Chapter 3

Levi

Damp hair plastered to his forehead, a loose strand tickling an eye lash irritatingly. Levi wiped a dirty rag across his forehead, sweeping the annoying hairy tuft out of the way, leaving a streak of grease behind. He was so looking forward to one of the chilled beers in the fridge. His mouth watered at the mere thought of the sweet nectar touching his lips and tongue. His wife was sitting at the table, staring intently at the data slate in front of her. Arabella looked up, her eyes burning with the intensity of plasma cutters, her jaws grinding together like the rollers on the Shredder.

Uh-oh... Whatever he had done wrong this time, and he knew that his list of possible contenders was quite extensive, he couldn’t think of anything that warranted the impending explosion. He looked mournfully at the fridge, the much longed for contents disappearing further out of reach with every passing second.

Her eyes continued to bore into him, seemingly on a mission to melt his soul into oblivion. No. He wasn’t going to relent. Not this time. She wasn’t going to win every argument. Just this once, he wasn’t going to be belittled. Just. No. Just break first. Just this once let me win... The air burned between them with an intensity last experienced on their wedding day. Their wedding night. And for several days afterwards.

“Dad can I ... woah!” Millie walked in, took one look at her parents and quickly about-turned one eighty degrees. “Never mind. I’ll come back in, like, never...” There was a brief muffled conversation as their daughter spoke to someone outside. “I wouldn’t go in there Ash, if I was you. Not dressed like that. Not enough thermal and radiation protection for a start.”

“That bad?” Asher asked.

“Depends on your definition of ‘bad’...” The voices faded off as the distance increased.

“And just when were you going to tell me?” Arabella’s voice was as cold as environment outside of the station.

Don’t say anything. Absolutely nothing. You might admit to something she doesn’t yet know about.

“You have done some ... very questionable things. But this? This is a whole new level of stupidity. What possessed you? Go on, this I really want to hear?”

The bait was dangled in front of him, and he desperately swam around it, struggling to avoid impaling himself on it. Words had never been his strong point He was more of the manual type, the accounts and paper work he left to Arabella, his wife and mother of his beloved three children. If this conversation was a chess game, he knew that he had already lost before he had even moved his first piece. Which he was about to do... “What have I done now?” How could she rip him to bits over that innocuous statement.

“That you even need to ask, is bad enough ... And not surprising in the slightest....”

Okay, maybe not.

She paused, obviously expecting him to fall onto his thermal lance. He managed to stay quiet but not stop his eyes flickering to the fridge. He needed that beer more than ever now.

“Well, since your small half inch nut sized brain is obviously struggling to comprehend the situation, or your folly, I’ll give you a clue shall I?”

As if he had any other choice...

“I had a rather Interesting e-message from Proclast industries...” She carried on.

Oh shit...

“Oh, I see the light come on that thick skull of yours. “ Another moment of uncomfortable silence grew. “I repeat my original statement of ’Just when were you planning on telling me’...”

“I was...” He was so fucked and both of them knew it, which wasn’t helping matters. “I was, just, you know, testing the welds, to see what the strength was like...”

She spun the data slate round. “There’s ’testing the welds’, and there is selling the entire hull for scrap, which, by the way, is what this ‘document’ is doing.”

“Look, love, we don’t make that much money...”

“I manage the accounts, I know ‘exactly’ how much money we are in debt by. I have a better understanding of the situation than you have, I’d wager.”

“We can’t go on as we are...”

“And you are prepared to throw all we have worked for, away for, what? Exactly?”

“It’s a good price.” He tried to counter, lame-fully.

“Oh, It’s a good price. A really good ’sign on the dotted line’ price ... Except for the itsy-bitsy clause in paragraph four, subsection three. Which you will have, obviously, read.” They both knew that he hadn’t. “Which I will quote...” She paused as she flicked to the relevant section. “ ’The final payment will be held on trust for one lunar year. And will be based in entirety upon the work carried out by the reclamation yard in that time... .’ End quote.”

