by Kal Spriggs
“One more kiss shouldn’t hurt,” I said and pulled him down again.
***
It was weird docking with Century Station.
The station itself was under spin to give it a sense of gravity. It had been built before we had access to tech like grav-plates, and it would have been prohibitively expensive to upgrade the entire station in the time sense, so it still utilized spin to create g-forces on the rings. The long spokes all opened from the central hub where they connected into the inner and outer rings. The inner ring was under about half a gravity of acceleration and that was where all the military docks, weapons emplacements, and offices were. The central hub was the command center and engineering section and from what I'd heard, it had been fitted with grav-plates to provide artificial gravity.
The Academy shuttle docked at the outer ring, at one of the official business docking ports. The maneuvers up to match speed were “interesting” especially as the pilot piled on acceleration to match the station’s spin. Century Station did have warp field projectors and could sustain a warp field, which could generate an internal gravity field without requiring spin. But it couldn’t dock and undock ships with a warp field up, not without a lengthy process of synchronizing warp fields or else massive energy expenditures to open “holes” in the warp field.
Instead, the three-kilometer-across station rotated in a stately fashion, the outer ring moving at one hundred and seventy meters per second, just fast enough to generate one-g of acceleration. I followed the other cadets off the shuttle and into the docking area. It wasn’t very big, just a waiting room with a couple of Militia in body armor acting as security. There weren’t any other shuttles docked at the moment, and the two guards looked bored. An NCO checked each of us off as we disembarked. When he got to me he squinted suspiciously at his datapad, “Says here you’re going to Summit Station?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” I replied.
“We don’t send cadets to Summit Station,” he glared at his datapad in frustration. “Well, the next cargo run there leaves at twenty hundred. You’ve got a six hour layover. It’ll leave from Section Seven, Bay Nine, Inner Ring.”
“Roger, sergeant,” I nodded. “Anything else?”
“Don’t get in any trouble on the station, no drinking, no fighting, and keep away from the civilian spacers, you’re not on leave, you’re on official travel, don’t forget you’re representing the Militia while you’re in uniform.” He said it fast enough that I could tell he’d probably said those same words a thousand, maybe ten thousand, times. “Next!”
“Yes, Sergeant, thanks,” I shouldered my duffel bag and stepped out of the way of the next cadet. Kyle was further back in line and I moved to a place out of the way to wait for him. I sent out a message to my grandmother as I did so. We’re here.
She didn’t reply directly, but a few minutes later I received a ping on my implant from the station’s main computer, with a helpful map to the station. There was one area highlighted for me, a set of offices in the central hub. I checked on my implant, the central hub was off-limits to unauthorized personnel. On a hunch, I checked my authorizations. Someone had recently granted me access to the central hub. Not just to the offices, either, I had full access.
I wasn’t going to abuse that. For one thing, there’d be questions asked if a cadet wondered into a space where they weren’t supposed to be. For another, I had the feeling the Admiral trusted me to use only the access I needed.
“All ready?” I asked as Kyle came up. I’d already told him that I expected to meet with my grandmother.
“Yeah,” he responded.
We stepped out of the Militia section and went through a couple of hatches before we came out into a public area. The outer ring was where civilian ships docked, and after being at the Academy for five months, it was a bit of a shock.
There were crewmen from dozens of planets and systems. I heard English in multiple accents along with conversations in Spanish, German, and other languages I didn’t recognize. As I followed my map, I passed by a station vendor selling fried cubes of vat-grown meat, the smell filling my nostrils and making me salivate. My stomach growled to remind me that I’d missed breakfast and lunch. A glance at the vendor’s sign, though, advertised that all the vat-grown meat was produced from “100% Recycled Waste Products.”
I was pretty sure that meant sewage. Maybe I was wrong, but I figured I’d rather be hungry than eat that stuff. Kyle didn’t give the stand a second look as we passed.
