Cut and sort.
Cut and sort.
Cut and sort.
That has been Wiggly Sprocket’s life for years.
She was a ship breaker for Trireme Station, and was mentally on autopilot as she cut a ruined fighter apart. Stretched out over a few kilometers were sixteen other breakers in their own docks.
In the cold weightless vacuum, her cutter’s deep groaning traveling up her legs was partially drowned out by the classic violin music in her helmet. Twin beams of energy rhythmically moved back and forth as the razor thin cut was made. As the cut finished, the segment lazily started drifting away. With tired drudgery, she angled her wrist mounted scanner over the piece she had just removed, and let it see if the internal component she wanted had survived intact.
Trireme station loomed behind her, and the formerly marble and gold colors of the once proud mining station had been dulled and marred by solar winds, war, and neglect.
Thankfully, the war was over, and the dying was done. But picking up the burnt and scattered pieces was neither quick nor easy. The gateway station linking the Lilian system to the rest of the United Pony Space Initiative was in ruins. Of the previous seventeen colonies and habitat stations, only a few facilities remained. Small farming towns on the lone habitable world, the foundering shipyard in orbit over the planet, and Trireme station that orbited just star-side of the first asteroid belt were all that had survived. For the navy, four warships and a handful of strike craft were counted among the living. Their enemies however were broken, and those that were marooned in the Lilian system had turned to scavenging and petty piracy.
All of the wrath, ruin, and the drudgery of her work kept Wiggly feeling as if she was in limbo, never able to see a return to real joy or Harmony.
With her scan showing all green, Wiggly used a repulser to launch an intact sensor array down to the recovery barge, then turned back to the half chopped-up fighter. She pulled out her scanner once more to plan the next cut, and had it outline dangerous or expensive components that would violently disagree with her cutting tool. She marked the best cut lines which remained on her visor as she secured the scanner. She halted the retrieval of her cutter when the music stopped in her helmet and a low whistle played. A massive grin cleaved her muzzle as text scrawled across her visor ‘prepare for end of shift’. Drudgery could wait.
Her stomach protested her negligence. “You and me both.”
Moving her repulsor to her back, and allowing the magnetic clamps to secure it, she spread her wings and used the rcs thrusters to gently drift back to the transport belt. It was little more than a series of metal hoops moving on a conveyor belt that went from the edge of the pier to the station airlock.
Once there, she pulled a lever and a low powered holding beam blanketed the chopped up fighter for her to continue tomorrow.
More text scrawled across her visor, ‘lockdown complete, breaker may depart. Please remember to return all rented tools to the kiosk before clocking out.’
Sprocket saw a few other breakers sail by with one of them waving at her. With a grin only quitting time could bring, she grabbed a waiting rung and was pulled along at great speed.
Trireme station dominated her view now. It was a ruined drum shaped station. There used to be a massive cylinder that housed natural greenery and habitats easily the size of a megalopolis. But the war had seen to the end of that. A gaping hole had been blown through one side and secondary damage had destroyed fully half of the drum.
Thankfully though, the central spire survived, and with it a sizable portion of the population. With the asteroid mining ships all destroyed and the great foundries still as cold as the void, Trireme had been reduced to feeding on the plentiful carrion left by the war. The last two years had seen enough repairs to stabilize the structure, but hopes to return it to its glory days were decades away when the repair crews were sent to rebuild the shipyards.
Wiggly Sprocket was brought to an airlock at the central spire where she and a few others waited for it to cycle for them. The local radio was abuzz with chatter and music from ponies that were coping as best they could. She looked up towards the great wound and saw a small tug dragging in a new derelict.
A shoulder bumped Sprocket causing her to turn to a friend of hers. “Hey, Sprocket, you down for drinks for Pieday?”
“I can’t, I promised Live Wire I’d take him up-spire to a restaurant with actual food.”
The airlock clanked open, the sound of it traveled up their boots. The stallion tsked in disappointment. “Yeah, that’s right. You two’s birthday is today isn’t it? Well, tell your brother I said hi for me.”
Air hissed into the lock, making all of the jostling metal and fabric become audible. “Will do.”
