The Atrium, Protovitae System, February 14, 458 UE. Docking bay A6823: 2658hrs A.M.S.T.
The flight to the atrium was uneventful. Basically you fly up, announce your inbound vector to STC, and they assign you a docking bay. For me it was always going to be 5000 or above on the A Port. There are three docking ports, A, which number from one to twenty thousand, are for commoners. B, numbering one to fifteen thousand, for commercial freight. And C, For nobles, and royalty, bar the King and immediate family. They do not dock onto stations in order to remain battle ready, in the event there is an attack, they can either fight or pull out quickly. The docks are then split into sections of five thousand. The first is a Membership Port, you pay a monthly bill of energy and your ship to dock. When a member, your ship will remain in its docking bay, instead of being brought to a hanger. This prevented having to wait for your ship to be brought around, when visiting the Station. The next group, five thousand and one to six thousand, was basically the same, but it had a docking fee instead of a membership, and if you wanted your ship to stay in dock you had to pay by the hour. Each subsequent group led to a decrease in services, allowing for cheaper pricing.
Farmers may get more than they used to in ancient times and dad does part time services in research and development, but we still weren't rich, okay we were well enough off, we were definitely not poor, but I am not skipping out on real food just for premium docking space I won’t even use very often. Anyway, after docking the Atlanta, I spin around in my chair and grab my cloak. My cloak was made of spider silk and was gray on the outside, and scarlet on the inside, but you would not see it. The scarlet that is, the cloak completely shrouds my suit. I then depart from the ship. Dreq knows to stay behind, if someone saw a white Dashad, then they could link my ship back to me. I want to stay incognito, because I am a commoner, and, considering my ship is one of a kind in a galaxy with almost every new design you can come up with, a noble might claim I stole it. I don't want to go through that so Dreq stays. I also have nanites that disguise the scales on my ship to make it look like a complex geometrical shape.
“Docking fee is eight hundred chits” the longshoreman said, clearly bored with his existence. “name please” he added.
“How about two credits, and we forget the name.”
“Yes sir, Mr, Val Ren, docked here at… 2701 hrs.”
“Have a good afternoon.” Leaving it at that I walked off the airbridge with a smile on my face, though no one could see it because of my helmet. There was no money pouch to steel afterwards, but the interchange was exactly how I imagined it. I saw it once, in one of those ancient vids, called a movie. I had always wanted to do that.
The atrium was massive. Unlike other space stations, full of hall ways with shops lining the sides. The Atrium was different. Instead of endless hallways, it was entirely open. In this openness, was a huge forest. The forest contains many pathways, and covers 60 square kilometers, about the size of Earth's Manhattan island. The forest was made of huge trees that stretched upwards two kilometers. In fact the the Largest tree, towers over the rest at 6.3 kilometers, just 40 meters from the ceiling. It is interestingly in the center. It is both interesting and weird because it was not engineered. It just turned out like that. So, obviously the tree was named Yggdrasil, and became the Command tower and SIC, or station information center. Station security was also located here.
Shops and pathways weaved through the forest at many different levels, leading to the shops, hotels, and restaurants carved into the trees. The best part, in my opinion, was the fresh air. It was not the stale recycled air that came from scrubbers. No, it was the fresh air you would find planetside.
I was most worried about the pathways. I don't know if I have mentioned this, but I am very clumsy, The procters say its a problem with my vestibular nerves. One of the few things they can't fix, mainly because they don't know the cause, or how my nerves are any different from everyone else's. It does not mean I am not dexterous, but walking on uneven surfaces is very difficult for me. As you can probably guess I did not play sports that required running. Instead I did things like, throwing knives, and projectile weapon sports. Its part of the reason I named my ship the Atlanta, she is also the goddess of running. Infact I run every day, but it is not the same on a treadmill.
It is my fault anyway, when I realized I could not repair Atlanta on my own, I created nanites with coded in self-preservation software, I know, this is really bending the law. At first this led to the nanites eating each other, so I gave the nanites hive mind matrices and changed the self-preservation that as long as the ship was intact and there was one nanite left, they would survive. This led to hyper efficient repairs.
One day when I was nine, an explosion occurred while i was working on the drive matrix, long story short, it blew off my arm and two of the ships nanites got into my body. When my body’s nanites found them they attacked. Unfortunately my ship nanites were tougher, they started killing and eating my nanites, and using them to replicate themselves. The data they gained from my body’s nanites gave them the impression they had been transferred to a “new ship.” They proceeded to kill off and replace all of my nanites, and then optimized my body. They repaired my arm in seconds and the rest of my body was fine.
