Cloud World

“Ok, well not to sound too cliche here,” Max said, looking Becca in the eye, “but I’m not the guy you’re looking for.”

She smiled.  “Of course you’re not.”

“No, really.  Let me explain.  I just signed up on the ‘Lady Luck’ when she was in Lessen.  I’ve been part of her crew for exactly one week.”  Unfortunately, he could see she wasn’t believing him.  Suddenly, he had an idea.

“Now, ” he continued, “I’m sure whoever your employer is had people watching my ship.  If I was the guy you were looking for, why didn’t they catch me when I was headed back to the ship?”  As he was talking, he casually put his hands into the hoodie’s pockets.  He felt the beacon in his left hand.  Very slowly, he began fiddling with the settings on it’s side.

“And one more thing,” Max said, standing up a little straighter, “even if I was this guy you were looking for, do you think I’d be carrying the map with me?”  As he said that, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them out.  Everyone’s eyes locked on the beacon, not yet sure what it was.  Then, in that instant that Max had everyone’s attention, he hit the button on the top.

Normally, these energy beacons emit a bright light for a period of five minutes or so.  Max had quietly reconfigured it to emit a blinding flash.  Not too handy to attract dragons, but perfect to blind a room full of air pirates.  He had closed his eyes the moment he hit the button, so he didn’t blind himself as well.

Everyone started shouting at once, waving their hands in front of them.  Max grabbed hit beamgun off the table, hit the big button by the door then leaped onto the ground below.  The door started it’s slow closing process, one that couldn’t be stopped.  He bought some time.  He started running under the ship, then stopped under one of the Kartik generators.  He pulled out his beamgun, and set it to fifty percent.  He shoved the gun up the tube until it was touching the recessed Kartik plate, and fired.  There was the high pitched sound of discharge, then the blast pushed his hand back.  He started running again, knowing he just put this ship out of commission for a while.

He made it to the large warehouse entrance, and turned the corner.  The two large guards were surprised to see him,

“Hey, hold it!” one shouted, slinging his rifle onto his shoulder and whipping out a tactical baton.  The other guard did likewise, and Max noted they had dischargers on the end.  Those things could stun three of him.  Quickly he started to backpedal, fiddling with his beamgun.  He turned it to it’s lowest setting, and started firing at the two men.  Max got the first one in one shot, but the second one was almost on him before he could manage to hit him.  The were both down, barely moving.  The lowest setting on the beamgun would shock their system pretty good, but not burn them or anything.  He had noticed they weren’t using lethal force on him, so he didn’t think killing them would be anyway to continue relations.  Behind him, he could hear the large door on the ship reopening.  He had to get back to the ‘Lady Luck’.

He knew if he could get one block over, he would have a straight shot to the ship, and if he was lucky, Cobbs would be looking in his direction.  He began working his way through the junk-filled streets.

Suddenly, Max heard firing from above as bullets started smacking the debris near him.  He scrambled to find cover, but one of the shots hit him in his right arm.  There was an intense shock that made him scream, then his arm went numb.  He hid underneath a corrugated steel overhang while he looked at it.  He wasn’t bleeding, but his arm felt totally asleep.  He stooped over to pick up the round.  It looked like a rubber bullet with two small wires coming out the front.  It probably had a capacator inside, which is what gave him the shock.  The threw it on the ground, and looked wildly around to try to find a path that offered cover.  None really did, so he just left his shelter in a full run.

The “pick pock” of automated fire ricocheted near him as he made his way to the main street.  He saw one of the snipers on the ruins of a roof next to him.  He whipped out his beamgun, and fired several shots.  None hit, but he forced the sniper to take cover.  He could hear the crew of the pirate ship behind him, trying to catch up to him.  They didn’t sound very happy.

Max cut through a shack on his left, and made his way to the main street.  There he saw a welcome sight.  Cobbs was nearly to his position, riding the load mover.  It was a slower hovering craft, but it made faster time than walking.

“Hey Max, what’s going on?” Cobbs asked as Max took the last steps towards him and hopped on the load mover.

“Cobbs!  Go man, we got a ship full of mad air pirates coming this way.”

Cobbs didn’t say anything, just threw the load mover in reverse, whipped it around then started full throttle back towards the ‘Lady Luck’.

Just then, the vanguard of the pirates group made it to the main street, and began opening fire.  Cobbs slunk down in the seat, trying to protect his head.  Max turned around and laid prone on the back, using the bulky design of the load mover for cover.  He used his beamgun and began to return fire.  After several shots, the pirates began to scatter and take cover.  Their figures became smaller as the load mover covered more distance, it’s Kartik generators humming.

Max turned around to Cobbs and shouted over the wind, “I think we’re going to be ok!”  That was when the pirates’ attack vehicle whirled around the corner, and stopped to load up on the pirates who were there.  In moments, hit began to head their way, opening fire as it did so.  The area around the load lifter came alive with ammo impacts.

Cobbs swung hard left to avoid fire, and Max almost slid off the side.

“Hey, careful Cobbs!” Max said.

“You have a better idea?”

Max tried to hang onto the load mover while Cobbs was juking left and right, weapons fire all around them.  Max was firing back, but his energy pack in the beamgun was almost depleted, and would do no real damage.  The attack vehicle was getting closer now, Max could hear the hollering of the pirates as they shouted in victory.  He turned around.

“Cobbs, we are in some real trouble.”

Just then, they heard a sound from the ‘Lady Luck’ which was still almost five hundred meters away.  A brilliant bolt of violet lanced overhead, and hit near the attack vehicle, causing a blast that blew them sideways.

“Yeah!  Capt has us in range!” Cobbs shouted.

More violet shots came overhead, offering cover fire for them.  The blasts were slowly pushing the pirates vehicle back, allowing the load mover to get more of a lead.  Soon they were at the landing site, and both small cannons on the ‘Lady Luck’ began to fire, causing the pirates to turn around and seek shelter from the buildings.

Cobbs slammed the load mover up the ramp, and they heard the Captains voice crackle on the comm, “Are you guys on?”

Max jumped off and ran to the comm and slapped the button, “Ok, we’re on Capt!  Go, go go!”

The Kartik’s fired up, and the main engines thrummed as the ship began to take off, the main door and ramp slowly retracting.  The pirates had gotten on foot, and were running towards the airborne ship, and opened fire.  Impacts tinked off the hull, but they were fine and the ‘Lady Luck’ quickly put the abandoned platform behind them.

“Once everything is stowed away,” the Captains voice said, “will someone get up here and tell me what the ‘rasa is going on?”

Max wandered about for nearly two hours, working his way deeper into the city. The ruins made it slow going on foot, and many of the structures were too dangerous to enter. He was following the overhead wires, trying to find a mostly intact section. He figured if he was going to find a network port, it would be near that.

He took a break to move the backback to the other shoulder, adjusting his scarf as he did so. The city didn’t have any of the residual heat from other activities, so it was nearly as cold as being out on the deck of the Lady Luck.

He did a more thorough scan of the area, shielding his eyes from the wind with his hands. It looked like the building one street down might be his best find so far. It was right next to a network conduit, and a group of cables as thick as his body were coming out of the ground near it.

He walked toward the mess of cables. Once, his foot slipped on a piece of sheet metal and he almost fell. He caught himself in time. Pay attention, he told himself. Last thing he needed was falling and cutting his leg or something. He cautiously worked on towards the building.

He walked up next to it, unslung his backpack, and squatted next to the pile of cables. He reached out with his gloved hand, and felt around the wires, rotating them to see if there was any sort of marker. The outer ones were fairly brittle, some snapped as his touch. The inner ones though, protected from the elements by their outer brothers appeared to be mostly ok.

Max took his small cable kit out of his bag, and began making a splice into the wire. He deftly wound out the thinner wires that are contained inside the cable, and matched the colors up to his splice. In a few minutes, he had a data port in front of him

The portable comp booted up quickly, his upgraded comp node still surprising him. He made sure he had every safety protocol in place he could think of up and running. He even had imaged his system before he left the ship, in case it totally destroyed his data. He fished in his back for a networking cable, and connected his comp to the spliced section. The network light on his console flickered, then lit up steadily. Max took a deep breath, and fired up the browser.

