Slipspace

Getting back to the docks was a bit of a chore with the fighter in tow. My usual ability to easily manoeuvre my way through station traffic was significantly hindered by the dead weight I carried. It required constant adjustments to the ship’s attitude in order to keep the centre of thrust within the scope of my adjusted centre of mass. That in turn meant that I was using resources to maintain stable flight instead of nimbly steering clear of other vessels. 

At the very least, the intense focus required kept my mind from wandering.

When I got in range, I contacted the yard chief for Torgal. He was surprised at my request for a direct drop into the primary bay, but was soon able to coordinate the procedure. And what a procedure it was. It took some very fine manoeuvring to establish a stable hover over top of the bay. Even for my practised hands, it was a small struggle for me to keep my positioning as steady as possible while dock workers latched on to the craft with the same manipulator arm I had helped deliver several days back. 

I felt my entire ship creak slightly as the station arm grasped the fighter beneath me. A moment later, the arm operator’s voice crackled over the radio, confirming hand off. I acknowledged it and released my own magnetic clamps, a gentle clunk echoing through the hull. Slowly, I backed up and away.

Once free of my burden, it was a simple affair to get back to the landing pads. I quickly set down and began my post-flight checklist as the pad descended into the hangar. The humming and gentle vibration of the reactor died out, moving into a cooldown cycle. Flight computer screens flickered off and the interior lights dimmed into low power mode. Another day of work was recorded in the logbooks, both the digital ones and the hard copy book I kept on board. 

I yawned and leaned back in my chair once my tasks were complete. The work itself had been physically tiring, of course, but the dysphoria attack had taken a lot more out of me mentally. All I wanted to do was go directly to my quarters and vegetate for the evening, but I still had to deliver my report to the dock master. 

With considerable effort, I forced myself up to walk into the cargo hold. Though the salvage report did not explicitly require it, I never turned it in without taking complete inventory of my haul. Neglecting to do so often led to being shorted materials and therefore money. And with how badly Mr Kruger had it out for me, especially if he was in a foul mood, I especially needed to make sure I dotted my ‘i’s and crossed my ‘t’s. 

Of course, I had a strong suspicion of what had Kruger in his apparent mood. Losing out on the Erickson contract would reflect badly on him regardless of who he tried to blame. He may have been in charge of this branch, but the man still had bosses of his own to keep happy. Said bosses didn’t seem to ever much care about the complaints from employees, but if Kruger affected their chance at profits, they wouldn’t be turning a blind eye. 

A sick desire for some toxic justice for him crept into my heart. I wasn’t normally an angry person, but, in my mind, if anyone deserved some karmic backlash, it was Harvey Kruger. 

Inventory took a bit of time, but the mundane task actually helped somewhat with the malingering effects of my episode. Report in hand, I walked into the main floor of the scrap yard to find the dock manager. The grizzled old man wasn’t difficult to find thankfully. I quickly spotted him near the fighter I had dropped. A number of workers were around it with him talking amongst themselves. I walked up and a few of them saw me and waved. 

Manager that he was, he waved the others off as I approached, admonishing them to get back to work.

“Hey, Trace, like my big prize of the day?”

He nodded approvingly. “It certainly is quite the piece. Where in the void did you find an intact corpo fighter?”

“Oh, you know me. I’ve got my hidey holes.” I gave a tired smirk. 

“Yeah, yeah, you and your secrets. I won’t lie though, I might look into nabbing this thing for myself. The frame is intact enough that a decent engineer might be able to get it flying again. It could be a fun project to turn into a racer.”

It was an open secret that Trace was a closet speed demon. It figured that he would be interested. 

“Well, I can tell you that the flight computer is at least mostly functional and there are still a few of the thrusters that will fire.”

Trace raised an eyebrow at me. “How do you know… You actually made this thing move on its own?”

I shrugged innocently. “It was in a hangar. I couldn’t get at it with the arms and I don't have a cable like some. Had to get creative.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, taking a deep breath. “You know kid, you could have gotten a spot working on a ship as an engineer. Hell, you could probably qualify to make assistant chief on a station. Why the hell are you wasting all of that as a scaver?”

My shoulders lifted and dropped apathetically. This talk was nothing new to me. I’d gotten it many times before from quite a number of people. My commonly used response felt nearly robotic as delivered it in a tone that betrayed my fatigue. “I’ve told you before, Trace. I don't want to just be an engineer. I want to see the stars, not sit in a maintenance bay.”

