Cycle 2 | Sector 7, Medusa Station
I undid my straps when I saw the habitation rings rotating around the station.
A beam scanned my ship as I approached. Before I could even react, a landing clearance code was issued by a robotic voice over comms. The sequence identified the station as Medusa Sector. It even patched me through to hangar maintenance to schedule repairs.
I asked Hangar Maintenance if they thought any Medusa Agents would want to look over Everest; seemed like someone should look into why this guy went rampant.
"No, and we're limited on our waste facilities. Just space him before you get too close. I don’t want to deal with a fried cyborg."
Alright Everest, into the airlock. I ripped off the name tag from his flight suit before I sealed the door. One day you're a spacefarer crossing the system, the next day you're a rampaging cyborg trying to crush a ship that just came out of jump, and after that you get unceremoniously flushed out of an airlock.
The Tradehub was busy here, and of course I got stuck behind the guy who wanted to haggle with the Weapons Broker. It was no wonder why the broker introduced themselves as Ink; covered with tattoos of plants and animals from some sylvanian planet I've never heard of; Orcus. They were cute though, maybe I'd take the extra time to try haggling too.
I wanted to sell off the counter guard I found on Everest. Ink wanted to trade me for a carbon dagger to defend myself with, commenting that it looked like I could use one. I tried to explain that in my hands, hacks are deadlier than any weapon. I don’t know if they believed me but they did give me directions to the wiredoc while the serum transfer was pending.
I quickly spent the serum I'd just gotten on some extra replacement parts for my ship. I figure if I take care of my ship, my ship will take care of me. Damn, I need a name for that old smuggler rig, every other ship out here has a cool name.
The wiredoc was a young guy named Lirio. I totally unloaded about being attacked straight out of jump and then having someone teleport onto my ship, trying to kill me. He listened as he rebandaged some of my cuts and scanned for any internal damage. He even seemed to care about what I was letting out.
"Do you meditate, Jade? You should try it. We all ended up in this galactic dark age because the humans before us expanded too far, too fast, and lost their balance among the stars. They eventually tore themselves apart just trying to survive! The cyborg…"
"Yes, Everest. He lost his balance between man and machine. Not that cybernetics are evil, but the way you described it, I don’t think it was Everest in there trying to kill you. You need to find balance in here, or you're going to get sent spinning across the stars by everything you bump into out there."
He had tapped a gloved finger against my temple as he finished sharing his wisdom.
Maybe Lirio is wise for a young guy, but he also claimed that he was born an old man and gets younger every day.