Unexpected Encounter 6
06 Apr 2016Rebecca Hail
Rebecca stood behind her, a pilotsuit in one hand, the other on the pistol in her shoulderholster."Uhm ... I just wanted to ..."
Rebecca interrupted her angrily.
"You wanted what? Being nosy?"
Ria remained silent and looked onto the floor.
"If you abuse my trust again, you'll stay in the stasispod for the rest of the trip. Understood?"
Ria nodded and Rebecca threw the pilotsuit towards her.
Calmed down she said:
"I can understand if you want to know more about the person you're dependent from. Especially in your situation. But do you know what risk I'm taking by not blowing you out the next airlock?"
Ria looked up to her and noticed that the blue colour of her right eye was a shade darker than the left.
With a shaky, slightly desperate voice she asked:
"Do you really understand the situation I'm in? I'm thousands of lightyears from where I wanted to go because some idiot loaded me onto the wrong ship. The only time I ever flew with a spaceship was with a crappy hauler from Yimanbim to Fuelum. I know nothing about spaceships or traveling in space."
"Believe it or not, but I was once in a similiar situation. Alone, with a lot of unknown people in a ship far away from my homeworld."
Rebecca said with a serious voice, then she started to grin.
"Well, I have to admit you have balls. Hiding in a limpet in Fuelum. You're probably the first person who pulled this off. But you shouldn't do it again if you don't want to end up in another ships fuel tank."
Ria just stared at her.
"FUEL TANK?"
"Yeah, I use these limpets mostly to transfer fuel to other ships. That's what Fuel Rats do."
Ria just looked at her with a questioning face.
"Fuel RATS."
"You really don't know a thing about space travel, do you?"
Rebecca asked with a slightly amused expression.
"Well it's basically a breakdown service for spaceships. They run out of fuel, we search and rescue them."
"And why rats?"
"Don't know, sorry. I'm not in for that long."
"Well, you obviously didn't start in the business of saving people."
Ria looked at the monitor with the pictures.
Rebeccas smile disappeared and after a while she said:
"Yeah, it was a long way from this ..." she pointed at the picture, "... to this.", then onto the Fuel Rats badge on her pilotsuit.
"How did you survive those injuries?"
"We had a pretty good doctor. He was a skilled former plastic surgeon, who f*cked up one of his patients and had to flee. I had a sh*tton of luck."
"How old are you exactly?"
"27. That was nine years ago, shortly after I signed the contract with the Ares Company."
"How did you end up there?"
"That's a story I normally don't tell. But I think I should tell it to you when we consider the circumstances."
Rebecca pushed herself onto the side of the medical table.
"Well, I was born in 3275 on Ehecatl A 7, that's actually not that far from Yimanbim, as the third of five siblings. I had an older brother, an older sister, younger twin brothers and the youngest sister. My childhood until my 14th birthday was relatively normal. My parents had high positions in government and economy, so we weren't poor."
Her voice sounded sadder with every second.
"Ehecatl was a pretty unstable system around 3289 and the tensions between the federal and independent factions soon developed into a war and the three federal factions formed the United Democracy to fight against the three rebelling independent factions. When the Federation denied the request of military assistance because "large military operations near the imperial border could be seen as a provocation.", the rebels started taking out VIPs of the UD and landed on Ehecatl A 7. My parents died when a rebel ship fired two missiles into our house, killing everyone except for my oldest brother, my youngest sister and me. My brother found me and my sister in the hospital, put us into his car and drove to the capitol. We lived there as refugees for almost a year. Somehow he avoided getting drafted into the army and managed to make enough money to keep us alive. When they finally found him, he had pneunomia. They couldn't take him, since he was ill, so they forced me to take his place. The officer didn't care about me being not even 15, he just wanted to meet his quota. It was the last time I saw my brother and my sister."
"They draft children into the army?" Ria asked with an unbelieving and stunned expression on her face.
"The high-command doesn't really care where they get their soldiers from. I told you that the Federation is a lot different from what their propaganda is jabbering."
"Okay, and then?"
The sad tone was replaced with an uncaring one.
"Well, I got four weeks basic training then deployment alongside a newly formed platoon against the guerillas in the hinterland. If they had deployed me to the frontlines, I wouldn't sit here. Still in the first week we lost nearly a quarter of our soldiers and I really don't know how I managed to stay sane during the first skirmishes since I just sat there with my hands over my head, crying out of fear. Since the war looked bad for the UD they began drafting everyone over 16 not working in the war industry. They sacrificed millions on the frontlines to stall the advance of the rebels. Somehow I survived two years of guerilla warfare and got send to marksman training for "excellent shooting performance". Then the rebels wiped out the capitol to end the war, the federation intervened, the tables turned and our platoon got deployed to the frontlines."