“Dude… don’t lump me in with THAT fucking Martian…

Come on man, don’t do me like that. Tsk. Dumb ass mother fucker. I’mma tag you back, you little punk ass bitch.” The argument sounds heated, but those programmers are twin brothers and are just really into their game of robot wars. Honestly, they are probably only ninety pounds when all suited up in their cyan student grade coveralls. As a bunch of truly gifted people, this group of students don’t leave the university grounds much, if at all. Building miniature fighting robots and holding tournaments on the weekends is how they unwind. A few brave souls have gone up to the green sector for some sexual encounters, but it took a real long time to get up there from the university dormitory, and they got lost a few times on the trek back. That green sector is humongous, those labyrinthine corridors will mess with your mind. The GPS on their moded biometrics came in real handy the fourth time they wound up crossing the main concourse from yet another direction. Truly maddening.

Up in the highest level of the technical program’s dormitory the gathered group of about twenty students are hard at work tweaking their entrants in the weeks bout. The fights aren’t exactly a secret, but due to the potential for catastrophic failure, the fights are frowned upon, but not entirely banned. A few professors like to swing by, place bets (usually based on hours to spend marking the robotics undergrads papers and assignments) in order to liven up the atmosphere. A bunch of asthmatics and robotics fanatics aren’t known for throwing ragers on a friday night. The room is twenty meters on each side, and four meters high. The desks have been piled up in a corner, and some mag lev fitted portable work bench, tool box combos have been brought in. There are bottles of oxygen and acetylene boxed up with a make shift welding rig. These miniature robots can kick up sparks and chew through the composite materials their shells and armor plating is made from. It’s as though Robot Jocks were taking place, if they were eight inches tall, and controlled with haptic gloves that link with biometrics, and wrap over a jumpsuit. Clunky, and definitely not sexy, but exhilarating all the same. Tiny LEDs, and sensor arrays beep, and blink and chime as the battles wear on. A thick layer of oil coats the floor, and the smell of ozone is thick in the air. Smoke swirls around the vents, seeming to hang near motionless by the cold phosphorescent lights. The room has no windows, and is located in the center of torus station. This part of the station has hundreds of rooms just like it, though most of them are dark. A few have intrepid students pulling all fighters, working on homework projects, or applications for Grant’s for professors. All very academic. A murmur of chatter and snark can be heard out in the halls. The security teams doing their rounds rarely come in here, they wave at whomever is at the door, usually it’s Paco. Paco is a very petite fellow born and raised on Mars. He has an odd sense of humor, but is one of THE best welders in the program. He has this dream to work as an ice hauler, just touring the galaxy, fixing mining gear and getting old. “Hey Paco, why the fuck you even bother with school mang, you don’t need a Ph D, just to work ice. That’s stupid.” Torrence, the local fire cracker, always stirring up shit. He’s not gifted per se, but he can get shit done just the same. Hates all the extraneous school work, but loves the program and his band of nerdy brothers and sisters. No relation. Turning back from his perch at the door, leaning on his work bench, Paco with his shiny red coveralls looks like an oversized child, but with amazingly strange facial hair. “Tsk… you know what mang, they brought me here fo’ free, mother fucker! I learn some shit, get a level three cert and it’s all cooked mang! I’m outtie. Find me a sweet wife, have a few kids, haul some frosty and settle down. No stress, big money. Yeah.” High fives and snickers of laughter all around. “You won’t catch me doing military projects for The Company, no way mang!, free range, long hauls for ice. Pirates don’t take down ice haulers. Those separatist goons don’t hijack your ship and jettison you out into space so your lungs explode, or your blood turns to gas and tries to RIP you apart. Nah-uh dude. Not for this Martian, eh Julian.” He pauses for effect. “I heard that shit. I’m not four meters from you by the door, dumb ass. I’m not a lifeless corpse out on the float hey, mother fucker.” Paco, turns back to the door, exchanging rude gestures with Julian, who is hunched over his bot on the floor. Foot steps can be heard down the hall, Paco pipes up. “Hey, yo! Who’s there. I see you man. Just cause you’re dressed in bla…” the sound of rapid fire gun shots echoes loudly through the room. Paco comes apart at the hips, cut entirely in two. Blood splatters across the door, and the tool bench he was leaning against. Ricochets can be heard pinging off the metal surface, with metal slugs punching through ceiling tiles, walls and bodies alike. One double strike catches a tiny robot in the center of the floor and ignites the oxygen tank at the rear of the room, which kicks off the acetylene bottle beside it too. With a boom the room erupts into flames. With no where for the pressure to go, it blasts out the doorway and down the hall. The covert shooter is ripped apart by the shockwave and resulting wall of flame. The heat is so intense that the room melts into molten slag. All that is left are trails of smoke, and incinerated entrails. The group will later be identified by their bones, and those without shattered teeth, their dental records.

A mile above, both decks of the observation lounge have just been breached during a live cast of the launch ceremony for the new starship Margot’s Fever. Many of the stations most famous celebrities have been sucked out into space, and died horribly.

PART XIII