opening chapter of a sci-fi novel I'm working on...
Bruce Copetski's ship fell back into Euclidean space on his forty-fifth birthday. As he saw the smudgy stars coalesce on the main viewplate, Bru was recalling childhood parties with Uncle Norm and Aunt Norma, and rectangular cakes with blinking strobe candles, and the home-bots harmonizing tinnily to the Happy Birthday anthem—a song nobody'd sung to him for some thirty years.
"Happy birthday, Captain Copetski." The buzz of inorganic voice came from Bacchus, his robot first mate—computer-brained beings still the only ones who could negotiate the vortexial leaps. Programmed for such niceties as befitted their servant status, crew-bots such as Bacchus were fairly standard on star yachts like Bru's, although he rarely fell into the habit of treating them like people, and even if he did, it wouldn't have been any kind of compliment.
Bru's yacht had never been christened with a respectable name like Delta Rising or Star Tracker or other tags he had run across in his travels. He had lost his last vestiges of romantic feeling about space-faring long ago, and referred to his vessel by its registry number, or simply as "the tub." Real names were for real people, and of the many acquaintances he had made, few of them qualified in his book as "real."
Bacchus wasn't real either, he reflected, but it had received the moniker from its former owner, and out of convenience, Bru relented and used it now and then—rarely necessary as most of the time he and the bionic were alone together. Salvage craft like his yacht could make a decent living in the Spiral Gap sectors, where terraforming and mining were beginning to thrive, and stellar mail service was a pressing need. He and Bacchus had become part of a loose network of galactic go-betweens generally known as SPAID-ers, short for Salvage, Portage And Information Dealers. Most of his ilk were rough and nondescript, with reputations that varied widely from awed admiration to total disgust among the corporate, industrial and pioneering types who inhabited the Gap sectors.
"Happy birthday, Captain Copetski." Bacchus had an annoying hard-wired habit of failing to realize it was being ignored.
"Ah, right—thanks," Bru answered. The robot would repeat the greeting a dozen more times until he acknowledged it. "Don't robots know," he said, "that people over thirty-five don't care anymore about birthdays? What's our ETA at Polkbridge?" There was a muted hum as the ship's chronometers recalibrated after the vortexial leap they'd just completed. Bacchus's head swiveled to face him.
"Twelve hundred twenty hours, Captain. Five hours, fifteen minutes from now." The head swiveled back toward the viewplate. "Long-range detectors show a clear trajectory ahead."
"Well, take over, then; I need some exercise and some shut-eye before we dock. Lemme know if the scanners blip anything interesting." Bru unbuckled and floated down a twenty-foot passage to his small cubic quarters, knowing that Bacchus would have no trouble piloting alone. He strapped absently into a gangly contraption that resembled an inquisitor's torture machine and began pedaling and pumping his limbs. The zero-gym was programmed for a thirty-minute workout, complete with tapered-off warm-ups and cool-downs tuned exactly to his latest medical body scan. As he exercised, his mind returned to memories of Uncle Norm.
Norman Palchik, his mother's brother, had taken him in when he was ten. Bru's parents had disappeared along with all the other passengers and crew aboard their cruise ship, somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. An only child, Bruce Copetski had known precious little about his wealthy parents, the main fact being that they'd had no time for their son. Norman and his wife Norma were proud, hardworking and poor. While they congratulated Norm's sister for finding and marrying a rich man, they secretly mourned the way that money had changed, corrupted and embittered her. They felt sorriest for young Bruce, and couldn't help rejoicing when the courts awarded them custody of the boy after the tragedy at sea.
Bru often vowed that when he came into control of his inheritance at twenty-one, he would grandly repay his aunt and uncle for being "real" parents to him. But tragedy struck again. As they were flying to Lunar University to be present for his graduation, a freak meteor collision caused their Moon shuttle to veer off course and crash on the lunar surface. Both Norm and Norma Palchik were fatalities of that crash and Bru, now wealthy and twenty-one, was alone in the universe. Uncle Norm had worked and saved for almost eleven years to educate him and prepare him for a life of prominence and responsibility. But the upper-class kids at school either reminded Bru of his rich, uncaring parents, or else they distrusted him because of his working class upbringing. Consequently he had no close friends, and the bitterness of life made him hard, selfish and reckless.
