Chapter 3: Meeting on the Bridge

Stepping out of my quarters felt like walking out of one metal box and into the bowels of an aging industrial warehouse. The corridors and halls of our ship didn’t have the sleek, sterile white paneling or the bright, artificial sunlight you saw in the corporate recruitment vids. Nor did they look like those cruise lines as advertised either. It’s all a corporate sham unless you’re one of the executives. No. Instead, it was all worn metal, exposed but neatly bundled wiring thick as tangled vines, and the low, constant hum of massive engines vibrating through the ship’s wall. The only thing they didn’t skimp out on was soundproofing our rooms. Though air always tasted faintly of copper, ozone, and decades of recycled sweat from an old gym locker room.

We are sailing or flying – pick whichever you prefer – on a retrofitted Kestrel-class heavy cruiser, an obsolete model by any modern standard, heavily scarred from micrometeorite impacts and whatever dogfights it had with pirates over the years, but it is built to take a beating without springing an air leak. I can only continue to count my lucky stars that seem to drift by in my travels through these systems. This ship isn’t pretty, but it was a flying fortress of cheap scrap if I have ever seen one.

A small, boxy maintenance drone whirred past my ankles near the wall, its treads clicking rhythmically against the grating. I keep forgetting that the faded yellow paint on the ground is their working lane. The thing’s single blue optic swept side to side, scanning the floor for debris, entirely ignoring my existence. T.E.B. kept the human crew down to just seven of us to save on life-support taxes, water rations, and payroll. To compensate for this injustice, they left P.A.U.L. to micromanage an army of these little metal roaches to keep the rust at bay and the ship moving. The only thing that I am grateful for from these pests is that they get to do the space walks instead of me when repairs are done outside in the vacuum of space. They’re a constant reminder that flesh and blood were the most expensive, and therefore least valued, components on this vessel to maintain.

I took a right at the junction, stepping over a puddle of coolant, and banged my knuckles against the metal door of Cabin 4. “Rise and shine, kid. Clock’s ticking.”

It must have been my imagination as I thought that I heard a thud from within the room, but that is odd as the rooms are meant to be soundproof. I looked at the watch on my wrist and saw that three minutes had passed, and placed a cleaning order into the system for the coolant leak from the piping in the ceiling in the halls. While I was lost in thought from the tiny things passing me by, the door hissed open almost instantly, grinding slightly on a warped track. Ollie stood there, already half-zipped into his heavy salvage suit. The lad was a palpable, nervous ball of energy buzzing around all those who got too close to him, much like static electricity. He was only nineteen, a bit green, but fresh-faced and wide-eyed, lacking the deep, bruised dark circles under the eyes like the rest of us, worn down by corporate badges of honor.

“Morning, Warren!” Ollie said, practically vibrating in his magnetic boots. Did the boy leave them turned on or something? “Did you see the alert on the terminal? High-priority salvage! Hazard pay here we come! Do you know what the multiplier on a high-priority tag is?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” I muttered, starting down the hall and gesturing for him to follow with a wave of my hand without looking back.

Ollie quickly fell into step beside me, his gait bouncy and unburdened. “If we pull a full salvage bounty on this one, I could cover the premium for my dad’s medical bills. His synthetic lung has been rattling for months, and we have been bouncing around from hospital to mechanic for that time. With this, I could finally afford a biological grown replacement for him, and—”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, letting his rambling fade behind me. With that eager, slightly goofy expression and the desperate hope clinging to every word he spoke about helping his family, he looked entirely too much like my younger brother, Sam. A familiar, protective instinct flared up in my chest, battling with the bitter cynicism that kept me alive on these missions so far. It made me stop for a moment to let him catch up to me, and I put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. I messed with his hair like a little kid, which he looked up to me with indignation, but I could only laugh as we continued to walk forward in lockstep.

