CHAPTER 17 - ESCAPE AND MONEY
Red alert was declared as the fusion-plume 'forest' became visible even through the viewscreens of the bunk rooms. These ships were flying unusually close for a space formation: usually, they would not be, as calculations by Rachel showed, within direct visual range of each other. Elektra, glancing at the position diagram automatically generated by the sensors, immediately got reminded of an incident in her childhood on Earth. Despite the warming of the global climate, it still snowed in her homeland, so every clear winter day her preteen self would ride a sled down the frigid slope of a nearby hill, of which there were many in the rural landscape. One day, however, her sled suddenly lost control and swerved straight into a nearby grove. Skillfully weaving between trees, she nearly made it out before clipping the trunk of a birch and breaking her forearm. The way the doctors healed the nasty fracture within days via biotech spurred her into becoming a doctor, but that was a different story…
There were over a dozen ships, and thus over a dozen pillars. Whether they were vertical or horizontal was irrelevant, as these concepts simply did not exist in deep space.
"Brace! Brace! Brace!" Kuw shouted. "Everyone brace!"
Patch assured everyone that it calculated the micropath least likely to result in further damage to the vessel. It was still the most intense maneuver yet. But turning around before was an even bigger risk: damaging or destroying a glubb-enn ship would have likely resulted in them opening fire, and at this distance this would have spelled certain doom.
It was over very fast. As the glubb-enn ships were this close to each other, the Pheidippides, with its immense speed, went through their pack within a tiny fraction of a second. Everyone felt themselves being thrown to one side. People who were not in seats, but rather dropped onto the floor, slid around wildly as the ship's trajectory hooked.
BANG! BANG! FWOOSH!
"Starboard radiator tip shorn off! Heat pulse through the whole rad! Section 45 of aft fuel tank ruptured! Throttle down! Throttle down!" Rachel panicked.
The ship's acceleration suddenly slowed. Everyone and everything was cast upwards for a brief moment. Then, relative quiet.
"Did we make it? Did we make it?" Kuw whimpered, clutching her head.
"We did!"
Cheers erupted through the CIC. The relmai acting captain announced that red alert had been lifted, and after this similar cheers could be heard from above and below. The ship was damaged, sure… but it was still flying. Even after Patch's mistake.
Jamaad opened the door, and pulled Artur in alongside himself. "What the hell did I miss?"
Patch stepped forward and admitted everything.
"Chief Engineer Patch," he said, "You should have known better. You really should have known better," anger grew in his voice, "while I do not have the heart to demote you for a honest mistake, it was your hubris that led to the ship being damaged."
"I know. I must contemplate this…" despite its monotone, a sadness could be felt in its digital voice.
"Your chances at getting a promotion any time soon have just vanished just like that section of our radiator."
A now-usual snort came from Artur. "Yes some stuff got fucked but wasn't it in reality because the red alert woke you up?"
Jamaad rolled his eyes. "That's a part of it."
Rachel called attention to herself with a brief 'ahem'. "I'd like to announce that we have now exited the densest part of the glubb-enn rebel fleet. Should be smooth flying after this."
"Ya know, I didn't spend a long time at all here, buuut I already feel so tiiired," Kuw said.
"We all do," Rachel said.
***
Nothing of note happened for the rest of the transit out of Glubb-enn. Elektra and Patch took command after four hours of Rachel and Kuw staring at the sensors in boredom while recovering from stress.
They did not feel like eating, so they simply went to the entertainment room to unwind. With the upgrades to the drive done, Mo was working his magic on the remaining spheres behind the curtain. The two talked and played quietly so as to not disturb him.
"Do ya think that the worst is over now?" Kuw said as she rolled a pair of dice. One and three. A few cards, made from tough machined steel, were moved to their magnetized positions.
"No, sadly," Rachel replied as she shuffled the deck, "we're still only what, maybe sixty percent of the way? There will be more challenges."
"But wiiiiilll they be as bad as this?" Kuw pushed a token forward a few tiles.
"I have no idea," Rachel placed down an entire stack of counters onto a tile, the magnets arranging them into a neat tower, "anyways, you know, this game is fun but I still have no idea what the theme is supposed to be," she said.
"How so?"
"Like, we're playing as… some kind of… virtual countries of programs in a digital world? But there's castles and stuff. While there are hints towards the 'real world' being destroyed in a nuclear war. And the units cast spells. I have no idea what the designer was thinking. Or what drugs they were on."
"Naaaah, no drugs would have created this," Kuw giggled, "I know for sure."
Rachel pulled out her datapad and looked something up in the onboard archives. "Apparently it's an adaptation of a book. Not much more is in the database."
