A new contact with the Rust Society prompted me to set off on a dangerous journey.
As I entered the bridge, a beam of light fell from the left side window across the room. Silence and dimmed light lay over the bridge like a soft shroud. Only the ventilation and the radiators whirred. It was the typical morning silence before a working day. I enjoyed the situation, took a deep breath and took a few steps forward to the pilot’s chairs with my coffee in my hand. Through the windshield, I could see the gas fog from the pyrojet, which shimmered like an abstract oil painting from the great distance.
For several weeks, I had been delivering goods to the pyro-gateway for the Citizens for Prosperity, which they needed to set up their society in the pyro-system. And I was beginning to like it. I also liked life on board the Starlancers Max that I had been given. Apart from the low top speed and the narrow viewing slit in the cockpit, it was a great ship. It felt like home. I hadn’t slept on a space station since I used the ship. Everything I needed was on board. The Starlancer was also very versatile. I could take a rover with me and still carry more cargo than would fit in my Star Runner.
Satisfied with myself and the situation, I took a sip of my coffee. A cold, sour liquid poured over my tongue and down my throat. Disgusted, I looked at the container in my hand. It was a can of coffee. Where the hell was the cup of fresh coffee I had made for myself? Then I remembered. I had left the cup on the table in the common room. Drowsy as I was, I had taken a can from the supply box and gone to the bridge.
“What the hell,” I thought to myself, downed the rest of the coffee from the can, took a seat in the pilot’s seat and placed the empty can next to me on the console. After I had flipped a few switches, the ship came to life. The humming of the engines became louder, the on-board computer calculated the quantum jump to the pyro gateway and waited for my go. With a tap of my finger, the dots of light from the stars stretched out, I plunged into the quantum tunnel and the orange-blue fog of the pyro-jump point grew rapidly.
Although I had been to the pyro-gateway several times before, the sight still impressed me. The jump point was a short distance from the space station. It was closed and looked like an anomaly, like a light in the fog.
After landing at the space station, I unloaded my cargo. I had no idea who would pick up the cargo and take it to the Pyro system. My only job was to unload everything at the pyro gateway. Because of the dangers in the pyro system, the Citizens for Prosperity took care of the onward transportation themselves.
After everything had been unloaded, I stood on the observation deck of the space station with a bottle of water. Fascinated, I looked at the jump point. It had a magical attraction, something mystical. It was the gateway to another world. At that precise moment, the wormhole opened. The light phenomenon became a vortex, a rotating black circle with a brightly glowing bluish edge, which grew bigger and bigger and sent out waves of lightning and distortions.
“Fascinating. Isn’t it?”
Without me realizing it, someone had stood next to me.
“It certainly is,” I replied. “It looks like a hole in the fabric of space and time.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he laughed. “Almost everyone stands at this window with weak knees before their first jump and wonders whether they should really take the plunge.”
“Uh, no. I’m not jumping for Pyro today. I was just bringing merchandise here to the Gateway.”
“For the Citizens for Prosperity?”
“Yes. How do you know that?”
“I’m taking the stuff to Pyro. My name is Gerald. I’m from the Rust Society.”
“My name is Zero. I used to fly through Pyro a lot when I was commuting between Levski in the Nyx system and Stanton. But that was a while ago. Rust Society? I’ve heard of them. And what kind of guys are you?”
“The Rust Society is an organization of transport and salvage operators who share information and guide newcomers in both fields. We also service the cargo routes, which are dangerous. Like I just did for the Citizens for Prosperity.”
“Because of your name, I thought you were all about scrap recycling.”
“No, the name comes from a drink called Rust. Okay, you can probably use it to remove rust from a ship. But we like to drink it. It has a lot of alcohol. If you’re ever on your way to Levski again, why don’t you come and visit me and I’ll buy you a drink. I’m from the local group on the planet Monox.”
Gerald seemed like a funny guy. Sociable, freedom-loving, someone from the borderlands. I immediately liked him. He told me a few more things about the history and background of the Rust Society and about his life in Pyro, then he had to leave.
*
The conversation with Gerald was still on my mind days later. I liked what he had told me about the Rust Society and the life they led in Pyro. Ok, the constant violence in Pyro was not inviting, but the freedom and life without the influence of the UEE and the megacorporations was all the more so. There were truly free peoples living in Pyro and the Citizens for Prosperity wanted to establish a peaceful society.
Then I thought back to my last stay in the desert, to what was important to me and finally to the scandals we had uncovered in Stanton. And what had changed as a result? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The megacorporations continued to rule people’s lives. There was no real freedom.
I was curious about the life Gerald led. Curious about what the Citizens for Prosperity were building in Pyro. And Monox was a desert planet. Not a sandy desert like on the moon Daymar, but a desert nonetheless. Sandworms are also said to have been sighted on Monox.
All good reasons to pay Gerald a visit. Good reasons to take a closer look at what life in the border regions had to offer. But Gerald had warned me that the violence in Pyro could get completely out of hand. It was best not to be discovered and, if in doubt, to disappear very quickly.
In Cousins Crow’s I optimized the stealth properties of my White Rabbit, then left Orison and made my way to the Pyro jump point. It felt good to be back in my Star Runner and set off into the unknown. On a journey where I didn’t know what to expect.
After passing through the pyro-gateway, I approached the jump point. The anomaly was wafting in front of me. A light phenomenon that didn’t look like a gateway. The closer I got, the more imposing it seemed. As I passed the last warning signs indicating that I was leaving the safe area of the UEE, the Star Runner’s jump drive activated. It calibrated itself with the wormhole and my displays began to flicker. The White Rabbit was in the anomaly’s sphere of influence, it had surrendered to it and was waiting to be activated.
I pressed the button. A wave of energy spilled over the Star Runner’s hull and raced into the anomaly as a concentrated beam.
The wormhole woke up. Like a Valakkar, it opened its gigantic mouth. Then it swallowed me with a roar that was out of this world.
I plunged into the maw, into the bowels of the wormhole. I raced through a winding tunnel into an unknown world. Into borderlands that were foreign to me.
After a short break, the stories will continue in mid / late February.
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