I stood by as the massive pod on the back of my mining craft tipped, draining its contents into the stations' stores. Another day of dangerous work to barely cover my loan on a half-broken-down mining craft. Not to mention refueling fees, docking fees, and storage fees. There are a lot of fees. Tucking my compad under my arm, I watched as the equipment gave a final hiss, and the last of the ore was extracted from my mining craft.
The large, yellow, crustacean-shaped ship had seen better days. The thrusters and mining equipment in its "claws" had been patched and jury-rigged so often that there was little of the original hardware left. Cover panels had long since been taken off and sold for scrap, and ease of access. Large spools of cables jutted out of and reentered the craft at various points bypassing damaged conduits. The craft had no FTL drive, being entirely system bound and relying on its cruise drive to traverse the system.
I looked at my reflection in the chromed pillar of the docking bay. Even here beyond the Empire, Itzli stations were gaudy chromed eyesores that dazzled the eyes. They claimed it was because our inferior eyes couldn't see and appreciate the same spectrum of colors as they could. All it meant to me, was that the contrast between the polished materials of the station and my gaunt, sunken face, and bald scalp stood out even more. My hazard-yellow vac-suit hung slack on my emaciated frame. Malnutrition, rad exposure, and long hours meant that I wouldn't be winning any beauty contests anytime soon.
Beyond the Itzli Empire is an area just outside the official jurisdiction known as the Itzli Verge. This space was home to thousands of stations just like this one. The area was unrestricted by Itzli law, yet still benefited from the protection of its fleets being so close to its borders, leaving merchants and industrialists free to exploit its resources without restraint. I imagine this is as close to paradise as you could find for them. For those of us unwelcome within the borders of the Empire itself, it was the only home we had. Others passed through on their way elsewhere, but permanent residents of the Itzli Verge made up the majority of the population of stations such as this one.
The automated unloader gave a cheerful chirp before spitting out a data chip with the tallied result of my latest mining expedition. Turning, I headed towards the booth at the entrance of the cavernous docking bay. Used to be, you had to worry about getting mugged on your way out, but that got put a stop to real quick when productivity took a nosedive because of it.
The station was a massive disk with tall spires extending from the center on both the top and bottom. The disk was organized into different 'rings' of function, with the outermost holding the docking and cargo bays along with the docks. Next in was the promenade ring, a massive open-air market. After that was the maze-like warren of apartment blocks that most permanent residents of the station lived in, and lastly was the heart of the station.
Docking bays held massive gantries with magnetic docking clamps that would extend out through the magnetic barrier to deploy or retrieve a mining craft. The weight of a fully loaded miner meant that it would either need to have powerful landing thrusters or advanced anti-gravity systems. Both had problems that made them unattractive to Station Masters, but it all boiled down to money in the end. Bigger thrusters meant bigger, more expensive mining craft and hardened hangars tough enough to withstand the stronger exhaust. Anti-gravity was energy hungry, which meant even more expensive mining craft and the fuel to run them. Powerful magnets on a retracting gantry were much more cost-efficient. Never mind the occasional accident when a gantry broke, crushing somebody under hundreds of tons of ship and ore that just was the price of doing business.
Slotting my chip into the gatehouse terminal, I watched my hard-earned money dwindle away. Sixteen hours of work and all I had to show for it was enough Ixpira's left over to afford to resupply, a meal, and a few hours in a sleep pod. Maybe a little 'Hyperfuel' if I felt like splurging. 'Hyperfuel' was the name for the alcoholic beverage of choice out here. Rumour had that its unique flavor was because it was transported in bulk in old fuel tankers that no longer passed inspection. If everyone agreed on one set of regulations, it was those around hyperfuel tankers. No one ever wanted one with a bad seal going up near them. The stuff was a wonderful combination of being a highly caustic and volatile, liquid while also having a tendency of sticking to whatever it touched that lacked the special coating needed to hold it.
Proceeding through the gate, I joined the river of other people on the station promenade. The outer promenade ring of the station was an open air market, filled with shops selling anything a spacer could desire. Food, boosters, rent-a-pods, 'entertainment,' pretty much anything you could imagine was for sale here. Most spacers passing through didn't care about the markup, they'd rather save time by spending a little extra money here instead of having to walk to the heart of the station for a better deal.
Itzli merchants here strode about in their gaudy robes, with entourages of clerks and guards as they conducted business. The Itzli are a race of upright lizard people with large crocodilian snouts who pride themselves on their talent as merchants, along with their ability to crush anyone who disagrees beneath their clawed feet, and their empire was proof that they were successful at it. You were going to do business with them, or you would become the business, slavery was a fact of life in the Itzli Empire.
