Chapter 5
Lost In The Mist © 2015 Sinclair Diavante
Chapter 5.
+30 days.
I stared through the viewport nearest my rented dry-dock bay, watching an AMTB guide The Jefferson into her home for the next few months. AMTB's are like the forklifts of the sky, automated maneuvering transport bot. The one I had hired was trailing a fine mist of something liquid, which was definitely not normal. I had come to realize that not much on 1Z-Yoshi ever was.
The pressure doors opened slowly, and she was almost home. I received comms in my wetware, a request to finalize billing for services provided. A custom applet popped up, the real moneymaker for 1Z-Yoshi. More like money-taker, I thought, as I selected normal atmosphere, 02, H20, H2, H3, and MWatt electrical. The MWatt icon was grayed out, all I could select was KWatt.
No, I thought, that can't be right. She'll need more juice than that. KWatt wouldn't even be enough for the deuterium containment fields. I tried to imagine how unhappy Yoshi would be if I started generating my own electricity with a microfusion reactor. Then I thought back to yesterday; didn't it look like my neighbors were using one?
The pressurization countdown had digits ticking in the hour and minute fields; I knew I'd have plenty of time to go wander before I could enter the large space. Now that she was in dry-dock, I could perform the roughest of repairs, the sort that would be a dangerous nightmare if I performed them outside in a suit.
The lights in the hallway above me dimmed as the artificial gravity in the chamber buzzed into life. The Jefferson touched down with a long groan that shook the floor; the lights dimmed twice more, and then resumed their meager output.
I had spent the last month working my tail off getting The Jefferson dry-dock certified. She had to pass a variety of tests to ensure safety before she could be brought into 1Z-Yoshi's facilities.
Tests, which she kept failing.
Any life on board? Nope. Well, what's this? Life signatures? No, that can't be right.
I found out the hard way what space rats looked like, and it's nothing like a rat. They're vicious little creatures that can exist happily in vacuum. They looked like a cross between a housecat and a fish, and they were able to generate their own microgravity to move around. There's nothing quite like being stalked by creatures in the silence vacuum had to offer. My 'blaster made short work of them though.
Then she failed some radiation tests, and imagine my surprise when I found a lump of Thorium-232 in what passed for a dresser drawer in one of the crew quarters.
The list went on and on, and Nod only smiled when I told him about my problems. He bested my stories with issues he had had on his first ship. Apparently, these things were considered a rite-of-passage. I tried to stay positive, when I wasn't pulling my fur out.
I stopped by Nod's work area, wondering if he was around. His telltale maneuvering thruster was rumbling in a corner, and he was near it, bent over a complicated piece of machinery I couldn't identify. He was using a tiny little wrench to turn an even smaller screw. He stared up at me and smiled, straightening.
"Hey, Nod. How's it going?"
"Mmm. Would be better if this Terellian reflex rejuvenator worked." He broke the head off the screw and tossed it behind himself. I stared, Terellis, a feline race. Ugh, I hated cats. I remembered who brought me to Sinclair. Fond memories of a terrifying time.
"Well, The Jefferson's in dry-dock! You ever hear of Megawatt electrical being unavailable?" I watched as he manually actuated some sort of... control arm. It terminated with what looked like a fake mouse.
"Mmmhmm. Sounds 'bout right. Neighbor's runnin' a fuser, he won't mind if you tap in."
I shook my head. Very unsurprising.
"Got somethin 'fer ya," he said.
He handed me a cube, about a foot on each side, maybe a third of a meter. That was a detail, which constantly confused me. Keman used metric, Erick had used imperial measurements. I could not decide which one to stick with, and it changed depending on my mood. The cube was metal, covered in dark etched patterns that resembled circuits. It felt heavy, and one side was warm to the touch. I looked at Nod curiously.
"Arcanian weapons platform AI core. Still active, runnin' off heavy isotope temperature differential. It's thinkin' right now, and gots no inputs."
"Er... Nod. What am I going to do with this?"