For the first minute, his system was bombarded with spam; max wondered how long the the routines had been running unchecked. His security software was running overtime, intercepting packets that were scheduled for delivery and scrubbing out the dirty data. The initial rush began to die down as the filters began to become more familiar with the type of bad data. Soon, he had the spotty connection mostly functional.

He steered towards the normal addresses that would be hosting any sort of forum software. After a couple of tries, he found a board that was still functioning. He looked down the list of posts, some over eighty years old. There were defiant posts, mocking the inhabitants who were migrating off, others advocating that all should leave. Most of the more recent posts were just tech and otaku “we were here” sort of messages. Most of them were garbled at the end, probably due to data integrity loss. Still he downloaded some of the older messages to read later. Everyone liked a little history to read now and then, especially when it was the kind no one had ever seen before.

Max decided to leave his mark as well. He had some code he’d written during his days at the tronics store. It was embedded code you could hide anywhere, that ran itself every couple of minutes, and helped clean up some of the anomalous spam traffic. He used to put it on all his customers systems to help keep them clean. Technically it was virus, but it was designed to do good, so he didn’t feel very bad.

He scrolled down to the ‘make account’ section. He had put in his info, and was going to submit it. He hesitated. Acting on impulse, he checked out the source of the page, and there it was. Submitting would give you an account, and also install some pretty nasty stuff. He copied the page onto his comp, then edited his version and removed the nasty prize that was hidden. He created his account that way, then worked on his post. He left a generic greeting, noting the date, and why they were on the platform. He mentioned the embedded code he was leaving in his post, and wished the past and future community that it would be beneficial. He checked on the hidden code he’d left, and was satisfied it was running. He browsed for a little bit more, then checked his time. It was nearing the three hour mark, he better pack up and leave.

He jacked out, and shut down his comp, unplugged the cable. He decided to leave the splice there; maybe someone else could find it handy. Jamming everything back in his pack, he stood up and took a second to stretch his legs. As he did, he thought he saw a glint of something down the road. He stood still, trying to find it again. There, it was there! Maybe just something moving with the wind, but he decided to check it out really quick before heading back to the Lady Luck. He still had some time.

Max walked over to the spot where he thought he saw the object. He walked through part of a fallen structure, and looked at what he found. It was metallic foil of some kind, held down by a bit of rebar. He picked it up, and held it glinting in the sun. Well, that was one problem solved, he thought.

“Seriously, why are all techs so predictable?”

Max starteld and turned to the voice from his right. There was a girl sitting in the shade of the wall. She was around twenty, wearing dark pants and some sort of leathery short jacket. All these points were interesting, but what was most captivating about her was the pistol she held in her hand, pointed directly at his head. “I mean, you guys can never leave anything alone. You’re worse than nosy dragons.”

She stood up and walked to him, motioning with her gun to put his hands up. He complied, figuring there was nothing else to do.

“Ok, lets see what you’ve got here.” She began to use her free hand to check his pockets.

“Um, who are you?” Max asked. “And what the heck is going on?” He thought to himself.

“Ah ah, no questions yet there guy; I’ve got to get you back to the ship.” She reached into his hoodie. “Oh, what have we here?” She pulled out his beamgun, and smiled at him. “Better let me hold onto that. Ok,” she turned him around, “get marching.” And so he did.

It was slow going, eventually he didn’t keep his hands up because he kept tripping. The girl didn’t seem to mind too much., she probably was thinking this skinny tech wasn’t a threat or anything. And he had to smile, because she was pretty much right. He was pretty scared, though he was trying not to show it.

“So tell me, oh gun pointing one, you always picking up strange guys on abandoned platforms?”

She actually laughed. “Smooth, Goggles.”

He turned around confused, then realized he still had his oversized goggles on. He flushed a little, and pulled them down.

“Come on, we’ve got to move. Don’t talk anymore.” Her face lost her smile.

Her ship was apparently on the entire other side of the platform, so it took a while to get over there. Max hoped the Captain would come looking for him soon, his time was almost up, but he didn’t know if he’d come armed. He’d probably just think Max fell or got locked in somewhere.

Max and the girl turned a corner, and two more guards were stationed down the way. They had rifles, and the nearest one waved. The girl waved back. “Ok we’re just about there guy.”

They walked past the two guards, and tuned left. Max saw what appeared to be a large warehouse, but the large side door was open, and someone had managed to park a ship in there. It was a little longer than the Lady, but had one less Kartik on each side. It also had four or five cannons on top; the look of a fighter. You didn’t want to mess with this ship if you didn’t have to.

They walked in, and around to the back of the ship, where there was a ramp that went up. Max hesitated before it, but the girl nudged him in the back with her gun, “Oh no, you first. I insist.” Max walked up, and through the large cargo hatch.

Inside was a simple room, looked like it was originally designed to hold cargo. Now, there were several tables set up. One girl sat at one, about the same age as the one that brought him here. She looked up at them as they walked in, and smiled.

“Good job, sis.” She said. Max looked closer; no doubt about it that they were related.

“No problem, he’s been a good boy, haven’t you?” she said, patting his head as she walked past him. Max shook his head aside. She continued to the table, and set his beamgun down.

The girl sitting frowned. “Hmm, this is pretty nice, didn’t think someone like you could afford something this nice.. What do you think, Tami?” Tami, his abductor, just shrugged.

“Ok, lets start things off on a good foot. My name is Becca. That’s my sister, Tami. Together we run this ship, the Artifice. Before you ask, it was our parents who left the ship to us. They died, tragically before their time.” Becca looked up for moment, then smiled. “At least that’s what they want everyone to think. Tami and I just think they had a reason for disappearing.”

Tami, off to the side, nodded agreement.

“Regardless,” Becca continued, “we run the Artifice now. We’ve got a crew of hard working guys, and we pick up honest work when we can find it, and if not,” she paused, “well then we get what we can get. Which leads us to you. What’s your name?”

Max breathed for a moment. “My name’s Max Zikendroht. Yes,” he said as both girls smiled, “it’s a mouthful. Yes, it’s a wonder I got through my first school years.” As he was talking, he was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Ok, Mister Max, I’ll get right to the point,” Becca said, folding her fingers in front of her. “Our employer, who shall remain nameless, just wants to finish the deal. You promised him something, and he wants it.” She looked directly at him, no smile evident on her features. “Where is the map?”

“What? What’re you talking about?” Max was genuinely confused.

“Oh come on, that stupid look on your face is the best you can do?”

“Sorry, I’m not acting here.” At this, Tami laughed, and Max reddened a bit. “I mean, I’m not lying.”

Becca sighed. “Max, we know you met with our employers agent a couple months ago, claiming you found something of interest to him. Our employer was very interested. He offered you a substantial sum, half up front, quite generous actually.” The look on Becca’s face showed how dumb she thought that was. “You said you had to get it, and you’d meet with the agent in Lessen. Well you didn’t, did you? You vanished, then suddenly your ship left the docks. Now if it were me,” she said, spinning his beamgun around the table, “I would have though you’d try to back out on a deal. Our employer though just thinks you must’ve had a misunderstanding. So, just give us the map, and things will be ok. If you don’t,” she motioned over to the two burly guards that walked in behind them, “well then things might go bad for you.” She looked at him.

Max realized some things very quickly. They didn’t know about him replacing Miles, Miles was an asshole, and unless he figured something out soon, he was in big trouble.

Things started getting interesting when they were halfway to Brekenburg. They had been traveling a little over a week.

It was late at night, and Max was at his desk. He was pouring over the detailed engine schematics. There might be a way to finesse out some additional thrust if he could design some better operational software. Suddenly, the intercom emitted two deep electronic beeps.

“Systems alert”, a calm, synthesized voice said, “losing altitude. Estimate collision with the heavens in three hours.”

Max jumped out of his chair, grabbed his hoodie and made for the door. He ran down the hallway, turning to head up the steps to the bridge when he ran into Cobbs.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Cobbs shouted over the alarm. “Get to the Power Room!”

“Oh, right.” Max changed direction, and arrived to the Power Room. As he ran up to the main console between the two fusion plants, the alarm was silenced. Captain Parkins voice replaced it.

“Ok, we’re here in the bridge. Max, where are you?”

“In the Power Room.”

“Get running some diagnostics, we’ll see if we can find something on our end up here.”

