One day at a time

[Cantankerous]

This following piece of fiction is the lead in for a completely new storyline. It's part of the audio journal of the father of the main character, Neal Rourke, listened to by his son and only surviving heir three days after his father dies in the President's End Massacre. Neal was a young man who had it all, but lost it just before he could take it in hand. The only thing he actually inhereted of his fathers "empire" were many of his enemies, a few of his friends and an Argon Mercury that was band box new, but hadn't been fully outfitted yet, having only half the upgrades of steering and maneuverability and a sparse few computer upgrades; but also having one each 25 megawatt and 5 megawatt shield on board and a Gamma IRE in the rear turret.

Note on the dating system--> it reads as follows: tazura, mazura, jazura, so the starting date of 38-01-764 is the 38th tazura, of the first mazura of the 764th jazura using standard game manner of tracking time. As a side note, things won't happen quite as fast here as in the official game, as I think the characters should actually sleep and what not from time to time. Well, you'll see.



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Neal Rourke switched on the audio journal disk for the eight time in the last half stazura and listened to the voice of the ghost.

Things didn't go as his father had planned them, that was certain. The only thing that saved Neal himself from irretreivable, cosmic debt in the wake of his fathers insurance company holdings crumpling after the President's End fiasco was the governments imposed moritorium on such debts on items destroyed and on the two "local" carriers tha insured them. That was going to bite the economy in the rear, but with so many dead, hundreds of thousands all totaled, no one sputtered too loudly about the monetary losses. Not yet anyway.

It was the words of the ghost, heard again, in perfect fidelity that brought him back to the present from his musings about the future. Neal pressed the play button for the ninth time and leaned back...hearing his fathers final journal entry again... agian... again.


I've forgotten what clouds, the type composed of water vapors, look like. It's been eighteen jazuras after all, eighteen long, but fruitful jazuras since I last made planet fall and felt real solid ground under my feet. On Vemport's Station, the Beta Solar Power Plant over in Cloudbase SouthEast I think it was, they have a solarium set up with actual dirt brought up from an actual planet; but you know, it's just not the same. When I was a boy I used to love to lay out in the backyard and watch the clouds go scudding by. They drifted, slowly, with a stately measure all their own. I missed that. More than I knew it seems.

There I sat, my new wife cuddled into my side, whispering sweet nothings in my ear, and all I could think of is the way the clouds went sailing by. Too many jazuras in space. There's no doubt about it.

Gwann understood though. Being alone with her, no one for hundreds of seaceres in any direction...except maybe up... you don't get that in space. Room, livable room, is at far too great a premium out there.

We sit there in our ships, or in our stations, cramped, crowded, surrounded by infinite space. Yep, it's really, really big. And incredibly cramped all at once. Nothing new though...ancient sailors said: "Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." It's the same for us, cramped into our tiny spaces, in infinite space.

Well, with the two new Silicon Mines in President's End maybe I can slow down now. Maybe Gwann and I can just stay here for a bit...extend our honeymoon and enjoy all this space, away from space.

Or maybe not too. I really should hit that Commerce meeting on the Free Trading Port. Those three Teladi Tousius Reps are supposed to be there. Well, Gwann will forgive me. There's a new Blues Club on D Deck. Gwann always says, just take one day at a time Dex. Maybe I should listen to her.


Neal switched off the disk and added a new one, pristine, untouched.


Journal entry One: Neal W. Rourke, Captain owner of the AFS-TS.12560(Mercury) *Sunset*; star date: 38-01-764; location: sector grid 3.78-5; Home of Light, Argon Federated Territories.

You should have stayed planetside dad. So should I probably; just sell the ship and take that job designing shield couplings for Spaceways. But dad, I can't, I just can't. I'm no "one day at a time"r either. I'm like you dad, long term all the way.

I've spent the last of my personal bank account buying the 645 E-cells presently in the hold. If I don't make a decent rofit off of them I may have to run for a pirate base and see if they're recruiting. Well, Ore Belt seems like the obvious starting point. I've got a plan, sort of. Maybe we'll keep body and soul together after all. Atleast the ships free and clear.

Ok, well, the cherry is popped I guess. Course for the south gate layed in and computed. SETA set, gravidar ranging and warbler set.

Now, where's that Split porn mag?




mmmm,

Ohhh, crap. recorder off.






I

[Cantankerous]

Neal shook his head and stepped over the scrawny old man who was sprawled unconscious across the doorway to the seedy pub. Turning to the young freight bosun who he'd promised to buy a drink for for unloading his ship so quickly, Neal gave him the almost patented 'Rourke Withering Glare' and silently cursed himself for being so stupid. This guy was probably leading him off to get rolled. It looked like the sort of place where it might happen. "So, this is the infamous 'Bucket of Blood'. It sure doesn't look like much."

The pock faced pale younger man did seem to wither a bit, but still managed to sound cocky as he responded. "Ahh nah, she don't look like much on the outside Cap'n, but the bar tender is a sight worth seeing and the drinks ain't watered. Too much..."

Neal scowled again as he stepped inside. Ok, so this was a cattle ranch station, but great gods below couldn't they do something about the manure smell in almost every enclosed space?

Seren Ranching Incorporated was a real honest to god one lung enterprise, according to his fathers recorded journals, and now he understood why the Ore Belt Cattle Ranch was just one lunged... you sure didn't want to breath deep while onboard. Neal decided then that he'd just buy the bosun the one drink he had promised and do a quick fade before he did get mugged.

