Dreaming of Atmosphere Read online

  “You can't flush a crewman out of the airlock for speaking the truth, Cap.” I said, chuckling at their antics.

  “Mutiny! On my own ship! All right, first round is on me once Isaac is dealt with. Where's he wanna meet?”

  “The Crystal Lounge. Know it?”

  “Yeah, a flashy dive with delusions of grandeur. I might need someone to watch my back. It's in a rough part of the Cluster. Feel like a few overpriced beverages before we move onto more reputable parts of town?”

  “You mean bars with cheaper drinks?”

  “It's almost like we speak the same language, Donny!”

  “No problem, are you expecting trouble?”

  “No, but not many people get to be my age by not being prepared in places like this.”

  “Not many get to be Captain's age at all!” declared Crege, bravely. This earned him a thump on the back of the head by Max.

  “Ertak, et kar ka do, burbak!” called Max.

  “You would not say such things if you knew my hatch-mother, Captain!” pouted Crege.

  “Well, you'd need to actually know who your hatch-mother was to tell her I said that, so I guess I'm safe.” came the retort. The compartment filled with laughter as we made our way to berth 232.

  3.

  It's strange how a place that for months was somewhere that I couldn’t wait to get away from, is now a cherished, familiar sight. As the ship weaved between pylons and support beams to its designated berth, I couldn't help but smile at the irony of it; until recently I thought the Corus Cluster was the frontier, now that I'd actually been to the frontier I see the creature comforts that I took for granted. I was looking forward to a hot bath, a cold beer, and room to stretch my legs. Isaac Cameron was putting obstacles in my way, proverbial hoops to jump through before I see the day out. Despite the light banter and jovial back and forth of my colleagues on the Dreaming's bridge, I had misgivings about the coming meeting. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something didn't feel right.

  We put the Dreaming into her berth, a retractable platform with dozens of pipes and hose fittings for various ship types coming out to greet us. Hergo, or Denno, set about connecting the correct hoses for refuelling and soon we were all stepping ashore, as sailors of old would say. There were a few grumbles about not being paid yet, but likely, everyone still had some credits to their name from our prior runs.

  “It would be nice to actually get paid on time one day, Seth,” grumbled Mal Cutler, throwing a sneer my way, “I suppose they don't teach accounting to grunts in the Corps?”

  “Can it, Cuts,” jibbed Eric, ever my front line of defence against the cantankerous Cutler, “Even the skipper said it was out of our hands. Go drown your sorrows in a cheap bar some place.”

  “Or better yet, drown yourself!” I call out to his back as he sauntered away, probably to find the nearest brothel.

  “Why are you always so mean to him?” came a quiet voice from halfway up the gangway, of which I was at the bottom of checking my side arm while waiting for the Captain.

  “He started it, Zoe.” I said, and instantly regretted it.

  “Aren't you supposed to be the mature one?”

  I sighed.

  “I suppose you're going to want directions? Some place interesting?” I quickly changed the topic.

  “No, thanks for the offer though. Fel'negr has offered to take me shopping!”

  “He has?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Yup! I can't wait! He said he was going to show me around the En'taren mall. I hear it's absolutely beautiful!”

  I broke out into a hearty laugh. En'taren Ma'wll was the local Orlii monastery, of sorts. The Orlii are the progenitors of a philosophy called simply The Way that teaches critical thought, deep focus and introspection. I'm not sure of the exact particulars but they're generally respected for their problem solving exercises and many famous scientific minds around the galaxy profess to adhere to at least some of the principles of the discipline.

  “What has he told you to expect?” I enquired

  “That I can buy things here that I can't buy anywhere else!” she called back as she virtually skipped down the gangway and started towards the station interior.

  “Actually,” came Fel’s voice as he walked down the gangway next, “what I said was You will be able to gain something here that you can gain nowhere else. But I guess I see where she could have assumed that that was what I meant.”

