Interlude (Part One)
Leah inspects a derelict ship on a Sōzō station with some help from a friend, and discovers something surprising...
Previously: Six months later, Leah is receiving the first ship that she will attach to Rainbow Station, a cargo carrier delivered by a woman named Ita-san. But before a delivery can arrive, first it must be ordered…
Six months earlier…
“So, how many crates of randoms?”
“About a dozen or so,” Leah said, pushing the wheelchair past the Sōzō corporation representative. They were in the cargo hold of the fourth ship they’d looked at that day, the CC 24601, and the empty hold made their voices echo as if they were standing on a stage. All four ships they’d looked at had been cargo carriers, decommissioned by Sōzō due an antiquated law out of the Sol system: a ship couldn’t keep flying if it was more than twenty years old. This was the only one that had seemed like it was more or less functional, if a bit abused, and Leah was happy to take advantage of the outdated law while waiting for the corpos to quit their bickering and collectively agree on something. As if that would ever happen. She expected the heat death of the universe to come sooner.
“A dozen?”
Leah turned her chair to look at the saleswoman currently scratching a pimple on her neck until it bled.
Ita-san was probably close to two meters tall if more, so she would have towered over Leah even if Leah had been standing. She had dark hair that had been cut into a bob, and wore a jumpsuit with the top half peeled down, the arms of it trailing behind her like the tails of a tuxedo. Underneath the jumpsuit, she just wore a tank-top despite the cold air of the artiatmo around them, showing a flat chest and full sleeve tattoos on both arms. Leah caught the tail of a ryū dragon curling down over her right shoulder as she moved, and a large cartoon castle on her left forearm; she guessed the woman liked old games. A clipboard holster was slung around her waist, and her strong chin jutted out towards Leah like it was cut from the same steel of the ship they stood in. The smile on her face was polite, but vaguely disinterested.
Leah understood.
Ita-san wasn’t even really a saleswoman. She was supposed to just be transporting junked ships back and forth between the different sectors of the KU, wherever Sōzō hadn’t used up its limitation on how many spaceships it could toss into a star each month. Leah wasn’t the first person to be interested in buying old, decommissioned ships, but it was a small industry for Sōzō and didn’t warrant a new, specific department. She guessed that Ita-san had picked the short straw this week, having to bring around customers who’d be spending less than a quarter of what it cost to buy one of these berths new. Walking Leah around and showing her these different ships probably wasn’t even worth her hourly rate.
Leah tried to show patient understanding in her smile. “Or so. Let’s do twelve to start. I can reach out if I need more.” A glint of metal caught her eye, something shifting in the harsh, fluorescent light of the room. Leah leaned to one side, squinting to see beyond the Sōzō saleswoman. “What about those?”
“Those?” Ita-san said, taking a step to one side and turning around, inadvertently blocking her view.
Leah let out a soft, annoyed sigh and maneuvered her chair to be able to see around the Sōzō employee, but her annoyance faded fast. She couldn’t believe what she saw.
On the floor were fifteen satellites, stacked on top of each other, each a bit larger than a dog. They were all powered down, their four cylindrical thrusters pointed straight down, though they could swivel in any direction; Leah guessed they were easier to stack that way. Extended out behind them, were what looked like deflated, beige balloons, five meters in radius, slowly gathering dust. Leah couldn’t see the vacuum nozzle, but she guessed that they were fully retracted into the satellite, just as it would be during travel. After all, that was the most important part of these satellites; leaving them exposed would have just increased the likelihood of damage and fixing a nozzle like that would be costly.
“Oh,” Ita-san said. She stopped picking at her neck and removed a mobile console from her pocket, scrolling through it to find the information. Apparently whatever she found there was boring, though, because the console quickly returned to her pocket. “They’re just gas satellites, miners. You know, for xenon or whatever? They keep the fuel gauges up on long hauls.”
“Oh?” Leah said. She pulled her own console from her pocket and did a reverse image search. Ita-san was telling the truth, but she didn’t know all the specifics. Even beat up, these satellites were worth more to Leah than the ship that carried them. She stared down at the console, flipping through photos of the satellites in action. “How’d they work?”
“I don’t know,” Ita-san said, and walked over to them.
For a brief, flickering moment, Leah worried that the saleswoman would know what they were and what they might be worth if cleaned up and repaired.
But she just tapped one of the satellites lightly with her foot, letting out a soft ringing sound from the vibration of the metal. She started scratching her neck again. “Every time they found a planet or star that gave off a lot of xenon, they’d stop and harvest enough to keep going.”