He waved his hand past a couple of holes, a weak red laser winked from within, it was trying to communicate. "Could make a good friend. Or enemy, might hate you, might hate life. Been separated from controlling anything for a hundred years." He paused, considering. "Maybe said... hundred thousand years." He seemed to second-guess his decision to give it to me, then shrugged. I had already proven to him that I knew my way around computing cores, I'd repaired several of his in exchange for parts I needed. I tucked it under my arm, hoping it didn't explode, or something.
"Nod, before I forget. I'm going to need a 1k roll of optical fiber, quantum mode. Know where I can find that?"
"Mmmhmm. Yuh. Chtolb named... hm. Ever hear the noise a broke pod door makes?"
"Yeah, Nod. I know just who that is," I laughed.
I stopped by Jimmy's house of pain, as I now referred to it. He wanted to make sure my fur was falling out and growing back with the right coloring. Plus, I had ordered a certain something and heard that it was waiting for me.
"Hi Keman..." His gaze sought the piercing between my legs, then my eyes. No throat shown, none needed. That marked me as an eccentric Rhenthar, but I didn't care. He had a real thing for me, wanted more than anything for me to mount him, parasite and all. It would be a while, before I was that comfortable. The last time I did that was with Sinclair.
"Heyo. My shipment came in?"
He set a small box onto his counter and sliced it open with his claws, pulling out a flat brown strap from within. He handed it to me, then started inspecting my fur as I looked at it. It was a Biothane dog collar, nothing fancy, just a chrome "D" ring and a buckle, with a second O-ring in the back. I had been having a hard time getting to sleep at night, and damnit, I missed wearing my collar. I felt naked without it. I didn't care what other Rhenthar might think, I badly wanted to go back to wearing one.
"Wanna let me put it on you? It's the size you ordered, 46 centimeters." My pupils got a little bigger when he mentioned the size.
"Ah, no. I think I can manage." I pulled it around my neck and dialed the buckle snug. A flicker in my vision, one of Jimmy's eye tracking lasers. A camera's eye view of me stood there, wearing a collar. I smirked at him and shifted my sheath around, it did feel good...
Jimmy took a smoldering joint out of his mouth and handed it to me, I took a long drag and handed it back. Since coming to the station, I'd developed a fondness for weed. The THC was good at loosening up some of the thoughts in my head. Life was so strange and new to me, at times. I missed Sinclair on a constant basis, but I kept busy. So far, it only felt like something he was making me do, like a task, a project. I would go back to him right now, if I could.
"Keman, I've got someone I want you to meet... I was telling him about you."
I had drifted off. "Hmm? Who?"
"He's a Rhenthar, Siberian Husky. White with black markings... his name is Mist."
"Oh really. Is that what he's calling himself, now?" I laughed. Zach with a new name... I cracked up.
"Er. He didn't say he knew you, but he did want to meet you." I was still laughing. My laugh died out.
"Yeah. I bet. I probably should." Guess he's checking up on me. Rhenthar as a whole almost never use their wetware for communication. Not unless it's the only avenue, the last resort. In a society built around trust and honesty, such electronic means offered one of the relatively few methods to get away with lying.
"He has a ship, he just left last night, but he told me next time he's at Yoshi, he wants to see you." Off on another mission. It almost sounded appealing for a moment.
"Ok. I'll check out this Mist." I chuckled.
"What is that, anyway?" Jimmy asked, pointing at the cube I had set on his counter. I patted its smooth surface.
"Just something Nod gave me, an AI of some sort. I'll tell you about it, later. My ship should be all the way in dry-dock by now. I gotta run!"
I made my way back to my ship, AI core under my arm. I saw the pressurization countdown stuck at six minutes remaining, but the equalization light was green. I opened the outer and inner airlock doors, and stepped inside to take a good whiff.
Smelled like burning metal. So sad, that anyone would attack this ship. There must be one hell of a story behind it. Luckily, there were no bodies onboard. The computing core had already been harvested along with plenty of other things I had had to obtain and reinstall. With it all gone, I couldn't view any logs or see any history of what had happened. The new core's logs were as empty as the ship. I sat the AI Nod had given me onto the floor and stared up at the nearest hole I could see. Installation is reverse of removal...