The Scrapper, Ch. 8

 My eye twitched again, were both of these bots working against me? Trying to convince me I was crazy? How could I space both of them before they managed to space me? My mind raced, trying to plot and scheme, as though my stupid squishy meat brain could outpace a literal AI and an malevolent machine intelligence.

“What I saw…” I had to really try to remember, it was like a dream already starting to slip away the longer I was awake again, “what… I heard…”

“SHHCKk-e have you on radar, over. Your IFF is non-responsive. Reply or be fired upon. Repeat, do you require assistance?”

My eyes shot open, locked on the radio console. Frantically I slapped the extra windows away and punched the Comms button, “Hello? Hello! Yes, we require assistance!”

“Understood, your IFF is either damaged or disabled. Send along your RegistrationID and we’ll see what we can do about getting you a tow.”

My RegID? Shit, Din said he had finished decrypting that bu- 

“Sending Registration.” 

I glared at the screen, where Din lived now apparently, how was it familiar with these protocols?

“TssK- Received and identified. Welcome to MCJ-IFR, Cordak. Just what the hell happened to you out there?”

I ran a hand through my hair, this conversation was familiar. Cordak… Is that what the registration says? Damn, I wish I was actually prepared to have this conversation. I stammered out a reply, “I uh… had to make a quick exit. Had some folks that were more interested in what I had rather than discussing a trade, you know how it goes.”

A pause, then the line opened back up. I heard some chuckles from the other end, “Roger that, Cordak. FlightAdmin is impressed you managed to keep your ship in one piece, the newsfeeds made it sound apocalyptic.” Some more distant laughter, “Honestly, we expected you sooner. But I get why it took you a couple cycles to get here.”

My head hurt, too many things happening too soon. I opened the line and gave them my best ‘cocky pilot’ voice, “Heh, yeah we had a few issues along the way, but we made it eventually. I’d like to come into port and try and repair this junker if possible. Don’t need my boss seeing it in this shape, ya know?”

“Haha, yeah I get ya. I bet they’d send you into the yards without a suit if you tried to hand it over like that. You got credits, we got supplies.”

I sucked in air through my teeth, “Actually… if we could work out some kind of a trade, maybe you guys have some work that needs doing?” I offered.

“Hmm.. Roger that, tug is on it’s way, it’ll bring you into dock 14. We’ll see what kind of a deal we can work out. Sound good?”

“Sure, sounds good, control.”

“Catch you soon, Cordak.”

The line cut out. That conversation had gone exactly as I had heard it in my… whatever the hell that was. Did I hear the future? Did I time travel? My head still hurt, and my stomach growled at me. I wish for one day my stomach and I could be friends. I stood up and headed down to the deck intent on grabbing another Strawnana repstrip.

“Hooray! We made it to port and they aren’t arresting us!”

“They aren’t arresting us YET, Din. I take it the registration was in the name of this.. Curdrack?”

“Cordak Drelt. I have forwarded the registration information to your tablet for reference.”

“Great, now I get to lie about my situation some more.” I glared at Palletbot as I went by, bending down to grab a strip and crack it open. Ugh, Pinoconut Butter again… wait. I thought this was a whole box of the Strawnana? I picked the box up and to my surprise there was an advertisement: “Coming soon: Strawnana! The delicious flavors of golden hay straw and banana! Pairs best with our award winning bestseller: Pine Coconut Butter!” I set the box down slowly and walked over to the light I had destroyed and wired into the accumulator directly. It was repaired now, wires running back into the light and a quick patch job to insulate the wires. I looked at the accumulator and saw it had fully shut down, the frame no longer glowing, the wires on it’s battery terminals ran up the wall, into the cockpit and… into the solar catchers.

“What the…..”

“STATEMENT: Kal, I do not remember what I said but I apologize, as it seems to have made you upset.”

I blinked a few times, turning to Palletbot like it had grown a limb or three.

“I will try to do a better job keeping my logs so that in the future I will remember what I said.”

Part of me thought, KNEW, I was being manipulated, another part said maybe this bot was just as much of a baby as Din was. So far neither of these bots had actively tried to harm me, as far as I knew. But I didn’t have any better ideas as to what the hell I just experienced. As well, I didn’t think I was going to have much luck hunting for information on a prison cluster. 

