By David C. Daoust
Colin felt fresh and ready for life, considering his body was in stasis for so many months, he wasn’t surprised. He’d taken a shower, shared some alone time with an old friend, and grabbed a bite to eat. The trouble he’d abandoned aboard the barracks ship lost in his wake. He fully intended to return to his ship on Twin Crown, though there was nothing he could do until the Solar Gate was open once again. So he had some downtime to waste.
Colin chomped on the last bit of a fruit bar as he entered his living room. He flipped on his system. The far wall of the room, which was pitch-black, suddenly lit up like a giant computer screen. It was a common set up, rather than having a small screen with a talking head; people would appear with their entire room.‘Made for a bit of extra cleaning, depending on how they felt about that sort of thing, but it was a bit more personable. One of those traditions left over from the Ark Age. The wall sized screen was referred to simply as a ‘Farwall’.
Colin found most of his friends, marked as unavailable or away. He wasn’t surprised; he’d been gone for a long time, longer than ever before. Gamers were such pouty bitches, he thought to himself with a good-natured chuckle. The truth was Colin spent most of his time in the Hub, playing games. Flying a small freighter from one place to another took a long time, and the sedentary life of a starship captain, was not a thing he could handle. So once he had the coordinates punched and the ship flying straight, he ducked out, and into the hub for some live action gaming. He could monitor his trip from within.
Colin had a much better connection to the virtual world than most, considering they were all using either their Farwall, or possibly just a visor, he was jacked in directly, which made his response time much more competitive. ‘Course he wasn’t jacked in at the moment, so he was stuck sorting through data with a keypad that appeared on the Farwall. He found most of his games in shambles. He could tell by the state it was in, that his team’s rating was in the pits. All of which told him, once he stopped showing up, they stopped showing up. Mostly, just so they wouldn’t be to blame… which also meant all the blame was going to be on him.
Colin sighed, not a single of his old team answered his call. He didn’t care. Little punks, He’d make a new team. Find some new guildies. He would have time, just not presently. He was sure they’d probably come straggling back, when they noticed him active again.
Of course, they had no idea what he did for a living; they just thought he was another gamer, with a little too much free time. Nope, and truly, being the ‘brain’ of a light freighter, was a lot more free time than one could imagine, even at the speeds he could reach. Gamers were quirky interesting people. A welcome respite from the life he was born to.
Bernard Vice had raised the Organization out of nothing, nothing but a wide network of connections to the shadier areas of the Onion, and a grim determination to make his vision a reality.
The family business was far more than just a smuggling ring. The Organization had its fingers in everything, from greedy gangsters of the Royal Alliance, to the bottom feeding pirates of the Trade Consortium. The Organization brought these criminals together, to the benefit of all.
The Criminal Empire did not stop there. Plenty of Consortium businessmen found the Organization the perfect way to add a bit of an edge to their business tactics, all the better to compete with the Big Wigs. Not to mention, the corrupted ‘Viceroys’, the Cronies of the Royal Alliance, didn’t get that way due to following their own laws.
Colin found himself working every angle there was, not all were so ‘bad’. For example, he found himself trading Company Scrip for Coin (though at a wide markup). Or often running food, honest to god food, into the Consortium. He also ran guns to the Alliance citizens, as the Viceroys managed to strip them of their gun rights somehow, or even ran booze to the smaller, more religious, moon Colonies; Prohibition was ridiculous, but profitable to the Organization. Things got shadier from there.
Consortium pirates started out as hungry and desperate men, they stole ships, and high jacked shipments. They needed to unload somewhere, the Organization was glad to help- for a percentage. These Pirates were rough, and prone to violence. Some got fat, good at their job, but most got hunted down like dogs. Consortium Soldiers were no joke, especially when it came to lost profits.
The Royal Alliance though, they had a way of breeding criminals of a slightly different nature. A little smarter, less prone to violence, though if it came down to it, far more deadly. They were better organized, better protected. They had crime families of their own, often times, Bernard’s men were in competition with these men as often as they were working together. Colin had traded bullets with them more than once. And was sure he was on more than one hit list.
The line they didn’t cross, was human trafficking, in fact, the Organization had standing orders about operations like this. Orders from his father himself, these things were not tolerated. Colin never got the full story, but Bernard’s hate for the slave trade was legendary. Kill on sight. One could thank the Organization itself for why these activities did not get a strong grip in the Onion, ‘cept most people don’t know the Organization existed, and if they did, they’d best forget.
All this from the refurbished Crucible, a space station abandoned by the Mining Cartels long ago, thanks to an inability to keep them all running, bought by Bernard to house his operations. This was the perfect place to maintain business. The Crucible was designed to handle a fleet of ships, hold tons of material, and operate sufficiently for months at a time, without restocking.
Colin sat their flipping through names on his screen; he could not believe no one was available. Finally he got to the name, Khalia, whom he was saving for last. Mainly because he planned to visit with her for a while, he’d missed them so much while he was gone. She was a childhood friend, a Vir’eesian, which had been his pen pal growing up, at times his only friend.
Khalia actually had a small daughter now, whom he loved all the same, even if he had never physically touched either of them. That was how it was with the Vir’eesians though; no one had ever touched one. Nor been in the same room with one. They were too far away. Often times, when he was home, his Farwall was left on, it was open to their Farwall. Greeting them in the morning was one of his joys, and the half-table off to one side of the screen, matched theirs perfectly. Meals were shared across a chasm, unimaginable.
Of course this friendship had been encouraged by Bernard, all for business reasons. Bernard wanted to spread his business everywhere. That included Vir’eesian space. She was to be part of the family, acting on their behalf. It never worked as planned though, Vir’eesians didn’t function like humans. Though once Colin was injured, Colin hoped the Vir’eesians would be able to learn how to build a ‘mech’,a holo-mech preferably, a technology that the alien race had yet to master. Though a mech Colin could inhabit even over the great distance. Colin saw it as a way to finally touch one of these distant family members.
Colin found himself frustrated with the Farwall, once again no reply. He could not believe that no one was anywhere. What in the world was going down? Maybe it was his end, could his system be malfunctioning…? Maybe his guildies weren’t being punks after all. Doubtfull. Flopping down onto the coach, he called up a diagnostic screen…
