Spaceship of Fools
by Jeff Pepper
part 1
Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing? — Plato, The Republic
I did not witness the mutiny. I knew it was coming, as could anyone with the wits of a squirrel. So, as soon as it started, I’d dashed into the ship’s galley and squeezed my small frame between the big old electric stove and the bulkhead.
Call me a coward if you will. But I am still alive, which is more than I can say for many of my shipmates.
The mutiny occurred about three weeks into the voyage. We had set sail from the industrial spaceport at Osiris 4, bound for New Britain with a cargo of a thousand tons of assorted machine parts, plus two hundred softbots fresh out of their creches, destined to be sold off at the servitor markets. During this time the crew’s mood, which had been cheerful initially, had grown as ugly as the crew themselves.
Our departure had been delayed for several days while the captain tried, in his usual blundering way, to sort out the various permits and export forms required before we could leave the spaceport. That left the officers and crew free of responsibilities and with nothing to do except drink, gamble, and bitch about the captain’s ineptitude. By the time we finally left port, most of the crew had pegged the captain as an incompetent fool, which I freely admit was pretty close to the truth.
Captain Oswald J. Schleswig-Holstein III was an aristocratic gentleman in his late 70’s. He was tall, thin, and stooped. His hair, once black and fashionably trimmed, was now the color of early morning fog and long enough to be tied back in a queue, and his lantern-jawed visage was weathered and unshaven. Once, long ago, it was said that he’d been a commanding presence, a leader of men, but now he was little more than a vague spectre. His worn-out eyes and ears had been repaired and augmented as much as technology could manage, but his sight and hearing remained poor.
To make things worse, his mental faculties had deteriorated; they had long ago passed beyond forgetfulness and were now well along in their descent towards full-blown senility. The ship’s owners should never have left him in charge, but one of the syndicate’s members was married to the captain’s youngest daughter, so there you have it.
If the captain had a competent crew, none of this would have mattered. He could have handed off routine duties to the first mate and the rest of the officers, and spent the voyage happily watching old videos, playing games in his cabin, and pretending to supervise the voyage. But alas, the first mate, a good and competent man, had received a lucrative offer on Osiris 4 to helm a ship of his own, and he had accepted it immediately.
Our captain was forced to find a replacement quickly. He could have asked the syndicate for help, but he was far too proud to do that. Instead, he hired Jez Starkey, a strikingly beautiful woman whom he had met at one of the spaceport’s taverns. She quickly beguiled the captain and convinced him to bring her aboard as the new first mate. It was only later that it became clear to everyone that she was, in her own way, even more incompetent than the captain.
Two of my dad’s sayings come to mind here. One is that sometimes a person is educated beyond their intelligence, which certainly applied to our new first mate. The other is the well-worn business aphorism that first-rate people hire first-rate people, while second-rate people hire third-rate people. And so it was with Starkey, who in a foolish attempt to assert her newly minted authority had summarily fired the entire crew and set about replacing them with her friends, acquaintances, and any strangers who caught her fancy.
* * *
It would be an understatement to call this crew motley. I’ve served on a dozen freighters in my thirty years, but never have I met such a collection of losers and misfits. Where shall I start? There was Barger, the dimwitted pilot, who knew nothing about sailing a starship and must have purchased his pilot’s license in some dark and slimy corner of the interweb.
There was Jackson, the quartermaster who’d met Starkey in an illicit casino and deliberately lost to her in dice to gain her favor. Ignorant of the ways of starships, he well understood how to spend the syndicate’s funds, and he set about stuffing the ship’s larders with food and drink purchased at inflated prices from his spaceport cronies.
There was Ramanan, the ship’s physician, whose medical license was rumored to have been revoked on another world and who had traveled to Osiris 4 to start a new life with, alas, the same dearth of skills and principles that had landed him into trouble before.
And there was our chief mechanic, a handsome and powerfully built man named Gao, who had no talent whatsoever for maintaining a star drive and whose only skill seemed to be satisfying our first mate’s sexual appetites whenever he was summoned to her cabin.
Starkey, having filled the ranks of her officer’s corps with these and others of similar ilk, ordered them to recruit the crew, about twenty souls in all. This was mostly done in bars and back alleys, and I will leave it to you, dear reader, to imagine the sorts of vermin brought aboard to crew our ship.
After the aforementioned extended period of bureaucratic bungling, the captain finally managed to secure all the necessary permits, and he gave the order to depart. There ensued several hours of frantic scouring of the port’s bars, brothels, and gambling dens to round up the crew.
While the ship’s officers were busy locating the missing crew members, a woman approached the docked ship and asked to speak to the first mate. She looked to be in her mid-50’s, conservatively dressed, at least compared to the rest of the spaceport’s residents, a bit on the stocky side, with inquisitive eyes and a ready smile.
When Starkey appeared, the woman introduced herself as Sandra Chu, a journeyman navigator, and asked if there was such a position available. I overheard the conversation.
“Sorry,” said Starkey, after quickly sizing her up and being unimpressed. “Already got a pilot. Don’t need a navigator.”
“All right,” replied Chu, “I’m not picky. I’ll take any job you’ve got.”
Starkey cocked her head. “And why exactly would you want to do that?”
“Personal reasons. I have family on New Britain. I’m willing to work in return for passage.”
