User:P64/FSF/Ship Who Sang

2011-10-09 initiation with import from parent page
 * The Ship Who Sang (book, also series and story

The five published stories feature one mission. Helva shines and usually earns a bonus from one party. In the first, third, and fifth she is paired with a trained brawn and the featured mission is but one of seeral, evidently over a few years. The second and fourth sheis not paired, essentially the mission is to deliver her professional passengers, once an exceptional physical therapist and once the core of a theatrical group.

Helva showed exceptional talent before her final installation and first employment at age 16. She is usually employed in the medical service of Central Worlds BB ...

Her first mission is to deliver vaccine? to a planet suffering from plague and the featured mission with her first partner is to evacuate settlement on a planet whose star will go nova. She loves her first brawn Jennan, and ultimately witnesses his death in her airlock which she is powerless to prevent. In the second story she delivers a physical therapist to a planet stricken by paralysis. In the third, they deliver 100,000 human embryos to a planet stricken by mass sterility and destruction of sperm and egg banks. In the fourth, the brilliant actor and director who leads the theatrical group suffers from addiction and the late stages of physically debilitating consequences. In the fifth, they deliver minute quantities of rare and potent drugs, essentially to fill an interstellar prescription. They run afoul of addicts who kidnap them and extract Helva from the ship, thus practically isolating her from her senses.

Meanwhile, Helva incidentally resolves Service mysteries in two missions. She discovers and neutralizes a rogue brainship that fled the service after the accidental death of her brawn--an option Helva had considered and declined after the death of beloved Jennan. She discovers and recovers from the drug ring four brainships previously kidnapped, missing in one month.

Her hobby since childhood has been to "sing", producing instrumental and human vocal sound with great range and almost unlimited repertoire. Song or vocal production is crucial in each story.

Helva's first four stories, her brawns or passengers recognize her humanity. They connect in various ways. In the fifth story, however, her professional partner is an officious boor who calls her an "unreliable mechanism" and treats her impersonally. Finally she fires him, in effect. The bonuses for another hypersuccessful mission enable here to pay her last debts, in less than 10 years where some need centuries. She needs another good relationship with a brawn and hopes for a permanent bond. The outcome of a remarkable courtship is that she extends her contract with Central Worlds in partnership with her supervisor, who has resigned from his own job there.