The Eravate Job, Part 1
30 Jan 2017Tisiphone Moreau
The rhythm of work. That trance of tasks that have become, through repetition, rote. There’s a state of mind where the mind disconnects from the body, where the hands and feet know what to do without conscious thought, leaving the mind to wander elsewhere - or to go quiet entirely.Dropping out of hyperspace in Eravate, I blinked and realized I had made the entire trip without any awareness - without even being present in the cockpit. What I’d been thinking about, if I’d been thinking about anything at all, I can’t say. What I knew was that the turmoil of the last few days was gone, replaced with a calm acceptance of Tiler’s proclamation there in High Rebout’s command center - The Dragoons are going back to work.
On reflection it was a reminder of Tiler’s subtle genius, the way he’d so effortlessly gotten me back on board in the company’s business and made it seem like he was doing me a favor in the process. A simple delivery job, a trivial thing to ease me into the idea and to get me used to doing what he asked. He always had a knack for getting people moving together towards a common end, and in the years since the disaster that had cost him the use of his lower half it seemed like he’d only gotten better at it.
I had to admit that, even with a skeleton crew to keep the place running, High Redoubt - and by extension the entirety of the Crimson Mercenary Dragoons - seemed to be doing better than anyone would have guessed. A mercenary force with no forces, who had not been hired out in over two years, by all rights should have collapsed under its own weight. A suspicion, gnawing at the edges of my awareness, was forming that there was more going on than the sale of radioactive material from Jericho’s core. We were transporting 10 tons of various isotopes - valuable enough to finance the Dragoons for maybe a month, but it would have taken at least half a year to extract that amount.
There was more going on at High Redoubt, questions that I would need to ask. As Ackerman Market rose up to fill the view outside the canopy I began to fear what I was going to learn.
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Agricultural Station ACKERMAN MARKET
Federation System ERAVATE
3/1/3303 04:36:22
“Lakon Tango India Sierra, you are cleared for docking on landing pad three-two. Be advised, speed restrictions are in effect.”
I transmitted acknowledgement of the pad assignment and settled my hands back onto the controls. There might be room for daydreaming during hyperspace travel, but docking - particularly at high traffic ports like Ackerman - requires full attention. Accidents are uncommon but always expensive, and in many cases fatal. Our cargo - not strictly illegal but unusual enough to raise eyebrows - also meant that it would be better to avoid attracting unnecessary attention during our stay.
Redemption’s dorsal thrusters pushed the ship down into alignment with the docking slot and with a gentle twist of the sidestick I matched our rotation with the station’s own, perspective shifting in the moment so that it seemed the station had stopped and the rest of the galaxy were spinning instead. We glided through the atmospheric shield covering the slot and I spun the ship further, lining up the Keelback’s belly with the assigned pad as we descended towards it.
I left Kristal to secure the ship and work out the details for the food shipment we were supposed to take back to Jericho, and set off to find Tiler’s buyer. From the short message he’d sent when we arrived in Eravate I knew his name was Sam Moscovitch and that I’d find his company - Eclipse Industries - on deck 4.
The first few decks of the Orbis-class station, layered around the core of the docking bay on the central axis, have only minimal gravity. It makes moving the cargo a lot easier but it also means magboots are mandatory for getting around. Like living aboard a ship, every action needs to be first thought over and planned through before made or the laws of physics wind up throwing you unintended consequences in the shape of equal and opposite reactions. After a while you get used to it, but every few weeks you read about some planetsider trying to free-fall through the corridors and breaking a bone or three for the trouble. I’d met an old prospector once who claimed that if you jumped just right, you could fold your legs into a lotus posture and glide down the entirety of a Deck 1 corridor, landing right back where you’d started after full rotation of the station.
I’ve never seen it happen, though I’ve given it a try once or twice.
I let the cadence of the buzz-thunk of my magboots gripping the landing pad's ferromagnetic walkway set the speed of my walk to the station services building, but once inside the airlock and under the relative safety of a ceiling I allowed myself to move with short, bounding hops to the lift that would take me down to the higher levels. Gripping the lift’s railing with one hand on the descent, I fished out my dataslate with the other and called up the station’s directory. Eclipse Industries was on the far side of the station, opposite our docking pad and about halfway back on the long axis. It meant taking a couple of trams - one around the circumference of the deck and a second down towards the station’s aft - which offered up an impressive view of the aquaponics terraces. They hung, tier after tier, suspended in massive wells that opened up onto the docking bay high above. Cheek pressed to the polycarbonate glass I strained to spot Redemption on her pad at the far side of the bay but the angle never presented itself.
Within the hour of our arrival on-station I disembarked the tram near Eclipse Industries and made the rest of the way on foot; half hopping, half pulling myself along the railings set on the corridor walls. It was a slab of black tungsten, bearing a logo of a stylized half-moon shaped like the letter ‘E’, set on a pillar between the offices door and the much larger cargo loading door, that confirmed I’d found the right place.
The door opened with the hiss of hydraulics when I pressed my hand to the screen beside it, unlocked despite the non-standard hour. They must be expecting me, I thought as I stepped inside.
Durable, beige carpet lined the floor of the reception area - softening the industrial nature inherent in the design of the lower decks but thin enough to not interfere with the magboots’ grip. A minimalist desk of brushed aluminum curved out of the back wall, faced with evenly spaced strips of synthetic pine and soft lighting set beneath the receptionist’s counter. A larger version of the Eclipse logo hung behind it.
A middle-aged woman, fade-blonde hair pulled up into a hurried topknot, sat at the desk and greeted me with a tired smile. There was no sign of the man I was supposed to be meeting with, and I double checked the name on my dataslate as I approached the counter.
“Good morning,” I said, giving the woman a small nod. “I’m Commander Moreau, here to meet with Sam Moscovitch?”
She rose from her chair, extending a hand out across the counter.
“Hello, Commander. Yes, I’m Sam. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”