“So, we work hard for the year, make it look good.”

“Oh Levi...” Arabella leaned back, her shoulders slumping, tears forming in her eyes “How can you be so stupid...”

“I don’t follow...” He genuinely didn’t.

She rubbed the tears from her eyes. “Subsection twelve, ’upon signature, the signee will vacate the premises and a transition team will manage the running of the facility... ’ Basically, what they will do, is staff our facility with a single caretaker and mothball it for a lunar year. Then they will turn round and say that it made no money in the transitory period and that they will be ‘doing you a favour’ taking it off our hands. Knowing Proclast Industries, they will probably charge us a ‘maintenance’ fee as well...”

“They wouldn’t do that...”

Arabella stared at him flatly. “Sometimes, your naivety is endearing. Sometimes it’s not. Do you wish to hazard a guess as to which side your statement falls under? Fifty, fifty chance. Actually, don’t even think of answering. I don’t think I can cope with you guessing wrong at this moment...”

“We can’t go on like this...” Levi repeated dumbly.

“No, we can’t. And they’ve increased the rent again...”

That stopped him “Again?” She nodded “Why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine at this point.”

“I mean, it’s not as if we can just move our station elsewhere. The cost of doing so makes it an immediate non-starter.”

“I think you answered your own question. They want our station, and given that joke of an offer they dangled in front of you, they want it for nothing.”

“But why?”

“Because they can?”

Levi no longer had any desire for the cold beer. In fact, he wanted to be sick. He turned round and headed back the way he had come, impotent rage boiling up inside of him. There was really only one way of expending that rage and he made his way back to the remote rig he had just left. There were eight of the chambers in the station and Levi and his three children kept to the same ones. Levi and his son were next to each other, the two girls had their own the furthest away from father and son as could be managed, for the simple reason that both girls liked to sing as they worked, and whilst helmet mikes could be muted, the vocal echoes bouncing down the station corridors were harder to stop.

Stepping in between the frame of the gimbal, he reached up and pulled down the hooks and mated them to the rings on the torso of his suit. He moved over and picked up the VR headset, slipping it over his short cropped hair. Strapping on the joystick mounts to his forearms, he tested for comfort, satisfied, he switched the rig on and the cables retracted, lifting him off his feet slightly, the suit tightening around his body as it took the weight. The gimbal moved around him as he twisted his body in the air. Reaching up, he pulled the visor down. The remote’s diagnostics popping up, Levi cleared the screen and took hold of the joysticks strapped to both arms, thumbs flicking off the safety’s to both control sticks. The diagnostic screen was quickly replaced by a video feed showing a patch of space outside of his station.

His remote hadn’t had enough time to recharge since he had docked it at the end of his shift, so he swapped to one of the spares. He pushed off remotely with his legs and the reclaimer unit undocked from its housing and drifted towards the half stripped hulk in the gantry.

He left the internals alone, the girls were much better than he was at stripping and sorting the internals, besides, he wasn’t in a careful frame of mind. He wanted to rip and destroy. Letting go of the right joystick, he reached out and a claw appeared on his visor. He closed his grasp and the claw clamped at the edge of the hull. His left hand moved out, a plasma cutter stretching out on the screen, a flick of a switch by his left thumb activated the plasma system and his index finger squeezed the trigger, the plasma cutter bursting into action. Moving his left arm, the remote followed his actions from within the gimbal and Levi cut a large ten ton slab of armour from the hull and casually sent it towards the requisite storage bin with a flick of his wrist as he set to the next piece.

The work was steady, monotonous, and he only gave it a small part of his consciousness as he devoted the rest to the seemingly fruitless task of quelling the turmoil inside his head. No. Things couldn’t go on as they had, but he was damned if he was just going to roll over and show his belly to the corporate bastards. He didn’t bother looking at the time. He would finish when he had calmed down, or the remote ran out of power. Whichever came first.

