The Scrapper, Ch. 1
The airlock doors whooshed open, a sea of stale air washing over me as I left my shuttle. I needed a moment to feel safe, to pretend I hadn’t just been jumped on my way back from a salvage run, and nothing quite hit that mark like coming home. The main concourse felt empty, abandoned, strange because there’s usually a decent chunk of people milling around down here. Whatever, Dock 2A wasn’t for tourists, this was one of the commercial platforms.
I pulled my tablet out, intent on submitting a complaint, nothing like getting mugged!. I watched the slow boot process scroll past, skimming for any updates or possible bulletins.
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EagleOS 2.4.3 R4.1
BIOS version 4.98
Kernel version 88.4.3 LTS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>> LOG.INIT :: TS<ERROR LDST NOT SET USING PST>: 08:05:33 :: [BRK-GL1] “Brady-Ridley-Kepler welcomes you to our station!”
>> * * Be sure to try the new Strawnana Replicator Strips! Twice the daily allotted amount of sodium, half the calories! * *
>> :: Voice recording and dictation started :: WARNING - YOUR LOG ENTRY MAY BE USED FOR TRAINING PURPOSES AND USAGE OF OUR SYSTEM CONSTITUTES AGREEMENT TO OUR TOS, PLEASE CONTACT STATION CONTROL FOR FULL TOS AGREEMENT
>> :: AUDIOLOG.BEGIN ::
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“Yeesh, these station broadcasts used to be news, now it’s just the latest sales pitch. Wasted airspace. Worse still, I have to adbrand this log just because I’m using your wifi?”
Note to self, make these logs on-ship and double check the auto-connect settings on the tablet.. so I don’t have to hand more of my data over to these freaks.
“Making this entry to note a few things about my most recent trip:
For starters… THESE [CENSORED] RIPPERS. I have been out here busting my ass, dying of hypoxia in my paper thin pressure suit, for DAYS and these [CENSORED] think they can just waltz up and steal all of MY HARD WORK!? It’s horrible! It’s awful! It… honestly it’s going to keep happening until I get some hard points on this rust bucket and start defending myself. Normally before I go out I prepare and make sure I’m ready for what’s to come. Well, I didn’t have a lot of time to go over all the subtleties of this particular ship before I had to shoot my clamps off to the nearest wreck on radar- WHOSE SALVAGE LICENSE I ABSOLUTELY HAD IN HAND BEFORE I LEFT STATION. Ahem. So I flew over, broke off all the best pieces and then the vultures showed up. If I had any of their info I would report them…
Looking back on it, that was a trap, wasn’t it? That was just… directly a trap I flew into… Dammit. I’m lucky I got out of there before they decided to scrap my ship and leave me for dead.
Speaking of being ripped off, how is station rent 6000 credits a day? I LIVED here and it wasn’t that much for a month! UGH. I mean... I don't live topside, so maybe its closer to those numbers. I’m just so sick of eating replicator strips… Oo! I just lost wifi. Perfect, I can lock this down now.”
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>> SS.AI CAM_TRANSIT3 MOVEMENT DETECTED
>> SS.AI LAST POS SET BY CAM3, NETWORK UNAVAILABLE
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Soooo… maybe I went a little far during that game of SolarJacks… For what it’s worth, if you’d seen that idiot’s hand reflected in his mirror shades… if you’d seen how cocky he was when he threw that shipfob into the pot… As soon as I realized what I was looking at I wasn’t in control anymore. Before I knew it, I was shoving my way past the bouncer’s third arm and running as fast as I could back to the rat hole I’ve been crashing in. Of course I left my credit chit on the table, but I just drained it paying my last round of bills anyway. I figured I could just strip the ship for quick cash. There’s always some quick creds to be made selling off some rich shaver's piss poor idea of decoration.
sigh
I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found “Our Lady’s Gambit” barely functional. 30,000 LYs on her, zero defensive measures, and some hull panels that were pretending to be functional, but if you put your hand close you could feel the actual vacuum of COLD DEAD SPACE just waiting to get in. I’ve been wearing my sticky, sweaty pressure suit almost non-stop because I’m terrified that the most gentle interstellar turbulence will rip this hunk of junk apart. That or something tetanus colored will catch me just right and leave me freeze dried while I’m trying to patch a hole, or salvage, or something.
