I woke up staring at a blazingly bright sun. At least it looked like a sun to my incredibly sensitive eyes. When I moved my head around a bit and slowly worked away at least some of the fog from my brain I realized it was nothing more than a fluorescent light bulb recessed into the ceiling. Wow, my head was killing me.
“Got you too, huh?” A gravelly voice asked. My head snapped around quick to where the voice was coming from. Yeah, that REALLY hurt. I blinked as much of the pain away as I could and finally blearily focused on whoever it was that spoke.
“Yeah.” I mumbled to the greyish brown blur.
“Was it the tight little blonde number?” He asked. My mind was finally capable of distinguishing male from female. Hopefully soon I might actually remember my own name!
“Huh?” I asked, not really registering the question.
“The blonde! Did the blonde wrangle you in?” He asked much louder this time, doing absolute wonders for my headache.
“OW! Yeah, the blonde. Gabby, the stupid dust addict.” My anger was coming to the surface as realization of what had happened flooded in.
“Whoa, sorry there young fella. Just ain’t had no one to talk to and figured you weren’t gonna be much good as company until you woke up on your own.” He apologized in a much softer voice.
“S’Okay.” I managed to slur, my mouth suddenly filling with thick slush. Or at least it felt that way. “Hi.”
The guy laughed heartily, but did his best to keep the edge out of his voice to prevent from setting off bombs and starbursts inside my tender brain. “They must have really done a number on you.”
“Picked up in a bar. Was on my way to drunk land to celebrate my escape.” I explained, not knowing what else to say.
“Escape? What, were you taken by these people before and manage to get out of it?” The level of curiosity and interest in the man’s voice sky rocketed.
“No, sorry, I was just released from this company that implanted some stuff into my head. Was with them two years in lockdown while I went through all kinds of tests and stuff.”
“Ah. What kind of implant did you get?”
“A Cybernetic Learning Cluster. It’s attached to the entire brain so that I can download stuff from computers and learn it that way.”
“Wow, ain’t them like really, really dangerous? Like kill or drive insane most of the people that get them?”
“Sometimes, yeah. After the implant takes and is functioning properly, there is absolute zero fatality rate. It was a serious pain at first but sure makes things easier. Where are we?” I asked, looking around and realizing it was a relatively small metal walled cell. The recessed fluorescent light and a hole in the floor in the corner were the only opening points other than the door. There was no furniture. “Oh, and where and when do we use the toilet?”
“See that hole?” He pointed at the hole in the corner of the floor. “Use it there and anytime you damn well please. Don’t mind me, I’ve been kicking around for a while so shit like that don’t bother me.”
I made it to my feet carefully, and had the feeling that wherever we were it was either my equilibrium was off or the entire structure was moving around. Could have been both but you never know. I eased up the pressure that was beating on my kidneys like they’re punching bags and made my way back to where I woke up.
“So you know what’s happening?” I asked the older man. He was grizzly and gnarled in a hard core sort of way. Wiry iron grey beard and hair outlined crow’s feet lined eyes and cheeks, giving the impression that this wasn’t this man’s first rodeo.
“Huh? Beats the hell out of me! All I know is I was flirting with this young little number, next thing I know I’m waking up here!” He harrumphed. “There are some flashes of being driven out somewhere and thrown in here but nothing about where exactly I am or what this place is. So, you like this implant?”
I smiled, it was easy to tell that this man really didn’t concern himself with what was happening and was just taking things as they came. “Yeah, old timer. It works well. They downloaded a massive amount of stuff into my head with it while I was in the lab. Some of it’s practical, some of it fun, and some of it just plain useless. I can tell you the name of every species of plant on earth and their growth rate. Don’t ask me how the hell that is ever going to be useful to me unless I become a botanist. And I have no intention of ever becoming a botanist.”
He chuckled to himself. “If I knew at your age what I know now, I would have become a damn botanist. Plants are a lot easier to get along with than people.”
I agreed via noises of general consent to the idea. After meeting up with someone that I figured would at least be somewhat cordial to me and winding up in some sort of prison cell, my appreciation for people was starting to take a serious nose dive. Now I understood the desire to push drug illegalization on a galactic scale. I’m sure not every dust head was going to waylay people in bars but the ones that were doing it made it damn hard to appreciate allowing legal usage and sale.
