Tales from the Service: A Personnel Matter

2953-11-19 – Tales from the Service: A Personnel Matter 

Replacing spacers and officers on veteran crews has always been a tricky prospect. No navy has ever been able to solve the problem completely; any system that tries to do a full psych-match for each replacement inevitably neglects sending any replacements to the most experienced and thus most culturally unique crews, and any system that focuses on filling rosters first inevitably places new personnel on crews they are not well suited to join. 

Thankfully, recruitment has ensured that the number of personnel available for both replacments and filling out the crews of new vessels is more than adequate in both the Fifth Fleet and the Seventh Fleet, so the easy patch for the problem is for skippers to send back poor fitting personnel and replace them again. This, unfortunately, leads to certain crews always cycling five or ten percent of their complement without ever really initiating any of the newcomers to the community. It also ensures that a certain percentage of replacement spacers who have been cycled in and out of warship crews several times and thus, often through no fault of their own, have personnel files that make skippers unwilling to take a chance on them, thus increasing the chance they’re cycled back again the next time. 

These spacers, though eager to do their part, are perennially drifting from ship to ship, outpost to outpost, without even the dignity of a rear-echelon posting. 

Captain Sven Danielssen massaged his temples and closed the report he’d been reading on his desk holo-display. The smart thing to do was to approve the attached transfer request from his gunnery chief and not ask too many more questions. The pair of ratings had after all only been aboard for about three weeks, like most of the crew replacements Melirose Diver had taken on after the bad hit she had taken at Elmore’s End. It would be no surprise to anyone that some percentage of them – largely green spacer recruits from the Core Worlds – had proven a bad cultural fit for the veteran crew of a blooded Seventh Fleet light cruiser. 

Of course, as one of the older cruiser captains in the Seventh and still commanding the same light cruiser he’d had at the war’s outbreak, Sven knew he was rarely accused of doing the smart thing. The mauling his Diver had suffered recently was largely due to his own command decisions, and he had been over the names of the thirty-four spacers maimed and fifteen killed in that action many times since. The smart thing to do was always to stay out of unnecessary trouble, but he had a bad habit of inserting himself into it. 

After a few seconds’ consideration, Sven tapped his comms earpiece. “Lieutenant Ahmetov, I’ve just finished your report on the incident of yesterday, second shift. Bring the two ratings you named up here to my office.” 

The response was, as usual of the precise, hard-driving gunnery chief, immediate. “Aye, Skipper. We’ll be there in five.” 

Sven sidelined the channel and shook his head. No doubt, since it was now nearing the end of the first shift of the next day, the pair was already awake and grudgingly preparing for whatever punishment duty Ahmetov had assigned them to until he could get them off the ship. Had he made this request at another time, the gunnery chief would have relished the opportunity to barge into each one’s bunkroom and shake them out of bed unprepared for a meeting with the captain. Anyone who Lieutenant Ahmetov judged competent was treated extremely gently by their chief, but he was a terror to anyone who he thought incapable of performing to an acceptable level. 

The problem, as always, was that Ahmetov, though he possessed a near-savant level understanding of relativistic gunnery and knew more than most engineers how to get the most out of Melirose Diver’s various weapons, was a poor mentor. He demanded too much out of his subordinates, all the way down to the most junior tech and the greenest gunner, with little interest in training the poor performers. In the peacetime Navy, this was fine; the crew could cycle through under-performing junior ratings every week or so until they had a few that passed his initial muster and were deemed adequate.  

Wartime service, however, had proven this system brittle. The cruiser’s gunnery department had been ten ratings under strength going into Elmore’s End. If Ahmetov kept going as he was, it might be fifteen the next time they got into the thick of a proper fight. How many empty berths would it take before the ship’s ability to defend itself was meaningfully degraded? 

Bad gunners and bad techs, of course, would definitely degrade the ship’s ability to fight. Lieutenant Ahmetov was right about that. The problem was that he didn’t seem to know the difference between moderately capaple and incapable. Anyone who wasn’t already approaching the ninetieth percentile was, in his view, a gross incompetent. 

