[The civilian solar ship is on course between the planets Dionysus and Iris. It is a shorter route, crossing the orbits of the dead Hypnos and the toxic Nemesis. This course is swift but far from safe. The Captain is Jon Brecko; he is a grizzled, burly man of indistinct ethnicity but rest assured what he lacks in racial background he makes up for in tragic backstory (to be filled in later). The adorable and by the books Security Chief, Willow Walsh, is a catlike homunculus of a woman; four and a half units if she was an inch, oversized batlike ears made less noticeable by her relatively oversized bosom. Her pink on white tail twitches idly as she marches onto the scene.]
WALSH: ...Good. Second internal tour report: clear, Captain. Aft scopes read clean, negative visuals.
BRECKO: Thank you, Walsh. Stelly? Forward array?
[Flight Officer Roger Stelly is a jaded young man of good humor and possessed of a neck beard and a terrible smoking habit. Walsh crosses the bridge to stand behind him and double check his screens as he reads them out, she is the eternal prospector; all leather, straps and cracked goggles.]
STELLY: Thermals are cold. Magnetics are background and the only gravity stretch reading is Hypnos.
WALSH: Visual report?
STELLY: What?
WALSH: What is the forward visual report?
[Stelly looks to the bridge's obvious forward bubble window just units from them and taking up all that you could see when looking towards it. Stelly cranes back around, looking to the Captain at the map table who shrugs and returns to his holographic display.]
STELLY: ...Visual on possible contacts is a negative ma'am.
WALSH: What about radio -
STELLY: Radio waves, x-rays, infrared and gamma rays, even laser sweeps are all negative, Chief - I - Ah, shite.
WALSH: Mmm-hmm. What is it?
[Stelly looks to the obvious screen readout in front of Walsh and then back to her as Captain Brecko comes up behind them both.]
STELLY: It's a laser point off our positive Zed by seventy-two, negative Y by ten and at an X distance of 237,000 long units or so.
[The Captain reaches past Stelly and over his diminutive Sec. Chief to begin manually focusing the laser and spectroscopic arrays, looking for more data on the distant object. Stelly switches up the radio wave seeker as Walsh takes a step back.]
BRECKO: It's big. And cold. No broadcasts.
WALSH: Size profile reads probable ship.
STELLY: Ship would be hot. And blasting a jammed signal if not an open one. If it's a ship it's ghosted...Oh!
BRECKO: Salvage.
WALSH: I'll get the rigs prepped.
BRECKO: Stelly, line us up and burn black until about 30,000 units then cut to 20% thrust.
STELLY: Yessir.
[Walsh makes her way down and off of the bridge. The Captain assumes the co-pilot's seat and continues to focus the forward scopes as Gemini VII moves closer to its distant target; she is a sleek planet jumper graded for space travel as well as atmospheric reentry and flight - that is to say she looks like a dinged, brushed metal stealth bomber.]
BRECKO: Port two ticks.
STELLY: Yeah...What do you think it'll fetch.
BRECKO: in these rings? 15% of total.
STELLY: What if we towed it to less reputable ports?
BRECKO: The Eleutherios will slap us with a piracy fag and depressurize us, no fuss no muss. To far in for that kind of shite.
STELLY: We could make for Tyche. Shipyards there'll offer at least 25%.
BRECKO: Thaumantias flags us, vents us and gets our salvage plus 15% of us. Only you could act like hundreds of thousands of credits falling out of space isn't lucky enough.
STELLY: ...That's true.
[Stelly pulls back on the thrust control with a series of mechanical clunks, he leans back in his cushy seat and sparks a tobacco death stick. The Captain produces a wooden pipe packed with marijuana. Stelly strikes a novelty flintlock lighter and lights himself before passing the torch to Brecko.]
STELLY: [Cigarette dangling from his lips.] 29,000 and closing.
BRECKO: Laser point is fixed.
STELLY: Container ship?
BRECKO: [Puffs thoughtfully.] Handysize if she is.
INTERCOM: [Walsh] Captain, the EVA rigs are ready and the tow lines are charging.
BRECKO: Thank you, Walsh.
[The Captain passes his pipe to the Pilot.]
BRECKO: There she is.
STELLY: Really? [Pulls long and deep off the pipe.]
[Stelly holds his free hand out and measures the distant smudge in the view dome between his thumb and forefinger.]
