Chapter 7: A New Job and Departure

It seemed like it took forever to fill the ship. Finally, the day came when the Captain announced that we would be leaving orbit at 2200 ship time.

I decided to let the children stay up late that night and for the grownups I declared the night an all-orifices-on bed orgy.

We had just finished a long week with training and my new temporary job. Yup, I had the ship Civil Service (CS) job. I was the senior sponsor on board and since all the officers on the ship had jobs I was elected. There had been a temporary CS officer on the ship running the office in orbit but he was stationed permanently at Earthat.

I had been having dinner with the Captain on a weekly basis and it had been two days before we were going to depart. The Captain had been interrupted during dinner and told that there was not going to be a CS officer aboard for the trip to Bedfordat. After he finished blowing a fuse with CS command; he turned to me and said “Well that sucks.” I had heard what happens when there was no CS officer and I knew what was coming next. “You do realize what this means right?”

I said, “Yes, since I am the senior officer sponsor on board, I am the CS officer for the trip.”

The Captain replied, “Yes you are correct, sorry. Apparently, the CS officer scheduled to go to Bedfordat switched to Fleet Auxiliary and left CS in a bind. It is a job I would not wish on my worst enemy. If you get stuck ask me for help though the AI.”

The CS officer staying at Earthat had two days to train me before we left orbit. I was very disappointed with the training material available to help me learn the job. The CS guy had a very jaded view of his job. The recycling of concubines who had outlived their usefulness had really soured. There was no longer a forty-eight hour rule before an innocent concubine was recycled. My job was to find sponsors for the released concubines or to get them alive to the colony CS pool. This would turn out to be harder than I would have ever expected, since the mental state of these concubines was often very depressed and suicidal.

The CS pod could handle twenty-four adults. An interesting feature of the pod is that it had a medical tube in it. It had been determined that often sponsors beat their concubines before sending them to the concubine pool. For the concubine in the pool to be accepted by another sponsor the concubine had to look good. The tube saw to that, without the medical bay tubes being interrupted for this task. It was something the previous CS officer had put into the pod during his tour of duty. I decided it was a good idea and left it in the pod.

On the day of our departure I emptied the CS pool. All the concubines in the pool were sent to the CS pool on one of the moon bases. I said my final goodbye to the CS training officer. I went home early that day since there was no one in the CS office. I left a sign behind saying closed until 15:00 hours. With training, I was going to be busy until then. After that I could see working my CS job until 2100.

I returned to my pod around 1815 hours and we had dinner. Afterward we spent most of the evening playing with the children. We let the children stay up to watch our leaving Earth orbit. About 2150 hours the Captain addressed the passengers letting them know what exactly they were going to see. At 2200 hours we were shown a picture of Earth with the North American Continent showing prominently. There was a distance, velocity and acceleration gauges shown on the display. Soon the acceleration gauge was showing sixteen gee and the distance and velocity gauges were scrolling faster than you could read them. At 500,000 miles away from Earth the FTL drive kicked in and the screen went black. We were on the way to Bedfordat.