Max started going through the systems one by one. In a couple minutes, he found the culprit.

“Captain, it looks like one of our power lines to the forward Kartik’s has ruptured.” He squinted, eyeing the diagram glowing on the console. “I think it’ll be easy to repair, but we’re going to have to be parked to do it. No way I can do this on the move.”

“Damn,” the Captain swore. “Ok, what if we just rerouted power to the remaining Kartik’s, how long would we have?”

Max crunched some numbers. “We could do it, but it’d be a close call to make it to Brekenburn, and we’d spend twenty times the fuel to make it there. I can’t reroute power to totally avoid that ruptured line, so we’d be leaking more and more energy the longer this goes on.”

“Hmm, ok. Well start the process to increase power to the Kartik’s we can get power too. Then head up to the bridge for a meeting.”

In twenty minutes, Max, Cobbs and the Captain were on the bridge, sitting around the map table/console.

“We’re here,” the Captain pointed to a small speck on the display. He tapped the screen, and flicked his finger around circularly, causing the map to zoom out. “Here is Brekenburg, but Max says it could be a little chancy to try and make it. So,” he looked up at the other two, “I say we head for this.” He pointed to a small symbol of an ‘A’ with a circle around it.

“What is it?” Max asked. “I don’t remember hearing of any settlements or anything over that way.”

“That’s because it’s not,” the Captain answered. “It’s an abandoned platform, left ages ago. It’s already been scrapped of just about everything of value, but the Kartik’s are still keeping the big girl aloft. There’s a couple places I know of there that we could set down and make repairs.”

“How big is this big girl?” Max asked.

“A dozen blocks or so. A couple spots on the ends that looked like warehouses, we can set down there. What do you guys think?”

Max shrugged, “Sounds fine to me, I’m all for playing it safe.”

“I’m not a big fan of ghost platforms,” Cobbs said, “but it’s our smartest option. I say do it.”

“Ok,” the Captain stood up, and went to the command chair. He began entering new coordinates, and the Lady Luck began to make her corrections, the ship listing to the right a bit as she did so.

“We should arrive in about eight hours, so a little after dawn. I suggest we all try to get as much sleep as we can.”

\ - \

The next morning, everyone was up early. Cobbs had whipped up some strong coffee, and all three of them were enjoying a cup on the bridge. No one said a word for some time, each enjoying the view of the dawn. They cleared a large cloud on the left, and a dark speck lay on top of the heavens.

“Hah, there we are.” said the Captain. “I knew we were getting close. Cobbs, set a course for the platform.”

An hour later, the Lady Luck was losing altitude, preparing to set down on the derelict platform. Max had all the external feeds being recorded; he wanted to look at all this in detail later.

The little town was severely decayed; most of the buildings had toppled, or had its roof collapsed. All kinds of debris littered the streets. Still, for all its damage, Max could use his imagination and visualize how people once lived here, maybe walking along that road to get food for the day, over there meeting a friend.. At the same time, the emptiness of the place was a little creepy.

The Captain found a good spot to land; it looked like the back lot of an old warehouse. He circled the area once, the Kartik’s on the ship whipping the air around, causing debris and who knows what else blowing around. He extended the landing struts, and gently set her down. The Captain made sure they were secure, then shut down the Kartik lift generators. The ship creaked as it put its full support on the struts.

“Well we’re down,” said the Captain. “Max, take whatever you need from the shop, and get out there. The sooner we can repair this, the sooner we can be gone. I don’t relish the idea of sitting here like a big fat target for long.” He swung his gaze over to Cobbs. “You, I want you to stay at your station, and keep using the imagers to sweep for anything unusual.” Cobbs nodded his agreement.

“Ok, lets not stand around ladies, we have things to do.”

Max and the Captain were walking towards the cargo bay. “Quick question, Captain,” Max asked. “Do you think we could jack into the local network? There might be some interesting things hanging around still, I’d like to check it out.”

The Captain shook his head. “No can do. These abandoned platforms have had their networks booby trapped by who knows how many otaku. We tap in, and it could fry our own little network here.”

“Oh ok,” Max said. “Just an idea.”

Max put the last finishing blobs of epoxy overtop the line. It was tough, but he’d managed to use the existing line, and just needed to put another good seal on top. Satisfied with his work, he climbed down the hull, jumping the last meter. He ran inside, and caught the Captain.

“Captain, we’re all sealed up. I ran a check up there, and the splice is working fine.”

“Good work, that was fast. How soon can we be off this place?”

Max gave a worried look. “Well, it’ll take a couple of hours before the epoxy hardens fully. I’d hate to have it come off in flight.”

The Captain sighed. “Ok, we’ll wait a couple of hours then. Not much else we can do.”

Max got a hopeful look on his face. “Hey Captain, you think, since we’re stuck here for a bit anyway, I could go and try to find a network port? I won’t be connecting the ship,” he added quickly, “just my portable comp. I’m really curious as to what sorts of degradation have happened.”

The Captain thought for a moment. “Ok, but be back in three hours. Any longer, and we’ll leave you.”

Later, Max had his gear in a pack slung over his shoulder, walking down the hallway to the cargo bay. He had his hoodie on, and his underarm holster with it’s cradled beamgun gave him confidence. He stopped in the shop, to see if there was anything else he’d need. He paused in front of the armory cabinet. He opened it, and took a quick inventory of what was inside. There were a couple rifles, some higher caliber weapons, and some spare parts for the deck cannons. Something at the bottom caught his eye.

He picked up one of the shaft devices, and inspected it. It was a baton, the kind used to distract the mechanical dragons.  When activated, it emitted a brilliant light, and dragons would go after it, since energy is food to them.  It made these a tasty snack, and was handy to help distract a dragon from yourself.  Max didn’t think he’d seen any dragons flying about in the city, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Thinking it could come in handy, he snagged one and put it in his hoodie pocket. Now, feeling over-armed for what he wanted to do, he walked out the cargo bay and into the deserted platform.

\ - \

In one of the higher buildings on the other side of the abandoned town, a lone figure lay prone on the roof. His hands held a set of magnifiers, and he had them trained on the lone figure walking away from the ship.

“Hmm,” he grunted, and began to shimmy away from the ledge. He crawled over to the other side, and looked town to one of the warehouses. Two more men stood outside it with rifles, guarding the area. he man on the roof used a small pocket mirror to get their attention, then flashed the following message.

“Repairs on ship done. target appearing to make way into the city. Recommend high stealth abduction.”

The cold air pierced the guards core when she cleared the airlock. She felt compelled to huddle his hands around her mouth, to warm them on her exhaled breath. She fought this urge, since that required moving the air filtration mask aside, and that was not going to happen. She hated this detail. It was going to be the damned death of her, she knew. This deep in heaven and there was no way she wouldn’t catch something, even if it was in the wake of the platform.

She peered over the side, barely making out the net that surrounded Amp’s lower half. At night it lit up in a cross-stitched pattern that could be seen for kilometers around. It was never truly dark in Amp. Now, in the early afternoon it was a thin mesh of thread bellowing in the mist.

Securing the baton at her waist, she took hold of the hand rail and began the slow march along the catwalk. It was going to be a long shift. If she had given it any forethought she may have backed out of that card game. Still convinced the game had been rigged, she felt like kicking herself in the head for not realizing that she was being baited along. Now that she was stuck with an extra shift, she really wanted to kick the other guy in the head. Or the teeth.

Slamming down her fist on the hand rail brought her back from her reverie. Though no guard in Amp would admit to having even the mildest case of vertigo, day dreaming out on perimeter could become rather unpleasant if ones footing became confused at the wrong moment. Sighing with resolve, the guard continued her march.

The mid-afternoon shift was responsible for checking the turbines and ventilation shafts. She wasn’t exactly sure what function they served, since no one would want to breath the air down here. Rumors said that the Order used them to collect the damned stuff for some sort of processing deep in the guts of the city. She didn’t care either way. What she did know was the damage a stray dragon could cause if it found an opening in one of the shafts. It only took one complete district blacking out for the city guard to take on this responsibility.

