So, here we are, listeners. The Lea te Suldan Station raid. The very one you’ve been hearing about for… about a year now. I’ve been following the news reports. I’ve walked in the reconstructions, and have been as impressed by what they replicated as I have been disappointed at what they missed. Like, they managed to get exactly how tables and benches were flipped, down their exact positions, but where were the trampled hamburger buns? The smell of disinfectant in the air? Why are all the alarm lights mauve instead of burgundy?
I’ve also heard accusations of terrorism, assault, and hostage taking.
I’ve made this episode, what will be the penultimate episode of Gastronaut, to offer a different viewpoint of what occurred on Lea te Suldan Station. I’ve made it not to clear the names of anyone involved but… for posterity. I guess the word here is: posterity. I don’t know if I can tell our truth or the truth. But I can try to at least tell mine. For now, my episodes remain on the buffer. Considering the accusations, I’m not sure how long that’ll last.
So… here we go then.
I’m Oscar Yasui, formerly a professional food critic, currently… I guess I’m currently someone else. And you’re still listening to Gastronaut.
I think I hate flying. Not a great situation to find yourself in, when you’ve been trying to brand yourself as a travel blogger or… whatever I thought I was gonna to become. But sometimes you grow into hating something. What’s the opposite of an acquired taste? I have no idea, and it’s my job to know these things. If I had this thought five years ago, I might have seen it as an opportunity to stamp my name on the industry. I’d call it something like, ah… learned loathing? Yeugh. I’d use my stylus like a prisoner might a fork, carving out a few more millimeters of rock between me and freedom.
But if I had to review Grac Au Mao Airlines in particular, I’d say this: it’s rough. About 2.1 guns for every crewmember. Lash and buckle seatbelts that had to be torture equipment in a past life. A hull that shudders in flight, whether or not there’s an atmosphere beyond it. The trip haloed by the anxiety of being identified and obliterated by Brightsail mass drivers, carefully concealed among the bold brass facade of Lea te Suldan Station’s exterior architecture.
Imagination took over as we hurtled towards station space. With no portholes, no windows, no viewscreens in the stale-aired cabin area, and very little to prepare for in my role, I didn’t have much else to do. I, the hanger-on of Grac Au Mao. The little podcaster that could, but probably shouldn’t have.
I imagined the barrels of the mass drivers turning to follow us, set through loopholes of shining metal ivy, peeking over the shoulders of stern-faced statues whose eyes beheld a Therevatti they had never known. How many turrets followed our passage? Two? Five? A dozen? With the lockdown, we could have been the only ship en route. Which would mean nothing would distract their point defense array from perforating our mudskipper shuttle on command. The push of a button. A single spoken voice authorization. An errant wrathful thought.
But we had no choice. Or, at least no better option. Military Railships were making for Therevatti, and I’m not sure if the Duke was among them, or if he and his entourage had been turned back with the Singular Devotion and the rest of the civilian Railships. In any case, it was this or spend our entire lives being hunted, while the planet was overrun and pacified. Destroy Lea te Suldan now, or face an impossible threat.
I looked to Polity without intending to catch their eye. They were fidgeting with a bit of wire casing they had snatched up from the ground. Bending it between unpainted nails, stressing the blue into bright arcs of white.
I didn’t say anything. Mass drivers are very fast, listeners. We could all be scattered into stardust in an instant. If that was the case, then it felt right that the last picture my neurons formed would be Polity’s lightly worried eyebrows.
A pilot nudged me. A young man with umber eyes and hair twisted into dreadlocks. He passed a small headset to me: not much more than a mic rod and earpiece, and some rubber straps. I put it on and he pushed a button, sending a soft chirp into my ears. My fingers found the volume knob and turned it up, trying to get the earpiece over the shuttle’s groaning hull.
Polity wrapped an arm around my shoulders, bumped their head against mine, causing both of us to gently wobble in micrograv.
“You ready for this?” they asked. Always worried, now--we probably needed a vacation.
“No,” I said, smiling. “But I talk into a microphone for a living and I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the work. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll do great,” Polity said gently. “Just don’t try to do any voices.”
“Why?” I asked.
Polity shook their head, laughing only with their eyes, “I’ve heard your voice for me. You’re terrible.”
I was about to say something devastatingly intelligent when my earpiece chirped again, and a voice came over the line.
“G2S Luxembourg, hold your current course on approach, we’re experiencing some technical issues on side and want to ensure we’re reading your ident clearly.” The voice sounded distracted.
I swallowed my nerves like a mouthful of cold flan. Polity pointed to a few impenetrable abbreviations on the screen they had pushed in front of me.
“Ehm, LTSTC I understand your last, we’ll comply. Is there something the matter on your end? Where’s the Interior Intelligence?”
“Not at liberty to disclose that G2S, but to answer your first, we’re having a time of it due to a bad firmware update, we should have it cleared soon.”
Silence over the line. A dozen or so Grac Au Mao fighters had clustered around me. Some were repeating what I had said to the others in Thetti, translating as best they could. Everyone clutched their weapons. They might as well have swallowed a carved eye for all the good it would do them against a driver round. We were all just scared. A scowling heavyset man tried to push his ear closer to me, but he was sent drifting through micrograv by another guerilla. I got the gist of the harsh whispers that followed.
Quiet on the set.
The voice again, close to my ear. “Right, we’re seeing you now, good. Confirm your cargo please.”
“Uh, agricultural samples for export and extramarket R&D,” I said, eyes following the path Polity’s nails wove across their screen.