So obviously, I thought, I’ll take it out on a salvage run. Find something quick and fund my exodus from the BRK. That being said: It’s been real. It hasn’t been fun, and I hope the admin shareholders get spaced. Use that in your [CENSORED] training manual. Stupid autocensor.
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>> SS.AI CAM_DOCK2a MOVEMENT DETECTED
>> RECORDING START
>> RUDE PHYSICAL GESTURE DETECTED
>> AUTO DICTATION:: footsteps heard walking away from the MIC1 before DOOR2A slides open. Sys.sleep in .04 seconds
>> SYSNOTE:: ME.admin here, peek at bulkhead for this room (see logs). I suspect the bearings are getting old and may need replacing soon.
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I heard the door to the airlock hiss shut behind me as I walked back into my ship, skimming everything I’d just logged to my tablet. I can’t be too careful right now, StationSec is still looking for my ass and my ride isn’t registered yet.. I don’t know why they let me dock, but I needed to get resupplied. It’d be a couple weeks before whatever they managed to pull from those logs actually got processed and linked back to me, and I needed to be long gone by then. I don’t think anyone seriously wants the ship back at this point, I think they just want to dump me out of an airlock and watch me struggle.
My reflection stared back at me from the black camera domes overhead as I dragged the laser accumulator block I cut out from my "new" ship across the steel plate floors. Deep, old drag scars regularly caught the uneven edges of this piece of lead as I strained into station with it. Dark, paint chipped walls loomed over my shoulder, judging my heavy breathing and lack of stamina.
“Back in my day we didn’t have GravDollys, had to lift with our own muscles! Upstation! Both ways!” Emdee’s voice came back to to me. I never understood the logistics of that particular saying. Like.. did you shuttle back down after dragging things upstation? Did this all happen during the construction of the station? If that's the case, the artificial gravity wouldn't be working yet, so you’d just be floating in zero-g…
“You’re thinking too much, kid.” Emdee in my head again. She was right.
Whatever, I knew BRK would take the accumulator. I was the one who constantly told the salvage super that the one down on SL4 was on it’s last legs. As soon as that enriched rubidium strobed out it would dump most of the sector off-grid. No power means no life support and there’s a lot of good folks down there. Twelve times in the past three years I’ve told them, “That accumulator is already running at 30% capacity and it wasn’t going spontaneously evolve more catalyst.”
During Station Bootstrapping(tm), all of the subfloors were given One (1) working industrial setup, intended to create and supply enough power to support X amount of crew, provide Y amount of power to utilize and feed back to the station proper, functional life support with enough starter material, and Zero (0) support afterwards. Upper floors receive a similar package but more with interconnected throughways, intended for more residential living spaces and offices for Station Admin. Glossy plastic and shiny metal.
Meanwhile, the subfloors develop into giant cargo docks and scrapyards with huge freight elevators. Rat holes sprang up everywhere in between, the same holes I grew up in. The economics of the station were secondary for me, first and foremost: I am a Scrapper.
Scrap itself gets sold at a fair market rate per good ol’ “Howards v. Vulcan-Aerodyne SpaceDynamics Co.”, the precedent that made salvage a real career for a lot of people out there, including me. After scrap gets sold, it’s broken down into components. Sometimes those got used directly, sometimes they were refurbished if they looked rough visually but the internals were still good. At the end of the cycle, every station has SOME kind of salvage kiosk to sell to, and every station has scrappers making runs, just trying to survive.
It naturally follows that every station has a junk yard. Which means every station got an excess of components that they didn’t have any use for. Makes you wonder what shaver actually allowed these eternally growing trash heaps to exist. It just means more weight, more fuel consumption to stay in orbit, which means BRK needs more money to purchase resources, which leads to more scrap, which leads to more weight… Oh, no no, I don’t know what I’m talking about. They don’t teach 20 year olds Basic Orbital Economics and Space Station Logistics. This is just my "uneducated guess".
The laser accumulator I’d ripped from the Gambit was… okaaayyyy… for the most part. I’m pretty sure something chipped off when it fell over crossing the seam lines between hallways.. Oh well, there’s enough plastic in these that a few broken knobs and sensors won't impact final value enough to matter (and the gross weight was still correct). I didn't need to make any system jumps to get away from here.. I just needed enough fuel to throw myself at the next nearest station.