  “And you didn't mean next season's fashion?”

  “No. I meant wisdom.”

  “Well, better you than me.”

  His eyes flashed a deep blue of amusement. “You owe me, Seth.”

  “That I do. Have fun, Fel.”

  As Fel'negr headed off to catch up with his charge, Denno made his way down the gangway next.

  “Take care, Denno.”

  “Hergo. Denno is on duty.”

  “Sorry, Hergo. Couldn't see you properly in the light.”

  A trilling, jittery sound emanated from atop the gangway as Crege marched down. I'd heard him make this noise many times; it's the Garz'a equivalent of a chuckle. He high fived me as he passed and made for the station proper. At last, Maxine swayed down the gangway, adjusting a webbing strap on her outfit.

  “This thing always pinches one of my boobs.”

  That's Maxine, all class.

  “You're wearing it wrong.”

  “No I'm not; they're made for men, not women in their forties with big tits”

  “You could put a chest plate on under your shirt? Two birds with one stone.”

  “No way, I'm wearing one of my best bras. It'd ruin it.”

  I sighed once more.

  “Ok, so how do you want to play this?”

  Max rubbed her chin, and then re-adjusted her webbing again.

  “Let’s just see how Isaac is playing it first, you hang back a bit or head straight to the bar. I'll go greet him and see what the fuss is about. If he wants a sit down and chat, I'll call you over. If he's just playing silly buggers I'll put my foot up his ass and join you at the bar.”

  “After you've made sure he's paid us, right?”

  “Yeah, that's what the foot up bottom is about.”

  “Ok, glad that's sorted. Lead the way.”

  “What did you bring?”

  “The PX-2, two clips, my scrambler, ablative jacket, 2 party poppers and my PSMC stabber.”

  What that meant was a standard energy pistol, with two spare batteries, a short wave communication jammer, an energy weapon resistant jacket, two stun grenades and a combat knife. My standard load out when I wanted to be ready, but not look like I wanted to start trouble.

  “Good man. All I got is my hold out. I don't want to appear jittery in this place. Could invite trouble, a woman walking around armed. They might think I'm scared. If they think I'm not armed, they'll thinking I have a body guard and leave me alone.”

  “You do have a body guard.”

  “You're a good boy, Donny.”

  “I want to earn my captaincy, not get it because you got yourself killed in a bar fight.”

  “Huh, who said you're getting it next anyway? What if I hand it down to Fel?”

  “Come on, that guy won't want to leave his systems panel. He won't trust anyone else to do that job.”

  “You're just bitter that he kicked you off as his second.”

  “That was nearly 2 years ago.”

  “Ah huh, you boys don't let go of grudges that easily.”

  “We do so!”

  “Sure. How's Cuts doing, lately?”

  I sighed, for the third time.

  “Can we just get going? I want to check out Cortez' Armoury before they close tonight.”

  “Ok, kiddo, let’s go hire a cab.”

  We made our way into the station. There was no need for customs or passport checks, that stuff was already handled while we waited for our berth. A security computer simply acknowledged our faces matched our reported credentials a
nd noted our entry into the Corus Cluster proper and then logged us into the system.

  Personal computing, these days, was a lot more personal than ages past. From a young age, most people receive a biological implant that grows along with us and matures at around the same time as humans enter puberty. When the implant, called a proto-chip, enters the next stage of development it interfaces with the host’s brain and begins interacting with it. The proto-chip then becomes a fully functional computer system that uses the meat in the hosts head to store data and provide processing power. Components of the system are grown from the hosts DNA and the result is a non-invasive, Bio-Augmentation called an Interface Overlay.

