“I think she likes you Horus.” Oz whispered.
“Yeah, seriously, you two have been flirting for months whenever she's in a scene with you. I can't count how many times I've stepped into the Nessa Club and run into your avatars chatting into the wee hours. When are you two just going to meet and get it started for real?” Ronin asked.
“She told me she's with a ship that's on assignment somewhere out there, I don't see that happening.”
“Oh, come on, you've gotta get together with her some time. Living vicariously through you has been seriously dull lately.”
“Well then, go find your own squeeze,” I replied.
“Bah! With a restaurant to run while living with three sisters? I'll be single forever.”
“Seriously Horus, she's got to make it back to Freeground sometime. no harm in meeting face to face.”
“Sure there is, it changes everything. I have a really bad record with meeting people from scenarios. Remember the last one Ronin?”
“Oh, the issyrian?”
“Yup, looked human on the outside, was anything but on the inside.”
“Issyrians can't be that bad, can they? They can change their appearance to pretty much anything I thought.”
“They can breathe out of the back of their heads if they want to. I won't go into the unchangeable differences.”
“Well, I met Sunspot while I was at the Academy and we've been in touch since. She's as much fun in person as she is in scenes, trust me.” Oz interjected. "Oh, and she's a real human. She has this whole cheeky redhead thing going, actually.”
“All the more reason not to ruin a good thing I say. Well, I'd love to stick around and get more love advice from a lonely restaurant owner and a career infantryman, but I've got a shift starting up in a few minutes. Thanks for running that scenario, I can't believe we pulled it off,” I said. I took off the virtual visor while the team members said their goodbyes.
Chapter 1
Just Another Day in the Dark
There are sectors so dark, so barren that starliners chart their courses along the fringes. Breaking down in dead space, having to drift for light years without any hope of assistance dissuades the big transportation companies from putting their passengers at risk. Other crews, especially freighter crews and more dubious folk take the risk, going to sleep for weeks as their vessels make the crossing.
Some visionary decided to build a state of the art repair and resupply station right in the middle of nowhere, where there's literally nothing. For three hundred years Freeground has been the only beacon of light for travellers, refugees, and those seeking out the darkest spot in our galaxy, right on the fringe downward from the old Sol system.
Once Freeground Station was a massive clover leaf complex with habitat, control, mechanical, and hydroponic sections. By the time I was born here thirty three years ago it had grown exponentially with kilometre after kilometre of structures including factories, research facilities, ship yards, forests, malls, housing, entertainment centres and its own military and government based on the ideals of democracy and freedom.
The walking surface area of Freeground is just over half that of Earth, that forbidden blue ball in the distant Sol system. My home looks like thousands of plates connected by circular frames all spinning, surrounded by skeletal frameworks that stretch out into the dark like long arms and fingers grasping for light that's so far away that it's just a faint glimmer.
I served during the last great war, when the All-Con Corporation spent twenty years trying to take control of the station. They sent fleets, spies, blocked trade, used misinformation to turn our allies away from us but we resisted. In the end the Freeground Fleet pushed them back all the way to their home world and destroyed their factories, once again proving that Freeground could not be owned by any corporation or governed by any external body.
I remember those days, setting foot on solid ground for the first time in my life, looking over manufacturing facilities as they went up in smoke. All-Con Prime was already a grey, scorched ruin of a planet before we arrived. They had mined it to the core and covered the surface with thousands of manufacturing complexes. I was shipped planet side to repair a communications array on a troop carrier. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to stand on the surface of the planet if I weren’t a fleet technician.
Even through the grey blue sky, the free blowing wind and distant horizon was impressive. I still didn't feel that I had been missing much growing up on Freeground station. Watching the fighter and bomber squadrons fly overhead I remember wishing I had served with them instead, seen more fighting. What I didn't know then was that while I was away doing my duty at the front with the last wave, Freeground had suffered a massive coordinated terrorist attack.
Three habitat sections had been destroyed in the blink of an eye, my entire family was gone. Everyone lost someone in the war. No one was untouched. The people who were responsible for the bombings had been living with us for years. These days, Freeground does not favour a stranger.
The Freeground Fleet is filled with people who crave excitement and pursue our enemies on a fraction of a seconds notice. I wasn't one of those daring few, however.
When I arrived back home twelve years ago and discovered what had happened to my family, I reported for duty with the engineering and construction crews. We rebuilt the habitats that were destroyed and when that was finished five years later I became a communications and priority assessment officer in the operations and port control centre.
For four days out of a five day galactic standard week, I discussed the needs and requests for supplies, repairs, and anything else an arriving ship either required or desired. They circled the station slowly, sometimes dozens of them, sometimes hundreds. Military, corporate and civilian alike, all calmly waiting to be directed by the port artificial intelligence to someone with a beating heart. There was a one-in-fifty chance they would get me. Their requests ranged from the mundane to the unreal. The traders mostly offered more than they requested, some of them willing to do anything to sell their cargo especially when they knew it wouldn't survive the trip to another port. There were days when I wished I was back between decks, alone, repairing some tertiary system in a neglected section of the station no one visited rather than speak to one more traders who had already tried peddling his perishable wares to everyone else. Sometimes the sense of entitlement and self importance travellers carried like rotting baggage was so infuriating it took everything I had to return to work the next day.