“Crew numbers?” he asked. I knew the answer, but fear kept seizing my brain, making every response feel dangerous. Lethal. I gripped my skull with a hand as I continued.
“Three,” I managed to say.
“Departure time?” he asked. And I answered as prompted.
“Right. Luxembourg you are cleared for entry at Lea te Suldan Station. Have an enjoyable trip, just keep in mind we’re running a skeleton up here. Need you assayed and outbound in 32, understood?” Polity was nodding now, pumping their fist.
“Understood, loud and clear,” I said. “See you soon.”
The connection terminated, and for a few moments the ship was quiet save for the rumble of its engines and the excited whisper of translators. Then a few erupted into cheers of relief and success, before our “cargo” of fighters were quite literally bouncing off the walls with joy. Polity hugged me.
If we were to die, then at least it wouldn’t be in fucking outer space.
Arrival was a blur of motion. Cargo out, crew presented for inspection, team smuggled in through hidden panels or secreted in the few shielded cargo crates we could assemble. A few guerillas climbed into the casks of soil samples we had brought as cover, donning oxygen masks and scooping handfuls of dirt over their bodies until they disappeared, buried out of sight. It seemed that months working in a tunnel network selected against claustrophobic fighters.
The original plan was to stay in the shuttle while Polity headed out with the rest of the squad, but I followed after them. I didn’t want us to be apart any longer than I absolutely had to be. You could call me clingy, listeners, but surviving two separate incidences of gun violence will do this to a couple. Polity appreciated my presence.
“Seeing you is delaying me freaking out, so that’s a big plus,” they joked.
The sound of our footsteps bounded from the surrounding buildings. When the metro passed us, its lightweight cars were empty of passengers, save for the odd lone maintenance worker, or clusters of mercenaries in light armor. We passed by dark storefronts, entryways closed off by rolling grates, fountains that contained no water. Just little matts of purple algae and small commemorative coins purchased from travelers.
And yet, not every light was out as we approached. In fact, we walked into a wall of smells. Char smoke, baking bread, sizzling peanut oil--cooking food.
“What?” I said. Polity followed my gaze. I could tell by their expression that they couldn’t believe what they saw either.
“This isn’t right,” they said, “there aren’t supposed to be this many staff aboard.”
Yet there were. In eateries everywhere, workers remained. Seated miserably behind counters, idly polishing already sparkling tabletops. A young woman was filling up a thermos of water for a few mercenaries. A middle-aged man was slicing some meat from a rotating spit for a shawarma wrap. Some were spacers, I thought. It can be hard to tell the difference at a glance without hearing a bolt of Thetti or Standard on the wind. But most? Most were Therevattins.
“Dain told us that everyone would have been evacuated,” I said, “with the exception of critical support staff and some security.” Polity’s lips pulled back from their teeth.
“Then he lied. Again.”
“I thought we confirmed,” I said. The longer I looked, the more active eateries I saw. Exclusively eateries. I could see the holding cells were dark, as were the shops, the hotels, the finance centers and the customer support desks. Just restaurants? What was this?
“I guess Grac Au Mao only confirmed its own,” Polity said. Their face was a hard thing to read. Anger in the pulse of their jaw, confusion in the narrow of their eyes, grief at the corners of their lips. Supposing the motives of a dead man.
“Polity,” I said.
They shook themselves free and refocused. “Look at the lights down the promenade. There’s too many workers here, too many people.”
The promenade arced up and away from us, the street rising and rising until buildings displayed their roofs, painted and branded. Spokes extended from each section of Lea te Suldan’s toroid, connecting to a central spindle decorated with sculptures—birds of paradise, each the height of three men. I had always found the view disorienting, even if I had logged more hours in space than some.
And the plan remained to destroy all of this. Charges on the spokes to detach the spindle and destabilize the exterior ring. Polity intended to gradually accelerate the station’s rotation past safe limits by seizing control of its attitude jets. As dramatic as this sounds, all of this would happen slowly, even after the acceleration, the explosive charges, the collapse. Everyone would have a little under an hour to escape. The damage would be irreparable, but while the station wouldn’t possibly survive, we were certain the crew would.
These were the thoughts in my head as I pointed down the road. Plans predicated on there being only Brightsail staff. Plans that now lay ruined by the cheery kiosks of eateries ahead of us.
Polity paused, surveyed the direction I had gestured to.
“Lea te Suldan is built for a population fifty times this number,” they bit their lip. “Each escape pod loads from their dock within minutes, their stacked like bullets in a magazine.” They gestured to an emergency exit route as we passed, marked with red signage, textured with hardened lights that would form pathways in a crisis. “They could clear this street in a few waves,” they said.
“Normally, yes,” I said, “but the station is going to be compromised fast. We’ve been around the mercenaries, Polity. They came here to fight, to get paid, maybe to make a difference, but they didn’t sign up to die. They’ll make sure they get their people off station first.” I could see them in the theater of my imagination. Cordoning off the pods, launching in groups while fending off a screaming, pleading mass of desperate civilians. Losing personnel to evacuation with every cycle. Outnumbered, but far from outgunned.
And Polity saw it too. One thing we seemed to share was a healthy vision for catastrophe.
“Brightsail will have their backs to the wall,” they murmured. “Maybe the mercs make the first move, maybe a worker throws something, maybe someone calls a charge.”
