Station Gen. II (part 2)

Tyler rushed up the hallway, pushing past the wall of people bottling it up. Alfred stood at the entrance, blocking it as others tried to push past him into the room. A few tech operators were aiding him, but almost everyone else was pressing on the small barricade.

“What is going on?” Tyler shouted.

“Daren is still in there!” a random scientist shouted from the front.

Tyler had been confused about Daren’s role at the station. He was greeted, questioned, and asked for his opinion wherever he went. The station staff hadn’t thrown Tyler out of the airlock, likely due to his friendship with Daren. It took Tyler a while to realize that Alfred held their loyalty, but Daren held their love. It was puzzling that he never laughed, nor was he exuberant or even appreciative of their admiration. There was nothing particularly likable about Daren, yet even Tyler still counted him as a close friend despite all that.

Tyler finally reached the front of the crowd and faced the hyper lab. The lab was chiefly smoke, but occasional flares of red illuminated the scene. There wasn’t much to burn except paper. A fire anywhere other than the hyper lab would extinguish itself instantly. The delicate equipment in the hyper lab was all flammable, and there were barrels of fuel that appeared to have spilled across the floor, burning slowly and exploding now and then. The hyper lab was where nearly all practical light-speed research was conducted. Tyler knew what Daren would say if he were here: that the saboteur had struck again.

Tyler looked in. “Where is Daren?”

Alfred shook his head. He was jittering and coughing like he was nervous. “Daren… he said he… well, he went back in, but then the fuel exploded, and the whole area became too dangerous. He hasn’t come back.”

The general procedure in a fire was to remove everything irreplaceable, seal off the area, and empty all the air. With Daren in the room, no one could close it off.

Tyler stepped forward, “We have to get him out and seal this area off as soon as possible! The hyper accelerator could blow if it gets any hotter!”

Alfred’s nervousness dropped off him like a mask. He shook his head, words sharp and clipped, “No! It is too dangerous to go in there. We have to wait. He could come back any minute, and we don’t want more people inside needing rescue.”

“We can’t risk that he might be lying back there, trapped. Are you really going to gamble that he is fine?” Tyler then turned to one of the tech operatives helping Alfred stop the surging crowd, “How long has he been in there?”

The ‘techy’ looked at his watch. “Two minutes.”

Alfred’s sharp demeanor crumbled into pleading, “Please, Tyler, I want him out of there as much as you do, but we need to think of the station. You are an officer of the law! You, of all people, should know that we can’t let a mob surge in there. Help me keep order!”

Quietly so as not to let anyone hear him, Alfred continued, his whole persona changed again, “and the fuel exploded after he went in, I don’t think he could have survived.

There were so many masks. What do you really think? Tyler thought Alfred’s appearance had changed three times at the last minute. It was beginning to scare him. What else was hidden?

Something exploded in the room with a flare of red light. Alfred fell forward into Tyler and shoved him to the floor.

Tyler crashed into the ground, smacking his head into the thick metal floor. He let out a grunt and hoisted himself to a sitting position. Alfred stared down at him contemptuously. Sitting there on the floor, Tyler looked up. As he slowly got to his feet, the words came out without realizing it.

“You want Daren to die… do you?” he added the last part to try to make it sound like a question when he hadn’t meant to say it at all.

Alfred’s face darkened perceptibly, or maybe the smoke drifting into the hall. He reached forward and pressed a combination onto a keypad, shutting and locking the door. Sealing Daren inside,

“It is not my fault that Daren ran into danger!” Alfred nearly shouted. Then, more quietly, “How dare you say such things! You… you ASA dog!”

There was a murmur as the crowd began to take offense on behalf of their director. They shouted insults in such unanimity that it was hard to understand a single one.

“Go back home, you astro-not!”

“Get off our station, you parasite!”

“Back off, Junk Wearer!”

This last one was a play-off of the bulky ASA combat armor soldiers wore to protect them from lasers or radiation weapons. Tyler found this ridiculous since he wasn’t in enemy territory and wore no armor.

