Flux Runners

by William Joseph Roberts

  Doug solemnly looked around the table at each of his crew — his family — and proudly smiled. “Alright then, it’s settled. All in. Let’s get to work.”

  cHAPTER 5

  The Betty, Nova star class transport

  Sol system, en route to Mars Orbit

  May 19, 2176 / Early morning (Betty Time)

  “G

  ood Morning Miss Melanie,” Wes crooned as he walked into the ships mess hall. It was one of the blander areas of the ship. The walls and bulkheads had been painted a dark pea green at some point in the ship’s distant past. Coolers lined one side of the room while storage compartments lined the other. a long room. At the opposite end of the room was the cooking and serving area of the mess hall. It was dominated by a buffet-style chow station situated on the far end of the room. Behind that was the counter space and gadgets used for meal preparation and the domain of the ships cook, Melanie Kleszinski. She spent most of her duty days prepping meals for the crew. “What culinary surprise do you have in store for us today?”

  “Ain’t none of you getting shit from me today!” Melanie threw a spatula into the galley’s dishwasher. “I swear every damn one of you keeps making messes just for me to clean up! Don’t you think that if I wanted to have kids, that I would have had them by now? I swear to God, when I find out whoever has been wiping snot boogers under my tables, I’m gonna throw them out of a damned airlock!”

  Wes quietly slipped into the ships head, the restroom at the forward end of the Mess hall. “Oh my God, she’s on a rampage today,” he whispered to himself as he lifted the toilet lid. “Oh, what the fuck! Really? Skid marks again! Seriously, people.” He sighed.

  “Are you shitting me, Wes?” Wes could hear Melanie’s heavy footfalls on the deck plating as he made her way toward the head. “Are there skid marks in there again? I just scrubbed that bathroom yesterday. I swear I’m gonna feed every damned one of you laxatives one day then lay duct tape on that seat to make sure you people remember to clean up after yourselves! That’s it! I am so done! Every damned one of you are on your own today!” The distinctive sound of a metal pot clattered to the deck plating somewhere out in the mess hall.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mel. I’ve got it,” Wes said. “Who seriously still does this outside of elementary school?” He quickly sanitized the room, then took a seat and accessed the SAPP implant in his left forearm.

  “So, what’s the latest and greatest in tech news this morning, I wonder?” He hummed to himself as he browsed the latest articles on nano processors.

  The ship’s intercom system crackled, popped, and buzzed to life. “

  Shit, that’s not it, where did you go, you little bugger?” Rachel's voice whispered through the tinny intercoms. “Ah-ha! There you are!”

  The classical sounds of Mozart that played in the background were suddenly replaced with the electronic beats and whip cracks of Devo’s Whip It, wrapped snugly inside of a metal coffee can.

  “Huh, Cheezy’s up early, but good choice of songs to start the day,” Wes mused. He continued to browse the articles and hummed along with the beat. “Hmmm ...indeed...”

  “Dammit! Not that one, the other one. Stupid fingers,” Rachel fussed. The song suddenly changed to the heavy base fueled punches of Marilyn Manson's cover of Tainted Love.

  “Oh, what the hell does she think she’s doing messing with my playlists? Devo was a classic, but this crap has got to go,” Wes mumbled to himself. “Cheezy! Get away from my station!” His frustrated shouts vibrated off of the inside walls of the small restroom. With a quick flick of his wrist, the holo display vanished and he hurriedly finished his business. Moments later, Wes stumbled onto the bridge, gasping for breath as he rushed to his station.

  “Geek on the bridge,” Rachel announced. “Isn’t this such a touching song, Wesley,” she sarcastically snickered. “Oh, come on Geek, let it play man. It gets so boring with your old people music playing in the background.”

  “To hell with that,” Wes said. “The Captain put me in charge of communications and the intercom system is part of communications. That means I own the intercoms!”

  He tapped his access code into the control screen followed with an audible, “BLEEERP! Access denied,” from the computer.

  “You locked me out of my console again? Dammit, Cheezy! How the hell do you keep doing this? You do not mess with a man’s tunes or his computer. It’s sacrilegious!”

