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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Company crews working in the rockfields spend their lives in Spacer's Fugue, a chemically induced state that concentrates their minds on to individual specialised tasks and leaves little room for anything other than sexual recreation. Only those with the strongest will break free of the Fugue to rise up the ranks, but Captain Silcoat's own advancement owes everything to a terrible crime committed among the decadent bars of Phobos Station. Now he has everything he ever wanted, was it really worth it?

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine)/Far Sector SFFH, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2005

16 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [273 KB], eReader (PDB) [32 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [18 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [18 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [66 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [90 KB], hiebook (KML) [103 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [74 KB], iSilo (PDB) [15 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [58 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [29 KB]
Words: 5457
Reading time: 15-21 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Good morning, Captain," chirped the blonde navigator. She beamed at him with full lips and empty eyes. Silcoat ignored her and swam on, advancing along the carpeted walls of the umbilical with bare feet and hands. He heard her singing a simple tune as she went, over and over.

The long corridor linked operations with Silcoat's chambers to the rear, a distance that gave him some little relief. He moved with the instinct and agility of a life spent in the rockfields, quickly passing the refectory and crew's quarters. He gazed briefly at the anonymous hatch that led to the SkinClub, as if he had never noticed it before. His eyes fluttered until fistfuls of carpet dragged him away.

The seal to the captain's suite hissed closed. Silcoat momentarily rested his back against the wood veneer of the door, feeling the micro-gravity of the ship's spin cradle him. Slight tremors in his hands eased and were still. He sensed movement and watched with distaste as two of the ship's spider-like maintenance servitors scuttled out of sight.

Every captain of the Bilston Glen enjoyed the sumptuous swaddling of these rooms. Over the decades Silcoat's predecessors had funnelled much of their share of the wealth generated by the ship's enterprise into this place. The crew wanted and needed little; the captain retreated into a cocoon. That was the bargain: all of this space for one man and the SkinClub for the rest. Silcoat rattled around in it all, echoing in the spaces. He had paid a high price for it. He loved it, hated it, could not give it up.