  Augmentation is commonplace, in modern times, both cybernetic and biological. The term Aug is an abbreviation of the cybernetic variety, while Bio is used for the latter, although just calling them both Augs is easier. Interface Overlay's are the most common Bio, nearly everyone has them, although they come in various makes and models. The top of the range are said to grant the user a secondary mind, an Artificial Intelligence that can communicate internally with the host and perform thought exercises and complex problem solving independently of the host. Sounds a lot like a multiple personality disorder, but I've actually met someone who had one such Bio, back in my time with the PSMC. He was our squad's techie and came from one of the Inner Systems worlds, where everyone is rich and has access to the most advanced technology around.

  Talking to him was creepy, you never knew if it was him or his computer that you were talking to, and he always seemed a little distracted. He was a good soldier though, and his double brain came in handy more than once. I rather miss him, to be honest; I used to bounce ideas off him all the time. I miss a lot of my old squad...

  “Donny! You getting in?” Maxine yelled at me from the back seat of the cab we'd just hailed, jolting me out of my memories.

  “Sorry, got lost in thought.”

  “Did it hurt?” She joked.

  “Yeah, it kind of did. “ She saw the look in my eye and softened almost immediately.

  “Thinking about Gossamer?”

  “A little.”

  She squeezed my knee as I sat down beside her in the cab, but said nothing more. She looked out the window with a sad look on her face. She knew she couldn't say or do anything to make me feel better, so she didn't. I was grateful.

  Our cab, a computer controlled air vehicle with 4 seats, sped off into the station access corridor. The corridor was a hundred metre wide lane about a hundred and sixty metres tall that ran the length of the station, about a hundred and twenty kilometres in total. Side access corridors opened at various sections further down that led to other sections of the station. The custodians of the station ran a monopoly on transportation, having banned personal transports inside the station, and the only way to get around without using small shuttles out in space was to pay a fee and use one of the many taxi vehicles such as the one we were using now. All up, there were about forty something different station sectors that were once smaller stations or habitats themselves, all linked up to this large corridor. In an emergency energy fields popped into place that could prevent atmosphere from leaking out of the corridor and all the station sections were isolated in a similar manner, as well as with their original airlocks when they were standalone stations.

  I read somewhere that the same person owned all the stations. An Argen entrepreneur bought up a heap of these old habitats that were all being mismanaged by their previous owners and gradually towed them all into one place in the middle of the two main population centres of the system. Add to that its nearness to the system's only operational Jump Gate and it wasn't long before his investment paid dividends.

  Jump Gates, by the way, were the only way to travel faster than light. They directed traffic to a single destination, light years away, linked to a matching Jump Gate at the other end. The Argessi System, as previously mentioned, only had one that led to the Harakiwa System. A second Gate was under construction but was several years away from completion. This meant that the Argessi System was the current end of the line, so to speak.

  The known galaxy is a vast, sprawling mess of Jump Gates connecting literally thousands of star systems together. To organise the many systems, the governing body of the galaxy – called the Galactic Protectorate, or just the Protectorate – classified groups of star systems together around significant systems and features and called them Networks. We were at the far end of one such Network – The Votus-Eridani Network.

  Each time a ship enters one of the Jump Gates, it's sent many light-years away to the next Jump on the Network, and this is when relativistic effects take place. Although the science is a little beyond me, the way I understood it is that they act much like a wormhole, although at some point I knew we left behind regular space and entered into a kind of adjacent dimension, call a brane. I've heard scientists talking about strings that interact with the branes, and pull us along or something, but it all gets messed up in my head and I feel dumber every time someone tries to explain it to me. The description that works for me is that a string connects the Jump Gates to each other, through another brane, and we travel along outside along the string, to the other brane and back into our brane. Moreover, it takes a couple of months to do that. Inside our ship, it only takes us a few days at most. Therefore, most interstellar travellers, such as Maxine and I, experience the passage of time a little differently to those who spend most of their life on one side of a Jump Gate.

  Most of the time you spend in a star ship is moving from one point in the star system to another. This can take about two weeks per Astronomical Unit, depending on your propulsion rig. An AU, which is how spacer travellers measure distance in space, represents an old measurement from the earliest days of space travel. It's roughly one hundred and fifty million kilometres, the average distance ancient Earth was from the Sun.

