Alice sighed and stared at the screens she didn’t want to be here. Why had she signed up for this?! It was all Stacy Phillips’ fault. She’d come sauntering out of the aptitudes with that smug smile of hers. “That was easy!” she trilled. “I’ll get a placement in top admin no problems.” Stacy was Alice’s best friend but some times, just sometimes she really hated her. In the common room they had carded coffees when this dishy guy turned up and started distributing info cards. Stacy slipped it into her reader and snorted in that way she had when she thought something or someone was getting above them selves. (Huh look to yourself Stace’) “Work experience? Who’s going to work?” She began to read off the options making derogatory comments about each one to giggles from the rest of the group. Alice wasn’t laughing. She was watching the young guy as he stood there to give his spiel but never getting a chance. She felt a touch sorry for him. Just his bad luck he’d run into Stacey on a roll. Before she knew it she’d piped up “That sounds interesting.” To what?! She hadn’t even heard. Too busy listening to her inner thoughts. Stacey turned to her. “Ali, you’re not serious? Pusher Jock?” She could still hear the laughter. She got mad, really mad, said something about dumb blonds and data entry that was, she had to admit a bit skosh, and she was signed up for a shift. What a dumb ass! She sighed again. She wasn’t even interested in how cargo got moved around. She didn’t know what she wanted but certainly not this. Pusher Jocks were paid virtually zip, got allocated a scuzzy two room and hung out with Dock Monkeys in scuzzy bars on White dock. Thirty minutes, just thirty minutes and it would all be over. She began trying to construct some sort of report for Stacey when she asked sweetly and with that wide-eyed innocent face, in front of the biggest audience possible, “So, Alice how was your work experience?” Alice glanced sideways. The suit was old, way too big and stank of restroom soap. She could only just see past the side edge of the helmet. She felt a touch guilty. Mr Fletcher was ok, just quiet. He’d gone through the boards with her nice and careful. Explained exactly what they had to do in that slow wheezy voice. Hell, he hadn’t even got mad when she’d messed up. Too much thrust for too long on that last collection. Really hard couple and the main clamp nearly back through the forward bulkhead. It really was her fault she was here and no one else’. Fletcher had to admit he felt uncomfortable. Long time since he’d flown with anyone. Let alone a “wet behind the ears” college kid. He’d seen it before. Out of college straight into a cockpit, straight into a wall. Still he’d been polite. He could see she didn’t like the idea. Too fond of knowing which way was up. Give her due though, most barfed up at their first stint in zero G. “Shouldn’t we be heading in to the mast? Shift’s up nearly” She said. Fletcher leaned forward got the grav capped water bottle from its clip on the stanchion took a swig. “Nope, gotta have a vector from central. Can’t move without a vector. Lotta tonnage out there, make a real mess if wreckage starts flying around. Chain reaction” And he went back to his water. “You don’t like me very much do you?” Whoa! Why had she said that! Fletcher’s head snapped round in his helmet so fast a droplet of water escaped. Alice concentrated her gaze on it. A small, silvery globe wobbling off towards the filters. With a tissue she snagged it. If those filters got wet they lasted no time at all. Expensive. She waited for the come back. Fletcher smiled. “Just not used to company that’s all. Been out here on this job more years than I can count. Only lone “Pusher Jock” left. All the new guys have partners.” “Why?” Alice was relieved to be able to change the subject. “’Cause corp. brats straight out of college came in thinkin’ they knew it all. Plasterin’ ‘emselves all over the hardware. Like I said, wreckage can do a lot of damage. So the company wrote the reg-u-lations and there were partners in every cabin. Every cabin save mine and that’s cause I’m safe. And I don’t move without a vector”. She’d been on the docks only once before. David her brother had just turned twelve Alice was ten. Up until that point they had hardly left the residency levels. School was a trans trip round to Blue section, the doctors, the shopping mall one level down and round to Green. Papa went out to the office on one White. A sweater was all she needed as an extra layer against the cold. But that shift they had been looking forward to. Mom was all dressed up and Papa came home with big thermal jackets, boots, hats and gloves! They carried all but the boots on their way to the trans, they would’ve been too hot else. Papa said they’d need them on soon. He called a private car wow! A trans car just for them. People at the stop