Tag Archives: Flyer Shugg

Ghost Ship – Chapter 29

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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Theo meets more relatives.

It occurs to me that, as out-of-place as Kareen might have seemed as an expert on the Code in a family widely seen as a Code unto themselves, it pales next to being an expert on the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct in a family that’s never going to set foot on Liad again. That’s going to be something she’s going to need to work out for herself – is she a Liaden in exile, upholding the standards of Proper Conduct among rag-mannered barbarians, or would she be truer to herself if she set herself with equal diligence to learning what’s proper to her new situation?

(The rest of the family, I think, has less of an adjustment, because they’re pilots and familiar, at least in principle, with the variation of local custom. And there’s always been that level on which Korval always considered itself not really Liaden, just temporarily resident on Liad.)

There’s a lot of foreshadowing going on: mysterious people about on mysterious jobs, dubious ships in orbit, and so on. Some of it will doubtless come out at the “housewarming party”; that, dramatically speaking, is what important diplomatic events are for.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 14

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Arin’s Toss
In Transit

In which the Uncle has a job for Theo and the Colonel has a job for Clarence.

I’m still suspicious about what the Uncle is up to. Giving Theo a course change while she’s en route means that anybody who might have been paying attention to the flight plan she filed won’t know about her side trip, and might suggest that he has reason to suspect that somebody is paying such attention. The amendment won’t do anything to help Theo evade pursuit, though, since it still ends with her arriving at Ploster in the time frame that the Department is expecting her to arrive. More likely is that the Uncle is only interested in helping himself, and hiding his interest in whatever might be waiting at Tokeo.

We were told in the first chapter of this book how long Bechimo has been on the lam, so the mention of the tales being “older than the Plan” might give us a limit on how old the Department is. Or it might just mean that there have always been ghost ship tales, and in Bechimo‘s case they just happen to be true. In any case, it’s not much of a limit, since it’s far enough back to comfortably include every mention in the prequels of what might be the Department. (Although, since we’re doing comparisons, it still makes Bechimo a couple of centuries younger than Jeeves, and a couple more centuries younger than Edger.)

I’m a mite puzzled by Max, the tug pilot with the colourful hair. Pat Rin’s round-up of pilots in I Dare included Surebleak Port’s tug pilot with colourful hair, but her name was Dostie Welsin.

I Dare – Chapter 50

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Day 47
Standard Year 1393

Surebleak Port

In which Pat Rin need not suffer the indignity of having his license pulled.

And now Pat Rin has about caught up with the end of Plan B. Specifically, this chapter is in the six-day gap between the climactic penultimate chapter and the final epilogue-sort-of chapter. In fact, these last few Pat Rin chapters from the arrival of the Juntavas courier on, this section which might be regarded as the climax of Pat Rin’s subplot, fits so neatly into that six-day gap that one might believe it was designed that way. (Especially if one vaguely recalled having heard somewhere that Pat Rin’s subplot was originally intended to be part of Plan B.)

I Dare – Chapter 48

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Day 47
Standard Year 1393

Surebleak Space

In which Boss Conrad defends Surebleak.

Interesting that the Department’s demand to prepare for boarding is given in Trade instead of Liaden. My interpretation is that they wanted to make sure the pilot could understand it, and, presuming that Cheever was the pilot, didn’t expect him to be able to understand Liaden. (And just now I can’t remember whether Cheever actually can.)

I wonder who named the asteroid mining ships. There’s a striking amount of variety in the names.

I also wonder, now I come to think of it, who added armaments to Fortune’s Reward. They seem to have come as a surprise to Pat Rin and to Natesa, which argues against them having been added during the preparations for the project at hand, at the same time the ship was being renamed. That the weapon controls announced themselves when the ship accepted Pat Rin as pilot suggests that Fortune’s Reward has been armed all along and nobody saw fit to mention it while there wasn’t a pilot of Korval at the controls; that seems like a Korval sort of precaution.

I Dare – Chapter 47

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Day 45
Standard Year 1393

Sherzer System

In which Boss Conrad goes on an outing with some pilots.

I’m not surprised, on reflection, to see Portmaster Borden among the pilots; makes sense a portmaster would be a pilot himself. Portmaster Liu is probably a pilot as well, but somebody’s gotta stay home and mind the store. I wonder how they decided who’d go and who’d stay. Flipped a coin for it? Or maybe Liu let Borden go because he’s the one who’s always upset about never having anything to do.

I want to know more about the “alternative courses of education” Er Thom offered the young Pat Rin: what they were, and why Pat Rin rejected them. I can think of several possibilities, but I’m not sure which best fits Pat Rin and Er Thom. One possibililty I’m pretty confident in rejecting is “education in useful non-piloting careers, which Pat Rin rejected because they weren’t piloting”; it’s clear that Pat Rin had already accommodated himself to the idea of not being a pilot. A more interesting idea is that they were not alternatives to being a pilot, but alternative ways of learning to be a pilot, since the family’s usual methods had failed – which Pat Rin rejected… why? The narration makes a point of mentioning that they were all offworld, which suggests several answers: perhaps Pat Rin just didn’t want to live anywhere but Liad (seems unlikely, stated so baldly); perhaps he feared the clan was trying to hide their non-pilot away from polite society; perhaps he’d already come to believe, as in “Heirloom”, that he was an unproductive load on the clan, and didn’t want the family to waste money sending him away for an education he was convinced would come to nothing.