Ashkelon Station: In Orbit of GL382

07/23/2183

Flashing red strobes and station alarms were still blaring outside in the corridor when Catherine Grey entered Duck's Bar. Within, the alarms were silenced, though the atmosphere was still raucously loud under a haze of cigarette smoke. The establishment was full to capacity with men and women dressed in a variety of jumpsuit's, welding jackets, t-shirts, grungy street clothes, or blue collar uniforms.

Catherine didn't spent a lot of time around crowds of roughnecks, space-truckers, tech's and local tradesman but she wasn't bothered by it. If anything she envied the lives of hardworking regular people. I would give anything to trade places with them.

Presently about a third of the patrons were making their way towards the exit, concerned in one way or another by Executor's alarms. The rest were content to stay where they were throwing back drinks and gawking up at live station media broadcasts streaming on large monitors. The audio was off in favor of music, but there were close-captions scrolling across the screens in several different languages.

Catherine tried to ignore looking at the screens as she pushed her way through the throng, maneuvering towards the bar. Her baggy jogging sweats stood out somewhat against the garb others were wearing, yet it was mostly the fact she kept her hood up that caught Wade's attention. From their table close to the front entrance he followed her progress this way and that as she squeezed her way between people's shoulders. Her slim form aided in this regard, but at last he finally glimpsed her face.

“Holy shit!” he muttered out loud, “it's her!”

“Who?” Ze'ev asked, turning to follow his gaze. By now Catherine had already moved past them.

“Our guardian angel!” Wade stated, hopping off his stool and heading after Catherine before anyone could stop him.

“Guardian angel?!” Ze'ev wondered out loud.

“The android that forced open the pressure door outside Dizzy's Club,” Reese explained with a grunt between puffs of his cigar. “Wade won't shut up about her.”

“Ah yes, Victor tried to introduce me to her in the central command center. At the time, I admit, I was in no mood for such pleasantries.”

“She's not an android,” Storen interjected with a slow shake of his head. “She's human, but her organs are encased in an artificial body.”

Reese furrowed his brows, “Say what?”

Storen nodded, “It's true. It's a remarkable story. I've read a lot about it. How does that change your opinion of her?” he asked Reese.

“I don't trust anyone, including androids or whatever she is,” Reese huffed, “But sure, I guess I owe her some gratitude.”

Ze'ev nodded in agreement, “So do I! I was told she managed to open that jammed pressure door single-handedly so everyone could escape Dizzy's Club.”

Not entirely single-handedly, Reese thought, I had it open several centimeters already, but he didn't bother correcting him. There were more pressing things to think about as he looked up again at one of the monitors flashing with breaking news about the explosion up at the Jĭngtì Lóng executive penthouse.

By the look of it, Ze'ev and Storen were both duty-bound to address this emergency so Reese wasn't surprised when they both rose to their feet. Around them the crowd and the reporters on the screen were speculating in a hundred different ways about what was happening and what the potential causes of the explosion were? Reese saw it immediately for what it was, an attempted assassination against Victor Li Shing.

Had the station administrator and his shady lead engineer not been sitting right here with him at this very moment, Reese might even have speculated that Storen orchestrated it at Ze'ev's bequest. Yet one look at the shock on their faces as the alarms started blaring immediately dispelled that notion. They were just as surprised by this as everyone else. Besides, the old man doesn't have it in him to be a killer.

“What does this mean for our arrangement?” Reese asked with a jerk of his chin towards the monitor.

_ _ _

At this moment, Isaac Pere Shashua and his assistant Sue Dechellis entered the bar. Standing five foot nine, Isaac's efforts to scan over the crowd were much more effective than Susie's. However, spotting the station administrator standing at a table near the entrance wasn't what he expected to see. The sighting made him do a double-take, especially since the septuagenarian made an obvious attempt at disguise dressed in blue jeans, a collared button shirt, a lightweight zippered sweater, a golfers cap, and eyeglasses.