Leah nodded to herself and put the console away. She scrunched up her face, feigning concern, and looked up at the saleswoman. “How long did that take?”
“About a week or two.”
“That long? Will it affect delivery?” Leah said, putting on her best negotiating voice.
Ita-san seemed to realize that she was scratching her neck again and pulled her hand back from the bleeding pimple as if she’d been touching a hot burner. “No. We’ll stock it up before we head over to…” She pulled the clipboard from her side holster and looked down at it. “...sorry, I don’t have it here.”
“There isn’t a name for the tunnel yet,” Leah said. “It’s been stuck in bureaucratic paperwork hell since it was discovered.” She wheeled her wheelchair closer to the satellites, listening as it scraped against the floor of the long hauler. “Is this the only fueling station Sōzō has?”
“No, they’re all over the KU,” Ita-san said, distractedly. She trailed her finger down the board. “But I see your tunnel name here: this random collection of letters and numbers? I thought it was your commdress.”
Leah leaned closer to the satellites, wiping off a bit of the dust off the outside. Her fingers traced the small abrasions carved into the sides by years of exposure to space. “Technically, it’s both. Could I use those fueling stations if I wanted to?”
“Only if you were on contract with Sōzō,” Ita-san said, scribbling something down. She looked up at the buyer, as if seeing her for the first time. “You only have one commdress for the entire system?”
“I mean, it’s only recently been discovered,” Leah said, leaning back up and absentmindedly wiping the dust off on her pants. It was a small wonder that the satellites were all still holding together. The paint job Sōzō had done to cover up small flaws in its design had almost completely degraded, there were hundreds of small holes from where the satellites had survived micrometeorites strikes, and the thin layer of dust still clung desperately to the outer paneling.
But she could also see they were still functional. Sure, they were a little old and probably not going to be functional for very much longer. But for now they could do their job. They were proud little machines, desperate to be helpful.
“Oh, you’re talking about that Lost System?” the saleswoman said.
Leah stiffened up and half-turned in her chair.
“That was found my last year in high school,” Ita-san said. “Everybody was talking about it. And they were showing that video? From the CEO of the company that bought the map of the tunnel out there?”
“So these are included in the purchase of the ship?” Leah said, turning her chair around and crossing her arms.
“Man, I can’t imagine what those people might’ve gone through,” Ita-san said as if she hadn’t hear her. She was staring off into the middle distance and started scratching her neck again. “Can you imagine? Being separated from the rest of the KU for that long only to be thrust back in right as-”
“These satellites are included?” Leah said.
Ita-san looked down at her, startled, her fingers in mid-scratch. “Oh, um.” She looked at her clipboard again, flipped through a couple pages. “Yeah. It says purchase and sale of everything on the ship.”
Leah nodded. “And you’ll load it up with the randoms as well before sending it out to me?”
Ita-san shook her head without looking up from the clipboard. She was trying to wipe off the blood from her neck on the paper. “No, those’ll have to be sent separately.”
Leah scrunched her face up, not pretending to be concerned this time. “Why?”
Ita-san shrugged, again not looking at her. “They have to be delivered separately.”
“But you’ll be delivering this ship?” Leah said. “Why not just load it up with all the shipping containers of scrap material as well and send it all at once instead of two separate deliveries?”
The saleswoman shrugged one more time. “Not my department. It just says here they have to be sent through two different deliveries.”
“Meaning I’ll have to pay two different delivery fees?”
Ita-san shrugged again, her face pained as she stared at the clipboard.
Leah sighed and gestured for the clipboard. The saleswoman had been paying closer attention than Leah thought, because she handed the clipboard over immediately. Leah skimmed through the contract, trying to ignore the blood stains.
Everything the woman had said was correct. Leah handed the contract back to her.
“Sorry,” Ita-san said, although Leah wasn’t sure if she meant the blood or the fact she’d have to pay a delivery fee twice.
“It’s alright,” Leah said, turning her wheelchair towards the docking port. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been screwed by a corpo.”
Leah let the final thought flit through her brain as she crossed back into the docking tunnel, And I doubt very much that it would be the last.
“All set?” Erin said as Leah took her seat in the back of the shuttle.
“Yeah,” Leah said. She folded the wheelchair, leaned over and secured it in place with some loose cargo straps before buckling herself in. “How’d your appointment go?”