This was a fantastic development because i was faster stronger and could think faster than ever. Unfortunately balance was to abstract of an idea for the nanites to understand, so I was left with a clumsy body.
With this in mind, I obviously did not want to walk, or trip all the way across the station. So naturally I just started flying, then I realised some people were staring. I cursed in my head, my suit did not use and Ion drive, so everyone was bewildered as to how I was flying. It was easier to conceal on Auctus because the blue sky hides drive trails, but here there was no blue sky. Sighing I press on toward B72.
The Atrium, Protovitae System, February 14, 458 UE. Docking bay B72: 2712 hrs A.M.S.T.
“Hey boss, look here, you gonna wanna see this!”
“Tony, I swear to god, if this another one of your pointless gossip stories, I’m gonna fire you.”
“No you won’t boss, seriously look at this, It just went out on the Omninet, two minutes and it’s already spread past the system.”
“What! Okay get over it here, show me.”
Tony went over to the captain and gave him his omnicomp. On it was a video of a strange person wearing a gray trench coat over a spacesuit, and a hood pulled over his helmet. The person was floating above the ground looking at the camera. “Tony, why are you wasting my time. He is probably using a Flantry to float.”
“Keep watching” Tony said.
The next thing the captain saw was beyond shocking, the person flew off, without Ion drives. That should be impossible. “Where is Erny?”
“Last time I checked he was at the main cargo ramp.”
Quickly the captain sent the video to his omnicomp, and after returning Tony’s, he headed to the main cargobay. Once he got to the bay he located Erny, talking to the same person from the video! It seemed the man wanted something his ship brought in, and Erny was telling the man that we were not carrying one, whatever that was. Just as the captain was about to step in, he was utterly shocked for the second time today, that was probably a record. After a hundred years in the military and two hundred years of being a Masscall, he had pretty much seen all the weird the galaxy had to throw at him, and he had thought, what he had not seen would not surprise him. But he was wrong.
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The man standing twenty feet away from Erny, did what the Captain thought impossible. An action left only to his favorite ancient stories of another galaxy. The man reached out his hand and “pulled” the shipping manifest from Erny’s hand, to his.
After a couple of beats the captain announced himself.
The Atrium, Protovitae System, February 14, 458 UE. Docking bay B72: 2714hrs A.M.S.T.
Did Mr. Soto lie to me? I thought as I argued with the Bosun, which was getting me nowhere. So, I did something a little extreme, I gravpulled the shipping manifest from him, and proceeded to read it. After a few moments, a tall man came down the ramp. “What seems to be the problem,” he said “I’m Captain Ross, Victor Ross.”
“I am James Rex, I was told there would be a divePod at commercial bay seventy-two, waiting for me. but your Bosun here tells me that there are no divePods on this ship.”
“I’m gonna take a wild stab and guess that, ‘These aren’t the droids you are looking for’ won’t work on you.” The captain chuckled at his joke, I didn’t get it, but the way the bosun rolled his eyes told me it was a quirk of the Captain. He noticed my gaze and followed it to the Bosun catching him at the end of the eye roll. “Come on Erny, really. I know normally i make those references when the barely make sense, but this time… He literally used the Goram Force.”
“Now you're mixing references.” said Erny
“It doesn’t matter!” The captain sighed, then turned to me. “The truth is we have one, but it is meant for a kid.”
I pull down my hood and take off my helmet, “that would be me.”
“Well, when Alexander told me I was giving this to a kid smarter than the entirety of my crew, I thought he was kidding. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“You know Mr. Soto?” I ask surprised.
This time the Bosun spoke up, “Yo primo Lex use to roll with us back in the umphf! Holy Santa Maria what was that for!”
“Lex told me, anyone to call him that, gets punched in the face.”
The Captain laughed, “He finally let someone besides Leslie call him that eh? Take pride in that, Alexander only lets people he holds in the highest regard use that name.”
Losing a fight with the blood in my cheeks I asked if I could have my package.
“Yes, here it is.” Another voice came from the ramp. The man was built like a freighter. And spoke with a strange accent. “Watching Ernesto get punched in face was very entertaining. Back in Mother Russia we greet people with fist to face sometimes, but only of our greatest enemies, or our most respected friends. I hope Erny will become respected friend. He may be Bosun, but he could easily have my job if he wanted.”
“Yeah hombre, first mate is too much of a hassle we, no hard feelings chacho, but now I owe you one!”
“How old are you kid, eighteen?” The captain said.
