Wanderer

Chapter 2-2

Kaira shifted uneasily in her seat on the flight deck as they approached Antilia Terminal. Until she’d met Tarkus she’d never left her home system and only had memories of being on two stations. The one she’d grown up on, and the one she’d spent a couple of years on.

Well, not exactly until she’d met Tarkus. Until she’d stowed away aboard the Glimmer. She’d met Tarkus halfway through that first flight, though it turned out he’d already been well aware she was aboard.

Since then she’d visited enough stations she felt she was starting to get a feel for the different states they could be in when seen from space. And this one… this one was rough.

Parts of it showed significant damage. Some clearly from impacts, and some that looked suspiciously like they were due to weapons fire. In many cases the damaged areas looked to have been patched up to the minimum level to seal them, with no efforts made to repair them properly.

Despite that, space around the station was busy, with many ships coming and going. There didn’t seem to be any order to what was happening, but somehow there were no collisions. At least none she and Tarkus had been close enough to see.

“Why don’t they repair the damage?” she asked.

“From the information I have it’s down to arguments over who pays. None of the merchants want anything to eat into their profit margin.”

“Why don’t the authorities fix it?”

“The authorities here report to the merchants. Any money they spend either comes from the merchants or from potential customers, leaving them less to spend with the merchants.”

“That makes no sense. If they carry on that way then eventually the station will be unusable.”

“I know. When that happens the merchants will either finally fork out some money or, more likely, just move somewhere else. It might end up being cheaper to build a new station in the neighbourhood and move everything they need across.”

“And everyone?”

Tarkus shook his head.

“No. Remember what I said about profits. Moving everyone would cost money the merchants don’t want to spend. They’ll only move the people they have to, and those who can pay the merchants to go. The rest will be left here.”

“On a dying station?”

“Exactly. Dying, not dead. The merchants would make the excuse that it’s possible to survive on the station, so it’s not time to evacuate everyone yet. Some people would manage to leave over time, thanks to charitable flights or falling foul of slaving raids. Eventually the station would reach the point where it’s almost impossible to survive on it.

“Then the merchants on the new station would probably argue for months about the best rescue package, and while they argued people would die. If they ever did send out a rescue there’d be almost no one left alive to bring back.”

“That’s horrible!”

“It is. But that doesn’t stop it being something which happens.”

“I sometimes think I made a mistake even leaving my home station,” said Kaira.

“What, and miss all the excitement we’ve had?”

“I’m all for new life experiences. It’s the new death experiences I’m not so sure about!”

“Just think of them as a great big bonus! A chance to understand how precious life is.”

“Right now, I’m getting close to being all bonused out!”

Tarkus smiled at her.

“I can’t say I blame you. We’ll see if we can get this sorted out without any more risking of life or limb! First, we have to find the people we need. We can’t just go in there asking about devices like those inside of you. We’d very quickly get into a lot of trouble that way. Not much is illegal to sell here, but that kind of thing definitely is. We need to find the right people, and to do that we need local knowledge.”

“From the way you said that I’m guessing you have something planned already?”

“It just so happens I do…”