“You know doctors,” Erin said, flipping a couple of switches. The shuttle disconnected from the station with a loud clank. “All needles and arrogance.” She flipped another switch. “This is shuttle alpha-one-niner, requesting permission to disengage.”
A voice came back through, the stilted tones of an obvious AI. “Permission granted, alpha-one-niner. Have a good-”
Erin flipped the comms off again.
Leah leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes. “Thanks again for letting me tag along.”
“No worries,” Erin said, leaning forward a bit to spit into the vacuum mudjug. “I’ve gotta come all the way out to Sōzō country for my checkups anyway.”
Leah felt the ship accelerate forward and had a slight temptation to open her eyes, watch her ship, bought but not yet paid for, fade into the distance. But she knew it would be better for her if she waited until they were far enough away that she wouldn’t feel nervous to watch Erin take her hands from the wheel.
She couldn’t believe her luck; mining equipment and a perfect place to store what she was going to mine. Even if she had to fork out more than half of her savings to make it happen, at least she’d been able to find it. She smiled and let out a long breath.
“Why do you have to come all the way out here for checkups?” she said.
“Company policy,” Erin said, her voice a bit muffled from the new plug of tobacco. Leah hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but she guessed this was a common occurrence for Erin to put in a plug when she first launched. “Guess Sōzō only trust the doctors here. When are you gonna get that junk bucket delivered?”
Leah bristled at hearing the cargo ship described like that, but decided it wasn’t worth the fight. If she pissed Erin off, all it would cause was another eight hours of argument all the way back to Izra. Leah heard Dad’s voice in her head: And besides the woman is doing you a favor.
“About six months or so,” she said, eyes still closed. She smiled as if she could feel sun on her face. “All the time in the world to finalize the sale of the shop back home, buy Aspiration from the realtor and-”
She cut herself off as she felt the whole ship shudder and jolt to one side.
Her eyes snapped open as she heard a loud swallow from the cockpit. “Ah shit.”
Leah took a deep shuddering breath. “What is it?”
“I swallowed my chew,” Erin said. “Fucking thing. Every time…”
“Oh,” Leah said, letting a relieved smile come over her face and her eyelids start to droop close. Maybe she’d get some sleep on the way home. “For a second, I thought there was something wrong with the shuttle.”
“Oh there’s definitely something wrong with the shuttle,” Erin said. From where Leah was sitting all she could see of the pilot was her bright pink hair, but the woman was clearly half-turned trying to speak to her. She jerked her head to the left to indicate the vast expanse of space. “I’ll have to set down on the asteroid over there.”
Leah’s breath tightened in her chest. “What? Why?”
“Dunno. Something wrong with navigation I expect,” Erin said, turning to the front again.
She clutched the armrests as the ship rocked back and forth. Erin was contracted to Sōzō. They wouldn’t let a contractor fly an unsafe shuttle, would they?
Leah scoffed at herself. Of course they would. Corpos gonna corpo.
“Can’t we go back to the Sōzō station?” Leah said, trying to loosen her grip on the armrests. She succeeded. Barely. “If your shuttle is still under warranty, they should-”
Erin snorted. “Warranty. I own this shuttle outright. It’s been serving Izra for a good long while and it’ll serve for a while more.” When Leah didn’t respond at this, she turned fully around. “Don’t worry. I know the one who owns that asteroid. It’ll be alright.” She gave a bit of an embarrassed smile. “And besides anytime I swallow chew, I have to be in the bathroom for a little while and I don’t feel right with that if I don’t have a backup.” She stared at Leah for a while until the woman met her eyes. “Unless, that is, you know how to fly a shuttle like this?”
Leah crossed her arms and looked away. “You know I don’t.”
“Alright then,” Erin said, and turned back around. The whole shuttle shifted again, heading further to the left. “We’ll just make a pit stop. No more than a day or two.”
“A day?!” Leah said. She leaned forward to express her frustration again, but the seat belt caught her and held her fast.
Erin chuckled. “Yeah. Might take a bit to figure out what’s wrong. Don’t worry, though. We’ll find it.”
Leah leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, praying they’d find it soon, praying that she’d soon be anywhere else.
Commentary on this episode for paying subscribers will be released this Monday.
Credits:
ZK Hardy as principal writer, editor, and audio editor.
Emily Westland as editor and producer.
Jamie Philips as design consultant.
Original art provided by Sabina Lewis.
Original music for audio recording and podcast by Ryan A. Mahoney.
What am I missing?
Are these bits prequels?