Station Gen. II (part 1)

Deep Space Research Station Orbiting Sun 2154 AD

“Neptune is bright and clear tonight.”

Alfred Gilssan looked up, annoyed. “Anything worthy of my time? I mean.”

Daren Tass turned away from the large picture window that showed the space beyond. Of course, it wasn’t real glass or any window. It was a screen projecting the live feed from a camera in the same position on the opposite side of the wall. Being only a screen, Alfred flicked the switch that turned it off as soon as Daren sat down again in the seat after pacing.

Daren had a slightly surly disposition, mainly just putting it on as a show to anyone who didn’t know him well, which was most people. He was rather imaginative and often lost himself in the middle of a conversation and began to stare into space. So, overall, it did not surprise Alfred how he answered the simple question, “Anything to declare?”

Alfred pulled off his glasses and set them on the desk, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He’d been good friends with Daren for five years, yet his patience with this conversation was waning. “So you call me to this meeting to report that someone knocked over a pile of oxygen tanks in the store room, causing a horrible jumble that took all day to sort out, and then you declare emphatically,” Alfred assumed in a loud and strong voice. Neptune is bright!”

Daren shrugged. “Sure, all that and the fact that someone misplaced all my team’s single-copy files in the wrong pile, and they were shredded and recycled.”

Alfred looked up. Everything was slightly blurry, so he half-closed his eyes. “Sorry about that. You lost the reports of two months of work, none of which was epically important, right?”

Daren shrugged again, stroking his trim, pointy beard, “No, just an inconvenience. They were only archives that is.”

“There!” Alfred groaned, leaning back, “Now, are you done?”

Alfred was used to a strict bedtime, which his watch told him was nine O‘clock on Earth. Unlike others, including Daren, who used the fact that they weren’t on Earth to barely sleep and not regularly.

“I’m not done,” Daren said. Furthermore, a leak on the bottom levels flooded some of the rooms, and the magnet seal fell off the airlock door when we were going to do a test launch.”

“I get it, Daren!” Alfred moaned, “Fine, I’ll resign. You aren’t the first person to say that I can’t cope with all the issues of running a station and shouldn’t be a director.”

“Resign?” Daren asked, “No way are you going to resign! You are the only thing keeping this station from falling apart! Who told you you  should resign?”

“I … I don’t know. It was an anonymous note meant not to hurt my feelings I think. It said I should resign because I was getting old and couldn’t cope.”

Daren jumped to his feet and paced wildly. Alfred’s glasses clattered on the cold metal station floor, which wound its way through the halls. Alfred looked aggrievedly at his glasses and then up at Daren, who was now winding around, pacing back and forth in a hypnotic fashion that drove him mad.

“Someone is attempting to sabotage our station, Alfred!” Daren exclaimed in a fervor.

Alfred grabbed his glasses and looked back up at Daren, saying, “Please don’t be dramatic, too.”

“No, no, it makes sense, Alfred!” Daren exclaimed, wheeling around and returning to the chair. He made it as if to sit down and then continued to pace around the room. “Think about it: the leak that stops all work for a day, the broken seal that causes us to postpone our test launch and reconfigure our schedule, papers disappearing, slowing down work, and not to mention trying to get rid of our director during these hard times.”

Alfred leaned back in his chair, exasperated, “But why? Who would want to stop us from doing research? That’s all we are! A research station, we don’t build weapons or do anything useful!”

Daren finally decided to sit down. He looked closely at Alfred and then checked over each shoulder, “Do you know what the most important project happening here is?”

Alfred thought for a moment, “um… I don’t know.”

Daren had his turn to be exasperated, “The light-speed engine!”

Alfred looked over his glasses, “light-speed? The ASA has had light-speed for years!”

“Not true light-speed, and nothing above it. As you get closer to the speed of light, you gain in mass and then innately are forced to slow down. You can never actually attain light speed. One of our largest projects here is developing an engine that will negate these factors and build up the energy necessary to ‘jump the gap’ in a manner of speaking and allow us to pass the point of light-speed and go faster even.”

