Into the Black

(BingeWatcher Station, orbiting Fendar IV, Fendar System, Free Worlds Alliance)

BingeWatcher Station got its name, unsurprisingly, from a bored human. Officially, it had some long, important-sounding name, assigned by the Empire, back before the Alliance had broken off from the Empire during one of the wars. The name had never been changed, on paper, but then that never really mattered to the people who actually made the station their home.

Yes, the little trade station centered over an agricultural world that was known primarily for its grain did have a stable population of ‘locals’ who kept the place running. There was some going back and forth with the people on the surface, but the farmfolk didn’t really get the stationfolk, and the stationfolk didn’t understand how someone could go and live on a farm. If anything, that was the one job that involved more boredom than living on the station, and harder work besides! No, the stationfolk liked their little easy routine of just sitting around, most days, keeping the station up and running, waiting on the regular transports to take food around.

There were no military forces in the system. Hell, the station didn’t even have any weapons big enough to do more than take care of asteroids that might come into their path. That wasn’t really a problem, though. After all, pirates didn’t even try to raid Fendar.

Not that they were scared off, or anything. Far from it. Sure, there was some talk about how the rest of the Alliance might just get pissy if a planet that provided a significant part of the food for the entire Alliance (especially after those Yathru Corporation dumbasses went and fucked up on Tsk’neth). But that wasn’t the real reason that no pirates attacked Fendar.

Simply put, there wasn’t any profit in it. The only products coming out of Fendar was food, and not luxury foods, mind you. Sure, that was worth some credits, but the margins were shit, just enough to keep everyone on the planet comfortable, so long as they didn’t get ideas of being all fancy. Even with a full hold of grain, pirates wouldn’t make enough to make it worth the trouble. Maybe they could steal some farming equipment from the surface, but where would they sell used combines? It would cost more to transport the thing than they would be able to sell it for, even as scrap materials.

Hell, even the other planets in the system weren’t worth raiding. The rocky inner planets were devoid of any useful material. The asteroids had been plucked clean long ago. The only other viable resource in the solar system were some gas giants which barely gathered enough fuel to keep refueling costs in the system low.

No, only way that pirates could make good money on raiding Fendar IV was if the food market crunched, like it did when Tsk’neth fell. And no one wanted that to happen. Anyone who did make that happen would likely face the entire Alliance as one. Yathru’s failure had convinced them that stomping on anyone who threatened the food was a priority, at least.

UnaCorp, the corporation that owned the Fendar System, banked on this to cut costs. In fact, they had sent corporate spokesmen to the various pirate lords and smuggler havens, and managed to get the word out that, so long as no acts of piracy were taken in the system, the system control officers would turn a blind eye to anyone who might not have up to date registrations on their ships. Those ships could buy food and fuel at the normal rates, rather than needing to go through black markets just to keep from starving.

The other offer they made was ‘neutral ground’. If the pirate lords needed a meeting spot, but didn’t want to go to anyone else’s turf, then no one would think twice if a couple ships that were more heavily armed than normal docked at the station. And anyone that broke that neutrality? Well, things wouldn’t go so well for them. After all, just because UnaCorp didn’t post forces in Fendar, didn’t mean they lacked them. And if UnaCorp had to ‘take notice’ of things, then it would ruin everything for everyone.

So, the system was maintained because that was what worked for everyone. It was in everyone’s best interests to keep things running that way. The company got better profits with lower overhead. The pirates got a port of call where they could relax, without worrying about getting shot. The locals sometimes were able to get things that ‘fell off the back of a shuttle’. Everyone won.

So, it was an entirely unwelcome surprise when a Hellspace rift opened above Fendar, and out poured a collection of things that looked as though they had once been normal ships. Only, there were holes that were barely patched, and several of them were leaking enough radiation that any human who set foot on board without serious protection would be dead in weeks. Red paint was in abundance, splashed across the ships like arterial spray. One ship even had a few corpses, long since burnt to just the bones, lashed to the bow, just below the cockpit.

The ships matched none of the known pirate clans. That much was obvious, since none of the pirates went into Hellspace. Even if they had the drives, there had been enough stories since that first couple of rifts opened in Coldana and Sol that people knew it was not someplace that you just went to hang out.

Worryingly, the ships didn’t respond to any hails. All attempts to communicate were not so much rebuffed as ignored, as though they did not have the ability to even detect the com signals. But it was clear that the ships were manned, because they were pushing in, heading for the planet, on what was clearly a controlled descent.

All except one, which was heading for the station.

Station Master Saul Saulson was not a brave man. Never had been. He wasn’t ambitious, either. He mostly just wanted to keep his head down, do the work assigned to him, and keep going until he finally got to retirement age. That was why, when the corporation had shuffled him out here as a ‘promotion’ that was essentially marking his career as a dead end, he had been happy.

“Damn it, I’m retiring tomorrow! Couldn’t this have waited just two more days?”

Grumbling at the rudeness of the invaders to show up before it could be someone else’s problem, searched the control panel in his office, and finally found a button that had not been pressed in so long that it would have had a layer of dust an inch thick over it, if he hadn’t insisted on preventative maintenance to prevent costly equipment failures. The General Alarm, the button that would send a priority message to everyone in the system that there was an emergency, and fire off a priority message to corporate. The last time anyone had pressed it was ten years ago, when a comet broke up in the outer system, and the fragments were slated to impact the planet. A few nukes corporate military ship took care of things, blasting the largest fragments away from Fendar IV.