The office door opened to admit the Lieutenant, leading a pair of young men in the unmarked gray tunics, with only the ship’s insignia and their surnames displayed on each shoulder patch. The pair each snuck a look at Sven, saluted crisply, then folded their hands behind their backs, their eyes firmly fixed on the deck at the foot of his desk. 

Ahmetov saluted, too, his salute as sharp as theirs, if briefer. “Captain, as requested, Spacer Halloran and Spacer Sung.” He gestured to each in turn. “I take it this is about the transfer recommendation?” 

“It is.” Sven steepled his fingers and looked hard at each of the young men. Neither of them could be over twenty T-years old, but they both had the look of lifelong spacers about them. They’d probably been from merchant spacer families before enlisting, as many of the ratings were. “Our current orders will have us out here for at least another month. Do you wish me to reassign them to another department until then?” 

Ahmetov scowled over his shoulder at the pair. “I can find a use for them for a little while, as long as there are no more... incidents.” 

“Understood.” Sven nodded. “I’m sure you have better things to do than this personnel matter, Lieutenant. I’ll take it from here with your spacers.” 

Ahmetov frowned in confusion, but with a little shake of his head, saluted again. “Understood, Captain.” He spun on one heel and exited the office without another look at his under-performing charges. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Swindler’s Ticket Out

2953-11-12– Tales from the Inbox: The Swindler’s Ticket Out 

Mari Robertson and Eddy Rothbauer watched Albie Schmelling get up from the table and amble across the lounge to where his young friend was waiting. They didn’t need to eavesdrop to know whether he was going to do what was said; the body language of each was sufficient to see whether the big conman was doing what he had to do, to avoid catching the immediate unfriendly attention of both the Gilhedat mission on the Sprawl and the local station administration. 

Idly, Mari wished he’d try his luck, if only so she could see which of the two arms of hated officialdom caught up with him first. That datapack under the bench at Rennecker’s diner was still on her mind, even though she knew it was folly to ever go back to that spot, much less to pick it up. If it turned out that local security was faster than the councillors’ own means of exacting retribution, she might have a slim chance of getting it and getting away clean. 

“Fortunately this one was easy.” Eddy kept his voice low and his eyes on Schmelling. “The next one won’t be.” 

“Got the next gig lined up already, eh?” Mari shrugged. “Would that I could be so lucky.” 

“I wouldn’t call it that.” Eddy shook his head. “Pay’s all right, but I’m going to be running rabbit trails for weeks.” 

Mari saw Schmelling press something into the hands of the girl, who was now staring at him in stunned alarm. “Was that a ring of cred-chits?” 

“Yeah. But there’s no way that’s all the money. Looked like three or four ten-grand chits.” 

“Think he spent the rest already?” 

“Doubt it. Less what those outbound tickets cost he probably has all the rest stashed somewhere until the moment of departure.” 

Mari nodded. She probably would have done something similar; that way, she wasn’t caught with a suspicious pile of hard money on her if the authorities did come sniffing. “That means he has to go get the rest. And one of us has to follow him, while the other stays with the girl.” 

“You stay with her.” Eddy stood up. “She’ll see you as less threatening. Do not let her make any calls.” 

Schmelling was already slinking out of the lounge, and though the girl at first made as if to follow him, she stopped and sat down at an empty table with a bewildered look. Mari sighed and headed over to join her there. 

“Not everything he said was a lie.” Mari said as she sat down, thinking this better than an introduction. “Eddy and I really are old business partners of his. Regrettably.” 

The girl started, as if suddenly noticing that she was not alone in the half-full transit lounge. “It was all a lie?” Her voice squeaked with despair, then her face suddenly hardened. “What do you have to do with it?” 

