Unusual Cargo

Some people considered the job of docking coordinator to be a boring one, but it suited Dyna quite well. She enjoyed the puzzle of slotting different spaceship models into the modular docking bays of the Andromeda-Prime Station. As a bustling stopover midway down the galactic arm, the traffic was more than enough to keep Dyna busy.

While she spent most of her day happily fussing over ship records and sensor data, she still found stray moments to watch ships drifting in and out the double doors of the vacuum lock. There were zippy personal cruisers, sturdy mid-sized transports, and occasionally the oddly graceful bulk of city-ships. She knew hundreds of models by sight, and when one with some obvious asymmetries entered the vacuum lock she flinched.

A scrapper ship.

Scrappers made their living salvaging from abandoned ships and stations. While a few struck it rich, most barely scraped by, and they’d developed a culture of “upgrading” their dated ships with whatever odds and ends they found. Some of the modifications were ingenious; others were a disaster in the making.

And one of those potential disasters was in her docking bay.

The Alpha-Prime Station was a substantial construct, hosting over ten million people at any given time. The station’s docking bay was appropriately spacious, with multiple floors and sections to accommodate all types of ships, passengers, and cargo. However, the bay was not so spacious that - say - a severe drive core malfunction wouldn’t tear through multiple nearby ships, docking floors, and all of the humans and cargo thereon. And if that happened, Dyna would be the one hauled into Governance and Command to answer some very pointed questions.

As much as Dyna hated scrapper ships, it was best to deal with them herself.

“Get me Tito,” she instructed a dockworker at a nearby data terminal. “This is going to be messy.”

“Tito” was the nickname for the TI-2 professional assistance drone used to carry essential equipment and carry out routine analysis for ship inspections. Technically there were eight Titos working on Alpha-Prime; Dyna got Tito 5.

Tito 5 had a low, boxy frame and a rectangular screen that could raise to eye level or retreat into the main body as needed. All of this was supported by two flexible treads. It was a very practical robot. Somewhat less practical were the glittery decals on its sides. Each Tito had slightly different ones. Tito 5’s featured the big-eyed bird-frogs of Chron-9656.

Dyna wasn’t thrilled about walking next to a Tito that was decked out like a child’s backpack, but there were bigger concerns at hand. She waited on the lower floor as the scrapper ship was directed to her for processing and went over her mental checklist to soothe herself.

At last, the ship landed with a slightly-heavier-than preferred thud and the lower hatch opened.

“Hello and welcome to the Andromeda-Prime Station,” Dyna greeted from muscle memory. “Would you be the owner of this… vessel?”

Normally, she would have stated the make and model, but this one was so heavily retrofitted that she was hard-pressed to say what was underneath. Was it a Libra-series? A chopped-up Odin?

“That’s me!” The woman who emerged had a typical appearance for a scrapper. Her right eye was replaced with an ocular implant popular for its ability to identify metals via spectrometry. Her hair was short - long hair required more maintenance and could get caught in moving parts - and her clothes were heavy and practical. But what stood out to Dyna was the woman’s overly-wide, nervous smile. Suspicious.

To be clear, Dyna had no dislike of scrappers themselves. They provided a vital service to the galaxy, cleaning up abandoned ships and stations and preventing useful parts from going to waste. But their ships…

“As you entered, our system detected some unusual emissions. Are you aware that your ship is producing methane?”

The scrapper blinked dumbly. “Still? I thought I fixed that. I, uh… hope that’s not a problem?”

“The amount isn’t enough to constitute a hazard, so it’s permissible. Are you conducting some form of agriculture on your ship?” The only ships Dyna had come across with those types of emissions were either raising or transporting livestock. She wouldn’t normally expect that on a ship this small, but she’d found stranger things on scrapper ships before.

“Agriculture? You mean farming? No! I mean, kind of? It’s not on purpose, but I have the right permits!”

If Dyna was suspicious before, now she was certain something was awry. “Ma’am, I’m going to need to briefly inspect your ship’s interior, including both storage and engine compartments.”

The scrapper woman visibly deflated, but nodded.

“Right, right. It’s just… a bit of a mess is all. And I have the permits!”

“The permits for what?” Dyna asked, following her inside.

“They’re - freck, how did he pronounce it? I don’t remember the scientific name, but you’ve heard of asteroid vines, right?”

“I don’t think I… have…” Dyna trailed off. There were vines in the spaceship. Dull, bluish-grey vines all knotted up like muscles and trailing along the floor, walls, and ceiling. “Why… are they on your ship?”

“Yeah, so it’s kind of a long story,” the scrapper began awkwardly. “To cut it short, some things happened with a stowaway button-grig back in the Helix system, and I figured it’d be a good idea to get licensed to transport Class-C biomatter, just in case. About a week ago, I happened to check a job board and saw there was a science-y type offering to pay by the pound for asteroid vines. I think he’s raising something that eats them? Anyway, easy money, right? I put them in the cargo hold, but then it turned out they really liked something in my atmo mix. They’re totally harmless! There’s just… a lot of them now.”

