By David C. Daoust
Between waking up in a pod of nutrient enriched chemicals, regaining his mental faculties, and getting everything in order that needed to be in order, Colin Vice really did not have much chance to react. He’d steadfastly dealt with the nurses, took a shower, got some real food; all of which was great after his previous days of walking through the desert. It was not until he was fully clean and comfortably lounging on a couch in his quarters, that he suddenly yelled, “FUUUUUUUCK!” as he flailed about in a private mini-tantrum, beating the dust out of the cushions that surrounded him as he thought about all the progress he’d lost thanks to the destruction of yet another Holomech.
The Battle Drones devastating drop from the ceiling had driven its pointy metal limb directly through the solid light lattice that made up his cranium, to crush the very core of the Holomech device itself. As such his connection was lost, and his mind was thrown back to his natural body. That specific holomech was gone for good, and he knew it, yet he still had others packed away on his ship. Deloris, the head nurse, had offered to throw his mind back to his ship once he’d achieved consciousness in his natural form. But that would only put him back on his ship. A ship that lay broken, in the middle of a desert, several days travel from the only real civilization on the moon. Colin was not in a hurry to get back to walking.
Not to mention all the questions, which were whirling about in his mind, about what he’d found in that hidden excavation site. As far as he could tell, the Battle Drones had set up a small operation in a hidden canyon on that desert moon. They were excavating metals from the very ground to repair themselves. To Colin, this was just so cool.
He wanted to know more.
Colin felt like he could find the cargo’s point of origin if he tried. It was a pretty botched mission at this point, and his father hadn’t weighed in at all… He had no idea what kind of repercussions the Organization may face. There was certainly going to be an unhappy costumer out there, if not already.
Colin could not think of the last time he’d actually spoken to his father, let alone seen him in person. This was not unusual; Bernard Vice was a busy man. He kept to himself, keeping the Organization- organized. His father did not like to be pestered. Colin had to assume some form of responsibility for his cargo; Cargo that seemed to have a mind of its own.
Colin had set out from this very dock, with the cargo hidden away in his metal belly. That meant the machines were here at one point. He wanted to know where they came from before that, who designed them, who built them, and what were they capable of.
He’d actually stood up and crossed the room to click the Farwall’s display, while he was pondering these very thoughts. The entire wall lit up and splayed an endless array of system folders under his finger tips. He noticed in the lower corner that he had a slew of messages waiting for him to read. It looked like more messages than he’d want to sort through. Just a few days ago he had thought his system might be busted. Mainly because everyone he tried to reach, was unreachable for some reason. Apparently whatever the issue was, had passed, but he was too engrossed with tracking the cargo origins to bother so much as opening the suddenly full inbox. He knew neither his father nor Khalia would leave a message, so he put the inbox out of his mind. The thought of his distant friend, that he had not talked to in far too long, got him to glance at the clock, he knew Khalia and her daughter would be sound asleep for several more hours.
The information on Battle Drones was there, it probably would not be there for any other courier, but Colin had a level of clearance, a tad higher than the rest of them. This part of the job was none of his business, Colin was meant to take cargo from point A to point B, for the most part, he played along with these rules, but he was also set to inherit this business someday, so his prying eyes were at his own discretion.
The Battle Drones’ design tracked back to an engineer, Theobald Gray, who lived on the small moon ‘New Galileo’, not to be confused with the City-Station, ‘Galileo’, which orbited the same system.
Apparently, those colonists really wanted to keep the name Galileo when they migrated down to the surface, Colin mused as he called up a map of the System; hovering next to the small spherical representation that sprang up on his display, both the City-station and the small moon, had the same little pink flag, with the white ‘Ark’ symbol at its center. This told him they were of the Royal Alliance.
A Royal Alliance ‘Colonist’ designing such advanced technology stuck out in his mind as unusual. The Royal Alliance was not known for innovation, and the colonists throughout the Onion, were not known to have access to the funds…
He clicked through what information he could on the engineer’s public works. There was not a lot. He did find, however, that Gray had graduated from a Consortium University, which sorta-kinda put his issues to rest. There was not much to go on, not much until he found a picture attached to a small news article, depicting one Theobald Gray standing with a fellow graduate that was described as his ‘future colleague’ in the small caption beneath it. The man was familiar; he immediately skimmed the article for the name…
Gordon Hitch.
Boom! A man he recognized. This was the same whiskey swilling inventor of the Holomech device- An engineer who lived in this very Crucible, though his home was much closer to the common areas.
The Organization’s particular Crucible was dubbed ‘Halfhull’ by the workers that once lived here. It was once a clammy, under-stocked, uncomfortably cramped working station, now it was a safe haven for pirates and thieves. This created a constant flow of ‘desirable undesirables’, flowing in and out of the illegal stardock, all of whom needed a place to wheel and deal, and all of which had coin to spend. Halfhull made quite a bit of Coin off the clustered bazaar of, not only brothels and pubs, but a rather impressive array of Casinos and Starspeeder Gambling Houses that filled the commons.
Ultimately, this made the Common area of Halfhull, a permanent nightlife district, and the constant influx of new ships, with overworked crewmen looking to enjoy much needed ‘leave’, kept this night scene hopping twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The booze was always flowing and girls were always dancing, that’s just what it was to put in at Halfhull.
Before he’d even finished reading the rest of the article, Colin was sorting through his closet trying to find some suitable clothing for a trip down to the stardock, where he knew, the man in question, would be carousing the scene.
The common areas were a place he had not frequented regularly since he was a young man, long before the assault that changed him into the ‘upgraded’ cyberneticly altered man he was today. He found the prospect exciting, he actually felt as though he was young again, and really after his boring trek through the endless wastes, it was a welcome change of pace.
Twin Crown could wait; he wanted to continue his investigation.
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