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Mixtape Ghost NVekta Prime Orbital
127-7-11
13:00
127-7-11
13:00
Vekta Prime Orbital was not a particularly beautiful city-station. Unlike the graceful white buildings of New Terra's main continent, it had been constructed in a rush, during the push to colonize the planet below. The original station had only been meant to last a short while, but as reliance on Vekta Prime grew, Orbital had grown with it. Segments had been bolted on piece by piece, with a flagrant disregard for the space station building codes of the time.
Now, the station was a behemoth of industry. The main shipyard of the Union, it was the primary point of contact of the numerous other Union stations orbiting the desert planet below.
Tark had always found it interesting how outsiders experienced the station for the first time, especially during the day hours. He'd been new to VPO once, too, and had reacted in the same way: floundering, pushing, and clawing to make his way through the crowds. Always polite, always apologizing, just trying to make it from one door to the next in the Mess-Sector. Now, years later, he had a better tactic. People tended to give you a wide berth if you laughed maniacally while you walked. No one wanted to get in the way of someone like that.
Of course, the downside to this incredibly effective method was that he had to consistently his mental fortitude to any security who happened to run into him. No, sir, he was perfectly sane. Just gaming a clusterfuck system to optimize his transit time. Yes, sir, he wouldn't do it again.
So far, he had been lucky enough to not run into the same security officers more than once.
"You're late," Tark smiled to Jet as the man walked through the door.
"I don't screech while I walk to lunch," was Jet's response, as the man sat in the seat across the table. He tapped a few words into the table, and a nanite cloud leapt up to form his meal. A sandwich.
"Oooh, so adventurous," Tark said, poking his own order into the table. Tetherpoint employees were lucky: they did well enough in the industry to be given meals during work hours. "No such thing as a free lunch, unless you work for Tetherpoint," he mumbled, as a sandwich of his own formed on a plate in front of him.
"Meet Ted, everyone. The best pot-meeting kettle for kilometers around." Jet smooshed his food into his mouth. "You know you have that interview coming up, right? Don't be late, grah matho. I didn't write you that most excellent rec letter for you to screw it it up by being late."
Tark rolled his eyes, leaning back with a smile to chow down. "The room's in Corp-Sector. It's up one floor and through one airlock. Five minute walk. I have a half hour to get there, no--"
"Five minute walk?" Jet slapped a hand on the table, and the whole thing vibrated from the meaty blow. "That takes me thirty-five minutes during lunchtime."
"True, true," mused Tark, standing with his lunch. "But consider this. You don't screech while you walk down the halls." Jet's hand snapped up to point at Tark, and he pointed back in kind. "Wish me luck, Jethro."
"Jet Thunder wishes you luck, Teddy."
God, that man had a cool name. He took a moment to appreciate it, then Tark was off, prepping his lungs for the next few minutes.
-----
"Welcome, Tarkath Edir Dendallo". The receptionist butched his name, of course, but it wasn't her fault it was entirely unpronounceable. "You'll be in room 3, first floor. Good luck!"
He smiled at her pleasantly and strode off to the room. His nerves were tingling. "Keep it together, matho. You got this." No ass-kissing. No shaking voice. Professional, Calm. He opened the door.
“Mr. Dendallo. Congratulations on being selected for the interview phase. Please, have a seat.” Someone who actually didn’t butcher his surname? Neat. At least this man was competent at pronunciation, amongst other unknown things. The individual who sat in front of Ted was not corporate. Not by any means compared to what the other interviewees had described to him. But in fact a Union Uniform. Navy, for sure -judging by the colours- but there were no medals, or service strips, or even a rank.
Tark sat. "Thanks." Good start to an interview being cordial. "And your name is?" Was he allowed to ask that? Was this some top-secret level stuff?
