A few days after departing Zamir, we arrived at our first destination. Our target here was an asteroid belt. We slowly traveled along the belt with advanced sensors scanning for rare deposits. It was fairly repetitive and a bit boring, but after the “excitement” of our previous missions, I greatly appreciated the mundanity.

  Isa was highly focused on her calculator prototypes. I still didn’t really understand why she was so fixated on mechanical calculators, but I could admit they were impressive.

  We spent quite a while surveying various parts of the systems between Harald and Zamir. Thankfully, nothing strange or particularly dangerous happened during the entire mission. There were a few interesting discussions during that time, though, with one in particular standing out.

  “Why are we even surveying these systems?” wondered Ani as we ate dinner. “It’ll take forever to get anything we find to somewhere useful, and even longer for the ships carrying the goods to return back home.”

  Jara shrugged. “Who cares? They tell us to scan some rocks, we scan some rocks. Let the pencil pushers figure out how to make it worthwhile.”

  “But isn’t it weird? All this route does is shorten the time to get from Zamir to the other side of the empire, and that’s only if you don’t want to stop in Midding for some reason.”

  Ess finished chewing a bite before chiming in. “I suspect they’re hoping to find some raw materials for trade with the Coalition of Clans.”

  “Doesn’t the Coalition have enough materials on their own?”

  “Probably, but I’m pretty sure there’s a decent trade pipeline for raw materials. No clue what they need so many for, but it’s a thing.”

  That conversation reminded me yet again that I should have learned about things like interstellar trade agreements as I grew up, but I was intentionally kept in the dark. As I meditated on it, though, I came to the conclusion that holding onto my anger was pointless. I lived a very different life at that point than I used to, and I was happy with it, so it didn’t matter what I might have missed out on.

  Once we finished our surveying, we made it to Harald station, and the captain made an announcement.

  “Crew, we’ve been commended for our exemplary work, especially during our earlier mission involving the Kaksholi scout ship. In acknowledgement of our efforts, the admiralty has offered us a new mission to scout a potential link between Midding and the route we took during that mission. They made it clear that this is a voluntary mission—if you do not wish to travel into the deep black again, you can request reassignment.

  “If you desire a reassignment, please let me know within forty-eight hours. You will be dropped off at Arkon to await your new assignment while we pick up replacements. Think deeply about this. If you do not intend to leave, continue on as you were. Thank you.”

  The captain’s announcement surprised everyone. Usually voyages into the deep black were reserved for experienced crew, but I supposed that we now counted, in a way, despite the crew overall being somewhat young.

  The discussions over the next two days were intense. It was clear that while most of the crew was fine with it, a minority was uncertain or outright wanting to leave. Out of our shift, the only person vocally against it was Tiroteo. Jara seemed a little unsure, but in the end, she decided to stay.

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  By the time the captain’s deadline arrived, five of the crew members decided to request reassignment—Tiroteo, along with the third-shift engineering tech, one of the marines, our most junior enlisted, and the third-shift senior bridge officer, though I heard it suggested that the latter was just hoping to be reassigned to a larger ship class.

  With that settled, we made our way to Arkon, somewhere we hadn’t been in about a cycle, a cycle that had taken us around most of the empire and beyond.

  When we got to Arkon, those crewmates who decided to leave departed, and we took on a replacement pilot and engineering tech, though we were still short a few crew members, including a senior bridge officer. To account for this, Lieutenant Rokloth moved to be the senior bridge officer for third shift, leaving just me and the XO as bridge officers on the second shift. Our new second shift pilot was Junior Specialist Astraya Chau, a human woman, while the new engineering tech was Senior Specialist Harkua Vorst, a dwarf woman.

  We didn’t stay long at Arkon, needing to head to Midding to pick up our remaining crew where we would also get leave at one of the largest stations in imperial space, something I was looking forward to seeing.

  Most stations were rather cramped affairs, similar to larger ships without main engines. The reason for this is that building larger spaces is much less efficient when you take into account aether shielding. However, the importance of Midding Station, combining with the amount of wealth that flowed through it, justified the added expense for constructing large, open areas.

  When we arrived, we were giving a docking berth in the military section of the station. Only a few hours later, I found myself entering one of the large marketplaces. The ceiling in the enormous room rose at least a dozen stories up, ending in a sky simulated with holoscreens. In between the ground and the ceiling were partial floors connected via stairs, elevators, and sky bridges. It was said that if it was available for sale in the empire, you could buy it at Midding, and if it wasn’t… you could probably still buy it there.

  It was well-known that there was a thriving black market that operated in Midding despite efforts to shut it down. I figured they let it happen so long as their crimes didn’t get too egregious, since loosely controlled crime was much better for everyone than totally hidden crime. Yes, that meant some of the goods were stolen or otherwise illegal, but atrocities like slavery or extremely dangerous items were largely stopped.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” mused Isa as I stood off to the side taking everything in.

  “I’ve never seen its like,” I admitted.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing my arms. “It’s time to go shopping.”

  I let Isa drag me over to some of our other friends, and we proceeded to explore the marketplace, though there was hardly enough time in our entire leave to explore everything, let alone in one day. I saw everything from glass trinkets made on Corta to rare fruits from Evon and even leatherwork from Tortal. Of course, I was most interested in the variety of boots available, some in styles I had never seen before. It took all of my self-control not to buy every one of them, knowing that I didn’t have room to store everything I wanted. I ended up keeping my purchases to just two pairs of boots and some supplies for physical sketching, something I had wanted to try since getting into digital art.

  Isa, meanwhile, was heavily focused on supplies for her inventing hobby, while the others with us purchased a wider variety of items, from clothing to food to Ani who decided she absolutely needed a large length of fine rope made from the silk of an arachnoid species from Hester.

  …I very much avoided asking why she bought that.

  Besides the marketplaces, Midding was also known for its wide range of restaurants catering to any palate. We ended up picking a restaurant specializing in cuisine from Abos, which proved to be delicious, though fairly spicy.

  Our second day of leave passed much the same as the first, though we opted to visit one of the other marketplaces that time. There was no real difference between them, just that there was still a limit to how big they could make each one.

  It was the third day, though, where things changed.