BRECKO: Start a hail loop. Medium friendly.
[Stelly clicks a few toggles and taps a touchscreen. Walsh comes back up the bridge and accepts the oversized wooden Sherlock offered by Stelly.]
WALSH: [Her puffs are quick and shallow.] Oni and Artyom picked up something on the aft laser sweep. I had them broaden the plane.
BRECKO: Bait and switch?
WALSH: Maybe.
STELLY: Thermals are still dark.
[Gemini VII glides closer to the derelict; a much larger cargo container with a long hexagonal prism shape that was not graded for atmosphere. Between the ship spinning in transit and the decks being electromag locked, the flat outer surfaces were meant to hold the individual shipping containers in nice ordered and catalogued stacks for orbital delivery. Out here, though, they were all in a loose clunking nebula around the ship proper. Most if not all the crates remained. The relatively few that were open still had their contents floating inside or visibly close by.]
WALSH: This is bait. [Pipe up to the corner of her mouth, eyes slightly squinted.]
BRECKO: Take us closer.
STELLY: Yeah.
WALSH: [Into the intercom] Artyom, contact?
INTERCOM: [Artyom] No, Chief. But we broadened the beam, more likely to contact at a shorter range. The point could be hanging back and we wouldn't know. Want me to focus and speed sweep?
[Brecko nods.]
WALSH: Yes. Report as each quadrant clears.
STELLY: Or the point is a bounce back that has nothing to do with us...
WALSH: Charge the diamond.
BRECKO: Yes, sir!
[The Captain flicks a couple of toggles under the main console after taking the pipe from Walsh. A Dymand brand industrial plasma drill - illegal on two worlds and restricted on thirteen others for requiring no modifications to weaponize on top of an idiot proof user interface. Laser or plasma drills tend to have short ranges and/or fixed areas of effect, limited at a maximum of about one hundred units long by a maxed ten unit radius for most asteroid breakers. Dymand Industries insists on producing plasma drills with a minimum length of three hundred units and a minimum radius of one unit; the length can be increased to nine hundred units and the radius maxed out at four hundred. This "drill" can alternately cut most civilian solar ships lengthwise or fan into a cone that melts heavier commercial craft like candles under a jet torch. Pirates and more legitimate Spacers love these things while miners find them (set to anything but the industry standard) to be impractical.]
STELLY: We're really doing that? [He clicks an overhead toggle, this one is heavy to see and hear move. A spark arcs off the switch as he snatches his hand away.] That damn thing has a massive mag field and we don't really have the best EM buffer so if you could turn it down before you turn it off - There! The deck below our plane.
WALSH: A lot of crush damage. Watch out! [Gemini VII slips through the dense cloud of lost consumer goods and truck sized steel boxes.]
STELLY: Yes, mom.
BRECKO: Yeah...What is that you reckon? Meteor swipe? Keep us moving. Fly by both sides. [More thoughtful puffing.]
WALSH: Radio seeker's flat Captain. No response to our hails.
INTERCOM: [Oni] Quadrant one quick clears.
BRECKO: [In to the intercom] One of you, go wake up Monsvik. Rigs on, I want two readying the tow lines.
INTERCOM: [Oni] I'm on it, Captain.
STELLY: This is old. A year or two. There isn't a wave of heat in that beast. The distress flare is even died.
WALSH: If it ever went up.
STELLY: You're just a ray of sunshine, Chief. Look, smash! Hit and run or a rock bounce like the Captain said. No spiders.
BRECKO: Spiders?
STELLY: You ever hear of the S.S. Radical?
WALSH/BRECKO: No.
STELLY: The Solar Ship Radical was transporting research specimens from Eden to the university on Mecca about ten years ago. Plants, animals the whole biology A1 bit. Nothing was too big, you know, physically. Their reactor went critical and a cascade failure went down. Fires broke out. They were left out in the Gap with atmospherics and lights. Nothing else, not even door locks.
WALSH: This is where the spiders come in, right? Research specimens run amok.
STELLY: The ones they packed up were babies just hatched and eggs nearly there. The babies are the size of a house cat. The newborns! Colony dwelling spiders the size of a centaur, that reproduce by tucking their eggs inside living animals. Guys, people are animals.
INTERCOM: [Artyom] Quadrant two quick clears.