“The lift is down that way... two hundred meters,” I noted. There were “side lifts” and shuttles throughout the station, but we were close enough to one of the spokes we could walk.
The central atrium of the outer ring was high-ceilinged and there were planted trees and even some birds that made their home in the station. I wondered who had to clean up after them. Maybe that was the “recycled waste products” the vendor’s sign talked about. At the very top of the corridor, the ceiling was transparent and I could watch as the supporting spokes traveled upwards to the inner ring, with part of the central hub visible past that.
I hadn’t been to Century Station before, and the spin-induced g-force was odd. Walking felt just a bit off, not enough for me to really say why. I knew why, I understood the forces involved and that we were “falling” sideways, but knowing the math didn’t help settle my stomach. It was just the smallest, most imperceptible thing and my body kept reminding me about it.
I focused on the crowds, noticing and identifying ship’s uniforms and patches on those I passed. Most of them were companies operated out of Century. Champion Enterprises was the biggest number. But there were a lot of Missionary uniforms too. The Century Missionary Services uniforms were simple and utilitarian. Their ship suits were even more so. They stood out of the crowd, the drab brown of their ships suits and the simple black and white of the crews in their uniforms. Those ships went out to dozens of worlds, I knew. Century’s religious elements had viewed it as their duty since long before they’d colonized Century.
I hadn’t much thought about them, I could admit. I knew that the Planetary Militia also took on escort missions for the Missionary ships when they went to dangerous areas of human space. Vagyr was one example I’d heard of recently. My family hadn’t been particularly religious, though I’d found attending the Academy Chapel to be peaceful and a good place to think.
What surprised me, though, was the number of other uniforms I didn’t recognize. Century didn’t have much native shipping and we didn’t have much to trade, that I knew of, anyway. But I saw at least a dozen civilian uniforms that I didn’t recognize and the sheer number of people surprised me.
What made me stumble to a halt, though, were three spacers wearing black Drakkus Imperial Space Korps uniforms. The three of them stood in a group, laughing, as they watched the crowd walk past. One of them saw Kyle and I in our uniforms and elbowed the others. The three of them looked at us and began laughing harder.
I started to turn towards them, but Kyle’s hand fell on my shoulder, “Jiden, no fighting, remember?”
I shot the three Drakkus spacers a dark look and then stalked away. Their laughter echoed behind me. I didn’t want to know what a Drakkus military ship was doing at Century Station, because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
***
Chapter 15: I Have A Mission
It was amazing what having unlimited access to the station could do for getting a lift. We walked past the long lines for the public lifts and then into a limited-access corridor. A station worker gave us a raised eyebrow, but when I activated the call button for the lift with my implant, he just settled for ignoring us.
The lift arrived and we boarded. At the last minute, a Militia officer hurried up and came through the doors just as they were closing. I noticed he had a drink or something spilled on his uniform and he was dabbing at it with a sodden napkin.
Kyle passed him a handkerchief, “Sir?”
“Thanks,” h
e grunted. “Stupid Drakkus spacers are everywhere, one of them ‘accidentally’ spilled his drink on me as I was finishing up lunch.” He sighed as he looked down at his uniform, “I’m going to have to change and I was already running late. Idiot tried to start a fight with me and...” he trailed off and looked at us both and then shot a look at the maintenance worker. “I shouldn’t be talking about that here. Thanks for the help, cadet,” he finished, just as the lift doors opened. He stepped out into the mid-ring, followed by the maintenance worker.
The doors closed. “That was interesting,” Kyle said, his green eyes distant as he considered what the officer had said.
“That Drakkus is trying to start fights?” I asked
“That he’s not supposed to talk about it in public,” Kyle noted. “That sounds... political.” He said it like it was a bad word. Then again, what I’d seen of politics so far... maybe it was.