  While we travelled advertisements from various establishments and services were showing up in my vision. The station network had finished logging us into the Cluster wireless and we were bombarded with the usual tourist hooks and flashy adverts that would have once been displayed on garish physical billboards in real space, not beamed directly to our brains. A simple thought and the ads were blocked. I looked over at Max and saw her staring into space, her eyes darting in small movements. She always found a few interesting ads to view, so I left her to her reading.

  I called up the cab's display in my vision and checked the ETA of our trip. I still had some time to kill, so I opened my personal messaging service. In moments, my vision was filled with a few dozen messages, the usual amount after being disconnected from a network for a few months. I scanned the subject fields for anything interesting. A newsletter for a gun enthusiasts group I subscribe to, an invitation to trial a new material from Cortez' Armoury, an email from my old PSMC doctor. Did I mention that I like guns? And armour.

  Cortez' Armoury was an exceptional energy weapon and personal armour store on the Corus Cluster, one I made a point of visiting every time I was on station. I talk guns with the locals there, and every now and then, it pays off, like today. I had an invite to try out a new armour composite they just got in. They're looking for actives, slang for active operators that sometimes get into violent, messy or just dangerous encounters from time to time. Did I mention that space could be dangerous? So, they wanted people like me to try out this new material and give the store some feedback. I'd been looking for a new fibre to mix on my armoured space suit. My days of jumping out of space ships and launching myself at enemy ships were behind me (I hoped) but the M4 Marine Armoured Extravehicular Laminate Suit, or just M4 MAEL, came in handy many times. It was somewhat heavy though, when you're not weightless, which is when I tend to wear it most of the time these days. Hopefully, this new stuff was lightweight.

  The cab AI dutifully informed us that we were nearing our destination. I closed up my messaging app and started up my local tactical app. I could see Maxine was getting ready to
o, drawing out her hold out blaster and pairing it with her Overlay Interface. I pulled out my PX-2 and activated a control on its grip. Instantly an icon appeared which I acknowledged and a small, nearly invisible marker appeared in my vision, tracking to where ever I pointed my gun. When I was happy with its calibration, I holstered my side arm and stepped out of the cab. A small box appeared in my vision, with the words 'Connecting to local surveillance. Please wait.' flashing. A couple of seconds later they vanished and I scanned the crowd nearby with my eyes. When I closed my eyes, I could see faint outlines of where people were milling about, going about their business in the sector. Occasionally a small red indicator appeared on some of the outlines, identifying weapons that were picked up by local cameras and other sensors that I was now connected to.

  The tactical app I was using wasn't entirely legal. I'd picked it up during an operation I was involved with back when I was with the Star Marines. We were operating in a heavily populated area and needed to distinguish between hostiles and civilians. Our benefactor was a part time asset of the Kanto Intelligence Agency, and he helped us install the app, mask it from command and allowed us to do our jobs without endangering innocent bystanders. I didn't see the need to uninstall it once I'd mustered out. It's only useful in a friendly network system, and discretely hacks into local surveillance feeds to gather data on possible threats nearby. I'm sure it has a few other uses too, but how do you get someone to show you how to use an illegal app without admitting you have one?

  I gave Max a nod and we walked to the entrance to the station sector, past the usual assortment of street vendors and commuters. We joined a queue of people waiting to pass through an airlock that led into the sector proper, and soon we were in a large compartment that must have once been a hangar bay or other large storage facility. This was a sector called Millard's Quarter, and it's what passed for the red light district of the Corus Cluster. It was early, so the usual clientele were mostly absent, just daytime traders and travellers were about. A few shady characters congregated in small groups, eyeing people who got too close, or perhaps casing them for later on. Several bars were open, but were not yet competing for the loudest din or the most colourful lights, and crowds weren’t at their shoulder-to-shoulder density.