Then he sighted the bar tender and as his jaw dropped he considered strongly just handing the guy a ten credit note and fleeing outright.

'The bartender is a sight worth seeing? These people were insane!' Neal had heard of this kind of surgical alteration, but seeing it so brazenly displayed, especially on a woman so ugly, and so huge, was staggering.

"Tha' there Cap'n, is Lulu Belle." The acne scoured younger man sounded almost reverent. "Ain't she just the end of all?"

Lulu Belle was almost two meters tall, had to weigh a good hundred and sixty kilos, had coarse, long red hair, not unlike the hair of an argnu, tended bar in the nude and had breasts so massive that even in the 0.8Gs of the stations standard gravity they had to cause her horrible back strain; with each set of the three pairs she had contributing to the load. A sight worth seeing? A sight worth running from maybe.

Best to get this done quick and get out while the getting was good.

Trying hard to cover his dismay, Neal strode to the bar, ordered two Argon 'Old Fedcal' Whiskeys, neat, handed one to the young bosun who couldn't seem to take his eyes off the bar tender, put his own back to the bar, tried to ignore the mixed effuvia of cattle sweat and manure that most of the patrons seemed to have about them and scanned the room for anyone who looked like they might be sizing him up.

There was a fight brewing at a table just ta few meters away and that decided it. Leaving his drink on the counter, Neal pushed off and headed for the door. Only to be caught up in the bruhaha that erupted just as he took his first step.

A youngish woman, wearing the coveralls of a station cargo handler, staggered back away from the punch thrown at her by another woman while the two men who had been sitting there squared off against one another, both blood mad and snarling, both pulling knives from hide aways. As the woman staggered her feet got tangled in a chair leg behind her and she tumbled, directly into Neal's own legs, taking him down with her. From there, all Hell broke loose and Neal, a decent, if unseasoned fighter, found himself smashed and swung at from all sides, but indiscriminantly. No one payed him any more, or less, mind than anyone else who got near them. Everyone seemed content to swing at who ever got the closest, with the massive bar tender, with what appeared to be a pillow sized stocking filled with flour in her right hand that she was using as a cosh, swinging away as lustily as any of the customers. Neal decided for the third time in as many seuzas that it was time to get out. Now!

Just then though a man with a knife planted firmly between his shoulder blades, one arm bent back trying to reach it, fell against his legs, taking him down again and covering him in blood. The knife yanked free and the flow got bad.

Slapping his hand over it and getting to his feet, dragging the man, who was half in shock from blood loss with him, Neal surged for the door way and wonder of wonders, managed to get out. Remebering that he had passed a door with a name plate that had the title Doctor/MD, appended to it just as he had gotten off the lift, Neal half led, half dragged the increasingly shocky and paling man with him.

After repeated shouting, and pounding at the remembered door the "Doctor" finally opened it, admitting both men, one just passing into unconsciousness.

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"The problem, Mr Rourke, is that I'm not a charity clinic. That man now owes me 685Cr for my services and he doesn'thave it. According to station logs, Mr Renner here has 3.15Cr in his accounts. Nor does he own any saleable belongings that will net me more than 20 to 30Cr, at best. Nor does the Samaritan Act hold true here on this station. Now, as YOU drug him in here, YOU are, according to statute 312.23j of the Argon Federated code, responsible for said services since this happened onboard a space station and not planetside. I KNOW these statues backwards and forwards Mr Rourke. I know both MY rights and YOUR responsibilities. Even if you don't."

Neal sat back in the plastiform chair across the moat of the "Doctors" low slung plastiform desk and sighed. After selling the E-cells and buying a load of Argnu Beef, paying the docking and loading/unloading fees, the taxes and the outright cumshaw involved, he barely had enough in his accounts to cover the doctors fees.

"You've got me by the short hairs Doc." Neal took out his wallet and yanked the ETD card out, dropping it on the desk. "I want everything itemized though Doc."

As the older woman took the card and slotted it into the side of her desk top commo terminal she smiled encouragingly. "You know, his records say he's a decent mechanic, and he's not under formal contract right now. YOU have the right to draft him as a debtor into up to..." she paused and did a few mental calculations, "...just under five mazuras of 'unpaid' servitude in recompense for your, genourosity."


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Journal entry four: Neal W. Rourke, Captain owner of the AFS-TS.12560(Mercury) *Sunset*; star date: 39-01-764; location: sector grid 1.03-12; Ore Belt, Argon Federated Territories.

Well, it seems I just aquired my first crewman by default. Name: Mak Renner, no middle initial. AFC-01AP.126/3412/M_R4923. Qualified as a Mechanic First Class according to his files. He's supposed to know a thing or three about power systems engineering too. He seems a decent enough guy, but a real barfly. Barely onboard and his first question was if I had any hootch he could glom off me. I thought he was going to cry when I told him I run a dry ship.

I've got him on a three mazura contract at half standard First Class wages to recoup my initial investment. *chuckle* It's better than keeping him as an indentured servant though and he seemed to appreciate that.

Anyway, according to dads notes there are a couple of perpetually hungry Cahoona Bakeries over in Cloudbase SouthWest to that's where we're set to run to. SETA set, gravidar ranging and warbler set. Maybe I can stay out of trouble over there. Recorder off.






Isshia