An hour later she came to her first way station. It was a small box of a building, not more than four meters to a side. Each station is attached to the main platform by a track that attaches on the bottom of the room. In the case of an emergency the room would become an elevator that would proceed up the track and into a holding area where the occupants would wait to be retrieved. The city guard knew how ridiculous the mechanism really was. Even if the stations still worked, there would be no rescue party. No one knew how to use the comm interface, and most of the lower city was quarantined by the Order. Despite their uselessness, they served as break areas for guards working the perimeter, so she was thankful. With any luck the last shift left behind some warm food. At the very least she would get out of the open air for a bit.

Inside she found shelves stocked with bags of water along one wall, and small table shoved into the corner, a pile of foil bagged strewn across it. Shoving her weight against the door to make sure it shut completely, she slid down to the floor, her arms hugging her legs to her for warmth. The station was surprisingly well insulated, and soon she could feel the numbness leaving her appendages, leaving them sore and heavy. She slowly rocked back and forth, suddenly jumping up in one motion. The card game had lasted late into the morning, and she was feeling it. Better to move about to avoid falling asleep. She still had two more stations to visit before this shift was over, and she could probably sneak in a nap at her last stop.

Stretching her arms above her head and stifling a yawn, she walked over to the console bay. Unzipping her jacket halfway, she pulled a small canister out of her jacket. One end of the memory stick was a cap that protected the interface connectors inside. Twisting until she heard the familiar click, and then pulling the cap off with a soft pop, she slid back the casing window that protected the interface port on the console bay and lightly stabbed the memory drive in. The screen flicked on, two blinking underscores appearing in the upper corners. She pulled off a glove and began pecking her login. After she put in her name and ID number, she removed her other glove, impatient to type out her 30-digit password with one hand.

Finishing her login she put in the command without looking at the prompt. She and some of the guards had taken it upon themselves to write a small script that ran all of the programs that mounted the memory drive and download the content of the consoles small cache. She noticed the light on the side of the canister began blinking green in sync with the text being output to the monitor. The left cursor moved right leaving behind a trail of characters. It stopped halfway across the monitor before vanishing and reappearing at the left side, streaming line after line of logins and times. At the same time the right cursor moved down, intricate kanji falling down the screen until it reached halfway down the screen. Like its horizontal counterpart it began a new line at the top, moving left one line in each iteration, until meeting the edge of the of the time logs.

These upper two quadrants quickly filled up with text, and began pushing the first lines off screen as the cursors continued churning out characters.

Being two quick to read as it was being uploaded to the memory drive, she instead looked at the bottom of the screen. On the lower right were the statistics for the station. Temperature outside and in, average wind speed, supply drop-off times. The last time water had been delivered here was over three years ago. She sneered at the prospect of how awful it must taste, if it didn’t her outright. The food packets, however, had been brought in by the morning shift the day prior. She had skipped breakfast to make it to her shift on time, her disdain for station food being overruled by her stomach’s insistence for nourishment.

Taking off her air filtration mask and helmet she ran her hand back over her head and tugged on her pony-tail. It had become loose, and she would have to put it back up before leaving the station. Tossing the gear on top of the monitor she noticed the green light had become red on the memory drive. Expecting the yellow that signified her drive uploading its info to the console, she wiped the helmet and mask aside to see what alert the console was given. In the lower left quadrant there was a listing of messages. All except one had been read, with the last one being highlighted as new.

The skin around her eyes tightened as she squinted at the line. There was no sender information, nor was there any time-stamp. There was only a subject, two characters that took her a moment to comprehend:

危険

The characters meant danger. Her hand moved to the keyboard, but she stopped short of loading the message. She made a scan of the room. Holding her breath she strained against her heartbeat to hear the tale-tell whistling of a crack in the wall. She looked over at the emergency panel that would activate the retraction mechanism, sealing her up inside the platform. Convinced it had not been tampered with she turned her attention to the message. As she confirmed her selection that quadrant of the screen scaled to fill the entire monitor. Just then her memory drive chose to sync its data with the console, slowing the rendering of the message on the screen. The header loaded, all fields empty except of the subject.

The message began to write, the yellow light blinking rapidly as the interface bandwidth filled with time-stamps and logs. A character appeared.

> b

Her eyes shot back up to the subject line, as if she had misread the subject line. The symbols read the same, her attention being drawn to the second character being written.

> b4

Thinking quickly, she tried to remember the procedures she did at the stations. She was familiar with l-users using chat speak on some boards she frequented, but she couldn’t imagine what was dangerous, or what it would be “before”. She looked at the memory drive, fighting the urge to rip it out. She knew it would likely crash the console. She looked back in time to see the next character.

> b4k

Convinced it wasn’t an abbreviation, she wracked her brain for an answer. There was no reason for it to be encrypted. Perhaps it wasn’t for her, and it was a special code for someone else. After waiting a few moments and not seeing any more characters appear, she began cursing the memory drive. A system sound beeped from a small speaker in the console, signaling the memory drive was done. She looked at the monitor in time to see the cursor write out the rest of the message.

> b4k4 ^_^

b4k4. Baka. Fool.

She slammed her fist against the console, visibly distorting the text on the screen. Tightly gripping the memory drive with her fist, she yanked the device from the port, nearly breaking off the tip in the process.

“Fucking otaku.”

Several hours later, Lessen was almost out of sight, and the sun was getting close to setting. The sun was already reflecting off heaven, the clouds a pale orange. Max braved the cold for a bit and was standing out on the forward deck. The wind was biting, and he tried to zip up his hoodie even farther than it already was, and adjusted his round goggles. He heard a clang behind him, and he saw the Captain walk out, his jacket cinched up snugly around him.

“Dinner’s in five minutes Max. Do yourself a favor, and don’t be late. Cobbs’ll take is personally.” He leaned against the rail next to Max. He gazed out over heaven, “beautiful, isn’t it? I never get tired of the view.” Max nodded in agreement.

Exactly five minutes later, the Captain and Max went inside and walked towards the galley. The wonderful aroma of curry hit Max before they had even made it past the Power Room. By the time they walked into the galley, Max could hardly wait to eat. Still, even he wasn’t prepared for what he found.

The little table had linens, actual linens; a deep green tablecloth with matching napkins. The dishes were a fine ceramic, and Cobbs had even put some flowers in the center. On the counter next to it, all the dishes were prepared, staying warm in heated containers.

Cobbs walked from behind the counter with a satisfied look on his face. “Everythings hot, come help yourselves.”

Max didn’t need a second invitation. He grabbed his place and was soon sitting down to some of the best food he’d ever had. “Cobbs, this is some amazing curry.”

“Oh thanks,” Cobbs replied, “‘it’s not my best, but it’s ok. I figured I’d save my better dishes for later, when we’re farther out. Give us something to look forward to.”

They all ate in silence for a little while, focusing on the very important task in front of them. After a while, the Captain grabbed some salt as he said, “So Max, tell us a little about yourself.”

Max took a big gulp tea, then launched into the abridged version of his biography, complete with latest female woes. The Captain and Cobbs were a good audience, and when he got to the topic of his ex, both men shouted in agreement.

“Women are the only constant in the slice, Max. They never know what they want, and it’s always our fault for not magically knowing.” Cobbs said.

An evil smile lit up the Captains face. “Or they think you do know, then they chase you all the way to the docks, and you have to beg your brave Captain to leave port early.”

Cobbs laughed. “Hey that was different, how was I supposed to know she would get so attached? I met her one freaking time!”

Everyone laughed now. Max began to feel at home.

Max checked his pocket watch; he still had some time to kill before he had to meet Paul at the store. He took the long way back, passing the various haunts that had become his world these past six years. Familiar faces looked out at his figure walking down the street and smiled. Max would wave back, and savor the moment. It’s tough to move on, but staying in one area and stagnating isn’t a pretty option either. Max knew it was time for him to pass through, so he enjoyed making these last interactions with the people he had known.

He walked up to the storefront just as Paul was arriving. He looked uncomfortable. Max opened the door to the store, and they both went in without saying a word. A few minutes later, both men emerged, Max dragging along his steamer trunk of personal belongings. It barely fit down the narrow streets of Lessen.

“Well I guess this is it,” Paul said. He motioned Max over, and sat his satchel on top of the steamer trunk. “I wish I could give you more, as your severence package, as it were”, Paul smiled, “but I think these might suffice.” He pulled out a small metal box, and motioned to Max. Max lifted the lid, and stared in surprise.

