As soon as Ti'Zok was out of sight on his way to the Station Master, I was moving. Scooping up my datapad, I abandoned my untouched meal where it sat and made for the door. I moved swiftly, not running, across the floor of the bar. Moving fast just meant that you had places to be and you were busy, running made you stand out and made people interested, and the last thing I wanted to do was attract attention.
Exiting back onto the streets of the station heart, I made my way back toward my docking bay. My eyes flitted from shadow to alley, constantly looking for any pursuers. I had no doubt he had someone keeping an eye on me. Making a sharp turn I head for a different exit. Taking the most direct path was too predictable, I could only hope he didn't have someone watching every exit.
My hopes are in vain, I hear a loud snarl as a pair of Kekoa come charging out of the door of a shop. A loud shout of 'Stop, Human!" behind me confirms what I already know, it's me they're after. I break into a sprint for the exit a few blocks away.
I don't have a chance in any hell of outrunning a Kekoan. I use anything I can to slow them down. I barge through the stream of pedestrians shoving them behind me in the way of my pursuers, a cart selling fried snacks is tipped over to the outrage of the owner, spilling hot oil all over the sidewalk. There's a crash and a roar of rage behind me as one of them slips on it.
I charge across an intersection without waiting for the all-clear, I can still hear the heavy footsteps of my pursuers. There's the loud blare of a horn behind me and then the ear-rending sound of tearing metal as a ground vehicle runs into something.
"Out of my way!" I chance a look behind me to see a wreck being shoved out of the way by the pair of infuriated Kekoans.
I take another sharp turn toward the exit, I'm now less than a block from it. I gasp for air as I try to keep running, my legs turning to jelly. Entering the station corridor I slap the emergency lock on the wall and the broad blast doors close behind me. Slowing, I try to catch my breath as it comes in great heaves. I can hear yelling and banging from the doors behind me.
I dive into the crowds, trying to recover and disappear. The commotion behind me let me know my pursuers had other ideas as the doors began to squeak and squeal as they were pulled apart. I look over my shoulder to see them each holding a door as they pulled them open with a final scream of stripped gears. Wading through the crowds as easily as water toward me, my pursuers close in on me. I began shoving people out of my way, ignoring the shouts and shoves I received in return.
I flinched as the crowd around me came alive with screams and panic as darts hissed over my head. Several others were hit and staggered before collapsing to the deck. The darts are likely filled with tranquilizers, but that made them no less lethal to my future. If I was caught, my life was over one way or the other, short or long, food or entertainment. Adrenaline surging, I sprinted down the hall toward one of the cardinal corridors that stretched to the edge of the station.
Bouncing off the door frame, I tore down the massive corridor, doors whipping by me. My breath is loud and ragged in my ears, and the crowd here is thin enough that I can't hope for them to slow down the Kekoans. I frantically scan for anything I could use to slow down my pursuers; I have no hope of outrunning them. I was so weak I was downright anemic compared to them, and already I could hear their loud footsteps behind me over my labored breathing. The crowd had done less than nothing to slow them down. Chancing a look over my shoulder, I spotted them gaining on me rapidly.
Spotting a maintenance bot ahead, little more than a bucket and scrubber on three wheels, a plan began to form. I patted down the various pockets on my threadbare vacsuit, desperately hoping I had what I needed. I grinned triumphantly as two of my pockets had what I needed, omni-packs.
The omni-pack is a wonderful thing. While it was handy in its intended use to power everything from exo-suits to mining drills to flashlights, it could do so much more. You could use it to weld a hull breach, taze a spacer, act as an impromptu light source, or in my case, with a little improvisation, a trap.
I leaped towards the cleaner bot, putting as much power and all of my weight I could into it. Landing on the edge I worried for a second that I'd miscalculated, then I felt it begin to tip. The bot let out a series of indignant bursts of code over my actions as the cleaning solution in it spilled all over the floor and the bot landed on its side. Grabbing one of the omni-packs in each hand, I popped the covers off with my thumbs, electricity arcing between the contacts.