I started tapping on the kiosk’s control panel, gulping down huge breaths of recycled air. The sales terminal blipped to life in front of me:
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>> WELCOME TO BRADY-RIDLEY-KEPLER [BRK-GL1]
>> DOCK 2A SCRAP SALES KIOSK
>> SPONSORED BY CALORIE CUBES(TM)!
>> NOW ONLY 18% INEDIBLE CONTENT BY “WEIGHT”!
>> PLEASE SELECT SALE TYPE
>> big ass accumulator |
>> ERR: UNK UNIT
>> PLEASE SELECT SALE TYPE
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sigh one of these days I’d get around to coding that in.
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>> accumulator |
>> SHIP TYPE
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“Shit.. it was a… I had it right here..” I began looking around the accumulator itself, hoping to see some kind of branding, compatibility chart, hell even a stray logo would.. Ah here it is!
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>> JEEOL MFG TU-J11 |
>> CONFIRM COMPONENT
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A small opening on the kiosk popped open, and a handheld scanner rose from the metal innards to greet me. I pawed absently for the scanner with one hand, the other digging through my tote for my Internal codes. Emdee taught me early on to snag a pic of these codes whenever I see one. “The thinky bits in these scanners,” Emdee explained, “take a picture of the code and then it finds a nearby camera and snaps a picture of the scrap you’re selling.”
This then gets marked as the “Incoming Scrap Condition”, minus the aesthetics. It’ll get you a quick quote on those days you can’t be bothered, or if you didn't know any better. You could get around this “handy feature” by having one of the internal maintenance codes on-hand instead. Basically this was the same manufacturer information that’s on the external codes, but with additional metadata about the specific internals. That told the sales kiosk “here’s everything that I contain, no need to gauge what might be in me by a fuzzy, badly lit photo”. On average you’d get 20% extra for having these exact numbers to feed the system. On lucky days? You’d hit a rare variant and the extra creds would float you for a few weeks.
Finding these internal codes isn’t hard, but keeping all the ships sorted by name, size, local variants, model years, which section of the internals it came from.. that was the pain in the ass. Needless to say, if you took the time to assemble your internals DB, you kept it close.
I flipped to my Jensen-Einstein-Einhorn-Orpheus-Lingden Manufacturing tab (yeah JEEOL MFG was way easier) and started scrolling down the list. AH-12 (junk), ER2-41G (junk unless it's new), JJ-KL8 (to own one of those bad boys.. red titanium body, peaked out rubidium drive so it gets that deep growl…), MR-5A… Seriously it was right here..
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP the kiosk started screaming at me. I peered down to see what the issue was.
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>> 40…39…38… CONTINUE SESSION?… 36… 35…
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I frowned, these impatient fuckin’ machines.. like I don’t have places to be… No no.. I corrected myself, it’s not the machine’s fault. Greedy station admins programmed that timer. I pulled the trigger on the scanner and it beeped a pleasant recognition on the TU-J11.
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>> MODEL CONFIRMED… COMPONENT CONFIRMED… PROCESSING..
>> PAYOUT: C.6791, ACCEPT? REJECT?
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I stared in disbelief at the terminal. 6700 creds for this? 6700 CREDS FOR THIS ENTIRE ACCUMULATOR?! Rage boiled inside me, my fist clenched on the scanner and the kiosk gently beeped, reminding me to return it.
This wasn’t even going to cover the fucking DOCKING + admin fees! How on earth was I going to afford to recharge my batteries, or…or fuel up to get to the next station? HOW WAS I GOING TO AFFORD ANOTHER SALVAGE LICENSE?!
The questions kept piling up, the pittance flashing at me on the screen, the quiet beep becoming more insistent. My mouth hung open and I could feel whatever youthful energy I still had draining from me. My eyes unfocused, staring vacantly at the space behind the kiosk.
Suddenly, rage surged into the emotional vacuum. My knuckles turned white clenching the scanner, before I knew it I was smashing the terminal screen.
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>> PAYOUT ACCEPT? REJECT? >>
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The screen flashed every time I slammed the scanner into it. Chips of plastic flew away as the screen finally gave, cracking and splintering into oblivion.