"I caaaan't really enjoy humie media much, so I mostly focus on the gameplay."
"It's a thing common to all sapients: enjoying logic," Rachel propped up her head on her arm, "which is why I prefer this for spending time together, you know?"
"Perhaaaaps games are the universal language," Kuw mused.
"Well yeah, there's a reason the only 'sports' competitions between civilizations are mind sports. It's the only option. Can you imagine how much of a trainwreck physical sports would be? Imagine if Canids competed against aadalu in weightlifting. Or relmai against chohjozra in shooting or gymnastics. Or… Abyssals competing against anyone in swimming. It's just not fair. Meanwhile in terms of intelligence everyone's roughly on the same level."
They played for a long time and almost forgot what had happened.
***
"Yectkogg next, right?" Elektra squinted at the screen of the captain's seat.
"Affirmative," Patch stated.
"One of the two megacorporate-dominated civilizations in the Oval… and the only one without a mitigating twist to its capitalism. And yet more than half of all of them go through a laissez-faire capitalist phase. But almost invariably, they end up reforming or abolishing it altogether. Maybe letting the rich squander and hoard resources so that your society's fate is essentially a lottery isn't such a good idea if you want to make it to the space age."
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Artur chuckled. "Yeah, if you let the pigs get to space, all they do with it is litter it with cars."
Elektra continued her impromptu speech. "Yectkogg is an Abyssal vassal too. They quite literally sold out. As in, they sell their undesirables and political opponents to the Abyssals for magnetic monopoles."
"The Oval center really is a fuckfest," Artur sighed.
"Agreeing. But correction: horrible state of the Central Reach is caused by Abyssal meddling, with dal-ghar backing. The Silent Empire does not contribute a statistically significant amount of suffering," Patch added.
Meanwhile in the captain's quarters, Jamaad was hard at work, verifying the necessary papers and credentials. The yect species' temperament, meaning their psychological bias, was that of intense punctiliousness to the point of pedantry, and punishing those who did not match up to these lofty expectations. He had to verify every single ID, the logs of every single transaction and repair ever done, the passports for all the additional parts installed, and so on. What worried him the most was the journey destination log. The yects could have full well decided to latch on to the Pheidippides illegally or dubiously-legally crossing several civilizational borders, and ruin the crew's week with their infamous, crushing bureaucracy.
***
23 Apr 2231
"This really was a loaded day," Elektra said to Patch as they exited the CIC. "Anyways, are you sure that the drive will work well despite the accident?"
"We straightened out the support rod to a tolerance of 0.01 millimeters," the robot assured.
"All good then. Our drive has a compensator. I think," she said as she avoided stepping on a cable in the corridor. "It probably did take more than usual, what with us not running at full strength and all. These stupid, uncaring glubb-enn. What if we all died? Whatever captain who sliced us in half with their ship would really, really have to live with the dal-ghar overrunning their little empire and their little benefactors. I wish Hell upon them all," she fumed, "a Hell where Satan himself pours salt on them while keeping them alive."
"Disclaimer: I do not subscribe to unfalsifiable hypotheses, but does Christian scripture not discourage performing judgements on others' afterlives if you are not a god?"
"You're right. Sorry. I'm just pissed. Pissed at us having to deal with Yectkogg to get our repairs," she said as they climbed the ladder. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
Once they got to the bunk room, Patch plugged itself into the charger and announced that it was going to sort its internal files into neat folders, as its data storage drive had gotten messy. With the robot being the only other person in the room and unable to talk to her, aside from the sleeping Rachel and Kuw, Elektra simply pulled out her Bible once again and started re-reading a few passages she had not studied recently. One caught her attention.
> A merchant, in whose hands are false balances,
>
> He loves to oppress.
—Hosea 12:7
***
It was a fairly long jump, around nine hours, to the system of Kyg-nke, a frontier world of the Yectkogg Corporation.
The red giant was clearly on its last legs: once a life-giving yellow dwarf, it had bloated itself in its death throes. This elderly star had long since scorched any traces of a biosphere on its three terrestrial worlds and two gas giants, its diseased form bulging and spewing protuberances as increasing amounts of hydrogen and helium escaped its gravitational grasp. These protuberances manifested as arches or lengthy trails that reached up to the innermost planet: a burned cinder of a world streaked with rivers of lava and pock-marked with the calderas of impact craters. What remained of an asteroid belt glimmered just outside its orbit, the asteroids having been melted into balls of molten rock, each resembling an infinitesimal star itself.
Yet, there was an odd beauty to it, in the same way that an ancient ruin may have been beautiful. Unlike an ancient ruin, there was plenty of movement in the system: many ships swirled around the outer planets, avoiding the deadly searing luminescence of the star. There was, after all, no profit to be found in its charred rock-children.