As everyone chatted and bragged or groaned about production numbers all while shedding their space suits, showering, and surrendered their tools. Sprocket kept her cutter and scanner, as she had bought them to avoid rental fees. Lugging the fairly heavy tools across her back, they were made lighter by the one third gravity the station could maintain. Sprocket opted to skip returning home to drop her equipment off, and instead made her way to her brother’s workstation.
It wasn’t that far from the breaker locker rooms anyway, and it felt nice to stretch her wings and legs as she danced between running and flying over groups or other obstructions along her path.
However, it was not feathers that gave her flight, as she could not grow them. Sprocket was a pegacorn, a daughter of magic and the sky while naturally lacking the talents of either. Her horn would have been uncontrollably discharging lightning throughout the day, igniting the oxygen in her suit had she not possessed a wire mesh that ran along the spiral of her horn.
Her wings were partially encased in threads of metal that hummed whenever she wanted to fly. Due to the war she had not been able to buy ones that fit since she was a young teenager. Her current set was a jerry rigged mess that barely hung on to the three long fingers of her wings, and hummed at different pitches when she used it. Were it not for the low gravity, she’d be unable to fly at all.
Unlike the truly vast open area of the wrecked cylinder, the hallways she walked through were cramped and worn out. Repair teams were never in great supply after they left for the shipyards, and less traveled places like this corridor were held together by slap-patches and hasty welding.
Sprocket rounded a foggy corner and spotted her destination. Live Wire’s posting was once one of five teller front offices where ponies would go to remotely buy and register ships bought from the colony shipyard. Now though it was where salvage shipmasters would go to have wrecks scanned and sold upon delivery.
Unfortunately, such large tugboats were easy prey for pirates, and were getting few and far between now. As such, Live Wire was the only one still present. He looked intensely bored at his teller station until he saw his sister’s approach, and waved tiredly at her. “Wiggs, how was today?”
Wiggly leapt over the counter and tackled him into a crushing hug, an act made worse by the tools on her back. “Wirrrrrrre!” She cheered happily as she buried her face into his neck. All through her life, the unicorn always made her feel safe in his embrace, like she was protected from the world’s woes. Where Wiggly possessed a pale red coat and a rich blue mane that had a streak of orange off the left side. Live Wire was a sky blue unicorn with a shock of vibrant red and orange mane spiked up. He bore a number of scars in spite of his fairly young age, with the worst being across the left side of his face. In place of an eye, he possessed a cheap orange implant that contrasted with his natural emerald eye. It had been worn out before he got it, and it couldn’t properly use his metabolism to power it for very long.
Chuckling sheepishly at the security camera above his head, Live Wire returned the crushing hug with one of his own. For his part, Wiggly was like a little sister to him, someone to guide and protect at all costs. He stroked her mane, knowing she needed a release from the tedium of her work. The act caused her to briefly go limp in his welcome embrace.
Reluctantly, Wiggly removed herself, and knew he would chastise her if she didn’t float back over to the customer side of the kiosk. She leaned against his desk with fatigue settling over her joy of visiting him. “Are you ready to get out of here for our birthday?”
Wire groaned, and started typing on his console. “I wish, but a tug just came in two minutes before closing for the night, and I drew the short straw. Shouldn’t be waiting too long though, I doubt he wants to wait long.” Live Wire checked the time in his eye. “The hour being what it is, docking fees will start in twenty minutes if he doesn’t sign it over.”
“Well that’s good, because you still haven’t chosen where you want to eat. It’s my treat tonight, birthday colt.”
“I told you what I want,” Wire asserted softly. “An extra pack of synbeef is more than enough. We need to save that money for the tickets out of here once the gate’s repaired.”
“Aww, but that could be a decade from now, and your birthday is today,” Wiggly punctuated with a light jab of a hoof. “I can pull some overtime when the next one is offered.”
Wiggly dug her hooves in and continued to insist on a restaurant, knowing full well how much her brother loved to eat. Live Wire continued to deflect, trying to find some alternative cost-free activity they could do, and could never bring himself to be insistent enough to give Wiggly pause.
Unbeknownst to them, barely ten feet away on the opposite wall, a rat was gnawing on electrical wire near a leaking methane pipe.
A short time later though, he was about to exhaust Sprocket’s ideas when a new face cleared her throat behind his sister. Sprocket turned to see a craggy old salt of an earth mare in a tattered trenchcoat and a patchy mane. “This is ship registration, right?” she asked with a snarl of impatience.
