Copperfield and Emerald staggered into view, followed by a crowd of mixed locals and other spacers, shouting and stumbling along like a drunken parade. Most looked like they were enjoying the show, but a few squared up against his crew members.

  “No no no,” Heath muttered as he hurried over. He was still too far away to hear what Emerald spat at the closest spacer. He was however close enough to see the shove the Spacer made in retaliation. And Emerald as they grabbed said Spacer’s wrist and flipped them onto the floor.

  “Shit.”

  He arrived as the brawl kicked off.

  “Is that it?” Emerald shouted as they dodged a haymaker, more by luck than intent with how much both combatants were stumbling around.

  “Hey everyone, how about we calm down and –”

  Heath was cut off as Jenny Mae appeared out of nowhere. With a battle cry she ran and leapt onto the back of one of the Spacers attacking their crewmates. The man didn’t seem to notice. Beyond staggering to the side, he continued after Copperfield while Jenny Mae was ineffectively hitting him in the back and pulling his hair.

  The crowd hooted with laughter, shouting suggestions at the drunkards in the middle.

  “That’s it girlie, pull his hair.”

  “Come on Clint, that’s the best you got?”

  “Keep going green dude!”

  Heath reached in to grab Copperfield and didn’t see the fist aiming at him until he was doubled over from the blow, wheezing and holding his stomach.

  That launched another round of attacks from his crew, all shouting something about defending their Captain. He’d remember to feel touched when he could breathe again.

  An ear-splitting whistle silenced the crowd. Heath hauled himself upright to see a trio of classers approaching, in matching outfits with the station insignia on the front pocket. Great. Exactly what they needed.

  Copperfield either didn’t hear the whistle or didn’t care, because he took one last swing at his opponent. It didn’t land, as the leftmost guard casually caught the Swashbuckler’s fist and twisted it out of the way.

  “That’s it for the show, folks, time to find beds for the night.”

  The crowd dispersed at the no-nonsense tone and sharp glares sent their way from the guards. Heath attempted to do the same, gripping onto Emerald and Copperfield’s sleeves. Jenny Mae seemed the most likely to follow if they all left in a group. Carter, bless him, was still around and did his best to help, ducking so that he could get one of Emerald’s arms around his shoulders as he propped the older spacer up.

  “Not you. You’re all coming with us.” The Guard’s snapped command stopped the crew in their tracks.

  There was no choice in that statement so they all trudged, dragged, and half-carried each other off to the nearest station-security office. Inside, they were brought to a sterile white room, sat in rickety chairs and told to wait.

  “Damn Heath. Since when are you a drama magnet?” Carter was gamely keeping up a smile, despite being dragged into Heath’s nightmare.

  “I’m sorry. Not really sure what’s happening right now to be honest.”

  “No worries man. Sometimes things get a little crazy. Doesn’t look like anyone got hurt.”

  “And that is why you aren’t in bigger trouble.” The Guard returned with such perfect timing Heath was sure she’d been listening outside. “Explain, now.”

  Heath looked to the side and saw each member of his crew looking down or to the side, effectively ignoring the situation.

  “Ahem, I’m the Captain of the Wandering Loon, this is my crew.” And then he was out of things to say. His crew had decided to fight but he had no idea why. “A conflict arose this evening, which unfortunately escalated further than anyone would have preferred. No injuries or damage occurred.”

  That should be enough. He could feel sweat pooling at the base of his spine, probably seeping through his coveralls, with the stress he was feeling. It was an unfortunate time to remember they were smuggling undeclared goods through this very station. The bright white lights were blinding, the tips of his fingers slowly going numb.

  His spiral was interrupted when Carter clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s right. No harm no foul, right?”

  The Guard crossed her arms and stared Heath down until he could feel his eyes start to water as he forgot to blink. The buzz of some loose mechanical piece took over the room as they sat in silence.

  “Get out. I’m issuing a three month suspension for your whole crew from the station. We see you back here before that, you’ll be paying a fine.” She finally broke eye contact and looked across at Heath’s crew. “Or working it off.”

  Jenny Mae opened her mouth, to let the Guard know that a ban was the wrong punishment for their infraction, Heath was sure. Before she could dig them into a deeper hole, he jumped in, thanked the Guard, and ushered everyone back out into the public concourse. He had a moment to wonder if this was what Captainhood would always be like, but he dismissed the thought. He had never done anything to mess with Uncle Walt’s day. Definitely not. A perfectly behaved nephew who never messed up or got into trouble, that was him.