In the right side of the box, a dozen comp nodes were arraigned in small slots. He picked one up gently and peered at the circuitry behind it’s protective clear casing. The intricate designs told him this five by five centimeter, flat comp node was top of the line. A quick scan revealed the rest were of similar quality. Each comp node was equivalent to a little over a months salary. Max whistled in appreciation.

Paul looked a little proud of himself. “I figured since you’re going to be traveling, it’d be better to have something you could sell easily anywhere, instead of a pile of mighty Lessen Krona. Plus, you might want to use a couple.” Max could only shake his head in agreement.

He softly set the node back in it’s little slot, and focused his attention on the other item in the box. It was a gun, obviously, but not like one Max had ever seen before. It was made of a fairly bright blue alloy, the grip covered with a coat of arms, something with a silver shield. He picked it up, noting how light it was. Max took was a sharp intake of breath as he realized what it could be. His deft fingers found the casing release clips, and with a satisfying click the top housing hinged upwards. A small energy pack glowed faintly underneath.

“A beam weapon! I can’t believe it, I’ve never seen one so intricate before.” Paul was as excited as a schoolboy again, eager to explain it’s features. It felt to Max like they were on one of their trips again, and had just found a particularly interesting piece.

“I’ve had this for a while, took it with us on our trips actually, for protection. The beauty of this is it’s not just a beam weapon, it’s one of the best. It’s energy consumption is very low, you can squeeze off almost sixty shots before you’d need to recharge. Also,” he pulled the weapon from Max’s hand and showed him a slide switch on the side, “you can change the power output. With a full charge, and this set to full power, you could stop a dragon.” Max stared at Paul. Paul reddened. “Actually, you’d probably just make it angry, but still.” He closed the housing on top, and handed the gun back to Max. “I put the underarm holster I used in there too.” Paul gestured to the faded brown leather piece at the bottom. “Fit’s great, and you don’t draw a lot of attention to yourself.”

“Paul..” Max started, “this is really too much. Take it, use the money for your wife’s treatments.” Paul waved it away.

“Are you kidding me? She wanted to give you half of my private stash. If I take this back with me she’d kill me.”

“Well, thanks a lot.”

Paul looked at Max and said, “if you break it I’ll find you and kick your ass.” Max knew he was only partially joking.

With a final handshake they parted ways, and Max walked down the narrow streets of Lessen, his steamer trunk rumbling behind him.

He found a inn a little ways down the road. He used to come here all the time for a drink after work, so he was considered a regular. The owners were surprised he was bringing luggage with him, more surprised still when he asked for a room. In no time at all he was situated in one of the nicer rooms in the place, his steamer trunk occupying one of the corners.

First thing he did was pull out his portable comp, flip it over and take it apart. In fifteen minutes, he replaced his old controller chip with one of the high-sale ones he’d received from Paul. He jacked the comp in, and booted it up.

It took about twenty seconds to come up, as opposed to the standard two minutes. The interface was slicker and faster than most of the stuff he’d ever seen. Feeling that warm sensation that can only come from a tech getting new hardware to play with, he hopped on the local net.

He scrolled down and saw he had a new message from Parkins, the captain of a small private rigger. Max had contacted him last week, answering one of the ads Parkins had placed for a head tech/engineer. He scanned down the message, his face lighting up as he read. Hmm, apparently he’d made inquiries around the docks about him, and he’d received a glowing recommendation from various people.

At this Max smiled. He had probably ran into Captain Berk. Paul and him had voyaged on Berk’s ship last year, and during a run in with the local authorities, Max had managed to overwrite the docking protocols and allowed them to escape an unwelcome search and seizure.

Max read on. It appeared he had the job, and the Captain wanted him working by the twenty-first. Great, that’s tomorrow!”, Max thought. “Still, I’ve heard good things about him and his ship, the Lady Luck.”

He checked some of his frequent local haunts online. The local otaku’s were arguing some more about the legitimacy of some members claiming to communicate with dragons via their thoughts when they’re close.

Max pushed his seat back and looked at the ceiling as he thought about dragons. He never was comfortable with them, which is a funny thing for a tech. Most are major otakus themselves, arguing the dragons history, whether more of the synthetic beasts are being made in some forgotten automated factory, and so on. Max never really caught the addiction, apparently. There was something unsettling to him about the metallic creatures.

There didn’t appear to be any outer syncs; no new ships had come in today, so no news from off Lessen. He shut down the comp, stood up and made his way over to the steamer trunk. He pulled the blue metallic beamgun from out of its holster and held it. Damn but it felt good in his hand.

The next day he got up early, showered and dressed. He hesitated in front of the trunk, then put on the underarm holster, adjusting the straps as he did so. he slid the beamgun in it’s snug leathery home, then pulled an Enercom green zip-up hoodie. (One of Philip’s gifts he had swiped from work.) Satisfied that the holster didn’t make any discernible bulge, he pulled his green beanie over his head and headed out the door, dragging the beat up trunk behind him.

Twenty minutes of walking got him to the docks. He paused a moment, taking it all in. There were about half a dozen ships in port, their Kartik lift generators pulsing, keeping the ships aloft. Max still wondered at the world in which he lived, the Slice. The clouds of heaven thousands of feet below, their poisonous layers forever keeping humanity sealed off from the ground. They were restricted to inhabitating only the higher of mountain ranges, and of course the hovering city platforms, like Lessen. There wasn’t a boy or girl who wondered at what lay beneath those clouds. Some sailors claimed to have made it below the clouds and back, and spoke of incredible firepower nearly blowing there ships out of the air. Most believed that to be tall tales, and that any ship that fell into the heavens was lost forever. Max didn’t know what was true. What he did know is the view he saw, an azure sky with an infinite cloud base beneath it, never ceased to be beautiful.

He worked his way towards the Lady Luck, her berth on one of the far docks. As he got closer, he admired the ships lines. It was about sixty meters long, the deck comprised of three solar panel sails. Four Kartik generators on each side were pointed downward and emitting their reassuring, gravity defying bluish light. He could see into the bridge, it’s glass covered observation section taking up most of the tower section in the middle of the hull. At the top, various antennae covered the top, as well as scanner dishes. The main cargo door on the side of the ship was open, and two men were already at work moving cargo back and forth, using a lifter. As Max got closer, he could hear the two arguing.

“What are you, a Tabera? Distribute the containers evenly moron, otherwise we’ll have the Kartik’s running overtime!” Captain Perkins shouted to the lifter operator.

“If you’ll stop yelling and pay attention, you’ll see that’s exactly what I’m doing, you moron”, the operator shouted in response.

“Oh for the love of..” the Captain looked like he was going to go into another tirade when he saw Max standing there to the side. “Oh, hey there. Max, right?” the Captain said, motioning him closer. He made his way to the loading dock. Captain Parkins was in his late forties, mostly grey hair, and a larger than average gut. Still, he was the kind of person you could tell had about five centimeters of fat on him, then you hit solid muscle.

“Max Zikendroht, pleasure to meet you sir,” Max said, offering his hand. A small smile played on Captain Parkins face, and he batted Max’s hand away.

“This isn’t the navy, don’t sir me. I don’t know what you did to these local farts, but I think just mentioning your name and they’d trip over themselves trying to talk of your godlike skills. If you’re half as good they say, I’ll be happy. Welcome aboard.” He clapped his arm around Max’s shoulder, and led him into the docking bay.

“Cobbs, stop playing around with that thing and meet our new tech!” The lifter stopped it’s gliding around and came to a stop near them. With a hiss, the canopy opened, and a red-haired man exited the lifter. He was around thirty, with a beet-red face that looked like it was always that color. His face had an easy grin on it as he greeted him.

“Oh, so you have another person to mother over, eh Parkins?” He smiled, shaking Max’s hand firmly.

“If I didn’t keep an eye on you, we’d have the best furnished galley in the slice, but no cargo,” the Captain retorted. “Max, this is Fraser Cobbs, my first officer. Actually, my only other officer, and a good thing too. He can’t even manage to get out of his bunk on time.” Before Cobbs could interrupt, the Captain continued. “He’s a good guy overall though, not totally worthless for company.”

You’ll see,” the Captain said as he began to lead them through the ships corridors, “that this is a pretty small ship. It holds a lot of tonnage; actually the Kartik generators can handle a cargo load of almost five thousand stone. Still, it doesn’t take more that two or three crew to handle the Lady. It has quarters for five, but we use the two spare rooms for passengers.”

