I woke to an annoying chirping sound. Feeling the nearby wall for the communication panel I tried to find the source of the infernal racket and silence it. Is a nice sleep too much to ask for? Defeated, I turned to my only other option, “Alice, what in the galaxy is that damn noise?”

“You have slept for the entire hyperspace jump, we are transitioning to normal space in five minutes, it’s the only way I could wake you,” her ever chirpy voice was just as annoying as the alarm.

I’m not a morning person. Or whatever constitutes as ‘morning’ in space.

“Ugh, fine I’m getting up,” I rolled out of my bunk. The floor was cold as I stumbled to the ladder and climbed into the cockpit to check the navigation screens. As I entered, the cockpit came to life with panels and flashing lights and the low whir of the FTL drive adding a soothing soundtrack to the scene. When you think of the cockpit of a spaceship I bet you imagine a sprawling bridge of some military command ship with people sitting at their consoles, controlling every little facet of the ship.

Mine is nothing like that, it’s kind of cramped to be honest. It’s basically a half circle of instrument panels and two large flight chairs. The left one was the comfortable one and therefore mine. I like to pretend Alice sits in the other. In front of each chair was a the flight controls, a standard yoke that was mounted on a moveable arm just like most atmospheric craft and single axis throttle control. I could have put the speed controls on a set of foot pedals but this way I have way more control over changes in velocity. She is a good ship, not going to go toe-to-toe with a squadron of fighters or a battlecruiser and win but she can hold her own and get away safety if necessary.

More importantly it was home.

I flopped down in the pilot’s seat and leaned back to stretch out my cramped muscles.

“Disengaging FTL Drive,” Alice buzzed from the console.

Transitioning to real space is one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see and I never get tired of the sight. The way the stars shrink from long lines of light streaking across the front viewport to the bright spots we’re used to seeing. There was a thunk and the ship lurched forward then stabalized again. “Alice, what the hell was that?”

“The FTL just did the equivalent of threw up. I vented the crap and but is seems we weren’t given the brand new FTL drive that we asked for.”

“Of course not, this is getting worse by the minute, hopefully this job Bucket has is simple and well paying unlike the last one he gave us.”

“Haha, I remember that moon base,,,good times,” Alice said laughing quietly to herself.

I sat up in my chair and grabbed the steering controls, jamming the throttle to max. To my left the planet Garrik 4, a large gas giant that filled most of my viewport with a cloudy green glow. We were still a way out from the station and I wanted to fly in manually. I spun to face the navigation panel, a hologram of our destination displayed itself just off the console. We were bound for Garrik Station, one of the few true neutral places in the galaxy and probably the largest, most populated place in the so called Border Zone.

     You see, twenty something odd years ago there was a revolution that ended in a civil war, The United Colonies, a large political party broke away from the Human Federation when it reformed into the New Terran Republic. The Border Zone is a somewhat fluid area between the two factions consisting of a few habitable planets, mining stations and outposts where traders could smuggle goods or transport people from one side to the other. My job mostly involves the former.

I pushed the nose of the ship down closer to the planet to cut down on travel time. Leveling out and skimming around the upper atmosphere of Garrik 4 leaving a large jetstream of disturbed clouds in my wake. There were several drone ships diving in and out of the cloud cover, large balloons full of atmosphere were trailing the ones heading back to the control ship which was sitting a few hundred kilometres out.

“So what do you think the job Bucket has for us?” asked Alice breaking the silence,

“No idea, but if he sticks to form, it’ll be getting something for someone who can’t get it legally and Bucket will spin it as; ‘Simple data grab, large reward’ whatever it is I’m in if it is enough to get robot head off my case.”

“I told you not to do that loan. The converters we had still had about several weeks of life left in them.”

“Maybe so but we couldn’t afford for them to crack or break down during an FTL jump or we would be splattered across three or four different systems.” Alice made a shrugging noise, “And now look at where we are.”

I smiled at the irony, “Though I am curious why he called us all the way to the Border Zone instead of sending us the instructions like usual.”

“It could be some top secret espionage mission that is too sensitive to talk about on open channels?” Alice said playfully.

“Ooo we could have finally reached the big time now, the times of just scarping by and dealing with shady mobsters are over,” I said sarcastically as Garrik Station began to loom over the edge of the endless green horizon. It was a somewhat mushroom shaped station with large rings full of residential areas spinning at odd intervals around the ‘stalk’. Most of the rich merchants and business people had offices and lived in the top promenade section, a huge glass dome that was tinted green by the nearby gas planet which the station orbited. The station was about the size of my fist at arm’s length still so all the nearby ship traffic looked like a school of tiny fish.

Garrik Station began to grow in size rather quickly, using the nearby planet’s gravity to speed up our approach.

“Alice, open communication with Garrik please.”

“Garrick Station this is Wanderer requesting docking permission,” I said once I heard the click of the radio.