After burying his uncle and aunt, he began to wander not only the planetside paths and pleasures of Earth, but the more exotic and harsher settlements of the Moon and beyond. His money allowed him to explore the strange and technically mysterious realm of the space-farers, most of them company men, many of them military, but all of them with skills and know-how they'd pass on to a rich young ruffian for the right price.
Finally, at twenty-five, Bru sank his remaining millions into a five-thousand ton star yacht with vortex capability. This became his home as well as his sole means of support. He vividly remembered his first vortexial leaps, taking him from the constellational neighborhood of the Sol system to the uncharted wilderness of the Spiral Gap, where space-farers were naming brand new constellations every day, and where thermal fusion miracles were warming dead planets and making some of them friendly to life transplanted from a now distant home world.
Bru floated from the zero-gym apparatus to a coffin-shaped cabinet on the opposite bulkhead of his cubicle. Once sealed inside it, he shut his eyes tight as small, powerful jets of spray cleansed his body and then blew him dry. Then, from one corner of the cabinet he reeled out a length of soft, flexible material which fastened to two hooks above his head. Wrapping himself inside it like a cocooned insect, he then felt a gentle rocking motion as the cabinet began to rotate, creating an artificial sensation of gravity that soon lulled him to sleep. The dim illumination inside his sleep chamber slowly died along with his weary consciousness.
---------------
Uncle Norm placed a tough, meaty hand on the boy's shoulder. The aquaglider's deck was solid and motionless under their feet in spite of their 250-knot cruising speed through the restless whitecaps of the Adriatic Sea. "Bruce," he said, looking not at the boy but out at the water straight ahead of them, "your mom always loved the water. You don't understand it now; maybe someday you will: it was a fitting thing that she ended up here at sea." His hand left Bruce's shoulder to lift a handkerchief with the other hand to his nose and he blew into it softly.
The boy had never seen Uncle Norm cry. There'd been an entire litany of other emotional responses, from joy that lifted the big man off his feet, to cursing, blustering anger that scorched an entire neighborhood with its ferocity. Never tears, though.
Bruce wasn't used to hearing tender words spoken about his mother. He could remember his dad calling her "old girl" or "spider lady." Were these terms of endearment that they shared for some secret reason known only to them? His parents always acted somehow businesslike and distant when they were around their son, and those times were seldom. Was there love there? Had there ever been? Bruce's life up to then had been spent more often in the care and fellowship of nannies, house-bots and secretaries than with that couple who circled each other like earth and moon, with no warmth to spare on their comet of a son who intersected their orbit so rarely.
The 'glider began to throttle back, the gyros automatically adjusting the deck's plane so those on it felt very little deceleration. The wind's screech against the window, muffled by the three-inch glass, toned down enough to let the pair know they were nearing their destination. "This is the place?" Bruce wondered aloud, peering out curiously as though he expected some floating sign among the furtive waves. "It's so far. No land in sight. They couldn't have. . . couldn't. . ." His ten-year-old blue eyes began to sting around the corners. A huge, strong hand placed a handkerchief in his small, skinny one, then it was back on the boy's shoulder.
"Gone, son. She is gone; they are both gone." Norm's voice was not bitter, but filled with a puzzled anxiety that seemed to be struggling against the wind that lashed at the sea. Bruce blew into the linen thing in his hands, but like Uncle Norm, could find no tears to shed. There, surrounded by deck, glass, water and sky, they bade his parents a silent farewell.
