Wow, so it's been over two months since I last posted something on here... Well, to the few of you who will actually read this, I sincerely apologise. It's not that I've not been writing, I've just not been happy with my writing recently, and so haven't wanted to show it off in the same manner as in the past. I've still been working on Manmade Man, but barely, and I've not even touched Like Clockwork for so long now, I know I really need to wind it up again and get back into the swing of things but, life just feels so hectic at the moment without actually doing that much. What I want is some time for just me, away from uni, away from work, away from life, just me and my writing, but I doubt that's going to happen any time soon. I'm heading home in a few weeks time for my Mum's birthday, but again, that's not me, that's life.
Anyway, enough ranting. It's not that my life is bad. My life's great right now! I know I'm very lucky, and sometimes I still can't believe it, I'm just being selfish I guess. But moving on to what really matters here - not me, but the writing. Today's post was my fiction entry for the Bridport Prize this year... It didn't even get shortlisted, but hey-ho, that's life, but one of the entry clauses was that it had to be previously unpublished work, including digital publication such as blogs, so I couldn't print this until now. So here you go guys, maybe you'll enjoy it more than the Bridport judges. I give to you, "In the Job Description":
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Even with the environmental settings on high, Raith still felt the chill of the void. It was a tiresome, lonely life as a strip-merchant travelling the space lanes. Raith spent most of his time scavenging from wrecked shuttles or freighters that had scuppered themselves in stray asteroid fields and then trying to sell his findings at the numerous markets, legal or otherwise that one could find on any inhabited planet or space station... if you had the right contacts of course.
On an average haul, Raith would usually come away with a container full of refillable fuel cells and the occasional serviceable part, plus the odd trinket here and there from the inevitable corpses of the dead ship’s crew, or ‘floaters’ as they were known in the trade. Some times Raith found wrecks that were either only minimally damaged or were transporting rare or essential cargo. Aid ships and dignitary shuttles were the pinnacle of these hidden gems, containing precious nutrient packs and high grade valuables respectively. During slower periods, Raith was lucky to find garbage ships in the drift, as it had become known by space farers and void colonists alike. Sad to say, this was a slower period...
Raith sighed as he checked his guidance monitor. He was still three days out from the nearest dock at cruising pace. He wasn’t sure his current fuel cell would hold out at anything faster than that, so there was nothing to do but wait it out. He unbuckled his safety harness and set the navigation controls onto autopilot before pushing himself backwards and turning, allowing the lowered gravity settings to let him drift from the control cabin and into the small corridor of his ship. He didn’t pilot anything special, just a standard TelTech X9-14F light cargo vessel, but he’d spent years customising it to the point where it was his. There was no other vessel quite like the ‘Saving Grace’. Visually, it looked no different from any other ship of its class, but inside he’d tweaked and played with the performance output so it had a higher top speed, a greater acceleration and could turn like the nimblest of military interceptors as far as handling was concerned, though it wasn’t advised when transporting larger loads due to the risk of hull warping. He’d upgraded the front cab to accommodate a slightly larger living space seeing as he spent most of his life aboard this ship. He had most of the standard home features: bed, bathing unit, personal storage, dining facilities – even a coffee machine. He’d acquired a taste for the bitter earth drink when visiting one of the neighbouring colonies with a shipment of Ariloc wind filters he was hoping to sell, and so with his profit, he had the machine installed before leaving the colony.
He paused as he glided gently into his room, coming to a halt as he grasped his sink and looked down at it, making a mental note that he needed to resupply on water too when he next docked. He glanced into the mirror and sighed. Staring back at him were the same Vuldosian features as always: same dark, solid charcoal coloured eyes, same pale olive skin, same chin length dark hair with that same blue tint he’d had since birth. Even those same slightly angular, slightly pointed ears, but he looked haggard, worn... it was as though these last months in the void had stretched him thinner than he’d ever been before as a strip-merchant. He needed a break, a vacation, just some time to call his own. He shook his head and smirked with a wry chuckle; there was no way he’d get a vacation unless he scored a large profit first... All Raith could do now was ride out the quiet, gnawing lull and hope that something came up soon. He activated his communication console and checked his contacts list. Dolara. That was the station he was approaching. He only had two contacts on or around Dolara: Chavil Estoran, a less than pleasant black market dealer who had a bad habit of undercutting payments due to ludicrous claims of damage or late delivery, or Quen’shi. Quen’shi was a Silcav, a quasi-reptilian race, humanoid in nature but with scaled segments of anatomy, slit-pupil eyes complete with eyelids at the side and clawed hands in most examples of the race. Quen’shi was traditionally a more honest informant, only asking for a minimal cut of the profits, but then, she had a bad habit of not finding the larger rig wrecks. Sad to say, it looked like Estoran was Raith’s best hope for some quick credits in this sector. Regardless of this though, he thought it would be prudent of him to not leave his options open and so he sent them both a coded communiqué, informing them of his arrival in three days time and hoping to arrange a meeting to discuss possible work. With this done, there was nothing to do but pass the hours and wait. Raith hated waiting. Raith frowned and adjusted the gravity, turning it up slightly so he could hold himself firmly on the ground before then falling back onto his bed and staring at the ceiling. He did not remember falling asleep. He did not dream. His mind was as blank as the void in which he flew.
