Chapter One
A burst of blaster rounds sizzled past my head as I dropped to my knees and slid behind cover. Crescendoing orchestration screamed from the station PA speakers. The slap of blaster fire impacted the planter I hid behind, shredding the genuine Terran maple tree that grew inside. Shots rang in my ears, punctuating the rising timpani beats that crashed around the commissary deck of Kilgore Station. The firing continued for several seconds. Each impact sent shock waves through the titanium alloy planter, and a shower of broken leaves and twigs rained down on me. Each shock wave made me flinch. I clutched my blaster pistol close to my chest and checked the magazine. The read-out showed me four blue lines: four shots left.
The firing ceased while each participant in the shootout reloaded their respective blasters or shotguns. The horns blared their triumphant notes, leading to the climax of the piece I knew so well. My eyes darted around, spotting a few stragglers on the level above, fleeing from the scene with hysterical cries of horror. I looked to my right and saw her – my partner, a vision of beauty beyond compare – kneeling behind the planter a good ten feet away. She appeared as an angel, only one that was covered in carbon scoring and dripping in sweat. Her black hair fell from a tight knot at the back of her head, a sweep of bangs covering her left eye. Her porcelain-skinned fingers nimbly worked to empty the bandolier that draped over her shoulder, deftly reloading each remaining shell into her shotgun. She hazarded a glance at me and called me over with a nod of her head.
I took a deep breath, the air thick with burning ozone from volley after volley of blaster fire. A haze of steam shifted like a river current around overturned tables and alloy support beams, working the station recirculators harder than ever. I heard the telltale metallic clicks and snaps of magazines sliding into chambers. I had to move before the mercenaries finished reloading. I threw myself out of cover and scrambled to her side, narrowly escaping a laser blast to my face.
“I only have four rounds left,” I said through ragged breaths.
“Just loaded my last six shells,” she responded, her voice steady and reassuring. Not an ounce of fear or hesitation left her lips. She’d been through shit like this before and always came out on top. This time would be no different in her mind.
I, on the other hand, was not so optimistic. This would be our final battle together. We would go out in a blaze of glory that would live in the hearts and minds of the people of Kilgore Station for centuries. I put a hand on her forearm. She looked to me. Her green eyes sparkled with resolve. Behind her gaze, I could sense the determination that burned within her. I wanted to reach out, cup her face with my hands, and kiss her. I could think of no better way to spend the last few minutes of my life than with my lips pressed against hers. Instead, I smiled and nodded.
“You go left. I’ll go right,” I said.
She agreed, and I moved to my side of the planter. That was when she placed a hand on my shoulder. I turned to face her and was met by her soft lips pressed to my own. Shock and surprise quickly melted, leaving
behind nothing but ecstasy. The feel of her lips, the touch of her hand on my skin, her scent, every sensation, and every impulse of that moment brought pure, intoxicating bliss. The viscous suspension of symphonic climax blaring from the station speakers and renewed blaster fire faded to nothing in my ears. For a moment, for that one painfully brief yet unimaginably powerful moment, the world stopped, leaving only her and me, lips locked for one last time.
“Make those four shots count, OK?” Her voice sang above the chaos.
My heart still raced from the softness of her lips and the taste of pink lemonade lip gloss they left on mine. I don’t think I could have said a word if I had tried. It would have been drivel, a verbal diarrhea of stutters and groans. I stood up from behind the planter and took aim when I noticed the grenade, airborne and ready to spill coffee all over me.
Coffee?
The coffee cup hit the plastic rim and ricocheted toward me, losing its lid in the process. The tepid coffee splashed against my navy-blue coveralls and splattered all over the floor I had just mopped and the can I had just wiped clean. The cup bounced harmlessly away, rolling under a nearby table. I looked up and met the three eyes of the culprit, a smug moneychanger from Tarsus, his earpiece buzzing with a conversation too important to miss. He couldn’t be bothered with the custodian he’d just soaked in ten-credit coffee. A couple of starbound teenagers, tall and lanky like all those who spend much of their life in zero g, wearing jumpsuits and magboots, laughed as they passed me. Both made it a point to mock my dejected face. Thankfully, nobody else seemed to notice. My eyes instinctively returned to the spot – her usual spot – where I saw the black-haired woman leaning against the railing a level above, holding a coffee in one hand and her glass communicator in the other. She had moved on, out of the food court to the lift exiting the commissary deck. I sighed.
I grumbled obscenities
I would never say aloud toward the spacebound duo and the Tarsian and got to work, cleaning the spill, and ignoring my now soaked uniform that clung to me like a second skin. The coffee reached all the way up to my embroidered name badge on the right side of my chest. The white background was now brown. I could barely make out “Johnny.”
