There was a distant clanging as a mechanic hammered out a buckled exterior hull plate and a glistening welter of sparks as an angle grinder was applied to a twisted strut. The hanger was unusually busy today, rich with the stench of industry. A wing of Outcasts had pulled in for refuel and repair before the final stint into Alpha. Hunters were engaged in dark deals regarding life and death. Miners bawled noisily at merchants over the price of this or that. Locals scurried back and forth, fetching and couriering, keeping the peace and circulating gossip.
Two men were picking their way across the flight deck ' skirting around a Sabre's thermal vent and the various accumulated piles of debris a functional workshop acquires. They approached a decrepit and creaky looking CSV. Standing below it the first pensively covered his eyes with his hand and shook his head ' a universal sign of agitation and disbelief.
'Howard, why do you want to do this?' The second man seemed too wrapped up in his own thoughts to answer. After a moment, he drifted back to the present from whatever daydream he'd been entertaining.
'Um. Well, you know why. I've got debts to pay. Please don't make this, um'¦ awkward, Pete.' He took a dull metal ring out his pocket and fidgeted with it nervously.
'Who hasn't? Look, this isn't the way to do it. If you head out to the Core Systems in that pile of crap, you're going to get yourself killed, you understand?' Howard was peering at his feet. Pete snapped an irritable finger under his nose. 'Are you even listening? My parents or their parents left those bastards in the core for damn good reasons, and so did yours. Look at me! If you want to fly, talk to Mr. Golham about joining one of the cracking crews. That's solid, safe pay, right? You get to keep the station in drinking water, so you'd be pulling your weight.' The ring was dropped back into the pocket, feet shuffled, hands wrung.
'I -'¦ I don't think it's what my mum or dad would've wanted'¦' he trailed off feebly. He'd always wanted to see the sector. But then, so had they. Pete gave a hissing, exasperated sigh.
He snapped. 'Screw your bloody parents! They were the ones who saddled you with this ridiculous debt in the first place!' The words came out in an angry mess. Howard flushed red.
'Don't you dare say that about them. Don't you dare.' Some of the colour drained away. 'I didn't want to tell you earlier, but I'm not just showing you the ship. I already had provisions loaded aboard. I'm leaving for Bretonia. Today.' He was shaking slightly. He wasn't used to standing up to Pete. 'P-please don't try to stop me any more.' There was a long sullen silence. Pete broke it.
'You know what? Up yours! You were never gonna listen to me anyway! I don't even know why I even bloody bothered! You're gonna end up just like your family'¦ Smeared across some godforsaken rock by pirates or baked alive by a reactor breach! What bloody chance have you got?' He shook his head, spat on the floor as if in disgust and stormed off.
Howard stood stock still for a moment, trying to get himself under control. 'S-some friend you were,' he whispered to himself. He desperately wished that had gone differently, seeing as he'd just alienated his previously best friend. In a smaller deck of population 14, things like that had serious repercussions. Close-knit community, long standing grudges. The cargo bay was open. Boots clattering he stumbled up the ramp. Turning back, he slammed the button to seal the ship. He watched the ramp rise, slowly blocking from sight the scurrying technicians, burly mechanics, insinuating miners and lounging Outcasts. Freeport 10.
He wandered dazed past the collection of crates that represented his stores, out of the cargo bay and through the previous owner's bead curtain that led to a spartan cabin at the very front of the ship. Climbing a ladder tucked into the room's corner, he emerged through a porthole into the cockpit. Climbing up, he dropped into the old, worn and grubby pilot's seat, a shower of yellow cushion foam scattered out a gash in the side. He kneaded his temples for a moment before looking up again and firing the engines.
He punched a key on the dashboard, then dragged a toggle across on the user touch-interface. 'Docking control, this is freelancer Howard Lovecrepe. Permission to undock?' There was a moment, then the crackled reply.
'This is docking control. Please verify: your ship is the Coolthulu?'
'Negative control, it's the Cthulhu.'
'Ah. Roger. Pattern is clear, you are free to go. Good luck out there Howard.'
'You know how I feel about this Lauren. Howard's old enough to look after himself. He has been for years now. Besides, Pete's family will look after him. They always have done when needed.' The greying man popped off the pair of goggles that plugged him into the nav-console and peered over his shoulder. His wife leaned forward over the back of his chair and wrapped her arms around his neck in an affectionate hug.