looked on, a little envious she thought, as the family stood at the red-lit track access. It wasn’t long before the car arrived. They all piled in and got the seats all to themselves. Alice was able to have a proper look at the car interior. On previous trips she’d always been in a crowded public stopping car and she had taken the things for granted. Now she was able to take it in. She’d never before noticed the hand rails on the walls and down the middle, or the safety info that was printed on the walls the right way up and upside down. When asked, Papa said the trans cars on high priority could travel up the station spokes, traverse the null G core and down another spoke to cut out a trip round the rim. “Take Hold” it said. “When instructed use-take hold and pay attention to G orientation.” Their car was moving now spinward along to Blue section where all the major commercial areas were. The light strip above the door turned from yellow to blue and then the car slowed right down. There was the sound of whining machinery and some clanking. David said it was the mag-lev sponsons re-orienting to the spoke rails. Alice gave a panicked glance at Papa. All he did was point down and say “Going to get cold soon Ali. Best suit up.” The trans station on Blue 9 was huge, almost as big the Mall at home. There were balconies and escalators, shops and eateries, bright lights and Tri-D ads for all sorts of attractions. The main difference for Alice was the people. At home on Blue 3 folks were soberly dressed, business types or families. Down here she saw coveralls, tattoos, bare flesh festooned with chains and plastics in just the right places to be decent. Merchanters on liberty cruising the docks looking for a hook up. Some sober, some not, seriously. They exited the station and she got her first view of the docks. The trans station was nothing compared with the actual dock itself. Here her breath steamed in the freezing air and looking right and left she saw the curving perspective of the deck rolling off up to the high-high girders, the arch lights and the section seals. Beneath her feet were another two decks of services and ancillary docking masts. In front of her, maybe thirty meters away across a road way crowded with outlandish humanity, ped trans carts and cargo rollers, was the dock wall. Behind that three meter thick skin was hard vacuum. In that towering wall with its structural girders, walkways and gantries at the top of high ramps were the ship access doors. Some were open and lit others closed and dark. Above, screens advised what was snuggled and grappled up against the station and where it was from, going to and when. “Starsailor.” She read on one. “Fargone – Pan Paris. Dep 23.00” Starsailor was in count for departure. Ali tore her gaze away from the dock wall and looked behind her. All along the frontage there was flashing neon up to four levels. Bars, clubs, sleeperies, restaurants. That had been some time ago, she’d celebrated her birthshift six times since then and here she was in a trans headed down another spoke to White 9 the working side of the docks. White was where the short haulers and service ships came in and auxiliary dock seven was where A12 and Mr Fletcher were waiting. It was as cold as she remembered, the size, the roadway and dock wall but that was about it. Here in the frontage there were warehouses, shipping forwarders and the odd dimly-lit bar. Huge cargo rollers stood idle shrouded in shadow. Not easy to replace arch lights up there in the girders. From here she had to go down, under level one. It was echoing metal stairs slicked with a thick rime of frost. Blessing her heavy boots and thermals, finally she came down into a suiting chamber dark and rusty and there he was, Mr Fletcher. She was a touch surly, he was reserved. Not a good start Ali me girl. He helped her on with the scuzzy suit, opened the hatch in the deck and descended a thin ladder to the final hatch in the wall of the dock arm. Hell! It was even colder down here. A short access tube and she was in A12 strapped and Fletcher was prepping for decouple. After the initial safety brief and job description Alice hadn’t listened much. Too clogged up with her own thoughts. Fletcher had said a lot about the Fleet, the war and about being in at the build. When the station was put together but that was one hundred and fifty years ago! Shitting her was what. She looked again at the boards and saw an old fashioned image frame, the kind that scroll pictures one after the other. It was stuck on one image. “Probably burned into the screen by now.” She thought. In a group, around the plaque that commemorated the closing up and making air-tight the first section of the station, was what looked like a very young Fletcher, or maybe his Dad. It was regularly celebrated. Station time still tied to the movements of a distant