Chapter 12
AURELIUS TOOK THE FASTEST shower of his life. He wasn’t going to be late for destiny, which was docked at the Spire in the center of the city. Part of him still couldn’t believe Sarge and the Governor himself had reached out to him personally for this assignment. He couldn’t imagine Sarge sticking his neck out for anyone else like he had done for him. Did he know the Governor personally or did Aurelius’s record stuck out enough to warrant the attention of the most powerful man on the planet?
“I can have my dreams, right?” Aurelius thought to himself. Either way this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. He wasn’t going to let Sarge or Governor Maher down.
Aurelius glanced around his room. The Service-Corp dorms were small, which meant it didn’t look bad that he kept it so spartan. Two single beds, a dresser, a table with chairs, a kitchen sink and cupboard were the only furniture in the room. Across the wall opposite the door was one big window overlooking the north west side of the campus. Being up on the eighth floor of a fourteen story building meant he had a great view. He’d often find himself just gazing out at the city looking for where he could see the ocean in between the buildings.
“I might actually miss this place.” he thought to himself. He was going to miss the view, his roommate Benny, even Sarge if he was being honest with himself, but Strife itself, maybe not. Strife had always been a home, his home in fact, but Strife was still just a place. Had he been booted out of the Service-Corp instead of assigned to the governor’s ship then it would still have been saying goodbye. In a lot of ways that’s just how he felt. Aurelius always understood why people loved Strife, loved the large open skies, the relaxed attitudes of the people but for Aurelius all that meant was ships, fixing them, cleaning them, sitting in them and considering what they might feel like in the air. Without those things Strife wouldn’t have been home, so leaving the world itself wasn’t really saying goodbye to anything real, not for Aurelius.
Aurelius took a quick look back at the empty dorm room to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. The room was completely clear, the only thing not part of the generic corps assigned room was a black shoulder bag sitting on one of the narrow beds. That bag contained everything in the world Aurelius owned, everything he had taken when he left home and everything he had managed to collect in the intervening two years. It wasn’t much, but Aurelius didn’t need much, he had his work, a good set of “going out clothes” a few sets of work uniforms, not too stained with grease and other substances, his personal tools, and that was it. The thought gave Aurelius a pang of regret, like a momentary mental twinge that had him almost picking up the com and calling home. Maybe to talk to his mother and hear her voice, maybe to see if she could send over some pictures or books, something to wear that wasn’t either stained with food or grease, or maybe just some pictures from before… but no, that part of his life was over, that door was closed and he was glad of that. He kept telling himself that, all the way to the monorail platform.
The monorail would take Aurelius to the Spire. He could see the immense needle of a building from here, rising up into the clouds. All the buildings around it looked like blades of grass collecting around the ankles of a giant, thin stock, mushroom. Strife didn’t have any major orbiting stations, there were a lot of different reasons for this, but in the end the only one that mattered was that with the Spire it didn’t really need them, everything docked at the upper levels of the Spire; small cargo haulers, huge long range exploration vessels, even military ships. If it couldn’t or didn’t want to land somewhere in the city it docked at one of the enormous disks that extended out from the top space scraper. They would unload their cargo and people, and do whatever they needed to, in the very outermost part of the planet’s atmosphere before moving on.
The cars that moved people up and down the outside of the Spire were cramped, only room for three or four people at best, and that was without baggage. That was usually handled by the more roomy, but less comfortable, freight cars but Aurelius wasn’t going to let his bag out of his sight. He drew several nasty looks from the car’s other passengers for this, but as he looked out the window, at the lights of Strife, the expansive plains, and the calm placid oceans as he went higher and higher, he didn’t care. All pangs of leaving were forgotten and every doubt ignored. Aurelius was headed into space, he was about to be a serving member of a Service Corps ship. That was the dream wasn’t it? It was what his father had wanted, what his brother had wanted and it was what Aurelius wanted.
