Month: January 2022

And all other common spaces aboard the UB313 dark site base. Strobing orange and blue lights spin with reckless abandon upon every flat surface alerting everyone to the mission at hand. The blisteringly cold air inside the base has a crisp tension to it now. The taught faces on everyone who passes along the gangways and in the halls makes the fear and excitement most palpable.

The away teams Eta & Theta have scrambled to their muster stations, and are reading their data packets in preparation for their impending departure. No direct route, just an order to get out to Lagrange point five out beyond Pluto / Charon and await further instructions there. The away teams are running at one third man power, and they have orders to add in the lost crew members weight in additional fuel cells or hard uranium pellets.

Looks as though the rosters were drawn at random within each team, as the crew compliments differ between Eta & Theta. One team appears to be all command, and the other all various types of grunts. No idea if the point is to work in tandem or to be isolated in obtaining the asset – whatever it is.

Muffled shouts and clanking of boots and machine parts on the rough metal grates makes it hard to think. Their are service vehicles and lift trucks going about their business as usual, and the machine shop people are busy retrofitting anything they can get their hands on. The screech and rattle of unbalanced loads in the lathes and cnc’s is nearly deafening. The light in here is dim, and the smell of acrid smoke and burning lubricants permeates the air. Air quality on UB313 is usually shit at the best of time, add propane engines, and burnt lubricants to that, and a million other solvents and you have the quality toxic cloud of air that we call home. Hanging down from the rough hewn rock ceilings are the under powered exhaust vents, miles of pipes and cables all tied together and mounted off of swinging all too thin chains. It really looks like a last ditch attempt to make the best of a bad situation. You’d be hard pressed to know this base has been operational for several hundred standard years. The hard worn and battered baffles that are up on ceiling swing wildly under the chaotic air currents and draughts.

The closely knit teams are already communicating with hand signals or on our closed circuit sub-vocal channels. Sounds like we stand to make a pretty good chunk of cash if we pull this daring heist off successfully. Will be left to rot in the surgical bay at the hands of the beast should we fail. The check lists for deployment are hours long and deeply intricate. Call from upstairs says be ready to drop in six hours time. So much to do, so little time.

All around the drop ships, the ground crews are scrambling to check off multiple items at a time. Oil slicked hands drop nuts to instrumental bolts, and sweat pours profusely from every pore. The stink of old breath and sweat mixed with oils, grease and desperation are an unwelcome but well known element to a dark ops deployment this far away from civilization. When you work to destabilize, steal and corrupt everything around you, the smell of fear is always nestled in your nose, and resting upon the back of your tongue so you can taste its fetid presence.

Part six: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Says the man in the burgundy jumpsuit. Jones is his name, he’s the director for this particular terminal bay which is part of the signals intelligence division aboard the Dirty Starling. Now that the orange jump suited menace has commandeered my services for longer than my usual one four hour stint, he has chosen to acknowledge my presence.

Part of my role as a Half-Three or ship board Ghost crew member is to be able to swoop in to assume control of some small portion of the ships systems and keep it moving for at least three hours, until someone more qualified can take over. I’m meant to be inconspicuous, that’s why we’re all colour coded. No need to ask what you do or what your qualifications are, if that position needs a blue, or green or yellow or red or burgundy body in it, and you see one there, all is well. Otherwise if you see a beige outfit, you know you’ll get a modest output for the next couple of hours, and not to worry. I’m a permanent temp worker that can shift between the machine shop, science division, mess hall or surgical bays and just about everything in between. But much like a ghost, I drift from sector to sector covering off shifts, mishaps and personnel errors for brief periods, and move on. The only place I spend any real time in one spot is my room across the ship, and that’s usually only for forty eight hours after I rotate off duty. The mental state I enter is much like a trance and it takes a deep physical toll on me, so my first twenty four hours after shift are spent asleep, where my deeply embedded programing in my brain works overclocked in order to repair my body and get me ready to do it all over again. This trance leaves me with fairly large gaps in my memory – meeting people or learning top secret details usually lasts long enough in my memory to function for a short term task, and then gets dropped as I rest between shifts.

“we’re just going to get you to work over by the viewing port along the back of the room, you’ll see a partition back there, walk through that and man the bank of terminals there. They are much older machines, and you likely won’t see of hear from any of us during your stay here. Just keep the lights on so to speak! We’ve got the really exceptional equipment going on our end, you are just sweeping areas of little or no interest to our project. As per standard procedure, should you locate something note worthy – which you won’t – make a note of it and follow the appropriate protocols”. With that Jones turns on his heel and disappears into the tangle of people, wires and upgraded terminals in the open terminal bay.

I take one sweeping look at the cavernous terminal bay, with all of it’s loose wires and fancy equipment. The floor is a rough open grating, and there appears to be about a thousand miles of cabling and pipes running under foot. Lots of different colours. We’re real big on colour coding in space. It’s like looking at a coral reef under foot, except there are no fish to complement the static cables with flurishes of movement. The soft crunch and scrape of my boots I getting easier to hear the further across the room I get towards the view ports. The concrete glass used on research vessels the size of the Dirty Starling are a somewhat old invention, but given new life in space. Their only downside is that they echo like a mother fucker, so that’s most likely why Jones or his orange boss have draped print outs of star charts and conversion tables across the panes of what looks like crystal clear glass. Walking for several minutes, I can see the far wall where the partition should be. I don’t see anything from fifty paces. My wrist navigator isn’t blinking or beeping, so I’ll just need to feel this out unaided. There is no sign of anything over in the corner, so I walk up to the enormous star chart against the glass. I run my hands over all of the minute details. Oh, the map is textured – how lovely. It’s semi opaque with a light purple raised ink on it that shimmers in the dim light. The point I touch begins to glow. It is bioluminescent. No flickering, a solid violet in the now dim ambient light. Out of the corner of my eye I see an orange and red twinkle of light. Turning to look over my left shoulder I see it’s a reflection on the glass from what seems like a solid featureless wall. Taking a few cautious steps forward I notice that the partition as they call it is a cut out in the wall that is set back, so the wall looks unbroken, but there is a cubby tucked away inside. The closer I get the easier it is to hear the ticking and whirling of the analogue equipment. The eight meter long u shaped panel is covered on three sides with huge lead panels and a water tank with something gently sloshing around inside.

With my hands on the walls I stick my head tentatively inside the room. The walls are almost bare but have clip boards full of hand written notes. Lots of warning signs and labels pinned together on a cork board, and a bookcase full of technical manuals. A bell chimes over the loud speakers so I look down at my left wrist and mark off the shift change. A high pitch peel sounds from my wrist communicator, a new message has just come in.

Ref Code Omega_00000007 You have been assigned to Signals Intelligence Analog Panel Maintenance indefinitely. Continue six shift protocols in preparation for supplemental orders. ••TRIGGER Sword Initiative {Clementine} •• [Signals found emanating from ZULU Quadrant 03-06-09917] CAPTURE**

My pupils dilate until almost entirely black, my care free laissez-faire attitude melts away – an automaton like figure bends down low over the analog signals panel, it begins to press a series of buttons, flipping switches and turning dial knobs. The empty black light bulb at the center of the console slowly begins to glow a dim orange barely visible even in the near total darkness of the small secluded room.

Part Three: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.