Deep Space 

She was an Old “Pre-Gold” ship of beta class and had, with my guidance, been cruising to distant moons of my planet, Calypso, for a long time, in search of the rich finds, mainly gold, lurking beneath the surface. 

I had just started to dock when the ship’s computer, which squeaked a high-pitched “beep” and reported the info which was so necessary for a fortunate docking. Beatrice, which the ship’s computer was called, had not remained a machine, but was now an accepted companion during my many trips (and fights against her own kind) prospecting the native moons. 

You had to be able to synchronize speed, place, and time to make a perfect dock. Because of the high preserving bills occurring at every bump into the station, many had started to see the Crystal Palace as a god cause of its merciless costs, and I was its most favoured pilgrim. I was often pictured as a saint among the many pilots, instructing them in the art of docking. Though no one ever succeeded in understand half of what I was saying (not many were interested in inchrastic equations), so I quit as a mentor every time I felt the storage becoming too lightweight. 

The computer beeped enthusiastically when it received the info of my skilful docking, and opened the door facing the tube which would bring me to the inside of the great space station, circulating Calypso in its never-ending circulation around its planet. 

I stepped into the bar and noticed the place soar with activity. So I sat down at a stool in front of the bar and ordered a diet Haimoro-shake with a sting of vibrant sweat. Though I had not been drinking, the bartender always said I’d been drinking, again, so I guessed I was once again sleepwalking, suffering one of the many bugs Mind forcers, who are a bit too interested in inserting things into several different brain pieces. 

After a bit of Caroot juice and Nutribars I went away, disappointed of the service, having to wait for the kitchen personnel to deliver the meal after losing their robot to the local police after discovering the kitchen drone having been an infiltrator of the Robots. Though the Microwave oven had been saved from the berserking machine, the laser table, cutting everything into fine pieces, had been destroyed, and leaving me with rogue pieces of something which looked more like fine pieces of dung mixed with a touch of brown jelly on top. I still wondered where the art of cooking had gone when I left the bar.

Part 2 

I slowly went out of the bar leaving the wine red blank floor of the bar to the white sterile floor of the commons, watching the surrounding entertainment facilities blinking and shining in a failed attempt to make them look glamorous, baked in around the great pillar of pure Calypsian first class metalwork, keeping the space stations’ citizens and music lovers in the night club 24/7 on their feet, simulating the gravity of Calypso when the station was rotating around its “shoulder”. 

The Commons where, as always at this time of year, filled with eager house owners selling the recent harvest of several fruits being DNA-bred through the land management terminals discovered in the year of 537 P.S (Post-Society). 

That the technology on Calypso had gone so far in the last decades was almost unbelievable. For many centuries the many mega-companies, introduced to Calypso at the time of the first settlements, blamed each other for stealing technology and contra-espionage for almost 200 years, forcing the inhabitants to create their own research teams consisting mostly of friends working like the Earthen computer nerds, eagerly working on new individual designs and blueprints. Many societies specialized in making special-fit armours made to fit the special measures and levels of skills of the buyer also stabilizing the physical body so the essence of life wouldn’t escape that often through the “dimensional wounds” due to old revival terminals from the older companies, having vital codes missing in their software due to the stressful and fast development in the former companies, not looking into precision but fast production. 

Later on after walking the talk in the corridors of the commons, selling some gold here, offering some ancient alien fossils there, I returned to my ship, and home, Beatrice, leaving the sterile floor for the more familiar cold steel of the cockpit. Every time I walked into this steel box consisting of buttons, luxurious red combibo leather I felt like I was home, and after checking the antimatter-cannons, laser-cannons. I decided that when I now was sitting in a merciless old juggernaut, I felt to go for a few rounds of ping-pong with some robot ships. Only thing was, I was going to win, having updated the hardware of the ship without any contact with any droids at Crystal Palace. Teasing the machines, I always made sure no Scum (that’s what I called them, and hey sure deserved it) would ever be close to my docking-tube, and I was going to keep it that way until one shot me out of pure frustration. 