I couldn't spend more time than I had to in my quarters either. I may have helped build the replacement habitation sections but that didn't get me my pick from the hundreds of new homes. What I had was smaller than the bathrooms in the deluxe sections and it had that easy to disinfect and reassign prefabricated look. Two rooms were more than some people got, however -- like in the hive levels where units are one point two metres tall, one and a half metres wide and three metres deep -- so I didn't complain. Much.
That day, like almost every other day, I made my way out of my small home and through the catacombs of hallways until I reached the causeway. The habitation we built years ago was so large that its centre housed a forest. Rows of shops and entertainment centres featuring everything one would expect on a core world, or so I was told, lined the walkway. Awnings shielded their open and closed fronts and seating areas. The perfect circle of streets was filled with people, many of whom wore loose clothing over their reshaped vacsuits. If they sealed them up they'd be protected from the rain, from anything, but there was something undeniably fashionable, visibly human about letting the dribble wet your hair, or hiding under an extra layer of clothing. The clothes told as much about what people did for a living, about their place, as they did about their income. Some wore square-cut business suits, others were attired in a myriad of garments that provided scant coverage and high style, all the way up to the practical and overly modest.
We Freegrounders are a melting pot of traveller
s, founder descendants, transients and lost souls.
I glanced up at the overcast holographic sky and cursed the drizzle as I stepped out into the open concourse. In half an hour civil servants would change shifts, the foot traffic was melee thick.
By reflex I closed my black and grey engineer's coat. There was really no need since the Freeground uniform of white and blue I wore underneath was completely sealed all the way up to my jawline. It sustained its own environment, protected from most stellar elements and even sharp objects all in a skin tight shell that was as thin and flexible as common cloth. It was a little too skin tight for my tastes to be honest, so I wore my old engineer's coat, which protected from almost everything the uniform didn't and held every old tool that survived my career as a field repair technician. Most people looked and wondered where I found one, since it looked like an old trench coat used by ground militia on ancient Earth when impact reactive armour was invented.
Nodding at a passerby I pulled up the collar and made my way down the sidewalk to Minh-Chu's, a small restaurant that was little more than a booth with a few stools and tables on a widened area of the walkway. Minh, Ronin in the simulations, waved as I approached and started heating some lo mein. He shook some black sauce on it and added vishri, a water vegetable that I had heard tasted just like shrimp, a fish from Earth I had never seen.
“Your mood matches the weather Jonas.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and nodded. “You'd think they would have planted vegetation that didn't need so much rain. If I had the rank to know what this habitat would be like I would've found other housing.”
“Ha! Watch what you wish for! Someone from Fleet Operations was in here just the other day and she couldn't help talking about Core Port Operational personnel being promoted. The team on your shift is doing such a good job they're looking at promoting the leads. I'd bet you a year of dinner you're on your way up.” Minh said as he handed me my bowl of noodles and chopsticks.
“Oh, just what I wanted.”
“Don't put down rank, friend. This was my reward for retiring early from Infantry Command, a Kingdom built on noodles and rice. Well, I had to sell that fighter I stole from All-Con Prime too, but it's still my Kingdom.”
“I'm your loyal subject as always. Best lo mein I've ever had,” I managed around a mouthful.
“Probably the only lo mein you've ever had. You should get back into fleet, see some solid ground somewhere. Maybe spend some time at another restaurant. I won't mind as long as you come back with friends.”
“One year on All-Con Prime was plenty.”
“Not much of a world, especially after we set most of it on fire at the end of the war. You really should get out there, find a nice home world to make landfall on. Just make sure there's a beach and plenty of women around so I'll have something to do when I get there!”
“And leave your Kingdom?”
“Nothing is a constant but change, I've heard someone say.”
“Ah, we'll both be here until they rebuild, and even during reconstruction you'll probably be on crowd control duty while I put the roof up. Then we'll just settle again. This is our home world, as intentionally wet and miserable it can be.”
“Who let an old man sit on my friend's favourite stool? Move on old timer! My friend will be along any minute.”
“Ha, very funny.”
“You shouldn't be settled so young, people are living to four hundred these days, and they still look fifty!”
“Look who's talking, Mister Restaurateur.”
“Oh, I'm not settled, this place breaks even in just under three months, then I start making credits I can keep. Maybe hire someone who can do my job and then I'm free. I could even qualify for Freeground Fleet and join a Reserve Fighter Squad.”
“First Infantry, now Fleet.”
“Reserve Fleet my friend, missions on a mostly volunteer basis with mandatory patrols twice a week close to home in a Black Hand Interceptor. The only way I'll see combat is if someone attacks the station.”