“My name isn’t really that important. What is important, is if you are the man I’m looking for today. And I damn well hope so. I have seen over 2000 people this past week, and I am damn tired. So maybe you will be lucky and a few of the things you’ll say will fly by me.” The unknown officer said with a smile. “So I’m going to ask you a few questions, to see if I like you and can write a proposal for that position you suggested in your application. Hmph, speaking of which…”
He pulled out a sheet of paper from a folder, Ted’s application for the Apollyon, curiously in paper form. “Instead of writing a grandiose epitome about how badass you are, and what big space battles you survived, you decided to write about a pretty well known accident here. One that you witnessed and even warned the Engineers about. That really caught my eye, and the eyes of my superiors. If you sent this to some corporate assholes in say…” He waved his hand in the air dismissively. “New Terra, they would have laughed this app off and shredded it. But here, it shows you have some balls, and perhaps that’s what we need in a Navigator.”
“So tell me, you have an attitude and the ability to criticize people directly to their face. Do you ever have any concerns about the fact that just maybe, you might piss off the wrong person, like say, a commanding officer, and there being a high possibility of them ejecting you out of the airlock?”
"With all due respect, sir, if someone in charge of a spacecraft were to throw me out of the airlock, then y'all need to take a serious look at who is appointing your captains. A CO who can't take criticism from his subordinates is more likely to get everyone killed than not."
Tark looked down. "I'm aware of my...more brash or blunt nature, or what have you," he waved a hand through the air for emphasis. "I'm working on it. But I have never directly refused an order for a superior when they put their foot down. I'll tell them my opinions. Usually bluntly. But if they make a decision, I'll respect it." He paused for a moment, cogs turning in his mind. "As long as it doesn't directly put my life in danger, or the lives of others on the team. I recognize that's a philosophical quagmire, but it is what it is."
The man leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "I'm sorry, but are you sure I can't even have just, like, an initial of your name? It's not really proper to call an interviewer matho, but it's really the best I have right now. Even a codename would work, sir."
“Well, if you must call me something, call me The Interlocutor.” He said that name as if it was some kind of joke among his peers. “But back on topic. You are a man who is not afraid to state his opinion, yet knows his place below his superiors. Good values to start with, but sometimes you just have to say: fuck it. Trust me, I was a Navigator once. And sometimes flying through a hailstorm of anti-capital ammunition while off your rockers was better than floating in place.” He said with some strange hint of pride, like there was fact in his words. “Take it from a man with experience. Sometimes even the most ridiculous of plans, miraculously works out, with luck, and a drop of skill.”
“So, that leads me to my next question. Tell me a bit about your piloting skills, and your general thrust knowhow. Wanna know if you can make that beautiful piece of 4km long badassery dance like a maiden. I honestly wish I got the damn job, but I’m not allowed to apply.” He almost seemed to pout at that last phrase.
"God, I wish." Tark slid back in his seat and sighed. "I wish anything flew like that in space. Okay, so my piloting experience came early on in my life. I grew up on Albion with my mom and grandpa Logeru. Gramps served in the navy back during the Final Days Campaign, and wanted to make sure I could fly his old P-12 Corvette. This was back when Armadillo Armaments was still in business. Shame they died out," Tark mumbled, "That P-12 still purrs."
He shook his head. "Anyway, I've just kept the license up to date since then. I won't call myself the best, since I never really got obsessed with s-piloting like some kids do. I got more in the technical side of things. But really, The," he said, pronouncing it as if "Teh", "You're asking the wrong questions for this giant pain in the ass."
"And it will be a pain in the ass," he mumbled, clapping his hands together and rubbing them lightly. "A hunk of metal the size of the Apollyon is not going to be dancing anywhere. It's just too damn big. Even if you put enough thrust on it to make banking--with any real speed, I mean--possible, the people inside would be thrown around by the G-forces generated by those maneuvers. It'd be like if New Terra stopped spinning for a second. Everyone would be pulverized by the sudden inertia change."
"What you've got here, sir, is a gigantic sitting duck. All big spacecraft are, once you get above heavy cruiser class. That's why they're supposed to combat one another at such huge distances. A logical dreadnought battle would take place over tens of kilometers, with each ship blasting one another from as far away as possible."
He stopped rubbing his hands and looked The up and down. An idea had popped into his head. "Besides," he said slowly, "A specialized AI would be able to make the ship dance better than any human ever could. But I'd at least be able to steer the damn thing to the logical best to be expected from it." Then he carefully asked. "May I ask why you aren't allowed to apply? If it's the job of the navigator, you seem--from my cursory glance--to have some real experience in the field."