The other two men at the table were strangers to him. One was a hugely-built black man puffing away on a cigar bit between his teeth. He was wearing an gray leather captains jacket, a knitted cotton shirt, baggy work pants and well-polished black work boots. Isaac couldn't see his face well from this angle, but his hair was black, thick and low cut, with an equally low-trimmed beard along his jaw peppered with gray. Isaac also spotted the glint of single silver pin on his collar. An engineering pin on a captains jacket? Is this a spacecraft tech who aspires to be a ships captain, or a spacecraft tech that was formally a ships captain? Given his age, the later seemed more likely than the former.

The third stranger was clearly a veteran station tech, white, also with a cigar in his hand. This one was in his mid-fifties, balding with thinning gray hair pulled back into a knot just above the collar. He also kept a short beard, though his was thicker around his mouth and chin. He wore a typical station tech jumpsuit beneath an old tan leather jacket with the black-over-red Ashkelon Station patches on each shoulder. Three dark-orange starbursts were sewn above the heart on his left breast marking his rank as a lead engineer. He also had two different types of engineering pins on his collar, both gold. A man of broad experience and expertise it would seem, yet unlike the other tech, he was very obviously a local.

By the state of their cigars and the number of beer cans, shot glasses and coffee cups presently on the table, they had been conversing for a while already. The hulking dark skinned man evidently drank as much as both the other men combined, which given his size was entirely believable, but equality likely there was a fourth person at the table earlier?

Ze'ev Darkon and the older tech were getting ready to step away from the table as the latter stuffed out his cigar into an ash tray. Isaac spotted two angry-looking red marks on his hand as he did so. He was thinking about what might have made those marks when the big man posed a question to both of them, 'What does this mean for our arrangement?', in a voice that was all-business.

That question prompted Ze'ev and the older tech to share a look, which in itself said a lot about their relationship. Looks like unfinished business here? Isaac was immediately keen to investigate this further as he filed that observation away.

“What's up?” Sue asked, catching his look of distraction.

“Let's split up. Keep looking, I'll catch up.” Isaac stated matter-of-factly before he stepped towards the table.

“Seriously?!” Sue grumbled with irritation, shoving and elbowing her way through the forest of legs in front of her.

_ _ _

Catherine took a seat on a bar stool at the serving counter as her sad aqua-blue eyes threatened to boil over with tears. Her expression was tense with grief as she clasped her hands together to minimize their shaking. She was so upset! The volume on the monitors were off yes, but dozens of voices were shouting and commenting on the live images enough that she got the picture anyway.

Three men in particular, standing close by, were grinning and cheering at the view of bodies and debris floating away from the Jĭngtì Lóng penthouse. These men varied in age from early thirties to mid fifties with a laser-etched bar code tattoos on the backs of their hands marking them as ex-cons. The oldest and the most fervently outspoken was a lean and virile looking white man dressed in blue jeans, well-worn boots and a ratty, plaid, long-sleeve shirt. His hair was thin and mostly gray; untrimmed and roughly combed with stringy bangs hanging down over his wide, creased and wrinkled forehead.

He was handsome, but severe in his looks with a jutting, cleft chin, piercing pale-blue eyes and rough, fine stubble adding a bristled texture to his skin. His voice was raw and breaking with an American accent as he said, “Look at that boys! The cunts in the penthouse are having an impromptu spacewalk!”

Catherine felt herself cringe at those words as her hands clenched together into fists. She turned on her stool to glare in his general direction and he seemed to sense that, catching her look from the corner of his eye. As he turned in challenge to look back at her, Catherine heard another voice ask, “What'll you have darling?” which brought her focus back in front of her where the bartender was standing.

She was an older, dusky-skinned, black-and-gray haired woman with wise dark eyes and a faded tattoo of a blue crescent moon and a yellow shooting-star above her left brow. Her demeanor was relaxed, despite the rowdy crowd and all the flashing alarms. An old hand at serving drinks, her voice was rich and exotic, sweet, soothing, friendly and sincere all at once. She seemed to know the regulars here as well as old acquaintances, and she wasn't shy about cracking jokes when the moment was right for a laugh.