Live Wire perked up, and nosed his sister’s hooves off the desk. “That’s right. I heard you come in, so I went ahead and readied the forms. You can sign off before the dockyard starts charging you.” He magically withdrew a touch pad and pushed it forward. Wiggly wanted the shipmaster to finish quickly, and cleared the way, giving a polite greeting as she retreated.
The corner of the earth mare’s lips turned up at the expediency, but shoved it back. “‘Fraid you’re going to have to change forms there, sonny. I want to register the boat under my name to fly, not sell it to be scrapped.”
“Oh!” Wire was taken aback, and one look at Wiggly revealed she was no less surprised. “You actually found a spaceworthy derelict?” He reclaimed the pad, and inserted it into his console while trying to remember where those particular forms were.
“I wouldn’t exactly call her spaceworthy just yet. Found a… courier shuttle that was chewed up by some PDC. Found the crew still strapped to their seats with holes in them bigger than a hoof. But whoever killed them missed the engine and enough important bits that it can be patched up in a day or so. I just need to find a crew for her.”
Live Wire pulled the pad back out and presented the new forms. “Well congratulations, that’s a hell of a find, if a bit grizzly.”
While her brother may have been playing the smiling clerk act, Wiggly Sprocket felt like the world was growing distant as opportunity loomed over her like a mountain. The shipmaster was about to grab the pad to allow it to scan her retinas to confirm her claim over the salvage when Wiggly practically launched herself at the desk, startling the old mare into dropping the pad. “Miss Shipmaster, ma’am! I’ll join your crew! I’ve worked as a breaker for eight years. You need a piece cut off, and it’ll be done before the words even leave your mouth!”
Grumbling at having to bend down to reclaim the pad, the earth mare snorted at her. “You don’t even look twenty-” The shipmaster paused after noticing Sprocket’s featherless three-fingered wings, and remembered her tribe could look eighteen and be in their eighties. “Well, I ain’t looking for breakers… Then again, you pegacorns are supposed to be mechanical wizards ain’tcha? Why are you workin’ the yards instead of the engineers or repair crews?”
“I did, at first,” Sprocket admitted a bit too quickly for her liking. “My boss at the time almost flooded hab block seven with carbon dioxide. I tried telling him that, but he didn’t believe me. So I maybe - sorta - had to be a bit punchy to get him out of the way to fix it. ‘Course he took offense to that and blacklisted me for his mistake.”
Sighing in disappointment, the shipmaster turned away from Sprocket to read the tone print on the form. “A common enough story, a bit too common,” she added with dismissive disbelief, “but I ain’t in the mood to take a risk on somepony who’s been blacklisted. Doesn’t look good to other possible crew and all. And as I said, I don’t need a breaker.”
Desperation set in, and Sprocket pushed herself into the shipmaster’s face. “Oh come on, ponies aren’t going to care since you’re the boss and not me. I can do it, I just need a chance! You won’t find a better crewmember, I swear it, please!”
“You don’t know the first thing about runnin’ a ship. Get off me ya stupid girl!” The earther bodily shoved Sprocket away, and using a mechanical hand on her hoof, she quickly drew a plasma pistol and aimed it right at Sprocket’s forehead. The only sound for a second was the whine of capacitors charging. “Touch me again, and I’ll melt that empty dome of yours.”
In an instant Wiggly’s whole demeanor changed. Gone was the desperate young mare, and nor did a panicky one take her place. No, Sprocket’s eyes reflected something old and unfazed by staring down the barrel of a gun. The firm, unwavering expression both impressed and unnerved the shipmaster, and her aim retreated barely a touch, but a noticeable touch. “I’ve stared down larger barrels than that.”
Live Wire lit his horn and a caustic orb threatened the shipmaster. “There’s no need for that. We’re a polite society here, yeah?”
Keeping a tense glare on both of them, the shipmaster watched Sprocket’s expression closely, looking for something. A few moments pass before a wiry smirk crosses her lips. Slowly and deliberately she flipped the safety on the pistol and holstered it. “That’s right. Real polite.” She kept her gaze on Sprocket. “You have an old soul, girl. Good on you for listening to it, albeit a bit late… Perhaps you got what it takes after all. We all got to start somewhere, you want to work? I’ll run you like a dog, but you’ll earn a fair wage.”