“It’s… okay. I’m still trying to figure out what exactly happened, and maybe by the time we get station-side, I’ll be able to relay some of that to you both. If I can remember.”

The inside of Our Lady’s Gambit looked better now than it did when we left BRK, freshly vented engine bay aside. Things were actually put away and secured down. Despite all that it still looked like I’d been trying to survive inside of a tin can for the better part of a week. 

I rubbed my eyes, then the bridge of my nose, winced as I noticed that was tender, and then took my canteen into the bathroom to try and wash up a bit. Keeper knows I could use a shower at this point, but for now I just needed to be presentable enough to look like I didn’t steal a ship and slip my boot. These people seem to be familiar with whoever ‘Cordak’ was, I could only hope they didn’t know him personally, just through stories. 

I also hoped Cordak wasn’t the ultraviolent type. I’m not sure I could keep up that facade.

“Okay, we need some kind of a game plan here, gentlebots.” I announced after I had popped a couple of painkillers from the medkit. “It will take some time for them to tow us into station and I honestly don’t know what to expect when we get in there. Din, if I can I’d like to take you along in my tablet but… can you even fit?”

“I don’t think so, but I CAN put myself in there as a remote entity! At least we can both be in range of your earpiece then!”

“ACK”

“Solves that problem nice and easy,” I pulled my tablet out and opened it up to find a fresh program waiting for me named ‘DIN Radio: Station 88130’. 

“Clever.”

“I thought so!”

“Next problem: I have no idea who this Cordak is. I didn’t get much from FlightControl earlier but if this person is palling around with admin on a mining cluster then I can’t imagine they have the best track record…”

“SUGGESTION: Play the part.”

“What?”

“RESPONSE: Listen for them to tell you how this person acts, then act accordingly.”

“What, just pretend I’m some hardened criminal?”

Din chimed in, “Well, as long as they don’t ask you to hurt someone it should be okay! You can be the strong-silent type and then play it off if they start asking questions!”

I frowned, this didn’t sound like something I could do, and I knew it would come off strange if I tried. At the same time if I didn’t attempt to pretend that I was this person I was equally screwed. It seems like I get into these situations a lot, now that I think about it. 

“Hm… maybe you’re right, and anything else they bring I can downplay.” A chirp from the comms in the cockpit lured me back that way. As I crested the top of the stairs I could see a tug shuttle approaching in the distance. It was nice to see something outside the ship besides distant twinkles of maybe stars. 

“TSSH- Howdy there, partner. I’m here to tow you into port, how are you sitting over there?”

I hopped into the seat and opened my channel, “Hey there, nice to be talking to someone again. I’m actually out of propellant at this point, couldn’t even RCS without breaking seal and venting. Any chance you have a spare bit of Chalox you could send over?”

“SHk- Dang, must’ve been a bitch to get here if you’re totally out. You’ll have to tell me how you got this far over a drink, haha. Lemme go see if I can get you a top-off so we aren’t fighting to get you landed.”

“Much appreciated!” I breathed a sigh of relief, for the first time in the last week it felt like I might be out of the asteroid field and coming home to port. Except this was literally an asteroid field, and then I remembered what port this was. The cortisol crept back into my blood faster than the dopamine could override it.

My friendly TugRunner, Jaima, scooted his vessel right up alongside Our Lady’s Gambit, hopped out in suit and personally ran about a quarter of a tank of Chalox directly to my fuel port.

“You guys get many breakdowns out this far?” I asked him while he gracefully floated about in the vacuum.

“Nahh, mostly they just have me pulling in salvage ships or the dumb dumbs that get too close thinking they can scoop some free ore. Don’t see why they don’t jus’ scoop all them bits into the trawler too ya know? Can’t be that much effort to split the gooey bits from the metal. But naw, it ain’t often we get folk who appear out here, half exploded even less.”

“Would you believe me if I told you that part happened after I left port?”

“Fella, I’m not sure I’d believe anything you told me if I weren’t starin’ at it with my own two eyes!”

We shared a laugh, Jaima seemed like a good person. Someone that would get along with us down on the sublevels with the rest of us nondex. 

“So, Jaima, how’s things looking here at the MCJ?”