Besides, he really hadn't applied to fly the ship anyway. Just to make sure that whoever DID fly it didn't end up listing into an asteroid or something.
“I’m not allowed to apply because my maneuvers are considered too dangerous, even though I could make the UNSF Armada fly like a leaf in the wind. A damn big and slow one, but it always had the least holes in it after a battle. The most side scrapes, too. Heh.”
The UNSF Armada, the only ship that came second to the Dreadnought parked outside this block of metal. A 2km long battleship, originally the Union Fleet’s pride and joy until now, that has now been decommissioned due to being obsolete, was famous for the Battle of Cardan, The Sevrik Skirmish, and Operation Uninstall. All major battles where the Armada pushed so close to enemy fleets that it would ram entire battle groups, and fire all of its weapons in all directions. It was a strategy that was so illogical that it left enemy fleet commanders dazed, either from getting rammed so hard that half their crew got pancaked against their own walls, or from watching the whole thing from another ship within the fleet. Yet somehow the ship always remained mostly intact. Many of the Union Admiralty give credit to Armadillo Arnaments, back when they built capital craft and their sturdy chassis design.
The man that sat in front of Ted at this very moment, was the one who flew that thing. “I didn’t give a flying fuck back then. In the heat of battle, when your crew is being sucked out of the holes in your hull, when half your instruments are malfunctioning and you can barely control the ship, you really stop giving a shit. You will reach that stage one day kid. Doesn’t matter how big the ship is or how many people will die. Because if you follow logic 100% of the time, like an AI will... then everyone will die.” This tone was dark with those last three words.
The man leaned back. “Besides...No one applied for Navigation. Those 2000 people were fighter pilot apps. You are the only one, even if you did make up the role.” Hell of a revelation. “Though don’t get set into thinking that you got the job. If we can’t find the right uncrackable nutter, one with the balls and the knowhow, then we will force it onto someone else. And that’s a much tougher job.”
“Alright, so back to business. Forgive my mild reminiscing there. What I mean by all that is, are you willing to go ham with what you have available, with all that the Apollyon can give you, when the shit really hits the fan? Do you have what it takes to tell your Captain to go fuck himself, when his orders could leave you and your shipmates as bleached floaters in the void?”
"Yes. Also, sidenote. There really wasn't anyone who applied to Navigation? Off of three planets and an empire to scale? Seriously?" Tark looked the man in the eye for a few fleeting moments and then relented. "Okay! Okay, fine. Fine. Let me tell you another story. It's not heroic, it's not something that'll be all over GalNet. But it saved the company I'm currently working for. Saved a whole lot more than that, and because I signed off on it, I got fired."
"Tetherpoint makes controls and avionics for smaller ships. Fighters, Corvettes. Sometimes mechs. We mostly specialize in guidance systems and GPS. Tetherpoint, get it?" He shook his head. "This was before I worked for Tetherpoint. One of the companies who I didn't ask for a rec letter.
"I'm hoping none of this leaves the room, sir, because I don't think I'm legally allowed to say this. Actually, before I do, am I allowed to say this? I'd rather not be caught violating potential non-discretion agreements. Not again.”
“Nothing is private these days, kid. You know that. Let’s just say the right people are listening, the ones who will give you the job. They don’t care if what you did was legal or not. Like I said a few times already. They want know-how, skill, and balls.” The man replied.
Tark nodded thoughtfully. "Okay, good. Good. So, uh...Crossroads Corp. They make the big guns. Mechanized death machines. Microcosms of war dominance. I used to work for them. I was a secondary assistant senior manager with them. Some meaningless title they threw around to make it seem like there was upward momentum in the company. I really don’t like them. They were straight yikr, if you'll pardon the swear.
"I first found out about Tetherpoint because we had a deal with them for the GAVIN. Project, which still hasn't materialized, to my knowledge. Serves them right, I guess. Long story short, I found out from one of the guys above me that we were going to use lower-quality chips from a competitor to run Tetherpoint software in the design.