So far, I had managed to keep my independence by the slimmest of margins. Legal slavery meant bureaucracy and regulations. They couldn't make just any random person on the street a slave, even out here in the Itzli Verge, nobody would want to work for you if they had to worry about waking up one day with a slave chip in them. Miner riots were no joke either, and competition between the merchant houses meant that somebody else was always happy to take advantage of their competitors if they Fragged up.
Processions of robed Varnava pilgrims carrying censers and surrounded by clouds of incense on pilgrimage were also a common sight on the promenade. Strange spindly insectoids that moved eerily in sync with each other, the Varnava were devoutly religious. Following what they called the Path Of Universalism, they believed in a singular creator of the universe that left a path for others to follow behind him. Many spent their entire lives seeking the 'waystones' that they believed marked the path. While typically pacifist, they would defend the 'waystones' fiercely if attacked. They were mostly a amiable sort, more than happy to talk about their beliefs over a booster without being overbearing about it. I'd passed my free time on more than one occasion loitering in a bar talking to them as I waited for the start of my next shift.
The Varnava were tall, only rivaled by the Kekoa in height. Their exoskeletons would change colors to blend in with their surroundings, and they possessed two pairs of arms, one with deadly blades and the other with simple grasping claws. Typically, their blade arms were kept folded flush with their body. A Varnava with extended blades was a warning that you were flying in dangerous space the few ignored.
Passing through the residential ring of the station, the chittering of Sizwe mining clans filled the corridors as they passed, forcing others to make way due to their sheer number. As you might have guessed from their name, they are the premier miners of the Itzli Empire. At home deep underground as much as they are in deep space, they are a territorial species, and fiercely protective of their mining claims. They can be found in almost every system of the Empire. Their skills and reproduction rate allowed them to displace most other species as miners within just a few years of their integration into the Empire. Even out here, solo miners like me were only tolerated as long as we kept away from the rich deposits. They were more than willing to use violence to enforce their claims.
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The Sizwe have elongated bodies, short legs, short round ears, thick fur, and just as comfortable on two limbs as they are on four. Anyone who underestimates their claws may soon find their insides are now outside, and they're just as adept at carving flesh as they are stone.
Kekoa warriors demand as much space as the Sizwe in these cramped halls, not only because of their sheer size, but also because the possibility of angering one of these massive aliens encourages others to keep their distance. The massive Kekoan warriors are often seen as bodyguards, void marines, gladiator fighters, and other high-risk and violent occupations. They evolved on a world of over 90% water, and are just as happy in the cold depths of their planet's oceans as they were on its frozen glacial islands.
Powerful jaws and razor-sharp fins on their arms served as both weapons and increased their agility in the water. Their planet was not a tropical paradise, but rather a bitterly cold arctic abyss. Their thick skin and dense layers of blubber served to protect them from blunt impacts as much as they did the bitter cold. Their circulatory and respiratory systems are well adapted for diving deep into the crushing depths of the ocean, giving them an advantage inside the cockpit of a fighter craft by allowing them to endure the punishing high-g maneuvers they undertake. They are also naturally adept at three-dimensional thinking, further lending to their skill in void combat. Their skin tone varies from smoky grays and deep blues to the rarest pitch black indistinguishable from the dark depths or the void of space.
Humans? I can probably count the number of humans in this system on one hand with fingers left over. There aren't a lot of us around, and we live mostly on broken-down hab stations. Some of us are lucky enough to find some barren, worthless rock no one wants to live on and have the luxury of real gravity. Some live like me, and journey into the galaxy in the hope of finding something better. Anything is better than wasting away on some broken-down station one mishap away from destruction.
We don't know where we're from or why we live like this. Some say there was a great war that we lost, others that we are the remnants of some lost expedition and that our homeworld is still out there, somewhere. All I know for sure is that most other races don't really want much to do with us if they can help it. We don't own ships because they won't service them or let us buy them in the first place. Any business we start goes bankrupt because no one will buy anything from it. Rarely, a desperate trader or smuggler will stop by a human station. They know they can gouge us to the bulkheads for even the simplest of commodities, filling their holds with scrap metal or algae for a handful of spare parts.
Many residents in the halls of this station are like me, independent miners scraping out enough to survive and little more. Malnourished, dirty, and desperate, we're of every race, creed, and nation, united only in our misery and wretchedness. You don't stay long at a station like this unless you don't have a choice. My choice had been to keep being a Void-rat on a freighter and die sooner than later, or I could go into debt in an independent miner contract. At least if I die now, it'll be on my terms, not the whims of a callous freighter captain.
Detaching from the rush of traffic, I entered the heart of the station. Here it opened up into a massive dome holding an entire city. The streets, buildings, and even personal vehicles are just like you might find in any planetside city. The upper half of the dome was transparent, allowing natural light to illuminate the interior. The massive spire in the center continued on above the dome. The spire was where the rich elite of the station lived, looking down on the filthy masses that provided their wealth with disdain.
