Reggie stopped in what seemed  a casual break, but looked the immediate area over, again. He saw the ground car, and heard the property manager's conversation.

 He went to take a drink from a water bottle." There is a ground car. At the far end of the warehouse. I think they are just looking us for, for the time being. But they might call for muscle. "

"Lets pick up the pace, maybe we can be gone before they arrive."

"Yeah, sooner we're gone, the better." Einar agreed. "Reggie, keep an eye on'em and we'll pick up the pace. We can always adjust the load once we're away."

Horace picked the pace up to a fast walk on everything, it was crucial to be gone before trouble arrived. The pace was grueling.

The Monsignor has one more box for you.

"I know our... friend.. told you we could not afford the typical rates for your ship, and he would arrange things.  We promised to pay what we could, what we had put together for the trip.  We have 90,000 in Commonwealth currency.  It would have paid for a regular delivery on a slow haul freighter.  I am going to go talk to the people in that vehicle.  I'm betting that if they have any thoughts of trouble they won't start it with an old priest."

The rest of the loading goes smoothly.  The robot trucks had already been loaded, themselves, but the cargoes have to be strapped down with webbing.

Some cargo ships have robots to do this work.  Crews tend to accumulate robots over time, it cuts down on the physical labor.  Then the ship's doctor tells them they need more exercise, so the net gain in convenience tend to be limited.   But perhaps the ship can visit a robot dealer or two.  Probably not where they are going, though.  That's not the sort of thing you find on a remote settlement.

The Monsignor is still talking  to the people in the vehicle when the cargo is all loaded. The crew is tired.

"Time to lift off, damn I'm tired, but we need to get out of here ASAP. Orders Captain?"

 Reggie did his best to assit with the final loading, and keep an eye on the Monsignor,at the same time.

 Once the loading was complete, the Security man headed over towards the car and church woman."  Monsignor, everything is secured. It is time for us to depart, if you please."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:03, Tue 24 Dec 2019.

"ALL ABOARD!"

The cargo has been quickly and hopefully correctly stowed aboard.  There are mesh nets (included with the ship, naturally) that descend over pallets and boxes and secure everything tightly.

The Albatross is a good ship.  The Penguins are tough, reliable, and once in space, quick.  If they have a down side to their performance, it is in getting up there.  Some corners had to be cut, the engines that launch and maneuver the ship are not that strong.  (But it's still an improvement over the many ships that cannot land at all!)

At busy worlds, all departures and arrivals are watched and coordinated.  This is not an intrusive thing, this is a necessity, to avoid messy collisions.  A ship enters or leaves the Lyonesse system several times per hour and there are generally dozens of merchant ships in orbit, and some belonging to the Commonwealth Navy.

They pass by several vessels on their way out.

At this point, they have the first navigational choice to make.

The ship will need to refuel once along the way and refueling points are less common out on the frontier.  There are two common routes to St. Brendan from Lyonesse.  The standard route is by way of Deseret, a total trip of 51.3 Light Years, with a stopover at Deseret, which is an important colony planet.  The shortcut stops at the outpost at Gideon instead, and is only 48.3 LY.  Most traders choose to stop at higher population worlds to do more trading, pick up passengers, cargo, etc, so the Gideon route is much less traveled even though it is shorter.

Both routes are considered safe and are patrolled by the Commonwealth Navy, though the frequency of patrols drops off quickly after Deseret and Gideon.  The trip to Deseret is so common that there are two daily large passenger transports going that way, the Ville De Cariveau having the previous evening, and the Ville De Regiomont being prepped for the morning departure.  The route to Gideon is much more lonely.

Einar looked beat as they climbed steadily out of atmo, and while he had caught his breath, he still had the look of a man who would be stiff in the morning.

Much as he had on the way in, he listened to the pitch of the thrusters as they manuvered under load. It reminded him that they needed to stop in orbit and to double check that nothing would come loose under strain given their hasty departure.