I exhaled, brushed my hand across the smoothed surface of a nearby statue. A Therevattin bird, one I’d seen in the jungle but never learned the name of. The station’s destruction would reduce it to shards smaller than my hand. “Even with enough pods, even assuming enough time, Polity, I’m certain--I’m certain there will be a bloodbath at the evacuation point.”
Polity came to a stop. Their hands trembled, but they fortified them into fists, one of which they rapped against their thigh, rumpling the fabric.
“We can’t let this go,” they said. Their voice was hoarse with strain.
“No,” I said. “Not if we expect to ever sleep again.”
“Ha,” Polity managed a weak little laugh, “Sleep. Glad you’re keeping your sense of humor.” They extended their hand and I took it, feeling it still trembling. We stared out at the promenade together, watching the light of Dotter catch a hundred thousand polished surfaces. When I turned to Polity, I saw their determination, their understanding. That was that, then.
“I’ll get someone to help you,” Polity said, “You aren’t doing this alone.”
“Thank you,” I answered, giving their hand a squeeze, “I’m starting immediately, so warn them they’ll have to catch up.”
Polity pulled me into a kiss. I ran my fingers through their sun yellow hair. When we withdrew, I wiped a tear from my eye.
“We have to keep trying, right?” I laughed.
“I should have never told you that shit,” Polity said, almost hiccuping, “I’ll see you again.”
“Yeah, you will,” I answered. We touched our foreheads together, then went our separate ways.
So, we split off. Polity to their position, somewhere in the guts of the station where they could pull the right strings of code. Me, to the first restaurant, hoping that Polity’s request for help would go through. It was a struggle not to break into a jog, to run gasping through the streets, but I couldn’t afford to look disheveled. My plan hinged, in fact, on being as sheveled as possible. Because I was going to commit a new felony. I was going to impersonate a health inspector and try to close down every restaurant I saw.
If you want to frighten a mouse, pretend to be a cat. A critic might inspire a chef to hatred, but in the restaurant world, a health inspector is a terrible thing, an awful clatter of thermometers, a cursed abacus. Leaving only eye watering dread and lethal numbers in their wake.
I couldn’t have thought up a better disguise if I tried.
The scent of the first restaurant struck my hippocampus before my thinking brain even registered it. Fresh pita bread on the air, just barely held aloft over the smells of cumin and cinnamon. The crackle of kabobs over flame, juices intermingling with that of sweet peppers and onions.
It was the kiosk I ate at when I first arrived on Lea te Suldan. It had been over a year and I was back. It was a good place then, with inarguably solid food. No cubed meat or lettuce stuffed wraps here. Little filler, mostly killer. But…
In the back of the kiosk, a group of mostly Therevattin workers labored over a conspicuously stone oven. No mechanical assembly line--that would undercut the flurry of hands moving dough from table to table to peel to oven. That would undercut the showmanship. Look at how much work is going into your meal! It’s bound to be good if so many practiced hands have touched it.
Perhaps that was uncharitable. I lifted my Twinnon Peregrine, poised my finger over its screen as if I was about to render judgment, and lengthened my stride.
In my ear, Polity’s voice crackled over the comms, “I’m in position at the junction, Grac au Mao has already gotten in touch. Everything’s going about as well as it can. Oscar, if you find that you can’t make any headway… just…”
Polity caught themselves. Cleared their throat. When they spoke again, the nerves had vanished.
“Do what you have to do, Oscar. I love you. I’ll be in touch.”
Polity’s words pulled me up like a string, worked a bit of steel into my spine. I did not respond, but it was what I wanted to hear. I focused my attention on the man at the kiosk, yawning towards an empty line bracketed by velvet rope. His skin aglow from the sign above him, which read: “Rasma’s.” Adjusted my walk to a nonchalant bounce, the gait of casual death. I think health inspectors picture it as innocuous, but every worker in food knows it instinctually. When I was a food critic for Palladium, I once ruined a bartender’s pour just by holding my Twinnon Peregrine at a particular angle in her blindspot.
Outside of Rasma’s, the man behind the counter gave me a tired smile, which quickly fell into a frown of confusion.
Then, a flinch of horror. The inspector had arrived.
“Excuse me,” I asked, “I’m here to check the conditions of your kitchen.” I gave a smile that existed only as wrinkles and lips. “Could you direct me?”
The young man stammered something about needing to contact his manager. “Oh, by all means,” I said, “but I’m sure you can do so on the move.” I tapped my Twinnon’s screen.
“I’m here to set a pace.”
I swept in like a bird of prey, listing code violations like sins. Mislabeled cleaning supplies. Partially blocked fire exits. Improper use of safety equipment. Defaced warning labels. Workers tried to adjust, but even if I wasn’t actively out to get them, there simply isn’t much anyone can do at a time like this. The hurricane is overhead. You can’t dodge the wind.
“This isn’t up to the standards Lea te Suldan has set,” I tapped randomly at a useless spreadsheet I had summoned for effect. “I’ll need this kiosk shut down immediately.”
The man at the kiosk goggled. Asked me to repeat myself.
“Yes, yes. Immediately. If your manager has any issues, he’s in luck. He’ll be able to speak with me during a mandatory lecture on health and safety we’re holding at…” I checked my notes, whirling my fingers like a stage magician, “Emergency Assembly Two. You can find it on any local map,” I waved my hands around for effect.
The young man bowed his head, apologized. I gave him my best condescending sneer, which in hindsight was probably over the line, but as a health inspector would say: ‘tis better to overcook than under. I could hear grumbles as I left, but also the clatter of pans being stowed, and a short time later the rattle of the kiosk’s security grate coming down. That would be five fewer people in the stampede for the exits. Five fewer people pressuring Brightsail. Five fewer anxious passengers waiting for their turn.