“Oh, the usual, Mr. Cordak,” he addressed me formally, it again made me worry what kind of face I’d have to put on once I got inside, “just dumb folks showin’ up, asteroids gettin’ mined, and me out here tuggin’ salvage.”

“Gotcha… keep me in mind when you find some more salvage. As you can tell out there I’ve got a lot of repairs I need to do on this thing.”

“Shoot, Mister, if I were you I’d just scrap this thing and get into something more modern.” I heard him tap on the thruster bodies through the headset but felt it echo through the ship body, “No weapons, no KinShields, shoot you ain’t even got a B-box or an accumulator back here. Thrusters won’t get you anywhere fast enough ‘fore you get shot down.”

“Heh, I appreciate the recommendations, Jaima. Unfortunately my uh…” crap, I don’t know who Cordak actually works for, “boss… wanted this ship in particular. I don’t intend on delivering it in this state though, wouldn’t look good on me.”

“I get it, Keeper knows the bosses are riding my ass too.” I heard the pressurized hose disconnecting from the fuel port, “Gimme a few minutes to get back over to Ol’ Reliant before you kick your fuel pumps on, okay?”

“Roger that, appreciate you, Jaima.”

He went back to his tug and boosted in front of OLGa so he could attach the magblocks he would use to tow me back into port. While he was positioning, I flicked my engine controls a couple of times. Diagnostics still showed my right thruster as being totally offline, left thruster damaged but technically operable. RCS thankfully hadn’t sustained much damage during this ordeal, and having some Chalox back in the tanks meant I could actually maneuver and use my pivots again. I should probably make an actual pre-flight checklist before I leave port next time. At the very least, if I wasn’t a criminal by the time I left, I could take my time doing safety checks.

Jaima certainly acted like a pro out there, attaching the mag blocks to the left and right of the cockpit instead of closer to the airlock like you’d expect. I had a bunch of crap still hanging from my airlock so it didn’t make sense to throw lines down there to get tangled. 

A sigh from over the comms as Ol’ Reliant got underway, dragging Our Lady’s Gambit back into port. “To think, I got to meet THE Cordak Drelt, haha!”

I muted the comms and swallowed in a dry mouth. I had big shoes to fill, apparently.

The tow into port was uneventful, but the sightseeing was great. The amount of traffic along the way surprised me. Plenty of freight ships, a couple of private frigates skimmed past, their sleek lines and peak engines glinting in the laser light of the mining operations happening nearby. LocalSec had an officer stationed at regular intervals along the traffic lanes, keeping an ever watchful eye from atop their RunnerJet. (Imagine a thruster, the housing surrounding it, and a tiny cockpit on top). Sometimes crazy scrappers would fix up an old Runner and then use it for MoonScooting. An exciting sport to watch, but the kind of thing only the young or insane would actually attempt. The scrappers (and the officers here) piloting them were often both.

Occasionally a large prison transport ship shadow would darken our path. They looked like what I had seen in some of those old-flicks, a giant metal body with sharp needles poking out from all ends. A… Steel Virgin I think? They were tremendous, angular structures that existed purely to hold as dense a containment of bodies as it could. Each vessel averaged around 3.5 million at full capacity, but that many never survived the trip. Lacking wings or any kind of aerodynamics, these ships would never land planetside and were meant purely to transport prisoners from one spot to the next. If a colony ship, bright, sunny, and carrying hope, had an evil twin with an equivalent capacity? These transports were it. Dark, gloomy, imposing. 

The convicts they carried were held in suspension so they didn’t have to worry about any pesky “human rights” laws. These were criminals, not humans, and they didn’t need to be awake and wasting food if they could be unconscious between point A and B. Definitely the prison system’s preferred method when heading to Radum.

“You don’t never wanna be on one of those, trust me there, pardner.” Jaima must have noticed I went quiet as we passed under the first one.

“Not as a prisoner, for sure,” I replied, “but something in me wants to know what that all looks like logistically from the inside.”

“Ha! One of them mechanical folks are ya? Wouldn’t have taken you for one, but it takes all kinds I suppose.”

So Cordak wasn’t a scrapper, but they were something of a celebrity. I wonder just how much I was going to have to invent (or learn) of this person as I went along.

My ship held together just fine and Jaima, the utter professional that he is, was able to dip and glide and pivot around everything we came across along the way. I didn’t even have to use my RCS until we were on approach vector to the dock, at that point he had to unhook the mag blocks and I still had to land OLGa myself. Thankfully the landing gear hadn’t been damaged too much.

