2954-05-20 – Tales from the Inbox: The Secrets of the Zenith Treader 

The Zenith Treader is, as some of you seem to have deduced, a real vessel; no attempt to anonymize its identity, that of its captain, or that of its pilot has been made. This is by request of the submitters, which we have verified are those two individuals. They do not think this account puts their vessel or its reputation at risk, and I tend to agree with them. 

Obviously, the opinion of military officers is that of the submitters, not of this embed team. 

Zenith Treader was on course for the parking orbit for nearly two shifts before either Ellia Kossner or Gareth Glass, taking terms on the command deck and bombarding everyone who was responding to them with questions, could get any sort of a useful answer. It came from of the military station that was closest, the one from which the officer had given them instructions. 

The message, though phrased as a refusal to provide information, helpfully cited a section and subsection of the military code under which refusal was required, and explained that everything would be explained by the commander of the cutter that would meet them at the rendezvous.  

Doubtless they intended this as a less than subtle hint to stop asking, but Gareth and his skipper gratefully copied the reference and pulled up a copy of the code. It was, as Gareth had suspected all along, the section related to smuggling contraband. The denial of information to the suspected crew was part of the section on dangerous contraband in particular. 

“So they think we’re moving illegal weapons.” Ellia sighed. “This is going to blow our timetable worse than I thought.” 

Gareth nodded. Timetables were her domain, not his, but he didn’t relish the idea of a team of Navy techs giving their life and livelihood a days-long vivisection. “You’d think they’d see our contract history and realize we had too much at stake to run contraband.” 

“If they could do economic calculus, they wouldn’t be in the military.” Ellia crossed her arms. “I’m going to go talk to Sung. Maybe if we leave everything open for them, we can speed this up.” 

A few minutes after the skipper left the command deck, the door opened again. This time, it was Patricia Lowell, one of the new techs. She took one look at Gareth’s grim face and hesitated. “Something wrong?” 

Gareth hesitated. “Nah. Some customs trouble might make us late on our turn-around.” He hated to lie to another member of the crew, but Lowell and her fellow tech Leon Estrada were the only new element to this voyage, and so the most likely reason for the contraband search they were headed for, after a simple mistake. 

Lowell nodded. “How long until we dock?” 

“Assuming we got immediate clearance and good inbound geometry, we could be docked at the Sprawl three days after jump resolution.” Gareth glanced at the nav display. “We didn’t get immediate clearance. We’ll be at our wait-point by the end of second shift tomorrow, and then another half-day or so to dock when they clear us. As to the customs problem...” He shrugged. “That’s not my department.” 

Lowell looked disappointed; no doubt she would like the company of anyone besides her fellow Zenith Treader crew after weeks of isolation in the Gap. “How long will we be docked?” 

“Skipper wants a fast turn around here, but I don’t know what her departure plan looks like.” To Gareth, an excuse to think past the contraband search was only too welcome. “Don’t worry though. She’ll tell us how long we’ll be here before we disembark.” 

“Sure.” Lowell looked around. “You know, it’s sort of bothering me. You and the Skipper are the only people who are ever on duty up here. Why are there four stations?” 

Gareth pointed to the two auxiliary consoles ahead of his, canted against the bulkheads. “When the ship was new, there was a comms station and a weapons station. But Treader doesn’t do high-threat routes anymore, so we stripped the weapons down to the two auto-turrets we’ve got now. With modern comms equipment, though, the Skipper and I can manage all of that ourselves too.” 

“I guess that explains why there are ten cabins.” 

“Yeah.” Gareth hadn’t been aboard long enough to see the ship at its full original crew compliment, but he’d been around when the last of the weapon removals had taken place, and they’d parted ways with Zack Macleod, the ship’s last weapons technician. “Running it as we do now, four or five is plenty.” 

Lowell nodded and looked out ahead. She looked as if she was working her way up to saying something more, but her comm buzzed. Tapping her earpiece, she listened for a moment, then hurried away to attend to something. 

Something nagged at Gareth for a long time after she left. Why had she asked about the ten cabins? Obviously they were on the schematics visible to anyone, but from the corridors, the extra cabins were blank, unlabeled doors on the main hall. They weren’t even all in the same place; the builders had intermixed them with the pressurized storage rooms, washrooms, duty stations, and other compartments across both of the main decks. The fact that they had five unused crew cabins was far from obvious unless you were looking for it. And why would she be looking for it? 

Gareth checked for new comms traffic, then got up and went to find the skipper. Perhaps there was something worth finding aboard after all, and he now knew where to look for it.