  Crew safe, if not sound, Heath turned to Carter. There was a whole pile of things to say, but he couldn’t get any of them out. In the end he settled on “I’m sorry”, with as much feeling as he could muster.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just stay safe. Travelers’ blessing.” Carter’s gaze roamed over his crew, his expression alternating between amused and genuine concern. “I expect I’ll be hearing about you through the rumor mill, one way or another.”

  “Yeah, safe skies”. They parted ways, leaving Heath alone with a sulking crew.

  “Captain –”

  “Back on the ship.” He felt a twinge of guilt for cutting Jenny Mae off, but it was buried so deep under annoyance it would be crushed into diamond before seeing the light of day. “Just, wait til we’re on the ship.”

  It was a trail of grumpy ducklings that followed him back to their berth.

  “Bridge in fifteen. I’ll file our flight plan for tomorrow morning. I don’t want to push it with the Guards.”

  They all trudged off to their bunks. Heath hoped they would listen to his summons, he was in no mood to drag them out to have the conversation. Instead of following them, he went into the bridge.

  Finally, blessedly alone, he slumped into the Captain’s chair, head in hands. “You were watching.”

  “Indeed I was, young Heath. I have found the lack of restrictions on AI interfacing with stations has revealed a significant lack of security on video feeds. Our crew shows great spirit in the face of adversity.”

  “Sure. Spirit’s one word for it. I might say stupidity. Disrespect. Embarrassment. There are a few to choose from. Gods, I was not planning on figuring out ship discipline this early.”

  “While I cannot condone unsanctioned violence, I may offer some perspective. Your fledgling crew has already weathered conflict and come out the other side. Even more, they stood together in the face of a common enemy. Many would crumble or split apart under such strain. The young Spacers in your care banded together in mutual defense.”

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  He looked up. Not that Loon really had a face, the floor was just as much her body as any of the screens, but it felt right. “You think I shouldn’t punish them.”

  “Not at all. Your Class instincts do not lead you astray in this matter, when the consequences of your crewmembers’ actions reflect onto the entire enterprise, that requires action. Walt knew well the importance of maintaining order when out in the void. I merely suggest tempering your reaction through the lens of unity.”

  “I’ll think about it. We need to reset our departure time. Do we have any unloading left?”

  “Already done. Our deliveries have been made successfully. We will lose out on any smaller jobs we would have picked up tomorrow, but the loss should not hamper us overmuch.”

  “Thanks. What –” He cut himself off when the rest of his crew appeared on the bridge.

  Each of them took their normal seats, very carefully avoiding eye contact with Heath or each other.

  “Any explanation?”

  Jenny Mae rubbed the back of her neck, and Copperfield shifted like he couldn’t get comfortable. Their older, but apparently not wiser, crewmate didn’t react at all. Emerald could be asleep with their eyes open as far as Heath could tell.

  “So, I decide to hit up a job hall. Why not? Have some free time and creds to burn. No harm having a bit of fun on the down time.” Heath opened his mouth but Copperfield was on a roll. “I show up and Emerald is already there. It’s good. We have a few, then some station locals start up a game of tarkan, six card. We join in. I might not have the levels of some of the others, but I know my way around a table. Spent more time station-hopping than in atmo. You pick things up.

  “The green one does alright but I’m cleaning up. Creds piling up on my end of the table. Smiles all around. Then some new Spacers join in.”

  That was enough for Heath to paint the rest of the picture, but he didn’t interrupt. If he strained, he could almost see the disappointed look on his Uncle’s face the one time at eighteen when he’d tried his own hand at gambling and came to his Uncle to help pay off the losses. A fact he’d paid for dearly in the six months that followed. Since then, he hadn’t gambled at all.

  Unless you counted throwing every credit he had and all his good sense out the window to resurrect a dying ship and start his own shipping venture fueled on hope and dreams.

  “-- it’s down to the two of us. This guy, he’s got tells, right? But the kind of tells that are obvious. You spend more than a few hours at the table, and they beat those out of you. And he’s been playing well. I’m sure he’s faking. So I go for it. I wait it out a couple of hands then pounce.” Copperfield’s story had morphed into a full pantomime, as he acted out the scene right there on the bridge.

  “It worked. I won, took the creds. Then things got…uh well, you saw how things got.”

  “Yeah I saw. He didn’t like that you won, accused you of cheating, you went outside to beat the crap out of each other. Am I about right?”

