Thoughts on Spacer Culture

Posted on Mon Oct 14th, 2024 @ 5:31pm by Lieutenant JG Rose Andrake
Edited on Tue Oct 15th, 2024 @ 3:49am

1,297 words; about a 6 minute read

Computer. Begin personal log, Rose Andrake.

Speaking to record my log... This feels somehow... Wrong. Weird and cold. I suppose I'll type my logs after this.

Sometimes I think about my life before Starfleet. The Wayward Son and the Starbreaker were my homes. My whole world, really. Most people in Starfleet never get it—the difference between living on a starship and living on a freighter like those old girls. It wasn’t the kind of life that ever got flashy, not by a long shot. We weren’t the Enterprise, zipping around with food replicators and transporters. We had to make do.

The Federation... yeah, we were part of it. But I’ve always known what it really means to be Federation poor. Most freighters were ancient hulls, patched and re-patched so many times I swear there wasn’t an original bulkhead left by the time I was sixteen. The Son was an old Earth cargo hauler, and the Starbreaker? I think she started her life sometime in the mid-22nd century. Way older than most people would feel comfortable flying, but when you grow up like that, the ship’s not just a vessel. It’s home. And you keep her flying no matter what.

Profit margins? Ha. What profit margins? We scraped by. Every job we took was just enough to keep her floating, just enough to get the next part we desperately needed. And forget upgrades. Things like transporters? Nah. You’d be lucky to get your comms updated to pick up subspace chatter without a five-minute lag. The truth is, the real killer out there is the maintenance costs. A bad nacelle, a blown plasma coil, a warp core problem—and we’re talking warp cores that date back to the Constitution class era—well, that’s enough to set you back so far you’re scrambling to take any contract you can get.

But we were spacers. We never went hungry, never went without the basics. Food, water, air—all that came from the hydroponics bay. That was our lifeline. You get used to fresh greens and veggies that taste a little off because the nutrient packs have to last twice as long as they should. You get used to having clean water, but you also get used to the system breaking down, and everyone knowing how to fix it. Life support was always on our minds. Not just the techs but all of us. Everyone pitched in, even if you weren’t trained. The techs were like magicians, wizards who knew every inch of the ship like they were born from her plating. They could keep the Son and the Starbreaker going longer than anyone thought possible, with nothing but duct tape and prayer. And when we got old... Well, the ship isn't a retirement home. So our elders would be in hydroponics or teaching the children everything they knew. Even Medical was hit with this. I broke my arm once as a little girl. What would take a Starfleet or Earther doc an hour to heal took four. In stead of my bones being repaired, I got a cast. Six weeks. Our biobeds were... Iffy. I ripped them out of a first gen NX class we were towing to a breaker yard. But they were better than what we had before.

We had days when even something like gravity was a luxury. If you had to choose between having full artificial gravity or repairing the sensors, you’d float for a week before you’d let a system like that go unfixed. Most of those sensors had been running since the Earth-Romulan War. And if one of them decided to crap out at the wrong time? Well, there’s nothing quite like a deflector failure. One minute you're sipping raktajino, and the next minute, there’s a hull breach the size of a baseball in avionics. Nothing’s more expensive than a hull breach. Worse if the seals on those emergency doors didn't hold.

And Starfleet? They didn’t get it. Sure, they’d offer contracts to haul cargo to the farthest reaches of the rim, just to keep things going. They’d throw you just enough of a bone to keep you loyal, maybe update your warp drive or give you some second-hand parts from a decommissioned ship, but they weren’t about to bring you up to spec. Not with how old the Wayward Son or the Starbreaker were. Hell, they wouldn’t even give us a decent universal translator. We had to rely on cobbled-together comm systems that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. As for weapons? We were flying rust buckets, not warships. When your ship's hull is held together with stress fractures and faith, you don’t need phasers—you need a miracle. And the ship's are all too old to be modernized without one Hell of a backer. The kind that doesn't come without cost.

But that was home. No matter how bad it got, no matter how run-down the ship was, we didn’t complain. Not really. That’s just how it was for us. Life on the edge, always on the brink of falling apart, but somehow we never did. Spacers have their own way of living, their own rituals and beliefs. We talk to our ships, we make offerings, we share stories about ghosts in the machine and spirits that haunt the engine room. Listen and heat the old girl sing her heart out as the guardian of us all from the black. It's different from Starfleet. Starfleet is shiny, clean, orderly—every system functioning within parameters. They don’t get the intimacy, the bond you have with a ship that’s been your cradle since you were born. And I bet most of them have never gone without artificial gravity for more than a day or had to drink water filtered through a hydroponic bay so many times it tasted like a garden. Or like their coffee with salt Bec cause the fresh water tanks had a bridge leak with the salt water aquaponics twenty years ago and the salt's still in the water.

I've never been to Earth. Never set foot on solid ground, except for a few days here and there. The first time I saw the Sol system was when I went to the Academy. Mars was my first real look at a planetary surface that wasn’t just a station outpost or an asteroid mine. Even then, I felt like a stranger. The only thing that ever felt real to me was space. Deep space. You grow up like that, and it shapes you. Makes you tough, resourceful. But it also makes you feel a little out of place when you’re surrounded by Starfleet officers who have never known what it’s like to worry that today might be the day your ship finally gives out. And still. Starfleet ship controls are sloppy, sluggish. I can maneuver a half dead freighter with more grace than these drunken pigs. Never outrun them, but still. What I wouldn't give for a nice, tight set of stick controls to drop in like a Klingon with a sledge and the grace of a ballerina.

I think about those days sometimes. Back on Wayward Son, back on Starbreaker. We weren’t rich, but we had what we needed. We kept going. And I guess that’s what I do now, too—just keep going. I... Some times I wish... Starfleet's my home, now. Has been since my ship and my family died. I just wish Mom would pick up the comm. I wish someone would tell me if someone... anyone had survived Starbreaker.

End log.

 

Tags: Cultural, Personal History

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