“Nothing. This time.” Mari flicked one of her calling-cards out of a sleeve pocket and spun it across the little table. There was nothing on it but an abstract pattern and a comms code, of course, and no two cards had the same pattern or the same code; it was easier that way. “The Glitters hired us to put it right off the books, before anyone files any official records. When their money is returned and that big oaf is safely off the station, you’re in the clear.” 

The girl picked up the card, looked for a name, then frowned when there wasn’t one. “So that’s it, then? I have to slink home and forget all of this never happened?” 

“Well.” Mari put her elbows on the table and leaned in. “You can do that, sure. But forgetting means being a mark the next time, too. Never forget how he got you to trust him. Because there’s always a next time.” 

The girl squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered. “What was he going to do to me?” 

“Nothing too bad.” Mari shook her head. “You were the go-between that prevented him from being found out by the Glitters, mostly. He was going to sweep you away on this liner, have his fun with you while the money lasted, then run off to a new swindle in a few weeks and leave you with nothing but a broken heart.” 

This being the extent of Schmelling’s designs didn’t seem to comfort the girl. She scowled as she pulled a transit pass from her pocket, looked at it for a long moment, then tossed it onto the table with all the disgust Mari expected of someone so recently shorn of a dream. 

Schmelling returned a moment later with a travel bag, approached the table, and, with a shifty look behind himself, dropped it next to the pass. Without a word, he skulked off. 

“Get it all back to the Glitters as soon as you can.” Mari pushed the bag toward the girl. “They’ll be understanding.” 

With a nod, she grabbed it and hurried off, not even noticing Eddy as she darted past him. He watched her for a moment, then sat down at the table, staring at the travel pass.  

“She’ll be all right.” Mari said, after a long silence. “They usually are.” 

“Probably.” Eddy agreed tepidly. 

After another long pause, Mari picked up the pass, staring at it intently. “Suppose you got the other one off Albie, Eddie. Why couldn’t we take their place? Hang that other job you’re dreading and get out of the Sprawl for a while. I’ve got enough money stored away for a few weeks of fun.” And when she got back, the heat would be off on the lifted datapack, and she could replace that stock easily by selling its contents. 

Eddie smirked. “Sounds nice, Mari, but not this time. I’d feel better with Albie off the station, You want to go and haunt his every step, though, you be my guest. And his. I’m sure he’d love that.” 

Mari laughed. “That would be its own kind of fun. But it wouldn’t be a holiday. Come on, Eddie. You know we can bum Albie off on some tramp freighter to nowhere.” 

Eddy met Mari’s eyes for a long moment. “I appreciate it. I really do. But I really should already be looking for that damned lost datapack.” 

Mari did her best to keep her face neutral, as if this was the most boring-sounding task imaginable.  

“Anyway. I’ll send over your cut of this gig in an hour or two.” Eddy arched one eyebrow, then got up and headed for the exit, leaving Mari there alone, holding a transit pass for a liner leaving in two shifts. 

“Hellfire.” Mari whispered, long after he was gone. Eddy knew her too well not to guess something. Obviously, he couldn’t prove anything, but if she took the girl’s place on the liner, or if someone saw her retrieving the datapack, or if it was discovered under that bench, her friend would have a prime suspect. 

Mari shook her head, finally giving the day’s expected windfall up for good. If Eddy was assigned to find it, then it needed to turn up somewhere; hopefully somewhere that didn’t trace back to her. 

That this account was shared with us suggests that Mari was entirely unsuccessful in this effort (as it being published would obviously reveal her involvement to anyone who was present, anonymization notwithstanding). Most likely, though the account ends here, she was not entirely successful in preventing the claws of officaldom from closing around her in some way, and she like her friend is now snared and forced largely to work for the Gilhedat or station authority rather than on her own initiative. 