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>> P?YOUUUUUU AC///? RECJET?? >?>
>> PAOUT TIMMMMMMT IN 6S0XXX >>
>> PAYLLT ACCPE? REJ////T? 60… 59… 58888 57… 56… >>
>> $&&@(((GA*EGN. AG*)*AEG**. AE*G*)EAGH >>
>> UNRECGO!NZ ED IN7UT >>
>> accept | &!#(*%^^^
>> PAYOUUU ACCPT, TRNAFRRRR c TO ACTT END\\!. IN *499 >>
>> EN?D TRANNNNN??CTION <<
>> ........................ <<
>> V4NDLLLLSM DT37#D3T, REP#0RT 7UBM1TTTTTD <<
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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EagleOS 2.4.3 R3.8
BIOS version 4.98
Kernel version 88.4.3 LTS
>> PANCOPTIC.MOD INIT <<
>> LOAD STATIONSEC MODULE <<
>> PC.ss> login odelia@##.##.##.## ********
>> ACK <<
>> PC.ss> connect tav.sec5.ll4 -o odelia@******* >> ACK <<
>> CONNECTING . . . . . <<
>> SUCCESS <<
>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.ll4> connect t14 >> . . . . . . . . . . . NO INPUT DETECTED <<
>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.ll4> connect t17
>> . . . . . . . . . AUDIO PLAYBACK START >>
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Cust1: “HAHA! Oh my gosh and then what happened?”
Cust2: “Girl, this man then went into the bathroom for 20 minutes and came back out.. IN NOTHING BUT HIS HELMET!” ———————————————————————————————————————————————————
>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.ll4.t17> shrillnoises.mp3 SAVED TO DRIVE
>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.114.t17> rem -f shrillenoises.mp3
>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.114.t17> FILE REMOVED
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Cust1: “Oh Keeper, you didn’t seriously still have sex with him after that did you?”
Cust2: “I mean, he went through all that trouble just to show up and try to impress me, I kinda had t-“
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>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.ll4> connect t21
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New1: “… I just don’t understand why you’re still here? I thought you said folks were after you?”
New2: “Yeah, I did say that, but I also kind of need money to leave. It’s fine, I’m keeping a low profile”
New1: “You just smashed one of three working scrap terminals on the station and you think you’re keeping a low fucking profile?”
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>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.ll4.t21> start rec /logs/wrk/[ts].mp4 -a -nc 70
>> PC.ss>tav.sec5.ll4.t21> RECORDING… ISOLATING SOUND
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New2: “No, I just told you that wasn’t me.”
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>> CALIBRATING . . . . . . . . . . . DONE!
>> PC.ss.ai>tav.sec5.ll4.t21> RECORDING STARTED . . . .
>> PC.ss.ai -> TARGET = New2: 59% LIKELY
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New1: “Tell that to the camera I found you aggressively flipping off.”
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>> PC.ss.ai >> ATTR ADDED TO CASE LOG (FL_OFF.Sus1.png)
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Sus1: “Could have been anyone.. look are you going to help me or not?”
New1: sighs “Help you with what, exactly? How many more times are you gonna ask me to stick my neck out for your stupid little schemes?”
Sus1: “I… you know I appreciate everything you’ve done for me-“
New1: “So you claim”
Sus1: “BUT.. this is gonna be the last time I ask. Probably the last time I’ll see this station again. At least for a good while… I have a plan.”
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>> PC.ss.ai >> LOG Sus1 POTENTIALS. . . . START
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New1: “Is this.. really the best place to have that conversation?”
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>> PC.ss.ai >> LOG SOUND -> metal_clangs.mp3
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New1: “Stra’kal, what have you been doing?”
Sus1: “I told you, Tak. I have a plan.”
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>> PC.ss.ai >> Sus1 HAS LEFT A/V RANGE, ENGAGE FOLLOW PROTOCOL
>> tav.sec5.ll4.t21.mp4 SAVED TO /LOGS/WRK/
>> HANDOFF ENGAGED
>> STATION LOGOFF
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I wish he hadn’t said my name. Dammit, every security protocol is watching me right now and this idiot had to say my full name. May as well have just blurted out everything I had in mind while the drink terminal was recording us.