“Gomez!” the radio in my ear shouted. It was my supervisor. “We need you on Deck Two, Level Two. That waster you said you fixed is throwing shit at people, over.”
I tapped my ear and replied, “On my way.”
That prompted him to yell, “Over?”
I sighed. “Yeah, over, over.”
We weren’t allowed to use the public lifts. Kilgore Station policy said facilities staff, including contractors like me and the rest of those employed by Astro-Suds Services, had to use the maintenance elevators. That meant a complicated, meandering journey from one deck to another, transferring from one lift to another, then down to a third, and across that deck to a fourth lift that finally took me up to Deck Two, where all the station’s public services were held. Only, my trek wasn’t over. Deck Two did not have any maintenance lifts between levels, meaning I had to lug my cart up two flights of stairs because, as a space broom, I was forbidden from using the public escalators that ran between the levels. I finally arrived at Deck Two, Level Two, sweaty, out of breath, with my coveralls firmly plastered to my legs and smelling of body odor and stale coffee.
The waste collector, or waster, in question was easy enough to find. I just followed the trail of partially incinerated refuse and trash juice. The accused droid was huddling in a dark service corridor that ran between two separate government buildings. It gave off an intermittent spray of beeps and alerts, followed by a hacking, wheezing cough of half-incinerated trash. For it to have so much on hand meant its atomizer was malfunctioning. I pulled my multi-tool from my belt and approached carefully.
“Hey there, little buddy,” I said. The rectangular waster quaked and shivered like a scared child, only this child was twice as big as a grown, earthbound human male: me. “Don’t be scared. I’m just here to help you work properly again.”
The waster’s service light glowed red.
“How did you even get back here?” I asked as I took a few steps toward the droid. “We disabled
waster treads last rev. Unless you’re one of the ones we couldn’t account for.”
That was when the intermittent red light changed to an erratic display of flashes and colors. A rumbling, sick grinding cry rattled forth from the droid, warning of an imminent trash eruption. I took a step back, only to be showered head to toe in a stinky, slimy tidal wave from the waster’s chute. Thankfully, I managed to shut my eyes and mouth before the explosion.
I wiped the steaming hot sludge from my face and looked at the mangled shell of the waster. It was so full of shit because of the busted incinerator that the noxious gases of decomposition caused it to self-destruct. It wasn’t silent, but it was deadly.
It took me the rest of my shift to clean up the mess created by the waster. I picked up the trail of trash and ash and swept and mopped the floor, making sure to place opti-stanchions set to wet floor so the station bureaucrats could avoid busting their asses and blaming me. The debris created by the explosion was a different matter. I scraped as much as possible off the walls and floor, then called for a disposal team to take away the remnants of the droid. Whatever survived would be repurposed or scrapped for parts. The service corridor itself would need to be refinished.
I threw my last dirty rag in my cart when my radio once again buzzed to life. “Gomez! Where the hell are you, Gomez? Over!”
I rolled my eyes and tapped my ear. “This is Gomez,” I replied. “Deck Two, Level Two. Just finished dealing with that malfunctioning waster–”
“Get your ass back here! Your shift is almost over and I’m not paying you overtime. Understood? Over.”
I exhaled before responding. “I’m on my way. I just have to finish this –”
“Let the bots do it. That’s why we have them. And how many times do I have to tell you to say ‘over’ when you’re done speaking? Over!”
My shoulders slumped
and my head dropped. “I’m sorry. Over.” I took one last look at the charred, mangled remains of the waster and shook my head. I pulled my glass-comm from my pocket, tapped the maintenance app, and added a cleaning droid to the requisition.
The Astro-Suds Services office and warehouse, located in the physical facilities section of Deck Six, looked like every other cabin on the deck. The only remarkable difference between it and the other dozen contractors renting space around it was the fancy flashing holographic sign just above the cabin number. A cartoon boy, wearing a ridiculous spherical space helmet, sprayed solvent on the wall, then wiped it to reveal the name “Astro-Suds Services.” He then stood proudly, arms akimbo, and looped back to repeat the process once more, for eternity, or at least until the company went under and all cleaning services were given to the droids.
I scanned my glass-comm twice before the hatch slid open and allowed me inside, greeting me with a violent rush of air meant to prevent flying pests from entering. It always intrigued me. The floors sparkled with an immaculate cleanliness reserved for a hospital. The walls, from ceiling to floor, refused to hold dust, dirt, or stain. Perfectly stocked shelves, fronted and evenly spaced, lined the walls. Even the air pouring in from the recirculators felt pure, like untouched, unaltered oxygen. No bug or pest would dare set foot inside out of sheer respect for the unnatural, almost godlike cleanliness that emanated from within. As I walked, I felt bad dragging my slime-stained cart and wearing my crusty coveralls that flaked microscopic particles of dirt and ash. That was until my boss and owner of this particular franchise of Astro-Suds shouted for me from his office.
