Chapter 4: Resource and Reclamation

January 11^th, 2279

Basil had looked forward to seeing the vibrant communities traders, drifters, entrepreneurs, companions, adventure-seekers, restaurant workers, and artists usually created on every large station in the Frontier towards the Fringe – as if to find some warmth on the edge of the more hostile region of space that was part of the League in name only, but the dance of life was performed a kilometer above him, in the inner ring and the public habitation decks. He, on the other hand, was stuck down below carrying his few personal items around and had so far only seen dark corridors, an executed ship and run into strange people, as if stuck in a badly written dream.

Again, he whipped out his pathfinder holo and looked for the fastest way to reclamation. All he needed was to send off the file that confirmed that the wreck had been correctly discarded, then he would be off this dreadful station on his way to another dreadful station to inspect his – strictly speaking – second command. Of course, the fastest way again involved taking the freight elevator, but at least it went past reclamation, which made sense to Basil.

As he was waiting for the elevator bumping around in the shaft somewhere above him, he started reflecting on his situation. In a way, he felt a bit sorry for being so hostile towards the uniformed man. Sure, almost all of the people he’d met in CO were insufferable fools and would stab you in the back for the slightest advantage, but just as Basil had realized he’d been taken for a ride by a disillusioned admiral who just wanted to take revenge on some bureaucrats, the guy showed up and gave him a way out. It wasn’t great but it was something.

The barn door opened and Basil slipped in. This time, he looked around, found the platform empty and then told the voice control to get him up to reclamation. As the door was closing, Basil saw the lieutenant from Hays’s office walking towards hangar 19. She was followed by an overloaded freightbot carrying various equipment hastily stuck into the nets of the bot’s freight compartment, clearly ready to set up shop as department head on a new ship, just as she had been promised. Basil was relieved that she apparently hadn’t seen him, coming from the other side. She had to have taken another route down to the far-off hangar. And Basil had absolutely no idea what to say to her, so he decided that this was a problem for future Basil.

At hangar level 13, a group of workers got on. When they saw Basil, one of them bumped his elbow into the Frior next to him and they put their heads together. Basil recognized the former as being one of the two he had wished to throw off the elevator earlier. He opened the news on his interface and tried to focus on current events. There was an article about the UFL’s Supercup semi-final, an opinion piece on arachnoids in the fleet, and apparently, one of their battlecruisers, the SFBC Hector, had wiped out a pirate base in sector 77 with minimal collateral damage and the freight captain’s union was extending their congratulations to the daring men, women, and aliens of the Hector.

When it was his time to get off the elevator, he kept his head in the holographic article to avoid having to look at the workers. One of them got out with him but kept walking past reclamation.

The head offices of resource and reclamation were empty. Basil had expected a lively department with bots and workers buzzing around, making sure everything was expertly recycled ‒ especially the non-synthesizable materials they had so much trouble getting their hands on and which they even salvaged from war graves ‒ ships that had been lost in the war ‒ but apparently, none of that was going on in sector 43. They had a great view on the inner docking area – where ships entered through the ginormous gate dead center of the outer hull to be directed to their hangars or docking ports. But the workstations were empty and powered down. Basil figured it made more sense to send ships back to the core systems and disassemble them where most of the shipyards were ‒ as had been the case with the María ‒ so here, on the edge of the Fringe, there was likely only the occasional freighter to be repurposed.

As he strode in between the workstations in an office only illuminated by the calming blue lights under the desks and minimal spots on the ceiling, he stepped onto a small bump on the floor. The bump let out a shriek that sounded like a deflating balloon, shot up in the air and landed on the projection table at the center of the room. It was an arachnoid.

AH FUCK NO.