“Seventeen.”
At this all three of them looked at me, stared for a couple seconds.
“Well,” the first mate was the first to recover. “It looks like Dimitri was right about you. What do you think Captain?”
“If you ever want a job, you have it kid. You would start at common spaceman, that's the highest I can put you without real experience.”
“Well, I have my own ship. Would you have space for it.”
“You are just full of surprises. Tell me, how did you get your hands on a spaceship.”
“I built it.” I said simply.
“Kid if you want a job, you've got it, and at able spaceman, too. I haven't been surprised in fifty years son, and you come here and do it ten times in the past twenty minutes.”
“Can we see ship?” The first mate asked.
“Sure. But, what is that?” I question pointing at a frisbee size disc, Erny was placing on my container.
“A bomb.” Erny declared nonchalantly.
“That is a Flantry, or floating gantry. It makes moving shipping containers effortless.” The captain assured as he hopped on the container, and the other two followed suit.
Thinking this was common, I put on my helmet and got on, the three meter by two meter crate gave plenty of room for all of us. The three looked at me expectantly. “What?”
“These things don't fly on their own,” Erny scoffed, “you got to push them.”
Realizing what he meant, I got off and started to push the cart.
“Kid we don't got all day.” The captain spoke, “the Flantry can go up as well.”
“Captain he can't fly,” Erny protested, “he does not have… Ion…”
“You were saying…” The captain remarked.
I stayed silent and notified the longshoreman to bring my ship to dock. He would then use a Tractor, to move my ship.
The Atrium, Protovitae System, February 14, 458 UE. Docking bay A6823: 2740hrs A.M.S.T.
“Ahh, Mr. Val Ren I hope you had a pleasant stay.”
The other three did not react to the fake name, “Mr…”
“John Silver”
“Mr. Silver, I would like to show my friends my ship, but it is quite special. Perhaps, for 100 credits plus ten for the tractor driver, I could have an empty docking bay with malfunctioning cameras.” Receiving the credits he says, “Apologies Mr. Ren it appears our Dockcams are malfunctioning, I will need my fellow stevedores to help me fix them. Please wait to depart, we will have them fixed in ten minutes.”
After he left the first mate spoke, “Is this first time to station for you?”
“I hear you Andrei, kid seriously you want Erny’s job?”
“I was a too afraid to dock, even with the nanites. I did not want people taking too close a look at my ship. And, if I worked for you, I would want to start at the bottom, like everyone else. Otherwise I would get no respect.”
“Fantastic answer! You are wise beyond your years, and Erny was just about to pay his debt.”
Erny just shook his head and said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. What is this you say about nanites? You use them to cloak your ship.”
“I use them for a lot of things,” I tell him as I pull out my omnicomp. “But right now, they are being used for this.” I click a tap a few buttons and the nanites recede, revealing the scales.
“Well, it look like dragon, but does it spit fire like one.”
A few more buttons and the weapons dropped down. A fixed proton rail main battery, complemented with two fixed heavy mag rails, four turrets, two bi-laser and two mag-rail gatlings, and four free moving laser cannons on each wing with standard targeting and point defense capabilities. No ordinance, that would attract too much attention, and is ilegal.”
Andrei was drooling, which the captain pointed out, and was registered with indifference.
“Kid, that ship has more firepower than a dropship, if you put ordinance on it, you would have a civilian cruiser with destroyer class weapons capability.”
“Well Captain I want adventure, that's why she is named Atlanta, so she is prepared for anything.”
“Make one for Andrei, I pay, three times what it costs. Half now, Half in two months when we get return.” Andrei was fervent. “Make it red, please. Red Dragon of Mother Russia has nice ring to it, don't you think?”
Dreq this is it! I say forgetting he won't be able to hear me. “Okay I’ll build one for you, but just you, and the captain, and to everyone else it just appeared out of thin air.” Just then the airlock to my ship opened and Dreq came out.
For the whateverith time, the three crew mates were shocked, so was I for that matter.
What are you doing out here!
Hey you were the one who was like ‘Dreq come out here.’ ‘Dreq this is it!’
What but… We will talk about it later, say hi then go back inside.
Dreq introduced himself and retreated to the ship. “Well kid, I'm gonna head back before you give me a heart attack, seriously consider my offer. I have a feeling you will rise above us all, it would be an honor to see you start your journey with us. Erny, let's head back, leave your Flantry with James, let's let Andrei hammer out the details of our new ships.” At that the captain left and I reactivated the nanites.
Andre and I spent another ten minutes hashing out details, then I left to go home.