“I'll have a Gunfire Tea,” Catherine answered with a bitter hint of an English accent.

The bartender smiled, “Bravo! I can't remember the last time anyone ordered one of those, but it'll take a minute to fetch the tea. Do you want something else while you wait? Hemlock perhaps?”

Catherine smirked, “If it's strong enough, sure.”

“Be careful what you wish for young lady, this one's the house!” the bartender chuckled with a wink, turning away to grab bottles for her first drink.

Catherine was actually surprised at herself for what she ordered. Gunfire Tea was one of dad's favorite drinks, a mixture of rum and black tea he sipped by the fireplace when she was just a little girl. He let her have a sip once, just to satisfy her nagging curiosity. She promptly spit it out remarking sharply how bitter it was. Her father only laughed, 'That's as good as it got in the British Army during the eighteen hundreds!' he explained. 'Cups of Gunfire Tea were served to the lower ranks before a morning attack and brought to the bedsides of soldiers on Christmas morning when they were deployed over the holidays.'

'But you aren't in the army daddy! You're in the Navy!' she had argued with him.

'Your grandfather was in the Army Catherine, as was his father before him. This drink reminds me to be thankful, humble, and to remember them. One day you should do the same. Consider it a family tradition!'

Catherine missed her father dearly, perhaps no more than this very moment. She was so alone! So afraid! Life had taken her so far from that fireplace and those long nights when Lt. Cmdr Higgen Grey was home from active duty sitting her on his lap and sharing stories with her. She would give anything to start over again and make different choices.

How the hell did I ever end up here? Catherine wondered, her eyes drifting up to stare at shelves behind the bar well stocked with local varieties of beer and liquor. Temple Colony on GL-382 below had several large alcohol distilleries taking advantage of its abundant corn and grain farming. Many of the bars and clubs here on Ashkelon Station got great wholesale pricing on these local spirits to help spread interest and demand elsewhere.

Standards of quality and authentic taste on the Outer Rim weren't what they were in the Core Systems of course, but cheap alcohol would always sell. By the same adage, Ashkelon Station would never suffer in popularity for having so much of it.

She watched the bartender mix bourbon, whiskey, scotch and apparently tequila together into a shaker before straining it into a rocks glass on ice, “Here you are doll, specialty of the house!”

Catherine strongly disliked the term doll, yet she merely nodded and accepted the glass with thanks. She wondered what the Tequila was made out of? Could you grow Agave plants on GL-382? Probably, sure. It was dry enough. Almost a desert world.

Meanwhile on the monitors, the E.M.V. spider ascended to the edge of the shattered view port of the Jĭngtì Lóng executive penthouse. Spotlights flashed over its yellow painted hull as it drew level with the twisted, blackened frame of the open penthouse suite. For a minute nothing happened. Tensions rose. One reporter stated, 'We are getting reports this E.M.V. was commandeered by unauthorized operators...' A flurry of comments followed this statement as different voices in the crowd reacted.

“Bullshit! Those are tech's in that thing, have to be!”

“Maybe they caused the explosion?!”

Further speculation and argument quickly followed about which tech's might be involved? Catherine felt her ire rising at the notion that this explosion was somehow deliberate? Part of her wasn't surprised in the least to hear it of course. Everywhere they went, Victor made enemies, if they weren't already there. She stared up at the monitor now, furious. This was a living nightmare! Dr. Gordon did nothing wrong!

Her mind started to visualize him out there, breathless in the great hungry void, suffering the same way she once had perished. Peering at the corpses tumbling through space, seeking him out, did her no comfort either. It was difficult to identify anyone at such a distance through the grainy pixels of these old screens. Yet still she tried, and as she tried, her sense of responsibility for his death magnified with the effort. It was obvious now how much her relationship with Victor put Henry in harms way. Ultimately however, it was her dependence on him that got him killed. He'd still be alive if he didn't save my life.