Four hours after the chamber lights dimmed to black, a three-note chime sounded repeatedly and the sleep cabinet brightened gradually. "Time to make myself presentable," Bru said to himself. Reaching out from his cozy shroud, he pushed open the lid and repelled outward into the cabin. Dressing in zero gravity had become second nature long ago, as had all the other physical necessities. He soon was back in the corridor, first floating aft to visually inspect docking thrusters, umbilicals, clamps, as well as check on fusion equipment and vortexial generators. Maintenance crews on all space stations were generally very reliable and competent, but Bru's training had taught him never to trust anyone more than his own eyes. Plus, not all the relationships he'd developed out in space were friendly ones. Grudges were a rare thing among the SPAID fraternity, but you never know. His earpiece began to buzz and crackle.
"Capt. Copetski, Polkbridge Station is now within detector range. First retro burn to commence in five minutes."
"Roger, that," Bru replied, making a mental note of his fuel consumption readout. He bounced off the maintenance module bulkhead and propelled forward until he reached the bridge area, where he soon buckled in.
"Gimme visuals on all outer viewplates," he commanded. Bacchus obeyed, and a collage of five secondary screens lit up before Bru a bit left of center screen. "Let me have manual control of screen three; it needs tweaking." Bru then joy-sticked the tuner until the starfield image on viewplate three was as crisp as the others.
"Send message to commander, Polkbridge Station: SPAID transport KR812 in your sector on full approach. We request docking instructions. Please respond." Bacchus punched out the transmission. Even at light speed the message would take several minutes to be received and answered. Bru transferred the maintenance readouts into the datapad strapped to his left wrist. After they docked, he wanted his turnaround to go as smoothly as possible. He'd be ready to brief the ship mechanics quickly so he could make some visits and do some business while the ship was being serviced.
Polkbridge was about two miles in length, a cylinder-shaped city in space half a mile in diameter. Vessels docked at ports that pockmarked the ends of the cylinder. The station was equidistant between two similar red dwarf stars, neither of them close enough to threaten it with too much radiation or other bombardments. It boasted many amenities for the spacefarer, in addition to several hundred repair bays, its own security force, and a small municipal government to serve its some ten thousand semi-permanent residents. Most Polkbridgers were either drifters (from Earth or else one of the three settled worlds in the Spiral Gap that had been successfully terraformed) or wealthy entrepreneurs seeking to oversee and exploit the latest mining and colonization concerns. Most station services were computer automated for those too poor to become established in a planetside community, but the wealthier class provided its own comforts, largely by way of servants, both human and compu-brained.
"STKR812, message received." The voice was that of a flight-bot, which annoyed Bru a little. It would've been nice to get a flesh-and-blood greeting after three weeks of salvage patrol with no one but Bacchus for company.
Just then, however, another voice cut in: "812? Could that be big, bad Bru-ski back from the great beyond?" Bru leaned back and allowed himself a smirk. It was Kevin Ragg, one of the few security goons on Polkbridge that Bru felt anything for other than intense disliking. "Relax, Copetski, none of the bartenders you owe will find out from me you're back in town. Just make sure after you dock at--" Kevin paused to check a screen. "—at Bay N227, that you give me first grabs at whatever goodies you're hauling this trip. See you later, Bru-ski. Drive careful. Polkbridge out."
That was more like it. Maybe birthday wishes did come true once in a while. Bru threw several switches to link up with Bay N227's approach beacon. "Where's that retro burn, Bacchus? Time to slow our approach, isn't it?"
"Coming up on optimum burn position in fifteen seconds, Captain," said the robot. Bru was glad his own timing instincts were still fairly accurate. He was no machine, he thought, but he wasn't over the hill yet. Not by a long shot. Poor Ragg would be in for a letdown. There was precious little in the way of "goodies" to show for three weeks of vortexial hopscotch. At best his haul might pay for fuel, repairs and a hot meal or two.
Funny that Kevin Ragg just happened to be there to tag his ship when it showed up. Birthday wishes my eye, he mused. Better keep an eye peeled during this visit, just in case. He felt the slight rumble of the retros heating up, and the sensation of his seat harnesses against his chest and abdomen as their velocity began to lessen. The rumble gradually increased until it became an audible roar that filled the ship. By the time the burn ended, two pulsing beacons were clearly visible in the center of the main viewplate. The slower pulsing red beacon indicated the station's "north" end, and the more rapid blue one, the "south."
