The tramp starship "Edmund Fitzgerald" was a long cylinder, the crew and engine were located at the aft end, with cargo holds along the shaft and the plasma scoop, ramjet and sensors located to the fore. Three of the five cylinders that made the cargo hold were reconditioned to allow passengers.

Each cylinder held a different class of passenger. The closest to the bridge and crew was 1st class. Although the Edmund Fitzgerald was heading back into a possible warzone, there was still a lot of business to be done and money to be made and these 30 staterooms had been booked to capacity.

The next cylinder was split among business class and tourist. One hundred smaller state rooms consisting of fold-out beds and fold away tables. Shared heads among pods. Functional common areas, with the business class "Suites" having nicer carpeting and decorations.

Then there was the Izzy’s cylinder. Economy. Steerage. Hey you rats. Functionally, she new the design was almost identical to the second cylinder. Except there was no carpeting, no art on the walls. Where the Tourist staterooms could hold two adults, four small bunks were placed in Economy. The common areas, too, were barely functional. Although she doubted there was much different in the equipment between the tourist cafeteria and Economy, the difference in the food that was served was night and day. Izzy knew it had less to do with economics and more to do with status. After all, with free zero point energy, it didn’t cost all that much to travel from one star system to another. The only reason for people in cylinder three to be treated this was was because they were the kind of people who travelled in the third cylinder.

And, when you get right down to it, they were Izzy’s kind of people. There were more aliens in this cylinder, more engineers. Izzy was welcomed aboard the ship by a porter with a patch over one eye and made her way through the ancient airlock. She heard hissing steam from somewhere, which was concerning in a starship: Things should be perfectly efficient in a ship that was braking the laws of physics as a routine matter of course.

The airlock went from the outer hull to the central tube, where the common areas like the cafeteria and Media room were. There was a momentary sense of vertigo as she stepped into the cafeteria and the Edmund Fitzgerald’s artificial gravity took over.From the cafeteria, she shouldered her duffel bag and forced her way past the few passengers gathered here and made her way down a steep ramp to the lower deck. She checked her boarding pass and followed signage on the barren polysteel walls until she found her berth. She had purchased her ticket at the last possible minute, having verified that the shopkeepers info was probably true and wasn’t surprised to find that her berth was at the very end of the cylinder, about as far from the ramp as possible.

It wasn’t quite the furthest out, because it shared a bulkhead with some machinery that was failing, leaving a dull thrumming throughout this section. No doubt the farther rooms were quieter, and those passengers who required that kind of solitude were willing to pay a little more. No, Izzy had reached the cheapest berths on the cheapest ship at the last possible moment.

Izzy hiked her duffel bag, took a deep breath, passed her passcard over the lock opened the door and stepped in to an almost visible odor of animal funk.

First, she noticed that the usual four bunks were missing: it was just the two. On the left was a neatly made up, functional cot with storage underneath and at the headboard.

However, the right sight. "Oh The Gods," she thought. The right side. There was a pile of oily, greasy quilts heaped on the bed. And on the small desk she was meant to share...

"It was a skull," she was explaining to the purser. "I can’t share a room with a skull"

The purser was absently tapping his tablet and Izzy wasn’t certain he was paying any attention to her as the other passengers milled around the common room.

"And the stink. Let’s not forget the stink."

"Ma’am," the Purser said. "We are fully booked. I cannot find you another room on this level."

He finally looked up at her.

"Unless you’d be willing to upgrade to coach?"

Izzy’s heart sank. There it was. The upgrade con. Wait for someone desperate enough to buy passage sight unseen, then make them upgrade. This was a con she knew well, and realized her options were limited. They didn’t expect her to stay. She could refuse passage, but her ticket would not be refunded. She could upgrade, which she couldn’t afford, or she could…

"Look, man. I understand. But surely there is someone else who hasn’t arrived yet. You could do me a favor and switch our berths before-"

"I’m sorry Miss Concannon, but I was specifically directed to give you that berth."

"Directed? By whom?"

"The Captain"

The Purser stared at her, waiting for a reaction. Izzy managed to keep herself under control, though she could feel the color rising in her face.

"I don’t understand. Do I know the Captain?"

He tapped the screen a couple more times.

"You used Magisterial Funds to complete the transaction. Upon completion, the magistrate’s office called the captain directly to-"

Izzy flew past the airlock and down the gangway. She turned left and slammed into one of the private call boxes that were located in the boarding area. She thumbed the keypad but before she could ask to be connected, the walleyed grin of T’kan Shan appeared on the viewscreen. Of course her was keeping her under surveillance.

"Miss Concannon. I trust you have boarded and will be out of our hair in a few moments?"

" You Rotten bastard. What the hell? You just couldn’t let me go, you had to punish me on the trip too?"

"Considering I am to be more than generous with the charges brought against you-"

" I don’t want to hear that. They’re bogus and you know it."

"Miss Concannon," the magistrate was calm. "It is a tenet of my faith that salvation is to be brought by good deeds. I suggest that to be spending time with an Ursine-"

"An Ursine? Are you kidding me?"

"-An Ursine shall be tempering your, ah, temper in the slightest. That is to be best for all concerned. I should expect that you need to be on that ship soon, else I shall be forced to uphold the law."

Watched as the magistrate cut the connection and bit her bottom lip. Ursines were known to be trouble among the spacers. Large, brutish, hairy aliens from a small arctic planet, Humans had given them the gift of interstellar travel before their empire had collapsed. Almost as large as two normal sized humans,they were strong and well suited to space travel. They had never really advanced beyond their hunter/gatherer roots and were considered backwards by most other races. They were not numerous (Some said it was hard for them to reproduce outside of their homeworld)and were loners content to travel by themselves doing odd jobs and gruntwork.

Now she was going to be sharing a berth with one. And, by the stench of the other bunk, it looked like he had been there for a while. It made sense: He was probably a member of the crew somehow, relegated to the farthest berth on the lowest tier of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Izzy felt like Punching the wall, but held off. There had to be a way through this. All she owned was in her duffel. All her wealth was concentrated in a few Bank credits and she was lucky that Wong and the Magistrate had not frozen her assets. Now, she was leaving the place she had called home for the last four years, the place she had really come of age in, never to return.

She sighed. "Well," she thought, "It can’t get much worse.

Next Chapter: New Chapter4