“It’s the programming that got me interested in piloting,” I said. “I was one of the programmers who had some semblance of social skills, so eventually I was assigned to go up to Phoenix Station and work on ships to customize the software. So I spent a lot of time in ships and talking to crew and listening to them talk about where they’ve been in the universe. You do that long enough and just sitting at a desk pushing code seems like a way to spend a lot of time wasting your life. I wanted to see what was out there. So I hustled my way into an apprentice piloting gig. That was seven years ago.”

“Not exactly an upward move, paywise,” Han said.

I shrugged. I figured that the shrug would come across as a casual and cool Hey, some things are more important than money rather than Hey, I’m living with my parents who are beginning to resent that fact so I will take what I can get. Anyway both were true. Lots of things can be more important than money when you lacked other options.

Not to paint my parents as the bad people here. It’s just that they had made it clear that it was one thing to support me while I was working my way up a ladder, and another thing to support a thirty-two-year-old human while I was sitting on my ass at home between gigs. Maybe they wouldn’t let me starve, but they weren’t going to make me comfortable.

Which was fine. I wasn’t out of work because I was lazy.

“Says here you’ve been out of work for the last nine months,” Han said.

“I’ve been between ships, yes,” I said.

“Want to explain that?” Han asked.

Well, there was no way around that one. “I’m being blackballed,” I said.

“By whom?”

“By Captain Werner Ostrander of the Lastan Falls.”

I thought I saw a faint smile on Han’s lips when I said this. “Go on,” he said.

“There’s not much to say,” I said. “I was second pilot on the Baikal and the first pilot wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so when I heard there was an opportunity to move up to first pilot on the Lastan, I took it. What I didn’t know was that there was a reason why the Lastan had gone through six pilots in two years, and by the time I found out it was too late. I ended up breaking my contract.”

“That must have been expensive.”

“It was worth every penny,” I said. “Also, as I was leaving the ship I dropped my mother’s name to the chief steward. My mother’s a labor lawyer. The class action suit against Ostrander that followed was, shall we say, very satisfying.”

Han definitely smiled at that.