  “To a nerd maybe,” Rachel laughed.

  “Oh my, God! There is such a huge difference between a geek and a nerd. Unlock it now!” Wes pointed at his console with a serious, eye-bulging stare.

  “Why should I? Hu? I happen to like this new playlist. It doesn’t sound so much like old people music. Why can’t we have something new for a change every now and then? Huh? Huh? Are you afraid of change or something?” She propped her feet up on her console and relaxed, lacing her hands behind her head.

  “Look now,” Wes said, jabbing his finger in Rachel’s direction. “If it weren't for the time I spent downloading and backing up all of those files, you wouldn't have anything at all to listen to in the first place. You don’t realize how hard it is to come by some of those files, do you? The corporations have anything considered entertainment locked down so tight that free is almost extinct. If Project Gutenberg hadn’t saved everything from before the world went to shit, none of this would even exist. We’d just be shit out of luck and stuck paying a king's ransom just to hear some music. They have had to keep moving the files and changing servers to keep the corporate asshats from deleting them and leaving people with no choice. And with every move, some of the files are lost or are no longer accessible. Total failure and loss are inevitable. A file can only be copied so many times before it becomes corrupt.”

  I already waste too much time hacking around your half-assed shit pranks like this,” Wes fussed. “Somehow this time you managed to lock me out without a problem. Quit wasting my time and unlock it, Rachel! Now!” Wes reached for Rachel’s foot and a large, well-worn pipe wrench suddenly appeared in her hands as she rolled from the pilot’s acceleration couch and leapt to her feet.

  “Hey! Turn it down,” Doug shouted from the doorway of the captain’s quarters at the aft of the bridge.

  “I can’t Cap. She locked me out of the system,” Wes shouted, turning back to face Doug.

  “What?” Doug replied as the music suddenly stopped.

  “I said, she locked me out of my station again!”

  “How dare you shout at the captain like that, Geek. He’s going to keelhaul you for your insolence.” Rachel grinned; her expression was that of innocently guilty.

  Doug yawned. “Don’t get me wrong, you two. I do love the tunes, Cheezy, but not so early and not so loud. Okay?”

  “Not a worry, Cap,” she replied.

  “What’s our status? I don’t even know what time it is,” Doug said through another yawn.

  “Nothing really to report, Cap,” Rachel said. “It is just after 0400 hours and we’re still on course. ETA to Martian space is approximately twelve hours, forty-two minutes.”

  “Ok, good then. I’m going back to bed for now,” Doug said through another yawn. “Let me and everyone else sleep in unless an emergency pops up.”

  “What the hell? That’s it? No punishment? She locked me out of the system again, Cap,” Wes growled.

  “It isn’t my fault that you make it so easy to access your console.” Rachel stuck her tongue out at Wes with a Plibbtt!.

  “Both of you, just chill,” Doug said. “Seriously, do I need to be a hard ass and toss you guys in the brig or something? Don’t lock him out of the system anymore, Rachel. What’s going to happen if you lock him out and then disappear? How are we going to get back into the system then?”

  Doug cocked his head to the side and stared at Rachel with a confused but quizzical look. “Why do you have a pipe wrench?”

  “Not my particular flavor, but to each their own, I suppose,” Lizz i
nterrupted as she strode onto the bridge. “Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on and why the speakers are blaring this dreadful music all over the ship before Willy goes on a rampage? Metal does not soothe a sleeping grizzly bear.”

  Doug turned back to look at Rachel. “I thought you turned it off?”

  “I just turned down the bridge speakers,” Rachel said, then smiled. Rachel unceremoniously slid the pipe wrench to the deck on Wes’s side of the console. “Wes did it!”

  “Hell no, I didn’t,” Wes said, returning the wrench to Rachel’s side of the console.

  “Children!” Lizz glared at pair.

  Wes turned around facing forward in his seat with a huff, “Fine.”

  Rachel slid back into her seat with the best straight face that she could muster. Full-on laughter looked as if it were ready to burst from her seams. “Oh shit, he looks pissed,” she whispered across the center console to Wes.

