Refugee to General: Part 2 – Refugee
13 Oct 2024Constance Flux
My name is Constance and I'm a refugee. I've been living in this enormous, overcrowded, chaotic space station since I was fished out of the sea by the Rescue Rangers, following an extinction level event on the water world my parents were helping to terraform. At the age of 14 I was dumped along with the 126 other survivors in the loading dock of Crimson Exchange, with a thermal blanket and a weeks worth of military rations. The station was already overcrowded, its population of 1 million inhabitants nearly three times that for which it was originally designed. We fortunate few staggered from the bowels of the mighty Anaconda that plucked us to safety and seemed to melt into the crowd. A security officer for the Kumo Crew that ran the station mumbled that someone would be along to look after the children soon. No-one came. By the end of the first day cycle it was clear we were on our own. Some of the life pods had been stacked in a corner of the loading bay, so I took my blanket and rations, pulled the nearest pod into a darker spot behind the fuel bowser and climbed inside, my exhausted body soon surrendering to sleep. When i woke and opened the Pod, the smell of sweat, grease and desperation filled my nose. I climbed out to find a small boy a few years younger than me, curled up on the floor in his thermal blanket. He was sound asleep, but perched upon his frail body was a small ginger cat. I recognised the boy from our school, but the cat was new to me. Upon seeing me it slid from the sleeping child and proceeded to jump into the freshly vacated pod and immediately curled up in the pre-warmed padding. 
The boy had a very pale complexion contrasted with a shock of red hair. He was so traumatised he couldn't speak, so I called him Radish and took him under my wing. We turned out to be a good team. We soon made ourselves useful to the regular crews that came and went. Radish was a technical prodigy and it seemed could fix almost any electronics. I quickly learned to operate a Mech Loader and did the crews work while they snuck off to the bar. We worked for food and the occasional credit. The cat stuck around and proved an exquisite distraction when Radish needed to 'acquire' some tech required to fix a module and was she great company for the two of us in the quiet times. I called her Belle. We became more than just friends, we became family. The three of us against the world. After about a year we had become invaluable to some of the ships and managed to persuade one Captain to take us on as crew when he was short handed. We knew this was the only route to escape our impoverished state and create a better life for ourselves, so we grabbed the opportunity. From occasional crew , to regular crew, to Pilots Federation trainees. We worked hard and lived hard and eventually, as the years passed, were gained competencies in different roles aboard the heavy freighters our company ran. I became Deputy Pilot and Radish Navigation Officer- Second Watch and even Belle was prized for her vermin control abilities.. It was a hard won reward and we were grateful.
