Photo by 🇻🇪 Jose G. Ortega Castro 🇲🇽 on Unsplash
Chapter 4: Trading Floor
Our quarters had two stop-gate doors. One from the yellow line hallway.
At precisely 1400, the other door opened into a large round, slightly overpressured room. A light breeze blew in when the door spiraled open. Like the Trademinister’s room, the floor was tiled, the walls decorated with carpets between each of the twenty doors circling the room, and the air carried the special scent of the best filters known to humankind.
Captain Blanche and I stepped into the room. Seventeen of the twenty doors had opened. I noted one male, Blue Sky’s runt from an accepted by the Sisterhood covenant, but controversial in-ship breeding between the First Officer and an untraded ship’s son, returned to their waiting room to pull out a chair for his aged captain to sit in since the room lacked any furniture. I’ll give him points for being polite to his great grandmother, but what little breeding tree we could find to confirm his suspiciously clean genetic tracking left us firmly avoiding that ship as an option. I thought their genetic diversity lacked branching.
A final door spiraled opened. This one decorated either side with a female with captain stripes painted on along her legs and gray-tinted hair cut close to the scalp reaching across to a young male her height and a quarter of her age. Unlike the outside door with the vintage shipsuits, both these paintings showed the couple naked and ready for copulation.
I do not know who they used for inspiration for the boy’s penis, but I hope no one here expected me to live up to that. I’m not sure that could even be properly hooked up into a shipsuit urinary.
Menagerie’s Brother spread his hand along eyelines, shaking his head as he extrapolated length and girth.
Jessica Sister-Trading-Conglomerate-Central-Marketplace, Trademinister of the Brother Trade, entered the room. Parsley dropped his hand immediately.
“Welcome all to the Brother’s Trade. I’m pleased to report seventeen ships are available to trade. I know you were hoping for eighteen, but one ship has been removed from the Sisterhood for violations. From the seventeen ships, we have thirty-two Trades today. I know everyone has reviewed the catalog entries.” She paused, looking around the room where Captains and their Brothers stood outside their waiting rooms. “Two entries were challenged for their valuation. They have been reviewed by an independent council and both original valuations stand. Their ships need to transfer the five percent fee before the floor opens.”
I noticed the independent council hadn’t been named. Likely one of the other board members with a vested interest since the members are paid a percentage of the weekly station’s profit. Hardly independent review.
“Thank you,” Jessica said after a moment. “When a trade has been agreed upon, please come into my office to register the Brother ship transfer. Remember all crew members should review the ship’s contract before signing a transfer agreement.”
Like any male here had a choice in the transfer. I forced my face into the stillness Trade had taught me.
“Fair Trade and Good Harvest,” the trademinister said before stepping into her sensor-laden suite. I bet every room and computer on this station fed into one Trademinister’s computer or other. The aggregate data sitting somewhere below my feet made my mind twitch.
Derby’s captain, dragging her thirty-year-old crewman, folded space to the Blue Sky captain. Without children to trade, the mailrunners needed to change out their males before they became too old and Garlic was pushing it. Derby must think her older Brother could be traded value-for-value with the questionable genetics of Blue Sky. Having run checks on the ship-pools for both, I knew neither had extra money or contracts to sweeten the pot. For them, that was the best trade in the room. After a short conversation, without a doubt, they would be the first to go into Jessica’s lair.
Likewise, We Land moved like they had a mail-run to lift over to Metals and Ores. Onion, slunk behind his captain, favoring a leg. Metals had three males to trade, but all looked…off…in their shipsuits. Captain Tilly had one of them open his mouth, before quickly shifting her interest to Collections whose captain, despite having two men to trade, just raised an eyebrow to the mail-run operator. Finally, captain made her way to Faithful with their ten males to trade.
All of us males are named after ship-growing plants hence the Good Harvest wishes by the trademinister. We are harvest grown to age to be traded. The young men around the room had names Lettuce, Riceman, Choy, Wheatie, and Cabbage. Everyone’s last name was their contracted ship name and the final part of the name within the Sisterhood was the highest ranked ship’s duty for their share of the ship-pool, for example my listed catalog entry named me: Peasbody Really-Radical-Stock, Third-Pilot. Everyone used first names shipboard as we shared a ship name. Of the males in the room, only half had a ship duty listed other than Brother.