'I know, I know. But I worry for him. You know what he's like'¦ He's 17 now, but he's'¦ He's still my little baby.' She stooped a little lower to rest her chin on his shoulder. 'I just think we should have waited a few years longer. We've been there for him little enough as it is.' He unbuckled the harnesses that confined him, then tapped the ship into autopilot. Prying her arms away he spun the chair around. He patted his knee and she sat down. Young Howard probably would have cringed at the sight.
'He understands what's happening as well as we do. We discussed this thoroughly with him. Besides, we've already set things in motion - invested too much to head back now. We'd be saddling our only son with a lifetime of debt.' He gave a wan smile. 'Not to mention diehard Zoner spacers like us age in dog years.' Lauren smiled with a twinkle in her eye.
'You sure know how to compliment a lady, Andrew.' Then the smile faded, like the sun passing momentarily behind a cloud. Her face was worn and lined, but by laughter, when by all rights it should have been wrinkled by worry or time. The lives Lauren and Andrew had chosen for themselves weren't easy ones. It wasn't one they'd wanted to tie their son into. 'Besides, you're looking none too grand yourself these days,' she quipped, tousling his hair. 'Just look here! This one isn't grey, it's white!' She plucked at the offending follicle, pulling it out. Andrew winced.
'Oh, you horrible woman! I don't know why I stay with you sometimes.' This was said light heartedly. Humoured banter between a couple that had been together too long to even consider being apart. Some said that their son being born 17 years before had been little more than a hindrance to them, a nuisance in their busy schedules. However this was never said by those who knew them or understood them. Howard had meant everything to them from the day of his birth.
What some perceived as distant coldness was merely absent mindedness at worst. Thoughts for his future gave direction to their creativity and yearn to discover, while regrets about his past led them to increasingly ambitious projects as a compensation. It was a sad irony in that by abandoning him, they were displaying their love for him in perhaps the only way they knew how.
'Freelancer Beta 2 / 5, you have permission to land.' Howard sat back in his chair and let the computer pull the steering controls out of his hands as the docking sequence was engaged. Small burners fired on the CSV's hull to get it into position, then nudge it into the flight bay. The exterior bulkhead folded down after him after he'd cleared the entrance, and the space pressurised. The door in front of him laboriously ground open once the atmospheric details had balanced, revealing the hangar in all of its squat, utilitarian glory.
Zoner ships were scattered around, mingling with the stylised craft of the Kusari, and the cautiously repainted Clydesdales of the IMG. There had been a convoy of Samura Large Transports moored outside as well. Howard had thought about how long they'd have lasted back home ' between asteroid dust getting into the delicate transport engines and jamming them, few friendly ports for repairs and opportunistic pirates looking to crack their cargo pods open, they probably wouldn't have made it halfway through Tau 23. If that. Zoners could usually eliminate two of those issues ' Zoner freighters all three.
The large room was a lot less noisy than Freeport 10's had been, although that was mostly a coincidence. That was the busiest the station had been in months. Freeport 6 was far larger and far more active. This must have been a lull in trade ' perhaps the local Samura and Kishiro stations were on their night cycles? After his ship had set down and he'd struggled out of it, he stood looking around the room from ground level. A bored looking technician wandered over. 'Kon'nichiwa, furiransa. Anata wa, nenryo ya shuri ga hitsuyodesu ka?' Howard just stared at him, bemused and slightly intimidated. The first time he set foot out of the Tau 37 system and someone was accosting him in a foreign language.
'Um? D-do you speak B-bretonian?' The technician sagged with relief.
'Thank Eris. You mostly get folks from Kusari here these days. Urgh. I hate talking in that language'¦ I can't get the hang of it. The last native I tried to talk to almost slapped me for 'despoiling their noble dialect'. Apparently I sound like I used a neural-net direct translator.' He sounded sulky towards the end of his outburst, then looked around furtively to make sure no vengeful resident of Kusari had overheard and was out to get him. Howard just felt slightly awkward at being hit by such a tirade of speech. The technician misjudged the look on his face. 'Oh, sorry, I'm John Smith. I asked if you needed fuel or repairs.'
'Um. Fuel would be good, thank you.' He fished around in the chest pocket of his flight suit for his credit chit. He'd hung around on the flight deck and seen his parents leave enough times to know how this bit went. He handed the chit over, then as an afterthought he added, 'oh, and I'm Howard Lovecrepe.' John reached out to take the money, then stopped, a frown on his face. 'I-is something um, wrong?' Howard stammered.