Resuming my run for freedom, the pair of Kekoans now even closer, I threw the pair of omni-packs behind me underhanded, sliding them into the puddle of cleaner I'd left behind me. The heavy footsteps behind me disappeared. I slowed to a stop and turned to look, and saw both the Kekoa paralyzed by the electricity running through the cleaner. Incapable of moving or speaking, every muscle in their powerful bodies was locked in place by the massive energy using them as a conduit.
Turning away, I felt some small amount of guilt. The energy in those two packs would be enough to fry an entire room of Kekoa. I could only imagine the pain as they cooked from the inside out, unable to do anything. I shook my head as I jogged onward, trying to forget the smell of cooking fish behind me. I disappeared into the crowds as I heard the approaching calls of station security coming to investigate the commotion. I navigated through the crowd, desperately wanting to break out into a run. I have no idea how long I have before I'm locked out of the docking bay, and my craft locked down.
Approaching the doors to my bay, I swipe my chip over the sensor. I sag in relief as the light on them turns green as they open. I'd made it in time, they hadn't finalized the contract transfer yet and hadn't locked my craft down. I rushed toward the maintenance console, stopped the refueling procedure, and disconnected the data connections to the station.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Power walking my way around my craft, I detached cables, hoses, and data lines. There was no time to go through the proper procedures. Fuel dribbled out of the hastily detached hoses and puddled on the floor, and I tossed aside the power feeds, ensuring they didn't land in the pool of volatile fuel. Turning on my heel, I made for the ladder to the airlock mounted on top of the craft.
Rapidly ascending, I cycled the airlock and dropped into the cramped cockpit of my mining craft. I started flipping the switches that would bring the rustbucket to life as I pressed the buttons to deploy the docking gantry. A blaring buzzer and flashing red lights were the answer I received.
"Slag!" I hammered the button a few more times for good measure in frustration.
"Did you think you could get away from me? I'll admit it was a little close there at the end, but even if you managed to leave the station, where would you go, Rama? I control every station in this system, I control the system, I control you!" Ti'Zok gloated over the speakers as I frantically looked over my controls for a solution.
There, the controls for the mining pods. The docking clamps didn't hold them in place. The pods often needed complete disassembly and overhaul, and removing the docking clamps every time they required maintenance was too time-consuming, so instead, they clamped the main hull.
I grabbed the control sticks for the two pods jamming them all the way forward and extending the mining lasers they held inside. The double-jointed rotating assembly they were mounted on allowed them a broad range of movement that I intended to exploit to the maximum. Twisting the sticks, I brought the lasers around and aimed at the docking clamps. I pulled the triggers.
"Are you insane?! You can't just go using the mining lasers inside the-" Ti'Zok's voice was washed away by the loud hum of the mining lasers, cutting through the air of the hangar bay and into the docking clamps. The sound was deafening, even protected as I was inside my mining craft.
I flicked a switch slaving the mining controls to one stick as I finished the startup sequence with my now free hand. My boards slowly lit up in green lights. Well, mostly green lights, but nothing was broken that hadn't been broken already. The thrusters sputtered before whining to life, I was going to have to time this just right. Hit the throttle too early, I'd leave half my craft still attached to the docking clamps. Do it too late, and I'll slam into the deck plating and turn into another bunch of scrap to go in the recycler.
The craft jerked, and the nose dropped as the lasers finished cutting through the front clamps. The magnets, now lacking power, fell free of the hull to the hangar deck with a resounding clang, leaving a massive divot in the plating. Shifting to the aft clamps, I left a long melted groove in the ceiling. I kept a close eye on them, nervously gripping the control stick as the laser cut closer and closer to the edge of the gantry.
As the last remaining metal on the clamps began to turn orange, I slammed the throttle forward, hammering it completely open. The dull whine of the engine immediately became a deafening roar, and I was slammed back into my seat as my mining craft rocketed out of the hangar at speeds violating every regulation and rule of good piloting.
Alerts on my control panel had me looking out my side windows to see what was wrong. I had hit the throttle just a second too early, leaving most of the aft half of what remained of the outer plating behind. The innards of my craft were now completely exposed to the harsh vacuum of space, unprotected from radiation and micro-meteorite. While unfortunate, this was a fair trade in my opinion. As long as I didn't hit anything, then I'd probably wish I still had that plating.
