Chapter 23: 23. Payday

The three of us stood in the secondary cargo hold, in front of a few cases that Mel's people had delivered. There were four rectangular ones, about four feet by two feet by one foot, one square case that was about twenty inches per side, and another rectangular one that was a bit bigger than the rest.

Sarah had the smaller one open and pulled out one of the items inside. It was an icosahedron made of some kind of composite material. Sort of like a black twenty-sided ball, each flat triangular surface had a few indentations which looked like little sensors of some kind.

"It's an HPD," the blonde engineer explained. "Which is short for holographic projector drone. It uses grav-assist technology so it can hover and move around under its own power. You don't actually see the drone while it's inside the hologram it creates. And since it can move about autonomously it can go anywhere we go, without needing fixed projectors in every compartment of the ship. The base gets wired into the power and data lines, and all the communication between the HPD and the base are encrypted."

She continued, "Downsides are it's got a limited duty-cycle, for every three hours operation it needs one hour recharge. The manufacturer recommends you solve that by buying two of them, but they're a little pricey for that. Just one of them along with the base unit is over seventy-thousand ecks. A second drone is another fifty-thousand ecks."

Sarah gently replaced the HPD in its box then closed the lid. She gestured to the next four crates, "The other end of the spectrum is fixed emitters. They're fastened to the ceiling and wired into the power and data lines, and can project a hologram anywhere in line-of-sight from the projector. Up-side is there's no duty-cycle, no down-time. And the cost is a lot lower per unit. Less than forty-thousand ecks to get enough projectors to cover both holds, upper and lower engine room spaces, all corridors, the mess and the lounge."

"Downsides," she added, "It takes time to wire each one up separately, and that line-of-sight thing means you need one in every separate space you want a hologram."

The captain nodded slowly, then asked "So why did you get both?"

The cute blonde blushed slightly, "I figured it was the best of both worlds? The fixed emitters will cover ninety percent of the ship's interior, but the HPD will let her access the rest, including both shuttles. She can even join us outside the ship, out to maybe a hundred meters depending on how clear the signal is to the base unit."

I asked, "That's a hundred and ten thousand ecks for both? And you still have to do all the installation?"

"The total came to a hundred and fifteen thousand," Sarah replied. "Including the cables and everything else I needed. And yeah, I can handle the installation. The HPD is easy. I just have to temporarily disconnect Jenny from the data bus and add a splicer, then she and the HPD will be on the same line in the hold here. I'll install the base up on the wall above her hardware, that'll give her the highest-rate connection to the HPD. That won't take more than half an hour, then I can install the fixed projectors whenever I have spare time. Probably take an hour to put each one up, and they don't have to go up all at the same time.

She looked to Piper and added, "It can all come out of my pay. This is my own project, I don't expect you to foot the bill."

The captain looked thoughtful as she stared at the half dozen cases. After a few moments she stated, "Speaking of, it's time we had that discussion. Let's head up to the mess, we can get something to drink then we'll talk."

The past fifty or so hours had been equal parts exciting and hectic.

The two holds felt almost empty again now that all the bulky salvage was gone, along with half of those big shipping containers. The other six containers were still in the main hold, stowed off to one side.

Then yesterday Piper and I spent half the day getting my e-suit modified. I realized I was a bit spoiled by how fast the custom clothing was produced, I thought the e-suit would be just as easy. Instead that was much more involved, primarily because it was valuable precision life-saving equipment.

Modifying the helmet to accommodate my ears meant it had to be partially redesigned, electronics had to be rerouted, the built-in headset had to be repositioned, and all the changes had to be triple-tested and double-redundant. Altering the lower part of the suit to fit my tail wasn't quite so intensive, but it still took time and needed to be tested and verified.

While we were out doing that, Sarah apparently talked with the shipyard owner about her hologram project. She was presented with two options and she decided to get both. Then after Piper and I returned with my upgraded e-suit, our captain had a meeting with Mel Lancaster to discuss the value of the salvage. And after all that, the three of us went back into the city for another nice meal last night.

This morning the hologram gear was delivered, along with supplies to top up some of the ship's stores. Finally the shipyard owner delivered a couple strongboxes of cash as payment for the salvage we sold him, less the cost of fuel, port fees, supplies, and Sarah's project.

Now we were a few hours away from when we needed to leave and we were finally going to find out how much money we earned since joining the Demeter's crew.

A few minutes later I had a glass of water, Piper and Sarah each had soft drinks, and the three of us were sitting at the table in the mess.

"Jenny are you with us?" the captain asked.

Our AI crew-mate responded, "Yes Piper I'm present."

Sarah smiled, "As soon as I get the HPD installed she'll be able to join us at the table."

Piper nodded slightly but got on with the topic at hand. "Last time we talked about this was before Jenny officially joined the crew. So to reiterate, the standard pay model is a percentage of the profit after the job is done and after all the expenses are deducted. Port fees, fuel, supplies, repairs, spare parts, et cetera, all that comes off the top. Whatever's left over gets divided up. Eighty percent stays with the ship, that's to cover long-term expenses, unexpected costs, overhauls, that sort of thing. Ten percent goes to the captain. And the last ten percent is divided equally among the crew."

She nodded to me and Sarah, "So five percent apiece. I've spent some time thinking about this, since Jenny is both part of the crew and part of the ship. Like she pointed out herself, she can't go out on shore leave and she can't exactly quit or go sign on with another ship. It's not the sort of situation I'd thought about before."

Sarah and Jenny and I all listened quietly to hear what our captain decided. I didn't mind sharing the profit with our AI crew-mate, but at the same time it was definitely unusual. She was somewhere between 'a piece of equipment' and 'a person' but it was hard to say where the line was.