That got a scoff. “I never could understand why anyone would want to be a spacer. I prefer having some roots and knowing where I’m going to be planting my head at night. That's where we differ, though, I guess.”

“Guess so.” I shook my head. His viewpoint made as little sense to me as mine did to him. Staying in one place left me restless with wanderlust. “Ah well, I’ve got my daily salvage report. Inventory is complete and I’ve got my copy.” 

He pulled out his tablet and I flicked the report over to him. A sharp nod replied. “Got it. And uh… I’ll try to make sure you get something special for this. Worth a lot more than scrap value after all.”

“It damn well better be!” Tired as I might have been, my voice was still firm and almost indignant. “Took serious work to extract that thing and I refuse to get short-changed on it.” 

“No worries, Matson. I’ll do what I can.” Trace was one of the reasons I had been willing to stick around so long. He was a lot more fair to the independent pilots than the office staff and wasn’t afraid to raise a fuss if he saw something blatant. There was only so much he could do, but he was a decent guy in a hierarchy of bastards, and as an actual bastard myself, I could know a bastard when I saw one. 

I waved at him and walked away, content to let the dock workers do their job. 

Deciding not to wait for, or pay for, delivery, I stopped at a vendor stall along the salvage arm and picked up a sandwich for myself. It was bland and only barely  edible, but I could always supplement the lighter meal with something more flavorful later if I was really in need. Yawns of mental exhaustion more than anything were threatening to escape as I walked through the door into my room. It was far too early to go to bed, but my crushed mood really didn’t want to let me do much. 

I was just about ready to let those thoughts drop me into my bunk, but held back when memories bubbled up from the night before. Instead of laying down, I moved back over to my desk in the corner and pulled up the terminal. I was going to fight fire with fire. Determinedly, I wrangled my mind into cooperating and accessed the paperwork Marcus had sent me. Looking over the sizable stack of digital forms nearly convinced me to put it off. Bureaucracy was a massive pain, but the captain was right. There was no use getting a contract together and signed when I would have to immediately have a new one made for the new name. 

The forms were long, drawn out and unnecessarily complicated, but I persevered and began filling in details. Oddly, some of the forms had markings I was unfamiliar with when compared to the official forms I had looked at longingly so many times before. Beyond those marks though, a legal firm was also notated in the margins. I could only assume that this was something that the Ericksons had arranged. Having a lawyer representing me through the process was never something I had really considered due to the added and usually unneeded expense, but it could certainly explain how Marcus planned on expediting things.

In the hour of slogging through the paperwork, I think I wrote my dead name more times than I had in the last two years. I had to certify that yes, I was doing this of my own volition and no, I was not attempting to impersonate anyone or escape judgment for a crime. Nor was I in any way attempting to change my name in order to absolve myself of any debts. Oh and yes, I did indeed want updated documents and an order of name change for other institutions. 

 I finally was able to submit the whole mess to the provided CommNet address. Much to my surprise, within just a couple minutes of pressing the ‘send’ button, a message appeared in my inbox, notifying me that the documents had been received and would be processed as time permitted. I blinked. I had to guess that it was an automated system that made the response. 

The chair bent slightly as I leaned back and sighed. There were a few conflicting feelings within my heart. I was relieved to be done with the nuisance called paperwork and also relieved that the process had finally been started after years of procrastination. Anticipation also held a spot. It was exciting to have started this as it was a definite sign of what was to come. 

Despite Echo’s prior reassurances though, dread still occupied a dark corner. I had always reasoned for putting the name change off,  partially out of fear of what might come when people around me found out. Those fears were still a quiet plague in my mind. I was trying not to let them take over, but it was difficult, especially considering my earlier dark point. 

I sighed again. After sitting at the desk staring at the receipt notice, I finally stood and changed into night wear before dropping into my bunk. 

In a moment of inspiration, I opened my holopad and brought up my body model file. The process for the continuity of consciousness mind transfer began with submission of an image file, just like the one I was looking at. The institute then used that model, samples of DNA from the original vessel, and extensive scans of the brain to construct an entirely custom vessel for use in the process. They stuck to the image as close as they could, but were somewhat limited by the original DNA in order to maintain biocompatibility. 

When sleep finally found me, I dreamed of my future living in that new body. She was happy and comfortable, flying amongst the stars, Echo by her side. It was nice, a good life. One I sincerely hoped to one day make for myself.