Even if the weapon was out of her face, Sprocket couldn’t shake her tense demeanor. Still, the opportunity was on the table, and the risk was inconsequential to her now. She needed an escape, and a testy boss was good enough for her. “Fine by me.” Wiggly raised her hoof, and the shipmaster shook it.
“Excellent. I parked my new acquisition on dock 42A. You can show me if you pegacorns are as good as they say by getting it spaceworthy.”
Live Wire was floored by both the turn around, and that Wiggly agreed to such a thing without even looking at him. Resolving to fuss at her later, he let go of the spell and resumed his customer service smile. “If you two are done, I’ll let security know there is no need for their services.”
He pressed his hoof down on the panic button twice to disable the alarm. Yet in doing so, the frayed wire sparked.
Boom
The floor and opposite wall exploded into the hallway. Wiggly Sprocket’s world became a typhoon of blinding heat and light. She was slammed against the wall, and cut up by whizzing shrapnel. She was left conscious, but dizzy and her ears were ringing like a school bell. The station AI reacted quickly and cut off all gas, electrical, and fuel lines to the section. The fire went out just as quickly as it started, leaving Wiggly to shakily gather her wits. Pain throbbing on both sides of her. Bleary, she picked herself back up. What she lacked in magic, she made up for with durability. She cradled her head with the only wing that didn’t burn with pain. She looked at her left side and she had raw burns and deep gashes along her flank, wing, and foreleg, but nothing felt broken. Her cutter had fallen off of her, and aside from a new dent on the handle, it looked intact. “Wire? Wire?!”
Fumbling on unsteady legs, she lurched over the counter, the red emergency lights illuminated her brother who was moaning from a concussion, but he had been shielded by the desk and-
Sprocket hastily looked to the shipmaster. The old mare was covered in a heavy steel beam obscuring her forward body. The upper segment of the beam was still attached to the ceiling which was the only reason the shipmaster wasn’t completely crushed. Flashes of Trireme’s sundering rushed back. Although her focus was impaired by her fresh injuries, pain, and old scars she still acted with clarity.
Wiggly reached for her cutting tool, and stumbled from the weight of it and her injuries. Grunting with supreme effort, and wheeled it around, nearly stumbling in the process. Flicking a pair of switches, she hefted the cutter and eyeballed a quick cut plan. But she stopped short upon finally seeing something that she had first missed in the dim emergency lights: brain matter that was splattered against the wall.
With biting regret, she realized there was nothing she could do for the dead shipmaster. Wiggly was about to go to her brother’s side when she saw the data pad resting face up near the corpse. Fumbling to return the cutter onto her back, she used a hoof to drag the pad away from the dead mare and looked at it. It suffered spider-webbing cracks and part of the screen was black, but the ownership form was still active with the green scan button dutifully sitting there waiting to be used.
Cold logic and ambition took hold. She’s too dead to make use of it. Sprocket glanced up at the camera, finding a chunk of metal had cleaved it in two. With desperation gripping her heart and starting to break her focus, she looked down both ends of the hallway. She could hear shouting and oncoming hoofsteps, but no one was visible yet. In a rush, she hit the button and held the pad up to her face. She was half surprised the gentle red scanner still functioned and it scanned her eyes. With a happy chime that felt out of place, the pad changed to show the vessel at docking bay 42A was to be transferred to her name, and all it needed was one last button to confirm. Come what may, with a firm grimace she hit the submit button.
The next day Sprocket woke up in the infirmary. She groaned, and sluggishly sat up to find her brother sitting on the foot of the cot she was on. The stallion was recovering nicely as well, but his eye implant was darkened without power. He put down the practically ancient magazine he was reading and gave her a relieved smile. “Glad to see you back, Wiggs.”
She hissed from a combination of deep aches and swaths of shallow burns. Bandages covered far more of her body than she remembered bleeding from. She had no privacy from other patients, save for a lime green curtain.
“What happened?” She rubbed her sore head. And narrowed her eyes against the harsh lights above. “Last thing I remember was… Umm.”
A bemused lifted eyebrow was all she got at first. “You dragged me about one step before collapsing right there behind the desk. At least that’s what the paramedic said.”