Another ten ton slab of armour was slowly pushed away, a steady stream of armour slabs slowly floating through space. It would take each piece several hours to float to their destination, where a dumb AI program controlling robotic arms, would latch onto them and slowly position them into one hundred ton cubes, tac-welding each piece into position ready for storage and collection by the next scrap hauler to pass their way.

His HUD pinged an incoming proximity alert. He turned his head, the remotes vision feed matching the movement. While Levi and his son pretty much ignored their favoured remotes other than for damage repair or maintenance, his two daughters had taken the opposite stance by painting their remotes with bright colours in intricate details. Neither Levi or his wife had prohibited or stopped the practice. Partly because it didn’t affect the abilities of the drones in any way and partly because the facility was family owned and run, so the two daughters technically owned their drones anyway. It also served as a public display of their operator skill, as in order to paint and decorate them, they either had to suit up and physically go into space, which was both dangerous and a tedious process to boot, or they could do so using the manipulators of another drone. It was no surprise that they had chosen to do so using another drone.

The communications channel was quiet, but Levi knew which daughter was approaching by the drones exterior colour scheme and artwork. The new arrival moved into the hull next to him as he continued to peel back and remove the exterior shell. Normally he would chastise whichever child was working so close to him. The operators were in no danger, safely ensconced as they were in the main station, but the remotes could be damaged by operator error, either by a carelessly discarded slab of armour/ hull plating, or an incorrectly cut pipe that was either still pressurised or still held a combustible source along with the oxygen required for it to flare out. And out here, having to take time out to repair the damage, was both costly in materials and time. If the-damage could be repaired by them. Whilst they could fabricate and repair most mechanical components, they had to call a third party in to repair the engines or the more delicate electronic parts.

Like him, Millie was supposed to be off shift, but given that she was out here and this close when she knew his stipulations as to working distances, meant that she was quietly supporting him, in her own way. The love for his family cut through his anger and he felt his anger start to dissipate. Millie’s remote turned as she skilfully wound up a length of fibre optic cable, there was some new artwork upon her hull. A big red heart with her name and the name of one of the young men on one of their regular supply haulers. She had tried to keep the burgeoning romance hidden from her siblings and parents, but she had made such an arse of it, even Levi had noticed.

He had been fully prepared to take the matter in hand and have a plain and forthright conversation with the young lad that involved sharp implements and a plasma torch, when his wife had stepped in front of him and quietly, gently, shook her head. He still wasn’t happy about the situation, but his wife was right. Their daughter wasn’t a child any longer and had to find her own way in life.

Given the location of the new artwork - in one of the remotes blind spots and the somewhat furtive behaviours of the other two siblings recently, coupled with their amused expressions whenever Millie wasn’t looking in their direction, strongly implied that Millie had no idea as to the recent addition to her hull paintwork. He felt a smile start to creep across his lips at the mental image of her face when she finally spotted it. She was so ... not going to be amused.

Given the skill and artistry of the lettering, it was going to be obvious right from the word go, as to who was the graffiti artist. Millie’s sister Zoe.

The little bout of adolescent shenanigans drove home just how important his family was to him, and that any decision to be made was not his solely to make.

: Dad? :

: Hmm.? :

: I was speaking to ... someone earlier today, and the Eastland is not coming back to re-supply and collect the scrap. :

: It’s not? : Levi was surprised but strangely, also not surprised, given all that had been going on lately.

: A company rep told captain Benjamin, that if he continued to supply us, then his flight permissions in Proclast Company space would be revoked. :

Pieces started to fall into place. Millie wasn’t just out here to comfort him, but was seeking solace to her own problems, most likely the main one being that she would no longer be able to see the boy that had captured her heart. Levi was also a little pissed that after knowing Benji for the better part of twenty years, that the wretch hadn’t the balls to tell him personally.

