We managed to get Barbara's immediate financial situation sorted quickly enough once her mother understood what had happened. (And I have to say, the old girl took the whole business with truly commendable sangfroid!) The simplest method proved to having her bank manager wire her savings to my own account after I handed her the equivalent in hard currency.
Unfortunately, we also found out that the US government had indeed cancelled her passport and issued an arrest warrant; the only reason her account hadn't been frozen was at the credit union where she banked was founded and run by old-school liberal activists with ties to the ACLU and the NAACP, who were contesting the demand in court and telling any reporter who'd listen precisely what they thought about their nation's lawmakers. (Techdirt has a good writeup on the subject, including an interview with the chairman of the board of trustees. You might find it useful background material.)
Well, that complicated things a bit.
There isn't a whole lot of unskilled employment in Fenspace, and good old hardtech Earth is catching us up on this one. We Fen might be a lot more flexible about formal qualifications compared to employers in North America or Western Europe, but if the job doesn't entail at least some skill and training then a 'waved forklift or robot arm can probably do it faster and for longer shifts, and cheaper too if you don't wake up an AI. And furthermore, at that early stage most of the factions had yet to get around to organising some sort of formal public assistance program for refugees or the otherwise unlucky. I didn't think she would've starved once her money ran out -Fen really do look out for their own- but it didn't seem like much of a life in the long run.
Besides, she'd been through hell backwards and didn't have many friends she could call upon out here apart from the guy who supplied the handwavium she used for her biomod, who was allegedly somewhere on the surface of Mars in a 'waved camper van. I couldn't leave her to sink or swim like that.
So, after a very long conference call with someone from QuinetiQ's legal department (I don't know why they have an immigration law specialist on staff and I don't intend to ask) and a mid-rankng civil servant from the Home Office, a deal was struck: If Barbara would consent to a thorough medical examination, she'd be granted indefinite leave to remain. She wasn't exactly keen on the idea for obvious reasons, but agreed on the condition that the tests take place in a civilian hospital with the absolute bare minimum of security present.
With that out of the way, and the New Yavin ATC beginning to make urgent noises about a lack of parking, we made good our departure.
The first week was all a bit of a blur for me. We went all over the Moon and then on to Mars, where we both got hilariously smashed on the first batch of Martian whiskey served at Callahan's. I think we went to have a look at Ceres afterwards, but I was suffering from a hangover of such epic proportions that I was sorely tempted to roll the dice on a biomod so I don't remember much of that day. Apparently Barbara was one of the lucky ones who didn't trade all her alcohol tolerance for the ears and the tail, in fact it seemed to have given it something of a boost... Or maybe I was just getting old.
I'd like to say I spent this time marvelling at the amazing beauty of the cosmos, but to be perfectly honest the view stopped being awe-inspiring after prolonged exposure. It's pretty, but it's... Well, I wouldn't call it dead, but it's static. Fixed. You'll see almost the same thing every time you look out of the window. Compare and contrast with the average Fen settlement.
What can I say? I find people more interesting than places, and places more interesting than the emptiness between them.
Anyway, after seven days of wandering around the solar system playing tourist, we returned to the surface to get Barbara's visa sorted out. She had her medical (an MRI, X-rays and some blood work) done at Dorset County Hospital; apparently they were the only ones with a gap in their MRI machine's schedule at short notice. The administrators were a little irked about this, but I smoothed most of the ruffled feathers by donating some 'waved toys for the children's ward.
And yes, if it's not a foregone conclusion, she did get the job. Barbara had plenty of long distance fixed-wing experience, something I was seriously lacking at the time, but despite having no previous rotary-wing hours she took to my ship's largely helicopter-like controls quickly. She also had a marvellously dry sense of humour and was generally good company on a long flight, and had an innate knack for making really good coffee.
We repeated the fruit and vegetable runs a couple of times, but other people with larger and better-equipped vehicles were starting to catch on to the idea and in any case it was extremely repetitive, so we switched to general cargo hauling. We were a bit of a specialty outfit, bigger than the literal hundreds of 'waved cars and pickup trucks whose owners would take on some packages for beer money but not quite up to intermodal container runs like a few enterprising Fen were getting into. We ended up doing a lot of house moves after signing on with Hermes Universal Deliveries, because we had just enough room to fit a couple or young family and all their worldly goods aboard and the speed to get them to pastures new before the kids could start rioting from cabin fever.