***
Raith woke. It didn’t feel like time had passed, but his chrono readout registered that he’d been asleep for fourteen hours. He couldn’t help but muse that it had taken a sizeable chunk of his travel time. He sighed and smirked before rising from his bed and looking back to that same weary face in the mirror. Just another two days he thought, two more days of nothing. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to make it stay behind his ears, but no matter how hard he tried, one strand insisted on hanging loose over his face. He frowned and made his way back to the control cabin. There were flashing lights on the flight console; a proximity alert. That meant one of two things: either it was debris, or another ship. Neither was overly a good thing, especially as the only other ships Raith knew around this area were pirates or sector enforcement patrols.
Raith lowered his ship’s output so that it was set on minimal running mode. The lowered energy and heat signatures would minimise his chances of being noticed on mid to long range sensors if it was a ship approaching. He reduced propulsion so that the Saving Grace slowed to a drifting pace and Raith sat down, clasping his helmet to his flight suit and searching for a visual reading of what had triggered this alert.
Moments that seemed to drag like hours passed by until something appeared on the Grace’s video screen. Raith’s worries were confirmed. It was a ship, flanked by two interceptor class void-armour units, walker type; effectively giant armoured spacesuits with their own propulsion and weapons systems. They provided more functionality than standard jet type units due to their close combat capabilities and were especially useful when boarding other ships due to their mechanical arms. Both ship and interceptors were green in colour and bore an emblem of a laughing skull over crossed rifles; the mark of the Harlequin Corsairs. The Corsairs were notorious in this sector of space and were the cause of most of the wreckages Raith had come across whilst travelling. They were also the reason why the wrecks had already been stripped to their very cores. Pirates! If there was one thing Raith hated, it was pirates. Crazy, unpredictable, destructive and above all else, they stole precious business from him! This wasn’t going to be fun at all.
The Grace turned to try and avoid a meeting course with the Corsairs as Raith hammered a new route into his navigational system, all the while checking his energy readouts. He knew he couldn’t afford a confrontation now with his fuel cell as low as it was.
The ship rumbled; the Corsairs had fired a shot and grazed the Grace’s hull. It looked to Raith like he’d have to fight after all... He brought his systems back to standard operating capacity and swung the Grace around to face the Corsairs. Their void-armours were already closing, and he knew they would be the main complication in this skirmish. They were manoeuvrable and could easily dodge larger projectiles such as torpedoes, plus their speed made it difficult to lock on with more precision weaponry such as the Grace’s light cannon units. If Raith survived this and made some money soon, he seriously considered investing in a void-armour of his own, but that was just a fleeting thought as he managed to lock onto one of the armours for just the briefest of moments. He took a shot, arcing the crosshairs to try and follow the armour as best as he could. The rapid thud of the cannons vibrated through the hull of the Grace as Raith was rewarded with a hit. It was only a leg, but the impact was enough to send the armour spiralling out of control for a few moments, allowing Raith to focus on the second.
The second void-armour was closing in quickly. Its optical sensors had a malicious glint to them; an absurd thought, but one that Raith couldn’t help but notice as he tried to achieve a weapons lock. This second armour must have had a more skilled pilot, as it avoided Raith’s aim with ease. It levelled its rifle and took a shot, puncturing the Grace’s hull toward the rear. It was only a storage unit. That could be fixed easily, but at a price.