It was already worth it, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
The next restaurant didn’t advertise by nose. It was a gallery of glass, presenting what would have been an excellent view during the height of tourist traffic. Vats, belts, and cutters for converting Jelly Pears into sparkling noodles. Rows of Savorflames in little gloomy trays, lit by ultraviolet light so as not to disturb them, and to display the houndstooth patterning their flesh carried at certain spectrums.
But the machines were still, the lights dimmed. Kitchen staff lounged and chatted. A pair of waiters flirted aggressively. At Cafe te Suldan, a name that is far from grammatically correct by the way, business was dead. It made sense. The fad foods of Therevatti never seemed to appeal to military types. I saw two patrols pass Cafe te Suldan, and neither gave it a passing glance.
I burst in and my nose was struck with the sharp of cleaning solution and the tang of citrus. Beneath it all floated the earthy breath of Savorflame grow bed substrate. Someone must have aired one out.
Polity’s voice crackled in my ear, among a host of other voices in Thetti, Standard, and the odd burst of Far Colonial. No communications were directed my way, but I still had the privilege of keeping up.
“712, 712, 712… thats on the other end of the station. Why are you…?” A pause, “Ah. I’ve just opened port 721. Which is what you actually wanted. Please try reading next time.”
I snorted aloud. One of the flirting waiters looked up at me and paled. I suppose a gently laughing health inspector would be a pretty sinister sight.
I approached and explained to the worker what my role here was. He shook his head, said something in Thetti. That gave me pause. But it also made no sense. How did a cosmopolitan restaurant like Cafe te Suldan operate without any Standard speakers.
The other waiter put a hand to his mouth to hide a small smile. Ah. That classic trick. He delivered an explanation in halting Standard that I had to wait for their manager, who was much more fluent, and also on a fishing trip on the world below.
I ground my teeth. Pressed my tongue against the inside of my cheek. What Thetti I did have wasn’t enough to get me through this. Cooking up a number of code violations here would be easy. Getting through this illusory language barrier would be impossible. I didn’t have time for this. The second waiter, the smiling waiter, glanced away, looked behind me. His smile faded to confusion.
The door to Cafe te Suldan opened and a pair of men walked in. One missing an ear, the other barely hiding a tattoo of a Baiheytu beneath a high collar. Both had heavy, treetrunk legs and eyes with red rims. As if they had been deprived of sleep, or weeping.
They marched up, hips setting tables to wobble, stopping on either side to flank me, a touch shorter, but far broader. The man missing an ear spoke first, his voice heavily accented.
“This is a code yellow then, brother lord inspector?” His voice was an epiglottal rumble. I straightened my back. Polity had come through!
“I… um…” I fumbled. My new companions glowered at me. In their looks of disappointment, I found my momentum.
“Yes, yes, absolutely a code yellow Brother… squire inspectors,” I said. “And a code ninety-four B as well, I’ll need an interpreter for this one to convey the countless violations I’ve witnessed.”
With their help, I communicated a litany of fabricated claims and one true observation: the savorflame growth pods had their humidity adjusted far too low and therefore constituted an explosive hazard potentially equivalent to a fireworks detonation. It wasn’t hard to play my character in this case, we were all quite literally under threat just by being in their presence. The waitstaff scrambled to adjust the humidity, to discharge any ambient electricity from the pods. A young woman behind the counter appeared mortified and not a small bit scared for her life. It was probably a good thing that we were leaving anyway, listeners, I’m surprised Cafe te Suldan hadn’t exploded on its own. When we were finished, I directed them to the same rendezvous as before.
Seven more saved. Plenty to go. But between the three of us, we were an inspection strike force. An unstoppable trident of health and hygiene. Venue after venue closed. Workers dutifully walked to the meet up point just outside the escape pod chamber. From conversation, some saw it as a break to a slow workday. Others saw it as the bullshit it was--but didn’t want to risk greater issues. Some were too tired or overworked to even consider. Just another task to knock out on the pile. The workers we rerouted swelled until it began brushing one hundred and fifty. It was the only real number on my fake spreadsheet: how much of the crew we had pulled towards escape.
That’s not to say that all of this went off without a hitch. There were arguments, accusations. Sometimes we’d hear the shutter drop, then quietly raise, and we’d have to spin on our heel and come back. We’d have to dodge mercenary patrols, inattentively wandering the station, or security positions staffed by bored technicians. Once we dodged a thrown glass, heaved through the air by an enraged chef. It caught the light beautifully as it arced towards my head. The tattooed rebel caught that one, actually. Set it on the table, upside down. Things could have been worse. Sometimes, they were.
Sometimes… we’d get a request to present ID.
“I assume each of the other locations you’ve visited have asked and, well, you weren’t scheduled to come in today.”
We were in a burger joint. The person speaking to us was an older man, maybe in his mid fifties. Laugh lines had put parentheses around his mouth, but his eyes were always scanning people he was talking to, trying to figure out what angle they were reaching. He had a habit of running a hand across his smooth and shiny scalp, as tanned as the rest of his skin. His workers bustled behind him as he ran interference, picking this and that up, organizing, cleaning. Clever.
“Now I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I just want to make sure everything’s on the level. Call it a healthy curiosity,” he said, eyes flicking between me and my escorts without a smidge of fear. A worm of concern wrapped round my aorta, tensed at every beat. I did not drop my pricksona.