Oh yeah. I think we might have been the ones to get the ball rolling on the ghost story about "The Big Deal". Enough of the details match that it could be an exaggerated version of our experience, anyway.
It was... early 2009, I think. We were on a run to Port Phobos with six tons of mixed cargo, when suddenly we pick up a very faint modulation on the radio at 121.5MHz, the Aircraft Emergency Frequency back on Earth. An automated distress beacon. We warm up the radar and slowly scan back and forth until we pick up a tiny contact a few degrees off our heading, and alter course to investigate and hopefully render aid.
What we found was close to what the ghost story describes: A shipping container with windows on one end and engines at the rear, badly damaged. (No name painted on the side though.) But nobody responded to our radio calls, so I got suited up and made my way over with the first-aid kit... And a pistol, because something really didn't sit right about this.
I managed to get the airlock to cycle, and found the ship totally deserted. There were bunks lining the walls for at least a dozen people but only two of them were made up. I found food on the stove in a sort of open-plan galley area towards the stern; it was cold, but hadn't spoiled. Otherwise, there was a certain amount of disorder -cupboards hanging open, a couple of items knocked off shelves- but nothing that suggested forcible boarding or any kind of fight. As near as I could tell, the crew had been taken off by another craft along with their personal effects and simply forgotten to turn the beacon off.
We towed it to Phobos and reported the incident to ATC, but in those days the sharing of information on accidents was somewhat piecemeal so we never did find out who the owners were or what happened to them. At any rate, they never came forward to reclaim the ship, which was far beyond economic repair anyway; turns out it'd been hit by something about the size of a beer can, probably some other craft's jettisoned refuse, and the engines were in so many pieces that the dockyard team couldn't even tell if they were acceleration or constant-speed. It was still airtight and the galley and the plumbing worked fine when hooked up to external power, so I donated it to the Port Lowell YMCA. It's probably still there.
All in all, things were going great. Fenspace was an amazing place to live and work; the sheer energy and vibrant human spirit in those new colonies was like nothing I've known before or since. That I was making a good living from a varied and inteesting occupation just made it even better.
Guess who popped and nearly ruined everything for me?
Unfortunately, we also found out that the US government had indeed cancelled her passport and issued an arrest warrant; the only reason her account hadn't been frozen was at the credit union where she banked was founded and run by old-school liberal activists with ties to the ACLU and the NAACP, who were contesting the demand in court and telling any reporter who'd listen precisely what they thought about their nation's lawmakers. (Techdirt has a good writeup on the subject, including an interview with the chairman of the board of trustees. You might find it useful background material.)
Well, that complicated things a bit.
There isn't a whole lot of unskilled employment in Fenspace, and good old hardtech Earth is catching us up on this one. We Fen might be a lot more flexible about formal qualifications compared to employers in North America or Western Europe, but if the job doesn't entail at least some skill and training then a 'waved forklift or robot arm can probably do it faster and for longer shifts, and cheaper too if you don't wake up an AI. And furthermore, at that early stage most of the factions had yet to get around to organising some sort of formal public assistance program for refugees or the otherwise unlucky. I didn't think she would've starved once her money ran out -Fen really do look out for their own- but it didn't seem like much of a life in the long run.
Besides, she'd been through hell backwards and didn't have many friends she could call upon out here apart from the guy who supplied the handwavium she used for her biomod, who was allegedly somewhere on the surface of Mars in a 'waved camper van. I couldn't leave her to sink or swim like that.
So, after a very long conference call with someone from QuinetiQ's legal department (I don't know why they have an immigration law specialist on staff and I don't intend to ask) and a mid-rankng civil servant from the Home Office, a deal was struck: If Barbara would consent to a thorough medical examination, she'd be granted indefinite leave to remain. She wasn't exactly keen on the idea for obvious reasons, but agreed on the condition that the tests take place in a civilian hospital with the absolute bare minimum of security present.
With that out of the way, and the New Yavin ATC beginning to make urgent noises about a lack of parking, we made good our departure.
