Galaxy of Heroes

“Escalon Station, do you copy?” Grimes said over the cruiser’s external com system. “Come in, Escalon.”

They watched the enormous station slowly rotate as it orbited the Largos red giant. It soon became apparent that the station had long since been abandoned.

Genie carefully piloted the cruiser into the station’s dark docking bay. She flipped on the exterior lights, illuminating the clutter that floated in the darkened bay. Once the cruiser came to a stop, Grimes and Spade put on space suits. They followed Genie into the decompression chamber.

The three pushed out into the airless station and then floated down dark corridors. They then proceeded to salvage as much equipment as they could from the already skeletonized superstructure.

Fortunately, when the occupants had abandoned this station, they had left the power plant virtually intact. Genie concentrated on reclaiming parts from the power plant and from the station’s darkened cargo hold, while Grimes and Spade concentrated mainly on the lodging modules.

The two males stuffed their packs with watches, jewelry, electronics and anything that looked as though it had monetary value.

The three of them became separated as they searched down labyrinthine corridors.

Genie located the station’s command center and strapped herself into a chair in front of an interface to the main computer. Half-eaten, crystallized food, frozen drinking containers and mechanical debris floated about in the darkness. Genie scanned through the station’s different databases.

She learned that this station was built by space drifters who had been voyaging on the galaxy perimeter for eons. About 500 of the drifters had fled a colony on a large asteroid in a little known system after they had come under attack from a Diocon reconnaissance platoon. The drifters had fled for their lives in a container ship that was barely provisioned.

With no destination in mind other than escape, and with little deep space navigational experience, they had aimlessly fled into a never-ending empty sector where they drifted for ages. Over time, attrition set in as strife and nervous breakdowns took their toll. The crew fell from 500 to 30 remaining survivors. As vast spans of time elapsed, significant quantities of the ship’s water and air supply gradually bled off into space, and worries about starvation and suffocation became paramount.

The drifters were in a desperate state when they arrived in the Largos System where they set their ship into orbit around the large star. This system was not home to planets that were hospitable to life, but it did have an abundance of resources. Three gaseous planets here contained nearly limitless amounts of easily accessible oxygen, hydrogen and other useful gases. Asteroids composed of every imaginable type of ore orbited lazily around the gas giants. All the useful elements in the galaxy were here for the taking.

The 30 surviving drifters used their newfound resources to expand their ship, transforming it into a huge space station, which they christened Escalon. They added massive greenhouses where various varieties of crops were grown. They then turned their energies to the construction of gestation clinics, where, from their own genetic stock, they maturated three successive generations of new humans, expanding their population to around 5,000.

Just when the station had become prosperous, the Largos Star began to expand and threatened to supernova. At that time, word was beginning to spread through the Outer Galaxy of a new planet called Gallos that was nearly Earth-like in composition. The inhabitants of Escalon Station packed up and left for Gallos, abandoning their once vibrant station to the expanding fires of Largos.

Spade and Grimes entered the dark command center and found Genie sitting alone in front of a glowing computer interface. She briefly recounted the story of the Escalonian drifters.

“Interesting,” Spade said. “The Escalonians were some of the early settlers on Gallos. Now they all live in the northwestern quadrant of Portogallos in a tower called the Escalon Building. I briefly dated a woman from that building. Her name was Doxy, and she was a weird one, let me tell you.”

“Takes one to know one,” Grimes said.

“What was weird about her?” Genie asked.

“These drifters were isolated from the rest of humanity for so long that they developed their own peculiar customs and mannerisms,” Spade explained. “They have a hard time relating to the rest of us. Doxy was attractive in her own way, and she had an interesting outlook on life, but she was always going on about how alienated and alone she felt whenever we were out on the town—even though Portogallos is a city of 8 million people. Then, right when I started to figure her out, she dumped me for a cyborg. The Tetraillani have developed a companion model specifically engineered to satisfy Escalonian needs. And so, I saw no more of Doxy.”

Genie didn’t understand why, but deep within her nervous system a slight tinge of loathing for her creators arose, sparked by Spade’s comments about Doxy’s cyborg lover.

“I have acquired the necessary provisions,” Genie said. “We should depart immediately as the Largos Star is indicating supernova.”

“It might be another thousand Earth-years before that baby blows,” Spade said.

“Yeah, babe,” Grimes said. “Give us some more time. This station is a goldmine for supplies.”

Genie exited the command center and returned to the cruiser. She waited alone in the cruiser’s cockpit, passing the time by calculating the odds that the Largos Star might explode into supernova before their ship could achieve sufficient distance to survive the blast.

It was true what Spade said that it might be another thousand years before supernova, but it was just as true that it could happen now.

Why risk their lives for a few physical objects of superficial value?

Genie wondered how such a reckless, imprudent, and irrational species had avoided extinction for this long a span of time.

She contemplated the dynamic that had been developing between Joe and Capt. Spade. The two human males were different in many ways. Spade was taller with dark hair and dark features. His eye patch and the scar on his cheek gave him an inscrutable appearance—steely and somewhat dangerous.

In contrast, Joe’s spiky blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and his quick smile gave an entirely different impression. By outward appearances, Joe seemed a relaxed and easy-going soul, but that impression belied his hard past and the privations he had endured—and the lethal skills he had acquired through years of hard-fought experience.

The two human males appreciated the camaraderie that they shared on this long voyage through interstellar space. The amount of time they were spending together and the way they enjoyed each other’s company annoyed Genie. Yet, both men were also rivals, who, while exhibiting signs of esteem for one another, shared feelings of jealousy and mistrust. Much of their conversation revolved around Capt. Spade trying to entice Joe into making a bet with Genie as the prize.

Genie was fully aware that Spade longed for her. Whenever she and Grimes had retired to their sleeping module, Spade sat alone for long stretches, simmering in his envy.

These humans were a complex and highly evolved species, but she observed how their primate ancestry lingered, exerting the underlying motivations for their behavior.

Those same primate urges existed inside of her. Her creators had given her the body of a machine, but also a human nervous system, and they had created an architecture that had made her a slave to the most basic of human drives and urges. They had given her the intelligence and wisdom to understand those drives and urges, but not the ability to control them or change them.

She had no power over the programming that flooded her nervous system with hormones and endorphins whenever Joe was present. She did not have the codes that could grant her access to the programming that sent her into distress whenever Joe was away.

Spade had those codes.

“Take us out of here, Genie,” Spade said, as he and Joe entered the cockpit, having sufficiently relieved Escalon Station of loot.

Genie wasted no time pulling the cruiser out of the dark docking bay. The hydrogen sail unfurled from atop the hull and the cruiser accelerated away from the station and the Largos Star.

She entered into the computer the coordinates for the Turquois Nebula.