"So here's what we'll do," the captain stated. "Sarah, Amanda, you'll both be receiving five percent of the profit like I said earlier. Jenny, you'll be getting five percent as well, but that's coming out of the eighty-percent that went to the ship. It feels like the fairest way to handle things, given the circumstances."

"Thank you Piper," the AI responded.

Sarah and I both nodded quietly, it sounded very fair to me and it looked like Sarah agreed.

Piper asked, "Jenny, Sarah's been talking about this hologram thing since yesterday but I haven't heard your opinion on it. Is this something you want, something you'd take advantage of?"

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She responded, "Yes captain. Sarah and I discussed it yesterday while you and Amanda were off-ship. I believe it will make it easier for me to interact with all of you, and I'm quite eager to experience the HPD. In addition to its mobility and projectors it has a suite of onboard sensors which should allow me to feel more present when I'm with you."

The captain looked thoughtful for a few moments, then asked "If you're more interested in the HPD, should we see if we can get a second unit from Mel before we're due to leave?"

"I'm not sure we need to go to the added expense," the AI responded. Her tone however made it sound like she very much wanted a back-up unit, even if she was reluctant to ask for it. "And it's hardly a necessity, since Sarah also got the fixed projectors..."

Piper smiled, "Contact Mel, ask him if he can get us a second unit here before we depart."

Barely thirty seconds later Jenny reported, "Done! He'll get back to us as soon as he has an answer."

The AI added a moment later, "I know Sarah already offered, but I think it would be quite fair if the price of the hologram equipment was deducted from whatever pay you are awarding me, captain."

"Right," Piper nodded as her smile faded and she got back to business. "As you all know, Mel's taken the computer, the two laser turrets, and the missile rack and missiles. He also took the five containers of parts, and a half dozen military e-suits. The biggest value out of that lot was the computer, the three armaments combined were worth a third of the computer's value. Everything else was a rounding error by comparison. After deducting port fees, fuel costs, supplies, et cetera, the payout from this excursion was three million, seven hundred and forty-nine thousand ecks."

After a pause to sip her drink she continued, "In addition, we recovered four million one hundred and twenty-five thousand ecks in cash from the Hammersmith's safe. That brings the total profit on the salvage to seven million, eight hundred and seventy-four thousand ecks. All three of you are due five percent each, which works out to..."

Jenny chimed in, "Three hundred and ninety three thousand, seven hundred ecks each."

My mouth started to go dry and I had a gulp of my water.

"Less the ten thousand ecks I advanced Amanda and Sarah the other day," Piper said. "So three-eighty-three thousand each for the two of them."

"How much is that in credits?" I asked nervously. "Sorry, it's going to take me a while to get used to thinking in ecks."

"Nine hundred and fifty-nine thousand, two hundred and fifty Imperium credits," Jenny replied. "Assuming an exchange rate of two-point-five credits per eck."

In addition to a dry mouth I started to feel light-headed. "That's... I was making fifteen thousand credits a year on my educational enlistment. That's an entire lifetime's worth of pay. My parents' hundred-acre farm back home was worth less than half that."

Sarah smiled and gently patted me on the back, "It seems like a lot kiddo, but an educational enlistment is just about the lowest pay-grade available. Remember, your real payout was the education. As a lifer with almost four decades in the service I was making a hell of a lot more than fifteen-thousand a year."

"Not that I'm saying this isn't a lot of money," the engineer quickly added as she looked across the table to our captain. "Like you said, we definitely won the jackpot. I'm sure this will come in handy if we run into some lean times ahead."

"Agreed," our captain smiled. "And our next stop is Ecclestone's World, which is a good place for shore leave. So if you two want to go live it up and celebrate for a few days, I think we can fit that into our schedule."

I quietly drank the last of my water as I tried to get my emotions in check. It would take a while to shake the feeling like I really did win a lottery or something.

Jenny spoke up again, "Mel just sent word, he will have an additional HPD for us before we leave. He said he'll deliver it himself so he can see us off in person, captain."

"Thanks Jenny," Piper responded.

When she and Sarah were finished their drinks, the three of us went down into the hold again and watched as the boss counted out our earnings. Sarah and I each received our own little strongbox full of cash. My pay consisted of seventy-five bars, plus an assortment of coins in various denominations. The biggest was a five-hundred-eck coin that was about two inches across and more than an eighth of an inch thick, the smallest was a twenty-five eck piece that was just under a half inch in diameter and rather thin.

It still felt almost surreal to me, not just the wealth I'd suddenly received but the fact that money was a real solid thing that you could hold in your hand. I was still used to thinking of it as a number on a screen, rather than something tangible. I carried my little strongbox up to the cabin I shared with Sarah, and stuffed it in one of my drawers in the wardrobe next to my cute new panties and tights.

We had another hour or two before our scheduled launch, and Sarah used that time to get to work installing the HPD base unit. She got a ladder out of the workshop and mounted the base just below the ceiling of the secondary hold, in the corner above the Re/Gen pod. It was connected to the power bus, then the splice into the data bus only took about two minutes since all that required was messing with cables and plugs.

It needed to charge up before Jenny could try it out, and I had the feeling our AI crew-mate was extremely impatient about that.

Sarah had all the work done and the tools and everything put away when the shipyard owner arrived with the second unit. He came in on a small flat-bad grav sled, with the second HPD case on the seat next to him.

There were more pleasantries, then Piper handed over enough bars to pay for the last-minute purchase. And finally there were the hugs and handshakes.

"Look after Rebecca for me," Mel said to Sarah and I. "And all of you, stay safe."

"Thanks Mel," our captain replied. "We'll be in touch. We might be back before long, if we find any more useful salvage on that Imperium ship."