Both airlocks opened after docking was completed. Brighand met face to face with a group of men holding energy rifles ready to fire with the oddity of mops on their backs and a bunch of cleaning supplies behind them. If he took out the pistol, they would gun him down mercilessly. If he didn’t take out the gun, they could still gun him down and he’d be unable to resist. He felt like all those cleaning supplies were there to clean off the blood after he got executed.
“Put your hands up, wear this, and get out,” said one of them as they tossed over a respirator.
It was basically a gas mask but only covered the mouth and nose. Useful for filtering air to the lungs but provided no protection to the eyes or rest of the face. By giving him this, they implied that they believed the disease to be airborne and unable to penetrate skin or sensitive areas. So if everyone wore a respirator or mask, it would not spread further. If the disease could be stopped so easily, it made sense that they would simply make him wear a mask and clean everything thoroughly rather than kill him.
Brighand slipped on the mask, raised his hands, and left the ship. The armed men holstered their rifles and began mopping the ship and spraying the walls down. Unlike his fears that they would question the damage to the engine or search him to find the pistol, they just ignored him.
“Am I free to go? Or do I have to wait until you’re done?” asked Brighand.
“Report to the medical bay within one hour or you’ll be sanitized. Take your space rocks with you,” said one of the men as he unlatched the box full of the scrap collected and shoved it into his arms.
“Okay, I guess I’ll go then,” said Brighand as he walked over to the quartermaster’s shutters with the box.
There, he found the shutters wide open instead of just a tiny crack. There the quartermaster sat with a full spacesuit on and a portable ventilator in his office. This felt even weirder than trying to communicate through a few centimeters of not shutter. He set the box on the counter and watched as the quartermaster pulled it aside and started rinsing it down in a sink.
The sink itself wasn’t unusual nor was washing. It just was usually one of the later steps. The order would normally be sifting to separate the different sizes of debris. Rocks would be picked apart to look for anything useful in them while also scraping off dirt from metal scraps. Finally, salvageable metal would be rinsed off then oiled to remove existing rust and prevent new rust from forming.
Now, due to the disease, the rinsing was done first and then all the other steps and another rinse. The quartermaster found the lead and set it aside. Another unusual part was that the quartermaster himself was doing this. Normally he’d push it off to one of his workers and only take over personally when someone said they might’ve found something special like an intact device or a bunch of lead like Brighand had. However, they hadn’t even exchanged a single word.
“You’re back early I see with a haul similar to last time. Looks like you got lucky. This pile over here is lead and will sell for a good price. High demand for it lately,” said the quarter master as he began weighing the lead and writing down on a piece of paper.
“The lead isn’t for sale and that luck is no thanks to you. You sold me bad coal, metal scraps and plastic almost blew my engine,” said Brighand.
“Who’s at fault for that? The person who sold you the bad coal or the fact you didn’t even get suspicious about the coal not having a hole bored into it. I didn’t sell you bad coal on purpose but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna sell coal I knew was good to anyone but people I like. I do kind of like you now as your whole disease scare allowed the station to be prepared,” said the quartermaster.
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“Prepared for what? I know something is going on as the janitors have guns,” said Brighand.
“Well a military ship from the war was found,” said the quartermaster.
Brighand couldn’t help but freeze up. He knew that it couldn’t be the same ship he found but couldn’t help but react. After all, that ship was in stealth hovering just outside the port, orbiting on the other side of the station so that it wouldn’t bump into ships coming and going from the cargo hangars. His implant allowed him to see its outline through the entire station.
“Twenty man salvaging crew found it. Only one came back covered in blood while towing the ship into the hangar. Security team was called in and kept the order, but we found out that the sole survivor, like you, had a disease. It infected a lot of people but the medical team determined it was an airborne disease and a filter keeps it out easily enough. Problem is no cure and most of security were infected. It made them violent and aggressive, even more so than usual. Some left in their patrol ships, some got quarantined, and a few had to be put down after they started committing murders,” said the quartermaster.
“And so, since there was no security, the janitors get guns and authority now?” asked Brighand.
“Yes. They were the perfect choice as they are needed to clean areas with the disease and had masks on even before the outbreak. Lotta chems in their cleaning products you don’t want to be breathing in constantly on top of the disease scare. Honestly, I think a few of them took off their masks and got infected anyway as they act a bit odd. It’s like they’re trying to find excuses to shoot people and started calling themselves the Custodial Union. Don’t tell them I said this though,” said the quartermaster in a whispering voice that was loud as normal as if to just tip off others rather than actually be hard to hear.
“Hey, stop putting the lead away. I said it wasn’t for sale. Let’s not gloss over that and try to get me to sell it unintentionally,” said Brighand as he watched the quartermaster marking down the lead and its price on a sales contract.
“Oh come on, this much lead can get you a full tank of liquid gas and then some. No better time than now to sell. Most of the security team’s ships run radioactive and they would get it for free. Now that they’re disbanded, I can sell radioactives freely and the remaining security team ships are all sold off while people are trying to buy up the lead so their engines can handle radioactives,” said the quartermaster.
“Exactly. I’m one of those people who wants to switch to radioactives. The combustion part of my engine blew. It can only run at low speeds now. Rest of the engine is fine so with some lead and radiation collectors, my ship can run on pure radioactives. Since I own that lead, it’s a cheaper option than buying a new engine. Speaking of which, my engine still needs repairs. Anyone willing to join up with me now, especially any engineers who want to be away from the port?” asked Brighand.
As the quartermaster oversaw the port as a whole, he also held power over the mechanics who would repair and maintain ships. He was the best person to ask about potential recruits for mechanics.
“No, there isn’t a single engineer that’ll tag along with you in a moving coffin just to avoid a disease that they can just wear a mask for instead. Wouldn’t give you any of them even if you gave me this lead for free. Here’s the contract. It has the radioactives you want to buy, a fee for making lead shielding, install costs, oxygen refill, food and water refill. Take off the mandatory fee towards your criminal record fine and you actually owe me a bit of money but we’ll call it even because I like you,” said the quartermaster as he placed the contract on the counter.
Brighand knew there was some trickery afoot and he was probably owed money but signed it after confirming the lead shielding was there and there was no lead on the selling part. It was carbon paper with a copy behind it that was given to him after signing. Behind the two pieces of paper was a clipboard that automatically made a third digital copy of the contract and signature.
“Now don’t you have somewhere to be? Don’t give the Custodial Union a reason to so-called ‘sanitize you.’ Power really went to their heads,” said the quartermaster as he gathered the lead into a basket and walked it out of his office.
Back to the medical center. He had failed to get an engineer from the quartermaster but that only counted healthy and presumed disease free engineers. After getting a checkup, he could find out if there were any quarantined engineers that he could convince to tag along.