Tag: SciFi (soft)

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)

Photo by nader saremi on Unsplash

Chapter 3: Ship Choice

Jessica. Her name was Jessica and she owned two of the Sisterhood mail-runner ships personally. I couldn’t imagine living on a ship which wasn’t crew-owned, but those ships had all the expensive bits of a big cargo ship – engines and environment – and none of the cargo room for expensive trade or living space for a large crew to pool resources. Paying for one by combining income from six crew didn’t happen, so most of them were rentals. Jessica sat on the Marketplace Board of Officers and may be one of the three most powerful people in the Sisterhood. She was a founding signer, and had been over fifty when she had signed then, and had undergone two Roadsky rejuvenations, hence looking younger than Captain Blanche.

The bitch, and I use that term very, very deep internally and it would never pass my lips around her, offered to have my sperm viability tested to increase my value. She had nineteen daughters, all by different fathers, none by Marketplace crew, all conceived by fathers two weeks after they had been traded through the Brother Trade. Amazing what one can find when properly taught to do research. She wanted my child without paying for it.

Medical reupped my numbers, as they had tested me again on the way in-system. Since there had been no appreciable change, they hadn’t paid for the new long-distance upload, but with Trademinster Jessica asking the question, and with the docking arm link dropping the costs to effectively nothing, they registered the changes for the catalog.

Dodging that missile meant my most recent half decimeter of growth was recorded, and the related four kilo mass gain. I now officially exceeded environmental stress calculations on two of the ships in for Brother Trade, and clearly would exceed both of the mail-runners limitations before I finished growing. Radical Medical dropped a note in the file speculating I should have completed with my growing at age eighteen, but my body seems to be rejecting the three years of suppressants and reactivated to complete the growth expectation of my genetic potential to two point one meters which I should obtain in another eighteen months.

I’m not sure how much good slouching would be at this point.

Three ships sent early contact and we sent back a picture of an ear to each of them. We weren’t willing to risk losing Marketplace privileges even if they were. Easy Road had included a full offer of two Brothers for me. Turns out they were down to a single pilot and didn’t have the ship-pool to tempt another pilot worth her certification. Adding to the drama, the backup pilot had jumped to another contract as soon as they hit the Marketplace, even though Easy was her birthship.

I did not want to get in the middle of that, whatever that was.

The captain and I pawed through the entire catalog, including the two latecomers. I memorized ships, captains, known cultures, cargos, routes, department heads, ship diagrams. I wasn’t going to be caught without updated maps again. While pushing all the data cargo into my head, I added the Sisterhood Board. Not everything will stick, but I should be able to get through this afternoon’s trading floor.

If we could hunt down repair records for the ships, we looked for repeated repairs indicating a possible lemon ship or poor maintenance training. Of the eighteen ships in for the Brother Trade, including our own, we narrowed it down to four possibilities where the male, or choice of males if a larger ship, available to be traded would fit into our ship, and I, and my oversized mass, could fit onto theirs and into their culture.

While Collections and Emissions looked promising on paper, mother had regularly dealt with their captain and gave me a 50% chance of killing someone onboard within the year. And only that long because with my medical training as a corpsman, I can fix a lot of things before they get fatal. I trusted her judgement, even though that ship had four men available to trade, one was a certified mechanic.

I liked the look of Ever Faithful the best. Again, they had a lot of men available for the trade, in a wide variety of skills. It would be weird going from a ship of seventy to over a thousand. How do you even get to know everyone? Their slow-moving circuit took four years, with stays of four to six months at each stop. They took good care of their children, through the fathers had no rights except to chose who to share sperm with, but most ships had built that into the ship-contract.

Joyous Menagerie, an entertainment and cargo vessel, had promise. They chose a new circuit every time out with only three anchor worlds where they repeat annually. If I wanted to explore the galaxy, that would be the way to go. The problem was the Brother Trade had an animal accident and would need special psychological care. While Radical could handle it, did they want to?

Metal and Ores, one of the late comers, was the third largest ship in the system, and was just small enough to dock at the Marketplace. They nearly went on our short list until we hit their maintenance; their vent system had needed repairs eight times in the last twenty years. Looking deeper, we could find no unsealed medical records, but I did manage to cross-reference the required recorded births, which were about double normal for a ship their size, to ship certifications, which were normal amount for first certifications and half for second certifications. I did not want to watch half my children die before adulthood, and the balance to die young, and nor did my captain.

The Trinkets Trolley looked fun, specializing in mechanical repairs. Not every colony, especially the company mining factories, could repair everything. While I wasn’t there yet, my jack-of-all-trades mind would love to learn those skills. We Brother Traded once with them; it’s where we got the continuing education idea. The genetic ties would be tricky, as the captain descended from that trade, but my gravity-genes made the trade pass the Medical Inbreeding clause.

