Throttle Four

Diana shrugged on a synthetic leather jacket, the coat still fab-warm, and then tugged it on tighter before running a hand across her hips. She had a belt on, with a very large, very illegal gun hanging onto the side.

Metal clanged on metal behind her, and she looked over her shoulder before grinning. “You nervous, ChaOS?” she asked.

The machine behind her shook its head. It was six feet of burnished steel, humanoid but skeletal, with a long rifle slung over a shoulder, along with a black cloak that would disguise it a little. Diana didn’t know how many weapons ChaOS was equipped with, but she suspected it had guns in its torso, and shoulders, and in its knees, and upper and lower arms, as well as a few in its head. Not that the machine was limited to mere projectile weaponry, of course.

“You are being exceptionally casual about this, Mistress,” ChaOS said aloud, the AI’s old-British voice sounding extra snooty when spoken from its current droid receptacle.

“It’s fine,” Diana said. She grabbed a mask from a box next to the ship’s airlock and slid it on, the straps tightening themselves around her head. It was an open-faced mask, with a neo-glass front which didn’t obscure her vision, and it filtered what she breathed out of two tabs near her ears.

She stepped into the airlock, ChaOS a step behind her. The door closed, and the pressure around her shifted almost imperceptibly, then the entire airlock dropped.

“The air is breathable,” ChaOS confirmed as lukewarm air swirled around her.

Diana took in the interior of the landing dock with her own eyes.

It was a large room, squarish and rough, with catwalks along the edges and visible piping, likely for fuel and other necessities. It was big enough that the Star Skimmer looked small inside of the room.

Not that the Star Skimmer was a large ship to begin with. It was 130 metres from bow to stern, a good third of that taken up by the oversized engines at the back, with a tapered front that ended in a sharp point.

It was, of course, painted in an eye-searingly bright red and designed to look as if it was about to take off at a moment’s notice. In Diana’s opinion, there was no point in going fast if she wasn’t going to be stylish about it. The Skimmer was a little roughed up, with a few scorch marks and some scratches deep in its armoured hull, but it was mostly cosmetic damage, too low on the priority list to bother with immediately.

She noted a few new seams in the hull, but they didn’t break the overall look of the vessel.

“Mistress, we have a guest incoming.”

Diana turned around and grinned as she saw her first ever alien.

It was a four-legged creature, with a mask over its lower face, a face that she guessed was made entirely of bone. Its feet ended in long bones as well, and its elbows ended in long, sharp protrusions. Its upper body, at least, was somewhat humanoid, with two arms and a bulky torso currently covered in a raggedy space suit that was far too tattered to be usable.

“Think its outfit is a fashion thing?” Diana asked. “Maybe grunge is in around here?”

The creature walked closer, then pulled out a small receptacle from a pouch and waved it at them.

“It is, from what I can piece together, an osel: a mammalian, carbon-phosphorus based species that is space faring,” ChaOS said. It paused while the alien spoke in a quick, guttural tongue. “It is currently begging for alms.”

“Uh,” Diana said. “I… don’t have any money though. Does it want food?”

“I suppose it might accept that,” ChaOS said. “I don’t imagine that this is some sort of test of your generosity.”

“That would be pretty weird, yeah,” Diana said. She gestured to ChaOS who reached down the back of its cloak, then pulled out a small foil-wrapped pouch which it placed in the begging osel’s mug.

The alien eyed the packet, then asked something.

ChaOS replied in the same gurgling tongue. “It is asking for money.”

“Well, tell it that I’m broke,” Diana said.

ChaOS repeated her message, and the osel made a few gestures before scurrying away. It seemed to move a lot faster as a set of doors on the side of the room opened up and a small group poured into the room.

At their head was another four-legged osel, followed by a much smaller alien hefting a large set of tanks on its back, with tubes running to a mask that covered its face. Next to them was a bulbous mass of greyish flesh with four stalks sticking out of the bottom. Diana guessed that the last was rather light, from the way it bounced along. The station didn’t quite have a full Earth gravity, but it wasn’t too far from it.

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“Think they’ll buy that we’re in a first-contact scenario?” Diana asked.

“I’m afraid not, Mistress. The forms and shapes of aliens I’ve seen from their records so far suggests that some species are fairly mutable, and bipedal species, while not the most common, aren’t uncommon either.”

“Right, they’ll figure I’m some gene-mod tweaker, or someone with a bunch of prosthetics. Welp, you figure it out,” Diana said.

“Pardon?”

Diana gestured to the group coming closer. Their clothes, at least on the two wearing some, seemed clean and official-looking to her eyes. “You take care of them. They look like customs, and you know how bad I am with paperwork.”

“You have never filed a single sheet of paperwork in your life,” ChaOS said.

“Exactly; I’m inexperienced and likely to make a terrible, diplomatic-level disaster of it. Intergalactic war is a possibility here.”

The droid behind her twitched a little before finally stepping up and addressing the approaching aliens in what Diana assumed was a polite tone. The alien in the lead, the bone-faced osel, tapped its chest twice and then replied quickly while the smaller alien next to it pulled out a tablet and held it up above its head.

It might have been a small, furry thing with a lot of tubes jutting out of it, but Diana decided that it was cute and that she’d learn if she could pet it later.

There was a quick back and forth before ChaOS turned towards Diana. “Well Mistress, I have discovered a few things.”

“Do tell,” Diana said.

“First, negotiations are common here, or at least not frowned upon. Second, the cost of a berth is relatively high, and starts as soon as a vessel has requested landing permission. Incidentally, we won’t be charged for the rescue attempt earlier, seeing as how the rescuer was an independent trying their luck.”

“Alright,” Diana said. “Any idea how to make money?”

“None. We currently owe the station twelve thousand two hundred Federation Credits, a sum which will increase by three thousand for every rotation spent here.”

“Rotation of the station or the planet?”

“The planet. Days last approximately twenty-seven Terra hours.”

Diana nodded.

“Additionally, this station, whose name translates roughly to The Gift of Boney Ingenuity, belongs to an agricultural consortium belonging to a group of osel. I don’t know if it’s an osel government, corporation, or society of some sort.”

“That’s… a name,” Diana said. “But I bet we have some names that translate weird too, so glass houses and rocks and all that . Anyway, they got services here other than docking? Maybe we can sell some stuff, make enough to pay off our rising debt… you can make money from selling things, right?”

“That is how money has been made, historically, by selling goods and services, taxation, and through inheritance and gifts.”

“Well, I don’t have any alien grandparents to inherit from, and this bunch don’t look ready to gift me anything.” She tilted her head in thought. “Can’t figure out how to tax people either, so that’ll be a no too.”

ChaOS turned back to the waiting aliens and continued talking to them for a moment. After a bit of hand waving, and some tapping on the pad the smaller alien held, everyone seemed to reach an agreement, and the customs agents moved off.

“No inspections?” Diana asked.

“Apparently not. I have also noticed a distinct lack of machine or artificial intelligences. Their programs, the few that aren’t wired, are… primitive.”

“Huh,” Diana said. “Gonna be honest, I’ve no clue what that could mean. Kind of careless of them, but I’ll take it.”

“Indeed, Mistress. Everyone should know better than to let you access anything without prior inspections.”

“Ha-ha,” she intoned before taking off. “Come on, we have a whole station filled with aliens to explore! I want to know if they like racing. Oh! If they have money, do they have gambling too?”

“Mistress, I am becoming increasingly distressed.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be just fine!”

***