“Don’t go spending those credits in your head yet, kid,” I warned him, keeping my tone steady, purposely cutting off his daydream. “Hazard pay means hazards. T.E.B. doesn’t hand out bonuses out of the goodness of their non-existent black hearts. They only pay extra when the mortality rates require it. Keep your head on a swivel today, kid, stick to the buddy system, and double-check your atmospheric seals.”

“Right, sure. Double-check everything,” Ollie nodded rapidly, his optimism momentarily dimming as he absorbed the advice like gospel. He tapped the gauge on his wrist computer, already verifying his vitals.

We reached the Bridge with five minutes to spare. It doubled as a lounge, a cramped, purely functional space dominated by a central holographic projector table and surrounded by flickering monitor banks. The smell of burnt synthetic coffee and cheap cologne filled the air. Most of Retrieval Unit 976-58 was already there, settling into their pre-mission routines.

In the far corner, bathed in the sickly green light of a diagnostic terminal, Sparks – or what his parents called him, Elias Finch – was muttering to himself. Our life-support systems and mechanic operator were practically twitching, rapidly scrolling through lines of code and occasionally slapping the side of the monitor. Sparks trusted P.A.U.L. about as much as he trusted a hole in his spacesuit, and his paranoia was usually justified, or so I believe.

“Look what the drone dragged in,” a smooth but rough, familiar female voice called out, pulling my attention to the center of the room.

I smirked, walking over to the main console. Jax or Jessa Vane, as she is officially called, was sitting on top of it, her heavy boots resting on a chair. She had some unknown tool clenched in her teeth as she used her good hand to meticulously tweak a servo joint on her left arm. The limb was a bulky, exposed-wire cybernetic — a cheap, heavy piece of industrial machinery that looked like it belonged on a forklift rather than a human being. She somehow always had a smile plastered on her face despite all this crap life had to us. I do wonder if she might get along with Sam, too. But that arm of hers was a dark souvenir from a mercenary job gone wrong three years ago, and a constant financial drain; T.E.B. charged her monthly interest just to maintain the hardware they forced her to install. I do wonder from time to time if she won’t just fake her death one day and escape into the business of piracy at some point soon.

“If it isn’t the company’s favorite cyborg,” I shot back, bumping my fist against her good one. Jax and I were fast friends from day one. Sure, we bickered like siblings, complained about the same bureaucratic nonsense, and watched each other’s backs when things inevitably went sideways on many of these acursed missions and odd jobs.

Jax rolled her one good eye — the other was a synthetic lens that glowed a faint, piercing amber — and bit down on some wires, pulling them tight with her teeth. The servos in her mechanical wrist whined with a high whir as she flexed her metal fingers. “At least my arm doesn’t complain about the food. Though it eats grease faster than I drink coffee. So, where’s your shadow?”

I blinked, looking around. I hadn’t realized I’d lost him in the ten feet between the door and the console. I spotted Ollie hovering awkwardly by the entrance, shifting his weight from foot to foot, looking like a lost puppy who had accidentally wandered into an unfamiliar room.

Jax chuckled, a surprisingly warm and genuine laugh from such a hardened veteran. “Hey, rookie! Get over here before you fuse with the bulkhead. You look like you’re about to salute someone. Come on, double time.”

Ollie’s face instantly flushed bright, deep red. He stumbled over his own heavy boots as he hurried over, refusing to make direct eye contact with her, staring intently at the floor plating instead. “Morning, Jax. Your… your servos sound good today. Very… well-oiled, like your beautiful slicked hair.”

“Thanks, kid. Oye, Warren, he’s a real charmer, ain’t he?” Jax said. She reached out with her normal, scarred hand to playfully ruffle his messy hair, acting completely oblivious to the massive crush the boy had on her. I mean, how could you not see it? Or maybe she just enjoyed mothering him; it was hard to tell with Jax. She stopped after a second longer and went back to tightening a stubborn bolt on her wrist casing.

Before Ollie could recover his shattered dignity and form a coherent sentence, the Bridge door hissed open again.

