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Chapter 2: A Catalog Entry
Captain Blanche strode swiftly forward toward the trading levels.
While I have been inside the Sisterhood Marketplace home station a few times, all the visits have been as part of a long line of Radical children holding hands, following Tamar and whatever two other adults she managed to convince to delay their liberty to babysit the learning opportunity.
I used the advantage of my long legs to keep up. Just behind her wake without stepping on her boots. It was a pace I had mastered over a lifetime I would never use again.
Orange cargo lines split into green food, yellow trade, blue lodging, and red entertainment. We followed the board yellow line until it spaghetti tangled into smaller lines with little boxes every five meters indicating which trade specialty section the line lead to. Three yellow circles representing coins for finances, crossed red laser beams surrounded by purple force field glow for the mercenary troops, wheat sheaves for food and agriculture – a lot of crew with a Faithful ship badge sewn on her sleeve walked along those lines. Normally, Radical crew followed the yellow line with the zig-zag box, indicating general merchandise being all over the place. Today we followed the line with the three stick figures box, one tall stick figure with two much smaller ones off each arm.
Of all the lines, it showed the least wear. I wondered if it was because not many people walked it or because the primary purpose of the Marketplace as the home system was to operate the Brother Trade so they kept it clean.
I briefly thought about being traded to the Marketplace crew, but they didn’t need pilots or navigators. Between the mail-runners passing their children off and people who proved to be unable to work as ship-crews but could at least function in space, so weren’t abandoned in a gravity well, the home station didn’t need much in the way of men for reproductive purposes. Their challenge is more getting rid of the excess population by mining the rings of the gas giants to make new ships than keeping up the genetic diversity.
The captain stopped, and I caught myself in time to keep from running into her. A doorway on the left, rounded top and bottom like a typical stop-gate for decompression was painted either side with a male and a female in ancient shipsuits, at least thirty years out of date, facing each other, reaching across the chasm of the open door.
She glanced up at me. I had unconsciously straightened for better control during the long walk and variable gravity plates throughout the station. I immediately hunched forward, losing about a decimeter. I ducked even further following her through the stop-gate door.
Inside the sumptuous room, furnished as only a center of a trade route can be furnished, was the first person I have ever seen outside of gravity, at least in my memory, not wearing a shipsuit. Her long hair, a luxury few shipcrew dared, wrapped in braids around her head. “Blanche, darling. So good to see you.”
“Trademister.” My captain nodded her head in acknowledgment.
The woman turned to me. “And this must be Peasbody, your son. Oh, he is a handsome one.” A small frown winked across the master’s very controlled face. “And big.” It cleared nearly instantly, but I realized it for the trading trick to downplay my worth and fought the urge to straighten to my full height. “If his father looked anything like him, I can see why you chose to climb that monster.”
“His father made me laugh,” the captain said. “He is very clever for a grounder.”
“Is?” the trademinster made her way to a table and tapped a couple of characters. “You still see him.”
“We still trade with the world.” My captain crossed her arms. I winced internally at the defensive stance. There is a reason why my mother wasn’t the Trademinster on our ship. “Peterson is now the portmaster for Audacity.”
“Really?” The woman’s fingers drifted across her tablet table again. “Why is that not mentioned in Peasbody’s entry? A portmaster relationship has value. Has your sperm donor not met you Peasy?”
“He has.” I modulated my voice high and kept my words short, following the training drilled into me by the Trademinister on our way in. I did not react to the shortening of my name to a childhood diminutive.
“Then why are you downplaying your worth?”
The trademinister received a five percent commission, and the Marketplace took another five percent, based on my book value. To underplay my worth left them collecting less revenue and could impact Radical’s ability to trade here in the future. For my birthship Brother Trade, I was worth more than any husband likely to be available, so we didn’t need to push up the cost further. Strategically, being undervalued, worked better for us. I exchange glances with my mother. The trademinister was talking to me, but the captain should be the one working the trade. She tapped the leg stripe of her shipsuit.
“At this time, Audacity is at 36% terraforming and only two Sisterhood ships land there,” I explained.
“And the other one would be Black Rose Sweets, who runs opposite of Radical, and so you will not overlap with them during Brother Trade, and they would be the only ones to have value for a small world portmaster.” The trademinister nodded understanding. “Any idea how soon they will have a station capable of space docking?”
