Of course, my character isn't 'quite' as bad as he could be. I made a few compromises so that I could tell a story beyond someone taking a nap in the janitor's closet. But hopefully, I captured something of the spirit of such ignoble creatures.
~~~
Out of the Way
A laser blasted a hole in the titanium platform outside, and Jank
paused for a long moment. He took
another sip from the straw riding loosely in the broken seal of an energy
drink. The station’s automated shields
flickered on, and his video feeds fogged over with a slight blue haze. A military transport hurtled onto the
platform, landing not far from the smoking cavity that had preceded it – not
quite landing. The shields of the
station had parted as it descended, and now closed slowly around it.
A bank of monitors crowded around his console, each cycling through one
of the dozens of platforms. Several
immediately switched to the platform just outside the commerce tower, the one
that was now populated by the transport that looked significantly worse than
its landing could account for.
He sighed and flipped on his microphone, “Welcome to Castorius II,
where Britonian Lightning is pleased to meet your energy needs.” He toggled a switch and several stylized
lightning bolts flashed impressively on the transport’s platform. “My name is Jank.” Information scrolled across one of the
monitors, “According to last records, your ship is fitted with an Aster Mk.
XVII. Standard fuel is radiated
matter. Would you like highly,
moderately, or mildly irradiated matter?”
Jank paused, then reluctantly switched the coms from sending to
receiving.
The customer hadn’t waited for him, “… pursued by three unmarked strike
vessels.” A woman’s voice. “I need shelter for my ship and crew,
immediately. They haven’t broken visual
contact, and if we aren’t out of sight soon, they’ll attempt to board us.”
“I’m sorry,” a slow pause to sip an ounce or two from his energy drink,
“company policy is to remain uninvolved in local violence.” In theory, this was both true and untrue. He could
shelter them if he consulted the first shift staff member. But Nica was too high strung to be reliable
in this kind of situation.
Several colorful curses were offered as reply as two of the three
strike vessels landed on the platform, and a couple dozen armored soldiers poured
out and surrounded the transport. Jank
shrugged, ended the communications link, and directed one of the monitors to
launch a U-Net connection. He browsed
his favorite feeds and took another sip of his drink. The room shook a few times from muffled
explosions, forcing him to grudgingly check the reservoir’s integrity. Everything appeared to be neatly contained to
the one platform, so he didn’t bother checking again.
Lasers cracked against the shields covering the commerce tower, sending
flickers through the monitors. He
sighed, and reached a hand out to send an SOS to the nearest patrol station,
then changed his mind. At their closest,
it would take them nearly thirty hours to show up. He would just have the drones clean up the
mess. Put it in the security
report. Less work that way.
The com light flashed, and he rolled his eyes as he flipped it on. “Yes, have you decided which fuel you would
like?”
“Almost,” A man’s voice, seemingly unconcerned, “We are considering an
antimatter energy source and would like a private fueling platform.”
Jank winced. Antimatter was
Britonian’s latest development. More
energy, much more efficient, and highly unstable. Anyone interested in it was to be given
special accommodations. “Of course. You may transfer to Platform epsilon 3 at
your convenience.”
“I’m afraid it will not be convenient.
Would you be so kind as to transfer us immediately?”
He sighed, “Of course.” He
activated the warning lights on the platform, and initiated a cellular
transfer. Several of the attacking
soldiers were vaporized in the process, the rest fled back to their ships.
“Thank you,” the voice sounded quite smug, and ended the link. He watched despondently as the three strike
vessels lifted off the platform, and tracked their profile as they flew around
the station searching for the new location of the transport. It could take them awhile, and they wouldn’t
be able to land there without his permission.
Several lights sprung on, a high-pitched whine began a rotation, and
his chair skittered across the floor from the impact of several missiles. Jank was startled into triggering the SOS,
despite it having been automatically activated upon detection of the missiles. He glanced at the station’s internal coms,
but before he could decide whether or not he wanted to involve Nica, he heard
her running up the stairs to central control.
“What happened?!” She was
wearing her uniform – of course she was.
Jank hadn’t bothered to unpack his.
“Uh,” he gestured at the monitors, “missiles.”
“Are you serious?” she shook her head.
She glanced quickly across the various displays, and then reached past
him to activate a coms link that broadcast to all three strike vessels,
“Welcome to Castorius II. Be advised,
you are firing on a refueling station. If our ability to contain our energy reserves
is compromised, they will detonate with a force approaching that of a
supernova.” She ended the link and
didn’t bother waiting for a reply, “If they hail us, try to get them to land
until we can figure this out. I’m going
to see if the crew of the other ship needs medical attention.”
She left at a run down the stairs.
“Okay,” he replied, belatedly. He
felt exhausted just from her being nearby.
A shame. She was cute,
otherwise. He looked disconsolately at
his energy drink. It had fallen off the
console, and now lay in a scattered spray of brightly colored liquid. Not much.
He’d been nursing it for some time.
Jank walked down to the kitchen, grabbed some towels, ran a corner under
some water, and walked back up to central control.
“… Jank! God dammit, answer your
line!”
He rolled his eyes, and activated his transceiver, “Nica?”
“Yes! Where the hell have you
been?”
No reason to answer that. He
bent down and started cleaning up the spill, “What do you need?”
“Give the transport crew access to the commerce center. They have some injuries and they’ll be more
comfortable inside. And did you really
leave them on the platform while they were being attacked?”
“Yeah, okay.” He keyed in the
code, “They can get in. And we’re not
supposed to show favoritism to any certain class of customers.”
