Meeting on board Java

[Semir Gerkhan]

Winston Insmouth watched the Guild Chief's presentation from one of the seats of that kind of amphitheater. He had arrived early, alone, had settled his corpulent body in one of the empty places he had found, and had waited there in silence, greeting those who were entering with a slight nod until the Guildmaster had come out to speak.

Winston scratched his unkempt two-day beard as he leaned forward in his seat, trying to analyze the situation that Albert Schulze was exposing. At first, it seemed like things were going quite well, the Guild had several bases spread across a lot of systems, from which they extracted valuable resources and provided work for a lot of members. However, his face darkened when Schulze spoke of the problems that existed with some of those facilities.

Insmouth watched as a member of the Kongsi Syndicate intervened mainly to criticize what Schulze had suggested about Dounby. Then an old man limped into the room and spoke of better times, and of using money to rebuild Aland. Finally, a woman wanted to contribute his opinion, also critical, about the Guild Master's project about improving the Madeira shipyard.

Winston didn't know what to think about what was being said there. He had just joined the Guild barely a month ago, and was still trying to understand the complex structure the organization possessed, so had come to the meeting only to catch up. He wanted to start actively participating but it was too early to say anything interesting, and as his mother used to tell him when he was a kid: "Winnie, before you open your big mouth, make sure something useful is going to come out of it."

Therefore, Insmouth chose to continue remaining silent, for the moment, and listen to the members who had more experience than him in order to form an opinion. Since no one seemed bothered that the old man had taken up smoking, Winston pulled out his own pack of cigarettes from a pocket of his old pilot's jacket, lighting one with his gas lighter, and continued watching the meeting unfold in a cloud of grayish smoke.