“Unless they promote me to command and I send your ass out to Kamshi, I hear the Tertiary Battle Group is having a blast maintaining the territorial lines out there.”
“You wouldn't take me away from my noodles.”
“Oh, if they make the mistake of promoting me there's no telling what they'll let me do.”
“Well, then I suppose I'll have to make the best of things out in Kamshi. After they saw our squad simulation replays they didn't have much of a choice.”
I couldn't believe he set me up for a promotion, I knew that Minh's days got a little long, and his kitchen staff of four wasn't exactly the most thrilling bunch, especially since three of them were his sisters, but this was beyond beating the boredom. “Which replay? Who did you send it to?”
“The Lost Wing sim. You remember, when you took command of three wings, took us through the asteroid belt and jumped the Anterans from behind?”
“That was on the secure Academy network! No one is allowed to take on level eight training simulations without clearance, especially since the opponents are trainees and officers.”
“You're a Lieutenant Commander, you have clearance, that's how we were able to play.”
“An inactive Lieutenant Commander, deactivated! Civilian of rank, and you're not even in the service anymore!”
“Ah, but someone knows Admiral Ferrah's favourite recipe for Dim Sum. It's amazing how many people in Fleet just love my cooking. You should have heard her go on about our near zero thermal manoeuvres, if that were a real operation it would take the best scanners in the galaxy to pick us up. I'm telling you she was-”
“She's a former pilot, but of course you knew that.”
“Of course, and you're in her command chain. She was equally unhappy when she heard that you were still filling requisition orders and providing commercial traffic control.”
“Well, there goes the simple life, at this rate she'll hand me a command on a starship somewhere, maybe set me up as a trainer. All because I can give orders from a simulated cockpit.”
“You can also make fifth on the kill leader board while doing it. Not the best, but then, we can't all have the reflexes of an android that can look three seconds in the future,” Minh said as he pretended he was back at the controls of a starfighter, firing at some unseen ship.
A thought occurred to me and I couldn't help but grin. I put down my bowl and slapped the chopsticks on the counter. “Oh, well, sounds like you're a necessary asset!”
“But my restaurant!”
“I'm sure you'll be able to hire someone to take your place with the Fleet pay you'll be drawing. If I'm getting promoted back into a career position I may as well have someone I trust working to keep the fighter jockeys in line.” I said as I stood up and started walking towards the tube shuttle that would carry me to the Operations Deck where I'd start another uneventful shift.
“You're a mean spirited man Jonas! My customers will miss me! I'll put a picture of you up right here on the counter and it will say Jonas Valent: Noodle Master Kidnapper!”
“May your life be interesting!” I called over my shoulder as I walked through the tube entryway.
Chapter 2
Walking To The Crossroads
During the war I was assigned to the engineering staff of a Destroyer named the Loki. It wasn't as interesting as it sounds. There were one hundred and twelve of us engineers there just to keep the systems running while we were on our way to the front. Only half remained on board when we reached All-Con Prime. That's when the excitement started.
The low grade engineering crew were set up with infantry units and sent out to blow up and burn every factory they had. Originally I was sent down to repair the shuttle that Minh-Chu's unit had dropped in on and then I was assigned to them as their engineer. Our objective on the ground was to put a stop to the All-Con Corporation's primary production lines. Minh-Chu saved my hide more times than I could count during that year. He taught me how to
stay alive in a firefight, even tried to teach me how to shoot. I qualified easily in basic training but I was never a great shot, definitely not what one would consider a marksman. Minh took me on as his pet project and what do you know, after a year I was actually a very good shot. I scored in the upper ranks after we got back home some time later.
The fighter pilot stint came later, when our units had to use stolen Raze starfighters to get off world and break through what remained of the All-Con fleet to get home. We never saw combat but there was something about being at the controls of a one point five million credit Raze Starfighter that made it hard to give up the cockpit when we got home.
Don't get me wrong, there's no glamour in spending three days in a cockpit, speeding away from the stars into the darkness, but we were infantry, engineering and other support crew set on our own with simple orders; get your butt back home using stolen fighters and supplies. It was an exciting challenge, if you weren't so terrified that you couldn't enjoy it.
Most of us only had the most basic pilot training. Min-Chu and I were two out of a handful who had taken the time to be fully certified. All together five of us had piloted craft outside of a simulator and we had to lead everyone else, over a hundred ninety untried factory fresh ships flown by green pilots all the way back home. When one hundred eighty seven of us arrived in mostly good condition there was a welcome party the likes of which we had never seen.
After getting back I transferred to the reserves and signed up for the volunteer patrols. Since I was already enlisted they were nice enough to let me keep the fighter but it didn't take me long to realize that the reserves were filled with rich kids who bought their own fighter, or cadets looking to go career-military but who hadn't finished their turn at the Academy or weren't old enough to be in the field. There weren't many so called veterans like myself out there. Minh had sold his fighter to start up his restaurant and didn't have time to volunteer.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins Page 2