"Alright..." He finally said gruffly once they broke Atmo. "Mister Wymp, could you run the math and see if a stop in Deseret would be worth the trouble? Figure that might have plenty of goods that the St. Brendan colonists might find useful. If they can afford them of course"

"Aye-aye Captain."

Horace punched into the computer the info he was looking for, the safe, well traveled route was preferable after all.

 Once they had burned for orbit, Reggie would pass the time by breaking down and cleaning his weapons, and working out.

 If anyone played chess, he would invite them to a game.

At the beginning a bit distracted by something, Florence quickly focused on what she was doing, trying to keep track of the cargo coming on bord as best she could which was not as well as she would have liked given the rythm stuff was brought on board. Oh, she got all the big stuff alright, they were kinda hard to miss after all. No, it was all packages stored in the vehicles that was a lot more challenging.

Soon she gave up on most of it, recognizing the futility of trying to do it all at once. With a couple more people, it might have been possible, but not alone. At least it would give her a bit to do on the way… Not that she didn't have other plans though. Robots seemed a nice possibility to help her, especially considering that… Well, it didn't matter for now.

As the ship prepared for take off, Florence sat at an unoccupied station and closed her eyes. She didn't seem scared at all, nor did she seem about to go to sleep, no, instead she seemed to be trying to be focused on something…maybe.

Once in orbit, when the subject of their route was addressed, she had something to say. "I don't know about finances, but going to Deseret seems to be the better option: we will want to get there after this run to pick a new job, but more importantly by going there now we could learn about stuff we might be able to find on St. Brendan: even if it's not much considering the state of the colony, running empty doesn't get money in the accounts so it'll always be better than nothing. Plus," She shrugged. "This being our first trip and all, we might find stuff that needs fixing on our way there. Being at Deseret instead of Gideon would make it much easier. It would also allow us to order parts in advance and pick those on our way back should the need arise."

They turn towards Deseret, and are soon Faster Than Light... and then come five days of rest.

The ship has room for more stuff, if you want to pick up things at Deseret.  Right now, due to the quick departure of the ship from Lyonesse, the ship has a lot of empty room.  Not so much in the cargo hold, but there are 12 staterooms and only 6 in the crew.

In the cargo hold, the equipment and supplies loaded take up about three quarters of the available space, but that’s due to the awkward, bulky shapes.  One could stuff a lot more small packages in and around the equipment-a total of about a third of the space is available, with careful packing.  There is some room (overhead) for pallet cargo, but it is impossible for shipping containers to be loaded.  As it is presently loaded, the ship could not take on more cargo in space.  The trucks and equipment are not packaged to be exposed to vacuum.  If the cargo bay was opened in space, that would cause a lot of damage.  Unless the ship lands at Deseret, cargo can only come and go through the airlock, which is much smaller.

They do a little checking in to the local economics of the two worlds they are headed for:


Deseret is known for:
Boats/Small Watercraft
Ground Vehicles
Infant Care Items.  They have a high birth rate on this world and take such things seriously.
Leather
Luggage, Travel Gear, Personal Bags- several "designer lines" are made here.
Prosthetic Devices
Refrigerant and Firefighting Gasses
Robotics Components
Tropical Fruit- Pineapples aren't easy to grow on most worlds.  They like Deseret.
Wall Finishes- including some odd "smart" ones- think stucco that can change colors on demand.

St. Brendan is known for:
Very little.  Being a recent and small colony they are a net importer of most things.   But that being said, there are exports of:
Soap and Personal Hygiene Products - valued for their supposed "special natural qualities", being made from the local life, which is mostly a sort of blue-green fuzzy slime on the rocks.   Like many exotic goods, this sort of thing tends to get more valuable with distance.
Air Filters and Filter Components
Cleaning Supplies
Dyes and Inks

Horace wonders if they could get more Cargo for St. Brendans. "Who is our broker here? We need to check on the availability of cargo for St. Brendans or beyond, though it will have to be packed to take up little volume. We'd have to land to take on cargo or passenger."

Einar had made himself a little instant coffee from his personal stash, some saccharine mixture with Cyrillic writing that he had picked up somewhere along the way. It was decent, and he drank deeply of the stuff as he stood on in the cockpit and watched as they manuvered.

