"Hey kid, make sure you set that barrel down the right way there, alright? Don't need another runaway getting stuck under a lift."
Kade looked up and met the woman's eyes with a scowl, nodding once as he went back to his task halfheartedly. She was sitting on a few of the larger metal crates herself, overseeing the offloading of their small merchant class Corvette while doing none of the work. Recently being made into a [Fledgling Captain] seemed to be getting to her head already, not that Merl had ever been a hard worker.
It had been a while since they'd docked at any station's port, so their hull was full to the point of the entire ship being unsafe for artificial gravity. This ended up forcing them to use a docking station that was detached from the main body of Sector Five's center station. The sub-station was more expensive, more time-consuming, way more dangerous to offload, extremely delicate... Kade was already irritated due to the news everyone had been given earlier, and the floating tons of cargo only put him even more on edge as he moved as quickly as possible to unload everything single-handedly. Merl would not accept anything less than his best and had made it quite clear in their contract that she would dock pay if unsatisfied in his performance, even to the point of forgoing it entirely.
"Don't you give me that look, I'll-"
"Ahh the boy's doing alright there though, isn't he lass? Leave 'im be," a man cut in, waving his only flesh and bone arm at her in a dismissive way. "Didja hear about tha newest [Expedition Captain] yet?" he continued, using a multi-tool attachment on his cybernetic arm to bolt down each of the barrels and crates Kade offloaded.
"Yeah yeah, Kade just make sure to offload evenly! You're doin' one side of the ship at a time again," she continued to nitpick.
"Aye, but the station insures against accidents caused by mid-offload gravitation failures," the man cut in again, tsking at Merl and waggling his good hand at her.
"I'll run my ship and crew, small though it may be, how I please. It's about habit, Tren. What if we forget to lock down one day and the station moves? Whole ship goes end over end; you gonna take responsibility for my loss?"
The man, Tren, held up his metal and organic hands in defeat, backing away slightly as Kade stopped for a moment to admire his modification. He'd never gotten to see men like Tren much back on his home planet. AKA, men whose bodies were torn apart from the front lines but already healed with modifications funded by the Empire.
Tren noticed his interest and slapped his metal arm.
"This baby was worth all the pain of losing it, in case you're wonderin'. Nasty demon bastard knocks me over, clamps down on me elbow an' starts thrashin' away. So I says, eye for an eye right? Bites the thing back on it's neck and start chewin for a few minutes, never moves again."
"Ah don't fill his head with that bullshit Tren-"
"Ah, shove it Merl, you weren't there! Ask me old [Lieutenant] and he'll tell ya 'bout me crazy arse. Still have nightmares 'bout the taste," Tren said, turning and pointing a metal finger at Merl before returning his eyes to Kade. "Anywho, she took every bit of the [Credits] I'd saved up fightin, coupled with the Empire's promise to take care of battle injuries and job placement. This entire hangar wouldn't be half as efficient as it is without a [Deck Hand] like me runnin' it fer the [Cargo Master]!" he added at the end with a wide grin and bit of pride, waving his arm out and around at the entire inside of the sub station's cargo hangar. "Most efficient and clean hangar of the twenty on this miserable port."
Kade had to nod at the last statement, at least. He'd been to over thirty different hangars throughout his life, some for small-time merchant ships like their own, and some for larger war-class type cruisers. Yet out of all he'd seen, the one he was currently in seemed to be top at least top three on organization and cleanliness. Number one for small merchant cargo operations for sure.
It was spacious too, he noted, looking at the more than twenty-foot clearance in between the different ship pads around the hangar. Each section seemed to have more than enough room for at least five times the cargo any of them could hold alone.
That wasn't to say it was an empty space by any means. Hundreds of folks milled about, dragging containers from their ships to the dock or from the dock further into the hangar, eventually disappearing through the many vast exits leading into the station. Constant noise and commotion was the backdrop to the sight of a perfectly functioning dock. Not to mention the vertical clearance to the thick outer glass ceiling. It looked like you could fit a hundred of the ships in between the floor and ceiling of the hangar.
That was another point of pride, it seemed, as the man noticed Kade's wide eye look as he fully took in the view above him.
"Best view 'ah the Sector Five Central Space Station you can get 'round here."
Kade nodded absently as he took in the absolute monstrosity of metal and technology floating far above them. It was likely over a hundred standard miles away, yet still took up his entire view. Housing nearly a tenth of the total population of the Sector Five Galaxy, it looked different, as they all did, to the two other Central Stations he'd seen. Sporting four massive rings that circled what looked like an hourglass of metal connecting the innermost ring to itself, the very middle of the structure held a glass bubble that glowed a faint tinge of blue.
It was... more simple, if Kade were to put it into words, yet no less majestic. Clean, as if meant to eradicate any unnecessary navigation when moving around it.
"Council chambers right there in the center, near the reactor. That be where they killin' that man today... But 'nyway, best get on with it lad, Merl be glarin' again," Tren finished, nudging Kade on the back and breaking him out of his stupor.