The captain and Menagerie met halfway and started talking. Parsley and I discussed the proportions of the painting. He really would be a good fit for the ship, if he stayed clear of Tamar, but I could hear the people who held the purses coming to an impasse. Menagerie wasn’t willing to provide the extra funds needed for the psychological software Parsley required for full healing, and Blanche didn’t want to spend the ship-pool to benefit one crewmember, however worthy the cause. Agreeing to disagree, the entertainment expert moved toward the financial ship who might have deeper pursestrings.
They didn’t according to my admittedly quick review. I didn’t spend too much time on them since we had already ruled them out for personality incompatiblites.
We turned to The Trinkets Trolley, to discover they were in deep discussions with the Faithful captain while We Land fumed nearby. The agricultural ship had only brought one trader for its ten males. Several singleton ships hovered nearby waiting their turn carefully avoiding eye contact with each other.
The Prestigious Sisterhood of Athena Mercenaries used the special dispensation allowing ships to bring one trader per three males to trade and had broken up their twelve males into four groups of three: one with the Athena captain, who all the other captains were trying to talk to, one with the first officer, one with their trademinister, and one with supply. Supplyminister Perrie, was the one who waylaid as we tried to figure out who to trade with.
“Afternoon Captain Blanche,” the woman stood even with my mother but looked taller, standing straight as a board, three men only four inches taller than her lined up military straight behind her. Green Beans, Jalapenos, and I could not remember the third one. He had been a complete no for our ship’s capability.
Carrot! I was disappointed he didn’t have orange or purple hair.
“Ship’s minister,” my mother gave her a nod of respect. Some ship’s captains might consider Supply reaching out an insult, but my captain knew better.. Even though as a ship’s captain, Blanche outranked Perrie, as Supply of the Athena, the minister supervised four times as many people than existed total on the Radical, including the men and children.
“We, Captain Raquel and the Athena crew, noticed Radical had a pilot-upgraded Brother available.”
My captain kept her eyes forward on the Trade. “He is also full-certified and has been sitting in the third seat for four years.”
“That is a lot of investment.” The woman’s eyes drifted over to me. “Is this him?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Looks lazy. Think you can stand at parade rest, Harvest boy?” Her voice had an edge which made me want to pull back my hunched shoulders.
I glanced at my mother, then dropped my eyes to her hands. No opinion. This wasn’t one of the options I liked. My children would be soldiers fighting in other people’s wars until they died making profit for the ship and the Board. Unlike most ships, they used artificial wombs. I might not even get assigned to a berth of crew to be a husband. But our options were closing quickly, and having seen the organizational difference between the Faithful and the Athena in this room, knowing my personal tolerance for disorganization which I had inherited from my gene-donor, of the options available, this would be the best trade for me.
“No,” I said firmly.
Perrie tilted her head. “Very well, nice doing—”
I interrupted. “I’m not a Harvest boy; I’m a Brother and expect to be addressed appropriately during Trade.”
She snorted in surprise and Jalapenos laughed. “Spoken like a full pilot. Could you stand up straight, Brother? I liked to see what I am trading for.”
Rolling back my shoulders, I straightened my legs and stood at my full height, putting me over a decimeter above everyone in the room.
“Hmm. Not a good size for fighter pilots, but that could be fixed in the tube.” Pierre nodded at my mother. “See if any of these Brothers are good for you. They are the best match we have to your ship’s profile. The dark skin one has a full crafting suite installed, compatible with your fabrication shop. While you examine they, would you mind me reviewing your crew?”
And with that little exchange, she had revealed valuable information. Athena specifically assembled options just to trade for me. They wanted me. And unlike many ships, their ship-pool was deep.
“Pilot?” The captain looked up at me, brown eyes to brown eyes.
I nodded. This was the trade we were going to get. And I think it would be an acceptable one for me and a very good one for the ship.
(words 1,627; first published 5/24/2026)
Brother Trade series
Chapter 1: Radical Docking (3/9/2025)
Chapter 2: A Catalog Entry (3/16/2025)
Chapter 3: Ship Choice (3/23/2025)
Chapter 4: Trading Floor (3/30/2025)