Invasive Species

David paid the cashier and turned back towards the cavernous room that was the northern hemisphere food court. His stomach growled in response to the aroma of home-style lasagna wafting off of his tray, but his attention was focused on not eating alone in the nearly empty food court.

He was almost prepared to cut his losses and eat in the lounge of the security office, when he spotted a group of security officers from the Charlotte. Most of the group was gathered closely and laughing incessantly, their food forgotten, but Tamsyn was separated from the group and eating her meal silently.

David confidently walked over to her table and she looked up at him with confusion. “Would you mind,” he asked, gesturing to the chair across from hers.

She swallowed her food and shrugged before cracking open a bottle of what looked to be an exotic IPA. “Sure, why not.”

He smiled at her and took his seat. “So, I’ve seen the rest of your team before, but never you. How long have you been in the business?”

“Two years. But, until this month I was mostly on runs across quadrant one.”

David smiled again. One of the things he loved about his job was meeting people from places farther than he had ever traveled. “This is your first time to the hub?”

“Yes, but I’ve heard of it.” She briefly looked around the food court. “Expected it to be busier.”

“It usually is, but you know, the holiday and all.”

She furrowed her brow and tilted her head. “Holiday?”

He stared at her with wide eyes. “Earth New Year’s.”

“Oh,” she replied, seemingly uninterested as she took another swig of ale. “I don’t really keep track of things like that. Sometimes I’m surprised I remember how old I am.”

David patted his wrist comp. “What else are government records for?”

She nearly choked on her beer but smiled at him when she recovered. “I’ve been to a lot of these remote stations, but I’ve never seen an employee in as good of a mood is you are. Doesn’t it bother you being away from home for so long?”

“Not at all. This is my home, or at least as close as I can get.” He spotted a ring on her left hand as it clinked against the bottle, and did his best to hide his reaction. “What about you? Can’t be pleasant to be away from your husband for weeks at a time on a freighter.”

She looked at the ring like she had forgotten it was there, and her expression turned somber. “He’s away on business a lot, so it works out.”

David felt like he had brought up a sore topic, so he quickly tried to divert the conversation back to something less personal. He caught a glimpse of the sidearm strapped to her right thigh. “Is that a Delta XR-45?”

She smiled again as she removed the weapon from its holster, un-powered the first shot, and released the power pack before handing the gun to David. He gingerly took the gun by the grip and looked it over. It closely resembled its mass-driver predecessors, which were eventually made obsolete by plasma weapons like this. Even without the power pack, the gun had a surprising heft to it. It featured a black frame and slide, with a beveled barrel shroud, the bronze colored finish well-worn.

The visual effect of the 6-inch barrel, which extended slightly from the front of the shroud, was counteracted by the bulky after market sensor attachment in front of the trigger guard. A power regulator slide above the attachment had a stun and beam setting, along with a wide range of lethal power levels. Pulling back the slide, the plasma chamber was covered by a heavy-duty heat vent with carbon scoring that was well beyond any good of being cleaned.

Aiming it towards the empty cafeteria, the holographic emitter that replaced the rear sight displayed the power level, currently at zero percent, directly onto his retina, along with a multi-spectral view of the environment in front of him. “This is too old to be standard issue,” he remarked, glancing back up at her.

“It’s not. That baby is all mine.”

“How many shots to a power pack?”

“Four-hundred.”

He furrowed his brow and examined the serial number, which indicated it had been manufactured in 2218. “No way this is a civilian model. Where did you get this?”

“It was my mom’s service pistol,” she replied as she took the gun back and re-powered it before returning it to her holster. “She was in the UNC Navy before the war.”

“Really? Which ship?”

She squinted at him for a long moment, as if evaluating him. “Maybe another day.” She smiled at him before taking her last swig of ale and standing up to zip her uniform jacket. “By the way, I never caught your name, Officer…”

“Cole. But you can call me David.”

“It was nice talking to you, David,” she said as she shook his hand. “I’ll be here for a few days, so hopefully we can have a drink together or something.”

“That’d be nice. “

She smiled at him again and walked away. David watched her go for a moment before finishing his meal in silence.

When David stepped into the customs office, it was nearly empty. Dan was at his desk beating on the desktop hologram projector, and Dalton was at his locker, packing away his equipment.

“What was so important that you had to miss your docking assignment,” David asked as he stepped up to his own locker and began unloading items from his utility belt.

“Him,” Dalton replied, pointing over his shoulder at the holding cells. In the nearest cell, the young man around David’s age with long mangled hair and a stubble beard was fast asleep, sitting up against the wall.

