bound for Spider Moon, Boojum orbit...
The trip from Kowloon took several days in a shuttlecraft. Kristiana really began to appreciate the convenience of Heavy Raiders and Raptors, though she found the library files in the shuttlecraft were both excellent, and extensive. Subjects ranging from fiction to history, thousands of books, treatises and tomes were archived for easy reading.
her escort, Linda, had a helmet with the word 'Seether' stenciled on the side, and the girl basically lived at the controls during the trip out. "Aren't you uncomfortable?" she asked.
Seether shrugged, "Not really. This is a lot like what I grew up with-if you can't learn to sit still for hours at a time, the belts aren't somewhere you should be." The faceplate of that flight helmet had projected data from the ship's systems and sensors overlaid in a heads-up display. "Besides, I don't have to be in the flight couch, it's just that there's not a lot of cubic footage and you're...planetbound."
"Dirtyfeet you mean? You've used the perjorative before." Kristiana replied.
"Yah. it's ethnic." Seether told her, "And yah, it's a perjorative, like Heinie, but maybe not quite so negative...alright, gotta focus here."
"are we docking with a ferry then?"
"Nope, just linking to a Fueller from Jodamson Mining, a shuttle like this has a decent tank, but it burns a lot of H3 getting out of the Well, and while I might enjoy taking the casual route to Spider Moon and arriving next month, you probably want to arrive there a bit earlier. This time of year, the orbital transition at one gee is a four day trip, later this year it'll be longer, you really timed it right for a quick outing."
"We've been together for two days...I haven't asked, How old are you?"
Seether grinned, "Fifteen next may." she said, "Earth-years, fifteen. Got my flight cert when I was eleven, Navigator's Apprenticeship is on-going, I'll be rated sometime in July next year if I keep up the pace I'm working in this apprenticeship."
"you're so young! are you a child soldier??"
"If I end up in combat, then someone has definitely left the lock doors open after a dock and everything has gone completely wrong." Seether told her. "I get where you're coming from though."
"Oh?"
"Sure, see, a planet-born will take two years of intensive training to work in space, more if they want to finish what we'd term basic flight qualification. The dirtyfeet going to Pandora spend four years of school to learn how to do the calculations I learned growing up in a burrow-it's like walking, right? I had to spend a year to learn how to walk in one-gee, but i was able to rig a suit for EVA just a little bit after learning how to use a potty rig. Lifestyle decides what life-skills you're going to have as a child, and that extends to what you're going to be competent doing as a teenager or adult. I'd be hopeless riding a bicycle on a planet, but not many planet-bound kids who can ride a bike, can manage an orbital transition or handle a fuel-docking. My cousin Jinna can do both and she's eight...but she'd be on her butt in a gravity well, she'd have crawl everywhere until she learned how to put her feet under her and keep 'em there, and her Dad still can't do it."
"So it's a trade-off."
"Yah Ma'am." Seether said with a nod, "I got lucky-I have talent enough to pass for a Dirtyfoot on a planet, got me in with the Apprenticeship...there we go. drinkin' from the straw..."
the hull rumbled as liquified Hydrogen 3 pumped into the onboard tanks from the fueler.
"Seems like a dangerous lifestyle either way...and you can't have the numbers." Kristiana observed.
"Yeah, well, back in the old days-the Rim Worlds days, my folk had a rep for stealing children, like the Faerie folks in some people's myths, mixed with some really nasty propaganda, because we'd 'steal' slaves from the Rim Worlds-some of that's actually true, mind you. We liberated slaves and we took in anyone we could afford to, brought them out into the black, freedom and safety from their oppressors, and a LOT of the time, it was kids whose parents couldn't feed them or protect them."
"What did you do with them?"
"They became us." Seether said, "we haven't done that in a long, long time, generations even...but there are places throughout the Inner Sphere where those rumours still float around like a bad smell in a life support filter. We still maintain cousin-contacts in the rest of human space."
"cousin-contacts?"
"informal. Belter communities are pretty much everywhere humans are in the Inner Sphere, but most of them are smaller than ours, or deeper in hiding, the Sol-Belters are probably the most advanced, and isolationist-they passed along some medical knowledge that stabilized our birth-rates so we don't have to constantly be on the lookout for 'talent' on the ground, but they're pretty stingy with some of the stuff they have reps for."
"Why is that?"
"well, the official line is diversity." Seether said, "nobody wants to end up like those Inbreds in the Chainelaines, maintaining a viable gene-pool and preventing inbreeding is a constant struggle, especially with the smaller communities, the Metis guys reputedly have a means of preventing it, which is why they don't marry out like they used to...but I kinda think there's a limit there, because they do contract with outies from time to time for ova and sperm. the real reason, is that they're right smack in the middle of Earthspace, and they've got the Terries breathing down their necks constantly-they can't afford to keep what they have and guard it from the possibility of some outie import saying things where the robes can hear it."
"so there is a common culture."
"NO...oh god no..." Seether laughed, "some common challenges, common approaches sure-but...it's like, there's us, and then there's guys like The Folk, who still recruit the old way, or the jarnfolk, who are weirder than we are, with their kooky 'honor duels' and nomadic lifestyle. Those guys, their women have a rep for sleeping around for a reason-they don't trade with other Spacer or Rockjack communities for genetic matter, they just sleep with strangers a whole lot, and occasionally 'adopt' foundlings in the old style, see, we have ties to the dirtyfeet here and in a few neighboring systems, family lines on the ground, some rotation between us and Kowloon, for example. THOSE guys only ground to get laid and trade, no ties, no family lines or connections to the places they visit."
"You have ties on Kowloon itself."
"Exactly, we maintain family ties to the inhabited planet at the bottom of the well, we share a civilization, a culture, religion, history, and family relationship. We also share economic ties, and some political allegiance, and that latter part goes back to first settlement, when my ancestors brought THEIR ancestors out of bondage on Earth to a world we all thought would be too far away, too inconvenient, and too much trouble for the Earthers to conquer and dominate." Linda sighed, "We were wrong, of course. we didn't consider that other people would settle nearby. Five hundred years ago, this binary system was so far out nobody thought anyone would WANT to come here."
"What changed?"
"People who weren't us, went further out." Linda said, "It's like, you move out into the hinterlands to get away from nosy neighbours, and they moved out there too. We're kinda lucky because the nosy neighbours still want one gee and one atmo shirtsleeves pressure without effort-planets. They don't want to live out here, so OUR branch of the family can still live pretty much unencumbered...but, you know, family right? stuck in the Gravity Well, getting dirt on their feet. gotta take care of family, and lots of them can't live out here. My ancestors chose to stick around."
