Joe’s spirits were hardly lifted as they started walking through the narrow hallways of the station proper. Passing through the residential (and recreational) sections, lights were flickering and stains were frequent. He made a “tch” sound as he saw a water pipe dripping. Fusion reactors meant pure water wasn’t generally an issue to provide, but still it was a sign of dangerous neglect.
“Who’s in charge of maintenance?” he asked Aaron, who was trudging in silence a few steps ahead, slightly embarrassed. He carefully stepped over a pile of empty cans.
“That’d be Ms. Wilco, she’s the daughter of our last maintenance chief, Roger. He accidentally spaced himself and no replacement’s come through. They did send an extra tech though to act as senior hygiene manager, he’s kinda all over the place.”
“I’ll want to have a word with her.” Joe’s voice was tense with anger, unusual circumstances or not a station couldn’t be allowed to fall apart like this. Engineers could only fix and prevent issues with the mechanical systems and machinery, maintaining the environment was a separate full time line of work and was just as critical. Wait...
“Accidentally spaced himself?” Joe couldn’t help asking.
“Yea he was cleaning the area near the outer airlock, the occupant sensor was busted and station monitoring didn’t catch it. He bumped the release while cleaning the chamber and the lock cycled him out.” Aaron shuddered slightly.
“It wasn’t a pretty sight when we got the body back inside, even the doc was a bit green.”
“The maintenance chief was cleaning the floor? And the airlock wasn’t checked before anyone went inside? This just gets better and better.”
The anger was starting to overtake everything else in Joe’s mind. This entire place was a shambles, and he’d actually started to look forward to meeting the local management so he could rip off their heads. Maybe he’d enjoy this promotion after all.
Joe was just working himself into a nice internal rant when they got outside of the residential area and he met his first station denizen aside from Aaron.
“Honk!” he jumped what felt like a meter and whirled around.
“Not a goddamn clown.” he groaned, Spaceys Mandate #13, all stations would have the misfortune of a clown to “improve productivity through humour and japes”.
The clown, frowning sadly beneath the mask, honked it’s nose again, a sadder sound this time.
“Honk.”
Joe frowned back in irritation and made a shooing motion.
“Look buddy I’m busy right now, I don’t need a clown breaking even more shit while I’m still trying to figure out what all needs fixing.”
“Honk honk.” the clown nodded sadly, and trudged off. Joe felt a bit like he’d just kicked a puppy, but shook it off and turned around to keep following Aaron.
Aaron was gone.
“Aaron?” Joe’s voice echoed forlornly on the metal walls. He’d been there a second ago.
“Aaron, I thought the reactor was urgent? Stop playing around.”
The silence continued, notable only for a complete lack of Aaron. He was gone.
Joe’s teeth ground together. Aaron had seemed to be the only semi-competent person on the station and yet he’d just proven that thought wrong. Once everything was in some kind of working shape he’d be compiling the most scathing report he could and hopefully get someone of actual use on the station with him.
Muttering to himself, masking his nerves with anger, Joe stomped onwards in search of a directory or signage to get him to the reactor. Hopefully his old SS-09 ID card would let him in, access control for station computers was notorious for slipshod security and standards.
The lighting got worse as he made his way deeper into the station, with not a soul in sight. More and more this place was beginning to feel like a derelict, where was all the traffic? Why were half the lights out? This was supposed to be an active Spaceys service center, surely they’d have just abandoned it by now if it was this unimportant?
Lost as he was in the unfathomable reasoning of business logic, he ran right into someone from behind and yelped.
“Bloody hell! Sorry mate but you were just standing... there.”
Whoever he’d knocked into had collapsed into a heap on the ground, but Joe felt an instinctive desire to step back instead of running to their aid. They were wearing a hazmat suit, and it looked covered in something... a dull sticky green maybe. Joe checked himself over quickly but couldn’t see any stains, and breathed a sigh of relief - before his breath stopped entirely as he thought of airborne agents. Holding his breath, he stepped gingerly past the prone figure. He’d get medical to look at them, and himself, assuming there was anyone capable of doing so onboard.