A quick glance at my mother divulged she hasn’t lifted her hand from the stripe.
“It’s on the fifty-year plan.” More like the five-year plan, the way the three city mayors of Audacity are pushing the spaceport, but they would need to get the terraforming to 40% before the space elevator could be built. One of the things Radical picked up at Treehelm had been a printer for the elevator. But all of this was trade secrets my genetic donor parent had shared across pillows during my mother’s last visit, and while Marketplace centered the Sisterhood, it leaked secrets to the other trading houses like radiation from a star. I kept to the official registered long-term plan with the GHC reviewers.
“So, not for another century,” the trademinister said, based on the typical small world development timeline. Most colonies couldn’t fathom how long and expensive terraforming was; Audacity was a second-generation colony drawn from the explorers of six urbanized worlds. Earthers might not know but Audacity’s population involved terraformers from completed worlds, dirt farmers who thrilled at the challenge of a partially understood soil biome, and dozens of other occupations who no longer fit in on their original birth worlds. That wasn’t to say Audacity had it easy; while rich in metals and arable land, the storms racing across the surface matched the extreme tilt of the planet.
I personally gave them seven years to picture out how to anchor a stalk against the category seven hurricanes near the equator.
I didn’t provide further comment, though the Trade stretched out the silence, expecting us to fill it. Instead I took the moment to recheck my slouch and slightly bent knees, then I let my eyes drift around the room, leaking my awe of the surroundings through my expression. A Kyron woven carpet decorated one wall; L’lada tiling covered the floor; Roadsky filters marked the vents, the smell distinctive, as was the fact no known contamination which impacted human health made their way through those filters. I calculated the room’s value in GHC currency and in the Empire for the Hope of Humanity coin. None of the Sisterhood ships traded with the Interspecies Alliance or crossed all the way to the far end of the galactic arm for the Milkyway United Worlds, through the one wormhole which proved the theory wasn’t just theoretical, but greedily claimed a toll of one ship is ninety to prove humans hadn’t figured out all the nuisances of that secret space yet.
I wondered if the ship I traded to would pass through the Empire. I knew all three of the Sisterhood’s Mercenary ships did good business there, but the willingness of the Empire to release privateer contracts made them less than desirable for smaller, barely-armed ships to circuit trade through.
Mother fell first to the silence. “When will the Brother Trade begin?”
“Two more ships are expected in. We should open the floor around 1400 tomorrow, to give them time to review the catalog.” The woman, and I feel like kicking myself for not finding out her name or the name of all the department heads on the Marketplace, such a noob move, lip ends lifted in something she might have thought looked like a smile. “Are there any particular trades you have been thinking about?”
“No, no,” the captain rushed out her truthful answer. The mechanics would take just about anyone; the trade has always been more about getting me to a safe ship than about getting the best man for Radical. “Observe, don’t dream, what a market holds.”
“Captain Eve. You can never go wrong studying her Best Ways to Profit.” The woman turned her cold eyes to me. “Have you read her works?”
“Not since basic,” I answered. Between pilot, navigation, medical, environment, sanitation, and officer training, I hadn’t had the time to learn trade, finance, supply, cargo, engineering, crafting, or any of the other dozen shipboard occupations. But I also never missed a single Friday continuing education lecture. Talking to the other men onboard, I discovered this was a unique tradition to the Radical.
But we were a specialty tradeship; we all needed to know a lot. Trade used anyone on liberty as extra eyes to find new products to put into cargo; likewise Supply asked us to keep eyes open for higher quality items natives might keep to themselves. Then there was Tamar whose personal mission was to have every single person onboard the ship have at least two master certifications before they died, including the Testosterones, even though most of the voidheads came only with what was between their legs in her opinion.
“Pity.” The woman tapped her computer again.
Oh, now I felt stupid. Trade must have sensors checking truth aimed at us from the moment we entered. I hadn’t lied. That was one of the rules molded into me from the moment I was approved for liberty. Never lie, but always hold back as much as you can.
“Blanche, your room is yellow-317. You are welcomed to return here anytime you want, but please do not do trading until all the ships have arrived. It’s only fair.”
I watched as my mother’s eyes blinked acceptance of the trade package.
“Thank you,” she said. “Fair trade.”
“Fair trade to you.” The woman responded.
(words 1,810; 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)