"North Bay 227, this is SPAID transport KR812," Bru said. "You should be receiving our approach codes. We ask that you clear us for docking. Respond."
"North Bay 227 responding—SPAID transport KR812, you are clear to dock. We are ready for information download at your discretion," came the automated response. Bru began the mail file download. Each message was tagged with a credit code that would cause a cash transmission to Bruce Copetski's station bank account, either from the sender, if he or she had pre-paid, or the recipient if and when the message was opened electronically. Most of the mail came from the three official settler worlds of the Gap, Generaton, Heavenforge and Reunion. Bru's message service was best known on Generaton, and it was rare indeed when he failed to make a stop in orbit there on the way to or from an exploratory jaunt. Heavenforge and Reunion had mail services of their own, but they were notoriously slow and expensive. These two planets also had exploration forces, but were grudgingly aware of their limitations in the face of the daunting vastness of the opening territories. Bru was certain that he and his ship would continue to provide a welcome alternative for these services for many years to come.
As they approached the northern beacon of Polkbridge Station , Bru consulted the small mirror just above the array of viewplates. He saw a roundish face, blue eyes and a straight nose. His hair was dark and coarse, cropped close on the sides and wavy on top. Some gray about the edges, enough to make me respectable, he mused, as well as a fine network of wrinkles around his eyes and forehead. Aunt Norma always said he favored his mother, and he'd often been mistaken for Norm's son, rather than a nephew. Still wishing he'd known his real parents better – but no. He turned away from his reflection and back to the helm controls. No, Norm and Norma were his real parents. Or had been. The image of his rich father had faded with age—age and the fog of excessive wealth. It had begun long before they'd been lost at sea, eons before he'd lost himself in an expanding universe.
"Bacchus," he said wearily, "let's put this old tub to bed and stretch our legs awhile." The robot nodded once down and up and toggled the retros one last time as they slid into their berth.
Short story by Mark Aikins
Read 805 times
Written on 2006-12-29 at 21:06
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Bru and Bacchus--Chapter One
Chapter One: The ShipBruce Copetski's ship fell back into Euclidean space on his forty-fifth birthday. As he saw the smudgy stars coalesce on the main viewplate, Bru was recalling childhood parties with Uncle Norm and Aunt Norma, and rectangular cakes with blinking strobe candles, and the home-bots harmonizing tinnily to the Happy Birthday anthem—a song nobody'd sung to him for some thirty years.
"Happy birthday, Captain Copetski." The buzz of inorganic voice came from Bacchus, his robot first mate—computer-brained beings still the only ones who could negotiate the vortexial leaps. Programmed for such niceties as befitted their servant status, crew-bots such as Bacchus were fairly standard on star yachts like Bru's, although he rarely fell into the habit of treating them like people, and even if he did, it wouldn't have been any kind of compliment.
Bru's yacht had never been christened with a respectable name like Delta Rising or Star Tracker or other tags he had run across in his travels. He had lost his last vestiges of romantic feeling about space-faring long ago, and referred to his vessel by its registry number, or simply as "the tub." Real names were for real people, and of the many acquaintances he had made, few of them qualified in his book as "real."
Bacchus wasn't real either, he reflected, but it had received the moniker from its former owner, and out of convenience, Bru relented and used it now and then—rarely necessary as most of the time he and the bionic were alone together. Salvage craft like his yacht could make a decent living in the Spiral Gap sectors, where terraforming and mining were beginning to thrive, and stellar mail service was a pressing need. He and Bacchus had become part of a loose network of galactic go-betweens generally known as SPAID-ers, short for Salvage, Portage And Information Dealers. Most of his ilk were rough and nondescript, with reputations that varied widely from awed admiration to total disgust among the corporate, industrial and pioneering types who inhabited the Gap sectors.
"Happy birthday, Captain Copetski." Bacchus had an annoying hard-wired habit of failing to realize it was being ignored.
