Once settled on board, he became part of the crew, even if an outsider. The Moth tended to dock in the TikaTiki section of the Torus. The captain had a piece of tail nearby. The thought made him chuckle under his breath. His jokes always worked better on humans.
Despite the lack of human companionship, the Moth was what he needed most right now. Anything to keep him moving about the universe became good enough. Even now, while he sat in a dispensing unit not far from the docks, the nostalgia of the setting struck him hard, if not the beauty of the location. The gray station walls did little for his complexion. The artificial lighting would never show off his hard-earned spray tan in the proper light. However, the port of call pulled at his heartstrings.
If he’d been born a few centuries earlier, he would have loved to ply the waves of a world, his world Earth, as a deckhand on a tramp steamer. Bouncing from one island to another arrayed across the South Pacific, a woman in every port… The whole idea of a seagoing bachelor seemed a bit too romantic.
Out in the black, there would be no woman in every port… There were not enough humans out here to fill that need. Best he could do was a few hours here and there with a sexbot or, if he could pay the price, a sex worker. The future and space were not as glamorous or adventurous as Jax once expected it to be.
Now if he saved the coin to buy his own ship, a new and exciting world of exotic trim would beat a path to his private quarters. Women loved the idea of a man in charge… at least that was what he wanted to think. Being stuck on a ship full of lizards had kept him learning more about the other races, but they all seemed so… alien. He missed the humans from Earth, even if he didn’t like them much. Their stupidity made him even angrier than the alien thinking he’d encountered since leaving Earth.
He examined the walls that surrounded him. The layers of paint only covered the decades of filth hidden just beneath the surface. Everything might look shiny, but Jax knew the ‘verse was still a shithole. No matter how hard you polished a turd, it remained a pile of shit at the end of the day. He knew each new owner would come in, and the first thing they would do was slap on a new coat of paint, as if a color change might change the history of what came before.
Try as hard as he might to keep a positive outlook, loneliness seeped in from time to time. If not for the steady stream of water this deckhand job provided, Jax might have taken one last walk out an airlock, his suit conveniently left behind. In Jax’s mind, the universe held no more secrets. Everything had been discovered, all a person needed to know could be searched via the implant, and one might experience anything the heart desired. The mystery of life was now packaged and sold at the highest available download rate. Adventure died along with romance… Perhaps there had never been that much of either in the world to begin with.
Absentmindedly, he scratched the latest coat of paint and discovered a clump of crap that had been covered over. It looked like an insect had landed on the wet wall and found itself entombed in the next coat over. The gruesome discovery disappeared, wiped on his denim pants. His dark mood was interrupted by a call over his com implant.
The voice of the Moth’s first officer echoed though Jax’s skull. His voice was always too loud for a human’s ears. “Ship is loaded, we leave in a cycle. Finish whoever you’re doing and get back here for final checks.”
“Damn…” Jax did little to hide the disappointment. It was hard to pronounce the first officer’s name: a cross between the sound of a sneeze and gee-whiz. Jax settled long ago on the shortened, easier to pronounce version. “Whiz… Captain said we would have at least three cycles downtime… a man has his needs, you know…”
“Quit bitchin’. That was before we got a special come down the pipe. Listen, you don’t want the gig, plenty of other hands lookin’ for work, ya know.”
If Jax didn’t know better, he would have guessed the first officer on the other end of the call was a human. It had taken the better part of his tour to teach the TikaTiki male officer better use of human slang and idioms. Over the coms, the thing sounded human. In person, the two-meter-tall lizard, with a tail just as long, remained hard to speak to with a straight face. Jax meant no offense, but it was hard not to laugh when the thing spoke, the lizard lips struggling to form human sounds.
“Jax… should I find a replacement for you?”
“No… you guys would never be the same without me. Besides, what would the Moth be without its flame?”
“I hope you understand that makes no sense. Get your fluffy monkey butt back here, or I’ll find another primate to replace you.” Whiz cut off the connection before Jax corrected the nickname. The whole fluffy butt thing sounded extremely strange.
A group of aliens had just arrived, all clustered together in a gaggle of matching brightly printed yellow shirts. They each carried an archaic recording device. They scanned anything and everything about them. If not for the giant fish heads with huge unblinking dead eyes, Jax might have thought of them as humans on vacation. A pair walked up and posed, making sure to get their picture with Jax in the background. Each held up three parts of what looked like a flipper.
Jax could only take so much strange, and his limit was just reached. He stood and smoothed out the wrinkles of his best floral print shirt. His shirt’s bright lemon tones reminded him of the Earth tropics, even if the frozen vacuum of space rested only a few feet away.
Jax longed for the warmth of the sun beating down on his face and the comfort of female companionship against his heart. He knew there was no chance of finding either over the next cycle. Better to head back and save his units for a porn download before they shipped out. He still had his best friend Rosie and her five sisters to keep him company. Once past the first jump-gate, all contact with the station would be lost. He needed to set up some private entertainment for his off-time viewing.
