Slipspace

As I rocketed out into the debris fields towards where my tracker showed the derelict to be, I found it odd that, despite only knowing Echo for the day, my perspective on the system around me had subtly changed. I had long been jaded by the years I had spent just dully working at my job. It seemed to me that once you had seen one hunk of scrap, you had seen enough for a lifetime. 

Echo had reminded me of just what I was fighting for though. There were bigger and better things for me. Just looking at her, I had all the proof I would ever need to know that the Celeste Institute did absolutely nova work. I wanted that for myself. I also found myself rediscovering a bit of my old wanderlust. There were stars beyond the junk that begged to be explored and I wanted to be there. I could almost fantasise about being part of the expedition to the outer reach that would expand the Slipspace Gate Network to the new frontier. 

I was torn between the distraction of my far flung thoughts and my current job. It was hard to focus on the present when the realm of dreams felt so much more enticing than reality. I was so distracted that I almost missed the blip on my sensor panel notifying me of an active heat signature within my safety radius.

Comms lit up with incoming transmissions and I chastised myself for allowing myself to fly in such a state. 

“Oi! Matson! Watch where you’re flying, idiot! You’ve got an entire system to scrap from and yet you’re here trying to ram me?! What gives?” 

The angry voice belonged to a fellow pilot contracted to Torgal.

“Sorry, Jace. Guess I was just on autopilot headed out to the derelict I’ve been working.” I groaned at the misstep. Maybe I should have gotten another cup of coffee before I left.

His voice carried confidence and a touch of smugness that lit my temper quickly. “Oh, so the tracker I found here yesterday was yours? Guess you missed your chance. I couldn’t resist trying to get at the juicy scrap in this hulk. You left a lot of goodies just sitting here.” 

It was a struggle to restrain my voice. “Jace, you know the rules. There are plenty of other bits and pieces around for you to pick up. I laid a rightful salvage claim on this one. Don’t make me get the station salvage authorities involved.” My next words almost ground out of my throat. “Find. Your. Own.”

“Whoa there, raging bull, don’t be getting all pissy just because you left all of the good stuff behind after you took your daily haul. You never claimed rights on this ship. I checked the logs! You may have left a tracker, but you never re-registered the claim after your initial day claim. It was free for the taking and now I’m here.”

My mind raced to check my memories. Unfortunately, to my complete and utter regret, he was right. When I had completed my initial day claim for inspection two days previous, I had never submitted the tracker tag for my extended salvage claim. I had been too frustrated after my encounter with my boss to remember to do so. 

“Damn it, Jace, you may be right, but you still ought to know better. I claimed this thing first. You saw my tag. Why can’t you just respect it?”

“Whine all you want, Matson. I’ve got my claim tag on this thing now. I think you are the one that needs to shove off before I contact the salvage authority.” His voice was still smug and I hated it.

Jace had always been one to toe the line on rules and always managed to skirt them just enough to piss everyone off without actually crossing the line. This wasn’t an unfamiliar encounter to him, he had done it to nearly every other pilot on the team. But since he never actually broke the rules, the authorities wouldn’t do anything. To make matters worse, he was actually in a lease contract with Kruger and was thus one of the man’s favoured pilots. 

It took a lot of effort not to slam my fist into the comms screen. “You should go see the doc, Jace. You need to get someone to look at that massive stick up your ass.”

“Fuck off, Matson. Go find some other wreck to scrap.” The channel cut before I could retort further and I was left to seethe in silence. 

I dragged a hand down my face and tried to calm down. It felt like every time I had some hopeful thoughts about the future, something had to come along to ruin my mood. As infinitely frustrating as it was, I found it difficult to calm myself as long as I was within view of the purpose built scavenger shuttle that proudly displayed the Torgal emblem along the dorsal structure.

Thrusters jetted hard as I jammed my fingers into the controls. My larger and comparatively scrappy ship turned about and flew away. Temptation to let my anger out on something nagged at me. I pushed it away as best I could so that I could focus on finding something else to break apart so I could earn some sort of money on the day.

“Vox, take the controls and point us at personal landmark Mike-Six. Keep us clear of any other vessels in the area and monitor traffic to make sure we aren’t followed.”

“Compliance.” 

I turned to the master systems display and began adjusting settings in order to at least partially mask the heat signature produced by the engines and also disabling the beacon that would be tracked by system control. Since I was outside of the controlled space, it was not required by station authorities, but it was rarely a good idea to disable it as it also functioned as the emergency beacon in case of primary system failure. 

Such measures were only warranted because I didn’t want to be traced to my hidden gold mine. 

I had one place where I knew that I could get valuable scrap. At the tail end of the last corporate war (only a minor scuffle according to the official records.), a number of the frontier systems under control of the big corps had raised small militarised forces under the guise of anti piracy measures. Alliance military sites and vessels were protected from salvage by Alliance law, but the corporate ‘self defence vessels’ carried no such protections. I had stumbled on what appeared to be a hidden cache of corpo fighters in an asteroid base that didn’t appear on the registers.  