Levi sent the piece he had just cut free, gently floating after the rest and turned off the plasma cutter. : Millie, stop what you are doing and dock the remote. Family discussion. : As soon as the docking clamps turned green. Levi shut the remote down and released himself from the harness. He felt strangely energised as he made his way towards the communal eating area where his wife and other two children were sat patiently waiting. Millie was only a couple of minutes later in joining them.

Levi took a deep breath. “As you know, work his strangely petered out lately and that we are struggling to make ends meet. It’s a situation that’s untenable, and involves all of us. So, I’ve decided that a decision must be made, and since it involves all of us, it must be made by all of us.” He took a deep breath and his wife stretched a hand out across the table and took his, smiling supportively.

He explained, as best he could, what had been going on, the offer to purchase the yard, the tactics being used to bully him into making a decision, one way or the other. He finished with what he had tried, to mitigate the situation, the avenues explored in the search for a way out.

“We can’t move the yard?” Asher, his son, asked.

Levi shook his head and brought up the quotes on his tablet and showed them to his children. “ As you know, the yard only has positioning thrusters, nothing even remotely powerful enough to move the station any distance. That’s why we have the tug. And yes, before you ask, I considered the possibility of using tugs, but it would take years for us to drag it out of Proclast Space and I can guarantee in that time, they would be charging us punitive transit fees the whole time. I could be done, but the cost is simply more than the yard is worth.”

“So we just abandon the yard and start again, somewhere else?”

“That is an option. A painful option, but it’s more practical than trying to take the yard. For a start, we would need to split the yard into two. The habitation module and the yard. As you can see, there is not much difference in cost between two large freighters or four smaller ones. The added cost in splitting the yard into four for transit rather than two, actually counteracts the savings against using two.”

“Don’t shoot me down, but is there any ship huge enough to take the entire station? I don’t know, which is why I’m asking.” Zoe asked.

“I think there is. They are used for transporting broken down dreadnoughts...”

“So top tier corporate?”

“The very top. And I doubt they would be any cheaper than the options available to us. If anything, more expensive.” The room went quiet as everyone tried to think of viable options.

“What if we don’t use corporate? What if we used free traders? If Corporate assets won’t trade with us, why don’t we just strip the station and sell it to free traders ... We leave the habitat to last, then scuttle what’s left? If we can’t have it, then we deny it to the Corpo cunts.”

“We won’t get as much for the parts with the free states as we would with the Corpo’s.” Their mother pointed out

“But we would get something, yes?”

Levi slowly nodded, though after spending the better part of the last two decades ensuring that the space around the yard was free from hazardous debris, to then go and scatter dangerous objects to navigation in that very same space wounded his soul to the core.

“Would the free traders risk their Corpo space privileges?”

“We don’t use traders with privileges to lose. As long as we strip quietly and load fast, we can be gone before they realise their precious space has been violated. And if they do spot the strip, by the time they organise a policing action we will be gone, If what they are after is the yard, then we deny it to them, make it all for nothing.”

Levi stayed quiet, letting his family have their say, as he had promised.

“We keep the suits and the drones and sell the tug...”

“Awww ... Do we have to...” Zoe said mournfully having formed something of a bond to the modified tug.

“Depends on what we get offered for her. If we get enough for her and the yard parts, it might be enough for a down payment on another yard, or part ownership with one. It means basically starting again, but it at least it will be with a boost rather than with nothing...” The discussion went quiet as they each wrestled with their thoughts.

“Okay.” Levi finally spoke breaking the silence. “Those in favour of taking the Corpo deal?” No hands were raised. “Those of stripping and running?” The hands of the three teenagers shot into the air. Levi looked at his wife.

“I go with my family.” Was all she said.

“Dad?” Millie probed.

He sighed. “I will miss her.” He sadly looked around the room.

“So, what now?” Asher asked.

“I don’t know. Carry on as normal. Finish stripping the Marlin. Love, can you reach out, see who, or what will be available and willing to pick us up, and how soon? We need to know the tonnage cost and what we want to salvage. And then we need to work at where we are going to go. Any one any ideas?”