STELLY: These fucking spiders kept the crew alive while the eggs incubated. Force fed them a protein jelly made from whatever the spiders had already eaten - usually other crewman. It was like the legend of the Xenomorph in there by the time Trinity Sec came down on their flare. A third of the ship was spider nest another fourth was person held and in between there was a lopsided stretch of war zone where the two fought over the food stores and the crews' own bodies.
BRECKO: Gross.
STELLY: So ease up on the whole negative vibe you've got here, Chief. No spiders.
WALSH: Fair enough. No spiders.
BRECKO: The very last one in a very long line.
STELLY: Huh?
BRECKO: [Rising from the co-pilot's seat.] Walsh, take over here. Find us an emergency hatch. I do not want to link up with this thing's umbilicale. There might be space spiders.
STELLY: Aye.
WALSH: Yes, sir.
[Gemini VII's garage. The design is smooth and open with a vaulted ceiling and walls arching out. There is an Orca rover, a four seat all terrain hover lift, suspended above by chains and a varied collection of crates secured below by straps and nets; there are lockers and equipment racks all along the edges of the space in here. Crewmans Tao Irisa (Oni) and Paul Monsvik are occupied with the gauges on their respective EVA rigs as Captain Jon Brecko approaches.]
ONI: Hey, boss!
MONSVIK: Sir.
BRECKO: Lines?
MONSVIK: Yessir. That's why we're here.
ONI: They're charged, boss. [To Monsvik] Wake up, man. You're going out to space in a minute.
BRECKO: You're excited.
ONI: I want money. I love money.
MONSVIK: I don't even know what we found.
BRECKO: It's handysize and icy. Meteor hit maybe.
ONI: We get the monies?
MONSVIK: Yes? Depending.
ONI: We got the monies! Money, money - Very sexy, boss.
BRECKO: [Tightening his EVA rig.] Shut up. [Into the intercom.] Walsh! Any callbacks?
INTERCOM: [Walsh] No response, Captain. No heat.
MONSVIK: Ready, sir.
ONI: Ready. I am ready.
BRECKO: [Into the intercom.] Aft sweep?
INTERCOM: [Artyom] Quadrant four just quick cleared.
BRECKO: Let's go.
[The vastness. The openness. The awe inspiring majesty of spacetime laid bare. There are three suns in the background view. A red giant (Hyperion) with smaller yellowing stars trying in vain to eclipse it; the slightly more orange star (Thea) is eclipsing the slightly more yellow one (Helios).So that's something.]
ONI: She's fucking huge! Look at that tasty credcheck!
MONSVIK: It's small. Handysize. Small.
BRECKO: Big enough for us.
ONI: Boss gets it. You don't get it.
[The trio of exonauts move under Gemini VII to retrieve the electromag tow lines. Breclo moves farther along the undercarriage, towards the bridge while Oni and Monsvik unlock the lines.]
ONI: You don't ever think that we might fall into the black?
[Monsvik lets go of Gemini VII and floats unmoving in the abyss. Paul Monsvik is a heavy man of west eurasian ancestry - a Euro for those who track human ethnicities anymore. Tao Irisa is a tattooed woman of far east eurasian ancestry, Asian. If you cared to ask further, she'd tell you she's Japanese; a carefully maintained heritage on Janus.]
MONSVIK: No.
ONI: Never get afraid when the lock pops? Like standing on the edge of a cliff?
MONSVIK: No.
ONI: Ever want to tickle my tonsils with your cock?
MONSVICK: No.
[Brecko swim crawls back down the bottom of Gemini VII to the crewmen.]
BRECKO: What are we doing?
ONI: Monsvik is lying about his instinctive fear of heights and space plus I think he's repressing sexual feelings for me.
MONSVIK: We're ready to go here, sir.
BRECKO: Good.
[The trio idly jet through the junk cloud, tow lines unreeling behind them. Containers bounce off each other slowly and silently nearby.]
ONI: You guys ever think our job is boring.
MONSVIK: Yes.
BRECKO: Yup.
ONI: But we're in space!
MONSVIK: Space is boring.
BRECKO: Hard vacuum is...yeah, it's boring.
[Silence. Oh, the cosmic rays!]
ONI: [Oni sighs wistfully] I bet Walsh is totally pounding one out with Stelly right now. Really getting her wide on.