I set her down as gently as I could, one of my pivots was acting up (probably a bad ignitor, or the fuel line was frozen again) and one of the landing feet was slow to deploy. When I finally made contact with the docking pad, I let up on the thrust to fully settle the ship down. No sooner did I let off the throttle than I heard a groan, then a creak, and then a snap as a quarter of the ship suddenly dipped and crushed into the dock. “Oh fuck me, did a foot just snap or something?”

Din pulled up the panel for me and… yep, that foot totally snapped with just a bit of real gravity. Great, one more thing to fix. I got up and hiked down the stairs, briefly looking around for anything I may want to take with me. I couldn’t think of anything immediately so I grabbed my tote and threw in my habitual items: a repstrip, my canteen, and the beamwelder. My goggles were still draped around my neck where they lived. Better than nothing.

I tapped my earpiece, “Din, Palletbot? You there?”

“Copy!”
“ACK”

“Alright, lets go see what kind of trouble we can get into.” I approached my airlock and punched the release. It stuck in place for a moment, then began to slowly grind it’s way open. Part of the patch job from earlier was keeping the bottom section of door from actually opening. Eventually I gave up waiting for it to figure out what it wanted to do and just climbed over top of it. Jaima was waiting for me on the other side.

He let out a low whistle, “Looks like you took half the connection tube with ya! Didn’t look so bad when I was setting the blocks up”

I nodded, “Yeah, kinda had to leave in a rush. Can you tell uh… I didn’t catch his name… That I’m here?” 

“Way ahead of ya, had him on comms as we were pulling into dock. His name’s Mirt. Should be here in a couple minutes. You need any help with bags or anything?”

I shook my head, “No, thanks, Jaima. I think I’m good from here.” 

He nodded and continued to stand around. I looked around the dock, searching for what I assumed would be a suit or a board member approaching. Jaima cleared his throat and I looked back at him. 

“Something up?”

He stuck his hand out, made a little ‘come here’ motion. I took a step closer, confused.

“Usually when uh… big wigs like yourself come through they hand out tips to the little guys like me.”

I stared blankly at him, who was a big wig here? OH, me. I’m Cordak. 

“I see well…” I began feeling around my very empty pockets. “Well… part of why I had to ditch station was a bad round of SolarJacks…” 

Jaima’s eyes narrowed. 

“I may have lost my credit chit…” 

Jaima scowled. 

“And that’s kind of how I wound up in this situation.” I let out a nervous laugh.

“Yeah yeah…” Jaima said, taking a step back from me, “you best remember this next time you need a tow around here.”

“Whoa whoa, hang on,” I put my hand up before he walked away, “Look I honestly don’t have much on me but once I talk to Mirt I’ll figure out a way to pay you back, okay?”

“How’re you gonna do that exactly?”

“I don’t know, but you’ve got some time to think about what you might want at least. I’m good at taking things apart and putting them back together!”

He frowned, “Mmm. I’m gonna hold you to that Cordak. Having a favor from someone like you is a nice around here.” He turned and sauntered away, looking as though I had just told him there weren’t any bonuses this year and he’d have to feed his kids hangnails for Birthmas again this year.

He didn’t seem like a bad person, but I didn’t have any sympathy for him.

Mirt found me shortly after. 

I had made my way up the concourse towards the main atrium for this dock. There seemed to be a lot more small ship ports on this station that the BRK. A lot more military looking individuals than back home. The guards themselves wore matte black uniforms, MCJ-CorrectionStaff emblazoned on the back and front of their kinetic vests. They wore helmets with clear (presumably auto-dimming) half-visors built in. Honestly their kit looked like a step up from StationSec’s, but that made sense assuming they were dealing with violent criminals all cycle every cycle.

He looked like he sounded: clean cut, nice suit (also emblazoned with the MCJ-CorrectionStaff branding), with the most punchable face you’d ever seen. “Cordak!” He said with an air of familiarity, though I could tell he was trying to make a good impression on a new person.

I turned to acknowledge his approach but he was already inside my bubble with a hand on one shoulder and shaking the other. Keeper he was fast. “Hi there, uh.. Mirt. Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure is all mine, I assure you! How was your trip?” his smile was all teeth and the vacant look behind his eyes told me this was a canned conversation.