Alfred, looking bewildered, leaned in onto his desk, head in hand, “I didn’t understand most of that…

“Either way,” Daren continued, “the ASA will pay five million for a working light-speed engine and a contract for six years of us producing and selling them to the ASA. Xi Stars Inc., our mother company, wants the money, the contract, and most importantly, the prestige. We’ve made progress, but other people want the same things.”

“And so they are planning on sabotaging us?”

“Yes! Don’t you see, Xi Stars’s biggest competitor, ChemZ Co., would do anything to get their hands on that contract! They’ve had a long history of competing in the same fields as us, and everyone knows there have been questionable actions on their part in the past.”

Alfred shook his head, “Okay, I understand. But if that’s true, what do you want me to do about it?”

Daren shrugged, “I don’t know, but… but we can’t just look away.”

Alfred let out a light scoff and got to his feet, striding gradually out of the room, “Good night, Daren.”

Daren got up and ran after him. “No, wait. I have an idea: the new ASA officer is coming in tomorrow. You could go and meet him and tell him about the situation…”

Alfred’s face grew livid. Daren glanced at him warily, “…or maybe you don’t need to…”

Alfred stormed away, shouting angrily, “If you want to talk to him, do so!”

• • • • •

Luteint Tyler Corick of the ASA stepped out of the airlock and onto the station. The ginormous doors behind him closed, and he could softly hear the giant engines revving and taking off. Around him, Tyler saw people in lab coats moving here and there with no apparent organization. Most seemed to be leaving one big room ahead, but otherwise, it was just confused chaos.

Tyler shivered a bit, even in his thick, insulated ASA-issued jacket. He’d heard horror stories back at the academy on Earth of soldiers nearly burned at the stake for daring to step foot on these stations. Ungoverned for so long, the Outer Rim research stations had grown to a near-independent nation, except that no single station would consent to be grouped with others and put under the control of any leader, even one they chose. They loved their freedom to the degree that they would barely let their director tell them what to do.

Above all other types of ‘tyranny’, the ‘stationites’ intensely disliked the ASA. When the American government first militarized NASA and renamed it the American Space Administration following the disastrous alien invasion, they pointed out that at least two other species of aliens that Earth needed protection from. Most critics have noted that the Navy and Air Force successfully countered the recent alien invasion, even managing to keep it classified for six months before it was disclosed to the public. Therefore, there is no justification for investing in larger vessels, advanced weaponry, and attempts to establish dominance over the entire solar system.

As to control, the ASA, despite its name, had been mostly turned over to the UN, which was becoming more of a significant power on Earth as small one-planet politics became somewhat unimportant.

Suffice it to say, the free peoples of the stations and Jovian moons resented these Astro-nots for suddenly proliferating the periphery in the ASA’s new “solar system inclusion” plan.

Tyler finally spoke up when an engineer covered in grease passed him. “Excuse me, um… well, I was wondering what I was supposed to do…”

“You aren’t supposed to do anything. You shouldn’t even be here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tyler muttered. He had meant to ask what he was supposed to do to be able to see the director as his papers told him to. Of course, after he saw the director, he didn’t have much to do but ‘patrol’, “thank you for that ever so helpful remark!” he shouted, not caring that he looked like an idiot.

The flow of people was slowing, and the main room was emptying. Tyler thought he smelled waffles, but wasn’t sure. “This place is weird.”

He turned to walk down one of the exits, bound to find the director eventually.

“Lt. Tyler Corick?”

He spun around to see a scowling middle-aged man of about 40-45, “uh, yes, that uh… that is me.”

The man scowled as if he had just swallowed a vinegar-soaked potato… whole. Or he’d rather be in the vacuum of space than meet the new ASA officer. “Come with me.”

• • • • •

“And that is about the full situation, sabotage, danger, and mystery” Daren muttered, draining the cup of coffee he held and slamming it down on the table, “now… Whodunit?”

Tyler looked up, shocked. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re the law here. Go arrest somebody.”

