Could help us piece it all together more coherently.” Says the mousey looking woman from the internal affairs office. If she didn’t have such a short bob of a hair cut, and refrained from looking so sincere or earnest you’d think she was a real hard nosed bitch. But such as it was, she came across as mild and genuinely compassionate. Both traits, I would imagine, she’d need to work extra hard at hiding if she ever wanted to make a fully fledged investigator or a detective, or be more than some hard nosed bastards go’fer. “Not much really. I don’t even remember going in to work that day. I’m still foggy on how long ago this all went down.” Sitting in the white plastic chair, chained to a soft cream coloured formica table with a reinforced plate steel under structure, I’m over come by the itching of my wounds. “Can I get a… you know a hand, my face itches and I don’t have arms anymore. Is it really neccessary to restrain me, bodily. I can’t even walk unassisted yet.” The blast at the dock yards had done a real number to The Company. Not to mention, stolen my arms, killed a very promising career in robotics, and left me with ruptured tendons in both my legs. Those would heal, but my fine motor skills in welding robotic arms in zero g had all but evaporated in one loud, concussive boom. “Am I a suspect. I mean jesus, that blast took both of my fucking arms man. That’s my livelihood. Seven years at the university, four more years as an apprentice, and then having to get my level three certs before doing anything even remotely close to the cusp of cutting edge. No, man. No, fuck. That. Bullshit. I ain’t no suspect, I was fucking robbed. Someone took my life from me, took everything in one fell swoop. So you cut the shit. Cut these restraints off me, and tell me how long I’ve been in this hospital. I know I’m still aboard the station, as everything here is fucking blue!” God damn am I agitated. This line of questioning has been going on for what feels like twelve hours now. Maybe more than that. I don’t know. My blue room, with blue lights and blue sheets, and blue curtains has no windows or media displays. The blue hallway I get frog marched down, on ruptured tendons no less, has no visible details telling me the date, nor time of day, or even what shift we’re in. “Ok, mr. Gendry, you’re right. We don’t need to put you in leg chains, that’s me being a bit over zealous. This is my first real case as a lead investigator.” There she goes, showing contrition, helping me out. I could learn to like this woman, if she weren’t the first face I saw after losing my limbs and any future I had in robotics fabrication. “According to our records the blast happened eleven days ago, around oh three hundred hours. You were on the last shift, or first shift of the day. Not sure how you would describe that. Why don’t you tell us again what you do, erm… did. If not that day, just on the regular. What your job was, is…” the formica table is empty, save for a few sheets of paper and a manilla folder with my work history and medical reports printed inside. Leaning back in my chair, oddly off balance with no arms to cross over my chest, I start into my tale. “Listen, I’m kind of an animated talker. I’m going to need arms, robotics, prosthetics, or regenerative. Whatever they’ve got me insured for that I can try to recapture some of the old glory of my work/life balance. Just as an aside. You know. Robotic appendages are my passion. Wrote a thesis on them, did a practical application on them too. Got great Mark’s. Top of my class. Even got a recommendation from the dean of the university, old Big D “the minotaur” Bradley.” I am positively beaming, I’m so damn smug.
“So as a typical dock worker, I bunk down in standard crew quarters, you know the ones out on the torus, like less than five hundred meters from where I work sixteen hours a day. The glory of rotating continental shifts. Pays well though, eh? Yeah, buddy. Big bucks for those with a class three cert. Not many folks round here get that far along. Especially in robotics, and those outboard drill rig appendages.” I can feel the juices flowing, getting into my story now. Who boy! “Yeah, so lately I was tasked with building a real robust system that can switch seamlessly between ice hauling, towing and full on drilling. Those three elements all have very different tolerances and needs for stress loads, torque, and the ability to swap in/out bits on the fly. A real pig of a job. Designing one is difficult enough, but three, in tandem. Christ! The calculations on the timing alone was enough to write a years worth of papers on. Chip load, bit speeds, stressors out the ying yang. Anyway, I got it designed on paper and then had to fabricate a proof of concept on an old mark twelve The Company had lying around, something called The Jolene Roger.” A sudden jolt, as the investigator sits up straight, comes to life. “Wait, you built a test rig on a mark twelve that had just be laying around? Those were only put in use around Pluto. How is it one ended up here?” Writing furiously on her note pad, looking to the folder to see if she’d over looked this interesting detail. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t ask where the resources come from, I just build what they ask me too. May I?” Looking up from her notes, the investigator motions for me to continue. “As I was saying, I had to fabricate my proof of concept. So I spent a huge number of hours gathering plate steel, titanium blocks and pistons and shielded hydraulics components and got about eighty hours in before, Boom! Do you know if the rig survived the blast? Some of my welds were exquisite. Like liquid pearl on glass.” A tap on the window of the door brings our discussion to a sudden halt. From behind the door, I can see an older gentleman from the investigative team motion for the woman to step out into the hallway. Quickly, and quietly I watch her slip out of the room. My back is to the wall, and I’m sat facing the door with just the formica table and an empty chair in front of me. The older man is talking into her ear directly, she nods almost imperceptibly. They both look back through the window of the door at me. A flurry of activity ensues as the investigators leave, and a junior officer comes in to take me back to my hospital room. I never even learned her name. No idea what caused them to run off after all those hours of examination and questioning. Must have bigger fish to fry.
“Sorry for the wait Mr. Gendry, or Jack, is it? We had to wait for your official discharge to come through from both the police force and The Company investigators before we could release your new arms to you. They’ve been especially formulated to you based on your biometrics, and the last psych evaluation you had only a couple months ago. We realize the trauma might have pushed you outside your baseline, but we think you’ll find that you can get back to work with only a minor period of adjustment. Seems that recco’ you had from the dean ofvthe university meant you got pushed to the top of the pile for these experimental limbs.” The technician takes me through a laundry list of specifications regarding my new bionic arms, and how to best care for them. Three hours later and I’m heading down the lift to my crew quarters. Life is finally back on track for Jack!
Waiting patiently out on the gangway in the dry docks are a group of unruly out of system technicians. Desperate to harvest the secrets contained in the black boxes buried deep inside the mark twelve capsule The Jolene Roger. The explosive mining charges have been set all over the mobile gantries, the separatists are waiting for the right time to pounce. In the shadows of the torus, an insurgency is building.
PART VII
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