Sprocket paused to think, eventually her eyes widened. Everything rushed back to her between the gun and fleeing the area. “I went Wigglinanas again…”
“Completely.” Live Wire fumed with an annoyed scowl. I still don’t get where she came up with that name. What even is a ‘nanans’? “Wiggs, I get that we agreed that if a chance popped up for you to fly that you could jump at it. But I didn’t think that included signing up with a pony who drew a gun on you like that.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wiggly sputtered, hoping for forgiveness. “It’s just - I was as surprised as you were that she switched frequencies on me. I figured if I hesitated she’d reconsider and say no.”
“You should have said no after that.” Live Wire shook himself and had to force himself to let go of his anger. Come what may, she was the world to him, and staying mad always felt weird to him, like his brain being dipped in oil. “Well,” he started with a much calmer tone. “Doesn’t matter either way, our would-be captain is dead.”
Two sets of armored hooves thudded on the metal decking, quieting Sprocket’s bemoaned reply. The hooves came to a stop in front of her curtain which was drawn away to reveal two station security officers. The front one was a hard edged pegasus stallion who was a passingly familiar face to the siblings, although neither of them could put a name to his face. The dark gray earth mare behind him was more of a surprise.
“Boss?” Live Wire asked with a surge of worry. “W-what brings you here with s-sec?” Live Wire gave the hard nosed administrator a sheepish grin.
“Verifying some facts before an arrest is ordered.” The administrator locked her harsh gaze upon Wiggly who cowed away. “Miss Wiggly Sprocket, as per 24 U.P.C § 1771, I am here to inform you that Trireme feels aggrieved about a possible case of grand theft astra, and first degree fraud.” The mare did not stop while the siblings looked pale enough to blend in with the bed sheets. “Know that if you decide to remain silent and invoke an attorney, I will move forward pressing the already stated charges. Am I understood?”
Wiggly’s lip was quivering and it took serious effort to make it stop. “I do.”
“Very good.” The administrator mentally commanded a drone on her back to activate. It flew up to be level with her head and projected a hologram of the old shipmaster between herself and Wiggly. “Yesterday, Shipmaster Cherry Sweet made her intentions known to the dock controller that she was delivering a derelict for her use. Her death was registered at 1945 hours station time.” The hologram changed to the damaged pad. “Yet the SAI logged the title transfer of the unnamed freighter to you at 1946. Care to explain this discrepancy?”
“Ah - yes I can.” Sprocket paused and closed her eyes to try and recall the night as perfectly as she could. “You see, she - Cherry Sweat that is - agreed to sign me on as her second in command. When she died, her ships and possessions fell to me in lieu of a will, right?”
The administrator appeared unmoved by the defense. “If you were officially recognized as part of her crew, then yes. However, there is no crew whatsoever listed under Cherry Sweat.”
“It was a verbal agreement we settled that very night.”
A very faint uptick in the administrator’s lips gave way. “Is that so? Then care to explain this?” The drone switched to video playback. It was the security camera from the night prior when Cherry arrived at Wire’s kiosk. It was silent, and it stopped when Cherry pulled her pistol on Sprocket. “Does this look like the actions of somepony wishing to sign you on as a crewmember? Let alone a first mate?”
“I - I well umm…” Wiggly’s memory of everything past that point grew hazy, and she didn’t know how to argue it.
“I thought not.” The administrator turned to the police stallion. “Officer, make a note of the time. Resident Wiggly Sprocket is hereby charged with-”
“Wait a minute, where’s the rest of it?!” Live Wire cried out, stopping his boss, who turned to him with grave irritation. Live Wire was unmoved by the baleful glare, and he tapped the side of his artificial eye. “You forget I was there? All cybereyes record the last forty eight hours in a secure partition. It’s all part of the terms and conditions after all. I can provide everything else up to the explosion. Cherry did invite my sister to her crew.”
“A recording from an implant? You could have doctoring software,” the mildly perturbed mare explained as if she was the only one speaking the truth.
“Then perhaps I can forward the file to a third party at the shipyard, or planetside by chance.” Live Wire was running on dreams and hope. He had no way of even contacting such a person, let alone affording to hire them. “How about it?”