I’d sort of noticed that gravity was dropping off and we were in microgravity by the time we reached the hub. Kyle gave a laugh as the doors opened and I shoved my duffel ahead of me. It thudded to the ground as it reached the area of the grav plates. I shot Kyle a look and he smirked. “I offered to help you before...”
“I’m fine,” I snapped, feeling self-conscious as I shouldered the bulky bag.
The directions let me right to an unmarked hatch. It opened at our approach and we went inside.
The Admiral sat behind a set of terminals where she monitored a dozen displays, tapping notes onto her datapad. “Jiden, Cadet Second Class Regan,” she nodded at me and my boyfriend in turn. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“You told her I was coming?” Kyle asked me in a low voice.
“I assumed that my granddaughter had told you and that you would be here,” The Admiral looked over at us. The planes of her face looked harder, her skin tighter. She had a dangerous gleam to her blue eyes, as well, something I hadn’t seen before. “Jiden, I have some bad news for you.”
“What?” I asked in surprise. My first thought was that I must have done something wrong, that I was being kicked out of the Academy or something.
“Your cousins, Melanie and Rawn, their cargo ship, the Kip Thorne, went down in the Dakota System just over a month ago,” the Admiral’s voice was tight. “They survived, but they were arrested for negligent endangerment of human life. The Star Guard took jurisdictional authority and their system judicial governor sentenced them to fifteen years at a prison colony.”
“Are you serious?” I asked in shock.
“Dead serious,” Her voice was hollow. “One of our agents working within Guard Fleet notified me about it. I’ve looked into the case file and there’s some things that don’t match up with the official record. But that’s for me to worry about, not you.”
“Which prison colony?” Kyle’s voice was subdued. He knew what I’d been through and I knew how close he was to his family. Guard prison colonies had bad reputations. Many of them were on airless moons or even toxic planets, where the prison colonists worked mines or harvested rare minerals or gasses. All too often, a sentence at one of those places was more likely to end in death than release.
“Thornhell,” the Admiral said in an emotionless voice. I looked it up on my implant. The first ten or more articles on it mentioned that there was some kind of prisoner uprising going on there and that Guard Army forces had been deployed as “peacekeepers.”
“Oh, God,” I closed my eyes. “Is there anything...”
“I’m doing what I can,” the Admiral interrupted. “You might be surprised by some of the connections I have. But I wanted you to know now so you don’t get ambushed about it.”
“Ambushed?” I asked.
“Charterer Beckman will have heard about it by now. She’s bound to have some kind of media response... which will no doubt want to interview you,” the Admiral growled.
“Media response?” Kyle asked, “That makes it sound like she’s going to plan--”
“She employs over a hundred reporters and manages several newsletters and news outlets,” The Admiral waved a hand and one of her displays shifted to show several news feeds. “She’s going to have them run the story as an attack piece, showing that my grandchildren were reckless and dangerous. She’ll probably have another where she pulls up experts talking about how ‘tragic’ it was that I helped them to operate a ship when they were clearly so poorly trained for it.”
I stared at her in shock. I couldn’t imagine someone using this kind of thing as a weapon. My hands clenched into fists as I considered it. My pulse pounded in my ears. “I’m going to kill her,” I snapped.
“No, Jiden, you won’t,” The Admiral’s voice went iron hard. “You are going out to Summit Station. You’re going to do your summer assignment, you’re going to get good marks, and you’re going to avoid any kind of situation that draws attention to you... especially nothing that includes threatening the life of an elected official. Do you understand me?”
My mouth snapped shut and I looked away from her glare. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” she said. “Because while you’re out at Summit Station, you are also going to be looking into something for me.”
“The pirates bypassed the station and its patrol when they attacked Black Mesa Outpost,” I nodded.
“That’s part of it,” The Admiral confirmed. She waved a hand and her displays vanished, then a map of the system appeared, hovering before us. There were over twenty glittering green icons that surrounded the system, the various watch stations that monitored for pirates, smugglers, or invaders. One of them, though, twinkled red.