“It was bad, almost suffocated, then I almost starved. Fancy place you have here.” I made a show of looking around and taking it all in: the stalls where prisoners in jumpsuits and tracking collars served food to guards and the various administrative personnel that were needed to keep a behemoth like this running. The constant rattle of mining freighters loading while trawlers unloaded. Everything stank like rust and people. A strange flicker of nostalgia tickled the back of my brain as I realized this is what the sublevels usually smelled like.

“Great great, come with me, we’ve got lots to discuss!” Mirt said cheerfully. He whisked me past more stalls, some public areas where staff mingled and prisoners performed maintenance like cleaning and transport. They reminded me of the animals you’d see traders bring through sometimes: broken, beaten, dirty, tired. I can’t imagine that being torn from your home is anything besides stressful, let alone being torn from your planet entirely and sold to the whims of whoever kidnapped you. I saw 3 separate groups of guards actively attacking a convict, ganging up on them in a way that felt familiar, but more vicious than I had seen and been victim to back home.

Eventually we made it to some gently sloping hallways that led us up and away from the docking ports. The floor transitioned from hard steel to soft carpet and the plush felt strange under my boots.

“Where are we headed, Mirt?”

“Oh just somewhere a bit more private than the docks. Lots and lots of ears, you understand.” He waved a dismissive hand towards me without looking back. The hairs on the back of my neck rose the same way I wish they had before that Chrome cracked me in the head. 

“Mind answering a question?”

“Sure, sure, just nothing proprietary of course.”

“What’s with the collars? Just tracking devices?”

“Oh that and so much more!” He actually looked back at me for this, a twinkle in his eye. “They track, they tase, they direct, they communicate! Oh they’re very splendid, and actually the evolution of those collars is what I’d like to discuss with you!”

That didn’t sound good.

We arrived at an office space with a shared view of the external docking port I had come through (I could see the markings from here) as well as the concourse we had just wormed through. Mirt offered me a comfortable looking chair next to the window and took a seat nearby. He picked up a small communicator and looked at me expectantly. I stared back at him.

“Ah sorry, can I get you something? A RegalWine? Some WhiskeyJack?”

“How about a hopper burger?”

He laughed, whole throated and full, a much different laugh than I’d heard from him so far. “Oh you were serious.” He cleared his throat and blinked away his embarrassment for me. “I’m sure we could replicate one, but we tend to stick to proper proteins around here. No need to be eating from the prisoner’s supply.”

“Shit, the convicts get hopper protein?”

Another laugh, “Oh my no, they get those disgusting replicator bars like all the other chattel.” He waved that shitty, dismissive hand again. His nails were perfectly manicured without a hint of dirt on them. “I’ll order you a burger if that’s what you want, on behalf of Gorshner Interplanetary please accept my apologies.” He beamed that toothy smile at me again. My desire to punch him grew.

“Thanks, sounds good.” I took the offered seat and leaned forward a bit. It was comfortable, but this entire setup had my leg bouncing. I couldn’t see any cameras but that didn’t stop the feeling that I was being watched, and not just by this snake giving me his best customer-service face. “So, we were going to discuss a trade of services?”

“Straight to business. I can respect that.” His smile fell into something reasonable, this must be his SolarJack face. “As I mentioned on the way up, we have been working on developing the next step in our ConvictCollars, truly the evolution of the device. Once they’re working, we’re sure they will quickly become the predominant method of crowd control for all penal clusters throughout the Gorshner Interplanetary colonial family.” His voice radiated his pride, his belief in the product.

“And… what, you want me to help with development? I can break stuff down and put it back together but-”

“Ah.. Um.. No,” he interrupted me, his brow furrowing, “I’m… sure you are quite capable in that regard, but I have need of your other talents.”

I raised an eyebrow in response, an awkward silence filled the room.

“Your um… personnel handling abilities, that is.”

I blinked at him a few times. The seconds crept by like hours.

“He means your mercenary capabilites, Cordak,” Din whispered to me over the earpiece.

My eyes went wide, “Oh… Oh! You want me to… what exactly? Did someone… leak the blueprints or… something?” Desperately I tried searching through my encyclopedic knowledge of classic FilmReels, trying to remember ANYthing that fit the bill here.