"Ah, right—thanks," Bru answered. The robot would repeat the greeting a dozen more times until he acknowledged it. "Don't robots know," he said, "that people over thirty-five don't care anymore about birthdays? What's our ETA at Polkbridge?" There was a muted hum as the ship's chronometers recalibrated after the vortexial leap they'd just completed. Bacchus's head swiveled to face him.
"Twelve hundred twenty hours, Captain. Five hours, fifteen minutes from now." The head swiveled back toward the viewplate. "Long-range detectors show a clear trajectory ahead."
"Well, take over, then; I need some exercise and some shut-eye before we dock. Lemme know if the scanners blip anything interesting." Bru unbuckled and floated down a twenty-foot passage to his small cubic quarters, knowing that Bacchus would have no trouble piloting alone. He strapped absently into a gangly contraption that resembled an inquisitor's torture machine and began pedaling and pumping his limbs. The zero-gym was programmed for a thirty-minute workout, complete with tapered-off warm-ups and cool-downs tuned exactly to his latest medical body scan. As he exercised, his mind returned to memories of Uncle Norm.
Norman Palchik, his mother's brother, had taken him in when he was ten. Bru's parents had disappeared along with all the other passengers and crew aboard their cruise ship, somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. An only child, Bruce Copetski had known precious little about his wealthy parents, the main fact being that they'd had no time for their son. Norman and his wife Norma were proud, hardworking and poor. While they congratulated Norm's sister for finding and marrying a rich man, they secretly mourned the way that money had changed, corrupted and embittered her. They felt sorriest for young Bruce, and couldn't help rejoicing when the courts awarded them custody of the boy after the tragedy at sea.
Bru often vowed that when he came into control of his inheritance at twenty-one, he would grandly repay his aunt and uncle for being "real" parents to him. But tragedy struck again. As they were flying to Lunar University to be present for his graduation, a freak meteor collision caused their Moon shuttle to veer off course and crash on the lunar surface. Both Norm and Norma Palchik were fatalities of that crash and Bru, now wealthy and twenty-one, was alone in the universe. Uncle Norm had worked and saved for almost eleven years to educate him and prepare him for a life of prominence and responsibility. But the upper-class kids at school either reminded Bru of his rich, uncaring parents, or else they distrusted him because of his working class upbringing. Consequently he had no close friends, and the bitterness of life made him hard, selfish and reckless.
After burying his uncle and aunt, he began to wander not only the planetside paths and pleasures of Earth, but the more exotic and harsher settlements of the Moon and beyond. His money allowed him to explore the strange and technically mysterious realm of the space-farers, most of them company men, many of them military, but all of them with skills and know-how they'd pass on to a rich young ruffian for the right price.
Finally, at twenty-five, Bru sank his remaining millions into a five-thousand ton star yacht with vortex capability. This became his home as well as his sole means of support. He vividly remembered his first vortexial leaps, taking him from the constellational neighborhood of the Sol system to the uncharted wilderness of the Spiral Gap, where space-farers were naming brand new constellations every day, and where thermal fusion miracles were warming dead planets and making some of them friendly to life transplanted from a now distant home world.
Bru floated from the zero-gym apparatus to a coffin-shaped cabinet on the opposite bulkhead of his cubicle. Once sealed inside it, he shut his eyes tight as small, powerful jets of spray cleansed his body and then blew him dry. Then, from one corner of the cabinet he reeled out a length of soft, flexible material which fastened to two hooks above his head. Wrapping himself inside it like a cocooned insect, he then felt a gentle rocking motion as the cabinet began to rotate, creating an artificial sensation of gravity that soon lulled him to sleep. The dim illumination inside his sleep chamber slowly died along with his weary consciousness.
---------------
Uncle Norm placed a tough, meaty hand on the boy's shoulder. The aquaglider's deck was solid and motionless under their feet in spite of their 250-knot cruising speed through the restless whitecaps of the Adriatic Sea. "Bruce," he said, looking not at the boy but out at the water straight ahead of them, "your mom always loved the water. You don't understand it now; maybe someday you will: it was a fitting thing that she ended up here at sea." His hand left Bruce's shoulder to lift a handkerchief with the other hand to his nose and he blew into it softly.