The first week was all a bit of a blur for me. We went all over the Moon and then on to Mars, where we both got hilariously smashed on the first batch of Martian whiskey served at Callahan's. I think we went to have a look at Ceres afterwards, but I was suffering from a hangover of such epic proportions that I was sorely tempted to roll the dice on a biomod so I don't remember much of that day. Apparently Barbara was one of the lucky ones who didn't trade all her alcohol tolerance for the ears and the tail, in fact it seemed to have given it something of a boost... Or maybe I was just getting old.
I'd like to say I spent this time marvelling at the amazing beauty of the cosmos, but to be perfectly honest the view stopped being awe-inspiring after prolonged exposure. It's pretty, but it's... Well, I wouldn't call it dead, but it's static. Fixed. You'll see almost the same thing every time you look out of the window. Compare and contrast with the average Fen settlement.
What can I say? I find people more interesting than places, and places more interesting than the emptiness between them.
Anyway, after seven days of wandering around the solar system playing tourist, we returned to the surface to get Barbara's visa sorted out. She had her medical (an MRI, X-rays and some blood work) done at Dorset County Hospital; apparently they were the only ones with a gap in their MRI machine's schedule at short notice. The administrators were a little irked about this, but I smoothed most of the ruffled feathers by donating some 'waved toys for the children's ward.
And yes, if it's not a foregone conclusion, she did get the job. Barbara had plenty of long distance fixed-wing experience, something I was seriously lacking at the time, but despite having no previous rotary-wing hours she took to my ship's largely helicopter-like controls quickly. She also had a marvellously dry sense of humour and was generally good company on a long flight, and had an innate knack for making really good coffee.
We repeated the fruit and vegetable runs a couple of times, but other people with larger and better-equipped vehicles were starting to catch on to the idea and in any case it was extremely repetitive, so we switched to general cargo hauling. We were a bit of a specialty outfit, bigger than the literal hundreds of 'waved cars and pickup trucks whose owners would take on some packages for beer money but not quite up to intermodal container runs like a few enterprising Fen were getting into. We ended up doing a lot of house moves after signing on with Hermes Universal Deliveries, because we had just enough room to fit a couple or young family and all their worldly goods aboard and the speed to get them to pastures new before the kids could start rioting from cabin fever.
Oh yeah. I think we might have been the ones to get the ball rolling on the ghost story about "The Big Deal". Enough of the details match that it could be an exaggerated version of our experience, anyway.
It was... early 2009, I think. We were on a run to Port Phobos with six tons of mixed cargo, when suddenly we pick up a very faint modulation on the radio at 121.5MHz, the Aircraft Emergency Frequency back on Earth. An automated distress beacon. We warm up the radar and slowly scan back and forth until we pick up a tiny contact a few degrees off our heading, and alter course to investigate and hopefully render aid.
What we found was close to what the ghost story describes: A shipping container with windows on one end and engines at the rear, badly damaged. (No name painted on the side though.) But nobody responded to our radio calls, so I got suited up and made my way over with the first-aid kit... And a pistol, because something really didn't sit right about this.
I managed to get the airlock to cycle, and found the ship totally deserted. There were bunks lining the walls for at least a dozen people but only two of them were made up. I found food on the stove in a sort of open-plan galley area towards the stern; it was cold, but hadn't spoiled. Otherwise, there was a certain amount of disorder -cupboards hanging open, a couple of items knocked off shelves- but nothing that suggested forcible boarding or any kind of fight. As near as I could tell, the crew had been taken off by another craft along with their personal effects and simply forgotten to turn the beacon off.
We towed it to Phobos and reported the incident to ATC, but in those days the sharing of information on accidents was somewhat piecemeal so we never did find out who the owners were or what happened to them. At any rate, they never came forward to reclaim the ship, which was far beyond economic repair anyway; turns out it'd been hit by something about the size of a beer can, probably some other craft's jettisoned refuse, and the engines were in so many pieces that the dockyard team couldn't even tell if they were acceleration or constant-speed. It was still airtight and the galley and the plumbing worked fine when hooked up to external power, so I donated it to the Port Lowell YMCA. It's probably still there.
All in all, things were going great. Fenspace was an amazing place to live and work; the sheer energy and vibrant human spirit in those new colonies was like nothing I've known before or since. That I was making a good living from a varied and inteesting occupation just made it even better.
Guess who popped and nearly ruined everything for me?