“Ah… not as such… we seem to have had an incident during the beta test on one of our freighters.”

“What kind of an incident?”

“Well that’s what we would like to contract you for. You see,” he pointed out the window, towards a large cluster of asteroids that were presumably being mined, based on the flashes and particulate clouds that hovered around. “We activated the new collars, and within one cycle we lost all contact with the freighter. It hasn’t moved, so we assume something happened to it mechanically.”

I turned back to him, “So send over some security, why do you need me?”

“We have sent four platoons over the past 12 cycles and we have lost contact with each and every one shortly after they land.”

I chuckled to myself, “Sounds to me like you’re just piling up shuttles over there.”

Mirt scowled before continuing, “Yes, it seems frivolous to continue that course of action, I agree.”

“So, what, you want me to investigate and report back?”

“Actually, we would like you to recover the blackbox from the freighter as well as our prototype collar.”

“Why those?”

“We’d prefer to not have an entire freighter stolen by the first scrapper that discovers a possibly unoccupied FTL capable ship. The prototype should be obvious, too much time and effort has gone into it’s production, we need it back to figure out what it did.”

“And you have no idea what happened to any of those guards, or any of the uh.. Test subjects you put on that freighter?”

“We have guesses, but nothing steelcrete.”

“Okay, so say I agree to check this out, what am I getting in return?”

“Whatever you need to repair your ship.”

“Anything? No fees?”

“Any fees will be handled by the standard contract fee once we establish it, and yes, any components you can salvage you are free to use.”

“Ahh, there’s the catch.”

“We certainly can’t have you taking from our internal stock, it would throw our numbers off.”

Keeper, every station exec was crooked, I swear.

“Unfortunately,” I ran a hand through my hair, “I left my weapons back in my other storage locker.”

“We can provide some basic provisions for the purpose of this contract.”

I nodded, making a show of rubbing my chin before looking up towards the asteroid debris in the distance. “Just a blackbox and a prototype, huh?”

“Correct.”

I sighed, “Alright, let’s get the annoying paperwork out of the way.”

Believe it or not, I actually had a decent bit of experience with contracts, having had to sift through far too many salvage license addendums over the years. Even more surprising was that this contract actually seemed legit for the most part. Equal split of liabilities, fair compensation to me, extreme compensation for the company in the event of my breaking the contract, all boilerplate stuff really.

Our food arrived as Mirt was going over the general portions of the contract. I noisily chewed on whatever meat product he had ordered for me and sipped at the VERY fancy packaged water they included. It had it’s own plastic pouch and a straw glued right to the container. I think this was the sort of thing tourists would get on-site at whatever 5-sun restaurant they were visiting topside. Clearly they rolled out the “visiting rube package” just for me.

“This is tasty, what is it?” I asked through mouthfuls of food.

“I’m surprised you haven’t had it before, it’s meatsoy.”

It was flavorful, definitely some spices and maybe even salt in there. It crumbled apart like a repstrip though, so I guess they shared that texture. I looked up at him while I chewed, “Never heard of it.” 

“Go figure,” he smiled his plastic grin, “do the terms seem agreeable so far?”

I swallowed and wiped my hands on the sleeve of my coverall, “So section 2, the actual terms of contract: ‘Signee is to retrieve one (1) MCJ-IFR Mining Freighter Blackbox and one (1) ConvictCollar labelled CC-BT4’ but I’m not seeing anything about salvage beyond that?”

“Further down, in section 3,” he swiped up on the tablet we were viewing to point it out, “Signee is permitted to salvage and recycle any equipment besides the above stated in section 2.”

“Ah, got it. As well, I’m seeing here in section 5, addendum 4a: ‘Any damage or loss of assets to GIM will be paid at standard rates.’ What assets are we talking about here, doors? Equipment?”

“The prisoners, of course.”

I blinked a few times, “And… what exactly is the ‘standard rate’ for these ‘assets’?”

“Generally it depends on their LaborValue that gets assigned when they arrive, but given that everyone on that freighter was part of a test group, they will have a standard 10% reduction in the event of termination of life.”

Keeper I wanted to punch this guy in the face. “Uh huh. Well, now that we have that cleared up, I can say this all looks pretty good. I did want to ask how I’m expected to get over to the freighter if my ship is currently out of order.”

