Page 5 of Mongrels United
“The crime rate is lower than it has been for two generations,” Grady retorted, because shedidknow that statistic. It was what made Captain Carpenter one of the most popular captains to ever lead theEndurance.
“Majorcrime rates are down. Murder is down, although one a year is still four hundred percent more than the ship experienced in its first five hundred years. I’m talking about the crime you consider too petty to track. Muggings. Harassment. Robbery.”
Grady shook her head. “I’m not here as the Chief of Staff,” she said firmly. “If you have a complaint, lodge it with the Bridge and I’ll deal with it in my professional capacity. I’m simply here with a friend, while he makes a deal.”
Hyson didn’t look offended. “Who is your friend?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your friend making the deal. What’s the deal? Who is it with?”
“It’s a legitimate deal,” she said firmly.
“If you’re his friend, it would be,” Hyson replied. “Whyhere?”
“Is this an invitation only thing?” she asked, her tone cool.
“I stay on top of who comes to my parties,” he replied. “It heads off trouble before it begins. And you could be trouble. The very wrong kind.”
“I’m not here to shut down your party. People have a right to relax and enjoy themselves.”
“That’s open minded of you,” Hyson replied.
She detected the cynical tone in his voice and chose to ignore it. “My friend is Kailash Rennell. He’s a—”
“The Grey Team’s groundsman and captain,” Hyson finished.
“Right. You own the Dreamhawks.” That’s how he knew.
“The team is a negative revenue stream,” he said dismissively. “Rennell is buying more gear from someone?”
“You know about that?” Grady replied, surprised. The Grey Team was a tankball team which Kailash had formed two seasons ago, made up of friends who were chronically unemployed, just as he was.
There was a lot of long-term unemployment on the ship, which was a constant headache for Captain Carpenter. Grady had a permanent research project open on her desk, looking into ways to relieve the problem, and she wasn’t the only person on the ship trying to figure it out.
But it was a knotty, tangled mess that, as far as she could tell, had started when people refused to take notice of the Occupational AI’s career recommendations, and instead sold their skills to the highest bidder.
Only that had been happening for more than a hundred years. The phenomenon of just not bothering to find any sort of work at all was a more recent thing—it had crept into shipboard life not long after the Leroux Affair.
Whatever the reasons, unoccupied people were a significant fraction of the five thousand people aboard theEndurance.
“No one will give me a contract,” Kailash often said, to explain his unemployed state. But he was notunoccupied, the way some of that demographic were. His personal solution had been to find something to do. In his case, it was to play tankball.
Kailash’s tankball team had no official name. They had barely been able to scrape the Tankball Association’s registration fees together for the first season and had no money to spare for anything else. As their uniform, they wore the basic grey leotards that could be printed for free on any printer, which was why they had become known as the Grey Team.
Their first season had been remarkable because the Grey Team had lost every single game.Allof them. It had put them in the record books.
That ignominious beginning hadn’t stopped them from registering for the next season. They’d used the tiny amount of money the Association gave them as their share of the gate revenue, and more of their own painfully-saved funds to pay the registration. Grady had arranged for them to use the half-tank in the Bridge Guard’s gymnasium, to practice when no one else wanted it, which was most of the time. No one wanted to fool around with tankball.
As they had nothing to do all day, Kailash’s team practiced whenever they could. They also talked to retired players and coaches, when they could find them, sucking any helpful information from them. They researched the game in the Forum’s history archives, digging up expert texts, books, and hours upon hours of footage from games in the past.
Grady had watched a few minutes of those ancient games over Kailash’s shoulder, from time to time. It fascinated her how many people had watched the games, back then. In those games, the old arena stands were full of cheering or jeering fans, pummeling the tank glass and screaming their delight or horror at the progress of the game.
The arena was never full, these days. The seats were sparsely occupied, at best. And the Captain’s box always remained empty. Carpenter wasn’t a tankball fan, either.
Kailash and his team members scrouged gear from wherever they could. Secondhand, borrowed, begged, or bought for next-to-nothing. They’d taught themselves how to repair, patch and rebuild gloves, shields and helmets. None of them could afford to print off new gear. Even the training balls they used had to be found and fixed. And there was little tankball equipment left on the ship that wasn’t in current use. Most of it had been recycled long ago.
Grady lifted her chin and told Nash Hyson, “Someone…a friend of a friend of a contact on the Forum said he had a cache of old shields and helmets, that he would let go for a nominal fee.”