Aris strolled in, and the atmospheric pressure in the room seemed to shift a little. Our biological assessor — and the ship’s resident doctor — looked like she belonged on a pristine corporate recruitment poster, her striking, effortless beauty contrasting sharply with the grease-stained room. I had brought it up a couple of times, and she would laugh it off and say it was a fit for her, as she preferred to get her hands dirty. To each their own. Much like the rest of us here. Her expression, however, radiated unapologetic boredom at the moment. She moved with a slow, feline grace, an electric nicotine stick dangling lazily from her lips, her white medical coat unbuttoned over her standard jumpsuit, which she had unzipped to expose her overflowing breasts. I ask myself why women torture us so much? Each time I see her, I try to look away or focus on her face.

Ollie, still blushing furiously, was standing right in her path. The poor boy froze, completely panicked, trying to figure out which way to step to get out of her way.

Aris didn’t even slow down. She took a deep drag from her stick, the tip glowing as if it were on fire, and blew a thick cloud of white cherry smoke directly into Ollie’s face.

Ollie coughed violently, eyes watering as he blindly waved his hands and stumbled aside, nearly tripping over a chair.

“Move it, junior,” Aris said smoothly, her eyes locked entirely on me, completely dismissing the boy. She leaned her hip against the console next to mine, flashing a practiced, sultry smile that felt as fake as plastic plants as an actual romantic interest. “Morning, Warren. Tell me you brought the good coffee stash. If I have to drink another cup of the engine runoff Sparks calls a brew, I might just walk out the airlock without a helmet.”

“Sorry, Doc. Fresh out of the good stuff,” I said, amused by the effortless way she commanded the room without paying attention to half the people in it. “You’ll have to settle for the sludge just like the rest of us suckers.”

Over in the corner, Sparks scowled without looking up from his screen. “My brew is chemically balanced for optimal caffeine absorption, Aris. It’s one of the few things on this ship P.A.U.L. hasn’t tampered with that isn’t already vacuum-sealed.”

At the front of the room, Supervisor Vance was aggressively tapping his datapad, his thin face creased with many more wrinkles a man of his age ought to have from excess stress. He had the permanent dark bags under his eyes as if they were tattooed onto him. Proof of a man who knew his middle-management position was one missed quota away from the airlock. “Alright, listen up, people. Settle down. Let’s get this briefing underway. I need everyone’s attention—”

Jax continued to fiddle with her hand, making sure every movement was fluid. Aris ignored Vance entirely, leaning closer to ask me how many hours of sleep I’d actually managed to log and asked to have our hours match up. Sparks continued muttering to himself at his terminal.

Vance sighed, a long, defeated breath, as he rubbed his temples. He looked up at a camera as if to ask for assistance from the surveillance.

BEEP.

“Attention, Retrieval Unit 976-58!” P.A.U.L.’s cheerful, synthetic game-show-host voice boomed from the overhead speakers, its volume dialed up just enough to be slightly painful, instantly cutting through the chatter. “Mandatory briefing commencing! Please direct your eyes and optical sensors to the central display!”

The room fell dead silent. Despite our bickering and socializing, we knew when the AI took over, playtime was over. We all turned to the central holotable as the projector flickered to life. A glowing blue schematic of a massive, heavily armored transport vessel slowly rotated in the air above the table. It dwarfed our own ship by a factor of ten as it was pulled up alongside it.

“Target for this mission is Retrieval Unit 457-45,” Vance said, his voice dropping the defeated tone and adopting a cold, rehearsed commanding tone. “They missed their last two mandatory check-ins. Sector telemetry is dark. P.A.U.L. suspects a catastrophic systems failure — likely a localized reactor leak or a life-support cascade failure. A possibility of containment break is possible for the samples they are carrying, but it’s highly unlikely. Now, our primary objective is to board the vessel, secure the ship’s black box for corporate review, and retrieve the biological samples they were transferring for the central R&D division. Those samples are high-value T.E.B. property.”

” We have a secondary objective?” Jax asked, her posture instantly shifting from a relaxed, bickering mechanic to a hardened, tactical soldier. She leaned forward, her amber eye fixed on the rotating schematic.