BRECKO: You lonely Irisa? You want some masculine attention?
ONI: Yeah. That's why I need the money. Booze and cheap dick. So chop chop.
INTERCOM: [Stelly] We're actually running more sensor sweeps up here, sooo…
ONI: Mmmhmmm.
INTERCOM: [Stelly] ...don't bring other people into your trashy thoughts.
ONI: It's happening right now isn't it. You -
BRECKO: Stop.
ONI: Okay.
[The exonauts continue on in relative silence, the only sound in the universe is the heavy, trapped sound of breathing in a bucket. Brecko coasts on his forward momentum, Oni and Monsvik need to keep their jets burning to keep their lines pulling.]
MONSVIK: I hate this part.
[The trio activate reverse thrusters in short, controlled burst but still impact the derelict hard enough to buckle their knees. Monsvik actually crumples into a one knee superhero pose.]
ONI: Who is Iron Man? [She maglocks her rig boots to the ship.]
BRECKO: Tony Stark.[Locking his own boots.] Go hook it port. Monsvik -
MONSVIK: Starboard, sir. Aye.
[The two exonauts move opposite away from the Captain who is clomping towards the bridge view ports.]
ONI: We're going inside, right? There are some good buys floating out here.
MONSVIK: They wouldn't have kept cargo inside. We do have to check for survivors before we claim salvage, though.
ONI: Are we going to loot the cloud of goodies here?
BRECKO: Yes. We're getting the manifest first though. There's a lot and we can't take all of it.
ONI: Yay! Cap you're awesome. Do you wanna fuck later?
BRECKO: No.
ONI: Porn. Porn until Dionysus. Is it because I prefer anal?
MONSVIK: Yes.
BRECKO: No.
ONI: Boss, I want it in the butt. I'll bring my strap-on!
BRECKO: Still not gay, Oni.
ONI: Really? I am a desirable woman who is open about my sexual appetites -
MONSVIK: [Makes a sound similar to "Bleh".]
ONI: SHUT UP PAUL! And I am locked in a pressurized box with you most of the year. Begging for it. Literally. And I get nothing!
BRECKO: Sorry. Go hit up Artyom or Stelly in the cockpit. Get it? Cock-pit.
ONI: I'm gonna rape you when you're sleeping.
BRECKO: Wow. I'll wake up before you get one of those things in. And kick you up the deck.
ONI: No, boss. You won't wake up with me in your ass, you'll be in mine.
MONSVIK: GOD! I'm done. Sir.
ONI: Me too.
[The trio reconverges at their original point of contact.]
MONSVIK: I hate you so much.
ONI: Prude.
MONSVIK: Slut.
ONI: Monogamist.
BRECKO: Dipshites. Let's go. The airlock is this way.
[The derelict has almost no atmosphere just trace molecular vapor. The reactor is cold and the gravity rings are not spinning. Dark, full of floating corpses and coffee cups and tools; there are a surprising number of pencils and paper scattered through the ship. Oni adjusts the analog controls on her wrist mounted PDA while Brecko and Monsvik pry the bridge doors apart.]
ONI: Kinda hoped these guys would've been blown out the breach or something…
MONSVIK: The air left slowly in this part of the ship. These men suffocated. Purple black faces. Their tongues are sticking out.
BRECKO: Eyes bulging...
ONI: [She lowers the output on a wrist mounted dial.] You guys suck.
[The derelict bridge. This chamber is as cold as the rest. The consoles were dead and the viewports cracked. There was a beep and a single point of blue light.]
BRECKO: [To Monsvik.] Look for the manifest hardcopy. [Into the intercom.] Walsh, call King. We need a wake of buzzards to clean this up.
INTERCOM: [Walsh] Yessir.
BRECKO: Oni, grab the clockwork. [He gestures to the blue light.]
MONSVIK: I have it. [He brandishes a leather wrapped bundle of papers.]
[Brecko, Oni, Stelly and Artyom are on Gemini VII's bridge, each pouring over a section of the derelict ship's manifest. Walsh and Monsvik are in the garage prepping the Orca for loot pickup and crate movement. The rear sensor array is set to automatic sweep. Brecko puffs his pipe as he makes notes, Stelly has a cigarette stub in his lips and strokes his beard; Artyom moves his lips as he reads, occasionally swearing in Russ and Oni scans the sheets with the speed of the truly bored. They all, just barely, could read French.]