“I… see.” Dyna tried not to appear too taken-aback as one of the vines pulsed and extended another inch forward, putting out little feelers on either side to clutch the wall. “And are these the source of the methane we detected?”

“Yeah, sometimes they-”

As if on cue, a sighing sound emitted from one of the walls, and one of the vines deflated slightly.

“-do that.”

The accompanying smell was a concentrated mix of sulphur and a poorly-maintained shower drain. Dyna grimaced.

“Tito, respirator please.”

“Atmospheric conditions are well within safe limits for humans without serious respiratory conditions,” Tito 5 informed her in a cheerful robotic voice.

“Respirator. Now. And sample those vines to make sure they’re classified correctly.”

Tito 5 opened a hatch on its back to produce the lightweight respirator, which Dyna immediately donned. She was not smelling that for this entire inspection.

“I juiced up the air purifiers so the smell shouldn’t get too concentrated,” the scrapper woman offered helpfully.

Meanwhile, Tito 5 rolled over to one of the ground-level vines and sliced off a sliver for its internal sensors to examine.

“I’m sure that’s improved the quality of your journey significantly. Now, you mentioned permits?”

“Right! Got it here.” Maudi produced an older-model datapad with a cracked screen and an official document pulled up.

Tito 5 let out a ping as its scan finished. “This biomatter has been identified! Xenolianas gigantis - commonly known as ‘xenoliana’ or ‘asteroid vine.’ All xenolianas are classified as Class-C biomatter: no known hazards. No transport restrictions in this sector.”

Dyna checked Tito 5’s readout and then scanned Maudi’s permit with her own pad to verify it. “This appears to be in order. These xenolianas are legitimate cargo, even if they’re not confined to the cargo bay. It looks like this ship is registered to Maudi and Taudi Ceres. And you would be…?”

“Maudi!” the scrapper grinned, visibly relieved that her cargo had been approved. “Taudi’s my twin brother. We usually fly together, but he had a close call with a laser-cutter and had to get some fingers reattached. So now he’s laid-up back home with Ma fussing over him.”

Dyna would not consider losing multiple fingers “a close call,” but she thought better of saying so.

“Since I’ve identified the source of the methane and confirmed the legality of your cargo, I just need to perform a brief drive core inspection. Given how… prolific these vines are, I have some concerns about the structural soundness of your ship.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. See?” Maudi grabbed one of the vines and pulled it free of the wall with a firm shake. Beneath, the metal appeared unscathed. “They’ve got these funny, clingy hairs they use to hold on. They do try to drop anchor roots here and there, but they can’t punch through metal walls. I may have to patch up some furniture, though.”

The trip through the ship’s interior was much more adventurous than Dyna was used to. The closer they got to the ship’s center, the larger and more densely-packed the asteroid vines were. In a few places, she required a hand from Maudi to get over a particularly large tangle. Tito 5, on the other hand, managed it easily with its treads.

“That’s a nice little service bot,” Maudi commented. “I like the stickers.”

As absurd as it was that she should be the one embarrassed in this situation, Dyna’s ears burned anyway. “Maintenance has a sense of humor.”

“My brother loves bird-frogs. He used to have them on his lunch pail.”

Dyna deliberately changed the subject. “Do you have a plan to manage these vines? If this continues, they’ll compromise your ability to move through the ship.”

“Oh yeah! I got in contact with the client. He said helium slows them down a lot. I just need to add 5% to the atmo mix, and I should be good. I’ll just be talking 5% higher-pitched for the rest of the trip. Ha!”

“I don’t think that’s how it… Never mind.”

When they got to the engine room, the doors were snaked with xenolianas. Maudi pulled out a small laser saw and started cutting through them one at a time.

“Since they’re non-toxic, I tried cooking up a few of them,” she said, making conversation while she worked. “Sad to say, they taste about the same as they smell.”

“Truly unfortunate. And you said your client wanted them as animal feed?”

“Yeah, apparently he’s trying to bring back something endangered. Though I gotta say, if I had to eat this stuff, I wouldn’t be too motivated to continue the species if you get my meaning.”

Dyna did get her meaning but chose not to acknowledge it.

Soon enough, the door was open, and the two were able to slip through the doors - shutting them immediately behind to keep the vines out.

“The local atmosphere is free of noxious substances!” Tito 5 announced helpfully.

Relieved, Dyna removed the respirator and placed it in the robot’s wiry, upraised “hand.” Mercifully, the engine room was tidy, even if the control panel arrangements were a bit unorthodox. The drive core hovered in the central chamber - a gently pulsing cylinder of blue fractal ribbons that alluded to a branch of physics well above Dyna’s paygrade.