The boy had never seen Uncle Norm cry. There'd been an entire litany of other emotional responses, from joy that lifted the big man off his feet, to cursing, blustering anger that scorched an entire neighborhood with its ferocity. Never tears, though.
Bruce wasn't used to hearing tender words spoken about his mother. He could remember his dad calling her "old girl" or "spider lady." Were these terms of endearment that they shared for some secret reason known only to them? His parents always acted somehow businesslike and distant when they were around their son, and those times were seldom. Was there love there? Had there ever been? Bruce's life up to then had been spent more often in the care and fellowship of nannies, house-bots and secretaries than with that couple who circled each other like earth and moon, with no warmth to spare on their comet of a son who intersected their orbit so rarely.
The 'glider began to throttle back, the gyros automatically adjusting the deck's plane so those on it felt very little deceleration. The wind's screech against the window, muffled by the three-inch glass, toned down enough to let the pair know they were nearing their destination. "This is the place?" Bruce wondered aloud, peering out curiously as though he expected some floating sign among the furtive waves. "It's so far. No land in sight. They couldn't have. . . couldn't. . ." His ten-year-old blue eyes began to sting around the corners. A huge, strong hand placed a handkerchief in his small, skinny one, then it was back on the boy's shoulder.
"Gone, son. She is gone; they are both gone." Norm's voice was not bitter, but filled with a puzzled anxiety that seemed to be struggling against the wind that lashed at the sea. Bruce blew into the linen thing in his hands, but like Uncle Norm, could find no tears to shed. There, surrounded by deck, glass, water and sky, they bade his parents a silent farewell.
Four hours after the chamber lights dimmed to black, a three-note chime sounded repeatedly and the sleep cabinet brightened gradually. "Time to make myself presentable," Bru said to himself. Reaching out from his cozy shroud, he pushed open the lid and repelled outward into the cabin. Dressing in zero gravity had become second nature long ago, as had all the other physical necessities. He soon was back in the corridor, first floating aft to visually inspect docking thrusters, umbilicals, clamps, as well as check on fusion equipment and vortexial generators. Maintenance crews on all space stations were generally very reliable and competent, but Bru's training had taught him never to trust anyone more than his own eyes. Plus, not all the relationships he'd developed out in space were friendly ones. Grudges were a rare thing among the SPAID fraternity, but you never know. His earpiece began to buzz and crackle.
"Capt. Copetski, Polkbridge Station is now within detector range. First retro burn to commence in five minutes."
"Roger, that," Bru replied, making a mental note of his fuel consumption readout. He bounced off the maintenance module bulkhead and propelled forward until he reached the bridge area, where he soon buckled in.
"Gimme visuals on all outer viewplates," he commanded. Bacchus obeyed, and a collage of five secondary screens lit up before Bru a bit left of center screen. "Let me have manual control of screen three; it needs tweaking." Bru then joy-sticked the tuner until the starfield image on viewplate three was as crisp as the others.
"Send message to commander, Polkbridge Station: SPAID transport KR812 in your sector on full approach. We request docking instructions. Please respond." Bacchus punched out the transmission. Even at light speed the message would take several minutes to be received and answered. Bru transferred the maintenance readouts into the datapad strapped to his left wrist. After they docked, he wanted his turnaround to go as smoothly as possible. He'd be ready to brief the ship mechanics quickly so he could make some visits and do some business while the ship was being serviced.
Polkbridge was about two miles in length, a cylinder-shaped city in space half a mile in diameter. Vessels docked at ports that pockmarked the ends of the cylinder. The station was equidistant between two similar red dwarf stars, neither of them close enough to threaten it with too much radiation or other bombardments. It boasted many amenities for the spacefarer, in addition to several hundred repair bays, its own security force, and a small municipal government to serve its some ten thousand semi-permanent residents. Most Polkbridgers were either drifters (from Earth or else one of the three settled worlds in the Spiral Gap that had been successfully terraformed) or wealthy entrepreneurs seeking to oversee and exploit the latest mining and colonization concerns. Most station services were computer automated for those too poor to become established in a planetside community, but the wealthier class provided its own comforts, largely by way of servants, both human and compu-brained.