Dejected, Tyler turned away. Who was he to them? No one, the delusions of heroism that brought the stationites to his side, faded. Something clanged against his hip. Looking down, he saw it was his radial-7 blaster. It was only effective for close combat because its disintegration ray of light ceased to function after more than five feet, unlike other projectile weapons still commonly used in open areas.

As Tyler looked at the weapon, a plan formed. He didn’t need Alfred’s permission to rescue Daren. Quickly, he pulled the blaster, swinging it in front of him. The crowd startled and backed up. He turned towards Alfred, and the tech operatives jumped to the side, abandoning him. Alfred stumbled into the door in shock.

Deftly, he swung the gun over and fired at the control panel, pulling down hard and long on the trigger. The bottoms and wires melted instantly, and the door slid back open with the sound of compressed air. Tyler hooked the gun back onto his belt and ran into the smoke and flames.

“Fool!” Alfred called out in disgust.

The inside of the room was a mess. Smoke, metal, and liquid flames pooled across the ground and walls. The hyper-lab was by far the most immense room in the station, nearly the size of half a football field. Tyler didn’t know where to start, with the smoke obscuring his vision. He sprinted across an open stretch and vaulted over a wall of fire burning on a pile of smoking trash.

Suddenly, out of the smog came a huge black object. Tyler ducked to the side only to realize it was stationary, and he was moving. It was the hyper-accelerator at the center of the lab. All light-speed calculations had to be done with this machine. One of the few in the solar system. It spat sparks and wobbled back and forth. It might explode if Tyler didn’t find Daren and get out quickly.

Ducking under a set of red-hot pipes and over a puddle of yet-to-be-ignited spacecraft fuel, Tyler crossed underneath the large machine into a less burnt area. However, the smoke was as horrid as ever.

“Daren!” Tyler screamed with a hot and dry mouth. He coughed repeatedly, trying to expel the smoke from his lungs, “Daren! Where are you?”

He sank to his knees, his whole body shaking. He tried to shout again, “Daren…” He broke off into coughs, then a gasp as he saw the huddled form ahead of him.

Tyler stumbled, caught his balance briefly, and fell to his hands and knees. The metal station floor burned his hands instantly. The pain drove him back up, and with another cough and stumble, he made it to Daren’s side.

“What were you doing?” Tyler whispered, voice hoarse.

“Getting… evidence.” Daren groaned and then coughed harder than Tyler.

Still weak, Tyler barely managed to pull himself back to his feet, stumbling slowly towards the exit, hoisting Daren onto his shoulder. He knew he had little time before the hyper-accelerator core exploded, yet there was still time to make it back and seal off the room and maybe even save some of the equipment.

Forward, still forward, one foot after the other, Tyler dragged them both towards the exit. Within another minute, he saw through a cloud of smoke the door, Alfred, and the tech operatives fixing what he had done to the door.

“I managed to get it to close again,” one said, pulling his screwdriver out of the wall. How long do we wait?”

Alfred shook his head, “Daren can’t be alive,” he said sadly, “and I very much doubt if anyone could go in and make it out again, seal it off quickly before the whole place explodes.

“Give them more time!” one younger scientist shouted. “You can’t give up!”

Alfred glared. “Seal! It! Off!”

The door began closing jerkily and slowly, still damaged.

Tyler shouted, his voice barely coming out as a wisp, “No! Wait! Please!”

One of the techies perked up, pausing the door, “I think I heard…”

Alfred quickly reached down, pushing the button that continued the closing, “I don’t hear anything!”

Suddenly, Tyler came into view through the curtain of smoke, and a great cheer arose. Tyler’s spirits soared when he realized they were cheering for him.

He dragged himself closer and closer, nearing the door. The techy stopped the door just as Tyler came through and fell, dropping Daren to the floor.

“Tyler! Tyler!” they chanted. Thrilled, he fell unconscious.