“Contraband?”

“Not this time, but he’s the most wanted smuggler in the Vega Coalition.”

David gave the smuggler another look before stowing his side arm. “Hard to believe he’s dumb enough to come through a customs-controlled port when he’s on the run.”

“Not as dumb as you think. His fake pass card fooled the computer. The picture was altered, not enough to be obvious but just enough to throw off the facial recognition.”

David closed his locker and leaned against it, now genuinely intrigued. “How did we get him?”

“Walter Rockwell, a Vega Federal Marshal, was clever enough to figure out what direction he was heading. Was watching the customs database. When his face showed up in the system, Rockwell contacted us. I had to hunt him down, arrest him, and impound the ship.”

Dalton punctuated the explanation with a wave of the lockout key used for the impound, which he placed in the binary lock safe. David envied him for the excitement that kept them from covering the Charlotte docking. Then his mind turned to Tamsyn, and he realized that he was fortunate for having covered Dalton’s post.

“Well, I’ll let it slide this time, but be at your post in the future,” David said with a smile.

“Hey! Next time a wanted man decides to stop here, I’ll call you, and you can handle it.”

David chuckled. “Promise?”

“Dammit,” Dan shouted as he slammed his fist on the desk computer again.

“What’s up, boss,” David asked as he walked towards the desk.

“Something must be wrong with the tachyon antenna. I got a message from the Recluse system, but it cut out. Now I can’t raise them back.”

David reached over and closed out the communication software before bringing up the real-time stellar cartography for the quadrant. Pointing to Recluse, he said, “The problem isn’t on our end. The planet just went behind the star. We should be able to reestablish contact in a day or so.”

Dan lifted his cap and ran his hand over his closely shaved head. “Everything checked out with the Charlotte?”

“No red flags that I saw.”

Dan placed his cap back on his head and opened a lower drawer on his desk, retrieving a bottle of scotch and a glass. “This is just what we need,” he said as he sloppily poured himself a drink. “If something is on that ship, and we don’t find out till they’re gone, it’s going to come down on us.” He looked to his left, seemingly seeing through the wall to the office of Randy Hicks. Hicks was the station manager, an asinine micro-manager known to throw the customs officers under the proverbial bus when something went wrong.

David looked back at the map, and the image of the unreachable mining facility. His eyes were drawn to the station RLADAR. A ship sized object with no transponder was approaching the station at a substantial speed. It came to an abrupt stop for a few seconds before speeding away again. He wondered about it for a moment, but found he was too tired to process the information. Instead, he returned his attention to Dan. “The Charlotte should still be unloading when Recluse makes contact again. No reason to freak out yet,” David replied, trying to sound reassuring. They didn’t talk much outside of official business and brief conversations before and after David’s shifts, but he did his best to always have Dan’s back. Dan was the one person on the station David really had anything in common with.

They were both dedicated to their work, and preferred living on the station over going home on leave. He had never asked what it was that Dan was trying to stay away from, but knew that whatever it was, was more manageable than what David faced at home, because Dan actually took his leave every year while David stayed on the station.

“Well, that’s it for me. Have a good night,” David said as he walked away from the desk.

“Something like that,” Dan mumbled and returned to his drink. David gave Dalton a nonchalant salute and headed down the corridor to his cramped personal quarters.

As he entered, the lights came on and he was greeted with his own reflection. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his face and eyed the razor on the sink drawer which he had forgotten to push in when he got up that day.

He slammed it shut, not interested in dealing with it until he woke up. He unlaced his boots and kicked them off before diving into his bunk alcove. “Lights off,” he said, but kept his eyes open as they switched off, leaving his vision filled with an alternating aura of green and purple.

He could hear the officer that lived next to him, whose bunk alcove was over his, getting up for his or her shift. David had never met his neighbor, but knew from experience that if he didn’t fall asleep before they started their morning routine, he wouldn’t until they’ve had left.

To kill time, he switched on his wrist comp and navigated to his personal files. Opening a folder buried deep in the system, he located what he was looking for. The wrist comp emitted a three-dimensional image of himself from years before with his arms wrapped around a short brunette. They were both smiling, but in his mind’s eye he could see coldness behind her curled lips. He attempted to stroke her cheek, but the gesture simply distorted the interference pattern that made the hologram, and her warped face moved away from his finger. He chuckled at the irony.

He had lost track of how long he had been staring at the image when he heard his neighbors hatch close, but took the sound as a cue to make an attempt at sleep. He switched off the wrist comp and stared at the ceiling until his heavy eyelids closed themselves, and he drifted off to sleep.