“Where’s your sensor panel? I just need to get the reading history for the last ten days.”

“Over here!” Maudi led her to what looked like a repurposed storage crate, but the large screen atop it was still mounted at a convenient height and angle. “We had to weld up a custom casing for this thing. The internals were pretty beefy.”

When Dyna followed her over, it became obvious why. Her eyes shone.

“Is this an Athena system?”

Athena-class ships were all research vessels, known for having some of the best sensors - internal and external - on the market. The detail and accuracy were second to none. The displays had pre-programmed data visualizations for all manner of scenarios and a robust algorithm for selecting the right one. On top of that, Athena sensors and consoles were resilient, meant to function in all manner of conditions.

This was a treasure.

“It sure is.” Maudi grinned proudly. “Scrapped it off an abandoned mining colony.”

“I’m amazed you didn’t sell it.” An intact, working system like this would go for a small fortune, even on the second-hand market.

“Taudi wanted to,” Maudi admitted, “but I fought him on it. We were due for an upgrade. Normally, we’d just get some second-hand Odin sensors, but you have to swap parts on those so often you pay for them ten times over their lifetime. These things? They’ll last longer than the ship.”

“Do you have the matching system at the helm?” Dyna asked. “This is more processing power than you need for monitoring a single-core engine. You could use it to extend the capabilities of your external sensors, too.”

“Unfortunately, no. Someone scrapped and sold the helm setup before we got there. But we’re  looking for a workaround. Our external sensors may not be as fancy as these, but could still take advantage of the Athena’s processing power. We’ve just gotta figure out how to make the connection without crashing either system.”

Dyna hmm-ed as she pulled up the metrics she needed. Power draw was normal given the size of the craft and its cargo load. Energy output was stable over time with no spikes or troughs. Though it wasn’t necessary, she indulged herself with a few automated graphing functions, displaying the data in several elegant permutations before linking Tito 5 and downloading the needed data for her records.

She restrained the impulse to sigh. The sensor terminals in her office hadn’t been updated for three tech generations. Yes, they did the job, but there was no elegance to them.

“It looks like everything’s in order here,” she said at last. “The drive core is operating within normal parameters, and there’s no evidence of xenolianas in your ship’s internals. You’ll just need to stop by maintenance for some helium as soon as possible.”

Tito 5 returned Dyna’s respirator, and the trio left the relative normality of the engine room. The vines were waiting. Dyna could have sworn they’d shifted just in the short time they hadn’t been looking. Were they actually growing or just processing gasses?

As they approached the doorway leading to the exit hatch, Dyna paused.

“Those seem to have gotten a bit… lower.”

The doorway was partially blocked by a tangle of sighing vines. Tito 5 might fit beneath them, but Dyna would have to crawl. She put up with a lot some days in this job, but she wasn’t sure her dignity would allow for that.

“Don’t worry,” Maudi assured her. “This happens sometimes. One starts climbing on another, then another gets on top of them, and before you know it there’s too much weight for those sticky hairs. I’ll just cut through them.”

Maudi made thorough work of the vines, starting with the lower ones and then moving up to the higher ones. She seemed to be tolerating the stink quite well, Dyna noted. Perhaps she was holding her breath.

“Do you think you should be standing under them like that?” Dyna asked.

“It’s fine! The angle’s better like this, and-” And the next cut had several of the vines flopping down heavily on her head and shoulders. Maudi grimaced. “You know, I should’ve known better.”

She recovered admirably, shrugging and pushing at the clingy tangle on her shoulders. “Well… a job done is a job done, right?”

Dyna couldn’t help but find Maudi’s broad, self-conscious smile endearing, if a bit pathetic. Best not to think too much on it. (She could practically hear her older sister saying, “But I thought ‘a bit pathetic’ was your type.”)

As Dyna contemplated this, Maudi divested herself of the remaining vines, and the three returned to the striking normality of the bay floor. Time to wrap up business.

“Here’s your docking assignment.” Dyna turned Tito 5’s helpfully-raised screen towards Maudi. “One of the coordinators will guide you in on the comms. Due to the… unusual status of your cargo, you’ll need to check in before you leave to confirm you can fly out safely.”

“Got it.” Dyna pulled out her datapad and snapped a picture of the screen. “Do I check in with anyone, or should I look for you?”

“Since you have a… unique situation, it may be best to stick with me. Just to expedite the process. When you’re ready to leave, you can call the main line for Docking Coordination and ask for Dyna Mitra. My name’s also on your docking permit, in case you forget.”

“Oh, I think I’ll remember.” This time’s Maudi’s grin was not so nervous. It was somehow harder to look at her when she wasn’t nervous.

Dyna cleared her throat. “In any case, welcome to Andromeda-Prime. I hope you enjoy your stay.”