The Gaming Outpost

Ladder swaying under me, each wooden rung pegged in, except for the fourth which had hemp rope to tie it into place, I ascended to the poop deck. Above me, the vast shadows of the greenleaf sails waited, and dimmed the faces of the tough fellows all about me. Every manjack of them a veteran of more than a dozen Runs through the Stargate.

The Lawnchair, our goodly seven master, captained by a man with a quirky sense of humor, passed out from behind the sunguard of the middling gas giant Terrak, and the full bright glare of Nova Century, the sun of this deserted (except for pirates and daring fartraders) solar system caught the brilliant green and ginormous sails as they were unfurling.

Twas a glorious sight looking up and up, seeing a Leafsail as light hit it, and it shone a glowing green, and even quarter furled, it was bigger than the biggest football stadium back home, on Earth.

The photonic pressure hit us, and the Lawnchair fell off to the left, most directly. I went with it, stumbling, determined not to scream like a child, trying to fetch my hand up on a ballista’s storage box for its ten yard long quarrels, or hook my foot in a pile of deck tied rope, but for naught. I was headed right toward the edging about the ship, and interplanetary space beyond that.

Need I mention that amongst the veterans, the men, whom I longed to be like, I was but a mere seedling?

A steel like arm whuffed the air out of me as space had been about to do.

“Whoa, there Charles.” Peg Murphy said, his bionic peg leg spiked into the deck, and his good lifter arm of solid bone and meat holding me back from certain death like I were but a kitten. A quick jerking about my middle, and as the ship righted itself, I was released.

A rope, hemp rope, because naught but natural materials can go through a Stargate, so decreed the ancient Makers, or perhaps the Universe. Some thought when we jumped, only things with minds or close enough could hold their form cause when we jumped, we became quantum uncertain in our form.

I looked up at Peg Murphy who was trying to smile, but he had a serious look under it.

“That there forcefield about the tree ship, it will hold in oxygen, but not you, else our quarrels would bounce back to us, and sides the photosyn from the leaves don’t give us that much juice.” He tabbed a finger as big as my hand, from his lifter arm, gengineered like that, in my chest.

“You be wearing that line on the deck until I or the first mate say otherwise. I see you without it, I’ll make you shave all the potatoes for a week, after I beat you black and blue, y’hear me, boy?”

Shamefaced, I nodded. I knew enough to be ready for a flip, but I had been daydreaming. Now I was going to have to wear a rope like a total child, but then compared to this lot, even though I’m eighteen, I am a child.

See I was born in a world, a universe, where most eighteen year olds were not really adults. Here, by the time you were fourteen you were promised to a girl, and by the time you were seventeen, you were a skilled tradesman, and had a child from your marriage, preferably a boy, although gengineering for that was strictly taboo, something about the long gone Chinese Wars.

So I had a lot of catching up to do in the Year of Our Lord 2482. Number One rule: Pay Attention! Space will kill ya’ given half a chance.