Starkey spat on the gangplank. “Fine. We’re one short in the galley. You know how to cook?”
Chu gave her a wry smile. “I worked for a few months in a diner not far from here. As far as I know, I didn’t poison any of the customers.”
“All right. Good enough for me. You’re hired. We ship out in two hours.” Starkey turned and went back into the ship.
Five hours later, we eased out of the docking berth and headed out of the system bound for New Britain, a journey expected to last two months.
* * *
Contrary to what you might expect from my descriptions, things did not go all to hell right away. This was due mostly to the ship itself. The Erebus was a well-traveled but solidly built freighter with excellent automation and plenty of redundant safety systems. It could easily fly itself and could almost maintain itself, too, with only minimal involvement required from its human crew. So for the first couple of weeks, everything was fine, more or less.
As soon as we set sail, the quartermaster opened up the ship’s ample stores of liquor and recreational drugs, which were freely consumed by officers and crew. One of the larger cabins was converted into a casino, which was run efficiently and profitably by an ex-gangster named Maron who was, supposedly, our safety officer. I have reason to believe a share of the casino’s profits was quietly passed to the first mate, Starkey.
When crew members tired of gambling, drinking, and screwing each other, some of them decided to pay a visit to the cargo bay where the softbots were. Nobody would tell me exactly what went on there, but it became a popular destination, and I once overheard a conversation in which Kitten, a heavily tattooed machinist’s mate with sharpened teeth, instructed her friends in how to wipe a softbot’s recent memory and return it to something resembling factory-new condition.
You may be wondering where our captain was during all this. For the most part he was asleep in his cabin in a drug-induced stupor. Accomplishing this was child’s play. Per instructions from the first mate, Dr. Ramanan laced the captain’s food with a mild sedative. This, together with his pre-existing senility, caused the captain to spend most of his time dozing in his recliner. From time to time, he would rouse himself and decide to stroll through the ship. Whenever this happened, someone would notify Starkey, who would accompany the captain on his rounds, reassuring him as to the state of affairs aboard the ship and gently guiding him away from any sights, like the casino, that might upset him.
* * *
Given the quality of life on board the Erebus, you might think that this would be the dream voyage for every lowlife member of the ship’s company, and would be recognized as such and treasured. But sadly, they were a bunch of losers and malcontents who, by their nature, could never be truly happy for long. Despite having little or no real work to do, and having unlimited access to every form of pleasure and vice, they still found ample reason to complain.
“The captain’s a fool,” muttered Gorzo, a mechanic’s mate, over dinner in the mess hall one night. “The old barnacle should be in a rocking chair in a nursing home somewhere, not running this ship. Hell, we’re doing all the work, and he just hangs out in that big old cabin all by himself. He rakes in all the credits, and what’s in it for us? Jack shit, that’s what.”
The others at his table nodded in drunken agreement. Soon this progressed to statements of righteous indignation, then someone stood up and shouted, “Take the old bastard down!” This was met with a roar of approval. Hearing this, one of Starkey’s informants dashed to the officers’ mess and told her what was going on. Starkey strode to the mess hall, followed by her officers, most of whom carried their unfinished drinks in their hands.
Starkey quickly assessed the mood of the crew and decided it was safer to join them in their drunken call for justice rather than try to stop them.
During all this, I’d been sitting in a corner of the mess hall, quietly eating my dinner and trying to stay out of trouble. But as it became clear that things were progressing rapidly from words to action, I knew it was time for me to get out of harm’s way. I slipped out of the mess hall, ducked into the galley, and found a hiding spot behind the stove. The next part of my story comes from what I learned from others who were there.
Most of the crew had now congealed into a mob. Led by Starkey, they made their way loudly and unsteadily down the passageway to the captain’s cabin. The door was unlocked. They burst in and found the captain dozing, as usual, in his recliner. Starkey motioned to Gao, who easily picked up the captain, slung him over a massive shoulder, and carried him to a fortified little cabin that could, if needed, serve as the ship’s brig. Gao dumped the captain unceremoniously on the deck. The captain looked up at Gao, not fully comprehending what was happening.
“Who are you?” he slurred, looking up at the huge man.
Before Gao could respond with an insult or a slap in the face, Starkey restrained him with a gentle hand on his forearm. She knelt down and said, “Captain, you have been unwell, and we have decided that it would be dangerous for you to continue with your duties. So there has been, shall we say, a change of management.”
The captain blinked a couple of times and cocked his head. “Mutiny?” he whispered.
“No, no, no. Just a change of management.” Starkey stood up, looked around, and her eyes found the ship’s doctor. She made a motion with her thumb and two fingers that clearly meant, “Give him an injection.”
Ramanan got the message. He produced a syringe from his medical bag which he always carried, more as an affectation than for any real practice of medicine, and jabbed the captain in the arm. The captain’s muscles grew even more slack than they were before, and he closed his eyes. Starkey laid him down gently on the deck. Then she stood up and spoke to the mob.
“I have relieved the captain of his duties,” she said. “I am now acting captain. But this ship,” and she waved her hand while pausing for effect, “is not mine. It belongs to all of you now. The captain’s cabin is hereby repurposed. It will serve as a lounge where all of you, officers and crew, can relax and enjoy each other’s company and share a drink or two.”
Copyright © 2025 by Jeff Pepper