The ship’s computer remained tiny compared to Far Reach Station’s mainframe. The amount of information he could gather while within reach of a station signal still boggled his mind. Even after all his time with the TikaTiki, what they considered entertainment escaped him. What they found pornographic left him scared and still filled him with nightmares.
Thank goodness the Moth gave each of the crew a private cube of a place to call home. The privacy would be needed this trip. He needed to set up a few special items to download.
The place his butt landed to watch the world pass by sat only a few steps from the lift that would return him to the low gravity section of the station. The Moth, like many of the currently designed ships, was not suited to be taken into a gravity well. Ships designed for that kind of hauling had a setup. The Moth remained set for deliveries in as near zero gravity as possible. That was what the crew trained for. Anything they delivered would need to be picked up from orbit. That remained their bread and butter contract.
Going from the near-Earth normal gravity to near-zero G made his insides feel funny. Once he reached the Moth, he would need to dress out for the trip. His street clothes would never do for the extended time in zero gravity. The blood would not circulate right, and he would lose too much bone density.
The docks were always so damn cold. The station used just enough heat to keep a person from freezing solid on the walk to the ship’s airlocks. Since the cargo was moved by remote-piloted mechs and the customs workers were all controlled remotely, the only people about the docks would be crew, and the station cared little for their comfort. Ships that carried passengers all docked in a heated section of the station.
Someday, Jax might try to sign on to one of the custom liners that only carried the cream of the crop. He choked back a chuckle. He wasn’t the kind of person that would suck up to some rich bastard just so he could get a cushy job on a liner. He liked his independence too much to tie himself down to a gig like that.
At least his captain fought to get the ship docked close to the heated comfort of the lift. Three bays down, there sat the Moth in all its rusted glory. From this angle, it was plain to see the
ship would need some major upkeep soon. The captain and the head office pushed the ship past its dock time, but there remained normal preventive maintenance that needed to be completed to keep her in the stars.
The cargo bay had been sealed shut. The first officer hadn’t lied, the ship was getting ready to set out of port. Strange for them to be heading out so soon after the arrival. Not completely out of the ordinary but strange. Strange never sat well with Jax’s stomach.
Jax tried his thumbprint on the airlock but found it had been locked from the inside. He pressed the call button, but it was more satisfying to pound on the airlock control panel with the flat of his hand. He was smart enough not to punch the thing—it might have broken his fingers on the metal door. “Oh, come on, let me in. I came as soon as you called me back.” Jax slapped the door three more times. “Whiz, don’t be an ass, let me in.”
The door slid back and Flanges, the chief engineer, stood on the far side.
“What the hell? Why’d you lock me out?”
“Captain’s orders.”
Jax should have found it strange to serve on a ship full of lizards, but it really bothered him little. The funny thing, it was hard for most humans to tell one TikaTiki from the other, male from female. For Jax, he found it easy. He kept pet geckos as a kid, so he knew lizards well. Besides, they shared the same desire for warmth. Not that the TikaTiki were cold-blooded creatures, they just came from a warm planet and liked the temperature warm like Jax did.
“What do you mean, Captain’s orders?” Jax asked, the engineer’s words finally sinking in.
“He ordered the airlock locked out. We will leave now that you are here.”
The swish of the doors closing behind him and their reassuring clunk when they locked down proved to Jax he was home, inside the ship. He kept pace behind Flanges into the hold of the ship. “What is so important we need to leave so soon?”
Jax had a few more questions, but they all left his thoughts when he came upon a large box made of black highly polished wood sitting in the center of the bay. Multiple straps held the cargo down from any possible jostling during transit. The ebony wood had to cost a fortune. The gold inlaid ornaments were more than Jax made in a year. If he had to guess, the box cost more than the annual operating budget of the Moth.
Flanges had to be upset about not getting the time to recycle the filters, but now Jax understood the urgency for getting away from the station as quickly and quietly as possible. If the design of the carrying case was any indication, then they must carry some treasure that would make them targets. Any privateers willing to make a quick credit, and not afraid to kill the crew to do it, would hunt them.
“Fuck me,” Jax said. Maybe the time had come for him to rethink his career on a tramp freighter and reconsider that luxury liner idea. Jax had the inescapable feeling he had seen this type of container before. From Earth… perhaps it was a racial memory etched into his brain. “How long till we leave?” he asked.
The sound of the clamps releasing the ship from the airlock answered his question.
In the near-zero gravity, Whiz floated down the ladder from the second level of the cargo hold. “I told you we would wait… Double-check the tie-downs, we don’t want the cargo chasing us around the ship if we need to make maneuvers.”
“Whiz…” Jax pointed at the expensive crate. “What the hell is this?”
“That is our cargo, and we are being paid a premium to not ask questions, along with getting it to the drop point on time.” Whiz shook his head. “You know the company motto, ‘If the money is there, we don’t care.’”
“You know I never liked that saying…” Jax kneeled next to the quick-release lever that any child should be able to figure out. He knew Whiz was keeping him busy to keep his bitching to a minimum. However, Jax remained a well-versed multitasking complainer. “What kind of life outlook is that, anyway? Where are we taking this…” For a moment, Jax couldn’t think of the word he wanted. “…box, anyway?”