  “Hu…” Wes said as he turned to look behind himself toward the rear of the bridge.

  “Did it happen to occur to anyone that some horrible music is blaring from the intercoms throughout most of the ship,” Big Willy said as he angrily stomped onto the bridge.

  Wes pointed with both index fingers at Rachel.

  With the reflexes of a cat on its twelfth life, Rachel passed the wrench over the console to Wes’s side once again, letting it clatter to the deck.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Wes shouted. “Willy! Rachel has your wrench again!”

  “Not me, Geek did it,” Rachel said defensively. “See, he’s hiding it under his seat.”

  “No, I not.”

  “Yes, you did, now hush.” Rachel shushed him with a chortle.

  “What the fuck ever.”

  Willy stomped over to Wes and snatched the wrench from the floor. “Dammit, Rachel! If you move my tools, I won’t be able to find them when I need them. I’m going back to bed, Cap,” Willy grumbled as he stomped off the bridge.

  “Snitch!” Rachel glared narrowly at Wes.

  “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Wes smugly smiled.

  From beneath the pilot's acceleration seat, Rachel produced a twenty-four-inch long double-headed dildo. In one smooth motion, she smacked Wes in the back of the head, twirled it like a baton, then tucked it away out of sight.

  “Oh God! What … What in the hell … Oh my God … Really?” Wes looked from Doug to Rachel in complete confusion as to what had actually just happened.

  “I dub thee, Sir Snitch-a-lot, the Knight of Tattle!” Rachel giggled, then turned back to the flight controls as she hummed a sigh of satisfaction.

  “That girl may need to see a therapist the next time we’re in port,” Lizz said to Doug. She stepped over to the helm and quietly held out her hand.

  Rachel looked up at Lizz with sad, puppy dog eyes. Her lower lip quivering. “But I’m still using it.”

  “Now, please,” Lizz demanded.

  “Dammit!” Rachel grumbled under her breath, then retrieved the neon pink phallus, handing it to Lizz.

  “I’ll be in my bunk for a few more hours if you don’t mind, Captain. Beauty does have its price,” Lizz said with a smug smile as she sauntered off the bridge.

  “You might want to give that thing a good wash, Lizzy, it smells a bit off,” Rachel said loudly.

  As suddenly as before, a rubber snake arced through the air struck Wes across his midsection.

  “Alright! Enough, stop already,” Wes said pleadingly.

  Doug yawned loudly as he scratched his chin. “Both of you stop it or I’ll send you to your rooms, on Earth, through an airlock. Turn the music down and get back to work.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Wes and Rachel replied in laughter-filled unison.

  “Good. It’s time to get serious. We’ve got a lot of work to do today, but not before I get some coffee,” Doug said with a smack of his lips.

  “Are you coming back to bed, Doug?” Krista’s voice pleaded from the open door to the captain’s quarters.

  Doug smiled wide with a grunted giggle. “Hmmmmm, methinks coffee can wait.”

  cHAPTER 6

  Nuremberg mining station

  Sol system asteroid belt

  May 23rd, 2176 / 0746 hrs local time

  “S

  o’s ya see, I says to him,” Big Willy said as he leaned heavily onto the metal countertop of the dock master’s duty desk. He pulled up his pants and adjusted his stance. “No sir, I said. I did not go out drinking last night. I was just too damned worn out, I said to him. And at that particular moment when I was talking with my buddy, Randy Stalnaker, he’d only been home for about ten minutes or so. Hell, he hadn’t even sat down at that point and you could tell that he was worn slap the hell out. The poor guy worked his ass off. He was working three jobs just to make sure that his wife, Amber, and his daughter, Pam, had everything that they could ever ask for. Now at that particular time Amber’s sister, Raquel, had had a string of horrible relationships and she’d managed to get herself kicked out of her boyfriend’s place for the umpteenth time, so she was staying with them, too.”

  “Full refuel and …” Hanns, the dockmaster, impatiently interrupted with a thick German accent. He tapped an impatient beat on the metal countertop.

  “I just need a top off of the protium and coolant tanks. The old girl has so many leaks, it’s almost like I fix one and three more lines start leaking.”