The other latecomer, a medium-sized cargo ship, was a speedster, their military engines from the Interspecies Alliance capable of ten-fold space, exceeding everything available in GHC space, and blowing the normal cargo speed of five-folds completely nova. Cargos don’t even bother to upgrade to tourist level of seven folds, since five-fold is the maximum speed at which the energy for collection equals usage. At seven-fold, cargos would be limited to systems with a working fold-reaction generation factory and the ship-pool would pay the system for the mass. The mail-runners and military vessels like the Athena could kick as high as eight-fold, but at least military vessels are big enough to house their own mass generators, slow as the generation is in normal space. For the mail-runners, what looks like cargo space is actually fold-reaction storage. Handshake and Guns at Dawn wanted to trade two males, but one was sixteen, so whoever took him would need to wait two years. Handshake lived a celebrity life, running mail and high valued items between governments. They also only had only two pilots and were nosing around for a third who was certified in all four sub-licenses. Four sub-licenses are rarer than wormholes, but picking up a man to train up could tempt them. The captain didn’t like it since half their circuit was outside of GHC space, but it wasn’t like I was coming home again.

I freshened my shipsuit and myself, did one last check of my pockets for the few things I owned, and stood for inspection. The captain approved, and we made no further mention of our relationship. I was Brother Trade. She reminded me to slouch.

(words 1,317; 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)

Photo by Dad hotel on Unsplash

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)

Photo from Dreamtime (paid for – please do not reproduce without Dreamtime or artist’s permission)

Chapter 1: Radical Docking

Staring out the viewscreen at the slowly turning Marketplace, the trade center for the Sisters Trading Conglomerate with sixteen ships in dock and two large vessels nearby running shuttles to the space station, I filled with both intense pride to be part of such a powerful alliance reaching throughout the Greater Human Cooperative and intense trepidation. I didn’t want to be here. Normally, I would be all over a trading mission, especially at the home station, but this time the trade was me.

I had hit eighteen two years ago. Last time we made it to the Market, I was two weeks underage and we had a contract delivery to hit. Last year we missed all the Brother Trade days, being on the other end of our ship’s trade two-year circuit, which meant I had no reasonable arguments to beg an extension to stay onboard ship this time around.

“Bring us in pilot,” the captain ordered behind me.

My last act as a crewmember under her orders. I eased in without comment or question, well familiar with the pilot seat, having sat third on the rotation since I qualified as an apprentice at age fifteen (*Earther-years, the standard used by all ships of the Sisterhood).

I would be a valuable trade. Certified as full pilot with for a planetary landing sub-license, as a junior for navigator and as a corpsman, and ready to challenge for apprenticeships in environmental and sanitation fields. Two mechanics onboard our ship could use a husband with a new genetic mix for the good of the ship’s diversity, and I was the only currency available.

After locking in the rotation calculations, I touched and brushed the controls, not even scratching paint or pads coming into the docking arm, stopping the minor thrusters once the magnetic emission force fields captured us relative to the docking arm.

“Very good Peasbody.” Captain Blanche called her first officer over. “Freddie, you have the bridge. Only two people on liberty at a time, three hours each, until the Brother Trade is complete. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Check the boards with Supply and with Trade to see what is available for resupply and what might be good for trade on our next circuit. You have the bridge.”

“Aye Captain,” Freddie said in her high, sweet soprano voice. “I have the bridge. Trade well, Captain.”

“Peasbody, you are with me.”

I stood, and Ymette, the First Pilot who should have been in the seat for the prestigious and difficult connection to the spinning Marketplace, slid in behind me. I had watched her fingers twitch every maneuver on the way in, but they wanted me in the seat, recording my value with every millimeter of the docking. It wasn’t my first docking, so they had confidence despite my recent full ranking certified at Treehelm two months ago. I hoped this docking wouldn’t be my last.

Some crews just used males for reproduction, though the Sisterhood frowned on wasting fully developed brains. And if the brain wasn’t capable of full development, why was it chosen for reproduction with crewmembers? I don’t think the captain would trade me to a social outlier ship, but if no other trade was available…

I settled my mind going over the ships I caught sight of as we flew in. Ever Faithful was an agricultural specialist, a massive tanker growing crops to fill in missing nutrients for colonized planets still undergoing terraforming. Supply would be hitting them up for oranges and other tree fruits and my mouth watered at the thought of fresh foods in the mess tonight.