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Joe’s nerves were shot now and he started jumping at sparks and shadows. This place was deadly, and he was feeling in serious need of something that could talk back. He reached into his duffle and pulled out a standard Spaceys comm kit,a simple, toughened LED screen with a fold out keyboard used for short range comms when doing EVAs or diving into the bowels of a station’s complex piping and hydraulics. It should be able to pick up the station’s local chat channels and give him both text and voice. He turned it on and quickly set it to auto find any active frequencies.
“Hello?” he tapped into the text console, feeling nervous about breaking the silence with his voice.
“Good day! Welcome to Spaceys Space Station CV-11 Customer Support! The Rest of the Best, at your behest! My name is Casey, how may I assist you?”
Joe groaned softly. He’d found the support bot. They were hardly even worth calling an AI, the sort of thing you could run on an office computer to handle basic troubleshooting and customer care. Well, maybe he’d be able to get use out of it.
“Hi Casey, this is Joe Nier, company ID 4550-30582. I’m the chief engineer on this station but have yet to be briefed on the issues currently going on with the station. Could you provide me some details?”
“I’m sorry, but as a member of staff you’ll need to speak to the internal support assistant, Stacey. Unfortunately, she’s non-operational at present and will not be able to assist you. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Joe ground his teeth together. He doubted arguing would be of much use here, and charge was running low on the comm unit.
“Okay, can you give me a list of the last hundred support cases you’ve logged?”
“I’m sorry, but only the chief customer liaison can request support ticket information.”
“Who is that and can you get them to contact me?”
“The role is currently filled by Peter Jameson. His last known location was airlock 3, shortly afterwards he left the station and we are unaware of his current position.”
Joe turned off the comm unit and stood up. He realised now that he was farther up shit creek than anybody had a right to be, and the barbed wire canoe had a leak the size of a faulty fusion reactor. A wave of numbness washed over him as he realised that he may have been sent here to die, not from malice but... to cut costs? He wasn’t some whiz-kid that saved doomed stations, he was a comfortable, complacent pipe technician. And even if he did fix the reactor, it seemed like there were a lot more problems to go around.
Joe sat alone in the hallway for a while, but his head jerked up at the sound of footsteps down the metal hallway, the steady tread of what sounded like someone in heavy boots. Scrambling to his feet, Joe’s breathing accelerated as the figure resolved first into a shadow, and then - a shape wearing the familiar uniform of Spaceys security contractors, a moderately vile red and orange affair which guaranteed their visibility in anything except the worst of lighting conditions. Sighing in relief, he jerked up short as he saw the guard point a rifle at him.
“Hands up! One hand, ID, slowly, now!” Joe’s hands shot up and he slowly lowered one into his bag, eyes fixed on the barrel of the old fashioned bullet slinger that seemed just as bad as any plasma gun right now.
“Sure, sure officer I’m actually in need of help!” he stammered out, “i’m the new engineer, I got lost when Aaron disappeared on the way to the reactor.”
“Hah! Sure, new engineer!” the sneering disbelief in the man’s voice was not a good sign, and Joe didn’t fancy his chances if the burly figure got rough. He gently tossed his ID card and promotion papers down between them and stepped back, not moving as the guard reached out and grabbed it. Holding it up to the visor of his helmet, Joe sweated as his credentials were perused. Even an innocent man felt guilty with a gun in his face.
“Joe Nier, huh? Says here you’re a 2nd grade plasmatics engineer. These promotion papers look fake to me.”
Joe barked a laugh in spite of himself. “I wish, I’m nowhere near qualified for this promotion but Aaron says I’m all you’ve got.”
The guard looked up at him again quizzically.
“Aaron, that a friend of yours?”
Joe was perplexed, “He’s one of your customs guys. He disappeared on the way here but I mean, the shuttle left before then and I don’t think there’s any way off the station so he must be around.” he shrugged and froze and the rifle swung back up.
“Follow me buddy, I think you and I need to go speak to the chief.”