Levi slipped into bed alongside his wife, who was quietly sobbing. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. “What should we do?” He asked her.

She took her time replying. “I will miss the yard.” She admitted. “But my family comes first. Always. As long as we are together healthy and happy, then I couldn’t ask for more.”

“They are going to leave us sometime.”

“I know. But I’ll still be happy for them. They will always be close in my heart, no matter where they end up.”

“I know...” He tried not to dwell on the potential breakup of his family, just so one manager could add an extra zero to his tally sheet. He felt his blood start to boil in anger and tried to think of something else. He failed.

The Marlin was processed and the family turned their attention to their home. First order, was to bring up the blueprints of the station and work out what they wanted to keep, what could be sold and how much could be stripped without affecting the environmental systems too much. It took most of the day planning as they had to be careful not to sever any of the critical systems, and it was decided that after one final night in their home, they would start stripping the station. The kids went to bed and Arabella logged on to their business account to see if there had been any reply’s to their requests for shipping and transport capability. Most were messages of unavailability, the timescale too abrupt, maybe in a few weeks’ time...? There was a message from Anya Industries. Arabella had never heard of them before. She opened it up and read the first couple of lines, her eyebrows rising.

Levi noticed the change in his wife s mood. “What’s up love?”

“Have you ever heard of Anya Industries?” He thought for a bit. “No. Are they a mining or shipping conglomerate?”

“I don’t know. I tried looking them up, but there isn’t much about them. What little I could find, implies that they normally deal with stocks and shares.”

“Stocks and shares? Maybe they are trying to Diversify their portfolio?”

“Could be.”

“Why the interest in them?”

“They want to buy the station. Or at least invest in it.”

“Buy the station?”

“I’ll send the message over.” Arabella tapped on her screen and Levi’s tablet chimed. He pulled it out and opened the message, reading the content.

: ... we wish to invest in your station and experience. Utilising our small fleet of recovery vessels, we aim to retrieve abandoned hulls and transport them to your facility in return for a flat fifteen percent of the recovered materials. The ships will be sourced and recovered by us, your only participation will be in the dismantling and sale of the reclaimed materials. How you do so is your purview, which we have no interest in... :

Levi looked up at his wife. “Are they for real?”

His wife shrugged. “They seem genuine’ish.”

“What about the rental situation with Proclast?”

“I don’t know, I’ll ask.” Arabella Typed away on her tablet.

“Is it a viable offer? How long is the small print?”

“Unusually short. If we get to keep our station and they keep their side of the deal, we would be fools not to consider it.”

Levi rubbed his eyes. “I wonder what they get out of it, if it’s not their usual income stream?”

“Could be they see the chance to disrupt the status quo.”

“A challenger company?”

“Possibly.” She lifted her tablet and read the incoming message. “The situation with Proclast Industries is in hand, apparently.”

“In hand? What does that even mean exactly. Okay. Let’s sleep on it and ask the kids tomorrow.”

They sat round the table and mused over the offer as they ate breakfast.

“What ships are they using? “ Zoe asked. Arabella typed away and the Zoe’s tablet buzzed. She looked down at her data slate and opened the picture. “Those don’t look creepy in the slightest.”

“Let’s see...” Asher asked. Zoe passed over her tablet. He screwed up his face “Fugly.”

Zoe pulled her tablet back and went searching for more information about the ships, but no results came back from her enquiries. She uploaded it to some of the ship spotter forums she frequented. The responses were quick, all of a similar vibe. No one knew of their existence and all were finding them a little creepy. She laid her tablet down and turned her attention back to the conversation going on at the table.

In Zoe’s opinion, there wasn’t really much to decide. It was either hand the station over to Proclast Industries, scuttle it, or take up the offer of Anya Industries.

