13 Degrees of Separation

by Hechtl, Chris

  He'd had his pay cut do to budget constraints once since the admiral had left a few weeks ago. They were talking about doing it again, 'trimming fat and reducing the pay to appropriate levels' while at the same time giving themselves a fat bonus for doing it!

  No, he couldn't wait to get the yard going so he could give them all the finger. He'd heard a few people mutter about starting a union, so far it had been all talk. He wasn't sure how far they'd go with it, the last two guys who'd talked about it had been fired for bullshit reasons. Now no one talked about it on the job or anywhere a cyber could hear.

  What he'd love to do is get the yard going and then offer everyone a job. If everyone walked off the job and quit they'd be screwed! He could just imagine a paper pusher trying to do his job! Let them try to muscle metal plates together to weld! Work 16 hour shifts with no overtime allowed... only to find out your rent had gone up or the cost of food had gone up... bullshit! It frizzed his ass no end to find out that he and Shari hadn't been included in that lease for life deal. Bullshit! The damn slikes! They had been born on this fracken station, their families before them, on and on. They deserved it! But oh, no, they gave it to the people on the Kiev and the Lieandra only! Bull! Bull fracken bull!

  No, after the last rent increase Shari had talked with Savo and Petunia and they'd racked up together. It was funny, when they'd announced they were leaving the leasing agents had freaked. Apparently all these rent increases weren't in their control, or so they said. Corporate. Bull. They'd tried to dangle incentives but they'd stuck to their guns. Moving in hadn't been easy but they were making it work.

  He scratched an itch absently, chuffing at the idea of group living. Shari eyed him and he stopped and shrugged under her gaze, not meeting her brown eyes. She hated it when he scratched in public. All these damn rules, social ones and work rules were getting on his nerves. He needed time to blow off steam.

  He still didn't know what the hell to do about the home front. Shari had talked him and the others into a group marriage. They were all still feeling it out. Being in a group was weird, cool with a couple of gals but totally odd with another guy involved. He still wasn't sure about that. Savo was a nice guy, and he was doing a good job representing them in the meetings, but still... weird.

  Shari wanted a kid, so did Petunia. But they wanted this Yard Dogs thing to get off the ground first, get it up and running smoothly. He wasn't at all sure about Petunia, Savo was right, she was a whole lot of woman to love. Handling the idea of somehow getting her preggers since they were technically different species... that was a bit beyond his gang education. Way beyond, way, way beyond.

  Savo, his thoughts turned to his 'husband'. He was a good guy, he could handle his beer and he never wanted to tick him off. One session on the mat staring up at the ceiling dazed had convinced him of that! Savo was security so he had contacts... hopefully something would break soon. He turned and grabbed a piece of sand paper and started scuffing up and cleaning the copper pipe he was working on.

  “Deep thoughts?” Shari asked, cleaning her pipe with a bottle brush.

  “Huh?” Howie asked. He looked at her. She was pregnant which was cool. She had to watch herself in tight situations now though. She couldn't quite get that belly in and out of tight quarters so easily.

  Shari chuffed. Howie was off balance mentally, she could tell. It was a lot to absorb for an uneducated chimp from the gangs. “I'm just wondering since you've sanded that pipe twice now,” she said.

  “Oh?” he replied, stopping. He stared at it and then over to his box. She chuffed a laugh. He shook his head with a soft snort at his own wool gathering and picked up the valve assembly he was supposed to attach. “Okay, so I'm just a little off today. Go figure,” he muttered.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Savo sighed, shaking his head as the others murmured amongst themselves. He was a chimp and yeah it was stereotypical but he seriously wanted to swing from the rafters right now, all this chatter was driving him stir crazy! Some of the people involved...

  They say you shouldn't work with family, and he wasn't quite sure how true that was. His new family group formed part of the backbone of the fledgling company. Howie and Shari were their welders... with nothing to weld. His lovely Petunia was their only certified space worker... with nothing except the truss extruder to work on right now.

  The Taurens Gwen and Riff were only here in spirit, both were currently working their day jobs in the station's engineering department.

  Taylor and Rasha Warner were their heavy hitters, together they had ten percent of the shares as well as the controlling key codes for some of their equipment. They were serving as co-chair of the board as well as CFO and CEO of the company. As Cybers they were also junior members of the station council... and also reserve naval officers.

  Anthony Spakitelli, Aka Sparks, and his wife Regina were here, as was Spark's cohort Roger Freeze aka Mr. Freeze and his tiny wife Ezri.

  Sparks and Freeze were part of the engineering crew, their wives were the medics of the company. They served under another council member and member of their board, Dr. Megan Trask. Dr. Trask didn't attend meetings however, she was a busy lady and had handed her proxy to the Warners.

  To his surprise and initial annoyance another member had bought shares from the Warners, the dumb AI Clio. Clio wasn't quite so dumb anymore, not so much of an air head since Sprite had repaired and rebuilt her. Savo was curious how much of the admiral's AI had rubbed off on the muse. He didn't have anything to judge her behavior off of though, he'd only met her after her rebuild. He'd at first thought of her as a spy until she'd proven her worth by taking over the brunt of the paperwork.