  Hanns unenthusiastically looked up from his screen. “The only fuel currently available on the station is CL42. How many cubic meters do you need?”

  “What? There’s no chance of fueling her up with some hot sauce, Hanns? Some deuterium or tritium, I’d at least prefer some protium if nothing else? It’s so much easier to tune the old girl when she’s got a belly full of the good stuff. There’s gotta be something you can do.”

  “I am sorry, Mister Murphy, but no,” Hanns said sternly. “The mining convoys departed for the asteroid belt last week. All available fuels are running short at the moment.”

  “Hell, man, she was topped off with hydrogen nitride back on Luna station,” Willy fussed. “You know what would happen to my storage tanks and injectors if I fueled up with CL42 without a full system scrub down? What else do you have available?”

  “We do have a large quantity of helium-3 available, but it is very expensive.”

  “How expensive is expensive?”

  “One point four million Martian Marks per metric ton, Mister Murphy,” Hanns said coldly.

  “You have got to be fucking shitting me. Are you serious? How in the hell is a man supposed to eat and refuel his rig?”

  “Then buy the CL42,” Hanns said. “It makes no matter to me, Mister Murphy. Or you can wait around on the station until other fuels become available.”

  “I don’t have that much time to waste, Hanns,” Willy complained. “Alright, fine, I’ll take a full load of CL42. I’ll just have to tell Cap that we’re stuck here overnight while I scrub the systems. Dammit, man. I just got the injectors realigned, too. I’ll tell you what, that’s just my damned luck.”

  “I am sure that you will make short work of it, Mister Murphy,” Hanns said blandly as he entered the order into the computer. “Merely page the refueling crew once you are ready to fill your tanks.”

  “Well, what about the remaining hydrogen nitride?” Willy asked. “Don’t tell me I’ll have to dump it. I’d prefer to sell it back for at least something.”

  Hanns briefly glanced back to the datapad, tapping the screen as if cycling through a list. “I am authorized to purchase hydrogen nitride at a rate of one thousand and twelve Marks per metric ton.”

  “Damn that’s a loss,” Big Willly said with a sigh. “Alright, it is what it is I guess. Not like I have much else of a choice. It’ll be at least late tonight before I can drain and flush the systems.

  “Very well,” Hanns replied. “As I previously stated, just page the refuel crew once you are ready for either the defuel or refuel.”

 
“Will do, Hanns. So’s anyways,” Willy continued. “This was all going on just after I had graduated high school and got a job working at the same place as my buddy, Randy. He talked me up to the bosses and got me in the door. So since the job was almost two hours away from my hometown, he let me move in with him, but we ended up on opposite shifts. Well, he worked like 16-hour days, 7 days a week. The man was a machine. With him being gone so much, one thing led to another and before you know it, I was dating Pam and became her mom and her aunt’s dirty little boy toy anytime I’d find myself alone with them. The hardest part was keeping it all under wraps so that none of them knew I was doing any of the others all while keeping Randy from finding out any of it. I tell you what, family dinners were some stressful times,” he chuckled.

  Hanns unmovingly stared at Willy, then sucked in a quick breath. “You do realize that you have told me that same story at least the last dozen times in all of the years that you have visited this station?”

  “Huh, really?” Willy looked away in thought. “I guess I’ve told that story so many times, that I just lost track of who I told it to.” Willy chuckled. “Anyways, full fill-up of the tanks in the morning. It’ll take me most of the night to purge and scrub the systems. Cap isn’t gonna be happy,” he said as he turned to leave, then looked back to Hanns. “You’re sure there’s nothing else you might have squirreled away anywhere?”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Murphy, but the CL42 and the helium-3 are the only fuels currently available.”

  “Alright. It’ll have to do then. I appreciate it, Hanns. You take care and I’ll catch you in the morning.” Big Willy turned, heading back toward the station's point of entry airlock. It was the single point of access between the station proper and the individual docking ports spaced along the stations primary docking ring. All spacer traffic entered the station through this portal with the exception of Martian military vessels, which docked at separate points from civilian craft.