That pang of guilt wrenched at her heart so harshly she immediately reached for the drink set before her, lifting it to her lips, tilting her head back to gulp deeply. It wasn't delicious, but damned it was strong! As strong as the fingers that suddenly took grip of her hood and yanked it off.

_ _ _

“Good morning,” Isaac said stepping close to the table where Ze'ev was standing. His expression and tone of voice were both friendly and polite, but only halfheartedly so. The same as a cursory greeting one might speak towards a stranger they chanced to meet eyes with on their way to work.

All three men immediately stared at him but Isaac wasn't looking back. His eyes were cast down at the small paper notepad in his hands, which he absently flipped open with a twitch of his wrist. Storen opened his mouth to speak but Isaac interrupted him as if he didn't notice.

“My name is Isaac Pere Shashua, of the Colonial Independent Newspaper.” Only then did his eyes raise up at them, looking at none of the men in particular, yet watching all of them carefully for a reaction.

Storen sighed and closed his mouth again. Reese said nothing, yet his expression was a mix of frustration and impatience. Isaac could understand that. He was interrupting the chance for Administrator Darkon and the other fellow to answer the question that they were all, right now, pretending he didn't ask.

Administrator Darkon was the only one who remained carefully composed, “What can I do for you Isaac?”

Good, Isaac thought, the old man isn't trying to play games. He gives me credit for spotting him. Best to start off on a platform of mutual respect. Isaac believed first impressions mattered, especially so for a journalist.

Approaching people and asking questions wasn't an easy thing to master. It was important to appear confident, but not arrogant. Respectful, serious, knowledgeable, persistent, and most of all, perceptive. Sometimes there was an advantage to be underestimated, but Isaac didn't usually play into that. At this moment it was true that Isaac had idea who he was dealing with, but the same was true for them. Best not to play dumb in this situation.

“I just wanted to introduce myself. We haven't had a chance to speak since I took over this section for the paper. I'm still learning names and faces around here. I know you're very busy, but when I spotted you here I figured this might be a good opportunity?”

“Unfortunately your timing couldn't be worse. I have to get back up to central command. There's been an explosion,” Ze'ev said pointing at the monitor as if to reinforce the fact.

“Yes of course,” Isaac stated before he looked to Storen, “You're a station tech right? What's your name?”

Storen smirked, “Why do you ask? You gonna write it down in your little book?”

Isaac nodded, “I never forget a face, but writing down names helps me keep them straight. I wouldn't wanna misprint it.”

“Misprint it?” Storen questioned, “Why would you want to print it?”

“Because you're both here drinking in the early hours of the morning, talking about an 'arrangement' of some sort with this individual,” Isaac gestured towards Reese, “even as there's a serious emergency in progress. Our readers will want to know the facts.”

“Are you fucking serious? Is this some sort of joke?” Storen swore, flinching a bit. Isaac could see he was in pain and this was likely affecting his composure. Something to do with those marks on his hand perhaps? Isaac also knew from experience that the one who acted most upset about a potential story usually had the most to hide.

“It's not a joke, it's a story,” Isaac answered with all seriousness.

Ze'ev smiled slightly, disarmingly, but Isaac saw he was troubled. And tired. Very tired. “This isn't the story you should be writing young man,” Ze'ev stated in the tone that wasn't as much a criticism as an observation.

“It isn't?” Isaac asked with a hopeful twitch of his brow.

“No. I have a much better one for you. An exclusive that could possibly make your career.”

Isaac smiled, “Is that a promise administrator?”

“As far as the story goes, yes, that's a promise. The rest is up to you. You're the one who has to write it. If you have the balls,” Ze'ev stated.

_ _ _

“Fuckin-A boys! I knew it!” the bristled old felon exclaimed, sneering down at Catherine, releasing her hood from his fingers, “It's Victor's daughter! In the flesh!”

“Jaeger! Keep your hands to yourself!” the bartender scolded, but it was too late. His compadres and the eyes of many others shifted towards Catherine with scorn. Once again she was the center of attention from people who saw her the same way they saw Victor. That hurt. It always hurt, and this time she didn't think she had the strength to endure it.