“You get many passengers?” Max asked.

“Here and there. If we have one per cargo run, that’s pretty good for us. Here we are.” The Captain pointed to the door they just walked up to. “Here are your quarters.” He pushed open the door, and Max peered inside. It was fairly spacious, as far as ships were concerned. He had a desk, that had a bunk overtop it. There was a small couch and even a small table. This would have excited him more if it wasn’t for the fact that trash was everywhere.

“Eh, yes, sorry about the mess.” the Captain looked embarrassed. “These were our last tech’s quarters. Miles, our last tech, kind of left in a hurry. By that I mean I threw him off the ship when we were six hours away from Lessen. I found he was taking double his sugar ration.”

Max threw a quick look back at the Captain, not believing what he heard. His eyes met the Captains, who nodded seriously. Then Cobbs and him couldn’t hold it and started laughing.

“Gods no, we don’t throw crew over the side, though I want to often enough.” He indicated towards Cobbs, and Cobbs tried his best to look wounded.

“Seriously though, something came up with Miles’ family. He hopped off the Lady once we hit the dock, didn’t even take his stuff with him. He didn’t say he’d be back, so if any of this junk looks interesting to you, it’s yours. Come with me, Cobbs will put your trunk in your room. Met me show you the rest of the Lady Luck.”

Over the next ten minutes, they made their way from one end of the ship to the other. Max was happy that the power room was in mostly good shape. He was worried it would be as bad as the previous techs quarters. The galley was one of the finest he’d seen. Cobbs had caught up with them, and was showing off one innovation in there after another. From the look of things, Max knew he’d be eating well, at least. The bridge was pretty standard; a Captains chair with two stations in front, all set in front of a wrap around bay window. Looking out the window, you could see all the way down the hull. The only weapons on the ship had in its arsenal were two small-caliber cannons on the deck, one all the way forward, on behind the bridge. After showing Max how to use the basic functionality of the stations, they made their way back.

“Ok that’s the VIP tour,” the Captain said, and stopped back in front of Max’s new quarters. “Now, a little bit of not fun things to discuss. The slice is a dangerous place, so I don’t begrudge you having a sidearm in that holster of yours.”

“Well Captain if..”

“No it’s fine. We all carry a little something special around.” The Captain lifted out his coat, revealing a ridiculously large revolver. The thing was a .50 caliber or something; it could take down a bear. “My only rule is this; the first time you ever pull it on me, or anyone on this ship, you die.” He stopped smiling and put his hand on Max’s shoulder. “I promise you that.”

“Now, why don’t you get situated here, and meet me in the Power Room in about an hour.” With that, the Captain walked away, leaving Max standing in front of his new home.

He opened the door again, holding an infantile hope that maybe all the trash was magically gone. A quick peek revealed no such luck. “This Miles guy must’ve been one serious packrat,” Max thought. There were spare components all over the place, most of them appeared to be not worth salvaging. He pushed his trunk to the side of the room, near the desk, and began to sort through the mess.

He found several newly made computing nodes in the pile, which although weren’t nearly as good as the nodes he’d received from Paul, were still at least functional. And of course, Max didn’t want to start using his private stock of comp nodes to improve the ship, unless he had to.

He took a quick trip to the small shop area, and grabbed a couple bins he could use to collect the junk he’d throw away. Within thirty minutes he had three bins he was pushing down the corridor, to the shop and it’s awaiting trash storage.

He lifted up the chute’s hatch, and began dropping the the pieces down. When he was working on his second bin, one of the items caught his eye. He picked it out, and gave it a more thorough glance. It appeared, initially to be a spare power regulator, its circuitry burned out. Worthless. But the housing underneath was bigger than usual.

Max glanced up at the electric LED wall clock and saw his hour was nearly up, so he put the curious piece aside, and threw the rest of the junk away. When that was done, he went to the Power Room.

He only had to wait a couple minutes before Captain Parkins walked through the door.

“Ok, we’ve got some time here to kill before Cobbs is finished loading the rest of the cargo, so lets go over the basics. Why don’t you tell me what you’re seeing here, and explain it to me?”

Max cleared his throat. “Ok, well obviously you have two fusion plants here,” pointing to the twin large metallic columns that took up much of the room. On the side of each column, a tall, narrow panes of thick Plexiglas allowed for a view inside. These narrow slits all emitted a dim purplish light, the only part of the fusion reaction that falls in the visual spectrum.

Max pointed to the fusion plant nearest him. “It looks like this one run th..”

“That’s ‘A’, the one behind it is ‘B’,” the Captain interrupted. “Sorry, just makes it easier to reference them.”

Max nodded, agreeing. “Alright, so it looks like fusion plant ‘A’ here feeds power to the engines and the Kartiks.” He traced the thick power conduits that ran from ‘A’ along the ceiling and out towards the stern of the ship. The Captain nodded in agreement.

“Lets see, so that means ‘B’ handles mostly everything else, running the equipment, lighting, and so on.”

“That’s partially right,” the Captain said. “Our solar sails help out there too. These lines here,” and pointed to several conduit lines in the spaghetti-like pattern on the wall, “take the solar energy thats collected and distributes it to the power grid. We’ve only had them a couple of months, the solar sails,” the Captain explained. “Their dual functionality is great though. If we can, I try to get the Lady in a good trade wind and let the wind do a lot of our propulsion work for us. And on a sunny day, the panels on the sails contribute to almost half of the energy needed to keep the ships systems running. Though I swear,” the Captain smiled, “sometimes Cobbs powers up that range of his in the galley and the lights flicker.”

Max laughed.

“Well you do know your stuff, and thats a relief to me,” said the Captain. “You’ve got a grasp of the basics of how the Lady runs, once we’re underway you’ll start learning a lot more in here, I know.”

“Yes, Captain, I’m looking forward to it.” The Captain had this don’t-brownnose-me look on his face. “No really,” Max said, “I have a lot of experience repairing ship components, but in a shop, you know? It’ll be neat to actually see it all working together for a change.”

“Alright, now it’s time to check out the Engine Room.” Max and the Captain went to through the door that exited towards the rear. It was a really small room; the fat, twin sideways engines taking up most of the space and going into the far end. They were, by far, the biggest engines Max had ever worked on, by a factor of at least three. He could feel the excitement at having new big toys to play with. The Captain went over the basics for a couple minutes, and then they were done.

“We’ll be departing in a couple hours, once Cobbs finishes getting our provisions. He’s probably in the market now, haggling over some peaches or something.”

“You don’t have any responsibilities right now, so if I were you I’d go to your quarters and write your messages if you have any. We’ll be out for a couple weeks, so this is your last chance.” With that, the Captain walked away.

Max went back to his room, and sat down at his new desk. He rested his forearms on the desk, the chill polished metal causing goosebumps. He powered up his portable comp, and hopped on the Lessen Network. Checked his mail, but the directory was still empty.

Although he was pretty sure she wouldn’t write him back, he was still a little put out by it. He wrote her last night, letting her know he was leaving today. They dated for almost a year, and here he was, signing up on a ship and shipping off. There was a good chance he’d never ever come back to Lessen, the least she could to is say goodbye properly to him, like he tried to do to her.

It hurt to think that she now cared so little for him that she didn’t bother to response. He pushed his chair back and stared at the lighting that wrapped around the room. For several minutes he lost himself to memories.

The worst part was, somehow when they broke up he lost all his friends too. She had made sure to let everyone know her side of the story, and spun it in such a way to make Max out to be a real jerk. He’d tried to tell his version, but by then everyones minds were made up. The last six months had been terribly lonely.

“Ok, lets pity ourselves some more, why don’t we?” Max said to the walls. Trying to push those unsightly memories from his mind, he focused his attention again on his comp.

He checked out the local news, nothing too terribly exciting had been going on. It looked like Doctor Keyes was due in a couple days, and he’d be bringing along his working prototype for the Beacon Relay System. His idea of small, helium based hovering platforms relaying light messages from platform to platform was becoming pretty popular recently. After all, who wouldn’t like to be able to communicate with nearby platform cities?

