Throttle Three

The ship on an intercept course was, in Diana’s professional opinion, a junk heap.

It had a pair of large thrusters, mounted on a set of rotors that allowed them to turn around the central body of the vessel which was more of a box with a cockpit in its centre. Pipes ran across the surface on some spots, and there were a pair of large pads on pistons at the front, obviously designed to grab onto things. Magnets, maybe?

“You know,” Diana said as she gave the retro thrusters a bit more power. “When I thought of aliens, I was expecting… I don’t know, beings of superior intellect and power and culture. That thing looks like it was stolen from a museum.”

“It would be presumptive to judge an entire species based on the appearance of a single utility tug,” ChaOS said. “But I am the presumptive sort, and I judge them to be somewhat backwards in technological terms.”

“Well, maybe this is just some… poorer area?” Diana asked. She wasn’t entirely used to the idea of poverty. The Sol system was very much a post-scarcity society, and where there was still some uneven distribution of wealth here and there, no one was flying anything as rusty as the vessel now heading their way, not unless it was on some sort of dare or to showcase late twenty-first century tech.

Still, she had had history classes, if only to remind her of the way things had once been so that she wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of her ancestors. Assuming that every other species in the galaxy had the same history was foolish, she realised.

“We’re getting a lot of noise from that tug,” ChaOS said. “I think they’re warning us of their approach.”

“So, what do you suggest, oh great and all-wise AI?” Diana asked. “Do we start blasting?”

“Let’s not blast the unarmed utility vessel asking us if we need assistance,” ChaOS said.

Diana shrugged. “Fine. Send a reply saying we’re thankful for the help.”

“We don’t know their language.”

“Then send it in English,” Diana said. “Besides, look at that ship, then look at the other ships you’ve seen. The design language is all over the place. I bet there’s more than one group here, which likely means more than one language. Bet they have translation AI.”

“… I suppose a friendly greeting would conform to the basic principles of the First Contact protocol. Sending a greeting now.”

Diana pulled her legs up onto her seat so that she was sitting with her knees up against her chest. ChaOS sent out a message in a burst of high-frequency radio signals. It would take a while, she figured, for a reply to come back.

That was time she could spend staring at the approaching station and the world behind it.

The planet wasn’t quite as green and diverse as Earth. It had a small band of green along the equator, but the rest of it seemed rather arid, without any signs of ice at the poles. The single ocean wrapping around the world was thin in places, likely not helped by the mountainous shores.

Diana guessed that maybe only a third of the surface was water: far less than Earth back home. So, a drier, more arid world on the whole. It was smaller than Earth too, though not by too much. Slightly less gravity on the surface, she guessed.

The station gave her more to think about. It was… a bit of a mess. It looked like a large tube, with a fat doughnut around the middle. The entrance and exits were on the ends of the tube, which made some sense. It was easier to match with the relatively stable top and bottom than to circle around the middle of the station to enter from there.

The majority of the station had uncovered scaffolding. Large boxy habitats were linked together behind that scaffolding, some covered in glass allowing those within to see space beyond, others more utilitarian. All of them were pitted and welded together with a patchwork of steel bits.

She had the impression that the entire station was trying hard to go for a junkpunk aesthetic. Or maybe the station really was made of junk thrown together with little regard for safety.

“Hey, ChaOS, can I see the other stations?”

“Some are currently on the far side of the planet, or hidden by local moons,” the AI said. It still projected images of all the other stations, some taken from further away.

They were clearly quite different. One looked like a long tear-drop, all sleek and grey. Another looked like a massive mushroom, with holographic ads all around it.

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“I’m starting to think that there’s more to the differences here than just different groups having made the stations,” Diana said.

“I suspect you might be correct, Mistress. The stations are giving off different sorts of signals and radiation. It’s likely that we’re dealing with multiple species, or at least very different approaches to technology. The planet is also barely inhabited. There are some cities along its equator, but not enough to justify the number of stations in orbit.”

“Huh,” Diana said. She didn’t quite know what to do with that knowledge.

“Oh!”

Diana blinked. “Good oh, or bad oh?”

“The approaching ship has sent us a dictionary. Or rather, some sort of translation package. It has words in forty-two languages, with definitions, and explanations. These languages are either all simplistic, or the dictionary isn’t complete. Either way, it’s usable.”

“That’s great,” Diana said.

“There seem to be… approximately seventy-two alien races in this codex. Those are the named races.”

“Oh,” Diana said. “Oh, shoot, that’s a lot.” Making first contact with one race was big, meeting a heap of them was… something way different.

ChaOS continued. “Translating their request now… they said that there’s a berth open on the upper level of the station and that the tug will guide us there for a nominal fee. They claim that it’s a bargain. I cannot judge the truth of that.”

“They want us to pay?” Diana asked. Paying for things was nearly a foreign idea. “We don’t have any alien bucks.”

“The money they use would more appropriately translate to Board Credits. But yes, Mistress, we are in fact very poor in the eyes of the locals.”

Diana pouted. “Well, tell them we don’t need the tug then,” she said. “And get me the coordinates of that berth. Get ready to match whatever they have for landing systems in a hurry.”

She grabbed a hold of the controls, then pressed down on the throttle. The Star Skimmer rumbled for a moment before shooting past the tug fast enough that her ship’s drive plume sent the tug spinning.

They got a squawk over the coms, the pilot of the tug speaking to them at a volume and with a tone that Diana mentally translated as a long string of curses.

As she came closer and started to decelerate, the actual size of the station became more evident. It was maybe ten kilometres long, from end to end, and a third of that wide at its widest point. Basically, the size of a small skyscraper.

“This is the smallest station, right?” Diana asked.

“Not exactly. There are others that are smaller, this is merely the least busy.”

“I think the locals haven’t gotten the knack for building big yet.” Diana gently tugged back on one of the joysticks, and along the forward belly of the Star Skimmer and its lower back, a set of manoeuvring thrusters spat out small jets of flame that had the entire ship rolling on itself so that its front was pointed down and into the top of the station. There was a large entrance, one with a shimmering blue wall over it. “Can you highlight the dock?” Diana asked.

“One moment, I need to translate all of this. They use an unintuitive numerical system, and their docks aren’t numbered in a way that makes any sense. I suspect they’re numbered by the order they were added to the station, but they weren’t added from the middle out.”

Diana shrugged. “Sounds messy,” she said.

“Found it. There are no running lights, and the interior traffic doesn’t rely on any rules that I can see.”

“Light up the landing spot,” Diana said. A moment later, a tiny red square appeared on the screen before her, and she gunned forwards and into the station. If she couldn’t be sure that a ship wouldn’t move into her way, then it just made sense to move fast enough that no one had time to cut her off.

“Mistress! You are being needlessly reckless. Again!”

Diana shot into the main tunnel of the station, weaved out of the way of a large pillar, then spun the ship around so that she could slow down faster with her rear thrusters. Then it was just a question of matching the velocity of the station and coming down for a smooth landing.

“Easy as pie,” she said while ignoring the blips on the comm. “Now, let’s go greet some aliens, yeah?”

***