"STKR812, message received." The voice was that of a flight-bot, which annoyed Bru a little. It would've been nice to get a flesh-and-blood greeting after three weeks of salvage patrol with no one but Bacchus for company.
Just then, however, another voice cut in: "812? Could that be big, bad Bru-ski back from the great beyond?" Bru leaned back and allowed himself a smirk. It was Kevin Ragg, one of the few security goons on Polkbridge that Bru felt anything for other than intense disliking. "Relax, Copetski, none of the bartenders you owe will find out from me you're back in town. Just make sure after you dock at--" Kevin paused to check a screen. "—at Bay N227, that you give me first grabs at whatever goodies you're hauling this trip. See you later, Bru-ski. Drive careful. Polkbridge out."
That was more like it. Maybe birthday wishes did come true once in a while. Bru threw several switches to link up with Bay N227's approach beacon. "Where's that retro burn, Bacchus? Time to slow our approach, isn't it?"
"Coming up on optimum burn position in fifteen seconds, Captain," said the robot. Bru was glad his own timing instincts were still fairly accurate. He was no machine, he thought, but he wasn't over the hill yet. Not by a long shot. Poor Ragg would be in for a letdown. There was precious little in the way of "goodies" to show for three weeks of vortexial hopscotch. At best his haul might pay for fuel, repairs and a hot meal or two.
Funny that Kevin Ragg just happened to be there to tag his ship when it showed up. Birthday wishes my eye, he mused. Better keep an eye peeled during this visit, just in case. He felt the slight rumble of the retros heating up, and the sensation of his seat harnesses against his chest and abdomen as their velocity began to lessen. The rumble gradually increased until it became an audible roar that filled the ship. By the time the burn ended, two pulsing beacons were clearly visible in the center of the main viewplate. The slower pulsing red beacon indicated the station's "north" end, and the more rapid blue one, the "south."
"North Bay 227, this is SPAID transport KR812," Bru said. "You should be receiving our approach codes. We ask that you clear us for docking. Respond."
"North Bay 227 responding—SPAID transport KR812, you are clear to dock. We are ready for information download at your discretion," came the automated response. Bru began the mail file download. Each message was tagged with a credit code that would cause a cash transmission to Bruce Copetski's station bank account, either from the sender, if he or she had pre-paid, or the recipient if and when the message was opened electronically. Most of the mail came from the three official settler worlds of the Gap, Generaton, Heavenforge and Reunion. Bru's message service was best known on Generaton, and it was rare indeed when he failed to make a stop in orbit there on the way to or from an exploratory jaunt. Heavenforge and Reunion had mail services of their own, but they were notoriously slow and expensive. These two planets also had exploration forces, but were grudgingly aware of their limitations in the face of the daunting vastness of the opening territories. Bru was certain that he and his ship would continue to provide a welcome alternative for these services for many years to come.
As they approached the northern beacon of Polkbridge Station , Bru consulted the small mirror just above the array of viewplates. He saw a roundish face, blue eyes and a straight nose. His hair was dark and coarse, cropped close on the sides and wavy on top. Some gray about the edges, enough to make me respectable, he mused, as well as a fine network of wrinkles around his eyes and forehead. Aunt Norma always said he favored his mother, and he'd often been mistaken for Norm's son, rather than a nephew. Still wishing he'd known his real parents better – but no. He turned away from his reflection and back to the helm controls. No, Norm and Norma were his real parents. Or had been. The image of his rich father had faded with age—age and the fog of excessive wealth. It had begun long before they'd been lost at sea, eons before he'd lost himself in an expanding universe.
"Bacchus," he said wearily, "let's put this old tub to bed and stretch our legs awhile." The robot nodded once down and up and toggled the retros one last time as they slid into their berth.
Short story by Mark Aikins
Read 805 times
Written on 2006-12-29 at 21:06
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