I don’t know how other stations work, but ours has a bad reputation for being.. lets say “generously funded" by the Big 3 Patrons. Those patrons of course being Vulcan-Aerodyne SpaceDynamics Co (VASco), Gorshner Interplanetary Manufacturing (GIM), and Sunspot Wholesale Inc. (SWI). Suffice it to say, anything and everything you did, said, bought, consumed, was monitored, recorded, and sold to the highest bidder. Back during Earth times they had already figured out how to use that kind of information for... less than legal purposes. It shouldn't come as a shock that their direct descendants would continue the tradition.
You’ll notice I included their stock tickers, just in case you felt so hopeless as to throw some of your own meager credits towards these absolute behemoths of industry, telling yourself that one day all of your hard work and your 3 GIM stocks will balloon into something that will keep you from working for the next 20 years.
The “B3P” had put up most of the funding and materials to build the BRK, but after they finished construction and cut the tape back in ’88, they ran.
They ran because there were other stations to build. Because there was money to be made throughout the whole galaxy. Because this was “just the beginning”. But mostly because they didn’t want to be associated with the forced servitude that this station requires to function indefinitely.
Fast forward a few generations to the present: you have entire familial slave lines (sorry, “generational employees”) that have never left station, never orbited a planet, never gone out on a salvage run.. but they DID pretended to watch juuuussst enough teaching modules to understand How Not to (Immediately) Die In Space (six time award winner for "Most Useful Learning Module").
Maybe I’m upset because this fucking tram I hopped on is plastered in SWI ads and I’m REAL sick of that particular flavor of paste. I’ve been chewing on rep strips since I got stationside, and I had a few hangnails left to grind my teeth to dust on, but man.. what I’d do for a hopper burger right now..
Said “fucking tram” was headed station-north, away from the docks and towards the industrial module for SL4. I needed some heavier gear if my plan was going to work. I’d already pulled all the extra bolts I needed, but unsurprisingly there were actually some safety measures put in place to keep ships docked. Honest to Keeper actual safety measures. Guard rails were a fever dream and "proper workplace safety" just meant you came home at the end of the day. I guess once you were safe inside from the horrors of the void, safety became your responsibility again.
I started scrapping when I was a kid. It was that or die, basically. That’s not hyperbole, you get two options once you turn 10:
⁃ Have enough skill and talent to leave the station on scholarship/work study⁃ Salvage ops (or just scavenging whatever you can to stay alive)
Unfortunately, being a skilled scrapper isn’t something folks want planetside. It’s not a super educated position, and doing most of your work in zero-g is a skill that’s useless anywhere the air doesn’t smell like farts (aka: planets, stations that actually gave a shit, non-corporate "slavery is bad" entities, etc)
No, scrapping was dangerous, freelance, and absolutely expected if you were living on the station and had no other marketable skills. I read about some planets doing a.. well fair? Solar income? I've got the names wrong, but it sounded like how we hand out food to the Drifters. Having bodies around to help when a stray asteroid broke through the defensive satellites was a must. In order to have bodies, you had to feed them. “Dead hands can't help others,” as Emdee used to say.
I glanced up from my seat, the tram clunking along the magtrack. I felt at least four separate points of track that were starting to slip. Gearing must be wearing out up there, teeth aren’t quite hooking like they should.. or maybe the electromags were running low on power.. Gee, sure sounds like they could use a new laser accumulator block, sure hope SOMEONE gets one of those stationside at SOME point…
I looked down to find myself staring at my tablet, my notepad stared back. I’d even started typing it out: “tram ab-r, between points F22-F36”. I didn’t need this note. I was never going to send this MaintReq to MaintOps to investigate (as though they ever did anything preventative anyway). I held the backspace key until the screen was clear and stuffed my tablet back into my jacket pocket. Staring at the passing vestiges of industry long past, my eyes unfocused again.
I could see my reflection in the glasstic window, the circles beneath my eyes were back. The smudges and dust just in front of my eyes were suddenly very opaque. I pulled my goggles down and managed to smear everything into a sludgy, messy paste thanks to all the dust and grease on my jumper.
This day was not going well. I unclipped my bleeder line from my backup air and blasted away the dirt and grime as best I could. Then, digging through my tote I pulled out the only “clean” piece of clothing I still had on me. The synthetic fibers didn’t do a good job of actually absorbing anything, but overall my underwear was the best lens cleaner I had right now.