The reason Basil was so intensely sorry for stepping on the arachnoid was not only the fact that he had inadvertently hurt and possibly injured a fellow servant of the League ‒ something that almost always brought tons of inquiries from above – but also the horribly strained relationships between the humans and the arachnoids. The arachnoids had actually been among the first races humans had encountered when they made their way to the stars two centuries ago on the ships they leased from the Catanians, horribly inexperienced and controlling technology they barely understood. When they entered the space claimed by the Axxi ‒ the dominant arachnoid race ‒ they had been unable to understand the communication attempts by the far superior race. They soon landed on a planet and found the place to be a barren, desolate rock completely interveined with tunnels of about a meter in diameter, since the Axxi and their subspecies preferred to live underground in highly developed and paradisical colonies. As the Axxi came up to greet the new arrivals, an incident occurred. For the Axxi, the familiar Catanian landing craft had meant they were dealing with frequent visitors or at least their allies’ allies. They were unaware that it was just a group of humans that had sold enough Grandidierite to lease a ship and look for profit in the stars, so they greeted them in their traditional way: They walked up to them and hugged them with their claws. The humans immediately opened fire and the arachnoid incident became one of the first subjects taught in primary fleet training. It was only due to the fact that arachnoids were by far the friendliest race anyone had ever encountered that allowed for a patient investigation. Earth had finally joined the stars and immediately made a name for itself. The humans issued an apology, sending some of their rarest resources over, some of them being poisonous to arachnids. The humans issued another apology and the arachnid council decided to send some of their elementary school teachers to earth in the first alien embassy on Earth. Later, when the two races became founding members of the League, mutual knowledge had progressed, but not only did most of the other races already consider humans to be numerous, but mentally inferior, the arachnids were also smart enough to realize that the human race had an ingrained disgust towards all things with more than two legs and two eyes, largely preferring to stay out of their way.

- I am ever so sorry!

Basil couldn’t remember when he had last uttered such a heartfelt apology.

- Please, don’t worry. That’s why we wear our shells. Plus, I tend to forget how little you longlegs see in the dark.

Basil chuckled at “longlegs”. It made sense from the Axxi’s perspective ‒ from their usual perspective on the ground, the arachnoid would be looking up to him and unable to raise his head far enough to see the whole human, only seeing two large legs stretching beyond his fields of vision.

- Are you hurt?

Basil was still worried, he had never disliked arachnoids ever since one of them gave him a tufa in his childhood, a rare and incredibly tasty type of fruit when little Basil was crying over crashing his drone into the side of a geological drilltower on HP-3266B. It had given him intense stomach pain and changed the color of his gums for a few weeks, but the kind gesture forever remained a pleasant memory for Basil, until he found out how tufas were made.

- Not at all, we’re made to survive collapsing tunnels, you simply don’t weigh enough. I’ve tried wearing a small bell, but the constant noise drove us all up the walls as they say, haha!

Basil finally laughed loudly. The knee-high arachnoid with his six legs, many eyes and black fur gesturing at him with two large claws, clad in something akin to a turtle shell sporting the League’s sigil was a welcome change for him.

- Glad to hear. Listen, I’m here to scrap a ship.

- Ah, let’s get on that then.

The Axxi squatted on his thick, hairy legs and silently hopped over to a workstation that had clearly been adapted to him as a user. His claws started typing passwords and the whole display came alive. It read “Lieutenant W.B. Perlas”. Basil was trying not to laugh as he realized the arachnoid had set up one display for each one of his eyes, now, his little head above the pebble-shaped body was surrounded by holo displays, the claws swooping out from left and right of the head, quickly typing.

- What’s the name and reg of that ship, commander?

- Captain, actually. Just haven’t got the stripe on right now.

Basil was trying to get around the explanation why he would scrap a ship just hours after he was put in charge of it.

- Ah, apologies. Haven’t seen a high rank up here in months. Must be the thin air, haha. The ship?

- Prototype G-3477, unnamed vessel.

The Axxi’s six legs all did two steps counter-clockwise, rotating the arachnoid towards Basil.

- Sir, are you sure it’s G-3477?

- I am, I’m coming straight from hangar 19.

- May I consult my colleague?

- Sure, why not.

Basil was apprehensive. If his career got another dent due to some previously unknown recycling directive and he was stuck with the wreck or even worse no ship at all, he’d have to see the writing on the wall and join the merchant fleet.