planet around a faraway star. Hours, Minutes, Mainday, Alterday, Years. Maybe humans needed those time frames even now. But every “year” they marked “Spin-up day” when the finished ring began rotation to produce a force very like gravity on the inside. Alice had been on the school trips to the deep insides of the now heavily expanded station to the very first modules to be bolted to the great wheel of a frame. There was the plaque, tarnished now with age but here, in this image, bright and shiny. “Is that your Pa?” “Nope. Spent a lot of time on merchants during the war. They would jump far far out into the deep dark and stay there. Didn’t want the Fleet pressing our crews. Stretches your life out jump. Did some time on the militia carriers too. Chasing the Fleet around, more jump time. Bit of rejuve. Not natural that, lying in a tank for shifts no end. Getting too old for that sort of thing now. I was on the construction teams with Park and Dale. I built your station Alice”. She gaped like a rookie. Fletcher would have had a massive station allotment by now. Stationers aged in more normal time frames. There was still rejuve, but the original Park and Dale were long gone. Even so their descendants were well off, close to aristocracy! Fletcher seemed to see what she was thinking. Memory played its grainy pictures across the silver screen in the back of his head. The terror of being stuck deep in the belly of a carrier praying that the brass up stairs knew what they were doing as the thing was thrown around like a toy. Then you never knew which way was up. Chasing the Fleet. Secret bases, boarding actions, then you got a chance to release the terror on someone else “I wanted adventure.” He said apologetically, simply. “Sold my most of my shares. Came back though”. There was a “ping” from the comp. “There we go.” He sounded as if he’d been expecting this. “You want to take this one? Have another try?” Alice was troubled, about making another mess. “Another job with less than fifteen to go?” “Aw, central always do this. Take just long enough to put you over shift but not into overtime pay. Oldest trick in the book. Can’t slack it, they know my cap. They’ll know if I go slow.” There was the docket. The steel mills nine hundred thousand clicks out had a can full of steel rods. Run out pick it up, bring it in to bay four of the “Helen B Merry” berth seven Blue dock. It was late out of the mill, they were in count for departure. The vectors out and back in came. Alice began keying the data. A nice smooth run was set up and initiated before she realised that Fletcher wasn’t shadowing her on the main board. He was just sat there smiling. “Did that without thinking eh? Fine job too. All set up and on.” He pushed the button and the rig’s mains cut in nice and slow just as she set it. A push in the back, building pressure. In the middle of the tangle of anger, stupidity, embarrassment and shock was a tiny kernel of pride but she didn’t trust her self to say anything. She just looked away at the scan screens. Detectors tracked anything and everything anywhere near close and let you know if it was too close or on a converge. Fletcher had explained most of it when she came aboard and she had understood some. As Alice watched the scrolling numbers something didn’t look right. She toggled her screen to graphic. There she saw the probability fans. Every vessel that used the station had I.D. and was logged on all its movements. So past history could be compared against present behaviour and the future predicted. This was essential for organising ships that moved at speeds approaching that of light when they dropped out of jump high in the zenith of the system. Their predicted courses were shown in differing colours for a percentage of likelihood, red for high green for low. The interesting bit was the size and positions of the tracks. If a ship was a rogue the track would be red but wide and dangerous. The red track was wide and close. “Mr Fletcher. I think we could be in trouble”. She keyed the scans to his screen. “Aw that’s just Karl. He’s always doing that. Central might as well not bother giving him a course. He’s always all over the place. Beats me they haven’t had his cards by now and beached him. He’ll be ok. We might have to hail him, warn him off. Not strictly reg but we can in an emergency. ” Alice suddenly realised it wasn’t Karl she’d seen in the numbers. The scan displayed the ship I.D. number and closing on Karl was a blip with an “U.O.” tag. “What’s U.O. mean?” Fletcher looked up all serious. “Unclassified object. Why?” He was already tracking on it. Alice watched with horror. It was fast, faster than Karl. “It’s closing on him.” She looked again at the numbers screen whilst Fletcher garbled codes and numbers to central on the mic, switching now and again to ship to ship to raise Karl. There was a