“Only the Captain knows, but I learned from our flight path we have no intended port of calls until our return back here.” Whiz said the words like they meant nothing.
Jax, on the other hand, stood straight up. His hands on his hips. He couldn’t believe his ears. “And that isn’t more than a little strange? This stinks to high heaven.”
The unmistakable sound of Flanges taking a series of deep breaths would have normally made Jax burst into laughter, but this situation called for seriousness. The whole setup sounded like a one-way ticket, a suicide mission for which there was no asking for volunteers.
The engineer walked about the cargo, his nose lifted in the air. “I smell nothing, though I do need to cycle the filters. It is beyond the recommended safe use period of the life support system, but we should be fine if we don’t stay out too long.”
“No, Flanges, it was only an idiom… a saying that this is a shitty situation and we might all die. I have never been the person to complain—”
“That is an incorrect statement, you are always the first to complain. If you did not work so cheaply and give us something to laugh at, your constant complaining would find you ejected out the airlock.” Whiz pointed to the cargo. “Now, please, finish your sign off of the cargo so we can hit the wormhole on time.”
Jax grumbled to himself. He didn’t want to be in stasis, and if the cargo broke loose, it would be his ass if it did. He looked over the manifest. Over half of the required boxes had been left blank. It proved impossible to tell what the container held from the shoddy way the forms were filled out. Someone must have paid a premium to get this cargo to pass through Far Reach customs. It basically had the weight of the container and the dimensions. For all Jax could tell, the contents might be anything, any contraband that could get them all the death penalty, or worse, in many systems.
Satisfied the chocks were in order, he placed his thumbprint and sealed off the shipment order. His ass was now on the line if they were boarded. As the able-bodied deckhand, he became the cargo master, responsible for the load and all its contents until delivered to the receiver. He was so screwed.
“Both of you, get to your quarters and trank out. We will pass the gate as soon as we can.” Whiz floated back up the ladder before Jax could think of another complaint.
His print on the scanner, there was little to do now but wait until they were boarded and he was slapped into irons or they delivered the cargo safely. He could see no other options. It wasn’t the first time in his life he’d be wrong.
The tiny space that served as his quarters was not far off. It took him no time to reach them and find the few others who shared the area already tranked out. Jax wasn’t entirely sure about the mechanics of interstellar space flight, but he knew enough to know it made his head hurt, and he wouldn’t crap right for several days after each jump.
Long before any of the spacefaring races reached the stars, someone came first. The builders. They had created great works of engineering marvels that even the most advanced races only marveled at. They built the basic bones of Far Reach Station and left it largely unfinished. They also created the systems of wormhole gates that burrowed through space-time and made interstellar travel possible.
If not for the gate system it would take generations to travel from one part of the universe to another. Places like the backwater corner of the universe that contained Earth would have never been found. Jax knew a few large ships could reach near the speed of light. It was rumored a few races could jump through wormholes without the gate system, but as far as most mortals understood, the gates made the universe work.
The major problem with the current system of traveling through interstellar space fucked with the mind of anyone not tranquilized into oblivion. Some who made the trip awake claimed they met God, others the Devil. Either way, if you didn’t dose yourself before wormhole space travel, you came out the other side… changed… and not in a good way. Most tales that spacers told were of a crew member who went insane fro
m the experience and killed their shipmates while they slept.
Jax lay down in his rack, the privacy curtain closed, and waited for the drugs to knock him out. They always gave him a headache, but the pain remained better than the alternative. Nearing oblivion, he remembered what the large black box reminded him of. It looked like an old Earth method of disposing of bodies. The Moth carried a coffin built large enough to hold a pair of people… side by side. Long-suppressed memories of ancient tales, legends of alien monsters, and drug-induced hyper-sleep nightmares rushed to his mind. “Fuck me,” he mumbled before drifting off to sleep.
<=OO=>
Jax thought he never dreamed while under the influence of the trank drugs. There was no memory of them. If he did dream, it was probably better he had no recollection of them. He assumed the dreams would be filled with nightmares, and not being able to wake from bad dreams was more than he could stomach.
This time was different.
He woke with the memories of all the dreams he’d suppressed in the past. Nightmares induced from a childhood of watching the worst form of horror entertainment available to an insatiable Earth audience. Jax’s hands quaked when he moved to rub the sleep from his eyes. His throat ached like he’d been breathing hard since the ship left port.
Normally, each time the ship entered a new system, there was terror enough waiting for the interlude between jumps. The deep black of space concealed all manner of individuals ready to do worse than any film director ever imagined. This would be one of those stops that most ships worked hard to avoid.
Jax struggled to wake up, sleep still filling his eyes. He said, “Status.”
Most times, space travel involved more than a single jump to reach a destination. Depending on the location of the wormholes and the gates that controlled them, a ship might need to travel in normal space for several days between gates. That was the dangerous part of the journey.
Humble Beginnings Page 12