Sighing heavily at the resistance, the administrator inclined her head. “Very well, forward the file to the drone.” After doing so, the hologram revealed the rest of what happened that night up to the explosion itself including everything he had heard. Although outwardly calm, the administrator was fuming, yet it was not directed at the siblings. “I see I was not given the full recording. Even so, a verbal agreement is not solid legal grounds. I am willing to forgive the grievances.”
“I can keep my ship?” Wiggly asked with growing hope.
“Keep? Hardly. Trireme will acknowledge that you assumed you had legal course to keep the vessels, but you do not. They belong to the station.”
Taken aback, Wiggly climbed off her bed, but stopped short of anything else as the officer moved a hoof over his gun as a warning. “What are you even going to do with the ships?”
“That is no longer your concern,” the administrator remarked before studying their faces. Then a moment passed before the risk of potential litigation threatening her career made her speak further. “But I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. Sweet Cherry’s original vessel will be auctioned off. Failing that, it will be sent to the shipyard, who knows maybe it can be repurposed into an asteroid miner. As for the unnamed vessel…” She checked something in her implant. “The tedious paperwork of registering a new transponder and the repairs will likely see it sent to the breakers. Who knows, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have it assigned to you, Miss Wiggly Sprocket.”
“If I may,” Wiggly began while bowing placatingly more to the officer than the administrator. “If you’re just going to send my ship to the breakers, why not let me keep the thing? I can fix it up, and then go do what I signed up for. I mean, what’s more useful for Trireme: just one more derelict, or another salvager bringing in work? Because I can tell you, the breakers never have enough work.” It was a thin hope that the administrator lacked intricate knowledge on the breaker yards. Work was getting thin, but the station wasn’t entirely desperate yet.
“You haven’t even seen the freighter Cherry brought in,” the administrator retorted flatly. “What makes you think you can fix it, let alone afford such a task?”
Wiggly proudly flared her three-fingered featherless wings. “It’s in my blood. I know I can do this.”
Humming for a second or two, the mare tilted her head. “Perhaps you can, perhaps not. In either case, Trireme will need to be compensated for relinquishing its claim over the freighter. I tell you what…” The administrator used her authority to check over the siblings’ records. “You two are recipients of the War Orphans Act, yes? Free room and board and a reduction on utility fees.”
Live Wire didn’t like where this was going one bit. “Now wait a minute, boss, you and I both know that what you pay both of us can barely keep up with the rest of our bills. How many times have I had to ask you for an advance or overtime?”
“You will have a ship to live on, yes?” the administrator replied with a matter-of-fact tone. “The long term savings on resending your privileges will save Trireme more blips in the long run. What say you?”
Before Wiggly could even move her jaw to speak, Live Wire roped her into a tight huddle while giving his superior a customer service smile. “Just a moment if you please.” Turning back to his sister, Wire gave her an iron glare. “Don’t you dare. Our rooms are all we have left of our parents.”
Hardly cowed by the display, Wiggly tutted. “Yes, and so far all the station’s given us for losing them is a hole in the wall hammock, not even a proper one either, watery paste for food, and ‘clean’ air given a once-over by the scrubbers.”
“Better that than the void.”
“A ship is an upgrade and you know it!” Wiggly pressed while jabbing him with a wing. “What’s a better gift from our parents? Some rotten hole-for-a-home I can barely stretch my wings in, or a ship we can call our very own. It’s freighter, right? Plenty of room. We can live there from here on out.”
It made sense to Live Wire, even if he didn’t like it. Wiggly would never forgive me if I put my hoof down. His gaze softened as he thought it over. As stable as it was, he had no love for clerical work, and even if he did, he couldn’t stomach working under the administrator any longer. Breaking the huddle, he turned towards his ex-boss. “So long as you waive docking fees for two weeks and give us allowances to fill our tanks to half, you got a deal.”
Humming in approval, the grim mare looked down her nose. “Nine days and one third on the tanks. Given your adequate work history; Mr. Wire, I’ll even add in a single replacement oxygen scrubber, should the vessel require it.”
Live Wire turned to his sister who was practically vibrating with excitement. He jerked his head towards the administrator. It was all Wiggly needed and she thrust her hoof forward to shake. “Deal!”