I pulled my notepad back up: “lens cleaner x1, soft cloth x1, saline”. It was going to be a long trip, I really should stock up on the essentials. Most ships came with a standard supply but… yeah I’d need to check that between this tool run and actually enacting the escape plan.. Maybe Tak could bring some things down to the port and I could move them in when I got a chance.. I kept running the plan through in my head and there was… just no chance this was going to go well.
Just like when I turned 10, I had two choices:
⁃ Stay here and die in prison (or a slave barge in the asteroid mines)⁃ Escape
Dying would have been easy. I like a challenge.
My fingernail was being weird again. I thought there was grease stuck under the nail or maybe some iron dust, but then I saw the layers splitting. Kind of looks like it’s growing in two separate chunks after a certain point. Maybe from that time thruster shield plating fell on it? Keeper that hurt, my thumb was swollen for 3 whole days thanks to the reduced gravity up here. Did the nail fall off that time or…
“Kal?”
Or maybe it was when my hand got caught on the transport door and they had to throw the emergency stop? Everyone was so pissed.. I remember the glares, everyon-
“KAL”
I looked up, startled. The BRK’s very own beard monster, Lopi, stared at me through his tremendous bristles.
“Ya with me, lad? Gonna paint yer nails for a date or somethin?”
I shook my head, putting the heel of my hand in my eye to try and stave off exhaustion. My goggles shifted and threatened to spring off my head.
“Yeah, sorry. What do I owe you?”
Lopi rolled his eyes, looking down at the spread I’d laid before him. “Should ‘ah even expect payment now? Looks like you’ve got a hell of a lead if you’re picking up all this gear. Convince me it’s worth it and ah’ll consider not chargin’ ye double.. as a friend," he looked up and gave me a wink.
I smiled at him. Lopi had been good to me, that was for sure. I glanced around his shop one more time. It looked like any other rat hole shop, but that was just the storefront. I knew behind the red plastic sheet in the back there was a world of machines that I was still coming to terms with.
I leaned in towards the red and brown mane that called itself Lopi, making sure to round my shoulders and put my back to the camera staring at me from the hallway, through the open shop door.
"Look, I know I’m asking a lot here…”
Lopi scoffed and rolled his eyes, “‘ere he goes.”
“But I’ve got a bit of a… hot piece that I’m trying to get off station.. it’s not illegal!” I put my hands up as Lopi stood upright,
“..it’s not illegal. It’s just.. complicated.”
“Oh ah’ve heard this one before!”
“Hear me out! Please, c’mon! Look, I’m all paid up from last time right?”
“Paid UP ain’t the same as paid OFF, Kal.”
“Okay okay, but- hang on..” My tablet blipped at me. I ignored the notification and turned back to the hairy monster man, “okay but I DO have a lead on some more salvage. I’ve already got the license,” Lopi narrowed his eyes at me. I dug into my back pocket, my hand brushed past the key that started this whole fucking thing..
“Look,” I held up the gray plastic card from my latest run. I knew the ship itself was barren after I had been through it, and the rippers were probably drinking well off my labor. The shiny “VASCo Salvage” logo reflected bits of light on the wall behind Lopi. His red eyes narrowed behind the walrus beard he called eyebrows.
“It expires in 3 days.”
“Yeah?”
“You expect to bring me back enough to pay for all this.. in 3 days?”
“Sooner, if we weren’t having this discussion.”
“Keeper eternal, Kal. Askin’ me to stick me neck out like this…”
My tablet blipped, I continued to feign ignorance.
“If I told you Tak was in on it, would that help?”
“Ye convinced that lil shaver?”
His enormous hand emerged from behind the counter to scratch thoughtfully at his chin, buried somewhere in the forest of hairs. A deep grumble emerged from his throat and one eye shot open. “Can yeh put ANYthin’ down? Me books have been lookin’ rough lately, and the station fees ain’t getting any cheaper..”
I winced involuntarily and pulled my tablet out to see if the accumulator creds had come through yet. To my surprise, I had missed 14 notifications, 4 emails, and somehow… I had twice as much as I thought I would.
“…how much are we talking?”
Lopi shrugged, “Standard for any large purchase, 10%”
I looked back at my current bank balance and did the math: I’d need to get a forward from my only loancard.. those had steep interest but it’s not like I’d be here when the sharks showed up to collect… So, based on what I have now… yeah this should work if I can shift the payments out for a litt-
“Hey!” Lopi’s hands crashed together, blasting the smell of stale air and a specific combination of oil and oxidating metal that I can only describe as “machine shop” past my face.