“What do you do for work?” I asked him, wanting to keep the conversation going because it was going to get awkward in here real fast if we didn’t.
“Me? I’m a space-freighter pilot. They call us port hounds unless you’ve heard the name. Jump on the quickest ship going and cruise till we feel like settling in for a bit. The scenery changes so I can’t complain.” He answered, smiling wistfully at something off in the middle distance.
“Wow, never thought of that before. I have a lot of piloting stuff in my head thanks to the brain butchers.” I commented.
His eyes got tight real quick, and the gaze went from half-glazed to laser eyed focus in under a blink. “You know how to pilot? What classes of ships?” All of the meandering was now gone from his voice and I started to get the impression something else was going on here.
“Let’s see, Super-carriers, Tugs, Line-haulers, etcetera. They have a seriously good general piloting set that they were testing my comprehension with. Doesn’t do much good here and now though. I wish they would have downloaded escape artist techniques!” I exclaimed, making sure I used all of the little poker tricks my implant was programmed with to sell it. Bio-Electronics was a government contracting company as well so some of the training wasn’t necessarily things that were designed for the average Joe if you know what I mean.
“Yeah, that would be nice right about now. Line-haulers huh? How about with rock beds?” The older man asked, his eyes shifting off away from mine to appear that he was uninterested in my answer. I knew if we both had a hand full of cards I would own his life savings at that point. Playing poker after knowing almost every technique imaginable in playing poker sucked the fun right out of the game. And unfortunately, Vegas and all the various casinos banned people with my implant from setting foot near card tables. I could hit the roulette wheel, or any number of pure chance games I wanted! But I’d be nearly shot on sight if I sat down at the high rollers table of the poker pits.
“Rock beds are easy, but wouldn’t you be better off hooking them up to Trollers? They are built more for heavy lifting work.” I would play this game because I felt it was actually getting me somewhere.
The older man grinned and slapped his knee. “You got me young pup.” Then he knocked on the metal door in a strange long running pattern. The door finally opened and there was a brute of a man standing there looking down at us.
I watched the interplay between the giant and the grey hair. It appeared the grey hair was the one in charge, but that didn’t necessarily mean the brute liked it. After watching my cellmate begin to rise, I followed suit.
He smiled a creepy grin my way. “We’ve actually been looking for a new pilot. Follow me.”
I was having serious issues at that point. First, I woke up in what felt like a prison with some guy that I thought was a prisoner. Now, I’m supposed to follow him wherever he’s going after finding out that for what
ever reason he was sitting in the cell with me. It makes a weird kinda sense, taking your time to see if a prisoner is like a cop or something by building some camaraderie with them.
I did what any sane person would do. I kept my mouth shut and followed him. Hard to believe but no smart ass remarks came out of my mouth. Maybe it was the hangover, I don’t know.
We walked for a few minutes, cutting through spaces and meandering through passages. This ship wasn’t in the best shape, at all. It looked like it had been remodeled maybe four or five times. Or make that like thirty. When we reached the bridge, there was a huge guy sitting in the navigators chair in front of three screens displaying the field of stars in front of us.
“Get up!” The old man growled at the pilot.
“Huh?” The man asked, apparently asleep. He made a few odd noises then finally leveraged himself out of the chair. I saw the look of complete and total emptiness in his eyes common in those that had given themselves over to the slow and steady death of regular boredom. I’d seen that look in a few eyes back at Bio-Electronics. No longer inspired, nowhere near inspirational. They were simply content with their lives of complete normalcy.
“You’re up, Moron.” The old man smiled a vicious grin my way. Whatever was going on here, something seriously bad could possibly come from it. I sat down in the chair. “Show me what you can do. We need to undock and get moving toward Omega Zone.”
As with every memory dumped into my brain, images of thousands of hours hacking away at keys and executing maneuvering drills for this particular set up splashed across my field of vision. This lead to a smooth exit from port and a gentle alignment with the jump gate on the far side of the moon.
