St Brendan
The Albatross is now fully booked with passengers! In fact, it will be just a bit crowded.
On the other hand, the cargo hold has room. They buy an entire container of skin care products and it costs a good portion of their cash available- it costs over twice what they took in from the run to San Lorenzo- but hopefully they can sell it somewhere.
But... once there is a route planned in to Merlin, there is a little more interest in shipping cargo by St. Brendan companies. The ship will be taking the "back road". This is what little frontier ships often do, avoiding the crowds of the Main Line. Both St. Brendan and Merlin are Coreward of the Main Line, so it works well, they will save almost 50 light years distance!
This is what enables them to make a good deal with the passengers, and the express service also gives them two containers to ship.
They still have plenty of room, which can be used a a big zero g recreation space when they are in flight. Maybe with so many passengers it might be nice.
Along the way they will have to refuel twice. It's a long trip, with navigation saying 22-23 days with refueling stops. The destination is Merlin, and they check the standard references about the planet.
Merlin is a habitable oceanic moon of the gas giant Nimue, and is tidally locked to Nimue- if you are on the portion of the planet "under" Nimue, Nimue is always overhead, a giant striped pinkish brownish ball in the sky.
Planets were settled using different selection processes for colonists, and a different social systems. Merlin developed a calm, "soft" society with a certain "new age Zen" style. They pride themselves on pacifism, and the Commonwealth maintains a school for Governors there, where they study Conflict Resolution. With Merlin's reputation for introspection, it is not surprising that the Institute for Consciousness Studies is located there. One of Merlin's "exports" is its people, often found working as therapists, counselors, and coaches. This includes the passengers the Albatross is now carrying, who work as Occupational Counselors- helping colonists transition from their old jobs to the things they will have to do in a new colony.
Merlin's exports include living specimens of its unique and bio-luminescent sea and land life. These are prized by aquarium aficionados throughout the 100 worlds. They produce a wide variety of other goods, including advanced metals and many types of food, but their life forms and the products they derive from these are unique. The bioluminescent compounds extracted from Merlin's equivalent to flowers can be used to produce a dye that gives off a slight glow when supplied with energy- typically from body heat.
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Meanwhile.... Florence will soon have St. Brendan to herself!
The old woman frowns, she has no desire to talk about the commonwealth, and politics, and all those annoying things. She came to Mission San Lorenzo to get away from that!
"Not to get away from the Commonwealth, we're not Freelanders**, no. I mean, just to get to a place where it was nicely in the background. Like a potted plant you just have to water from time to time."
But, yes, there are plenty of people around who do like to talk about those things. There are always some young people who just love to talk about the future of the galaxy and how their ideas will make things better, if only the older folk would listen to them. Of course, they can be found around the Fordam branch.
The woman's younger assistant is willing to provide more details on how things are here: Mission San Lorenzo, and most of the Rain Coast settlements, were established specifically because people wanted to live a remote, isolated lifestyle where the social leadership of the church was the only game in town. There is one Governor representative in the town, the Magistrate, who acts as judge and mayor, but as the people see it, the less the Magistrate has to do, the better. It's not that they dislike the commonwealth, but in general, that's for "other people" who run corporations and fly spaceships and do civilization things. Out here, the parish priests give advice and people follow it, and everyone attends Mass. Of course, one of the universal laws of the Commonwealth is that people who are poorly matched to the social system of a Governate must be free to leave it and resettle in a more suitable one, so every year a few people who just don't want to live like this leave. But on the whole the population has been increasing. A simple, uncomplicated life where everyone knows their place appeals to a lot of people back in the big cities of Earth.
**Freelanders: People who create settlements without Commonwealth authorization. The Commonwealth greatly discourages this, but is reluctant to forcefully evict them. How to handle this is a big issue for the Governors.