• • • • •

Tyler opened his eyes and sat up quickly, “Daren!”

A doctor walked over and pressed him back down into the bed, “Daren is fine. You need some more rest.”

“Where is he?”

“On the other side of the medical ward, his injuries were worse than yours. He’s still unconscious, but he’ll be fine.”

Tyler finally relaxed and lay down, closing his eyes. He fell asleep again.

When he woke for a second time, the curtains around Daren’s bed had been drawn, and no doctors were around. Tyler sat up, looked around, and got out of bed. The floor was cold and hard as usual, and most people aboard the station wore socks or shoes. The medical ward was on the diminutive side and had only ten beds for all three hundred or so people on board. Tyler was still wearing his uniform, although someone had pulled off his jacket and boots, which were poorly burnt but very well cleaned on a chair. After quickly putting these on, Tyler walked over to where Daren lay.

Another doctor emerged from nowhere and put her hand on his shoulder, “he’s still fine. He woke up once, but now he’s asleep again.”

Tyler nodded and stepped away reluctantly, “and how am I? Am I good to go?”

She nodded and stepped across the room, looking at some monitors, “Yep, you’re good.”

Tyler nodded, thanked her, and left the room. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was the next morning. After a small breakfast by himself, he started on his patrols, monitoring halls, checking closets to see if they were full of what they should have, and generally doing the nothing he always did. Only this time, it was different.

Everywhere he went, people smiled. He was greeted when he stuck his head into a room to check how each lab was going. Some even asked once or twice for his help in minor ways. It was strange; he still didn’t have much of a job, but a few kind words had turned the whole thing around.

For once, Tyler felt like he belonged, as if the stationites had accepted him. They treated him like he was one of their own. One of this close-knit family.

Tyler received a message on his wrist communicator around three in the afternoon. They connected the massive station by allowing people to send a ‘tag’ from an area of the station that called them there. Larger, more complicated wrist communicators could send full messages.

Daren was there sitting up with a mug of that awful mud-like coffee. Tyler smiled and sat on the bed across from him, “how are you feeling?”

Daren grimaced. “Fine, but no one seems to think so!” He broke into ragged coughing and covered it with a sip of black mud. “I had the doctors get you a cup, too,” he added, gesturing at the nightstand.

“Oh, thanks,” Tyler chirped, picking it up and taking a long draft.

Daren grinned, “I know you hate that stuff.”

Tyler spat it back into his cup. “Really? Come on, man!”

Daren laughed loudly and hoarsely, giving into a racking cough again.

One of the doctors came over and gave him some medicine. Tyler was about to leave the medical bay when he remembered something.

“Daren,” he said, “what about your evidence?”

Daren looked up at Tyler, lying down again, “Grab the laptop from my room and come back. I think I have evidence to show who started the fires.”

Tyler returned quickly to find Daren holding a small, grimy hard drive. “When the fire started, I realized that the security cameras would have caught them on camera, but the fire would have probably shorted them out and stopped sending signals to the main computer. I found these videos on a mini pre-sending drive that holds them until an update sends them across.”

Tyler sat down next to Daren, handing him the computer.

Daren flipped it open, plugged the hard drive in, and powered it on, “come on, come on,” he muttered the whole time.

Tyler crossed his fingers and held his breath as a darkened room came into focus. A man wearing the classic station uniform walked briskly through the deserted room. Leaning close to a set of wires, he snipped the wires.

“That was the backup connection. It allows this camera to send info to the computer,” Daren explained.

Tyler watched, intrigued, as the man slowly turned around closer and closer until… the screen went blank.

Daren tapped a few times. “What? NO! Why?”

Tyler watched as a banner popped up on the screen: “This file has been deleted from the system.”

Daren was still raving, “But no one can delete individual files from the system unless…”

“Unless what?”

“…Unless they used the director’s computer!” Daren moaned, “Why did ChemZ Co. have to get such a good saboteur? There is no stopping this guy!”