“Mmm.. That is a good point. We are down a few vessels after sending them that way so our own stocks are low, but assuming you succeed we will have those shuttles and the freighter back in our possession… Yes, let’s put another qualifier in here that you will be allowed to fuel up and repair your vessel to at least shuttle capabilities. Then you can risk your own ship!” He smiled at me.

“I think that’s agreeable,” I returned his fake-as-repstrip smile.

After the addition, we both signed off and shook hands. I tried to collect my trash, looking for a bin to recycle it in.

“Oh just leave that for someone else,” Mirt told me with that annoying flick of his wrist. 

“Ah, okay. Used to doing my own recycling, haha,” I tried my best to sound genuine. 

“Mmm. I’m sure.” Mirt proceeded to lead me back the way we had come, all the way to the concourse with all of the various stalls. 

“Your RegID has been added to the list of approved contractors, feel free to get whatever salvage you need, within reason, to get your vessel up and running, and then you’re clear to complete your contractual duties. Best of luck.” He gave me a small wave, a polite smile, and then turned on one heel and briskly headed back to his nest upstairs without waiting for a reply.

I shook my head and tapped my earpiece, “Hey, guessing you both caught all of that?”

“Yes! It Was Very Engaging!”

“STATEMENT: I disagree and would like to leave.”

“Glad you two are getting along-”

“DISAGREE”

“…but I need to find a scrap heap. So I’m going to go have a look around. Meanwhile could you two try and ping this missing freighter? Those things are pretty tremendous, it’s tough to believe they totally lost contact. You’d think someone over there would be trying to reach out if they were in trouble.”

“I Am On It!”

“Wish I had your enthusiasm sometimes, Din.”

“DISAGREE”

“Look, Palletbot, the sooner we get underway with all of this the sooner we can get to a different port, okay?”

“…ACK” 

I swear, if these two were a single person I’d say they were bi-polar. Yes, that was a pun.

As I wandered down the halls where most of the commerce on MCJ seemed to take place, I saw upsetting things. Prisoners cooking the food, prisoners hauling cargo, prisoners being beaten for not cooking the food right or dropping cargo. The only hierarchy that seemed to exist was fear of punishment, and the correctional staff took every opportunity they could to remind the prisoners of that.

Regrettably, it was easy for me to ignore. I’d seen this too many times back home to try and help. I wasn’t a nondex here, I was Cordak: some kind of mercenary that wasn’t enslaved (yet). I had to keep my head down and play my part. 

I wondered how many people had told themselves the same as they watched Tak and I get our asses kicked by Chromes for trying to steal some food. Looked the other way as we got arrested for trying to sell without a salvage license. How many times had I stepped in for someone else just to be reminded of my status? I hope Tak is doing okay and that my escape didn’t fuck up his Reg situation… 

Thinking of the little guys reminded me, I still owed someone here. I went back down to the docking bay and started asking around at MaintenanceOps for Jaima. A couple of calls and a few minutes later, he was walking back down the ramp towards the bench I was waiting at. I raised a hand in greeting, he flashed one back.

“Ya rang?”

“I did! See, I just signed on upstairs to go and investigate a freighter. Trouble is, my poor ol’ shuttle here just ain’t up to snuff. Thankfully the StationAdmins saw fit to add me to the list of contractors, said I can get this all fixed up before I head over that way.” I shot him a victorious grin.

He didn’t respond how I expected, rubbing the back of his head and avoiding eye contact, “Well… sure I can help ya get the stuff ya need to repair but uh…” he looked around nervously, “ya think that was smart? Agreein’ to that?”

I cocked my head to the side, “Agreeing to what? Investigating that freighter?”

He nodded.

“Seemed like a simple retrieval, I’ve done plenty of those.”

“Well now, I don’ doubt that, just… folks been talkin’ baaaaad about that freighter.”

I stood up and motioned for Jaima to follow, heading back towards OLGa, “What kind of bad are we talkin’ here?”

His eyes kept hunting around, he looked more suspicious than someone trying to look suspicious, “Folks sayin’ there’s all sorts of ghouls out there. Demons even!” his barked in a harsh whisper.

“Only demons I’ve ever known are the ones that run places like this, Jaima. C’mon, what’s the story?”