  On the other end were Alice, her husband Ralph, they had no skills in construction but had bought shares anyway. Bert Bertoli had also bought shares, he wasn't sure from whom. The restaurateur was too busy with his growing business however to attend regular meetings. He did cater them however, which was nice. Savo snorted, fingering the beer mug in front of him. Not that they needed much being here in Ralphi's bar.

  When John had suggested this project he'd been all for it, but he hadn't known the sheer bullshit involved. If he had he'd of bailed long ago. Stubborn orneriness and a will to not only prove the doubters wrong, but also show everyone John was right kept him going. Kept him and many of the others going, it sure wasn't for the pay! They were still running in the red.

  It wasn't John's fault he'd underestimated the opposition. He'd tucked away some really nice equipment for them too, which would be nice to use if they could ever get most o fit out of the damn storage! The only thing currently in use was the little truss factory sitting out in space nearby. It was a fifty meter long silver tube with solar panels on one end. It could spit out truss segments at an astonishing rate, all built and ready to be connected to other segments, or pieces of modules, or other structural components. But it lacked the materials.

  They had a solar panel maker, wire extruder... just feed it aluminum, or copper, or plastic, or a mix of other materials and it could make wires of any type in any gauges you needed as long as you wanted. It could even make pipe, hoses, and duct work... but again no materials.

  An electronic fabber, an assembly fabber, EPS conduit extruder... The list of minor but important factories went on and on, filling a good part of their 200 cubic meter warehouse.

  There was a robot maker... something they had tried to put to use with mixed results. The cost of running the blasted thing made it a black hole, they couldn't keep up with the bills to run it so they'd shut it down last week. It sucked, they had a mini factory that could churn out all sorts of bots and it was sitting there collecting dust like all the others.

  The pieces they flat out refused to acknowledge they had were the micro fusion reactor and pair of molecular furnaces. Those were critical components, ones that a lot of people badly wanted since no one could make them. Well tough, it was theirs and they weren't giving it up. Nor were they going to give up the fiv
e industrial replicators Irons had given them just before leaving on Phoenix. Absolutely no one knew about them and they were doing their best to keep it that way.

  With the molecular furnaces, replicators, power, and raw materials they could make just about anything not on the restricted list... and a few components that were. Apparently when the admiral turned over the reins of all this to the Warner's he'd also uploaded the key codes to allow them to use some of the lesser restricted files... if they signed into the machines as military officers.

  John had even given them, Sparks, Howie, and a few of the others detailed blueprints to make the yard and other things. Tons of software and data, critical things no one outside of Pyrax had. And apparently no one in Antigua had any interest in letting them implement without a fight.

  Their original plan was out the lock, hell, they were on what, plan C? D? E? He didn't know. It didn't matter, just as one of them finally got somewhere damn it!

  “So what's wrong now?” he asked with a sigh. The others glanced his way and then turned to Alice who in turn turned to the Warners with a raised eyebrow.

  “I'm guessing something good,” Ezri sighed. She brushed her skirt, annoyed at being here on duty. She had twenty minutes before she had to go back on shift to cover for Jordan.

  “Yes... and no. The bad news is yes the space bots line is down. We lost the last contract when we couldn't deliver and even incurred a penalty for nondelivery.”

  “Wonderful,” Howie sighed.

  “So we can't build the tug?” Shari asked, trying hard not to sound exasperated. Petunia her Neo gorilla sister wife nearby grunted in irritation.

  “Right now we can't even afford a pilot for one,” Clio the AI replied. She had originally been one of the muses on the station, her role had been as historian and researcher. The admiral's AI had found her and restored her higher functions and retasked her with managing Fusion one. She'd finally been relieved of that duty when another AI and sufficient organics to man and maintain the reactor had stepped up.

  At ends she'd bounced around with small tasks before she'd decided to invest some of her earnings into various start up banks and other projects including the Yard Dogs. She'd decided that she owed Sprite and the admiral that much, to try to oversee their creation and help it along. So far they weren't having that much luck in that department.

  The plan had been to build enough space bots to fund a tug and hire a pilot. With a tug in their stable they could start supplying themselves with the raw material needed by the other factory modules... thus getting off the ground. However that plan had been demolished by the latest tariff the station council had slapped on outside construction.

  The group talked, not really getting anywhere. The Warners seemed distracted half the time, not really paying attention so the organics in the room rambled. Alice got up and swept the floor. After a while Ralphi got up and went behind the bar to unload the dishwasher.

  The consensus eventually came down to the fact that they needed more help, they needed resources. They were producing space bots but were still in the red. “And we'll be in the red until we can either catch a break or get off this fecking station!” Savo snarled. The others didn't disagree. They didn't like it that the station was either undercutting them or taxing them heavily. They were supposed to be a start up, with a tax shelter and other protections to allow them to get a good foundation and grow. But the way the station and government were working it they were getting screwed.