I am not particularly sympathetic with her plight, or her friend’s. No doubt in her life she’s committed far worse crimes than petty theft and escaped justice for them; being forced to live within the restraints set out by handlers might be unpleasant for her, but it is better for Sprawl society in general that she be kept on a short leash. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Swindler’s Confrontation

2953-11-05– Tales from the Inbox: The Swindler’s Confrontation 

Albie Schmelling, as it turned out, was not particularly difficult to find, though he probably thought he was keeping a low profile. When they found him in the lounge abutting the passenger liner docks, the cup of cold coffee by his elbow and the subtle bags under his eyes suggested he’d been there far longer than he had any proper business to be. 

Though Schmelling noticed Mari Robertson as she came in and rose to scuttle out the opposite end of the lounge, he only ran into Eddy Rothbauer, who’d gone around to cover that exit.  

“Albie! Long time.” Eddy fixed the bigger man with a humorless grin and gestured toward a table in the corner. “You must tell me what you’ve been up to!” Eddy was, of course, heavily armed at all times. Schmelling, as a former co-conspirator in ill-fated money-making schemes, knew that perfectly well.  

Schmelling, glancing around to see Mari behind him with her arms folded, shrugged. “I would love to, but I don’t have much time-” 

“Then we won’t take much of it.” Eddy clapped a hand on Schmelling’s shoulder. “We’re busy today, too.” 

Schmelling permitted himself to be led to the table, and Mari sat down next to him while Eddy took the seat opposite. Almost the moment his rear touched the cushion, Eddy started talking. “It wasn’t me. Honest it wasn’t. I don’t care who-” 

“Woah, hold on.” Mari held up her hand. “Albie, we don’t care. There’s not going to be an official complaint, as long as you give back the money right now.” 

“The money?” Schmelling paled. “That’s all you’re here for?” 

Eddy leaned forward. “Well, what did you think we were after?” 

“Slander, as usual. You know only too well all the things people will say about me when-” 

“When they’ve had the misfortune of spending any time with you.” Mari shook her head. “Whose daughter was it this time?” 

“What? No, I would never!” Schmelling chuckled nervously. “What would give you an idea like that?” 

Eddy and Mari both shuddered; they’d seen his womanizing and preference for younger partners in far too great detail to believe his denials. Mari's previous arrangement with him had foundered on his repeated insistence on pursuing naive young women instead of attending to their business.  

“No, no, it’s nothing, really. Just a misunderstanding. Should be taken care of tomorrow.” 

“Sure, a lot of things will be settled for you when the Otto Bofors shoves off with you on it.” Mari grinned. “You really need to come up with some new aliases, you know. Transit tickets are public records.” 

Schmelling groaned. “Come on guys. You know how it is. If you’d made a score like this, you’d be-” 

“On the fastest hull out of the Sprawl, yeah.” Eddy waved his hand. “But we didn’t. The people you robbed hired us to get their money back. And that’s how we make our score. Sure, it's smaller, but we don’t have to run.” 

Mari, recalling the datapack sitting under the bench in Rennecker’s suppressed a wince, feeling that she was correctly placed on Schmelling’s side of the table. Captured by officialdom or no, Eddy was at least for the moment engaged in pure white-hattery, that is, jobs in the grey trades that required no moral compromise and whose wages were clean. In a way, she envied that; if the Glitters had mostly white-hat work for him, perhaps capture wasn’t so bad. 

“I worked so hard for this, Eddy.” Schmelling wrung his big hands. “Look, I’ll give you a cut to go interrogate someone else until I’m gone.” 

“Just give the money back.” Eddy rolled his eyes. “Or if you’ve got it in hard chits, give it to me, and I’ll take it back. Nobody would ever trace it to you.” 

“Come on...” Schmelling glanced between them. “We can work something out.” 

“What baffles me, though.” Mari leaned in. “Is how you of all people tricked the Glitters. You’ve got more tics than a chronometer for anyone who knows what to look for, and they pick up on those really fast.” 

“That’s, ah, not how it is.” Schmelling looked down at the table. “I didn’t have to fool them. I had... a sort of go-between, yeah?” 