Arching an unamused eyebrow at the offered hoof, the mare simultaneously ordered the drone to move the offending hoof out of her personal space and send a request to the SAI. “Excellent.” She didn’t need to wait long as the SAI delivered a document to her internal storage. She then redirected the same document to Live Wire and for it to be displayed by the drone. The holographic contract looked like a slightly yellowed scroll with the relevant text complimented by the seal of the United Pony Space Initiative above it. “This is the contract of our aforementioned agreement. Peruse it if you feel it necessary, then sign.”
While Live Wire was able to simply use his soul key, a unique signature created between a pony and their first implant, Wiggly Sprocket was a rare all natural pony. As such she had to let the drone scan her retina after she was satisfied the contract had not been quietly altered.
Once it was all said and done, the administrator hummed in satisfaction. “Perfect. Some advice, if I were you, I’d check yourself out within the hour. Your free healthcare is now expired. Good day.” With a final nod, the administrator departed, dragging the officer with her.
“I think we just spent more than we thought,” Wire worried as he could practically feel his wallet deflating. “Wiggly, if this freighter turns out to be a mistake, I swear on mom’s grave I’ll upload myself somehow so I can haunt you for your entire life.”
“How bad can it be? Cherry was willing to repair it and she was solo.” Sprocket patted her brother’s shoulder with a reassuring smile.
One hasty exit from the infirmary later, the siblings were quick to make their way back to their respective quarters. Wiggly stepped inside presumably for the last time. The once sterile floors and walls were worn down and dirty thanks to the cleaning bots being taken offline years ago to conserve power, only to never be resumed when the issue was solved. What few possessions she had were scarce. Lacking any real bag, she unhooked her cargo netting hammock and used it to grab what few bits she had before the station could claim it all. The five ration bars in a cupboard, a few reused water bottles, some ratty clothes and dolls she had outgrown, but couldn’t bring herself to throw out. The only thing she took real care in preventing damage were two picture frames. She took them off the shelf and gently ran the edge of her wing on the first one. It was her at nine years old. Her proud pegacorn father and unicorn mother were smiling in their old home before the sundering. When the drum was still intact, old fashioned houses made of real wood that had been grown right here in Trireme.
The three of them sat on rich green grass with clouds obscuring the curve of the dome behind her smiling parents as they squashed her in a hug. Tears fell from her eyes and she wiped them away with her other wing. Ever so gently, she nuzzled the picture before carefully wrapping it up in an old blue and white dress. The other photo was of six ponies; her family, and Live Wire’s own in one big group before the war started. They had been neighbors back then, and Wiggly couldn’t remember the first day she had met Live Wire. In fact, her first memory was waking up from a nap right next to him and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that they belonged with each other.
The warm memory faded, the smile on her face did not. She looked over the cramp room she had reluctantly called home one final time to ensure she didn’t miss anything. The creaking vent, the hundreds of tally marks she made hoping the room was temporary, the loose paneling where she hid Wire’s birthday gift once, and the leaky shower that she had to smuggle a tarp to replace the missing curtain.
No, she wouldn’t miss any of it, because none of it was hers. She left that room, that cell, behind.
Some lunch later, the siblings exited the tram which brought them to the dockyard. It was a massive artificial chasm that survived the sundering. Twin exits complete with shielding retained the atmosphere, and twenty ‘small’ docking platforms lined the edges. Eight recessed larger docking platforms sat in the center which allowed through traffic. Presently, three vessels were docked in the center platforms while over a dozen smaller craft took up the spaces lining the walls. The cacophony and pollution of so many ships was carefully regulated by pre-war mechitech, making the dockyard bearable without rebreathers or ear protection.
Wiggly Sprocket took a long slow breath and sighed in contentment. “Can ya smell it, Wire? This is a turning point, I can feel it.”
“Oh yeah, my nose hairs get burnt every time we come here,” he retorted with anxious humor. “But how about we save the ‘this is Elysium’ until after we see the state of our new home.” Leading the way, Wire stepped onto a busy conveyor moving ponies and small cargo pods alike.
“You mean you haven’t looked at the scans yet? I would have by now if I had a sublink.”
Wire shrugged helplessly. “Cherry clearly did some of her own, else she wouldn’t want to keep the thing, but the station doesn’t exactly give those out for free even if we’re the new owners. The only thing I know is that it is a terrapin class light freighter. We’ll just have to be surprised.”
