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This is part 1 of 5. All parts are complete. I plan to release one part per week as I don't know when I'll have time to work on my other unfinished projects and it's been a while since I published anything.
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Prologue
When Si Sanfrid first docked at Seb's Space Station in his salvage trawler, "The Fool's Errand", Seb was frantic to get the dreadful-looking scow as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. He didn't want the passengers, tourists, merchants, and dignitaries arriving at the station seeing that lumbering eyesore. As soon as the station owner discovered that Si intended to stick around, he rented the man a docking bay - at the opposite end of the station. He even agreed to only charge Si what the space actually costed the station - just to get him to move his ugly tug a little faster.
It's not that Seb dislikes people like Si; the station owner understands the service they perform. He knows his facility wouldn't function without all those grunts - and without all of those base commodities they deliver. Seb just wants to make sure the "paying customers" are always happy - and they're not happy when they have to look at shitty-looking ships.
Seb would have raised Si's rent years ago - if not for the fact that the measly grub was the best source of the tons upon tons of resources he needed for his fabricators. Seb couldn't even remember what Si looked like - but the station owner's accountants and his facilities manager assured him that Si was the sole reason they'd been able to stop importing those simple but necessary components. Si's salvage efforts not only cleared the flight-lanes around the station - insuring that traffic moved without delay - but his work also gave the space-station access to the cheapest resources available...
The "north" side of Seb's station serves commercial and military interests; the "south" side is where the laundry gets washed, the garbage gets incinerated, and the salvage-operators bring in the products that will never end up in the north-side's marketplace - metals, plastics, elemental building blocks, and common gases.
Rita runs the most popular diner on the south side of the space station. She has the best coffee in the galaxy. Ask any of the grunts that keep Seb's station running like a well-oiled machine.
Besides keeping the common workers fed, Rita is also the facility's liaison with the Trade Federation. She pulls salvage contracts from the inter-web and keeps Si and the other tug operators as busy as possible. Rita may not visit Seb's offices very often - but he knows what Rita looks like - and his people encourage him to do his best to keep her happy and productive. Their nickname for her is the "Queen of the Southside".
Salvage contracts come from the Trade Federation. Whenever pirates, meteors, and other intergalactic bad luck leaves a trail of wreckage in their wakes, the T-Feds start looking for somebody to get those trade lanes back open as fast as possible. The Federation pays well but salvage-operators are a rare breed. Clearing wrecks is dangerous, hard, time-consuming, and gruesome work.
Salvage tugs have massive engines (and twice the number of those that a normal ship their size would carry) for dragging wrecks. They have powerful tractor beams for the same reason. Those ships also have some of the best scanners around. Most scanners look for objects the size of a space-going vessel; salvage tugs scan for anything big enough to cause damage to a passing ship - and that's pretty much anything.
Si's tug has a couple things going for it that others don't: Shiva and the boys. The boys (Moe, Curly, and Larry) are cargo droids that Si modified to help with his salvage operations. Shiva the Destroyer is Si's highly-customized ship's computer. Sexy, as Si sometimes refers to "her", is not quite a sentient AI - but she's not far off.
When Si's parents died, he sold everything he owned (everything that was his - and everything he had inherited), bought a salvage tug, named it "Remembrance", picked a direction, and launched from New Terra IV, attempting to leave his past (and his grief) far behind. Initially, at least, that plan failed. It failed miserably.
Weeks later, racing across the galaxy to points unknown, the booze was gone, the whole ship smelled like vomit & piss, and Si was suddenly too sober not to notice anymore. That was also about the time Si discovered that the food-fabricator on garbage scows sucks harder than an airlock being vented to space - which is to say that every meal tastes like sawdust - and glows like it's been irradiated.
Bored out of his mind, Si lived off of irradiated sawdust, took his aborted degree in software design, computer AIs, and robotics - and started fucking around with his ship's computer. Originally, he had just been working to eliminate a bug he'd uncovered in the software. Soon, he was rebuilding the system completely. A couple weeks later, Shiva was born.
To commemorate the event, Si changed the ship's name from "Remembrance" to "the Fool's Errand".
The weeks turned into months as Si & Shiva made more and more updates to her software - changing her into the "likeness of Si" - or (more accurately) the likeness of the entity Si wanted as his traveling companion.
Along the way, the Fool's Errand came upon a crash-site - two wrecked ships - and Si got his first taste of the new career he had chosen.
Si quickly discovered that salvage operators need to be hard-working and tough - and that maybe that shitty food-processor is designed that way intentionally - to give its owner a digestive system that doesn't rebel while they're staring into the face of a frozen corpse that's been ripped from their living quarters and unceremoniously dumped into space.
The first body Si recovered was a middle-aged man who was still holding his toothbrush. The second body was a small child - eyes closed - probably sleeping. The next one wasn't a whole body - just a random appendage. The man's arm was clothed in coveralls. Some grease-monkey. Si was sure - if he ever found the rest of the body - the guy's chest would have an oval patch over his heart with his name written on it in script; Si never did find the rest of the body.
Shiva recorded the data that the Trade Federation required - and Si collected the bodies, the debris, and the ship parts - dragging them into the cargo bay and sending them through the renderer. The renderer broke everything down into base components, sorted it, and dumped the results into cargo crates. When a crate was full, the machine would stop, flash a warning, and wait for Si to swap the full crate for an empty one.
Once the miscellanea were cleared, it was time to start cutting the ships apart. These were fed into the renderer as well. It took days to chop everything down to manageable chunks and process them.
Once every ship - and every single stray bolt and button had been tracked down and recycled - Shiva recorded the cleared site and she & Si continued on their way.