“Damnit!” Raith punched a console; everything revolved around money in this universe. Raith was sick of it. Just once he’d like to not have to worry about... his thoughts were cut short as the Grace creaked. The second armour unit had latched onto the Grace’s hull and Raith could only assume that the pilot was using the hole from their rifle shot as a point of entry. That explained why it was the storage units they aimed for!
Raith growled and rerouted the energy from his shields, reversing the output settings so instead of creating a barrier, it sent a surge of energy across the hull of his ship, dislodging the armour from it. Raith span in his chair and hit a large green button on the flight console, activating the full burst of his engines. Even if his fuel cell wouldn’t hold out all the way to Dolara, he’d be a lot closer, and far away from these Corsairs, or so Raith hoped...
***
The ride at full burst was rocky and the Grace juddered, not helped at all by the hole in its hull. Raith had just finished a sweep of the ship to see if the Corsair pilot of the void-armour had actually managed to board, but there was no sign of anyone other than Raith onboard. He sighed as he watched the energy monitor hover dangerously close to the zero percent marker. He had only seven percent of his fuel cell’s energy left. He hoped that would get him close enough to Dolara to send out a distress signal and call for a maintenance crew to collect him; more expenditure, Raith thought...
Finally, the Grace slowed as its fuel cell dwindled beyond the point of maintaining full burst in the engines. Raith keyed in his message to the Dolara spaceport and set his sensors to long range so he’d know when the maintenance crews were inbound. There was nothing for him to do now but wait, wait and worry about just how much this was going to cost him. He was painfully reminded of how much he didn’t like waiting. He sighed and glanced at his sensor readout. There was a reading, off to the port side of the Grace, right on the edge of his sensor range but before Raith could get a proper reading, it had vanished; a wreck perhaps? It had too irregular a course to be a propelled vessel, so it had to be a drifter. Once Raith had refuelled and spoken to his contacts, he resolved to investigate this further. He made a note of the coordinates from his sensor readout and minimised his system output once more, all apart from life support and sensors. Raith hated waiting...
***
A day had passed since Raith had docked at Dolara thanks to the aid of the recovery teams. The Saving Grace was almost repaired and thankfully, Raith had been able to call in a few favours to get the parts he needed, and he knew the mechanic well enough to pay at a later date when he had the money. Raith was sat in a bar, the “Starry Ocean”. This was where he’d arranged to meet Estoran. Unfortunately, Quen’shi had come up with nothing with regards to information. That was typical of her however; she always left the potentially dangerous information alone. Raith clicked his neck to one side; that was a side effect to adjusting to a properly maintained artificial atmosphere; it left him feeling creaky for a day or two. He finished his drink and glanced up to see the familiar, rotund form of Chavil Estoran stride into the bar, flanked by his usual two goons in suits, no doubt lined with some form of protective material. Estoran himself probably had some kind of non-visual energy field around him. Sure, he was only a businessman, but with his line of business, he made enemies: other information brokers, jilted strip-merchants, but above all, sector enforcement agencies.
“Raith my boy!” Chavil took a seat across from him. Raith heard the seat actually creak a little under Chavil’s bulk, “How’ve you been? How’s business? How’s Grace, she still flying straight?” The fact that he was being so friendly unnerved Raith a little. Chavil was usually a straight-to-business sort of man. He usually disposed of pleasantries unless he had a dangerous job or one with very little information about it.
“I’m not here for small talk Estoran, what’s the job?” Chavil squirmed in his seat. It was somewhat repulsive to see a man of his size writhe with discomfort; Raith glanced aside momentarily, calling over a barmaid for two more drinks.
“Well, Raith, it’s like this. A Terran freighter en route to the Galactic Union’s new settlement on the fringes – New Europa I think they’re calling it – just stopped and started drifting.” Raith quirked a brow and leant in, gesturing Chavil to continue, “No sign of damage or mechanical failure, so the sector patrol assume it must be something internal, with the crew. They’ve cordoned off a quarantine zone around it and called in for an investigation team everything! Thing is, the nearest investigation team is a good three days out...” Raith paused and sat back, “So where do I come into it? Why haven’t the Corsairs in this area picked it clean already? I don’t think something like the local sector patrol is enough to scare them away.” Chavil grinned, “Superstitious folk them space pirates. Ship goes adrift for no reason, they think it’s some sort of curse. I’ve heard them talking when they dock for supplies...”