“There’s been a trend of ships slipping past Summit Station. Two smuggling vessels slipped out of the system that way two years ago, one of them tied to the smuggling ring you uncovered. Four years ago, the pirate that hit Long Station slipped past the station’s patrol, too. I’m not sure if it’s part of this conspiracy, incompetence, or something else entirely. I’ve looked into it, but there’s no pattern I can identify. The squadron commander for their patrol has been relieved, the station commander has rotated out three times, and none of them have any connections I can see with the others.” She made a face, “All of our perimeter stations have become dumping grounds for officers and enlisted who have shown... errors in judgment, shall we say. Summit Station is markedly so, three of their past squadron commanders have ended their careers there, and five of their last seven station commanders have either retired or resigned from their posts. There’s more than the usual number of disciplinary issues with their crews as well.”
She transferred a file to my implant. It was full of personnel files, money transfers, bank statements... My eyes went wide as I realized that a lot of this was extremely sensitive information. I didn’t know how she had managed to get it and I didn’t feel comfortable having access to it.
“Keep an eye out while you’re there, find out what you can,” she said. She looked past me at Kyle. “And you... you keep an eye on my granddaughter. She might be the only one I have left.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kyle braced to attention.
“Now, the station monitors have been told not to track you, but if I run that particular program long, someone will notice. Besides that, I have to get back to central command, this is just one of my overflow offices. Someone will notice if I’m not back soon.” The Admiral sighed. “You should go.”
On impulse, I stepped forward and caught her up in a hug. “Take care of yourself.”
She went stiff in my arms, but after a long moment, she patted me on the back. Her voice cracked a bit when she spoke, “You too, girl. Now, you’d better go.”
***
“You okay?” Kyle asked as we got back in the lift.
“No,” I let out a shuddering breath. I shoved my bag out the way and reached out, grabbing him in a hug. “This sucks”
“I’m sorry,” he said, returning the hug.
“I feel like my family has a target on their backs and somebody is picking
them off, one by one,” I buried my face in his shoulder. This was horrible. I just hoped that my grandmother could do something for Mel and Rawn. I hadn’t ever been exactly close to them, but they were family... and this whole situation felt wrong.
“Everything will work out,” Kyle said, patting my back.
I wanted to protest that he didn’t know that, that he couldn’t know that, but I needed the reassurance right now.
As the lift dropped down to the middle ring, we settled down towards the floor. I went from being gently held to having my feet dangling. “Okay,” I muttered, you can let me go now.”
He did and I straightened my uniform. I finished just in time as the lift doors opened and a couple of Militia members came aboard. I shouldered my bag and Kyle grabbed his and we stepped past them. “Where to?” I asked, wiping at the tears that still hung in the corners of my eyes and hoping no one noticed. I’d done enough crying of late that I’d invested in smear-resistant makeup that was subtle enough that it hid the splotchy-face and red eyes a bit. Thank God for small favors.
“This way, I think,” Kyle said. We walked down the corridor, pausing as we came out into the concourse area. The curvature of the inner ring was steeper, here. The inner ring had a smaller radius. The central corridor was narrower and lacked the crowds of the outer ring. Most of those I saw were either in Militia uniforms and body-suits, or station workers in coveralls. There were a handful of civilians, but there weren’t many and they stood out.
There were also heavy, armored hatches spaced along the ring and the inner ring ceiling wasn’t transparent. The corridor was more spartan, with a few signs for shops, most of them selling food or military-themed supplies or equipment. My stomach rumbled to remind me that I still hadn’t eaten anything.
Apparently either Kyle had heard it or he knew me well enough. He led the way to the nearest food vendor. There were a dozen enlisted-men seated on stools in the narrow room. The food smelled spicy and it made my eyes water. I recognized the smell of phall and thankfully, so did Kyle, we turned around and left. “Let’s not eat there,” Kyle grinned at me.