STELLY: We're going to have food for years. MRE's, A-rations and B-rations and just way too many D-bars. Colonial shipment I bet. Section E113 to F005.
BRECKO: Mmm-hmm. [He jots down Stelly's alpha numerics and labels them "food".]
ARTYOM: Solar cells for Gemini. Spare parts for the Orca. Repulsors and shock absorbers. Enough vacuum hoses to refit both. Wire and Terminal kits of all gauges. A150 to C029
BRECKO: [Marks down Artyom's crate section codes, labeled "parts".] Any EM buffers?
ARTYOM: None that match Gemini, none that beat out what we have in the Orca now. CO2 scrubbers, though.
[Stelly's console begins trilling sharply in tandem with a blinking green light.]
STELLY: The heat sinks are at capacity. I'm turning off the big just-in-case-cannon.
ONI: [Jumps to her feet.] Roger, you ignorant bitch! Shut up!
STELLY: Why?
ONI: This is the single greatest day of my life!
BRECKO/STELLY/ARTYOM: What?
ONI: Crate D-101-6589! Contents? SexForm Framework version 1.6.2! And we just pulled an AI off the wreck.
BRECKO: That's the only crate? How are you going to find it?
ONI: God loves me.
INTERCOM: [Walsh.] I found it.
ONI: See.
BRECKO: How?
INTERCOM: [Walsh.] Dee-one-oh-one six-five-eight-nine? It's one of the ones we need to clear out of our path.
BRECKO: No. How are you hearing us? How do you know it's in our way?
INTERCOM: [Walsh.] We've been on open mic for half an hour and we're out here right now.
[Brecko spins around to face the view dome. Sure enough, there was the Orca nudging crates.]
INTERCOM: [Walsh.] Maybe lay off the herb a bit, sir?
BRECKO: [Chuckles and tucks his pipe into the console.] Right?
[Later. The Captain moves the box with his foot. Heavy and rectangular, it is covered with english characters (which curiously nobody here could actually read despite speaking it just fine) proclaiming its contents to be the most advanced move in both virtual reality and sexual interactive technologies. The box is open and Oni is flipping through the instructions in search of the nonexistent Japanese print while Walsh and Artyom read the Russ pages that they literally had to tear from the booklet as Oni would not let go.]
BRECKO: Just going by the picture, we're giving our new AI a skeleton?
ONI: Yeah! The volumetric display overlays the endoskeleton and matches the movements.
ARTYOM: Paul isn't going to let you do this.
ONI: I'm not afraid of your boyfriend or his gun collection. Bitch.
BRECKO: I doubt the AI is going to let you do this. I just need the emitters to talk to the thing about it's wreck and confirm transfer of oversight. You can ask it about being turned into a sexbot.
ONI: Ask it? Fine. I will.
BRECKO: [To Walsh.] We can get the emitters off this thing right?
WALSH: ...Yes…
ARTYOM: Maybe. They come off for maintenance but the power supply and the lasers...all on the frame. Paul isn't going to let you give an untested AI solid form. He isn't.
BRECKO: Just keep reading. Me knowing what best to tell the port is more important than his religious hangups.
ONI: Yeah, don't be a bigot.
ARTYOM: Moralizing from the would be rapist.
ONI: Whoa! What? I joke but come on. I would never jump boss.
WALSH: Just plug an unknown AI into this thing with whatever priorities you want set. Without asking its permission.
ONI: [Throwing the manual.] Why isn't there any Japanese!?
BRECKO: Like one planet speaks that. Not even in the majority.
ONI: Pffft…
[Oni begins unpacking in earnest, Brecko halfheartedly helps her. Artyom and Walsh pass their pages back and forth. Somewhere above the rec room, on the bridge, Stelly is chain smoking and reading a paperback novel. Monsvik is in the galley eating a ham sandwich, listening to a pocket MP3 full of orchestral arrangements. The solar ship has resumed its course to Dionysus with the handysize container ship, Daisy, in tow. Far behind them the cloud of containers is now being picked over by a small armada of looters who's thefts will mask those of Gemini VII's crew.]
BRECKO: We may just have to pull the emitters from the Daisy's bridge.
ARTYOM: If they aren't compatible with our systems then we will have nerfed our salvage for nothing. Also we'd have to stop to go over and check.