“Oh you know what? All the better!” Sprocket giggled manically as the conveyer pulled them along.
A short time later, they stepped off and were floored by what they saw. Sitting on platform 42A was a mess of a ship. In its pristine condition, the freighter would look like a flying rectangle parked on its thin long side with one drive thruster on both sides of the ship. The cockpit sat high at the front and below that were the sparse living accommodation below it. Two modular weapon hardpoints were visible on the thin dorsal side. The rear section housed the airlock and docking ramp. It had a cheery blue and gold paint scheme with a ‘Happy Trails’ logo of the now defunct transport company.
As the siblings circled the vessel and then searched within it they found that the cockpit had been ventilated. There was only unrecognizable mangled metal where the two weapons should have been. Dozens of cannon holes had over-penetrated from one side to the other. The ramp had been cut open by a pirate’s handheld plasma torch. The transponder had taken a direct hit. Even the registry number and printed name had been deliberately cut away with some pirate graffiti around the removed section as if to spite the poor vessel.
After mentally assessing all the damage, Wiggly tapped her brother’s shoulder. He had been busy plugging into the computer, and investigating matters on that end. “Any luck in there?”
Pulling the connector out of the console and allowing it to spool back into his neck, Live Wire shook his head. “Storage and the CPUs’ were fried, likely by prolonged exposure to solar radiation, but I got good returns on most everything else. I could pilot the thing so long as I’m using my own gray matter, but this rust bucket is dead the moment I unplug. ‘Course, I’d need to find the software first, and figure out how to actually fly second.” He sighed while looking up first at the flight controls ruined first by the attack, and then by hard vacuum. “There’s no way this thing is ever going to look pretty.”
“Says you!” Sprocket twirled in the tight confines on the vessel’s hallway behind the cockpit. “Just you wait and see, once I get all the important stuff in working order, we can decorate to our hearts content.”
“Can you fix it?” Wire pulled himself back to his hooves and fixed her with a half desperate half hopeful look. “Because we’re not exactly flush with funds ya know.”
“If we want to do it down and dirty, and we’re going to have to if we want outta here in nine days, I can do it.” Wiggly ran a hoof along that chipped and cracked plastic paneling along the wall. “We can afford enough slap patches to keep the living quarters air tight, along with making sure we don’t suffer any leaks in the tanks or feed lines. The rest we can fix out in the midnight sea.” A massive toothy grin cleaved her maw at the prospect of fixing it all. “So that just leaves your end.”
“Damn I wish I had your enthusiasm for all this.” Try as he might, Live Wire was stuck with the situation. Not that he had any real love for his old job or dormitory, but there was a sense of stability he knew he’d miss. “My buddy Circuit Break owes me a favor, so I can get a license for the SAI to write me a control program on the cheap. As for piloting…”
He drew a blank, making Wiggly do the same for a time. Eventually a thought struck her. Wiggly slid up to Wire’s side with a sultry look that made him instant suspicious. “Why not ask your maaarrrefriend? She’s a pilot.”
“She’s on rotation with the Rainbow Dash.” He eyed her with annoyance at how strongly she was giving him comically romantic eye flutters. “So she’s a no go.”
“Bull.” Wiggly cut the act to be serious. “Come on, I know how you cyborgs are. You spend your nights in her private lobby doing unspeakable things to each other.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Wire retorted with the certainty of truth behind him. “Navy ships have a total blackout on personal messaging or mingling like that. I’d have to send a message the old fashioned way if I want her to see it.” He recoiled a bit at the flat stare she gave him. “Okay, okay, I’ll send a message. But there’s no guarantee Winter Gale will receive it any time soon.”
Loosing up, Wiggly made for the ladder to grab her list of supplies. “Then you probably should get the SAI to include a simulator with your flight program.”
Live Wire followed after her, and called out as Sprocket stepped off at the bottom. “Just tell me this: do you really think we can do this? We’ve been stationbound our whole lives. We’ve never even been on a shuttle.”
“You want my answer or a real answer?”
Rubbing his eyes as the day’s fatigue and hunger dragged at him. “Your answer actually.”
Flashing a winning smile, Wiggly flared her wings, only to be hemmed in by the confines of the walkway. Not that she let that deter her excitement. “Not only can we do this, but we’ll be famous. I can feel it!”