Her parents though, seemed determined to complicate the issue. She looked towards her brother and sister, and could tell at a glance that they were in agreement with her as to what the decision was. Her parents were just re-treading the same arguments now, not bringing anything new to the table. Bored and rapidly losing interest, her attention strayed back to her tablet. One of her forum posts was attracting a lot of interest. It was drawing a steady stream of replies from people who were speculating as to whether or not the ships even existed. Several forum users repeating that they had been unable to find the ship design in any databases. Zoe was about to give it up as a dead loss, when one of the regular contributors posted several screenshots dated a week previous at another forum. It was several pictures of skeletal hulls in a shipyard, in the process of assembly. There was no doubt that it was the same ships. The topic of conversation there had been about what use the ships were going to be used for.

Zoe showed her parents the picture. With dedicated retrieval ships, a steady stream of hulks would ensure financial security. When Her parents finally decided on a vote it was a quick affair, resolved within a minute.

Arabella messaged Anya Industries their agreement to the terms. With no hulk to strip, and the plans of scrapping their home shelved, there wasn’t much to do. Their mother was on a cleaning mission, and since Zoe hated make-work, she slunk off to the airlock with the excuse that her drone needed servicing. She hid outside for as long as she could get away with it.

Just before they went to bed, the proximity alarms rang throughout the station. The family congregated in the room that doubled as the bridge and watched the six ships approach. Levi tried hailing them, but with no success.

“That’s those fugly craft in the pictures. Looks like they have just left the shipyard. Not much to them though, can’t have a big crew.” Asher observed.

As they drew closer, their ‘limbs’ unfolded as they moved apart to take up positions around the reclamation facility. They latched onto the station with a series of audible ‘clangs’ that resonated around the station. Immediately, the positioning alarms sounded as the station started to move.

“Zoe screamed. “Mum, dad, what’s happening!!”

“I don’t know! I can’t access the manoeuvring controls, somethings locking me out...”

Millie’s stomach lurched as though... “Did we just jump! But that’s impossible!” Millie ran over to the navigation console

: System error. Re-calibrating :

“Come on you piece of shit...” The system rebooted and displayed a star map that wasn’t the one she had grown up looking at.

Varna

The Anya touched down right where it was supposed to, and again Varna marvelled at how easy it was to control such a large craft. Incoming messages pinged her message screen. Queries about any repairs needing done, re-supply of consumables, refuel of oxygen and fuel tanks, any need for hazardous waste disposal, freight to be purchased/sold. It seemed an endless steam. She deleted the lot without bothering to even glance at the contents.

Pressure readings on the legs were informing her that the Vanya was fully down, so she reduced the planetary thrusters to idle, keeping a little power on so that they cooled uniformly and didn’t warp the shielding. At least, that’s what the instruction manual on planetary landings that she had read the previous night, had recommended. She wasn’t sure if it actually applied to her craft, since she had absolutely no idea how the thruster system worked. It made sense to err on the side of caution though, as she lacked the funds for repair. Varna flicked through the monitoring screens. All looked good. As her brother had always said. “Any docking of Varna’s that you could walk away from, was a good one...”. The memory pained her, as her parents had never actually allowed her to dock their ship to a station. Not enough seat time her parents had always said when she had asked.

Varna cast her eye over to the two displayed times. Ship time and planetary. She would need to get a move on as she had underestimated the re-entry time a little. Checking that her tablet was still linked to the ships command and control functions, she headed for the airlock.

At the end of the gantry, two armoured and mirror-visored port security guards awaited her. One waved a security wand over Varna as the other asked a lot of standard questions over her suit speaker. No she wasn’t carrying any contraband, no she wasn’t here to carry out any terrorist acts - seriously, as if she would say ‘yes’ even if she was ... No she wasn’t infected with any notifiable diseases. No she wasn’t radioactive. Yes, she was here on business, not pleasure and yes, she had a cargo already in place. Both scan and questions completed they stepped aside and let her carry on though the gantry. The gravity was heavier than anything that she had ever experienced before, pulling down on her body as her breathing became more laboured.