“You’ve heard of surprise inspections, I take it?” I dragged a finger over the cushion of a nearby seat, as if theatrically searching for dust. It was spotless. “Since you seem unfamiliar, I’ll explain: this is a tactic to uncover particularly nasty actors who prefer to invest their efforts into gaming the system rather than protecting their customers,” I said.
“Oh, I’m aware,” the manager responded, radiating cool charm. What was he doing here? Everyone else above service staff had left or been given the boot by Brightsail. The restaurant was spotless. My critic instincts were already raving about the place. Intimate seating seemingly built for lovers to pass french fries to each other. Advertisements of “root beer brewed fresh planetside.” The light smell of fresh oil on the air. They ground their own meat. They cut their own fries. Even among Lea Te Suldan’s eateries, this one, this Boneshine Burgers, that was the name of the restaurant, stood out as a standout example. Even the workers were on a different level, focused and well rested. Did this man, this obstacle to his own safety, properly rotate his staff? What was this?
“And,” he continued, “I’m certain you are aware that your own codes state that a proprietor may request verification of ID as a matter of course.” He thrust his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels like a man half his age might do. “I’d hate to brag, but me and my team run an acceptably tight operation here. I’ve no concern with your inspection, surprise or not, but I don’t remember your face.” Our eyes remained locked to one another, my hand twitched against the frame of my Twinnon Peregrine. Shit.
“I’m a new arrival,” I said.
“ID, if you’d please,” the man said.
I didn’t need this. Every minute wasted meant that Grac Au Mao came closer to either being discovered or demolishing the station with all of us aboard, whichever came first. Polity’s communications had switched from semi-frustrated navigation to tense explosives support. Even now they were discussing which signals to place the detonators on so as not to alert Brightsail.
And the smell of this establishment’s undoubtedly delicious cooking was making my stomach ache.
My face fell, and the man in front of me exhaled, dropping his own mask of delicate smugness.
“I take it you don’t have an ID then,” he said. I shook my head.
“Well, you chose one hell of a day for an extortion racket, Mister ‘health inspector,’ sir.” He straightened his back. Behind him, I could smell the french fries in the fryer. The workers were distracted, and what was undoubtedly an excellent batch was beginning to race past golden brown.
“You and your thugs can stay or clear out,” he said, “but I’m calling security either way. Boneshine Burgers doesn’t cater to criminals.”
A moment of silence followed. I felt my shoulder twitch. On either side of me, the guerillas were stirring--caught between waiting for me to do something and backing away for the door.
“Your fries are burning,” I said. “You’ve heated your peanut oil perfectly but you need to pull em.”
His eyes darted slightly. A worker behind him raced to pull the fries out.
“Oscar Yasui,” I said. “Former food critic. Current guerilla… I guess you’d say specialist--for the rebel group ‘Grac au Mao’ local to Therevatti. The… planet…” I motioned vaguely at the air, “the planet below us.”
The manager was a tough fellow, but he seemed to know his stuff. My gamble rolled its first win. His determination wavered. Confusion ate at his composure.
“You are him,” the manager murmured.
“I’m not a health inspector,” I said, “but I am rushed, scared, hungry for a hot meal, and at the moment, trying to save your life,” I motioned to a portrait of the man among a group of unrecognizable customers. It was labeled with a slash of cursive. “You’re Bradley, right?”
He did not respond, but I didn’t need him to.
“Bradley, I’m in a real hurry. This inspector angle isn’t working, you’ve made that abundantly clear, so fuck it!” I motioned to the table, allowing the exhaustion I was hiding to slump my shoulders. Bradley’s lips had pressed together so tightly they had gone white.
“Let’s talk. Because I want everyone to survive the day.”
Bradley looked to his workers and settled down across from me. His expression hurt my heart. It was probably the same noble grimace I carried when Ungerson was dragging me around.
“Are we hostages?” he asked. I raised my hands in reply.
“No!” I said, voice peaking slightly, “no, no. Not at all. I’m not holding anyone anywhere. But we all need to get off this station as fast as possible.”
“And…” Bradley said, “why is that?”
I explained the broad strokes to him. I didn’t point to where any of Grac Au Mao’s teams were, only that the station would soon be destroyed, and that my job was to warn everyone. We hadn’t expected so many left on the station, but that didn’t mean we could just leave everyone in danger. Bradley kept his eyes hard as we spoke, but nodded along. To his credit, he answered a few lingering questions I had about the situation here: Brightsail wanted to project an image of stability to the arriving forces from Sol, so news programs wouldn’t run stories of Lea te Suldan appearing empty and overtly militarized. So they quietly rushed to fill positions on the station, overpromising and underdelivering to the new workers, all to ensure future investors didn’t get antsy and pull interest from the colonization project. I had been watching Brightsail’s stock lately myself. It had been falling, slowly but surely, ever since Polity unveiled their piece in the Pacheco City Bluezone.
Eventually, Bradley motioned to an employee.
“Get me three Number Sixes for the road,” Bradley said. The employee swept a burnished scoop through a stack of perfectly prepared fries. Another assembled a burger in moments, buns flashing between hands in a practiced dance. Soon, a reusable takeout container was thrust against our collective chests, their tops decorated with an image of a silver femur.
“This is for you, you look starving,” he said without smiling. I hefted my meal, felt its weight, felt the heat of fresh food gently radiating into my hands. My stomach growled. Behind me, my one eared companion had already cracked his open, just enough to weedle a few fries free.