Eddy scowled. “You got some girl to believe you. And to take your idea to the Glitters. Because she was so earnest, they never saw the scam.” 

“Err, basically.” Schmelling shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” 

“What do you think is going to happen to her when you get off-station?” Eddy growled. “Even for you, letting a girl take the fall is low.” 

“I wouldn’t-” Schmelling looked up, brow furrowed, but at that moment, Mari noticed someone coming across the lounge toward them, and gestured for the men to be quiet. It was a woman, youngish, slim to the point of looking underfed. She was dressed in a simple overcoat draped over a modest smart-fabric jumpsuit, with a heavy layer of inexpertly-applied makeup on her face doing its best to hide her extreme stress and fatigue. 

“Herman, who are your friends?” The girl – Mari couldn’t think of her as anything else after hearing her quavering, falsetto voice – approached the table and put a hand on Schmelling’s arm. “Is everything all right?” 

“Former business partners, my dear.” Schmelling held up a hand. “Just finalizing a few loose ends before we depart.” 

The girl looked at Eddy, then at Mari, and with a nervous smile, retreated back toward the food-fabs at the other end of the lounge. 

“She still doesn’t know it was a scam, does she?” Eddy nudged Schmelling. 

“No, she hasn’t a clue.” Schmelling sighed. “She’s booked for the Bofors with me. I figured we could live it up for a few months until the money ran dry, and then...” 

“And then you’d be bored with her anyway, and vanish. On to bigger swindles.” Mari hissed. 

“Maybe not!” Schmelling shook his head unconvincingly. 

“I'm going to watch you give her the money and tell her the truth, Albie.” Eddy drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table while his right hand slid down toward one of his pistol holsters. “Then I’m going to watch you get on that ship. And I’m not going to watch you come back, do you understand?” 

Schmelling winced, face pale. “I can’t-” 

“Trust me. You can.” 

Eddy Rothbauer and Mari Robertson are, most likely, pseudonyms. I was surprised to find un-anonymized names in this account, as you likely have been; these are even the names of people who really are Sprawl residents, but likely they are people unrelated to this business. These names seem to have been picked because they are common: as of this posting there are three Edward Rothbauers on the station and no less than four residents with some variant of the name Maria Robertson. 

The name Albie Schmelling, however, seems to be the real name of a real con-artist who was a Sprawl resident until very recently. He departed the station under unknown circumstances in mid-September and has not been recorded aboard since. One of the motivations for submitting this account seems to be warning people of Schmelling’s predations, though if he has as many aliases as our submitter suggests, I’m not sure how much good this warning is going to do. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Criminal’s Preoccupation

2953-10-29 – Tales from the Inbox: The Criminal’s Preoccupation 

Mari Robertson arrived at the front of the Songbird’s Roost before her friend Eddy Rothbauer. Despite its whimsical name, the Songbird was one of the roughest bars in the entire Sprawl complex; the sign depicted not one of Earth’s many colorful singing avians, but a flightless xeno-specimen with a jagged beak and a predatory gleam in its eyes. No doubt the proprietor thought this amusing, but Mari had always thought the place would be more intimidating still if its advertisement was as whimsical as its name. 

Mari had of course already sent out the queries she’d promised Eddy. She knew most of the people on the station who supplied questionably moral but not officially illegal demand to the many visitors coming through Sagittarius Gate. Surely if one of them had vanished with a large sum of money, one of the others would have heard of it, and besides, anyone who didn’t respond within a few minutes to a vague query about high value business was probably a suspect anyway. 

As she loitered across from the Songbird’s door, Mari was thinking, however, of the datapack, not of Eddy, his friends, and their missing money. If she could bury herself in this problem, it would give her an excellent alibi for the theft whenever it was discovered, and in the mean time it was, while not precisely safe, stashed somewhere that didn’t trace back to her. If it were found by someone else, she’d be out a massive payout in a few weeks or months, but at least the chance of trouble was looking remote. 