I often wonder how in God’s name I stay so cool in situations like this. Part of me was screaming that I should run, dive, hide, just about do anything other than sit in this chair and do what I was told. I’d never had any problems with high stress situations. A little shakiness at first, but then smooth sailing. I’d call it a gift, but if I did that I wouldn’t be giving any credence to the concept that this trait was yet another reason why I was sitting in this chair in the first place. Any normal person would probably have fought to get away from Gabby before going into that newly constructed commercial building!
I kept pace with read outs and fed instructions to the engine room guy, who introduced himself as Eddie. He followed my guidance flawlessly and we were soon moving through the Jump gate.
There was a growl of approval from the old guy that I woke up to in the cell. I turned toward him to acknowledge his appreciation just in time to see him pull out an energy pulse pistol and send a charge into the old navigator’s skull through his eye ball. I sat dumbfounded for maybe a minute.
“Good job, welcome to the Nautilus. You’re the new pilot! Mark, dump this waste out the airlock.” And with those words, my cell buddy holstered the pistol and walked off the bridge whistling a merry tune. The giant hefted the body of the other giant and walked off. This left me completely alone on the bridge.
“Uh…” I said to no one in particular. Very devious of me huh?
“What happened?” Came a question across the internal comms set up.
“The older guy with the beard killed the other pilot and put me on it. At least I guess.” I informed Eddie.
“Thank God, that guy was useless. I don’t know where the hell Fred picked him up in the first place but he cost us some serious money with his screw-ups.” Eddie explained.
“Does that happen a lot?” I asked.
“Huh? What?”
“People getting wacked by the boss like unwanted weeds in a garden.”
“Oh, well, no. Not really. Look, this gig pays pretty good with the right haul so you don’t have to worry. Plus, the boss ain’t really hard to work for. Do your job, you get paid. Don’t do your job and you’re gone. Pretty simple.”
“Right. Nothing like job security.” I couldn’t help but spit out.
He laughed at the statement for a few seconds. “What kind of people you think you’re working for? St. Judes? What’s your name, by the way? Where did we pick you up at?”
“Name’s John. I sort of fell into the interview.” I didn’t really want to mention that I had been pulled out of a containment cell where I was being interrogated.
“Oh! Wait, you must be the guy that the boss quarantined before putting into the pens! Whoa, big surprise for you. I’m sure you’re pretty happy right now.” I heard the smile in his voice.
“Okay, um, maybe I should present myself like someone who doesn’t know what’s going on here at all.” I stated.
“Gotcha, man, you’re a hell of a lot more fun than that last lazy bastard flying the boat.”
“Thanks!” I relayed, sarcasm dripping from my voice.
“No! I’m being serious! Couldn’t get that guy to crack a joke or get a joke for shit. Anywho, yeah, you were supposed to be a slave for the Diamond mines over on Richter. You know the mineral rich planet with all the volcanos?” He asked, but before waiting for me to relay that I had absolutely no clue what he was talking about he went on.
“Yeah, the boss was all kinds of worried because you were clean, looked healthy, yet somehow wound up with the latest shipment of losers to be free labor. Those guys are mostly drug addicts or homeless people.” He explained. “The city officials kinda look the other way because it is a sort of street cleaning service.”
“Why don’t they just use robots?” I commented.
“Robots cost more money. You have to maintain them, do the initial purchase, provide power. Way more expensive when it comes to the cost of keeping the homeless guys. They don’t complain much because they get fed and clothed. The food sucks, and the clothes are crap but it sure beats having to buy robots. We do the hauling so when we go to get a load, we’ll take the newest herd with us. You never know though if someone has a tracker shoved up their ass.” Eddie clarified their whole position.
While I found this enlightening to be in a completely brand new world of criminal machinations, I didn’t really feel good about human trafficking. Yeah, I’m sure that the homeless people didn’t really complain. With people like the “Boss” walking around shooting people in the eyeball with a pistol I would hesitate before complaining myself. This also left me with a few hundred ways to infiltrate the operation or shut it down. Thank you kind doctors for downloading so many law enforcement techniques into my brain! It wasn’t like I was already paranoid before or anything. Now I have a million new ways to plot out my eventual death and destruction at the hands of galactic security forces!
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