It was starting to catch up to him. The chaos of that morning, the happenstance collaboration and the giddy thrill of spending an obscene amount of money. They crew, the contract and finally the physical labor of trying to get the ship loaded without any interference from the locals. He wanted to go rack out, but, had opted for the coffee instead.

"I think you just volunteered" Einar said with a faint smirk and a sip. "I know it's kind of cleche, but what do you think about the baby stuff?" He asked the crew in general as he scrolled through the economic summary of Deseret and her myriad trading hubs. "I mean it's a Colony right? A Catholic colony, I'm thinking there's gonna be a whole lotta ankle biters comin' along, if they haven't already.'

"Agreed. Haven't you slept for the entire voyage captain? Five days in space has been good!"

"Normally takes me about two weeks" he admitted with a slight shrug. "New ship, new sounds, new crew...it's a new start, a whole lot of "ifs"" While there was some notion of standard time cycle, the dimming of lights and the rythm of a shift, he had also been coming off a particularly arduous contract, so he was paying back some of his sleep debt piecemeal.

"Nice to have my own bunk again" he commented in a more upbeat tone. "And a room to myself. I set my bag in the corner and just kind of wondered what I was supposed to do with all that space, might have to hang up a few mementos."

He gestured towards Wymp with the sealed cup. "How 'bout you? You sleepin ok? Got your guts right?"

"I'm good, sleep like a baby. It is nice to have your own state room."

In the five days since they had left Lyonesse, Florence had been quite busy: she had spent the first day going through the stuff they had in the cargo-bay, making sure it matched the manifest perfectly. Not that it would have been possible to do anything about it of course, but at least she'd have known something was wrong.

After that, she spent most of her time reading on her laptop, taking a few notes from time to time or taking a few strolls through the ship. Though when she did that, she seemed deep in thought and not paying attention to anything that didn't jump in her face. When she went on those strolls, she left behind her the light, nice - and very feminine - citrus smell of her body-wash or shampoo.

At the time of the discussion about taking more cargo on Deseret, the girl proved that despite being focused on her laptop she still paid attention to what was going on around her by saying. "As soon as we arrive, we should make it known that we're going to St. Brendan with available passenger slots. We might not have many takers, but even one is better than nothing. Especially if we don't hire anyone else."

She tapped her fingers rhythmically on her laptop for a second before adding. "Given St. Brendan's exports of hygiene stuff," She glanced darkly at Einar at that. "I'm not sure baby stuff is the best we could get. Before two years old or so, I don't suppose there's too much you really need to get from another planet. Except for emergencies but we can't really predict it. Maybe a better idea would be to aim a bit later than that, toys and particularly young children education stuff. The colony is, what? Six years old or so? Maybe we should aim at stuff for kids three to five years old?"

"Maybe a little of both Miss Pearce? Baby and hygiene as well as anything else we can carry. Passengers are welcome too."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:19, Fri 03 Jan 2020.

Florence's eyebrows Rose a bit, as if she were puzzled. "Hygiene? I could understand for... Well, for the ship," She carefully avoided looking at Einar at that. "But what would we do with it in St. Brendan? That's one of the stuff they export isn't it?"

After a brief hesitation, as if a bit unsure - or unused to it - she added. "And call me Florence please..."

"St. Brendans exports Hygiene? I'm sorry, I got confused there for a bit, . . Florence. I'm Horace by the way."

Florence got the file up on her laptop and pointed to it. "Soap and personal hygiene. They apparently produce it from some kind of local slime. It could probably sell decently enough on Deseret - or even better farther out - but I don't see us getting much by trying to sell hygiene products on St. Brendan."

She shrugged. "Which is also why I'm not sure if baby products would work all that well. For the most part it'd be food or hygiene, right? They already have all of this already. But if we aim at the three to five years old range, I think we'd have more success. But I'm obviously no expert, so..."

"Go with your gut Florence, I was confused on the hygiene, your were spot on."