How I Got Here: "Coriolis"
05 Jan 2023Columbuss
Commander Justin Estok. Stardate 5-JAN-3309."When I heard about what happened, I'd feared the worst..."
Take any major city you've ever been to, with all of it's buildings and traffic. Wrap it around itself until the buildings in the distance are above your head and the street you're on, it never ends. It just forms one continuous loop. The only kind of street where walking in a straight line leads back to where you started. Now, stick that city inside a steel exoskeleton, so thick and dense that the buildings disappear inside it, and enormous in a way you can't even comprehend. Fill the exoskeleton with uncountable miles of piping and electrical work, so intricate and complex that no, one person, can possibly understand how it all functions. The kind of engineering that's almost too elaborate to fathom. This city, it spins around a central axis. It spins because it has to spin. It spins because, if it didn't spin, it couldn't exist. This spinning, it's what keeps your feet on the floor.
At the center, this city, it's hollow. Spotlights shoot up from the surface as ground crews guide incoming ships to land. Looking up, these ground crews can see people doing the same job they're doing, looking back at them from the ceiling. In this place, "the ceiling" is only "the ceiling" from your point of view.
Once a ship touches down, landing pad restraints activate to hold the ship in place as the floor drops. An intricate system of shock absorbers, pistons and rotors all work together to rotate and lower the ship into a prearranged landing bay before reorienting and rising back up to the surface. This is where you take your first steps into this city. Walking out of the landing bay, you're greeted by a customs officer who wants to know why you're there. A plethora of offices and booths designed to help you find where you're going litter the concourse. Digital maps and station layouts are available for upload to your flight suit computer and there's no shortage of advertisements attempting to instill their worth into whomever might happen to look. Taglines like "Core Dynamics. Mass Producing Freedom" or "There's Fast... And Then There's Buckyball" catch your eye as you head for the elevators.
The elevators take you down, which is the only direction you can go, before depositing you into another concourse, looking over the street mentioned earlier. The one that never ends. From here, you navigate this booming metropolis, weaving in and out of foot traffic, past people who'll live their entire lives here and likely never set foot on solid ground.
Buildings in major cities you might find on the surface of a planet, they go up. Skyscraper's they're called. All of them, littering the cityscape, reaching up, toward the stars. The buildings in this place, they reach for the stars too. The only difference is, the buildings in this place, they're inverted. They go down. Down until any further and you're back in the void. All the way down, to the kinds of offices for people with three letters on the door in front of their name. The kinds of offices the people near the surface will never see. The kinds of offices with expensive glass floors that show the galaxy spinning outside beneath it. The planet below comes into view, rolling across the corner of the floor before disappearing behind the other end. This happens every seven and a half minutes or so. This is where I found myself. Watching the stars through the glass floor as Jarrod Barret welcomes me to the offices of Federal Liberal Command.
"Heard you got yourself into a bit of trouble in the past," he says, with a stern Federal accent, not all that different from mine. "Ugh... The Imperials. They're so concerned with appearances, they make revenge into a fashion statement."
I smirk at this as he continues.
"Look, we need good pilots here and judging by your reputation, you fit the bill. Not Elite. In any category. But reliable it seems. Reliable is important to us. It says here you have a history in transport work. Izumo Heavy Industries?"
"That's where I got my start, yeah."
"Good. I spoke to Izel Peterson already. Quite frankly, she was happy to hear you were still alive. She had only kind words for you. What we do here, is support nearby systems loyal to Shadow President Felicia Winters, and extend her influence to systems who might otherwise lean in a different direction. If a system's in need, President Winter's doesn't discriminate. We're always looking to lend a hand to all those who need our help. Does that sound like something you might be interested in helping us with?"
I take a second to think, taking a sip from the coffee Barret's secretary handed me before I walked in.
"It's admirable. I'll admit that. I'm just... I'm not looking for any long term commitments at the moment. I have enough on my plate."
"Al Mina?" He asks. "The Alliance is a hot mess masquerading as an organization. No one knows where independent sovereignty stops and parliamentary control begins. It has such a loose, tenuous, grasp on it's systems I doubt anyone would notice an ASP slipping in or out. Especially with a Liberal Command ID attached to it."
"For what I have in mind, carrying a Liberal Command ID might not be the best idea."
"Very well... no commitments. Lets call it... independent contracting for now. As it happens I have some goods I need transported if you're up for it."
So I took the contract. I still needed to feel out the Al Mina situation before I could return anyway. It was worth making some money in the meantime. I left Barret's office, taking the elevator up to the open city before making my way to a public relay center. Stepping in to the booth, I orient it for a tight beam transmission to a set of coordinates in my flight suit computer. Coordinates John gave me, long ago, should something like this happen. I send the message, urging a response be sent to the Chelsie Grinn's comm relay ASAP.
I awoke the next morning in the cabin of The Chelsie Grinn with a message on the comm panel indicating that my hold had been loaded with Barret's delivery. It also indicated a tight beam, video response from the signal source I'd relayed to the night before. Walking to the cockpit, I power up the ships subsystems, activating the onboard comm projector. Out in front of me, a digital projection appears of Finn Hardy, John's right hand man in Crimson Life. In the recording, Finn takes a few steps back to get his entire frame into view before speaking.
"Justin, I can't even begin to explain how happy I am to know you're okay. When I'd heard about what happened I'd feared the worst. That you were... well," he says with a shrug. "Or at the very least captured by the Fed's and facing the same fate as John." He pauses as his expression changes and he adopts a more solemn tone. "Things aren't... great here right now. The Dynasty has assumed control of every star port in the system and Gryll has installed himself as head Chairman over all of it. Something's fucked up about how this whole thing went down. It's too much to explain over comm. We have to meet. It could be a few days until I can manage to get out of the system undetected. They're watching everyone. Attached to this message are some coordinates and a time. Meet me there. Don't trust anyone. See you soon."
The transmission ended with Finn walking toward the camera before blinking out of existence. I pulled up the file attached to the comm. It was coordinates to the Atarapa system. Only a few jumps away.