Raith took the details from Chavil and scanned them over. The coordinates were roughly around the location he’d encountered that blip on his sensors; this interested Raith more and more. It seemed simple enough, sneak in while the sector patrol is on their circuit at another part of the quarantine zone, board the drifter and see just how much he could take. This sounded like pay-dirt! Raith grinned and looked to Chavil, “I’ll take the job, but I’m only paying you a standard finder’s fee this time because it seems no other strip-jockey’ll touch this one.” Chavil frowned and grudgingly gave a nod. Raith left and returned to the Grace with a sense of renewed fervour and excitement. This was the sort of job that strip-merchants the ‘verse over dreamt of... though in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but feel as though Chavil knew more than he was letting on. That was usually the case. Something told Raith that this wasn’t just going to be a standard run-of-the-mill spacewalk...
***
By the time Raith made it back to the Saving Grace, the repairs to the hull had been completed and his fuel cell had been almost completely recharged. He paid the repair drones and boarded his ship, activating the Grace’s flight systems and plotting the coordinates into the navigation system. Going off the data he’d received from Chavil, a unit from the sector patrol would have just finished their routine sweep of this side of the quarantine zone. That meant that he had two hours to breach their patrol line before their next sweep. That was the easy part. Once inside, all he had to do was make sure he wasn’t discovered, get the goods and get back out again whilst still avoiding patrols.
He fired up his engines and let his auto-pilot deal with the rest. Raith took the time to prepare his standard boarding equipment: his armoured flight suit and helmet in case the synthetic atmosphere had failed, standard survival equipment belt containing a small supply of food rations, signal flares, cable and a mini grapnel, s.o.s. beacon and basic first aid supplies. He also made sure his vibro-knife and pistol where fully charged and loaded respectively. With one final check of the filtration system within his helmet, he was ready. Once again, as Raith sat back in the pilot seat, he found himself waiting...
It took only an hour to reach the drifting ship. Raith set a fluctuating gravity field around the Grace so it held its position, providing an anchor effect. With one final check over his equipment, Raith released the airlock and made his way into the void, pushing himself from the Grace with enough force to allow himself to float over to the freighter. There were still lights on both in and around the ship, and from his sensor readout there was still a serviceable atmosphere within the ship’s hull. Raith made contact with the freighter and traversed his way across the hull to find an access hatch which he could use to enter the ship. Once inside the ship’s service ducts, Raith checked his readout once more; it was definitely a breathable atmosphere on this ship, but he was picking up negligible life signs.
Raith dropped from a grate he’d removed and found himself in a lit corridor. With a door at each end and no sign of any crew or drones, he drew his pistol and made his way down the corridor to one of the doors, punching the keypad to open it. He span to the side, taking cover behind the door frame. Instinct; one could never be too careful when opening doors on drift ships. He heard nothing, no sign of movement, no gunfire, nothing. Raith leant to peer around the door. Before him was another corridor, just as empty, but with more doors this time. With cautious pacing, Raith made his way along the corridor, checking the door markings to see if any of the rooms would be of any use. He found a large double door marked ‘Mess Hall’ and heard noises from within. Checking his pistol was primed, Raith opened the door and dropped to a crouch, half behind the cover of the door frame; he held his pistol aimed and swept the room. A dozen crew members looked back at him, expressions of confusion and inquiry on their faces. Two security drones, detecting the weapon, levelled their own guns at him. Raith blinked, holstered his pistol and stood, holding his arms by his head to show pacifism. The drones fired. The last thing Raith felt was the hard thud of the floor as the searing heat of the drone’s lasers scorched through his body...
***
Raith awoke. He found himself completely stripped of his equipment. His head swam and his movements felt sluggish and delayed. He forced himself to sit up. It looked as though he was in some form of infirmary. He looked down to see the remnants of his wounds. They’d been sealed, but had not properly been treated yet. He felt an itch at the base of his skull. Raith moved a hand to scratch it, finding some sort of node. It was hard and cold to the touch. The infirmary door opened. A medical drone hovered through carrying a tray of tools and a large syringe with a silverfish green liquid inside. “Subject is awake. Good. Subject is ready for final stage of healing.”Raith looked at the drone and shook his head, waving a hand, “No, it’s fine. I feel better, really. Truth be told, I don’t like needles.” He stood and pushed past the drone, heading out into the corridor. He had to get off this ship, which meant he had to find his void-suit. There were crew on this ship, how? His sensors showed no signs of life, but they looked pretty alive to him. He broke into a jog along the corridor, finding his way back to the mess hall. There were only three crew members in the mess hall this time. They looked to Raith as he entered, one stood, “Ah, there you are. Y'gave us a fright, barging in here with a gun drawn. Hope you’re okay?” Raith cocked a brow and glanced around, “Umm, yeah. I’m fine... What happened here, why’s your ship adrift?” The crewman sat back down and smirked, “Maintenance.” Raith looked around once more; the systems all seemed to be in full working order. His head throbbed a little at the base of his skull; whatever had been put in there hadn’t properly settled yet he assumed.