Weapons trading was closely monitored however and under rightful claim rules, I couldn’t lay claim on the entire base. So, I willfully neglected to report the site (as was strongly recommended but not officially required) and only pulled items from it on rare occasions in order to avoid suspicion. It wouldn't do me any good for there to be a mess of pilots trying to grab what they could from the veritable gold mine. 

It was my hope that I would not only make a healthy profit, but that I might also find parts for my navigation computer within the base. The equipment inside was of similar vintage to the transport I had used for the construction of the Oxide and could potentially hold some of the components I needed.

As Vox guided the ship with steadier hands than any human could manage, I activated environmental controls and pressurised the aft cargo compartment. Once the status indicator showed a healthy atmosphere, I opened the rear hatch and moved from the cockpit and into the much larger compartment.

One of the few disadvantages of my hidden site was that most of the equipment that had been left behind was scattered and loose within the main bay. Only two small craft had been left behind intact but bits and pieces of further craft were laying about. The manipulator arms on the Oxide were amazing, but the pieces were small and the bay was too small to manoeuvre the entire vessel properly within. 

So, instead of using the mechanical arms, I would use my own EVA suit clad hands to pick through the mess. The bulky blue and white suit was awkward to pull on without help, but I had done it enough times that I managed. 

A few minutes later, as I clicked a glove into place, my subdermal audio implant beeped at me and Vox’s voice sounded in my head. 

“We are approaching the site requested. Sensors do not show any signatures nearby and I am approximately ninety-one percent sure that we were not followed.” 

“Thanks Vox. Bring us in close and depressurize this compartment once we are at relative zero velocity within ten metres of the entrance. Hold station after that and continue monitoring for approaching ships. Alert me if anyone gets too close.”

“Compliance.” The computer was quiet for a moment before adding, “And do be careful, Miss Adresta.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Secondary task, run Turing protocols.”

“As you wish, ma’am.”

Shaking my head gently, I pulled on the helmet for my EVA suit and activated its onboard systems to check seals and begin pressurising the suit for extravehicular activity just as the gravity plating in the compartment began shutting off.

After nearly seven continuous hours of zero-g work in the hidden hangar, I was ready to call it quits. I had already pulled two military grade plasma casters apart and put the components into crates in the cargo compartment of the Oxide. A tiny reactor core joined them along with a number of other lesser parts and pieces. I wouldn’t be hauling much for recovered material, but the components were worth far more per kilo of mass. 

Despite my hopes, I had been unable to locate viable parts for my personal project, but I was pleased with the haul. The profit from the larger reactor in the derelict would have been worth a lot, but I had nearly the same value in military grade components with less overall work to dig them out. 

All the while I was working, I exchanged sporadic text messages back and forth with Echo. She was curious about my job and what I did around the station when I wasn’t working. In exchange, I probed lightly into her life as a cargo captain’s apprentice. As it turned out, our experiences as an apprentice to a ship captain weren’t entirely dissimilar and quite a bit of our back and forth was taken up with stories of life in space. By the end of the day I was even more smitten with the girl. 

Looking down at my suit’s status panel got me out of my thoughts. The power cells and life support systems of my suit were drained to the point that I needed to be heading back in. I called for Vox to get things ready for departure and within a few minutes was watching the aft cargo hatch of my ship close. 

Once gravity came back on and the ship-board life support green lit, I sagged onto the bench next to my personal stowage locker. Taking my helmet off, I breathed the fresher air into my lungs. My neck popped audibly and I stretched in place. It had been hard work even in the zero-g environment and the suit had begun smelling of sweat. I was glad to get out of it as quickly as I could. 

The flight back to D’reth Station was typical and without complication. Docking in the salvage arm proceeded as it had countless times before and I soon found myself marking up my manifest to submit to the Torgal dock chief and the office. 

I was interrupted by the blonde haired secretary who looked extremely out of place in the salvage docks. 

“Excuse me, Mr Matson, but Mr Kruger requests to see you in the office.” Her tone of voice and body language indicated nervousness and stress which put me on guard. That couldn’t be a good sign. 

I finalised my paperwork and looked at the young woman. I almost felt sorry for her, having to work that close to that sleazebag couldn't be fun “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be right up.”

Her stress level seemed to rise further and she shifted uncomfortably. “Mr. Kruger requests a meeting immediately, Sir.”

At that point I was getting nervous as well. “Okay then, I guess I’ll follow you.”

She nodded quickly and turned around, walking fast through the salvage docks and to the lift at the end of the area. 

Making matters worse was how quiet the office was when we arrived. Nobody seemed to be in at the moment which did not bode well for my nerves. At that time of day, the office was usually busy with pilots reporting their daily takes and retrieving the previous day’s pay. As I looked around, it was nearly vacant except for a few orderlies working at their desks quietly. It was almost unnatural. 

With a deep breath, I stepped forward to Kruger’s office and rang the chime. “It’s Matson, sir. Reporting as requested?”

A pause. The door opened to reveal Harvey Kruger at his desk and obviously in a sour mood.

Quiet rage answered my gaze. “Get in here Matson.” 

The door shut behind me and sealed me in whatever fate my boss had in store for me.