Maybe it was the fact he could already feel himself leaving his world behind, as he ascended high and higher up the side of the Spire and away from the world, that made him reach for his dog tags. The need to tell someone about this was nagging at him. Not just anyone but one of the only people in the world who would be able to really appreciate what Aurelius was about to embark upon. His father would be so proud, probably brag to all his friends for a few weeks maybe while opening a few drinks and live on the stories he’d be telling about his space faring son. Never mind that Aurelius hadn’t done anything yet, little things like the facts were optional in his father’s stories. Aurelius smiled to himself, just thinking how the stories would always stretch, sometimes with a seed of reality in them, other times not, but in the end, he didn’t make the call. He couldn’t call his father if he was unwilling to also call his mother could he? He wasn’t talking to them both for the same reasons, he couldn’t reopen that door anymore for his father anymore than he could for his mother.
Eventually the car stopped on Aurelius’s level. He stood there for a second, letting the other passengers squeezed out before slinging his bag over one arm and walking out into the lounge where the new crew of the Freedom’s Reach would shortly be boarding their new home.
Aurelius had seen spaceports before, if not in person, than in thousands of Holos and he knew what they were meant to look like, it wasn’t this lounge. The entire place wasn’t a bustling hub, travelers rushing from one dock to another, shops trying to sell them last minute crap for souvenirs back home. What it was was the same slightly battered and dirty chairs and desks that the corps used everywhere else and the same slightly tired looking personnel that seemed to man all the groundside operations Aurelius had ever seen. Still these surroundings couldn’t dampen his excitement. This was his moment, and soon this place and all the other places on Strife would be a memory, something he’d think about from time to time, maybe even revisit every now and then, but they would be in the past.
One day Aurelius thought he might call Strife home again, when he finished his service, and had the money to set up his own shop for fixing hoppers and all those little things that were so critical to keeping ships in the sky, but that was a way off, years if ever, and now he wasn’t worried about that. Ahead of him was adventure, or something close to it anyway. At the very least he’d be adventure ajasent. Maybe he wouldn’t be the brave space captain, but damned if he couldn’t fix the hell out of the captain’s squeaky chair.
“Attention: Will all new crew members please return to the docking area. The hatch doors will be opening shortly.” The announcement brought Aurelius back to the present, and with everyone else he gathered up his bag and made his way to the short line of people getting ready to step aboard their new posting.
The Freedom’s Reach, such a grand name, and as Aurelius looked out the windows he thought that the massive ship might have once been worthy of the title but the hulking ship he was looking at now was on it’s last legs. That wasn’t unusual for the corps. Everything was used until it couldn’t be repaired any longer and sometimes well beyond that point. Aurelius suspected the only original parts left were in the hull and only because the thick metal skin of the ship, with it’s pockmarks and extrusions, looked to be at least sixty years old. The mile long rectangular hull of the ship was cracked in places, the patchworked repairs clearly evident in the mismatching of the paint. Even the large cylindrical power core that ran down the length of the ship looked to have impact marks of having been in service for a while. The only things that looked to be new were the doors on the large front docking bay, and the rear wing like rudders. Both showed signs of recent work, and Aurelius thought he saw several areas where the external plating hadn’t even been installed yet.
Aurelius pulled his attention away from the view of the ship. He’d have all the time in the world to explore it both inside and out, instead he focused on the line of people who would be going aboard with him. Most of them were junior level techs. It made him wonder if this ship had been pulled out of mothballs for the governor. That would explain it’s age and all the techs coming aboard. Most of the senior crew would have been here for weeks, clearly Sarge knew that it would take his special kind of brilliance to keep this ship running, either that or he was seizing his last chance to get Aurelius as far away from him as possible, Aurelius figured it could go either way.
He moved forward in the line as each new crewmember stepped through the hatch and had their tags updated with posting and ship information. It wasn’t long before it was Aurelius’s turn. As he stepped onto the ship, and placed his tags in the reader he was struck with how stale the air was. It was a sign of the atmosphere having been recycled again and again by filters that were not quite, but almost, up to the job.
As the line dispersed into the busy corridors of the ship he could hear a low thrum. It was something he felt more than heard. The engines, the conduits, the generators, all of their activity combined gave him the impression that his back teeth were vibrating ever so slightly.
As he walked down the long industrial corridor looking for his assigned bunk, only one thought kept going through his head. It wasn’t his parents, or anything else from the world so very far below. No, all Aurelius could think about was “What are they going to let me get my hands on first?” He couldn’t remember the last time he was this excited.