He didn’t think that corporate would be happy to see this report. But he couldn’t think about that. Looking to his second in command, he said, “Fred, call security, and have them open up the armory. Arm anyone and everyone they can. We’ll requisition the ‘loaned’ weapons back later. If there is a later. And put the control center in lockdown. Full protocols.”

Looking at his comms officer, he sighed. “Jackie, call Governor Bundt, let them know that an invasion warning is in effect.” He paused, and then focused on the scared girl. “Record any transmissions, internal and external, that you can, and have them stream directly to corporate intelligence. That will at least give someone the chance to figure out who they are.”

(Two Days Later)

THUNK!

Saul Saulson was not a brave man. Never had been. He had never once looked at the main characters of those movies, and wished he could be like them. They were all stupid. Taking stupid chances and doing stupid things, and coming far too close to death for his liking. They usually would have died, too, if they didn’t have plot armor to protect them.

No, he was not a brave man. He was not the protagonist of a slasher movie. He wasn’t an action movie star. Hell, he wasn’t even one of those slice of life main characters! He was a station manager on a little backwater station in the middle of nowhere. And he was supposed to have retired yesterday!

In a kind and just universe, he wouldn’t be here. He should be on a transport, heading to the resort world of New Florida, where he had already put down a deposit on a nice apartment in a retirement community, with a time-share at the beach. He should be relaxing, and looking forward to a well-deserved retirement. Should be.

THUNK!

Instead, he was huddled in his control room, with only Fred, his second in command, and Jackie, his communications officer. They had locked and sealed the blast doors the moment that it became clear that the station was going to be boarded. When the security staff got overwhelmed, they had quickly welded the door shut. Trapping themselves in here. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now he was wondering if it would have been better if they had just opened the doors.

He couldn’t sleep, even though sleep was all that they could do. They couldn’t escape. The doors were sealed. They couldn’t call for help. The enemy ship had taken out the long-range communications array early on in the ‘battle’. They couldn’t blow up the station. Main power was offline, ever since those… things hit the reactor room.

THUNK!

The ‘battle’ was a slaughter. The security staff were armed with station weapons. Single-shot stunners and neural whips to deal with unruly drunks. Nothing that could potentially damage the station, or cause permanent harm to inadvertent bystanders.

The enemy was loaded up with weapons that were as varied as the ships they came in on. They all looked to be scratch-built out of whatever scrap that they could get their hands on. Horrid, brutish things, but they were so damn deadly. They lacked the elegance of a proper weapon, but the things did not seem to care, so long as they were useful.

The things (he refused to think of them as actual sapient beings) had swarmed throughout the station, attacking anyone they met on sight. The lucky ones died quickly. The unlucky ones? He shuddered to think about what he had seen over the security cameras.

THUNK!

The creatures were human-like in appearance, about as close to human as those knelfi were. They had sharpened teeth, and slitted eyes, like a cat’s, and their ears were more batlike than anything. But they had no real intelligence. If they hadn’t shown up on ships, he would have said that they were feral-subsentient creatures, barely better than wild animals.

A pack of rabid wolves had more compassion than these things, however. Wolves would have just killed and consumed the people on the station. He had watched as they… did things with the bodies. Sometimes before they were actually dead.

He shuddered. Not everyone had died quickly. Some had been taken. They were beaten. Raped. Killed. Skinned. Eaten. Sometimes even in that order. And it wasn’t just happening here on the station. They could still access the local communications, and the things were spreading out across the planet, like a reaving tide, leaving only blood in their wake.

THUNK!

And they were beating on the blast door, trying to get in.

“Boss, we’ve got problems!”

“Really? NOW we have problems?”

Saul sighed, and looked at the screen. He wished he hadn’t. On the screen, the savages were bringing up something that looked like a harpoon thrower. With a steel spear. He watched as they finished setting it up. Made ready to fire.

CRASH!

A spear pierced the blast door, spines keeping it from pulling back through. He could see on the camera where a chain led back from it. He could also see as the savages began reloading.

“They’re going to get through.” Fred’s tone was dull, lifeless. Devoid of hope, like they all were.

“What do we do? What can we do?” Jackie was scared. She’d seen what had happened to the others. They all had. And no one wanted that.

Saul sighed. “Well, we have stunners. Won’t do anything on them, but there’s a fault that can be exploited. We can overload the power settings. Set it to discharge the entire battery at once. That will kill someone, but only at touch range.”

“We only have two stunners.”

“I know.”

There was a moment of silence, as Saul rewired the two stunners. He ignored the fact that the spear thrower was almost reloaded. Bypassing the safeties was easy enough.

“They’re almost ready!”

CRASH!

He took a breath as the second spear penetrated the blast doors, and stepped up behind Jackie, pressed the stunner to the base of her skull. It was quick. Hopefully painless. The least he could do.

Fred turned, mouth open, trying to say something. Saul didn’t hear it. Didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t stand to hear it. I pressed the second stunner into his chest. Probably not as painless, but it was quick.

Saul dropped the spent stunners, and turned to look at the door. “I was supposed to retire yesterday.”