A Starship Called Starsong

Chapter 29

I eventually reached over to grab my Guide off the nightstand without bothering to get out of bed. Out of curiosity, I pulled up a list of the work tickets across the various areas. Most of the crew had the same shift during the day hours, although there was always someone in the Bridge or on call in case of an emergency.

There wasn't much, and all of it was rather minor or regular tasks. I began to realize just how much I had done in the way of maintenance tickets on the Tyndel that were technically supposed to be the job of other departments.

Despite having only a third of a full crew complement for a ship of this size, all of the areas were managing the workload with plenty of time for the training modules Starsong had set up.

"I am doing quite a few of the tasks without them realizing it, although I am making sure that they get a chance to try different things as they learn."

I scrolled idly through the list. "How many areas don't have Overseers or Officers yet?"

He reverted to using the speakers since I had spoken out loud. "Twelve Overseer and two Officer positions are still vacant. Those people should be at our next two stops."

I paused. "How are they all so conveniently waiting at those places? I assume you are arranging for them to get there?"

"Yes. I paid for flight tickets between planets to ensure they would be at their designated stop. Some of them traveled for over a week on a SuperExpress Passenger Jet for pickup."

"Wow..." I hadn't realized how far some of them had traveled or how much effort some had put into getting to the port we would be stopping at. The majority of those on board were Overseers or Officers though... "I assume that we will be picking up more assistants as time goes by?"

"Yes, I am allowing the Overseers time to learn our systems and get to know one another before giving them assistants. This also allows me more time to find assistants with the best potential - ones who won't transfer into larger companies. The other difficulty is that we came this way because most of the better and more experienced applicants were in this direction, but the star systems in this area have a fairly low population and not many are ideal for the assistant positions we have left."

That made sense in a way. "How was it that so many higher ranking people were at the first two stops? I honestly thought that it would take us a month to get half of those positions filled. Good Officers or Overseers are almost always employed or they are widely scattered."

I had a hard time seeing the five big intergalactic companies missing so many experienced people. Starsong continued to use the speakers near me.

"I beat the intergalactic companies to them. Those companies are notorious for moving into certain star systems in such a fashion that their presence pushes many of the local companies and spaceships into bankruptcy – and they often do it just to obtain the experienced crew members and have their pick of the junior ones. The companies wait until the newly-unemployed people start putting out resumes and promptly hire them within the hour. I simply sent letters of offer to the ones I wanted while they were employed, offering to pay for travel and accommodations. They knew full well that the spaceship they were on was sinking in debt, and they bailed with the offer."

He was clever... I had heard of the intergalactic companies' tendency to do that, but it never occurred to me that Starsong had purposefully sought out those areas and gathered all of those people into one spot long in advance for an easy pickup. He had probably emptied most of this entire section of space of every talented person as he hired the best of the best.

"The DawnBreak Company has been pushing its way into this corner of the universe with determination. Hundreds of individually owned spaceships, as well as small companies, are failing due to the added competition. Finding under a hundred qualified people across such a vast section of space wasn't nearly as difficult as it could have been."