  “Well you put it like that, you make it sound dirty. This was a matter of honor.” Copperfield stood and moved his hand like he was going to strike a pose holding his sword. Would have been better if he was wearing the sword. Or boots. The pirate continued his tale clad in coveralls and socks, flailing at his side and still half drunk from the evening’s adventures.

  “You know better. Emerald definitely knows better. I’m glad it wasn’t you that started things, but you let them escalate, and the crew is going to lose out on some profit because of that.”

  Copperfield at least had the grace to look abashed at the reminder.

  “But I appreciate you all sticking up for one another. We don’t have enough room for drills, and I’m not going to dock your pay. I know for a fact the Imperial Regs let Captains have flexibility to decide punishments Jenny, don’t try and pull that out.” The crewmember in question subsided and pulled her interrupting finger back in. “But there have to be some consequences for getting into that situation in the first place. Next round of ship chores is doubled, and cleaning without [Ship Maintenance] for the next week. Loon needs to be spotless.”

  “Yeah that’s fair,” Copperfield muttered and sat back down.

  The silence that followed was not as awkward as Heath had feared, but not as comfortable as he would have hoped. At least it was over. The relief of navigating his first disciplinary action as Captain would have to be enough. That and the tingling of a status change. The buzzing at the base of his skull was stronger than what just another Leadership update would account for.

  Suddenly the whole thing didn’t look too bad at all. What was a short ban and a contract they would barely break even on, compared to a Class level? As long as they didn’t make a habit of it.

  Their reflections were broken when Ekaterina stormed onto the bridge. “What is going on out here? First you interrupt my mana manipulation practice trance stomping around in the middle of the night, then I get a notification our flight plans have changed. What kind of ship are you running?”

  She turned on Heath at the end, looking ready to spit fire. Something he was not entirely sure would be only metaphorical. Days on the same ship and he still didn’t know anything about her or her Class, beside it being the kind of old-school magic class that rich families saw as a mark of pride.

  “Apologies, Miss Althalas. We had a bit of an issue on the station. It won’t happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t. Really I don’t think you appreciate…” she was still glaring daggers at Heath when her eyes shifted and then went wide. “Just, see that it doesn’t.”

  Just as quickly as she’d arrived, she stormed right back out to her bunk.

  “Peachy, that one.” Emerald finally deigned to speak.

  “Look who’s talking,” Heath said.

  And just like that, the tension broke and they all shared a laugh.

  “Let’s head to bed.”

  “Too keyed up for that,” Copperfield said. “How about a movie?”

  Before anyone could comment, the list of the options in the storage banks appeared on screen. The Loon weighing in on the idea as much as she could. None of the vids were anything too recent, but there was a wide variety. Copperfield went to work sorting through, with occasional input form Jenny Mae, or disapproving grunts from Emerald. They settled on something, Heath didn’t really care. Sitting through entire movies wasn’t his favorite, but he could use some time to unwind himself before trying to sleep.

  As the opening credits were rolling, Jenny Mae turned back to Copperfield. “Were you cheating?”

  He looked at her like she’d grown an extra head in front of him. “Of course I was cheating. What kind of tarkan player doesn’t cheat?”

  **********

  At the next station, Heath was taking no chances. It was small, not many permanent residents, but enough traffic to have a respectable Skill-training setup. First thing after they docked that morning, Heath marched his crew off to the gym. The week in transit had almost made him forgive the last station for its no refunds policy, but he wouldn’t be forgetting it. Or making the same mistake twice.

  “I booked everyone for four hours of combat Skill training, your choice what exactly you work on. The rest we can train on the ship, but until we get our own facility, we’re doing this every time we stop. I’m doing an hour of [Marksmanship], and the rest on sims split between in-flight and personal combat. Emerald?”

  They gave the best sigh Heath had gotten in a while, top-ten quality for sure. “[Mage Hand]. If I must.”

  “How do you have –” Jenny Mae started

  “You must,” Heath cut in. “Copperfield?”

  “I have [Battle Tactics], [Swordsmanship] and [Marksmanship] that can be direct-trained, since this place doesn’t have the right facility for Betsy to get a workout. I’ll do an hour of each then sims for the mech.”

  “Perfect. JM? I know you’re lower level and don’t have the skills yet, but you can still practice the basics.”

  “Oh, I have [Sharpshooter]. Evolved form of [Marksmanship]. I’ll train that and get a workout in.”

  Copperfield stumbled and almost walked right into the wall. “What? How?”