He took the chit and fed it into a hand-held machine. 'Ah. No-o sir, no problem, per se.' He tapped away at the machine for a moment, looking preoccupied. 'Your fuel is on its way. Um. Are you related to Lauren or Andrew Lovecrepe by any chance?' he queried in what he thought was an offhand and conversational manner.
Howard looked alarmed. 'W-well, yes, they w-were my mum and dad. B-but why?' John looked frankly surprised.
'Good lord. How are they? When they las-'¦' He stopped. 'What do you mean they 'were' your parents?' He asked sharply.
'Why do you want to know?' How do you e-even know them?' Howard retorted.
John paused for a moment. 'They used to be regulars a couple of years back. They were nice to all the staff here. They left a package with Station Admin that they said they'd pick up 'on the way back'. Only they never did.' There was another heavy silence. 'What happened to them?'
'T-t-th-hey're d-dead.' He stuttered angrily. 'C-Corsairs f-found a d-debris field in o-one of their l-locked down s-systems, w-w-with their t-transpondder broadcasting from th-the black box.' John looked mildly startled, and had visibly paled.
'You're kidding? Nothing killed those two'¦' He was hoarse with disbelief. 'I thought maybe'¦ Maybe they'd gone home and forgotten or something'¦' He looked up at Howard, and to his immense embarrassment, saw that he was welling up. This had broken open old wounds that had been happily healing for years. 'Oh hell'¦ Look, I'm sorry. I really, really am'¦' He trailed off lamely, watching Howard's adam's-apple furiously bobbing up and down as he tried to get a grip of himself. 'Look, we had better go and get that package, yeah?'
He just about managed a choked '-eah'. The next fifteen minutes were a flurry of bulkheads, storerooms, lifts and station bureaucracy as they proceeded to the vaults. Freeport 6 was a commercial station: previously a trade hub between Bretonia and Kusari. Now it was a waystation for Kusari corporations and a few others on their way to the front. Either way, its history had left it with a heavily developed mercantile infrastructure.
The vaults held trade agreements with the stations' Zoners, valuable belongings, writs and recordings, important data, contracts and more beside. It was in one of these boxes that his parents' package was sitting. John had accompanied him up and now a fat security guard with a bulky and probably non-functional taser was waddling along with the keys. No doubt he was just a deceptive facade. At the end of the day, this area of the station was a bank.
'Wight boys, I'll just open this box up for you. Weally, this shouldn't take too long.' Howard glanced at John who shrugged. Howard wasn't going to be found offering any criticism so far as speech impediments went. 'What did you say youw name was again suw?'
'Howard Lovecrepe,' he said with a wince. He could imagine how this was going to come out.
'Wight Mr. Lovecwepe, it's this box wight here.' He glared at John who was smiling at him innocently. 'And if I heaw anything fwom you, you'll be out on youw awse in the hanger again, undwastand?' His bushy moustache twitched irritably. Howard half expected it to jump off and make a burrow somewhere.
'Perfectly sir. I can observe relatively rapidly that this is a respectable repository of regal regalia.' The grin widened.
'Wight you little toe-wag! Out of here wight now!' In a waddling jog, he lumbered, relatively speaking, towards the mischievous mechanic, who ran off laughing. As a bellowed afterthought he added, "and no it isn't! We don't have woyalty!" He returned to the vault box, panting and red-faced. 'Wery sowwy about that suw. No wespect these days.'
'Um. No. I guess not.' Howard mumbled carefully. There was a clunk as the box swung open; a brown leather satchel was sat inside. It probably hadn't changed a bit in the years it had sat in the atmosphere-controlled sealed-box. The massive mountain of a guard reached in and snatched it up in one of his ham-like hands. He delicately handed it over.
He's walked back to his ship at double time after signing his package out. His parents had dropped off the map two years ago, and he'd never heard from them again. This was something. Whatever it was, it was something. John had said they were going to pick it up on the way home. So they were going to come home. They had planned on coming home. He was sat in his cabin now, his legs hanging off the edge of the bunk. The ladder to the cockpit was on his left, and the satchel was on the sheets to his right.
Carefully he snapped the heavy metal buckles open and tentatively reached inside. His hands brushed along something flat and smooth and another object that was cold and square. He removed his hand then upended the bag. Two textbooks fell out, pages splayed, which were then flattened by a small metal box which dropped out after them. He picked up the box and looked at it carefully. It was locked by some complicated device. There was no keyhole, but instead a circular indent the shape and size of a wedding ring. He put it aside for a moment to look at the books.