Tyler looked into his mug of dark black coffee. He wasn’t much of a coffee person at the best of times, and this stuff looked disgusting. Still, he sipped away politely, “Well, if you can’t understand it, how can I?”

Daren shrugged, “I don’t know, but we need someone with authority to do something.”

“You know,” Tyler said, examining his reflection in the coffee, “I always thought that you hated authority. You don’t obey any form of organization, do you? No day or night, so you wake and sleep at will. Not much gravity, so you don’t obey up and down…”

Tyler trailed off, looking warily at the now glowering Daren, “…Well….”

Daren’s glower cut him off again. Daren typically had a glare or at least a scowl on. Yet he never glowered except when necessary, “Not enough organization?”

Tyler cringed, “Yeah?”

“That’s the ASA’s motto, huh? Not enough control. They think they can run every detail across millions of miles of cubic space, and guess what! They are wrong!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Tyler muttered into his mug. This was the average staionite, going on about how evil the ASA was. Finally, he thought he’d met a non-prejudiced stationite, “ASA bad, directorship good.”

“No, you don’t understand. I think the ASA is necessary,” Daren said, “but they are doing it wrong. You see this situation and decide there isn’t enough control, but control isn’t the issue. The ASA thinks that it has the perfect formula for how to run a station and now wants everyone to conform to that same style of living. Yet having a more rigid system of production, rules, or even research areas won’t fix anything. What is necessary is accountability and leadership. Do you know how often a spaceship has landed at a station only to find everyone missing or dead? No one knows what truly happened, but I believe this could have been prevented if someone had been present and in charge, even if only in an official capacity. Leadership is not the same as control. The ASA does not want to lead; instead, it seeks to squeeze, control, and extort.”

Tyler thought for a moment. “But a lack of organization is what could be preventing research or advancements.”

Daren sighed a long-suffering sigh. “All primary technological developments in the last twenty years have been from us, the second-generation stations. Not Moon City, not Mars, and especially not those showy Generation Three stations. We have a system here; it works. We get a lot done because we work together. Do you think the ASA coming in and ordering things around would truly increase production or research?”

Tyler shook his head, “I don’t know.”

Daren got up and walked away slowly. “Well, the video records are in the control room, and the director is in his office, which most anyone will point you to. Hop to it, Sherlock.”

Tyler spent the rest of the day attempting to find out what to do about this mystery and the director. When he finally got an audience with Alfred, he stood there talking at him, saying just about anything to get him to respond. Finally, after falling silent, Alfred looked up at him and said, “If you are done, you may leave.”

It was clear to Tyler that the director didn’t want him there, but as he left, he tripped over the edge of the desk and knocked a folder to the floor. Alfred looked up, annoyed, and got out of his chair to clean them up. Tyler quickly bent down and scooped them up.

“NO! NO!” Alfred shouted, “Stop! You’ll mess up the order!”

Tyler stopped with the bundle in his hands. Gently, he set it on the desk, knowing the damage was already done. Alfred glared at him, “GET! OUT!”

Tyler scurried to do so, grabbing a small metallic object off the floor where the papers had been, “Oh, excuse me, sir, I think this is yours.”

It was a small circle with wings that read, “CERTIFICATE OF GRADUATION AT THE EARTHITE COLLEGE. PRESENTED TO JACOB GILSSAN.” Alfred looked up, annoyed, until he saw what was in Tyler’s hand. “Don’t touch that, give it back!” Alfred tapered into silence as he swiped the small badge violently from Tyler’s open hand. Alfred’s face turned red and contorted. “Get out!”

Tyler quickly left the room, his eyes wide with shock. The Earthites were an intellectual group that had established a new academy to teach old practices or something similar. Jacob was probably a family member who had come back to Earth. A primary Earthite practice was the pledge never to enter space. No one knew what the Earthites wanted; they never told anyone—they just existed.

Tyler made himself a routine, as no one would help him find something to do. The first engineer he met had said Tyler wasn’t supposed to be there, and that was other’s opinion, too.

When lifting weights or doing push-ups in the morning, Tyler mutters, “I’m the eyes and ears of the ASA.”