"That may not seem like a problem to you, Teh, but if the chips can't run the software, they start rounding off the edges. When they start rounding off the edges, you get the Silvarion catastrophe. For an industry like ours, doing this kind of shit without telling the business partner was considered a colossal dick move.
"It was a little late for me when I found out, and I swear I must have bit the damn exec's ear off when he told me what they were planning. It was stupid, it was betrayal, but it would have made CC a hell of a lot of money. I wasn't about to let that happen, so I modified a fighter's autopilot and forced it to crash into the Data-Sector of VPO. Just so happened to hit and destroy the entire GAVIN project files. Of course there were backups, but not enough. It's expensive to back up petabytes of data, even nowadays. Set them back months, if not years. I'm pretty sure they probably gave up on it."
Tark smiled a little from the memory. "I figured they'd find out who did it, so I made a desperate play--more for self preservation at this point--and contacted Tetherpoint. Jet Thunder was the guy who picked up the contact, and that man, bless his immortal soul, saved me but good. When CC fired me--and they did--he was there to scoop me up into Tetherpoint."
Dry throat. Tark coughed, cleared his throat with and ugly heaving sound, and twitched his head. "Sorry about that. Anyway, I only got to where I was by a stroke of luck, but I wasn't about to let what people told me to do stop me from saving lives, and saving a company's reputation. You know that if the deal had gone through, CC would have blamed Tetherpoint for any failures. Even if it meant being homeless and jobless, I'd have done it again."
He leaned back again, this time tipping the chair up onto two legs. "It's not the most gutsy, bravado filled story, but it clears up something I said a few minutes ago. I'll follow orders, as long as they don't hurt people. Of course, some people getting hurt is preferable to everyone. And, of course, if shit hits the fan, like it always does..." he met The's eyes, "I'll make the call that gets us out alive."
There was a grin, a big stupid grin on the interviewer’s face that said it all. “Well, you do have balls.” Satisfied, the man set his folder aside and rested his hands. “I’d say that ends the interview, kid. We will be in touch if the news is good or bad. But regardless, I’ll be honest. You impressed me. If it was up to me, I would have hired your sorry ass on the spot. Now if you excuse me, I have more of the fighter hotshots to attend to.”
Tark stood up and brushed down his front to remove any imaginary dust. "Thank you, sir."
He moved his lips back and forth for a moment, mulling it over in his mind, and then said: "I don't know how long you're going to be on VPO, Sir The Interlocutor, but if you'd care to, there's a group of us in the industry who get together on nights like this to shoot the shit. Most of them are pilots themselves, or've spent time on a ship as well. I think y'all'd get a long. We meet late, so maybe you could get your fighter hotshots out of the way before then. Gubhli's Bar and Grill. You won't hear about it on any top 10 lists, but its the best damn gutspear in the Union. I'll be there probably all night, drinking my stress away, so you'd be able to stop by at any time.
Tark smiled. "I always appreciate a man who likes the old Armadillo ships. Solid as a rock. But the guys will probably need a name more than I do, sir. Any interest? The non-alc beverages are pretty good, too." It was worth a try, at least. Tark liked the man, and his gruff, honest demeanor.
“I appreciate the offer, kid. But my job no longer allows any bar hopping. I’ll keep it in mind if I ever decide to quit.” He gave Ted an approving nod, though it seemed to be more of a farewell.
"Damn, well. That's a shame. Oh!" Tark fished into his pocket, pulling out his Tetherpoint business chip. A little old, but he'd never had to update to the newer versions.
"In the event you ever do decide to quit, I'd be happy to sit down and talk more. Thanks for your time, sir. Good luck with the other guys." He smiled devilishly. "By the way, for the hotshots who think they know it all, try asking them about the Silvarion problem and see what they'd do different. I guarantee I'm not the only person who knows what really happened. It might help show you who has the technical knowhow for bigger ships. Up to you, of course." He patted the back of his chair with his hand briefly, trying to come up with another thing to say.
Nothing. "Have a good day, Mister The," he finally said, and stepped outside. This time, he didn't feel like shouting his way back to Tetherpoint.
"Take your time, Teddy," he mumbled. Then he set off back to work.