“What? Keeping people from being
shot is hardly favoritism.” A pause,
“Stay in the control center, I might need your help.” The line went dead, and Jank sunk back into
his chair. This was getting out of
control. He pulled a magazine out of a
rack on the wall he had ordered some drones to install shortly after his
arrival to the station. The reading
wasn’t much, but it was some distraction.
A quarter of an hour passed quietly, before one of the monitors
chirped. The thirteenth chirp or so,
Jank looked up. Blinked. Leaned forward. Then sighed, and sent a link to Nica’s
personal com.
“I’m here, go ahead.”
“A tri-hull starjammer is entering our zone. It’ll be a few minutes before they get close
enough to dock.”
A pause, “You think they’re part of this?”
“Well,” he glanced at a few of the monitors, “The other guys docked
with it.”
“Hang on,” another pause, “Treat them like a normal customer, see if
you can figure out what they want. I’ll
see what these people know about it.”
“Nica?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s coming up as a Shillian vessel.”
“Oh. Well. Do your best.
Try to keep them from shooting us.”
Jank grimaced as he ended the link, sending a hail to the starjammer as
he did. Shillians were a race of aliens
that were known both as universally mercenary and universally violent. The hail went through, “Welcome to Castorius
II, where Britonian Lightning is pleased to meet your energy needs.” He toggled a few of the larger stylized
lightning bolts, those which could be seen from further out. “My name is Jank.” A monitor showed that the station’s scan was
being blocked. “We have energy to
accommodate over fifty thousand different propulsion systems. How might we best serve you?”
“You will surrender the criminals you are harboring, along with their
ship.” The voice drifted in volume and
paused several times in strange places, but had no accent. Probably a translator program.
“I’ll need to see documentation from both your world and theirs
establishing that you have the authority for arrest and seizure.”
A burst of static, “Do not try to delay us. You will give them up, or we will destroy you.”
“Uh,” he tried to remember, “Then you’d be shooting a refueling
station. We’d blow up.” He paused, then added, “And you’d get blown
up too.”
“Then we won’t attack the station.
We’ll come aboard. And we will
find you, so that you are the first
to die.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he switched his link, “They’re gonna try and board
us, Nica.”
“I heard,” there was laughter in the background, “Did you really just
say ‘yeah, whatever’ when someone threatened to kill you?”
“I guess. You were listening
in?”
“We wanted to hear how the conversation went ourselves, so you wouldn’t
have to try and describe it all to us.”
Jank thought for a moment, “Thanks.”
“Let us know if they do anything.”
“Uh,” he sent a few commands into the system, “You’re in the commerce
tower, fourth floor?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m opening control feeds on your floor, and on the platform of the
transport. You can just get what you
need wherever. Saves time.” He leaned back in his chair and picked up his
magazine, “I also flagged your handscan to give you control access and voice
command authorization at any tower or platform monitor.”
“Good thinking.”
“Yep.” He ended the link, and
settled into his chair with a satisfied sigh.
Hopefully the last of his distractions.
*
“Mister Jank? Mister Jank are
you there?”
He woke up a bit bleary eyed, and glanced at his timepiece. Two hours had passed. His shift would be over in just a few
more. He’d been hoping for peace till
then. No such luck, apparently.
“Mister Jank!” The woman’s
voice, captain of the transport. “Your
colleague has been shot. Please
respond.”
The chair enfolded him nicely.
Pretending not to hear? Not much of an option. If he didn’t answer, Nica would kill
him. The girl was unreasonable that
way. Probably report him to corporate,
too. “I’m here.”
“Good,” the woman managed to sound both relieved and annoyed, “We’ve
managed to trap the Shillian assault teams on the first floor. We can escape, but only if you distract or
disable their command ship.”
“Yeah, okay.” He grimaced, “What
about Nica?”
“We stopped the bleeding; she’s fine for the moment. It’ll be best if we take her with us. We can get her to medical facilities faster
than they can get here.”
One less thing to worry about.
“Nice. I’ll see what I can
do.” He ended the link, and thought for
a moment. A special set of controls lit
up to the side of the room. “Oh. That might work.”
He slid his chair over to the controls and started working.
Several complex arrays, many the size of a mid-size transport, extended
from the refueling station. When
finished, they hung suspended far to one side, well past any of the platforms. He opened coms to the starjammer, “Standby
for fueling.”
A long pause, “Repeat last transmission.”
He keyed in an acceptance, “Thank you for choosing Britonian
Lightning.”
Several powerful projected impulses quickly and smoothly moved the
large ship close beside the extended array.
He checked a timer on one of the monitors. Three seconds.
“Please come again.” He ended
the link.
Castorius II erupted, as the quasar did at regular intervals, hurling a
wide beam of energy from its north and south poles. The extended array gathered a small
percentage of that energy, but even that little made for an enormous amount of
fuel. Britonian Lightning had spent
decades perfecting the materials necessary for not only the energy transfer,
but also for an assembly that would survive the eruption. Jank was reasonably sure the starjammer
hadn’t gone through a similar stage of development.
The vessel splintered, parts simply vaporizing at the impact, others
hurled away at incredible speeds. The
explosions were muted as the air dissipated into vacuum, but spectacular
nonetheless. A monitor chirped at the
departure of the transport. He nodded,
then keyed the computer for a voice command, “Activate drones. Sweep the first floor of the commerce center for
active bio signatures. Clean them up.”
The transport flitted across his view screen, giving the eruption a
wide berth, then vanished as it opened a wormhole. He leaned back feeling a little lonely. Then shrugged.
He’d program one of the drones to take Nica’s shift.
~~~
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