rising trend in the numbers but within that a rise and kick back. Alice just knew the thing was spinning turning end over end. “Karl, Karl. Copy. Leave your vector now. U.O.on intercept. Evade. Evade. Copy.” Fletcher shouted down the mic. “He’s got four minutes.” Alice was shaking all over glancing from screen to screen maybe she was over reacting. Then she heard Fletcher Shouting at her. “Alice, Alice. I need you tracking now! I need you to listen Karl’s going to be hit.” She squeaked she couldn’t help it. “He’s so close we’ll get hit by the debris we have to stop or we’re in trouble.” He was loud and clear now not wheezy at all. “We haven’t got time to decal. She screamed. “Yes we have and I don’t want you losing it now. I need you tracking Alice! I want you to handle the attitude jets. You need to flip us over 180 degrees when I mark it yeah?” “Ok.” She risked a glance at the numbers. Karl was moving but so slow. Moving off the line but then the tag disappeared. Great blooming flower of fire on the cameras and then white out because they couldn’t take the intensity. “MARK NOW!”. No feeling of movement, no inertia just the digits on the pitch gyro rolling up to 180 and taking what seemed like forever. Then, the kick in the back from the mains again. Not the gentle build she’d felt before but long hard push which made her gorge rise and blacked her out for a second. A manoeuvre certainly not legal but it stopped them dead and pushed them back a touch down their vector away from the expanding cloud of wreckage. Even so there were bangs and crashes’ echoing through the frame as what was left of Karl’s pusher bounced off their hull. “So long Karl.” Fletcher said gently. They sat mute for a while. It felt somehow unreal. Just a number on a screen now gone. Fletcher had been listening to the ship to ship and the station com. “We got a loose tank on our hands. Blow out from a ship at dock.” She had seen them on the station news sometimes but never as serious as this. All ships ran on water. They used it for fuel. Superheated steam for the attitude jets, something scientific and complicated for the mains. The jump engines were nuclear. Water was plentiful around a station. All that steam from ships nosing into and out of dock froze and was collected by “Ice Johnnies” scooping it up and getting it to the station tanks. When a ship docked it was hooked up and refuelled with high pressure water. An old short hauler, with its fuel tanks mounted radially around the core was being re-fuelled. One of its tanks had a weak supply valve. Add to that the ship’s engineers exceeding the pressure capacity of the tank to get as much water pressurised into it as possible, and it had broken free propelled out of the frame trailing clouds of ice behind. Already it had taken out two dock jocks changing direction each time and beginning a tumble. Alice began to sniff and looked at the scan. The U.O. was still there. She toggled to graphics and a line, a thin red line straight at the station hub. Scans had no data on it see, just what it had done so far, no ID, no capability and nothing else in the way to change its direction. Karl had bounced it off towards the hub. The station hub; where all the coms and scans services were sited. The station hub; where sensitive industry was located, the life support services that needed zero gravity. The station hub; where the structural braces of the station connected together. The tank was big and a lot of mass. If it ploughed into the hub it could wreck the station .” That’s it.” she thought.” Home is dead and gone. Nothing we can do.” “Alice, I think we’ve lost our com. I can hear central but I’m not sure they can hear us.” He looked at her and didn’t like what he saw. Alice had given up. She sat hunched in the suit shivering. All she ever knew could be destroyed. She was in shock, panic. There were ways of dealing with this sort of thing. Fletch had seen it in the war. Gentle ways, but he needed her help. A general call to all shipping had gone out on com to evacuate the station area. No sense in providing more wreckage. The skimmers were too small. A carrier, hell even a rider ship could’ve been in from the rim in a flash, vaporise the thing just like that. God knew where the carrier was, and only God. Classified. Fletcher was the closest vessel to the U.O. He could get there and stop it but he needed Alice back. So gentle wouldn’t work. Hard it had to be. “So corp. college girl!” he tried unsuccessfully to put a sneer into that he hoped she wouldn’t notice. Her head snapped up. “I guess some of your friends thought you were pretty scuzzy going for this sort of thing?” She glared at him. Bingo, hit a nerve there. “Well, you think any of them could’ve done what you already have? Now we are going after that son of a bitch and I need you on and tracking doing what you just done again.