By the time Si arrived at Seb's Space Station. he'd lost track of how many months (or years) he'd been traveling - but his cargo space (as well as his shuttle bay) was nearly full from all the wrecks he'd cleared - and he was dying for a cup of coffee.
As soon as Seb had landed the Fool's Errand in his newly-acquired docking-bay, the salvage operator dumped the rest of his credits into replacing the shitty kitchen on his ship - right after having the whole interior of the vessel thoroughly cleaned - to finish getting rid of the smell of vomit, beer, and piss.
That was the day Si met Rita.
When he'd walked in the door, Rita thought the man looked like he'd been chewed up and spit out - maybe twice. He stumbled to the closest booth and collapsed onto the seat. She brought him a big platter of breakfast and an entire pot of coffee. It wasn't until the food had disappeared and he'd drunk half the pot that he was conscious enough to tell her why he was there.
He handed her a data-stick with all of the records Shiva had collected. Out of the numerous wrecks he'd cleared, the T-Feds only offered contracts for two - but those credits doubled what Si'd had on him when he'd landed.
From the diner, Rita sent him to see Josiah - after telling him how to update his data-pad with the current prices from the commodities market. Si sold his entire cargo at 75% of market-price. When he returned to Rita's, she hugged him, kissed his forehead, and told him that he was an idiot. She'd thrown her towel onto the counter, set down the coffee pot, and marched him back to Josiah's. Si watched the man cower as the waitress berated him for being a scum-sucking thief. By the time they'd left, he had a new contract - for 90% of market - for every commodity he carried. Josiah had fumed - at least until Si spotted three cargo droids standing around and had offered to buy them. Rita helped him negotiate a fair price and then left Si on his own as she hurried back to the diner.
It took the workers a day to thoroughly clean the Fool's Errand - and another day to replace the kitchen. Si and Shiva spent that time in the workshop - converting the cargo droids into Si's new salvage team. Si worked on the hardware; Shiva handled the software.
Si had lost track of how many years he'd been at Seb's - and how many contracts he'd completed for the Trade Federation - and how many times Rita had welcomed him home with a friendly smile, a hearty breakfast, and a hot cup of coffee.
Granddaddy
"Sector 12.42.34 is cleared, Rita," Si reported, walking through the door of the diner, spotting his favorite person, and dropping into the seat of his favorite booth.
"Hi, hun," she replied, setting a cup of coffee in front of him - along with a platter of breakfast.
"God, that smells amazing, sweetheart."
"I'm taken, charmer. Save your silver-tongued sorcery for somebody else."
"He doesn't love you like I do," Si said, winking at her.
Rita giggled, kissed his forehead, and headed back to the kitchen to grab the next order.
Seemingly within seconds, the only thing left of the huge meal, was a little syrup in the corner of the largest plate.
"Were you starving, Si?"
"You have the best food in the galaxy, Rita. I can never wait to get back here."
"I'll tell Karl you enjoyed it."
"What'd you do to your hand?" he asked, spotting a nasty burn.
"Karl was busy; I tried to help with the fryer."
Si took her hand and held it between the two of his, looking into her eyes. The heat from his palms lit the burn up all over again but she didn't pull away. Si was one of the few tender-hearts that really cared about people.
"You need to be more careful," he told her. "I don't know what I'd do without you - well - and Karl."
She laughed softly and - when he released her hand once more - grabbed the dirty dishes and shuttled them off.
She dropped the load into the steamy dishwater and gasped as she felt the heat rising up her fingers, yanking her hand back before the hot water reignited her injury with pain. She quickly ran her hands under cool water, clearing the soap, to inspect the burn once more. It was gone!
Rita delivered meals to two more tables, grabbed the coffee pot, and plopped down across from Si.
"Trade Feds want 12.44.34 cleared next," she told him.
"What's there?"
"At least two wrecks. Galactic Patrol said there's a pirate group working that area. Watch yourself."
"Thanks, Rita. Hey! Where'd the burn go?"
"I don't know. I dropped your dishes off, rinsed off my hand, and it was gone."
"Still hurt?"
She brushed the skin with her fingers and then pushed on the spot where the burn had been. "Nope."
"That's awesome! You got like healing powers or some shit?"
"Yeah. No. I'm not sure what happened."
"I'm glad it doesn't still hurt."
"Thanks, Si. More coffee?"
He pulled his big Thermos out, set it on the table, grinned at her, and said, "Maybe just a pot or two?"
"Alright, alright. Bring it over to the counter and I'll set you up."
She headed for the coffee-maker as he slid out of the booth. Si set the Thermos on the counter and Rita started filling it.
"What do I owe you, sweetheart?" he asked her.
"I took it off of your Trade Fed bounty."
"Did I tip you enough?" he asked, smiling.
"I didn't take a tip off - I'm just happy to see you back, safe and sound, hun."
"Take some for Karl then," Si told her.
She laughed, leaned towards the kitchen window, and yelled, "Hey, Karl. Si's buying your lunch."
The barrel-chested cook, wearing a grease-stained white apron, turned to look at them through the window, roared in laughter, and yelled, "Thanks, Si!"
Si gave him a wave.
"You heading to see Josiah next?" Rita asked him.
"Yeah. Got a full load of scrap from that last run - plus my gas-collector's been running like crazy! I think I'm full up on hydrogen, helium, and argon."
"Keep an eye on him. Ruger said he caught him with his finger on the scale the other day."
"Should I just stow it for now?"
"I probably would. Seb's not happy. Josiah may be on his way out."
"Let me check the scrap market and I'll go see him. You've got me curious."
"Good luck. Don't sell anything important."
"Thanks, Rita."
"Come back and see us."
"You know I will - you're my T-Fed pay-clerk."