“Gomez? Is that you?” His voice shot through the sterile air like the slime spewing from the damaged waster. “You’re always cutting it so damn close… Get your ass in here!”
I parked my cart just inside the doors to our back of house, knowing he would most likely have an explosive tirade if he saw it parked on the showroom floor, and dragged my way to his door. Even though I was expected, I still knocked twice before peeking my head in. “Hey, boss-man,” I said with a weak wave.
“Damn, is that smell you?” he asked. Richard Fallis lowered his glass-comm a fraction
of an inch, just enough for me to see his beady brown eyes peering back at me. When they saw me, his eyes got even smaller before he tossed his comm on his desktop and motioned his perfectly manicured hands to the chair just in front of him. I could see the Heparian pornography playing on his glass-comm, enormous ears and trunks wildly flapping about. I could also see the plain look of indifference he had to my knowledge of it. I took a seat, and he rolled his eyes.
“How about you close the door, genius, or are you wanting everyone to hear our conversation?” Fallis groaned. “So cute, but so dumb.” He mumbled the last part.
“Sorry, boss, I didn’t realize it was that kind of meeting.” I apologized and quickly shut the door, but not before noticing the sani-droid already humming around the office, cleaning up the mess I tracked in.
Fallis leaned forward in his seat, locked his fingers together, and placed his hands on his desk. “How did we miss deactivating the treads on a waster? Weren’t you the lead on that project?”
“No, sir, that was Manchac. I just assisted.”
His face contorted in confusion.
“Manchac,” I repeated. “That was his system name, what everybody called him because his real name, Manchacarragn-garrachgan Amgarach’chg, was too long and too hard to pronounce. Old Sigmoid fella?” I could tell my words weren’t getting through. I sighed gently. “The bug-looking dude.”
Fallis’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Manchac! I almost forgot about that egg-laying son of… Well, I don’t know what he was a son of, if I’m honest!” He laughed with such a force that he nearly fell out of his chair. I almost thought he turned red, but realized how impossible it would be to notice that through the layers of make-up he slathered on. I forced a smile as if I also found his xenophobia amusing. After his laughter subsided, he took a moment to compose himself and run a hand over his almost solid lump of sandy blond hair. He then asked, “So tell me, how did you and Manchac miss a waster?”
I shrugged. “There were a handful that went unaccounted for. Manchac said it was a glitch in the inventory matrix and we left it at that.”
“Well, I guess I need to be talking to Manchac then. When is he in next?”
“You fired him, sir, last rev.”
Fallis grunted. “Well then, this is on you, Gomez. If you would concentrate on your work a little more instead of daydreaming about captaining a space freighter or rescuing maidens or whatever shit you daydream about, this wouldn’t have happened.”
I swallowed, lowered my eyes, and said, “Sorry, Mister Fallis. It won’t happen again.”
Fallis shook his head disappointedly. “What am I going to do with you, Gomez?” he asked, his tone condescending but vaguely sweet. “Get out of here. Make sure you clock out now. I’m not paying you overtime for this meeting.”
He leaned back in his chair and returned to his Heparian porno, but not before looking me up and down in an uncomfortably predatory way. I left his office, tapped my glass-comm at the time clock, and returned to my cart; the silence and emptiness in the warehouse punctuated the absence of my coworkers. I slowly checked in my cart, recording all my chemical and supply levels, then locked it up for tomorrow. Lastly, I peeled the simultaneously slimy and crusty coverall from my body and tossed it into the trash. There was no point subjecting our laundry service to that atrocity.
Once at my locker, I went through the usual motions of typing in the combo on the digi-pad followed by kicking the lower right edge. It refused to open otherwise. Most of my coworkers had mirrors and pictures or digi-screens in their locker. I refused to decorate mine. This was just a job, after all. Why would I decorate? And I didn’t need a mirror to remind me of the few white strands of hair invading my deep brown locks, or the dark circles under my eyes, or the five o’clock shadow gracing my cheeks, or the flecks of grime and grease plastered to my forehead (I could feel, and smell, those fine without any visual or olfactory aid). I pulled my heather gray hoodie with the Astro-Suds Service logo emblazoned on the front over my T-shirt, then grabbed my bag and slammed the locker shut. Once outside, I pulled my glass-comm from my pocket and checked for messages. I sighed as each icon flashed the same blank zero it did that morning. I scoffed, “What did you expect, Johnny?” and started toward home.