Two, on different periods of Sol history. One book on Earth, the other on the settlement of the Sol colonies. They'd both been published by the University of West Chesterton, Planet Cambridge. They must have been for him'¦ He'd loved studying history and had considered himself an amateur historian himself for a period. That had been until his parents had been reported as dead. After he'd received the news, he'd given up on all the little hobbies he could no longer afford. Partly because his parents had always encouraged him to further that particular interest though. Mostly because of that.
For a long time he just sat there with the books on his lap and stared at them. They knew he preferred paper-books to digital ones. These must have been a present. Idly he flicked through the first book on Earth's history. The vast majority seemed to have been about war. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages on it. Historians had to study what had been stored aboard the sleeper ships. He guessed that's what happened when military strategists were left to decide what was culturally vital to their new colonies. Sirius never stood a chance at peace, and Cambridge researchers had compiled how Sol apparently never considered it.
Eventually he put both books aside and picked up the box, turning it this way and that, looking for a way to open it. It was covered in a matt grey paint, and seemed to be completely seamless. He tried scratching some of the paint off with a nail, to no avail. The only clue to its contents was the dulled rattle that came from within when violently shaken, and seemingly the only clue to its key the mysterious metal contraption with the ring-shaped indent. Slightly disappointed, he stowed the box in one of the tiny room's storage compartments, and carefully placed both books on the shelf above his bunk. He'd read them in full later. That done, he left the room, tramped through the cargo bay and disembarked once more into the flight deck. John was loitering nearby, attempting to be inconspicuous.
'Wotcha Howard,' he exclaimed as he hurried over. 'Anything interesting in that bag o' yours?' He smiled amicably, spoke light heartedly.
'Um. N-no, nothing th-that would i-interest you,' he managed in reply.
John cocked his head to one side, giving Howard a wry look. As if coming to a long drawn-out conclusion he shrugged and smiled again. 'Hey, whatever you say. Now then, I have a bit of a proposition for you.' The encouraging yet subtly cocky smile was back in service.
Sensing John was harder to get rid of than mouldy mulched synth-crop on the heel, he humoured him. 'And w-what would th-that be?' he queried.
John leaned in closer, looking both ways to make sure no-one was near, as if committing conspiracy. 'You're heading to Bretonia, right?'
Howard narrowed his eyes. 'Y-yes, why?'
James looked shifty. 'We-ell, I noticed you turned up empty. Not particularly business savvy I see.' Howard went to speak and was halted by an admonishing finger. 'Look, some miners turned up with a big load of niobium that was supposed to be forwarded to Kusari a few hours ago. They owe me a favour, and I know that it isn't a contract load. So'¦ Take me along to Bretonia, and I'll get you a profitable shipment to start you off on your journeys.'
'W-wouldn't anyone n-notice if a sh-shipment of m-minerals just disappeared?' Howard was genuinely curious now, and not the least bit tempted by the prospect of earning some money. The earlier he started killing off his debts, the sooner he could claw his life back.
John just raised an eyebrow, as if amused. 'You really haven't ever been off '10, have you? Welcome to the real world, mate. You're not going to find any knights in shining armour in the Big Black. You take every opportunity you get, and if that includes Guildsmen skimming off a percentage of every load to sell off the record for a bit of personal profit, so be it. The supervisors ain't gonna report it, 'cos they're probably up to their neck in the same business. Some'd call it corruption. Us lot, we just call it pragmatism.' He rolled his eyes. 'Listen to me go. Do you want this or not? If you're not feeling particularly chipper, I've even sit out the ride down in the cargo bay. You don't even have to talk to me.'
Howard speedily shook his head. 'N-nothing like that. I'm i-in. Th-the cockpit m-might be a b-bit cramped, b-but you could s-sit there as w-well if you wanted. If n-not there's the cabin r-right below. Sh-should be able to talk if I l-left the hatch open.' John shone that lazy, cocky grin again.
'Good man. Knew you were a true entrepreneur, just like your parents were.' Howard narrowed his eyes. 'Ah, right. Sorry about that. A little insensitive of me.' The silence hung for a moment, like a hang-glider who's just pushed out over a chasm and suddenly realised that the canopy is full of holes. 'Ye-eah'¦ I'll go get in touch with that miner shall I?' Without waiting for a response, he scurried off.
Howard just shook his head and clambered back into his ship, completely distracted from whatever purpose it was that had drawn him out again in the first place. Contemplating what travelling with his unusual new companion would be like, he trudged through the cargo bay and dropped down onto the bunk. He pulled out one of the text books and placed it on his lap. Flipping open at random, be began to read.