Maya was happily humming while accessing the spaceport's official recruitment list through the terminal in her quarters. With only nineteen stellar standard years, she was pretty young for an officer. Then again, she grew up on board her father's ships, so it wasn't too much of a surprise to see her in the position she was currently in and most voidfarer captains didn't really care about the ages of their crews.
When living onboard a spacecraft, the most important skill any crewmember needed was the ability to stay sane amidst the nothingness of the void. If you only planet hopped or stayed in the same solar system all the time, you were pretty safe from the call of the void. But Voidfarers had to live weeks, months and maybe years on their vessels.
Nobody knew what the "call of the void" really was, you couldn't measure it with scientific gadgets. But there were stories of ships that had gone missing for years only to appear in a random location, with the crew either dead or missing. Those were the worst-case scenarios. Sometimes the call affected only a few or a single member of the crew, making them do weird things, talk in unknown languages, or hurt themselves. If there was a planet nearby one could land there and after a few days of rest, most people found back to their old selves.
Maya knew the effect as well. Sometimes when she looked out into the endless space, she got the same feeling one had when swimming in deep waters with unknown dangers beneath. Her method of coping was remembering one of the stories her father had told her as a kid about the strange planets he had visited.
Mykena was a big planet, but It had a relatively low population because it was only used to feed the one other habitable planet in the solar system, as well as the Vallian core worlds that were only two Warp jumps away.
There were only four people available in the official recruitment tab, they all were people, born on the planet beneath and had no prior experience travelling the void.
People like that sadly were near useless to them in their current situation, firstly they needed people with experience in handling spaceships and secondly, these recruits were more likely heavily influenced by the government of the world they grew up on to see every noble house and faction but the one they lived under as evil.
The other way of recruiting people was checking the bars on the spaceport and hiring people of other space ships, should their captain allow it.
While Maya took the time to read into the bios of the four recruits and evaluate them fairly, Jack just glanced over the report she send him and dismissed them all immediately.
He had certain key phrases in the reports he was looking for and after seeing four of them, he could confirm, they were quite similar to the reports he had gotten back in the game.
But that didn't mean he was free from his worries. in fact, there was a smuggler located on this Spaceport, that would be able to provide him with a least a few reliable crew. His only problem was, he had no idea how the man looked.
Jack had only ever seen the drawn portrait of the man due to his low graphic settings. So he was feverishly trying to figure out how to recognise the smuggler.
In the end, he decided to just take his crew for a drink to the dockside bars and improvise from there.
Most of the spaceport looked deserted. In all likelihood, most of the shops were only opened when one of the large transport convoys stopped here to buy food and supply the colony with goods.
Jack led his crew to one of the two bars that were open anyway.
There were only a few customers inside. A group of men were sitting at the bar, talking quietly, and at two other tables, people were playing cards and drinking.
As a true introvert, Jack immediately felt the stares of the other customers and therefore chose a table in the far corner of the bar. The others followed him without comment and used the small screens embedded in the table to order immediately. After some trial and error, Jack also managed to order a beer.
A slightly uncomfortable silence spread, while the crew looked at Jack expectantly. Apparently, they were waiting for something from him, but Jack had no idea what it could be. He cleared his throat sheepishly and looked at the dog-eared woman at his side with a meaningful look, hoping she would save him from his dilemma.
Fortunately, Maya did him the favour. He could see her tail start to wag slightly as she sat upright and the attention of the crew swung over to the woman.
"As you all know, this is our first shore leave since we got the new ship. You all know we desperately need more crew so keep an eye out for candidates. The spaceport here is not particularly large but we will stay here for a few days until the Captain and I have met the Official Recruits. "
Jack glanced around to gauge the reaction of his crew, but no one seemed to have a problem with the suggestion.
"Very well, that settles that, the first round is on me! Today we drink!"
Maya's announcement was met with loud shouts and whistles. Jack was quite uncomfortable about the whole thing, but the other bar patrons didn't seem to mind.