Pure hatred against the metal scum’s seared through my veins, reaching my arms trembling with the great power of revenge. Once: I had started my journey, just like today, but with none hatred at all. Only my wife, Sarina, sitting beside me, having the slimmest thighs and the best personality ever found on the nine worlds the project called Entropia, had colonized. I still remember her laughter, filling in the empty space with company and loyalty. But most of all love. It hadn’t taken more then a few hours. I was once a trader you know. Beatrice received a heavy blast from above uncovering the stealthed robot scout. The laser beam was so powerful, it pierced through my mirror-windows like butter, and she was lost to the infinity. Beatrice repair-bots had closed the window before I could catch my loved one. I could only but blame myself. Why did I take that shortcut? Why didn’t I listen to Sarina, warning me of this route? The drudgery, oh the drudgery. 

As I, with new found strength of soul and moral, I slowly undocked out of the ancient sentinel of Calypsian space force, listening to the voice of my most beloved star “Sarina Blove ”(oh yes, she was still my shining star.) When the moment of self-hatred and vengefulness I decided to leave the lost memories behind and have some fun. By “mistake” I bumped into some nasty looking asteroids who were just begging to get spanked by the antimatter laser, so I decided to be polite. The great four-nozzle antimatter laser cannon, showing up on the upper left of the cylindrical star ship, locked in on its target and shot away a spray of hot antimatter parts, showing no interest in preserving the original matter of these rocks, melting right through the rocks, making them porous like a sponge, making me able to prospect the shrapnel’s of the former asteroids at a safer distance.

Part 3 

Heat scanning made no difference to cold space metals, so I brought out the specials, my prospect scanner, showing everything from a plastic card to rocks as hard as diamonds at a max distance of 1 km. The solid objects were pictured as black objects on the screen on the built-in scan-panel bulging out, resembling an overfed Snarksnot with tab boards as heads and a busy positronic brain as its circular body. 

I found nothing of mining-interest, but something bugged me. Either there was something, that didn’t show on the heat scanner, or it was one of those parasites, Argomatrix, living on metals in space, not breathing, but extracting chisel for their bodies to keep the energy running for their furnace like stomachs not to ache. Many say they look like a minimal metal grey copy of the Areanatrox, aka “Spider”, on Calypso. Scientists still discuss the origins and similarities in these species’ DNA structure. I’d only seen one once, dangerously close to chewing through my Erdorium-pansar like he, or she’d never seen a Star Cruiser DB-03 Special Issue. 

I decided to take it cool, rotate a couple of kilometres above the pimpstone-like asteroid, trying to fool whatever was in that piece of rock that everything was just fine and then snap it with my scoped laser cannon on top of the ship, sniping it on safe distance, beaming its dead corpse after those final death twitches, looting or investigate what this strange creature closer. I would surely get a death penalty from “Save the Asteroids”, but the reward, offered by the investigation labs close to Troy, would surely calm down the activists and give me a bonus for my “Extra ordinary Efforts in achieving The body of the long speculated life form”. –At least, I though to myself, I wouldn’t have to follow on to the dissection. 

In the middle of the eternal night of space, I woke up, noticing, when touching the avatar scanner’s screen on my arm, all my inner systems were in panic. My unconsciousness had received something exciting. I slowly stepped up, supporting my hand on the cold metal wall in front of me, I had been sleeping on the floor after falling out of the chair, and I still was surprised of not awakening by the crash onto the blausarium floor. When I looked to the prospecting ProspectoScanner-scanner, it had picked up something. I rushed to the command panel and looked at its screen gasping from the 4m ride through the commander-room, showing the signatures of moving matter inside that big rock. Something was feeling too safe. 

I hit the gas and roughly, landed on the porous rock, leaving the engine on, forgetting my keys in all excitement. Though the big rock was fragile, it was strong enough to carry my weight. Cause of the Zero-G gravity, I weighed as little as a gerbil on diet. 

From the belt, strapped onto my special ordered- shadow space suit, I picked up my “EWE EP-50 Mod.”, walking towards a hole in the ground that was supposed to lead me right down to the unknown entity living only to die by my gun…

to be continued...