Then I remembered I wouldn’t be at the officer table ever again. I dragged fingers over the wall as I walked behind the captain, higher than the well-worn streaks made by children running messages up to the bridge from other departments on the ship.

Being even bigger than the space station, Faithful had parked on the sunlit side. The Prestigious Sisterhood of Athena Mercenaries warship hovered on the cold side of the Marketplace, the quicker to exit, the quicker to face any incursions coming from outside the dual-star, gas-giants-only system the Sisterhood had chosen for their home system. Collections and Emissions was even smaller than my birthship, Really Radical Stock, and unlike most Sisterhood ships, kept equal amount of men and women onboard as they did financial and high-end trading and many planets preferred males for financial trades. They always had plenty of males to trade; they didn’t even practice the standard gender suppression methods among their children for the standard three-to-one ratio.

The two smallest ships, We Land and Derby, worked mostly as mail runners and only kept one male on board to fill out the minimum required crew of six to needed to fly under the conglomerate flag. They might be interested in me to beef up their pilot ranks, but I’m not sure I would want to be on a ship which had to trade out all their children at age five because of lack of room and education facilities. Besides, mail-runners traded out their males for newer models every five years since they didn’t keep any of their children, and I am a bunk-body. I really hope to only be traded once.

Truth to tell, I had hoped never to be traded offship since I wasn’t closely related to about half the crew, but the captain was a stickler for tradition in most things.

The captain entered the code to open the airlock into the docking tube.

I hadn’t received the updated code since all my hardware had been reverted to stores other than the very expensively installed pilot implant package. Everything I carried on my person and in my head would be all that I could take with me to my next posting. I had left behind my tools, as my hands had outgrown them ages ago but no one could justify spending printing-mass on someone who would be traded soon. The tablet with all my music, books, videos, and lessons had been wiped and returned supplies. Whatever ship I ended up would not risk a mechanical virus transfer; the biological danger was enough.

“Don’t forget to slouch,” she said as the airlock repressurized to match the station’s docking arm.

“Yes, Captain.” I relaxed my shoulders and hunched my back. Trading me two years ago would have been better, before I added three more inches of height.

Mass takes food, oxygen, and space. The Sisterhood had chosen to go the matriarchy route to save money. Twenty original ships, 100% crewed by women and replenished with fertilized embryos flew the stars traderoutes, saving money, joined together under one company contract, now the largest merchant family-company in the GHC.

Over time, the Brother Trade tradition developed for genetic security. Females stayed with the ships, males traded between them upon maturity. Every transaction recorded to protect the company from inbreeding. Ninety-seven years after the initial contract, it would be my turn to be traded.

My trade came with a lot of special features. My mother had been distracted by a gravity-man and ended up with me nine months and dozens of systems later.  I didn’t have the perfectly proven and traced genes to the original founders, but my DNA would add diversity to any ship, guaranteed. I was healthy, but I was also as large and strong as a gravity-man in charge of moving cargo in a non-variable gravity environment needs to be. Even with drugs to suppress my growth prescribed by Medical once they realized I was only starting to grow at fourteen, unlike most females who were winding down, I towered over all the adults onboard my home-ship at 1.8 meters. My mass is expensive. One of the reasons I got pushed, and pushed myself, in so many specialties was to make that mass worthwhile even though I would be traded offship.

Fortunately, I was born in a lull between generations so Education and Training had berths available to waste on training male brains. As Tamar put it, the berths used the same energy and maintenance sitting there empty, may as well put knowledge into the Testosterones.

Tamar was not allowed to have a husband to herself.

After we both yawned to adjust the inner ear, Captain Blanche ordered me to slouch more before moving forward down the docking tube,

I rolled my eyes and attempted to do so, as I whispered, “Yes, mom.” and slid down the tube after her. Like the micro gravity between Radical’s gravity plates and the Market’s spin could provide me something to stand straight or slouch against.

Once inside the airlock on the station’s side, we landed in the half gravity the station provided in the cargo unloading areas and faced each other. The captain lifted her hand to my cheek; I slouched so my face rested in it, closing my eyes to memorize this last touch of my family-crew.

“I will get a good trade,” Blanche promised firmly. I could feel her hand shake in the shipsuit glove, but it wouldn’t be visible on the security cameras. “But if they break contract, you know how to contact us.”

I trembled and let the tears flow just enough to let the emotions escape.

When her hand dropped, I bit my lip and opened my eyes. I used the back of my shipsuit’s glove to absorb the moisture. “I love you,” I whispered. This time she was close enough to hear my whisper.

She gave me one last look, brown eyes to matching brown eyes. Before turning to face the opening airlock.

(words 1,607; 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)