I headed for one of the many bars on the outskirts. I say 'bar' but they provided a myriad of services, serving as a bar, food court, casino, temple, and any other function someone could make money off and figure out how to cram into it. If you aren't prepared for it, you can easily be overwhelmed by the sensations of a station bar. Odor and sweat of a dozen different species, the stench of vomit, rotten food, and washrooms cleaned far too little. A haze of smoke from incense, drugs, and even natural bodily processes hung in the air. The once chrome and shiny material of the deck plating and bulkheads had long since discolored from years of stains, and the harsh chemical cleaners had further bleached them to a bland beige.
I approached the bank of food vending machines that provided cheap, somewhat edible food, and selected the same noodle dish with the name I had no hope of pronouncing that I always did. There was no human food on this station. I don't even know what human food would look or taste like. Back on the habs we made do with reconstituted Nutri-paste made from whatever the aquaponics managed to make. Typically algae or seaweed, but sometimes there'd be some fish eggs mixed in with the starter we traded for, and we'd have some real meat for a while, at least until that particular aquaponics bay broke down and they all died.
Taking my container of slimy, soggy noodles, I sat at an out-of-the-way table. The plastic container of synth noodles soon sat forgotten to the side as I stared at the compad in front of me, its soft green glow illuminating my face, this was the real treasure of my trip. No motherlode of rare ores could compare to the information on it. I had already long committed it to memory, and now I just stared at it, lost in thought. The pad itself was battered and worn. Having spent years in hard vacuum, it was a surprise that it even worked. I had come across it and the wrecked ship I found it on in my previous mining expedition. Now it had become a new hope for a way out of this mess if I was willing to take the risk.
The pad detailed the discovery of a starship, deep in a cluster of asteroids within the system. The original owner of the datapad had likely intended to come back with equipment and crew to extract the ship from its secluded berth. Fortunately for me, they had not escaped the cluster of careening rocks unscathed. I had found their ship adrift, a massive impact having destroyed their engines. The information on the pad included coordinates for the location of the ship, saving me the lengthy task of backtracking their trajectory. Sequestered as it was in that dense cluster of rubble, it was no surprise that no one had found it before. I could only conclude its continued survival was that it was still operational enough that its auto-pilot system was still guiding it between the spiraling rocks.
I looked up as a shadow fell over my table, obscuring the hazy light of the bar. I hastily turned off the pad as the person I wanted to see least loomed over me with his pair of Kekoa bodyguards. The massive black-skinned aquatics towered over their Itzli charge, with their armor further increasing their bulk.
The gaudy red and gold robes of Ti'Zok Xaxxlan swept across the floor, and opal-studded jewelry adorned every limb and digit. He leered down at me with a maw of golden teeth.
"Well well, if it isn't my favorite human Rama Hardmod." My cheap behind-the-ear translator only made his voice sound even slimier, with the dual tone of his hissing, slurping tongue overlayed with the translation fed into my ear.
"I'm the only human you know Ti'Zok, what do you want? No, let me guess, the same thing you want every time you talk to me. Sorry, but after consulting ourselves, we have come to the decision that we are not for sale." My witty response was met with a glare, and his bodyguards fingered their weapons in warning.
Ti'Zok was an Itzli trader, a very prominent Itzli trader. He had a monopoly on the entire system's trade routes. You didn't do business in this system unless you did it with him, anyone who attempted otherwise didn't live to regret it.
"I am... Disappointed by your refusal of my offer. I thought perhaps your common sense might have prevailed, and you had reconsidered." His crocodilian maw leered at me while his beady eyes roved over my form, making his intentions for me clear. Like most Itzli, he had tastes that were better left undiscovered. He'd been bothering me for months now, and it seemed like every time he was on the station, he made a point of tracking me down to try and convince me to sign on with him.
"Thanks, but no thanks, I'll end up either on your dinner table or in your bed, and I'm not too keen on either."
"That's too bad," he slurped. "I had hoped not to involve the Station Master, but I see I will have to buy your contract from him. Having you under a mining contract instead of something with a little more... Freedom would have made me happier. I think you would have preferred me more if I was happy." His dark eyes gleamed with sadistic glee as I froze, and a cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck despite the muggy interior of the bar.
I hadn't considered he would go to the Station Master to buy out my contract. Stupid of me, but I hadn't thought his desire to own me enough to go that far. I wasn't that valuable afterall, just another human out on his own. I forgot the first rule of dealing with Itzli, "The only thing more valuable than their money is their pride.", and I had certainly injured Ti'Zok's pride with my continual blatant refusals. His mouth curled in amusement as he turned and walked away, leaving me to stew in my dread.
Forget having the time to fix whatever might be wrong with that ship. I would be lucky to have the time to get off the station before my contract was bought out and my mining craft locked down. I no longer had the luxury of choice or taking things slow. I had to get off this station if I didn't want to become either dinner or entertainment, and I had to do it now.