“So you’ll meet us there?” I asked. I couldn’t help but be excited. More lives saved and a free burger in the bargain. This was the kind of thing dreams were made of.
“Of course,” Bradley replied, “I’d need to see this for myself.”
It got easier after that. I had a belly full of sweet potato fries, a manchego cheese burger with slow caramelized golden shallots and an egg cooked jammy with just a bit of run. Not a light meal, but a mobile one. I hate to say this because I’d rather claim I was fueled by ideals and hope rather than excellent carbs and protein, but I remain as ever a creature of comforts.
I ended the day with aching feet, griping knees, a copper flavor rising to overtake the taste of heaven on a bun. Listeners, Bradley meant well, but do not eat an entire burger and fries and then run laps around a big metal donut. I couldn’t help but notice that the simple act of moving from restaurant to restaurant was getting harder, every step was pulling more oxygen, pushing more sweat from my pores. Even my companions, tough men as they were, were raising their own complaints.
The stars outside the window were moving ever so slightly faster. We were accelerating. Centrifugal force was pushing us down harder than Earth would now. The three of us broke from the final restaurant and made for the evacuation assembly point. Time was running out.
Except for a few confused mercenaries searching for a place to eat, the station was completely cleared of personnel that weren’t explicitly working with Brightsail. Statues of the Saints stood smiling over empty thoroughfares, hands pointing merrily to shuttered restaurants. Places their likenesses would never see, trapped as they were in deep Railspace. We hurried to the exit together, careful not to appear too excited at the prospect of reaching the escape pods.
We arrived to find a group of nearly two hundred individuals, sourced from every eatery on the station, assembled under the auspice of remedial training. Behind them, past a large open space of concrete lit by overhead lights, was a row of six circular apertures where the escape pods waited in their berths. Transparent panels let the curious--or the desperate--observe stacked rows of additional pods beneath, loaded atop each other like the teeth of long dead sharks, each waiting for their turn. Spirits weren’t particularly high among the assembled. A few in the group were creeping for the exits by the time I arrived, and groaned when they saw me.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. I was busy picking out a place where I could stand in view of everyone, when a blaring shriek, something closer to a beam of force than a noise, nearly knocked my weakened knees out from under me.
That very moment, Polity’s voice was in my ear.
“Oscar, one of the teams…” they said. I heard no typing in the background of the call, their fingers were unmoving at their keyboard. They were looking at a display most likely. “I can’t see too well from the cameras but… Oh Saints, I think they’re shooting… I think they’ve been found by Brightsail.”
The alarm blared again.
“Oscar, listen to me, we have maybe ten minutes at most before Brightsail suits up and starts searching. Tell me that you’re where you need to be.”
“I am,” I said, “are you safe?”
“For now. Grac au Mao can detonate their bombs at any moment. You need to get everyone out, okay? Get them out of here. I’ve unlocked the pods for you.”
The crowd was murmuring amongst themselves. Lights above each of the berths switched from standby amber to ready emerald with the deep thunk of crossing voltage.
Nobody moved for them. Even when my two companions from Grac au Mao pushed forward, grabbed arms and directed them towards the exit, nobody moved. There were shouts from the crowd. Hesitant steps from foot to foot. Someone made for the emergency hardline phone, but was blocked by the man with the tattoo.
“We’re going to try, Polity,” I answered. There was no response. I climbed over to a bench fashioned to look like a nest of bent metal branches, woven with coiling vines. I pulled in as much air as my lungs could carry. And I shouted.
Loud person, high place, chaos and confusion. My mother always told me that I had some brass in my lungs, but even that wasn’t enough. It took a few tries before I turned heads. Pulled enough attention that the room quieted down. Across the room I saw my single eared escort pause, still holding a worker’s rumpled uniform in his clenched fist.
“Everyone, we don’t have much time here,” I said, “I need all of you to get into the pods.” A commotion from everyone assembled. A jolt of fear. I licked my lips to moisten them. Had the air of Lea te Suldan always been this impossibly dry? Maybe I’d just gotten used to Therevatti.
“Please, we do not have much time here” I shouted over the growing wave of overlapping voices. The rebel with the Baiheytu tattoo repeated what I said to the crowd, though I doubt that he repeated me exactly. “This station is…” I paused, searching for the right word, “it’s about to experience significant mechanical failures. We’re all in danger. We need to evacuate as soon as possible.”
An eruption now, a surge of frightened workers. Moving forward, moving backwards, some looking to the pods, others to the exits.
“How do you know this?” came a cry from the crowd.
“I’m with Grac au Mao,” I said.
You spend enough time with a group of people, you get a picture of how you appear from the outside. You get an impression of what others might see you as. In that moment, I hoped that identifying with a group that claimed the best interests for Therevatti might help find order in the mass of people that I was trying to save.
But there is no single rebel group on Therevatti. There are nearly ten major groups, many of which are composed of minor factions loosely united against a common threat.
This listeners, speaks to what happened next.
Chaos. Another thrill of motion through the crowd. For every glad look of recognition, for every nod or shout of support, there were three other faces that looked terrified. A foreign born revolutionary, a violence minded extremist. To the majority assembled, I was no savior. Five, maybe seven men and women broke from the crowd and ran as fast as their feet could carry them for the hall, moving deeper into the Station’s interior. They found their path blocked by one ear and tattoo, who took a wide stance and held out their arms, as if they had broken into a nature reserve with the intent of wrestling a clone bear. Two hundred or so workers pushed forward, pushed back, a tide of bodies that threatened to break through.