Max, however, was one of the skeptics. Doctor Keyes still hadn’t come up with a way to overcome the fact that the relays would be totally worthless when visibility became poor. Until he could come up with a good idea for that, which Max doubted he could, it would be a useless invention.

He read some other articles, then got down to message writing. He sent one to Paul, letting him know he’d made it ok. He also wrote one to Philip, keeping him updated. He was pondering writing one last message to his ex, when the network light on the comp blinked off. The data cable to the ship had been disconnected.

“Hey Max,” the intercom crackled to life, and the Cobbs voice emerged. “Make your way up to the bridge in five minutes, we’re getting ready to get underway.”

With a heave, he opened the door and walked onto the bridge. Cobbs was manning the left station, and motioned to Max to take the right one. Max and the Captain took their chairs. His console lit up when Max sat down, and he looked over the data on his screen. He had views of pretty much every aspect of the ship, from energy flow, to Kartik calibrations and everything inbetween.

“Don’t change any settings Max,” Cobbs said, “just keep an eye on what we’re doing.”

The Captain leaned on his chair, and used his small side console to initiate the communication beacon. He entered the following message: “Lessen control, this is the Lady Luck, docking bay fourteen. Requesting permissions to clear moors and head out.”

Outside, the comms beacon on top of the bridge rotated to point to the control tower, and began flashing out the message using a highly focused light. Inside, Cobbs console was mostly taken up with an outside feed that was zoomed in on the control tower. After several moments, he started seeing the tower flash back it’s response. Underneath the feed, software began interpreting the flashes, and translated them below.

“Captain, we’ve got clearance.”

“Ok Cobbs, decouple all mooring clamps. Fire up the forward engines, and back us out, twenty percent thrust.”

Max felt the ship power up, and the near inaudible humming of the engines slowly became a little louder. The docking couplings disconnected, and the ship shuddered as she drifted free, and the Kartik’s responded. Max pulse quickened, and he felt the ship hovering fully on it’s own power, no longer rigidly connected to something solid. (Or, more solid than she was, anyway) He could feel the beginnings of inertia, and he saw the ship slowly begin to back up.

The Lady Luck pulled out of the dock. Once it cleared the end, it rotated one eighty degrees while moving away from Lessen. Once she was turned around, the solar panel sails fanned open, the twin rear engines glowed to full strength, and the Lady Luck began to pull away from the platform city.

Max pulled up a feed from one of the rear cameras, and took a look at Lessen. It was still early morning, and the town was all abuzz. The wind generators on top of all the buildings were rotating swiftly, giving the appearance that the platform city was buzzing away from them. Within moments, the Lady Luck was far enough away now that he could see the massive generators underneath the floating city, keeping the his whole past world aloft.

Max realized he’d forgotten to ask a critical question.

“Ah, Captain where are we taking the cargo?”

A sharp laugh echoed behind him. “Wondered when you’d ask that question, though it’s a little late now if you don’t like it. We’re going taking this load of textiles to Brekenburg.”

Max woke up five minutes before his alarm was set to go off. He rolled over, saw the time, and groaned. Some habits are hard to break. There was no point trying to go back to sleep; you can’t do much with a extra couple minutes. He lay still for a moment, as if gathering his energy.

“Yosh!” he said, throwing the blanket aside. He wanted today to be a good day. His last day at his job should be a good one.

He stumbled through his morning routine. Hopped in the shower, and took the time to towel it down when he was done. He went to the kitchen/eating area of the small apartment, grabbed the last breakfast bar out of the pantry. He took a pride in the fact that he’d timed this all out so well. His last day in his apartment over the store, and all his food stores was gone. He put on some clean clothes, took a deep breath, and walked downstairs to the store.

Seeing the store this empty made him sad. The tronic store had been his home for over six years. He’d learned much in that time, from how to run a business to becoming one of the local experts in tronic tech. His regulars, scroungers who were always looking for that special CPU node, or dragon interface, had been pleading with him ever since he announced the imminent closure. He wished he could help, but it was the owners decision.

Although he wasn’t necessarily happy he was becoming unemployed and losing his home in the same day, he knew the reasons why. The owner Paul’s wife, the nice smaller Brakenburg woman who’d fell in love with the owner on one of our scrounging adventures, had fallen sick several months ago. The health tech center, the best in Lessen, assured that several hours per week in the Martin pod would keep her cancers at bay indefinitely. That much time in a Martin pod would cost a small fortune in the long run. Max remembered how, in the last couple months, himself and Paul made three trips to different medical centers in the area, all the way out to the Engervil platform. All said the same thing. We even started to put together our own Martin pod, Paul thinking the health techs were lying about the amount of energy require to run it per hour. He still remembered the owners face, that crushed look, when our early experiments proved those things took enormous amounts of energy to run. The only recourse was to sell the tronic store. Paul was a good guy, Max was promised a sizable amount of Krona as a bonus for all the hard work over the years. His wife even embarrassed him by offering their house anytime, if Max was having troubles finding a new place to live.

He shook his head, as if to shake the daydreams out, and opened the store for the last time. The shelves, once piled high with scavenged tronics from all over, were now mostly bare. His job today was to pack the rest up into boxes, and make sure the last several repairs he’d done were picked up by their owners.

By noon most of the work was done. Everything was packed, and only Philip’s data node was left to be picked up. Max knew Philip well. A regular customer, he would wait until the last minute to pick it up. Philip was more shaken up about Max moving than Max was. He knew Philip was just upset because now he couldn’t take his normal two hour trips to visit the tronic shop, and greedily inspect the newest haul by their latest scrounging trip.

Ten minutes to closing exactly, Max was proved right. The door chime booped enthusiastically, announcing someones arrival. (He momentarily got sad; today was the last time he’d hear that familiar sound. Then he became embarrassed, admonishing himself for acting like an infant, and not the twenty-six year old man he had become.) Philip sauntered in the door, his short, pudgy frame barely making it though.

“You look like you just ran a marathon; you’re sweating like a climate conditioner,” said Max.

“Oh I’m sorry, Mr. Walked-Ten-Meters today. Do you even leave this tronic paradise of yours?” Phillip said, huffing up to the counter with a grin. He took his normal spot, leaned in heavily and looked down in the display case on instinct. “Your inventory is somewhat lacking of late, Novice Zikendroht.”

“I never should have told you my last name”, Max said, “I thought someone with the last name of Flinker would understand my pain. Sounds like a disease. And,” Max said quickly before Phillip could argue, “I’m half as old as you and know just as much or more than you do, old man. A novice I’m not.”

“Bah,” Phillip said with a wave of his meaty hand, “you young punks know nothing.”

“So, you finally going to pick up that data cube that YOU couldn’t fix but I could?” Max stood triumphantly.

Phillip gave a small smile. “Yeah I suppose.” Max turned around and went to the workbench, Phillip in tow. With a flick of a switch, the data cube on the bench fired up with a barely audible hum. Gently, Max pulled the case off, revealing the cluster of glowing faint blue gel nodes.

“I won’t lie to you Phil, I had some troubles with the this one. Curious as to what the problem was?” Philip just stared. “I’ll take that as a yes. It wasn’t that the beta chip was having problems fetching the data, it was the bio data gel nodes themselves. These three here,” pointing to the back three, “were infected with Kaliph’s disease. It took four rounds of med treatments to rid it entirely.” Phillip just stood with a stunned look on his face, staring lovingly at his data node.

“Max, I know I give you a hard time sometimes,” Philip spoke softly, “but you are really one of the best tech’s I’ve seen. I never would have thought to check for pathogens in the bio data gel. The odds of that happening are like, what, one in a thousand? Anyway,” Phillip said as he gently put the cover back on the cube, “I owe you one.”

Max reddened a little bit and pushed Philip towards the counter. “Out, old man, out! You know the rules, no customers behind the counter.” Max quickly worked up the bill, and Philip paid his debt happily.

“Hey Max, let me treat you do dinner,” Philip said.

“Thanks Phil. I have to be back in four hours to meet Paul, but thats fine. You sure you want to part with some of that money of yours?” Max said, the two walking outside the old store. Phillip watched Max use his data card to lock it up.

“Well, the way I figure it, you’ve helped me hide from work for like one hundred hours. Least I can do is treat you to some crappy food.”

“Oh no,” Max said, dramatically clasping his chest, “we’re going to Rudys?” Phillip gave a wicked smile.