Fortunately, the first drinks arrived a little later and Jack's attention focused on the metal pitcher with the golden liquid in it.
He carefully took a sip. The beer tasted better than anything he had ever drunk in his old life. He took another big gulp and then sighed and let himself sink into the cushion of the bench he was sitting on.
His gesture of obvious comfort was received with more whistles and cheers from the crew, which in turn prompted Jack to take another mouthful of beer to hide the redness on his face behind the metallic mug.
They stayed in the bar for a few hours without being bothered. Then there was a shift change on the planet. The men who had been drinking and playing here left the bar one by one.
It was not long before the first workers from the other shift arrived. Most of them were easily recognisable as farmers, they had obviously come straight from working in the fields, for they were dirty and sweaty.
Most of them only glanced at the voidfarers and then went to the counter or one of the card tables.
Jack was enjoying a new beer when suddenly there seemed to be trouble at the bar. A new group of workers had just arrived and one of them was arguing with the bartender.
He was about to ignore the whole thing when the man started to get louder and point at the table where he and his crew were sitting. Jack put down his beer and hoped fervently that the problem would solve itself.
The man continued to argue with the bartender, but it wasn't long before the others at Jack's table became aware of the argument and, unlike him, they seemed to know very well what the issue was.
Maya, sitting next to Jack, finished her drink in one deep gulp and slammed the container down on the table, then stood up and called over to the man at the bar.
"Do you have a problem with us?"
The man turned slowly, when he saw who had spoken Jack could see the disgust on his face. His gaze glanced over the other people at the table and then caught on the star on Jack's jacket that identified him as a captain.
"Voidfarer, your mutt is barking. Do something about it."
"Did you just call me a mutt, you fucking country bumpkin?"
"They shouldn't even let creatures like you in here."
A growl sounded from Maya's throat and before jack or anyone else could react, she had already jumped up to pounce on the man at the bar.
He just laughed dryly and pushed the bartender aside to face the attack.
Maya bridged the gap between the two in a few moments and opened the fight with a well-aimed blow to the man's face, or at least that was her plan. She had no real experience in bar fighting and the hours of drinking did the rest.
The farmer intercepted her blow with one hand without any problems, held her arm and struck in his turn. The fist hit the young woman in the middle of the face and a yelp of pain could be heard. The man lunged again, but before he could strike, a steel drinking jug hit him in the head.
Jack had been so spellbound that he had not noticed how Mordred his mechanic had also jumped up. The bullish man had thrown his drinking jug and was now running towards the fight.
"How about messing with someone your own size, or do you only fight women because you're afraid of losing?"
The first man let go of Maya's arm to face the newcomer, but one of his comrades was quicker. The farmer lunged for a long shot as if to end the fight with just one attack, but the mechanic dived under the arm and gave the man a hook to the chin that lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing into the bar.
From then on there was no stopping Jack's entire crew and the group around the racist farmer were involved in a brawl in no time.
Jack continued to sit in his seat, overwhelmed by the whole situation. On the one hand, he wanted to help his new friends, on the other hand, he had no confidence in his fighting abilities.
Some of the guests hurriedly left the bar, while others came in, attracted by the noise. The innkeeper had managed to crawl behind his counter and was about to alert station security.
Jack thought about stopping the man, but having no better idea to end the scuffle, he just sat and took another sip of beer.
By the time security arrived, the brawl was almost over anyway. The farmers had been working hard all day, while the Voidfarers had just sat around and drank. That might have been a problem for Maya, the youngest among them, but the rest of the crew were bar fighting veterans. Nobody got out unscathed, but the farmers fared a lot worse than the Voidfarers.
Station security took them all in indiscriminately and after they took the testimony of Jack, the barkeeper and the other guest, they left. For a moment, Jack thought about letting them cool off with station security but then he got up and followed the cops, to bail out his crew.