  Their Administrator shrugged. “My family works a hippobream ranch. The marshlands attract a lot of flying predators so you learn to shoot real quick. I’m a better shot than all the cousins. When I got my Class, I had the Skill too.”

  “That’s, that’s…” Copperfield sputtered to try and get the words out. Heath was feeling about the same, even if he didn’t say anything.

  “That’s impressive,” Heath said, cutting off whatever Copperfield was going to come up with. “The only person I knew with a natural combat Skill was a Pilot that Walt contracted with to teach me the basics. Said he earned [Dodge] as an offshoot of his [Piloting] skill, since he was flying through flights technically unarmed. Pretty sure he was lying though.”

  Emerald grabbed his arm and waved it around for a moment, pinching at the muscle. “You should probably just stay armed.”

  The three younger spacers stopped dead in their tracks while Emerald continued on through the door. There was no way in any hell that Emerald had just willingly made a joke.

  Green hair poked back through the doorway. “Shut up and get in here.”

  The training session itself was boring, but productive. A workout would be easier, he could at least listen to some music or an audiobook. Skill training was different. If you weren’t giving it your undivided focus, the training barely worked. Which means he spent an hour trying, and mostly failing, to hit randomly generated targets with the provided practice guns. Some while he stood still, some prone, others while he was forced to dance around return projectiles. The hours paid off in upgrades to his Skills, and a clear picture of how bad he was at the tactical sims.

  At least he had some crew members around that could handle themselves in a fight. Probably. The only fight he’d really seen them in they hadn’t been winning, but no one had pulled out any Skills so it didn’t count.

  Judging by expressions the others had a similarly productive morning. His curiosity almost got the better of him, but instincts – normal ones, not Class ones this time – kept him from prying. Captain’s had a certain amount of leeway in asking about Class information, since they had to know some of it for hiring and figuring out contracts, but most people found it extremely rude to just ask someone about their Skills and levels.

  The four spacers moved as a group towards the small restaurant area for the station, eager for a satisfying lunch after an intense workout, and weeks of travel rations. With their recent contract completions, Heath was willing to spring for the meal out.

  Copperfield slowed to walk next to Heath, a few steps behind where Jenny Mae was chattering at an unresponsive Emerald.

  “We were at the range at the same time. It’s insane. Like, she said she had [Sharpshooter] but I thought she might be joking. Nope. Turned it up to the highest setting and nailed each course like they were nothing.”

  “Yeah?” Heath answered. “We get her some guns and some better ship armaments, plus you in your mech, and it sounds like we might actually make it through a fight.”

  “Yup. Now you just need to keep up, Captain Noodle-Arms.”

  Noodles sounded great, and after a ramen lunch, the group split off for the rest of the afternoon.

  Ekaterina was in the mess hall when Heath got back. He checked on the door in surprise but continued into their kitchenette. It was the first time she’d spent any amount of free time outside of her bunk. Except for when she had to remind them to be quieter so she could meditate.

  He gave her a cautious nod, and continued on his own mission. Through trial and error, he’d found that the right combination of the nutrition supplements they kept in stock, mixed into the slightly carbonated water produced by the kitchen, created a flat, imitation soda. Which would have been sad if it wasn’t leagues better than any of the regular ways to get the sludge down. Spacer cuisine was not for the faint of heart.

  “Was your training session productive?”

  Despite being the only other person in the room, it still took him a moment to realize she was speaking to him. And not to complain. “Oh, um, yeah, good session. Wish we could have some training rooms on board, my Uncle used to, but well.” He ended with a shrug and went back to his concoction.

  “Did you work on your uncle’s ship before striking out on your own?”

  “Hmm. No, my Uncle Walt was the original Captain of the Wandering Loon. He passed away recently and left it to me.”

  “But then how…” she trailed off, perhaps realizing how invasive what she was about to ask was.

  “Ship suffered some damage.” The less he spilled about the nature of that damage the better.

  “I apologize, that was rude of me. Your uncle must have been quite the man to inspire you to follow in his footsteps.”

  “He was.” His throat was suddenly too tight to go on, and he had to swallow a few times before he could continue. “He was my hero. It’s been difficult with him gone. Have a nice afternoon, Miss Althalas, I need to go see to some cargo.”

  He grabbed his drink and went to the cargo bay, relying more on muscle memory than sight as tears clouded his eyes. Thankfully the others were gone and he was left in peace with just Loon to take a few minutes to remember.