You've saved yourself and your crew and many others today, and the fleet hasn't forgotten all the ways you and your partner have helped us out. You keep on doing what you are doing, young entrepreneur – the road is a bit different for captains like us, but, you'll get where you're going if you keep moving wisely!”
His white teeth flashed in his ebony-colored face very much as my white teeth in my dark chocolate-hued face … he would keep moving wisely, and so would I.
Meanwhile, the Crystal Sister-Queens would eventually face a date with Mark's “queen” the full fleet admiral … but that is another story entirely.
One fractal in Apophysis, rendered with four different palettes -- choice of palettes in a fractal makes a LOT of difference!