“Copy Wanderer, we have you on radar. Please wait for further instructions,” a woman who sounded too much like a computer replied.

I pulled back on the control stick and the maneuvering thrusters kicked the front of the ship out of the atmosphere and onto an intercept course with the station with a whoosh.

“Wanderer, maintain your current heading and please proceed to docking bay A46,”

“Copy that Garrik, proceeding to A46.”

As I closed the communication window Alice highlighted the docking bay with a ring of holographic light projected onto the canopy. It was on the side facing us just above the halfway point of the stalk. I throttled the ship down to about half speed so not to crash into any of the other ships flying around. It got more and more chaotic the closer you got to the station. Most stations had a small military presence that worked as traffic controllers but out here in the Border Zone there was no such thing here with ships flying every which way as they formed themselves into unorganized queues vying for a docking position.

A46 was between the top two residential rings so I adjusted the thrust and gave the ship a neat little spin as I flew above and around the swirling mess below. Floating around a large cargo hauler who was docked to the ring below me who was too big to fit inside the station, I cut power to the main engines and continued using only the maneuvering thrusters to weave between a bunch of holographic billboards that lined the docking bay approach. They were advertising a new ship model that had just hit the market, an Estevez X-407, the newest version model of my ship, it was a lot flatter and and had a very alien feel to it with it’s centered engines and sweeping dull grey hull. Not a fan. Alice displayed a row of holographic lights showing the final approach, parallel lines poking out perpendicular from the station a few hundred metres. The hanger bay doors were already open and the bluish glow of the ray shield that kept the atmosphere in lit up the surrounding part of the station. I maneuvered my ship into the docking bay, the ray shields flowing over my ship like water preventing any atmosphere from escaping the bay.  It was much smaller than other hangers I’ve been in recently, only room for three or four vessels my size and I was the only one here. Sliding the ship over and spinning her around so that I was facing the exit, Wanda touched down gently and the magnetic clamps in the landing gear made a solid thump as they secured to the station.

I flicked the last couple of switches that secured the controls and powered down the engines. Ship piracy isn’t as bad as it used to be, between internal ship sensors, security technology and surveillance at most docking bays, the chances of having your ship stolen is pretty slim but after spending so much time on the fringes of legal society it has become muscle memory to lock it up. I pulled on my pair of rugged boots and jumped out of the cockpit. Walking over to the storage containers on the other side of the bunk that held my personal stuff, I opened the locker that held my gear and proceeded to put it on.

A lot of people in this business go out of their way for the newest tech, the shiniest gadgets and the most expensive body armour to hit the market but all it does is highlight how rich of a target you are. I prefer a subtle, cunning and more homemade approach because anyone can go out and buy a super dense, blaster deflecting set of armour but if you don’t have the experience and skill in handling it. May as well wear plain clothes.

I clipped on my breastplate, over the shirt I slept in and threw on my favourite brown jacket so that my armour was a bit less conspicuous. My chest piece is a flexible fibre mesh with a few ceramic plates of armour on top which offers plenty of protection against laser shots but if someone gets in close with a knife I’ve got to keep on my toes. I wrapped my belt and holster around my waist, the magnetic buckle snapped shut and I slipped my pistol into it’s home. The pistol is one of the old GV-85s that use a gas fuel as ammunition for the laser emitter over newer battery models, it has a very solid construction to it and a nice weight in my hand which comes in pretty useful when I need to bludgeon someone with it. The internal mechanisms are fairly simplistic and easy to maintain which is one of the reasons I’ve never needed to upgrade.

Pushing the sleeves of my jacket up I slid my arms into my gauntlets, I gave myself a quick once over making sure everything is secured. I slid my helmet over my still half asleep looking features and hit the button that opens the outer door and extends the ramp. “Alice, jump in,” my voice silent to anything outside my helmet.

A voice came from my earpiece, “Already here,” my wrist vibrated twice as reassurance. After clearing the landing zone, I turned on the Compad with a shake of my arm and a hologram floated above my wrist created by my visor’s augmented reality module. I flicked through the screens till I found the map to Bucket’s place.

“Alice secure the ship,” there was an audible clang as the ramp retracted and the airlock shut, followed by a low whir of the shields coming online. Checking another set of screens to make sure she was secure and I headed out of the hanger toward the centre of the station.

I had barely cleared the blast doors out of the hanger when Alice piped up in my earpiece, “Change of plans, we’re gonna have to take the long way round,”
    “Whats going on?” I had kept walking and the sounds of a large crowd of people had begun to reach me. “From the station reports, it’s a protest of Govenor Sallin’s appointment to Rallegh. How he doesn’t represent the people or something.”

“Ok, sounds like the type of thing we should avoid, got another route in mind?”

“Take the next corridor on your left, leads us through a market and to a bunch of service elevators,” she replied after a few seconds of deliberation.

“Alright, off we go.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 4