Eddy appeared from the direction of the nearest public lift well, and Mari waited until he was about to enter the Songbird before darting across the concourse and sliding her arm into his. As they went in, the murmur of pedestrian traffic was drowned out by the crashing music that always filled the bar, making it impossible for anyone to overhear anyone even at the next table.  

The loud music was, Mari suspected, an anti-brawling measure more than anything else; if people couldn’t hear each other, they couldn’t take umbrage at snide comments made in nearby conversations. It certainly made the place convenient for any conversation one wanted to guarantee was held off the record; most recording technology simply couldn’t filter out the discordant music enough to make speech intelligible later. 

Mari slid into a booth along the left wall, and Eddy sat down next to her, leaving the seat opposite vacant. They’d be able to converse in low tones better this way, and it would make her being approached by libidinous patrons somewhat less likely.  

“Do we know who the Glitters were dealing with?” Mari poked the hard-button table interface to order a pair of drinks. 

“They gave me a name, but it’s an alias.” Eddy shook his head. “No records in the station system of a person by that name. It’s not one I’ve seen any of the usual suspects use either.” 

Mari nodded. “Someone scammed them. Aren’t they supposed to be nearly telepathic? Who scams a telepath anyway?” 

“They can't read minds.” Eddy shrugged. “They’re just really observant. At least that’s what they say.” 

“Even if they aren’t.” Mari waved her hand, suppressing a shudder at how close to home this conversation was. “Still sounds like a death wish.” 

“Sounds like a good way to be at their mercy.” Eddy nodded. “That might be worse than being dead. They’re basically all diplomats, and diplomat is just another word for politician.” 

He didn’t need to explain this; they had both escaped the mesh-network of interwoven petty dictatorships that was the Silver Strand. It was a fine line to walk, doing odd black work for the rich and influential, without being dragged into their orbit, and one scam gone bad would send the perpetrator spiraling down into such a gravity well from which there was rarely any escape. 

Mari opened her mouth to mention that her queries were still not conclusive, but a hard set to Eddy’s jaw gave her pause. She realized with a start that he’d spoken from far too personal experience – he was on that spiraling course already, prioritizing the needs of the Gilhedat councilors for a quick turnaround because the alternative was them letting the station authorities know about something they had caught him doing. In that moment, she soured on the idea of ever going back for that datapack. She felt bad for Eddy, but she couldn’t help him, she could only help herself. 

“I had worried it was you, actually.” Eddy looked hard at Mari. “You looked like you had seen a ghost when those Gilhedat followed me into Rennecker’s.” 

“Me?” Mari smiled. “If it was, I’d have cut you in already, and we’d both be on a transport to somewhere anonymous and remote.” She couldn’t help but wince; if Eddy was already snared, he couldn’t have accepted such generosity, but she couldn’t let on that she’d guessed his predicament. 

“Sure.” Eddy smiled back doubtfully. “We’ve got to move fast to make sure whoever did it, isn’t doing that right now. Who do you reckon we start with?” 

“My queries aren’t done, but based on the responses I’ve got and I haven’t got, I say we pay Schmelling a visit. This is something he’s dumb enough to try.” 

Eddy rolled his eyes. Albie Schmelling was a big, bluff Philadelphian who managed somehow to be one of the station’s most effective con-men. Neither of them liked him very much. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” 

Their drink bottles arrived from the delivery chute, and Eddy reached over to drop a few chits into the payment receptacle. “Drink up. I’ll look to see if he has any outbound bookings.” 

Mari’s fear of being pulled out of the grey trades and into being a semi-official agent for some flavor of officialdom is strange to most of us; it would seem this is an easy path to legitimacy for such a person who wanted out of their high risk lifestyle while still using all their existing skills. One should keep in mind however that personal autonomy (if only for the purposes of misusing one’s talents and time) is highly prized by those who find themselves drawn to this sort of lifestyle; they resent anything that smells like having a permanent boss. 

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