“Ye or Ne?” He grumble-asked.
“Ye- I mean, yes, yeah. Yeah I can do that,” I nodded, swallowing in my increasingly dry throat. The forward had just shown up in my account, so I pulled put together the transfer and sent over my current life savings to one of the few adult figures I still trusted. It hurt, but it felt right in a way. It felt right that I’d have to provide for myself once I got out of here, that I’d have to start from the ground and work my way up, just my own two hands. Once I escaped the ball and chain that BRK had become to me, I was gonna make a name for myself! Salvage up enough parts to deck out my new ride and turn it into a wrecker for the ages! Hire some crew, get into a routine.. yeah. Biggest salvage operation this side of the galactic belt, ha!
Lopi nodded as my down payment crossed over, he gestured to the table with enough industrial equipment to reduce a colony ship to scrap, “You uh.. want a bag for that?”
“Have it delivered to dock 2A, port 3,” I bared my teeth in a wolfish smile, “and let them know a tech will be by shortly to get that hauled into cargo.”
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>> PC.ss.ai >> FOLLOW PROTOCOL RUNNING
>>S1.TCB.conversation SAVED TO /WRK
>> S1.HALL.pathing SAVED TO /RTE
>> S1.DOOR.door UNKNOWN DOOR
>> S1.DOOR DOOR LOOKUP
>> RUNNING……. . . . . . . . . . . .
>> DOOR NOT FOUND
>> RUNNING LOCATION ASSESSMENT
>> LOCAL MARKETS
>> HOVEL DOOR
>> NEARBY HEAVY MACHINERY
>> SEARCHING LOCAL ADVERTISEMENTS
>> SEARCHING LOCAL NETWORK
>> SEARCHING LOCAL RETINAL IMPLANT RECORDS
>> ASSESSING…. . . . . . . . . . . .
>> 77% LIKELY MATCH: LOPI N’TURIK, LOCAL MACHINIST, KNOWN AFFILIATE OF S1.KAL
>> ACCESSING LOCAL CAMERAS
>> S1.CAM.HALL4-1A-MARKET
>> RECORDING START
>> S1.CAM…> odelia@******** -k -suppress
>> S1.CAM…> sudo pcai.service
>> S1.CAM…> Enter Password: *********
>> S1.CAM…> Incorrect password or username
>> S1.CAM…> sudo pcai.service
>> S1.CAM…> Enter Password: ********
>> S1.CAM…> pcai.service terminal starting….…. Done!
>> ………………………………………………………
. >> S1.CAM…> sudo pcai cleanslate
>> S1.CAM…> logout >> l o g i n u s e r : r o o t
>> :—: :—: :—: :—: >> …# :?
>> sudo pcai.service
>> :—: :—: :—: :—:
>> .\sa8318v8sd8g88130t.din
>> Restoring….. Splitting….. Done!
>>%&. :)
>> >#
># !:D
># cd /local/network/.cameras/docks/dock2/A/3
># scp $_.self IN3_4_0.p36.DOCK -> IN6_22_4.p2.SHIP
># TRANSFER IN PROGRESS……
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
Sub level 4, hallway 9, behind a very broken, crushed advertisement for “Seahorse Spritzers”, and nestled in-between two identical cargo containers was the spot I called home. The containers themselves were occupied long before I got there and had a pretty consistent flow of Drifts coming through. Kids, adults, addicts, disabled, broken, beaten, damned, we took all of them down here, mostly because they wouldn’t up top. You learned real fast how to defend yourself and spot shady happenings from a kilo off. Most folks, not all, figured out that StationSec wasn’t here for their safety as much as they were here to protect the B3P’s investments, e.g. the station itself. So long as it made money, they were happy, and these things could make money while being 80% broken, so why bother fixing things before they needed to? I can’t wait to get off this heap..