Chapter Two
Deck Thirteen forever smelled of reactor exhaust mixed with raw sewage. This was partially due to the vicinity in which it was located, in relation to the reactors and station waste treatment facilities. Yet I knew its residents bore some of the responsibility. Regardless, the recirculators never worked properly. The electrical system constantly went on the fritz. Nobody outside of droids, cyborgs, the augmented (or augs), and slummers would live on Deck Thirteen. In fact, most of the station referred to it as the Septic Tank, or just the Tank for short. It was a disgusting pigsty of a neighborhood, and it was, unfortunately, the only place I could afford to live on Kilgore Station.
I never took the lift down to the Tank. It always seemed to stall out between Deck Eleven and Twelve as if it knew where it was headed and refused to go any further. So, I always got off at Deck Eleven and took the stairs the rest of the way.
You kept your head down on Deck Thirteen, especially if your innards contained organs and blood. Yet not for the reasons you would think. Sure, violent incidents happened in the Tank, but no deck on Kilgore Station was immune to that. It couldn’t be helped, really, especially when mercenary groups, black marketeers, the Salaran Autonomy Board (freedom fighters struggling to restore autonomy to the Salaran system), and other competing organizations all called Kilgore their home. The danger on Deck Thirteen, though, centered on hazards and obstacles for organics like me. Droids constantly spilled oil and fuel on the stairs, making them slippery. Augs discarded their old parts directly into the walkways. I once witnessed a Sigmoid tear the head off a droid for stepping on the brood of eggs it deposited directly in front of the Open All Rotation store. I pulled my hoodie over my head, placed my hands inside the front pockets, and kept a close eye on the path ahead of me.
I passed storefronts with flashing holograms advertising the newest glass-comm or their most recent technological marvel arriving from another system. The restaurants on the way poured both strange and tempting aromas into the walkways of the Tank, which was honestly a feat, given the smell that typically dominated the deck. Makeshift crosswalks built to connect one set of residential cabins to another flew over the walkway, each at a different, dizzying height and angle. Whether out of habit or necessity, I couldn’t say, but I kept my head down and walked at almost a jog for thirty minutes before I spotted my residential stack.
“He-o tippa pa nihan o’chk, Johnny Gomez!” Tinzo greeted me in its native tongue.
I waved as the hatch slid open with a whoosh. “Pa na hapa o, Tinzo,” I replied with limited knowledge of its language. Tinzo, an M’gogo from Usel Prime, moved to Kilgore Station from its home planet a century ago with dreams of opening a restaurant in the Sol System. The rumors it heard of humanity’s love of foreign cuisine were true. Unfortunately for Tinzo, most M’gogo cuisine contained a spice blend that caused violent diarrhea that often led to death in humans, earthbound and starbound alike. Its restaurant failed after the soft open killed two hundred forty-three people, hitting Tinzo with massive fines and disavowing its Galactic Chef License. Tinzo found itself destitute and
broke, but instead of hopping the first transport back to Usel, Tinzo used the last of its money to rent a room in a particular stack on Deck Thirteen. It had lived here since.
It shouted the same greeting to every single being that entered, only, with me, it was always followed by, “You smell of trash, Johnny Gomez.” Tinzo’s two mouths moved in unison, pretending to spit something disgusting out of them. “More so than usual.” Its dangling proboscis twitched and folded up like a snail sliding back into its shell.
“It was a busted waster,” I replied, and patted it on the shoulder. The M’gogo reached up with one of its many hairy hands and dabbed mine. Tinzo loved humans, which is why it spent most of its time wandering the station, sitting on benches, and watching people walk by. It always ended its rotations on the bench by the front door in the lobby of our stack. If anything, it was a creature of habit.
The dim lighting, along with the squeaky recirculators present in the lobby, ensured I would never bring company to my place. Small piles of incinerator ash gathered in the corners. A viewscreen on mute, surrounded by heavily soiled armchairs, displayed a static-filled image of station news and events. The constant traffic in and out wore down the carpet to nothing more than a series of black patches. I climbed the unfinished alloy stairs to the second floor and made my way down the hall to cabin 212. The hatch slid open before I could reach for my glass-comm, and I nearly collided with my roommate, Rygar.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, his baritone voice like melted caramel. His bulky, half-organic, half-augmented frame took up the entire doorway, from threshold to top casing, left to right frame. He had to bow his shiny, bald head just to exit. Cradled firmly in the safety of his mechanical, alloy-plated arms was our incinerator crate, full to the brim. “You know, they really need to consider installing an atomizer here.”
I reached for the crate, which Rygar gladly relinquished into my grasp. “Atomizers cost too much. Kilgore would never have one installed on Thirteen.”
“Meanwhile, the Tank is drowning in excess ash that gets swept up into the recirculators, causing frequent filter replacements. I’m sure an atomizer would cost less in the long run.”
“Maybe,” I said, shrugging my bag from my shoulder to the floor of our entryway and quickly walking to the ash chute at the end of our hall. ...
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