A struggle was erupting between the guerillas and the breakaway workers. Tattoo saw his partner and an older man pushing each other back and forth, a prelude to thrown fists. To my total horror, listeners, I saw Tattoo’s hand creeping for his belt. Perhaps for a club, a blade, or a gun concealed there. I don’t… I don’t know what he was thinking. An accessory of intimidation? A ward against fear?
We were becoming Brightsail. Trying to control a terrified crowd without any training. Resorting to weapons when our words failed. It was the exact outcome I was here to stop. If this continued, either my companions or my charges were going to get injured. My nerves calmed, and I felt my body heat with anger. I had to stop this.
“Oscar!” Polity said in my ear, “Oscar, Brightsail is now engaging multiple teams, and… the first one they don’t have any way out! They’re pinned… they’re pinned in the anchor shaft! I think… Fuck, I think… I think they’re going to-” The connection cut as the ground heaved beneath all our feet. A booming roar clawed through bridge and bulkhead, pattern and plate. I lost my balance, collapsed onto my shoulder. Screams of terror from the crowd.
A detonation. Ahead of schedule. The alarm continued to blare, but now emergency lights flicked on, bathing everything in rust-hued shadows. My arm ached. My hip ached. My head ached. Bradley rushed to my side, knelt down and began to heave me up to my feet.
“C’mon,” he said, “you’re the shadiest critic I’ve ever met, but you can’t let a little bump stop you. Get up!” With his help, I rose again to the top of the bench.
“Back at ‘em!” Bradley shouted to me. Then he called for the crowd’s attention. I checked myself. Nothing broken, nothing sprained. Keep trying.
“Listen!” I shouted.
“Regardless of how you feel about Grac au Mao, we need to leave. Damn the evacuation procedure, Brightsail has their own. You can hear the sirens, you can feel the detonations, Lea te Suldan Station isn’t safe!” The crowd remained fearful, but now heads were turning for the pods instead of the exit to the Promenade.
“We can make it, but we have to move right now! The escape pods each fit twelve, but there'll be a bit of time before each wave of pods can be called up and launched.”
“Form lines!” Bradley shouted, the station was beginning to make an awful creaking sound, like the metal that formed its structure had realized something was wrong, and was screaming for help. “Everyone get ready!”
The single eared guerilla lifted the man he was grappling back to his feet. Gave him a nod, helped them to the door. They were moving. Saints, they were all moving towards the pods!
Workers shuffled into position, clambering into their escape vehicles, adjusting themselves into seats. Writhing sets of straps slid into position across their chests, securing them in place. Each rounded vehicle filled with occupants. The end caps slid into their sockets, flat segmented plates, like the shells of stag beetles slipping down over the entrance, blocking all view of everyone inside. The pod slid forward, moving away from the ramp, before a cautionary curtain of laser light draped across the bay, ruby red. A few moments later, a massive door dropped down, and the entire room shook from the weight of its landing. The pods launched outwards, propelled on magnetic rails. The first wave was gone. The loading system was already hard at work elevating another set of pods into their berths. The humped backs of new vehicles were already rising into view. We’d have another group away in minutes if we hurried.
The station’s interior intelligence called out through the intercom. “Alert to all security personnel. An unauthorized escape vehicle launch has occurred at Emergency Point C. Requesting investigation.”
Another set of doors began sliding down, this time across all three avenues that led to the assembly point I and the remaining workers had gathered at. A security measure?
Polity answered my question for me. I heard their voice crackle over my earpiece.
“Hey Oscar.” Polity was out of breath, their voice seemed desperate. “I’m not uh, I’m not doing so great here. They obviously know that something’s wrong uh, they’ll be coming for all of you. I’ve locked some mag doors down to buy you time.”
“Polity?” I asked. I heard distant shouts over their comms. “Polity what’s going on at your end?”
“Nothing good, Oscar,” there was a smile in Polity’s voice, but no humor. “Gates are dropping all across the ship. Guerilla teams are either running for the shuttle or fighting for it. I’m…”
A small swallow. Their voice dropped to a whisper.
“I’m not really doing either. I’m in a side passage, I… I’m trapped Oscar. Every route around me is locked. I’m…” A quaver now, “I thought that I could circle around and… There’s a door with an old school keypad I don’t have the programs for and… I’m so, so sorry.”
I did not reply. I tugged at my hair. Keypad. Lock. I pictured Polity’s metaphorical keyring of hacks and codes. Pictured them desperately thumbing from key to key, looking for the right one, finding nothing. My mind raced.
“Oscar?” there was a rising note of panic in Polity’s voice. “Could you… could you stay on the line? Please?”
“I…” it was a struggle to speak. The thoughts moved so quickly that it felt like the world was shaking. Side passages. Polity was stuck in a side passage. Who had access? Passageways were used to move employees, equipment, supplies.
Then it hit me. You never saw workers moving freight in the main streets of Lea te Suldan. Auto-dollies and cargo sleds would ruin the manicured magic. Which meant if a restaurant wanted to get a delivery of foodstuffs…
“Access,” I said into my comms.
“What?” Polity said.
“I might have something, just wait there.” Polity gave a quick bark of a laugh.
“Nowhere else to go, sorry to say,” they replied.
I ran to the workers lining up, ran from frightened face to frightened face. “I have a friend trapped in an access corridor, do you have a passkey? An eight digit key pass? Does anybody have an eight digit keypass for a certain door in a certain sector?”