Tyler thought of what he had been reading the previous evening: “Someone is sabotaging ChemZ Co., too.”

Daren wasn’t really paying attention, “Yeah? Who?”

Tyler thought briefly, not answering Daren, “Everyone is being sabotaged.”

“By who?” Daren said again.

Tyler tapped his lips, “Not by ChemZ Co., by the same person sabotaging us.”

“Where are they from then? If they are not from ChemZ Co.”

“From Earth.”

“Huh?”

“I know how to catch this guy!”

“How!”

“It’s going to involve some backup files and some research on one Jacob Glissan.”

• • • • •

Daren hurriedly sat at the computer desk in the neglected room. The desk was so old that it was made of wood. Ten years ago, when the station was first built, this computer was set up with a primary purpose: to serve as a receptacle for unwanted items or data, essentially functioning as a trash bin for the station. Anything deleted from the entire system ended up here. There was no way to access this place remotely or to delete everything at once; it acted as a backup in case of accidental deletions.

Daren cradled his burnt arm, wrapped in bandages, and booted up the old computer. It started slowly, loading and humming. He still felt weak after more than 24 hours in the medical bay.

A beam of light pierced the dark room as the door swung open effortlessly. A faintly blue, white-hot light shot forward, instantly reducing the computer to ashes. Daren leaped up and stumbled backward onto the ground. Wincing, he pulled himself up to face Alfred, who stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light, holding Tyler’s radial-7 blaster.

“I should have thought of this beforehand. The security footage I deleted ended up here,” Alfred muttered, “now I’ll have to kill you, I guess. Hmm… out of bed early, are we? Who’s to say you didn’t die from the fire?” he cackled like a madman, “I mean, it’s all just burns anyways! We all burn eventually! Say goodbye, Daren. Too bad your friend left out his toy! It is soooo appropriate that Neptune should be bright tonight.”

Alfred stepped backward, pulling down the trigger. Nothing happened, so he snarled and held the gun up in the air, shaking it back and forth.

The light turned on, and Tyler stepped out of the corner. “Try pointing it at yourself. That always works.”

Alfred looked up, face draining of color, “You… but I… but you…”

Tyler set a small disc with glowing lights on its surface on the desk. “This is an ASA-issued device designed to deactivate ‘toys’ like mine when someone misbehaves with them. It can function for up to one full hour.”

Alfred hurled the useless weapon at Tyler’s head, who caught it deftly. As he turned to run, the three most muscular scientists blocked Alfred. In shock and inarticulate rage, Alfred’s face swelled as if it would burst.

“I’m arresting you, Jacob Glissan, for destruction of property and attempted murder,” Tyler declared over the cries and half-formed insults. Tyler stepped forward, bringing Alfred’s (or Jacob’s, that is) hands behind him with a pair of electrical cuffs. An invisible energy current joined them and sent paralytic impulses through a person’s arm.

“To tell you the truth,” said one of the surprised scientists, “I didn’t believe it until now.”

Daren looked pale. Tyler was wondering whether or not he should be back in bed when Jacob (as we must call him now) finally managed to put together words, “How!”

“I did some research on your Earthite buddies last night,” Tyler said in his most authoritative voice. “It turns out the whole thing is a scam. I had my colleagues check in with some suspicious people at their stations. We found that nearly ninety percent of all Earthites end up in space despite their vow not to. After realizing that ChemZ Co. was currently being sabotaged in the same way, I decided it couldn’t be them; it was too similar, too coordinated. It must have been someone who didn’t like what was happening at the stations: all stations, not just ours, and specifically light-speed research. Your badge of accreditation was the last piece of the puzzle. The real question is why? Why do you Earthites not want the development of light-speed engines?”

Jacob glared at Tyler, not answering. Then, composing himself, he turned to the three scientists behind him, “Are you going to trust him? I am your director! He is nothing but a trundler of the ASA! He is a worthless piece of scum!”