“Yet I can’t see or hear a thing,” he would say to himself, jogging in the evening.

Being the representation of the ASA was difficult. He had to ensure that the station followed ASA regulations, which, naturally, no one thanked him for. And because of this, no one besides Daren would speak more than necessary to him. Besides continuing to work out, Tyler would patrol halls, check up on supplies, and read ASA announcements about what his fellow officers were up to. The reports weren’t very encouraging. It seemed like everyone was against the ASA these days. Protests on Earth, demonstrations on the Moon. Strikes on the solar plants close to the sun. And the humiliation of officers at the outer stations.

“I will do something,” Tyler promised himself daily, “I will do something to make the whole solar system see that the ASA is important.”

Daren kept in touch with Tyler, continually asking whether he had “caught his man.”

This got on Tyler’s nerves, yet Tyler counted Daren among his friends—his only friend on the station.

“I don’t get it!” Tyler finally shouted, “What do you want from me?”

Daren shrugged, “you are the detective.”

“And that is just it, Daren,” Tyler growled, wanting to shake the man by his collar, “I’m not a detective!”

Daren raised an eyebrow, unbelieving, “Then what’s with the academy mumbo-jumbo?”

Tyler probably sounded more hysterical than he realized as he leaned across the table, “For the last time, Daren! I did not attend the ASA training academy to become a detective in the Kuiper belt! I went to the academy for weapon training and spacecraft piloting!”

Daren drummed out a tuneless melody with his fingers on the metal desk. Most everything on the station was metal, rubber, or, of course, plastic. Tyler panted a bit and started to realize how insane he had been sounding. This station was driving him crazy.

Finally, Daren laughed, and Tyler sat back down in his seat. He couldn’t figure out how Daren could aggravate him so effortlessly or why he enjoyed doing it so much. The ridiculous thing was that Tyler, not learning from his experiences, fell for it every time, much to Daren’s amusement.

Daren finally spoke, “You represent the ASA on this station?”

“Yes.”

“And the ASA represents the government in space?”

“Yes.”

“And the government represents the law?”

“Yes”

“Then, by a stretch, you, my good sir, represent the law on this station. If an equals b, and b equals c, then a must equal b Q.E.D.”

Tyler leaned back into his seat, “Okay, so if I do represent the law… Which I never did deny, how do I catch this guy?”

Daren got up as his holographic wrist computer alerted him to someone calling him to one of the labs he oversaw, “I dunno, that’s your job, academy ace.”

Tyler groaned audibly as Daren left, then went to the storerooms to go through old security footage tapes as one of the engineers had suggested when he asked around. This was meant to make fun of him because, as he had found out after only an hour, the tape room was in such a mess that if you did manage to sort the recordings out, it would have been easy for a saboteur to delete anything he wanted from the system. He decided to spend the rest of the evening seeing if he could make anything of it.

Tyler sat down at the computer and dusted the desk off again—somehow, there was always dust. Then he proceeded to scroll through all the footage he’d looked at yesterday, ensuring they were all still in the little digital folders he’d added. Security was never much of an issue here. So, as all the other equipment had been upgraded, this system had been neglected. Like seriously, what kind of computer has a mouse with a cord these days?

Tyler only lasted half an hour before resigning in defeat again. He picked up his laptop and went to the official ASA notice board website, which kept him updated on new developments, policies, and what other officers were dealing with. The reports page was mainly full of information about the periphery and the Kuiper belt. Interestingly enough, a veritable sabotage war was traveling around Ol’ Sol at every technology development station in the entire solar system. The ASA was beginning to despair that the lightspeed engine would never be built. This triggered something in the back of Tyler’s mind—something his commander had once said. No, it was Daren… or was it Alfred? No, Alfred hadn’t spoken to him.

Who was sabotaging who?, he found himself thinking, chemZ Co.? Another thought nagged at his brain and pieces might have begun to fall together if not for a most inconvenient interruption.

Just then, someone burst into the door, sweaty and smelling of smoke, ash, and grime streaked across his face.

“The hyper-lab is on fire!”

TO BE CONTINUED…