Instead, the many yect ships clustered around stations orbiting gas giants, including a few terraformed moons dark blue with murky water and greenish-black with uniform alien plants. They were sleek yet clearly cheaply-made so as to save valuable money: they superficially resembled Terran ships, but their habitat modules were tiny and clearly cramped, and seams were visible in their Whipple shields. The stations were, too, blocky and utilitarian. Perhaps someone from the Age of Protests or earlier would have associated rampant capitalism with at least a veneer of opulence, but here it manifested as corner-cutting where it was possible.
"We have to get repairs," Jamaad said, "This is not a good place, but the later legs of our journey are outright bandit-infested. This place is, at the very least, reasonably safe and well-equipped, if only because these people's whole shtick is squeezing water from a rock."
"And every last umec from their subjects," Artur said.
"Huh, do they also use umecs domestically?" Jamaad checked in with a database, "Nope. Only for interstellar trade."
"Umecs, money, cash, moolah, whatever. You get what I meant."
"Yes, I was just surprised. No aliens like the prospect of tying their domestic economy to Terra. Different needs and so on. It's weird to me that it was meant to replace the human currency, the arg, but ended up becoming another human currency that happens to be accepted at some stations elsewhere. But I digress."
In a relatively safe system like this, the autopilot sufficed for navigating to the outermost station: Decl-tjub-03, in orbit of the gas giant Decl. The jump prior to this was, fortunately, plotted in such a manner that the entry point would be close enough to Decl.
***
24 Apr 2231
It took around eight hours, by which time it was the second shift's turn in command.
"Jamaad told me about them, but wow it really does look so dismal up close…" Rachel looked at the sensor display and shook her head.
It was almost like a mockery of FE-01. A thin, almost anemic pillar. An even thinner ring, clearly possessing little to no amenities. Lots of commercial vessels swarming around the two docks. In the background loomed the blue, dark-striped mass of the gas giant, with thin and close-by rings. Two terraformed moons were nearby, covered in webs of city lights.
Kuw sat down in the communications console's seat and set up a connection. Artur, who stayed in the CIC late, sat up curiously.
The alien on the other end of it was semi-humanoid, with a body plan that was the same as humans or relmai, but with three legs and three arms in a tripodal pattern. His skin was a deep red with brown streaks, like that of a tiger but shorter and fainter, and covered with uneven, sparse black hairs, like the arms of some humans. His face had a short snout with a wide mouth, and was round and large-eyed like that of Elektra, but instead of her fins, the yect had five pairs of thick loop-like, open 'ears' going from the sides up to the top of his head. It looked rather… sleazy. His fingers and toes were long and flexible, like that of a monkey, and ended in bulbous tips wet with slime.
Clearly a member of his society's upper class, he wore a reflective silvery vest with golden square highlights, as well as matching triple-pants and a blue headband. It seemed that the communication had a background added to it to replace the view of the station's command room, as the alien seemed to float in a gentle light blue void with white cloud-like spirals.
"Welcome Alliance customers, to the third Decl branch of the Yectkogg Corporation. I am Xokk-ineg Jbuka, chief representative of the branch. Our services, among other things, include the best repairs in the eastern Abyssal sphere, according to customer feedback, which you do indeed seem to need."
Kuw informed him of everything, and what followed was a very lengthy conversation peppered with corporate-speak that went way over Rachel's head…
"...and lastly and leastly, we have a docking fee of a thousand and a half umecs for all ships of civilizations outside of the Abyssal Sphere, doubled if they are damaged. Remember: this is in addition to the border crossing fee, the multispecies fee, the modified ship fee, and the distant-mission fee," Xokk rattled off.
Rachel could be seen rotating her chair to face away from the camera. "What a rip off," she thought, "this is like that scammer guy, but legitimate. Which is such a wonderful thing."
Kuw sighed. "Sure."
"The most delicious synthesized food and drink is available in Decl-tjub-01, so come in, come in! Disclaimer: species fees apply to all nourishment sold within the boundaries of the station. Disclaimer two: you may not use an autopilot not developed by a Yectkogg Digital subsidiary. If you do not possess one, we may guide your ship towards our ports for a fee of seven hundred and fifty umecs."
Artur placed a hand on his holster. "This guy has a very shootable face," he thought, "but nah I won't. I won't. I will resist the urge to."
"Alright!" Kuw said.
"We are looking forward to servicing you," Xokk smiled.
After the feed shut off, Kuw turned to the other two. "Shoooould we just… not? Maaaaaybe we can make it to the Kingdoms without getting fleeced like this?"
Debate erupted in the CIC…