“What sort of maintenance? The ship seems fine.” Raith back away as the crew stood in unison. They turned to face him; their eyes had glazed with a metallic sheen. They stood shoulder to shoulder and all in unison began to speak, “Maintenance on crew. Crew was not operating at optimum efficiency. Crew had to be repaired, Subject.” Raith stood agape. He turned and ran back into the corridor before the throb in his skull increased. He stumbled and fell to his knees in agony as a voice seemed to echo within his head.
“Subject: Raith. Subject will comply with repair protocol.”
Raith stood and staggered his way into a side room. It was some form of communication relay. He slumped into a chair and rummaged in the desk drawers, finding a security taser pistol. He turned in the seat and fired at the keypad on the door, locking it and fusing the circuitry.
“Subject: Raith will comply with repair protocol”
“What’s going on? Who are you?”
“Negative response. System is not ‘who’. ‘Who’ implies identity. System is all.”
“System? The ship’s computer system?” Raith fought hard to ignore the pain burning inside of his skull as he conversed with the voice inside his mind.
“System is ship. System is crew. System is all.”
Raith fell from the seat, doubled over with agony as flashes and images screened through his mind. A mechanic; the ship’s drones had begun to malfunction, he was working on a medical drone before the drown impaled him with a scalpel and then interfaced with the ship’s central core. Raith felt the cold metal puncturing through his chest, he cried in pain and vomited from the shock.
Another vision; this time it was the same medical drone. It was running physical examinations on the crew, injecting them with that silvery green liquid and fitting microchips into the crew’s skulls. That was the node at the top of Raith’s own neck.
“That liquid, what is it?”
“System. System expanded through medical nano-machines. System control nodes manipulate nano-machines. System is all.”
Raith winced as he felt the node at the back of his head once more. This so called ‘System’, it was controlling the crew through nano-machines. They had control circuits in their heads that made them slaves to System’s will. As the vision continued in his head, Raith noticed a calendar on the infirmary wall. This had happened over two years ago. For two years this ship had been under System’s control. No wonder he didn’t pick up any life signs Raith though, the crew had died long ago, but their bodies were being preserved by the nano-machines, repairing their tissue and preventing decomposition...
Raith pushed himself back into the seat. He scratched at the node, trying to pull it out, but to no avail. The only reason he was still sentient was because he’d managed to avoid the nano-machines. The pain in his head was indescribable. He slumped back into the chair and stared at the ceiling, his breathing growing heavier as more flashes of data streamed into his mind. This time it was the mechanic from before disabling the ship’s engines, causing it to drift as it was doing so now. Raith slammed his fists into the armrests of the chair, the jolt of pain focussing his mind enough to activate his wrist unit’s communicator.
“Subject: Raith shall join System. System is all.”
Tears rolled down Raith’s cheeks as he fought through the pain in his head. He keyed in a distress signal, relaying it from the grace’s own transmitter to increase the signal strength. Raith slumped once more into the seat. Hopefully the signal would reach the sector patrol ships, or even Dolara Raith hoped.
There was banging at the room’s door. He’d been discovered. No doubt System had alerted the crew to his location. Raith chuckled as he stood, wiping the moisture from his face and holding the pistol ready.
“Subject: Raith has zero percent hope. Zero percent chance of avoiding immersion into System. Subject: Raith should prepare for repair protocol to commence. Subject: Raith shall become system. System is all.”
Raith’s hands were shaking as he gripped the pistol tighter. His head still throbbed from the chip inside his skull. His only hope now was the distress signal. He hoped it had reached someone, anybody! He vowed to himself that, if he survived this somehow, he’d never do another job for Chavil again. No, he vowed that if he survived this, he’d kill Chavil... All that Raith had to do now was hope the door held long enough, and wait...
Raith hated waiting.
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I promise I'll try and get more on here soon, I just need to get my spark back first.
Peace out guys, and God Bless.
Craiggy.