“You got it.”

Rudy’s wasn’t bad as they both made it out to be. It’s just tradition to always talk the place down. That was part of its charm, actually. Customers yelled and complained to Rudy, and Rudy would yell right back and threaten to throw them out. A symbiotic relationship, you might say.

They just barely beat the dinner rush. They watched in smug satisfaction from their newly-acquired booth at the poor suckers who were starting to clot at the front.

After they ordered, (Max was actually looking forward to some well-made ramen) Philip took a long swig from his vodka tonic, and gave a grimace of satisfaction at its acrid taste.

“So, since I thought that guy Paul would be stupid to actually go through with selling the place, what the hell are you going to do now?”

Max looked up as the food arrived. He took a quick slurp of his ramen, and all his tastebud hopes were realized. “Well, I’ve been saving up for a while; Jeff let me live in the apartment for free. I could be out of work for a long time and be ok, but I’ve some offers lined up. I AM one of the best techs in Lessen, after all.” At this, Phillip gave a salutary nod in Max’s direction.

“Well, if you ever get lazy, and want a corp job, I’ll get you in with Enerdon. You and I can take two hour breaks together.”

Once they finished their dinners and berated Rudy for the unfit-for-consumption food, they started making their way back towards the store. When they were halfway there, Philip stopped. “I’m over this way. Take care Max”, he gave Max a handshake. “Keep in touch; send me some bullitens now and then and let me live vicariously through you.”

With a final wave, they went in their separate directions. As Max made his way, he couldn’t stop looking at his city. It was like he was viewing Lessen for the first time. Dusk was upon the city; the setting sun contrasting with the field of windmills that blanketed the skyline. Each windmill looking like glowing disks, the LEDs in the blades giving the illusion of a solid wall of light. Lessen appeared to be covered in illuminated pinwheels. The beauty made his heart ache.

White light. Not the most pleasant of waking sites. Then again, the rocks that had nested in his back over night didn’t help his morning disposition, either. Flic blinked quickly, adjusting to the mid morning sun as best he could. Slowly he was able to open them completely, regretting his body’s decision to wake at that particular angle of sunlight. It was his least favorite time of the day to wake up.

The low hum of small servos drew his attention to away from the sky and his attempted to turn his body to look at the ground around him. Half way through his turn he felt a light shutter, and realized that Tess was burrowing into him for warmth, his shifting having uncovered her rosy cheeks, exposing them to wind and light.

Smiling to himself, Flic decided that sleeping in just a bit more wouldn’t hurt much, and tried to lay back down while avoiding his rocky bed. The humming became higher in pitch, and he knew that the dragon was nearby. Feeling a form shading his face through closed eyes, he opened them to see the beast peering down at him.

The humming came primarily from the sides of the dragons mouth, where two round caps were barely fitted over the motors that allowed it to open and close its jaw. Flic wasn’t sure why, but the dragon always seemed to go through the same motion when it woke up. It yawned.

He knew that there was something wrong with its programming, it just didn’t act like other dragons. He wasn’t a trainer, but he had been through enough to pick up a good handling, even making modifications here and there. Nothing fancy, usually a permanent seat or a cargo harness. And yet something about this dragon was odd. It learned quickly. Faster than other dragons, faster than some people he knew. It watched over them at night, or rather, it watched them. And while it doesn’t sleep it goes through all the motions. The first time he had seen it yawn was after he had done so himself. After that morning he had heard the tale-tell noises of the small humming motors that signified it craning its neck and extending its jaw. At first it was creepy, though now he found it oddly reassuring. It meant the beast had watched them, it had watched over Tess.

Her relationship with the dragon was something that had been on his mind a lot lately. She was getting attached to it. He expected that, she was a child after all. She had given it a name, which he had warned against. Tora, she called it. She said it was a dragon’s name, a prince in fact. He didn’t know where she got her ideas on dragon royalty from, but she was adamant that this be the beast’s name. The thing that worried him was how quickly Tora took to its new name. It was as if it understood that is what it what it was called, and that was not something Flic was used to.

He had become close to a dragon when he was Tess’s age. When its batteries became contaminated and had to be terminated before it leaked acid, he was devastated. That was the last dragon he had named.

And now Tess had her childhood dragon. Flic had gotten a great deal for it. In fact, he kept it grounded for a month after buying it to make sure there wasn’t a catch. For only four power cells and a pound of epoxy resin, he insisted on seeing the diagnostic records from the year prior. The family who owned it had everything in order, even going so far as to have a proxy ship sign off on the records certificate. When he pressed on as to why they were getting rid of a fully functional model they admitted there was something odd about its behavior. At this the children in the family began giggling until a stern glare from the parents quieted their laughter.

His own diagnostics didn’t show anything wrong with its programming or its motor skills. When it finally took it up into the air for the first time he was pleasantly surprised with its flight capabilities. Flic had been on smooth rides before, but nothing compared to Tora’s flights. Steady and fluid, the dragon’s take-off was like taking Kartik lift, while the actual flight had the stability of a hover ship. And that was without tuning. After Flic had installed the saddle rack and manual control board, he and Tess left the small rock.

Flic was still finding little features on Tora. He wasn’t familiar with over half the ports that interfaced with the dragons core, and was constantly surprised and wary of the energy efficiency it showed on long flights. IF that weren’t enough, it seemed to be a newer model, not much older than Tess’s eight years. Flic had not been aware of any new factories being found nearby. He doubted that Tora had made its way to that small village on its own. Surely someone must had made these upgrades themselves. Yet he didn’t know anyone this side of Amp that could do these mods.

As if reading his mind, the dragon shook its head from side to side, its dog-like grin appearing almost comical, as if to dispel any mystery its origin may present. Tess raised a bundled fist to her eye, rubbing the sleep away while taking in the cold morning air. She looked at Flic with her other uncovered eye, a small smile forming from under her ever present scarf. Flic smiled back, affirming that they were done sleeping in. Pushing herself upright, then shifting her weight to Flic’s chest, she reached out to pet Tora’s nose.

“Good morning, Tora,” she said around another yawn, this time rubbing her other eye. Tora stretched out his wings in reply, shielding the father and daughter from the wind for a moment.

“Good morning to your dragon before your papa, eh?” Flic mockingly glared up at his half awake daughter.

“Good morning, Papa,” she replied, laying back down and nuzzling into he heavy coat. Their high perch was considerably windy, and Tess didn’t like a lot of wind in her face. Tora rose up and stretched, then nonchalantly lay perpendicular from their makeshift bed. The dragon’s neck and tail formed a crescent around them, its bulk blocking most of the wind. The hardened metal-weave scales along its spine created a whistling sound as the air rushed through the joint shafts that held them in place.

“How are you feeling? Did you sleep okay?” He asked the snuggling child.

“I had a dream about mama,” Tess said into his jacket, breathing into the pocket of cloth that held her face to warm it. She continued, “She was waving at us. We were riding on Tora. We were meeting her.”

Flic didn’t say anything, instead putting one arm around Tess and using his other to sweep rocks from underneath his lower back. Tess looked up from her warm nest, meeting Flic’s eyes as he settled back into place. Her brow was slightly furrowed.

“Do people ever come back from heaven?” She asked.

Flic’s mouth went dry, his tongue suddenly cold and sore. He really wasn’t expecting that question so early in the morning, or, really, at any time. Tess’s mother had always been better at these kinds of things. What would she have said, he thought to himself. When he drew a blank he fell back to his rule of parenting, be truthful. With certain caveats that always seemed to be the way to go. A question of this type didn’t seem to have any easy answer anyhow.

“I don’t think so,” he admitted.

“Boku mo,” Tess agreed. She pressed her face into his jacket again, trying to absorb the last bit of heat. A few moments later she looked him in the eyes again.

“I miss mama.”

She lay her cheek down on his chest. Flic lay there, slightly stunned by the nature of their exchange. A familiar pang began to squeeze his heart, something he felt whenever his daughter amazed him with her developing understanding of the world. He willed it away, lest his she feel his heart breaking through his chest. Look at how much she has grown, he thought to himself, wondering if Tess’s mother would hear his silent admiration. He sighed, with Tess sighing right after.

“I do too, Tess,” Flic said as he wiped sleep and tears from his eyes.

“I do too.”