Another alert went off, I'd been pinged by the patrol coming around the side of the station. The bent-winged fighters were fast but even more short-ranged than my mining craft. They lacked even the intra-system cruise drive that mine had, and trying to use their standard drive to move about the system with the little fuel they carried was a fool's idea.
Ignoring the insistent chiming of my comm panel, I veered away from the fighter patrol. Preparing to transition the engines to cruise mode I flipped another switch on my dash, turning off the Inertial Counter System. The ICS brought the ship to a halt when switching to cruise mode as a safety precaution. Less stress on the ship, and you were more on target for your desired destination, with less chance of flying face-first into something you didn't want to, like say an asteroid. With it turned off while starting the cruise drive you simply continue to drift at your current speed.
It doesn't take long for the drive to charge but in a situation like this? Every second counts. Inputting the coordinates for my destination, I slapped the button for the cruise drive and flipped the switch for the ICS back on. I had heard stories of pilots who had forgotten to do that last part, they served as a warning to rookies not to mess with stuff they didn't understand if they didn't want to end up as a smear on the inside of their cockpit.
Several shots whizzed by my cockpit glass, the fizzy white of stunner cannons instead of something more lethal. Ti'Zok must really want to get his slimy claws on me. The shots all went wide or fizzled out before reaching me, having been fired by an overeager pilot at extreme range.
"C'mon c'mon c'mon." I watched as the last quarter of the gauge slowly filled. The ping indicating the drive was charged was music to my ears. Reaching for the lever, I allowed myself one small pleasure of hitting the comm. transmit button with my other hand.
"Seeya slagheads." I pulled the lever, and it all vanished in an instant as the noise from my thrusters increased in pitch, and the station disappeared behind me. I sagged back in my seat in relief. With the station and Ti'Zok already several hundred thousand kilometers behind me and increasing, I could finally relax for a bit.
Most people don't realize just how mind-bogglingly huge space is until they're out here themselves. Traveling from the station, orbiting one of the gas giants, to the system's main belt, even at a small fraction of C, was going to take me several hours. Time enough for a small nap I think. I'd just finished a long shift before all this nonsense, and I'd never gotten the chance to get any sleep before Ti'Zok decided to ruin everything. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I was starting to crash. I yawned as I pulled a small blanket out of a storage compartment, set an alarm, and settled in for a nice nap.
***
I dreamed I was flying over a deep blue ocean. Looking up, the dark sky was illuminated by a luminescent ring that stretched to the horizon. The ring sparkled like a prism filling the sky with rays of every color imaginable. There were no stars in the sky, only a purple veil so dark it was almost black, the only light coming from the ring and its rays. I turned to talk to someone next to me, but I could see no one there.
The dark, fathomless ocean gave way to waves of pale gold that stretched across the land. Illuminated by the ring overhead, they seemed as much a fluid as the ocean as they rippled and waved in the breeze. There were people around me now, but all I could see of them was a blur of color. Orange, blue, gray, and white blurs moved to and fro beside me.
We left the golden sea behind and flew over silver hills. Tall silver-leafed trees blanketed the land like an army of spears going to war. The ground beneath them was pitch black, and no light reflected off it. I felt that if you stepped on it, you would fall into an infinite abyss. The people were gone again, leaving me alone. I felt chilled.
We rose up, leaving the silver hills behind. Now I flew over crystalline purple mountains. They reflected the light of the ring, leaving them sparkling like amethyst. We flew low over one of the peaks, and it split open like a flower in bloom, and we descended down into the flower.
The purple crystal of the mountains gave way to the gray metal of man. We descended down an endless gray shaft and stopped in a large, dimly lit, metal cavern that stretched out of sight. I was surrounded by people again. More than last time, they seemed to fill the entire cavern. The blurs were all black now, no color. I felt colder still, the chill seeping into my bones.
I floated down a gray hall filled with doors. The people were gone again, and only a cold fog clinging to the floor remained. The farther I went down the hall, the colder I became. I felt as if I went any farther, I would freeze solid. Before me stood a single golden blur.
"---- --!" I shook my head.
"I can't understand you." The golden blur reached for me-