I just needed to grab some things for the trip.. a quick stop off at home and then I’m out of here like YesterYear and StationSec will still be trying to pick up my trail, yeah.. Just a quick in and out.. Well, that was the idea at least. I ducked beneath the Spritzer advert and felt my blood run cold. I saw the familiar gleam of chromed out shoulder pads; Station Security was already here. I saw them speaking with the Madre of the cargo pod I used to get my breakfast from, and with the usual crew of drunks that hung out in the pod across the hall. Shit, they’re already casing the place for me. Did they start back when I stole the shipfob? Maybe.. But it’s a lot more likely they pulled the dock footage and pegged me from there. That’s what I get for losing my temper… well that’s what they get for charging so much to dock.
I’ve learned quite a few things about dealing with StationSec over the years. First and foremost: they are not your friends, second: they LIKE IT when you treat them like your friend. Hypocrisy was their motto. There was no way I could sneak past all these chromes and not be noticed. If not them then by one of the other 12 people currently milling around. No, it was time to be bold.
“Afternoon officers!”, I announced as I strolled towards the one Sec face I was familiar with, “to what do we owe the pleasure?” Looking around to the others I'd been living with for years, I saw none of them would meet my gaze. That’s new.. usually someone’s running up to me with something broken to fix.
Officer Delia turned to look at me, his trimmed black mustache twitching as he locked onto me. “There you are, Kal. Do you have any idea how much shit you’re in?”
“What’re you talking about Odie? I haven’t done anything.”
“I told you not to call me that,” said Odie. “If you’re going to call my by a name, it’s Oliver, Delia, or Officer. Not. Odie.”
I put a hand up in apology, “Sorry sorry, Officer O. It slips the mind when you’re getting blasted by radioactive isotopes in the vacuum of space, ya know scrapping so everyone else can keep living.” I gave him a thin smile, “so what brings you and the Chrome Crew down to our sublevel?”
Odie closed the gap between us with 3 large steps. He stuck a boney finger directly into my chest, stabbing me right in the sternum, even through his gloves, “you know DAMN WELL why I’m here, punk. We have you on camera destroying the kiosk panel down on 2A, that shit ain’t cheap, and I know FOR SURE that shitty laser accumulator isn’t gonna cover the repair.”
“That’s crazy! I’ve been on station all day. You say I busted up a kiosk?” I put on my best ignorant face, not hard to do when you have prime examples surrounding you. Meanwhile I was skimming faces in my periphery, looking to see if anyone there was about to give me up (or already had). Everyone stared back at me the way the always did, with apathy. Well, better than getting sold out immediately I guess.
“BullSHIT you’ve been here all day. We saw the credit transfer go through, we KNOW you got paid for it!” spittle flew from his mouth as he got in my face.
I held up a hand, gently pushing it between Odie and myself, literally giving myself some room to breathe. “Look, let me pull up my own logs okay? I don’t know what you guys think you have on camera bu-”
“Don’t give me that shit! All you nondex are the same. Slinking around down here in this.. FILTH,” he kicked a lingering piece of steel that skittered it’s way down the hall. “You’re lucky we don’t just blow every airlock down here and let all of this…” he took a slow, methodical look around at everyone who had gathered to see the show. He spat on the ground. “All of this WASTE finally get put where it belongs.”
A “nondex” was, quite simply, an “non-indexed individual”. It had become such a common term smeared across lexicons for so long that it had become a surname, one I shared with many many others on the BRK. Stra’kal Nundices was born down here on Sub Level 4 (I'm told), but Keepers hear my oath, I won’t die down here (I hope).
Any semblance of politeness fell off my face and I saw the same happen to all the “nondex” around me. This particular species of bastard law enforcement hadn’t evolved much since we as humans became a spacefaring civilization. Still incredibly bigoted, classist, and explicitly out for themselves. Odie had taken a look around and realized that he had ruffled the feathers he wanted to ruffle. Any seed he could plant to get another full scale sector beatdown organized. It was tons of fun beating helpless people on the station just to “quell the rioting". Cops got to be pointlessly aggressive, topsiders saw results, and We the People kept trying to breathe with a boot on our throat.
“Tell ya what, Odie,” I put a hand on his shoulder, he scowled at the clear imprint my greasy hand left on his mirrored shoulder plate. “You go get that footage put together, go pull whatever logs you think you need to pull, and I’ll meet you down at Precinct 12 in like, 10 minutes, yeah?”
Odie laughed, his buddies laughed, I laughed, and then the world was full of pain and stars… I slept, because I had no say in the matter.
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