Kade nodded absentmindedly, letting go of the barrel he'd been securing and leaping back toward the ship for another while Tren turned away from him and back to Merl.
"Tha' [Expedition Captain] though, lass! Whole squadron, hundred men and women, kilt on tha very first operation. Supposed to be a safe collection on the surface, turned to a fuckin' mess by his own hand."
Merl nodded, pulling out a smoke and lighting it to Tren's disapproving grunt.
"Heard they want to space the poor guy."
Kade briefly glanced toward them at that, seeing a scowl on Tren's face.
"I heard he was gettin' tossed in a hole. Spacin' a bit too gruesome for the people's hero and all. The man did have quite a reputation, not to mention a big [Credit] history. Bet he had moren' a few points in his durability. Take 'im hours to die out there," Tren stated, waving his arm toward the hangar doors.
Kade winced at hearing of a few more of his hero's proposed methods of execution as he dropped another barrel and lept back for the cargo hold again. He was trying to hurry, knowing the execution of sorts was to be today. Newest, youngest [Expedition Captain] in existence, coming from nothing, storming up the ranks with not a single blemish on his record, giving all the young men and women a figure to strive for, only to trip and hit the ground hard at one of the most delicate parts of his career.
Head hung, Kade didn't see he'd aimed wrong and slammed face-first into the upper right portion of the ship, dazing himself as he gathered his bearings and floated back away from the ship, and ever so slightly upward.
"Oy, pay attention you twit. You're gonna get yourself smashed in the cargo doin' shit like that! Dad'll be up my arse if he hears I let that happen to ya after I promised to get you outta your slump," Merl screamed up at him.
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Kade began to open his mouth to fire back, about having had enough of his elder sister's attitude, when he noticed the floating ash from her smokes all begin lifting up and to the right, headed for the ceiling of the hangar where he'd just been gazing moments before. His head tilted in confusion as suddenly, a muffled boom like a bomb had gone off echoed throughout the interior of the hangar, rattling everything with increasingly more intensity as gravity shifted.
All of a sudden, how the ship got offloaded began to matter. Several other Corvettes in the nearby area began to rotate and slide sideways as they slowly began lifting for the glass ceiling of the hangar, three others floating up with barely any movement. Theirs didn't budge, as they had followed protocol and fastened it down the moment they landed rather than rely on friction and the weak magnetic locks on every ship's landing gear.
All eyes in the hangar immediately shifted to the ceiling itself as a bright light, coming from the Central Station grew in intensity.
In the back of his mind, Kade vaguely recognized Tren's voice begin to call out orders over the intercom.
"Gravitational shift, prep your bunkers!" But even if Kade was too stunned to move from the impact, it seemed as if everyone else was simply entranced by the increasingly bright light coming from the Central Hub to even think of reacting to his orders.
"Is that the fucking reactor?" a man asked.
"No way..." another mumbled, others equally perplexed as many theories began circulating the large airfield.
A piercing scream followed by the sound of metal grating on metal echoed out above the voices and rattling, interrupting the many conversations as all eyes turned to its source and impressed the danger of the situation on those present. A small woman floated above, pinned in between two ships that had closed in on the lower half of her body, thousands of pounds of smooth metal deciding it wanted to kiss where her body unluckily resided.
"GET YOUR BLOODY ARSES INTO THE BUNKERS," Tren screamed into the intercom after that, finally getting more than a response as people began moving, yelling, and inevitably tripping in a panic.
Those on the ground activated their magnetic soles then moved to the nearest panel that had lifted out of the ground the moment Tren had felt something was off, causing a walkway to appear at the heads of each of their landing pads that led down into a protective chamber. Others called out orders or helped gather their crewmates that were untethered, the entire bay erupting into a flurry of yelling and crunching metal as Kade watched from above.
"Ohhhh my shit," he muttered, staring at the rapidly shirinking ground below him as panic set in. "Oh nononono," he continued, flailing around for anything to grab onto and finding only air.
He turned his eyes away from everyone's mad scramble below him to see he was headed in the same direction of the hangar as every piece of unsecured cargo and ship. Looking past the ceiling at the central hub only served to blind him as the light grew in intensity, and glancing down made his reality apparent as he was already more than fifteen feet above their ship, his sister screaming up at him. Her elbow bashed into an emergency glass panel, retrieving a large black rope from the inside.
Usually that would be all that was needed when someone had simply miss-jumped and was moving toward the distant ceiling too slowly. Kade however, was not floating with random kinetic force through space, but being drawn upward by gravity.
To his death.
"KADE! TREN DO SOMETHING," his sister screamed, flailing the rope upward and missing the throw by a wide margin, too frantic to aim properly.
Still, Kade also began throwing everything he had on him as panic began to set deeper. His boots and gloves came off and were immediately tossed up to the ceiling, followed by his shirt. All of it only slowed him briefly, not coming close to stopping his direction of travel.
The rope missed him time and time again as he eventually floated too far for it to reach, glancing down one last time at his sister and Tren, the older man holding his metal arm up in a salute of some kind.