“Easy Cleopatra!” Jaeger responded, holding his hands up in mock apology stating, “I was just trying to be friendly!” before he immediately addressed Catherine again asking, “Have you come to watch the show?” as he was gesturing to the monitor. “Looks like some of your favorite people are having a bad day. Is that making you sad?” he asked in an unkind, derisive tone, leaning close enough that she could smell the booze on his breath.

“Fuck off!” Catherine cursed, tensing up so much with anger that the thick glass in her hand suddenly shattered.

Jaeger took a hasty step back, as did the bartender who gasped with shock. Those seated next to her also flinched in disbelief.

“Damn!” Jaeger exclaimed, “You are some kinda freak aren't you?!”

Wade kicked in the back of Jaeger's knee at the same instant he grabbed a handful of his hair, toppling him backwards, off-balance. Jaeger fell flat on his back with a sudden and violent crash that knocked all the air from his lungs.

Immediately Wade snatched one of his wrists pulling up on his arm as he applied pressure down against his neck, under the jaw, with the edge of his boot. Jaeger groaned, struggling to take in a breath as Wade twisted his wrist in his hand, straining it to the breaking point and holding firm.

This was a variation of a classic Colonial Marine Corps Martial Arts take down; which incapacitated an opponent with further options to break his wrist, or his neck, quite easily. This maneuver also allowed Wade to stay on his feet, free to disengage if necessary to face another opponent.

Wade mastered many such close-combat techniques after one hundred days of training in mental, physical and character disciplines drawn from over two dozen schools of traditional martial arts. This was enough to earn him his brown belt, with the option to instruct new recruits and undergo yet even more rigorous training for a black belt.

Wade declined to go any further with it. At the time his preferred challenges were interrogations and intelligence analysis. Training for a black belt seemed like a good way to get embedded with a front-line combat unit. Recon. Black Ops. The sorta work he had no interest in. Nevertheless, in moments like this, he was just as happy to kick some ass as any other Jarhead.

Jaeger's compadres moved towards him threateningly as the crowd stepped back anticipating a brawl. There were bar fights, and then there were bar fights, Wade mused preparing himself to take them on. His tall, lanky frame had reach advantages over these two, yet they certainly looked willing and mean enough to give him some bruises of his own.

At that moment, Catherine stepped off her stool to block their path, both her hands balled into fists, one of which was still dripping white lubricant. “Back off!” she warned prompting both men to pause and glance at each other as if to ask is this really a good idea?

“Cut that bitch!” Jaeger hissed, an instant before Wade broke his wrist. Jaeger screamed just as his voice was squeezed into a whimper by Wade's boot pressing on his neck so hard his face turned purple.

The other two ex-cons pulled knives and moved towards Catherine who dropped into a fighting stance of her own. Feet shoulder width apart, one leg held back, knees slightly bent with her right fist held up a little higher and closer than her left. Taekwondo, Wade recognized.

Suddenly there were muzzle flashes off to his side in sync with the sharp, rapid rhythm of a submachine gun. People dove away and ducked for cover, save the two ex-cons about to slash and stab at Catherine who were the bullets targets. Each of them jerked and spun in place, impacted by at least a dozen rounds that riddled their bodies. They were dead before they even hit the deck.

Wade flinched as one of Victors bodyguards dressed in its characteristic black suit, stepped out from the crowd. She turned to stare at it, red blood splatter smeared across her face, as clear as her expression of umbrage as she shouted, “STOP IT DAMN YOU!”

The bodyguard remained stoic and unphased, its expression as cold as it was aloof, just as more submachine gun fire elicited further gasps. This gunfire however, appeared on the monitors as another one of Victor's bodyguards started shooting from within the Jĭngtì Lóng executive penthouse at two station repair tech's who had just emerged from the E.M.V. spider.

Jesus! Wade thought, this is getting worse by the minute!