  They were also pissed off over the slip. The slip was a scaffold, a full repair slip for a medium sized ship. It was a simple thing really, just a structure that wrapped around the ship so lights, robots, and other things necessary to working safely on the hull of a ship could anchor themselves to.

  Admiral Irons had directed its construction months ago in order to fulfill the contract between the station and Kiev 221 and the Lieandra. Several ships had asked to be repaired since then but all had been rejected. Oh they were sold parts at high prices by the stationers, but exterior repairs were off limits according to the station council. So the slip sat their idle, drifting like a piece of junk. They had repeatedly tried to rent it but had been denied. The station council never gave a reason why, nor even a figure to try to achieve. Just a straight no.

  The Warners were in control of the military equipment Irons had left behind. They had proposed building their own slip which had been supported by the company. However they had yet to get anywhere since the station was slowly strangling them.

  “We're working on it. The fact that we are one of only a dozen companies other than the station that can even produce bots, tugs, and other space machinery is a good thing.”

  Savo grunted. “But not good enough. We're in the red remember? We're paying more for the resources and the assembly than were getting for each bot.”

  “And we can't raise the prices, we're locked into contracts. And if we do we'll get underbid. Which reminds me the latest contract is up next week. We've been informed the station isn't interested in renewing.”

  “Lovely,” Savo muttered rubbing his brow. “We can't even... you're telling me we were making the damn bots for free, hell paying them to take them off our hands and now they are telling us thanks but no thanks?”

  “It's about that way,” Clio sighed. “We were underbid. I can't get involved because I'm on the board here. Same with the others, we all have to abstain.”

  “Which drops the contracts into the hands of our competitors. Who can't do shit compared to us! Are they nuts?” Savo snarled.

  “It seems that way doesn't it?” Clio said serenely. His brown eyes studied her avatar. She shrugged off his gaze and smiled back at him. “Staring me down only works on a meat sack,” she told him winningly. He snorted and finally looked away.

  “Figures,” he muttered.

  “So we can make the bots and tugs for ourselves then?” Alice asked. The others looked at her.

  “We can't afford them. The resource cost is just too expensive,” Clio explained patiently. “The plan was to grow, to build bots and tugs and then use them to grow exponentially but unfortunately all these taxes are killing us.”

  “Yeah we know,” a few of the people in the room all said in unison.

  Clio nodded unhappily. “And I know you know. We're going in circles.”

  “Which you AI hate. Okay. So any other ideas?”

  “There aren't any other start ups. We've got reduce inventory soon and get rid of some of our warehouse space or we're going to be charged a premium on top of the fee when the contract is up for renewal in three months.”

  “You're not serious.”

  “I'm afraid I am. The zoning commission changed the rates in our section.”

  “Oh feck all. That's all we need!”

  “Yeah well...” Clio sighed as the organics vented. She really couldn't blame them. She'd started to see a pattern in all this activity against them. At first she'd thought it was all bureaucracy but she'd noted the pattern when the commission had ruled in a closed door meeting. That had opened her virtual eyes to the possibility of enemy action.

  Some of the other AI she'd shared the data with were at least keeping an open mind. She knew the organics already had their suspicions, they were spouting them even now as they blew off steam. It was so fascinating seeing emotional responses from them. Fascinating, just intriguing. Did they understand that all this angst was raising their blood pressure causing possible damage? There was after all, nothing they could do to stop the process. Of course they did know all that yet they did all this yelling anyway. What a fascinating paradox, she thought.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Mairi and Olga found and rented their quarters. Mairi didn't care where they ended up, a bed was a bed at this point, she was tired. Her mother had tried to drag her all over the station looking at this and that. All while Mairi carried their luggage of course.

  Still, they were here now, and that was what mattered. She smiled as her mother pre
ssed her thumb to the lock and then stepped aside so Mairi could. When Mairi removed her thumb the light above the lock turned green and the door opened with a soft shush.

  Slowly they stepped inside just as the lights flicked and came on. They looked around and were amazed by the space and furnishings. The door opened to a massive room, ten times bigger than their tiny apartment back in Senka. The green painted living room was larger than their previous home of 2 years. “You really think we can afford this?” Olga asked, sounding excited. She was staring at the wall screen in front of the tan couch with a giddy grin on her face.

  Mairi looked around, her left hand on her shoulder strap. She honestly couldn't answer that, she wasn't sure. But she was determined to try, they'd signed a two month lease. If they kept the payments on time they'd be able to extend it into a one year at the present rate.

  “As long as you don't run us into the red mom. And if we both can find a decent job soon,” Mairi replied, setting the duffel down behind her and then shrugging the other bags off. She resented that her mother had only her small clutch bag. Olga had said it was to keep her hands free in case of need. Yeah right.

  Her mother rushed around, trying the various appliances out. Mairi tossed her bags onto her the bed she chose and then turned to her mother. Her mother poked the mattress and then nodded. Mairi made a point of not fetching her bag, instead taking her turn inspecting the apartment. It was nice, something out of a holo movie. Quite nice. She wasn't sure she... no they... mom was just going to have to find a damn job like it or not... would be able to afford it in the long run, but it was still nice. Nice and clean. A fresh start indeed.