Keys and locks. Just because Polity didn’t have the key didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
I wasn’t getting anywhere. I jostled shoulders and fought off elbows, hips, scalps. Digging through a nervous pond of people anxious to find their way to safety. Dozens and dozens were left, and those who spoke Standard didn’t have good things to say. “I’m not sure” or “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” Everyone smelled of seasoning and grease and worry, a blend of appetite and anxiety that left me ill even as I searched person to person. Eventually, I got the worst news.
“I know that corridor,” said a wiry young man with tanned skin and flecks of red in his stubble. “You’re right, it’s access for food deliveries, but it’s for the Voyage Bistro. Dude, they left in the first wave.”
Fuck. Polity spoke in my ear.
“Oscar the mercenaries,” their voice was so, so quiet. “They’re right outside in the corridor. Oscar, Oscar, I love you, please don’t go.”
“We’re trying to figure something out, Polity,” I said. “We’ve almost got something, just stay where you are,” I lied.
I went to my guerilla escorts, to Bradley. We each asked person after person, fanning out among the crowds. Already, a fourth group had launched. Maybe the passcode was with one of them.
I jerked dead in my tracks, someone having grabbed my shoulder. A woman with pale brown eyes and a simple prosthetic arm was shoved in front of me by the guerilla with the Baiheytu tattoo.
“Hi, hello,” the woman said, “I should not know this, but I know because I like to visit a friend in the-” “What?” I asked, resisting the urge to shake the words from her body, “what do you know?”
She told me a string of numbers. I had her tell me again, slowly. I repeated the same to Polity.
“Oscar!” Polity hissed, “I’m through! I’m through the door!”
I had to bite the meat of my hand to keep from screaming for joy. “Polity! Polity you have to run, Polity! Run for the shuttle!”
“I don’t think I can,” Polity said. There came a series of massive slams on the mag doors then. The ones separating the pod bay to the station. Repeated bangs and muffled, digitally amplified shouts, with the characteristic distortion of a mercenary powered helm. The Brightsail mercenaries and staff of this section were looking to make their escape. I doubted they’d be willing to get in line behind us.
“Oscar, between the mercenaries and the damage, I can’t reach the shuttle,” Polity said, “I’m moving as fast as I can, but I can’t make it to you either.”
It was just as well. Sparks had begun to fly from the anchor points, in brilliant green and blue sprays. Someone had brought a heavy cutter. The doors were almost certainly swarming with mercenaries. I scanned the ceiling for a ventilation duct. I found a few… but they were inches across. No movie luck here.
“Polity I’ll find a way to,” I didn’t get a chance to finish the thought.
“No, babe.” Polity said, “I’ll find a way to you. Get in a pod, get down to Therevatti. We’ll catch up later.”
“Polity, meet me at-” A series of roars sent everyone in the room toppling as the ground buckled beneath our feet, as what we perceived as weight itself shrugged, leaving everyone’s inner ears to sketch out a new normal. The main charges had detonated. The station was going to give way. The sparks from the mercenary cutter gave out, and the door howled as it was forced upwards by what must have been ten pairs of armored hands.
We were out of time. I clawed my way towards the pods, using light fixtures and fire extinguishers as handholds as the angle steepened. Dragging my way up a new slope, a hill of perspective and twisted gravity. Tattoo had finished helping one of Cafe te Suldan’s waiters into a pod. He seized my outstretched hand and threw himself backwards, levering me to safety. I rushed to buckle myself in, pushing a hand against my ear to shut out the bone cutting sounds of machinery, the tongue tingling frequency of the mag rail spooling up.
“Polity! Polity can you hear me? Polity!”
The line was dead.
“I love you.”
Moments later, the pod sealed and we sped away from the station, g-forces compressing my torso, trying to forge my ribcage into one contiguous cuirass of bone.
The station, Lea te Suldan Station, was splintering apart behind us. I could see it through a screen linked to an exterior camera. Each sixth of the wheel drifting towards the center, grinding against itself. I felt the hairs on my arm bristle as the Railgate collapsed, wracking a reality outside our own with explosions formed when the real and the other collide. Irrational fireballs lighting up the unknowable void of Railspace. Even if I could not see the havoc, I was aware of it. As if I had spent my whole life in the presence of a sound that had been abruptly terminated. Or as if my house was haunted, and somebody had gone and killed the ghost.
The station itself did not explode. It merely crumpled. Forming a ball of debris. Statues of founders and Saints smashed into shrapnel. The barrels of mass drivers fractured and bent. Wings of glass ornamentation collided with each other, haloing the ruin with an expanding sphere, glimmering in Dotter’s rays. But that was the end of it. A wreck, but not an annihilation. The wheel that Lea te Suldan was hung crumpled, defaced, and ruined… but its safety features and emergency functionality should have remained intact, at least for a time. Any survivors inside would be able to reach an evacuation point--at least if they hurried.
More pods were launching as we left. Brightsail following behind us. Or launching from the five other sections. Maybe Polity was on one? Or had found a way to the shuttle. Or had, in their brilliance, made their own exit from the station.
I slammed the back of my head into the cushion of my seat. I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes. There wasn’t anything I could do now. I imagined Polity sprinting into a pod, sliding home, launching. Singed, but alive. If I focused on the thought hard enough, it almost seemed real. I clung to it.
But mostly? Mostly I just cried.
For Gastronaut. I’m Oscar Yasui, signing off.