They stared indefinitely at Jacob. Finally, one said, “You tried to kill Daren, director. You are a traitor to this station.”

Jacob’s face twitched, and he appeared utterly transformed by unspeakable anger. Daren pushed himself to his feet, staring in horror at Jacob. “I don’t understand. Alfred—I mean Jacob, if that’s really your name. I thought we were friends!” Jacob chuckled wryly, turning heavily to Daren, “Friends? Friends? Of course, you did, as if I could ever have been friends with the likes of you! You, with your fanciful aspirations, you who thought you were so clever, you with all your nasty attitudes and unhealthy habits. You are the very essence of what space does to a man.

Daren fell backward into the chair as if someone had delivered a blow to his frail body.

Jacob turned, walking with his knees yet somehow remaining dignified, to Tyler’s eyes narrowing, “And you… You thought you were the epitome of a detective. You make me sick, you and all the ASA. I should have thrown you out of the airlock when you set foot on this station. My station!”

Jacob turned a bit more until he was facing no one in particular and addressed mid-air, seemingly embracing the whole galaxy with his next words, “The ASA, not content with smearing the evils of humans across the face of the Earth and even to the solar system, must build a light-speed engine. With that, they will proliferate the galaxy with evil and foul orders. The ASA is a destroyer of all things good, a vile creation of all the worst minds on Earth. The ASA should be torn down! It’s very ships disintegrated, its academy burned, its name forgotten…”

Tyler backed up just a step as Jacob focused all his heat on him, “… It’s very soldiers left to die in misery.”

Tyler, checking himself, reached down to lift Jacob to his feet and ‘escort’ him to a makeshift prison until an ASA ship could come by and pick him up. Just as he was about to grab Jacob, Daren got to his feet and nearly fell, catching himself on the desk.

Tyler hurried over and helped him up. Looking to the scientists, he supported Daren on his shoulder, “Can you take him to some place secure until the ASA prison ship can come by here?”

They nodded various assents and grabbed Jacob roughly, dragging him away as he spat and screamed.

“We need to get you back into bed,” Tyler said, “you are not ready for this.”

Daren shook his head, “I’m fine.”

“You look horrible.”

“You look worse, and that without being injured.”

“Sure, but I don’t have major burns on my arms. Let’s go.”

Daren hobbled along with Tyler’s help, “You’re just jealous of my awesome beard.”

“Hardly, it is mostly gray hair.”

“The gray of wisdom whipper snapper,” Daren remarked, then his face grew sad as he contemplated the events that had just taken place, “I can’t believe it. Alfred (I mean Jacob) and I have been friends for nearly three years.”

“I think he may have been your friend at first.”

“My friend died long ago,” Daren remarked coldly, “did you see him? He looked transformed.”

Tyler sighed quietly, “he gave into his anger. At first, he may have been working for what he believed was a good cause, but he let hate control him.”

“Sounds like the plot to a cliche sci-fi.”

“Yeah, basically. Even I know the ASA needs to change, and hopefully, one day, it will, but not through the actions of a terrorist. I didn’t mention it back there, but five years ago, the Earthites weren’t a terrorist group. They were a peaceful, intellectual college. They snapped finally, when no one would listen to them, and decided that the best way to change the world was to destroy things. Neither the ASA nor human culture will change by ceasing star travel. Earth needs to grow, to see other cultures, and to change.”

They approached the medical bay before Tyler continued, “This station is going to need a new leader, perhaps one who can help it integrate into the ASA and assist the ASA in adapting to include others. We can make a difference—you, me, and anyone else who joins us.”

Daren laughed a bit forcefully, “I’m a bit old to be changing jobs.”

“Not that old, and besides, you’ve been leading this station for years,” Tyler laughed, “but seriously, Daren, we can make a difference.”

Daren finally gave a full smile, no trace of sadness on his face, “You know what, Tyler?”

“What?”

“I like that.”