“Yes, I am detecting faint, highly erratic life signs aboard the vessel,” P.A.U.L. chimed in cheerfully, sounding overly fanatic. “Standard T.E.B. protocol applies. If viable crew members are located, you are to assist them, provided it does not interfere with the primary salvage directives.”

The atmosphere in the room grew instantly dense. No one cheered at the prospect of survivors. We were professionals, and we knew that this sort of mission could have the greatest of casualties possible. If they might as well be entering a ghost ship. If they were lucky, these “faint, erratic life signs” on the ship that had been dark for days usually meant people trapped in failing air pockets, suffering from severe radiation poisoning, or left in cryo-sleep pods. But knowing the crap they have to deal with, those life signs will turn out to be some monsters wandering the ship looking for someone to eat. I hope it is the first one and not a repeat of that volcano eruption fiasco two missions ago.

“Thermal readings don’t match a reactor failure,” Sparks spoke up, his voice a gravelly whisper as he stepped out of his corner, holding up his datapad. “Ambient heat is centered in the mid-decks, not the engine. And the automated quarantine bulkheads are engaged on three separate decks. It just screams that we are walking into a trap.”

Vance bristled, shooting Sparks a sharp glare. “The file is obviously corrupted, Sparks. Don’t overthink it. It’s a salvage run. It will be a simple grab and go for once.”

“What kind of biological samples were they carrying?” Aris demanded, her boredom entirely gone, replaced by a doctor’s razor-sharp edge. She crushed her stick between her fingers and stuffed it into her pocket. “If quarantine is engaged and they breached containment, I need to know exactly what kind of exposure or creature we are dealing with. Are we talking chemical toxins? Airborne pathogens? Live fauna? I need to prep the right antiviral filters or surgical material to have on demand, too.”

“Data regarding the cargo is restricted to clearance level Omega,” Vance replied dryly, reciting the company line like a shield. “Just don’t open the secured crates or any live encased samples. We bag, we grab, and nab the black box; we get out. Jax, I want standard breach protocols followed to the letter.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice, pen pusher,” Jax muttered, her metal fingers clenching into a heavy, terrifying fist. “I’m not losing my other arm just because the company wants a rush job. We will conduct a methodical sweep, test the ambient air, deploy magnetic tethers, and absolutely nobody takes off their helmet until Aris gives the all clear and we have the filter systems running again. Anyone breaks the seal without permission, I’ll weld their helmet shut myself and shove catheters up and down every one of their orifices.”

“Agreed,” Vance said, looking down at his pad, his right eye twitching as his butt clenched in fear of the image now painted in his mind. It was clear and comical to see him squirm like that. That same fool Vance acted quickly to end the meeting before Sparks could even get one more word out. “We’ll operate within acceptable risk margins, but the company expects results, and we are on a timetable. Suit up. I want boots on the deck of Airlock 2 in 2 hours.”

The blue light from the massive hologram bathed the Bridge, making us all look like ghosts. My stomach tied itself into an ugly knot. I just couldn’t shake this bad feeling, which is now growing by the moment. This whole setup stunk to high heaven. Big transports like the 457-45 don’t just randomly malfunction and kill the whole crew from a little engine trouble. That is what the backups are for. Most of all, T.E.B. doesn’t hand out high-priority hazard pay for a simple smash-and-grab operation that is not against other operations. We were walking right into a meat grinder, and we all knew it. At least I hope they understood that. This might be the first and hardest mission that boy Ollie will face. Will this even be worth it at the end of the day?

As I turned away from the holotable, my retinal HUD flickered to life in the upper corner of my vision, an in-dismissible constant reminder. Debt Balance: 40,056 CR. I swallowed the cold, hard lump of dread forming in my throat. I couldn’t afford to be afraid. I looked over at Ollie, who was staring wide-eyed at the hologram, patted the rookie firmly on the shoulder to break his trance, and we headed for the armory.

Time to start another job for this black-hearted company.

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