He'd managed to slow his rotation with his acts of desperation so he was at least facing the ground, glancing over his shoulder once and seeing the mess of metal behind him nearing the glass ceiling. Even if somehow he landed in a safe pocket, he'd still die if it broke. And if it didn't, he'd still have to survive the things coming apart as well.
Breaking his musing, Kade looked back downward and smiled at his sister, frowning briefly at seeing the barrel he'd forgotten to secure fully dislodge and began to float away. The smile returned again when he saw Tren still awkwardly saluting, the older man at least watching the last moments of his young life as a bit of white mist seeped out of his metal arm.
A half-second later, Kade felt like he'd been hit by a truck as his right shoulder exploded with pain. He began to tumble end over end from the force of the blow before he heard the distinctive click of metal and his tumbling came to an aggressive end, a howl of pain finally escaping his lips.
"AHHhhhHH!!!"
He didn't know what had crushed just his shoulder, but he knew it was broken. Shattered. And that was discounting the foreign coolness he felt rotate inside of it. Glancing over, his scream increased in intensity at the bloody mess that it had become. A brutally serrated metal spike had bored its way through his flesh and bone with a thin silver wire tethered back to Tren's arm, already fifty feet below him.
He'd begun to speed up it seemed. His vision began to blur as his scream died down.
The pain multiplied as the grapple expanded with a metal click on the other side of his shoulder, retracting with enough force that Kade briefly registered his shoulder shifting much too far forward for his liking. His limp body was dragged to the ground as his mind tried to come to terms with more pain than it had ever felt before, doing so by slowly shutting down unimportant functions.
"I got 'im stop cryin lass... -ot even the first ah've needed ta shoot... get the bunker open yet?" he heard Tren say in a muffled, broken but getting louder by the second tone, impacting something as his body finally felt grounded and was huffed down what he assumed was the flight of stairs.
Kade half-listened to them frantically yelling about and roughly handling his body, but he couldn't exactly complain really as the pain had swiftly become just a dull throbbing. Coming around slowly, his head swiveled down to his body in a daze. They seemed to have thrown him into a chair and strapped him down, confusing him for a moment until he saw the gauze haphazardly stuffed into his open and very bloody shoulder.
Tearing his eyes away from that terrifying scene, he noted they'd made it into in a small room with a few chairs around a large screen that showcased the hangar they were just in. Multiple smaller screens showed other hangars, all showing about the same scene as theirs. At the top of the screen was the Sector Five Hub. It seemed the light was dimming, bringing him hope that whatever was happening was ending.
A few light slaps to his face brought him a little more out of the daze.
"Leave 'im alone lass, you'll make it worse."
"He can't fall asleep. He can't. They always say-"
"That's with a proper head whack, you're just gonna end up hurtin him," Tren interrupted, lightly smacking Merl's hand away from Kade's face.
"'Mmm fine Mers," Kade mumbled, watching the screen as more and more screeching filled the room from the metal colliding.
Everything seemed to have stopped speeding up with the dimming of the light but, even if the gravitational anomaly had truly gone away, all that meant was now everything not there already was now on a free-floating kinetic trip to the ceiling at a constant speed. The screeching of metal as it all congregated could even be faintly heard through the thick layer of metal and concrete above their heads.
"Will the glass hold," he eventually asked, lolling his head over to look at Tren.
They had to have given him something. He'd never been this calm in the face of disaster in his life.
"'Ah sure fuckin hope it does lad, or you're gonna be in for a long time of pain while they work to extract us," Tren replied, gesturing back at the screen. "We'll know in a minute here."
Kade nodded and went back to watching. The first loud boom of a cargo container slamming into the thick glass ceiling rang out, visibly damaging it but doing nothing more. Ships began to pile on, more and more weight stacking at the top of the hanger. He was certain it would break when a larger ship's rear corner struck the glass directly, moving faster than any other piece before it even, but the solid piece of excellent craftsmanship held to everyone's surprise and relief, making the rest of the show a bit less terrifying.
Finally, only two pieces were floating up: a large wooden crate, and a single metal barrel with Kade's family crest placed directly on the center of it.
"Nuh-uh," Merl said from beside him, glaring over as they all watched the crate slam into the barrel.
While they had been on a path for the huge pile of metal before them, suddenly, they were both headed for the sides of the mound. The barrel rotated multiple times through the air, Kade begging for it to not land on its edge.
The universe obliged as it struck the ceiling broadsided, sending a loud, dull thrum through the entire hangar as Kade and Merl both sighed out in relief.
But that was the thing about glass that neither of the prestigious Griffin's far removed family didn't know, and the reason Tren's head was hung in defeat. It wasn't always a single point of force that would be the final straw; the glass above was made to withstand that. But when damaged in multiple places...
Sometimes that vibration was just at a frequency that glass didn't like.
Silence reigned for a few seconds after as Tren chanced a glance at the screen finally. The moment he'd looked up, the smallest hairline fracture began to spread across the thick ceiling. Small to them, but large enough to see from the cameras hundreds of feet below.
"Kade, you're a fucking idiot," Merl finally muttered.
He nodded.