Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A selection from "The Spacer and the Cabbages" by Auston Habershaw

The Spacer and the Cabbages

by Auston Habershaw


E
ditorial Note: What follows is a transcript of an interview conducted by SPIT- NET agents on the USS Orion with Warrant Officer Scully Rodgers on February the 12th, 2232 CE. This interview was conducted some five standard months after the infamous incident on Ceti-Philos 9, and is a primary source document of great importance, as it sheds light on one of the most controversial personalities in modern history. According to reports written by the agents, Warrant Officer Rodgers did most of the talking, and therefore it has been the decision of the editors to include his commentary only, excerpting only the crude language he sometimes employed.


(At the outset, SPIT-NET agents describe Rodgers as a male of indeterminate ethnicity  in his mid-thirties. He is wearing a worn yellow vacuum suit and a frayed flight jacket covered with better than two dozen mission patches. He smells strongly of cigarette smoke and sweat, and has not shaven in several days. Like most lifetime spacers, he speaks in a thick accent denoting a lifetime of near-constant comms use. Rodgers, sitting at the interview table, is the first to speak)

“Got smokes in ‘dis can? Negatory? Figs—you govvie jump-chumps and your friggin’ regs. Could light ‘em on the Courser, and there was a fine can, affirm? Filters’ll hold out fine—trust me, I been in the Big Empty too long to go chokin’-out on some govvie can with un-sat filters. I know the specs, affirm? I ain’t no newbie.”


(Rodgers is denied cigarettes)
“Fine—keep ‘em. I’ll live.”


(Rodgers is asked to repeat his story.)
“You wanna cross my wires, huh? Yeah, your givin’ me the negatory, but I know when I’m bein’ packed up for a shield hulk. You get dis clear—Scull Rodgers ain’t takin’ the drop so some jump-chumps sittin’ sphere-side and lookin’ at the blue, blue sky can feel all warm and cozy. Look, your war ain’t my fault. I’ve been broadcastin’ the same report to suits like you for five terms, affirm? Five <expletive> terms! That’s a load a cred I ain’t makin’ from my end of the can, chief, and I’m gonna jettison a hell of a fit if you jackboots don’t stop jammin’ me and lay me a rendezvous with the judge!”


(Rodgers is asked again to repeat the story)
“So, that’s the line, huh? I affirm, sure. I affirm it’s a big load of SPIT-NET scow trash, is what. Cool it off, chief, cool it off—you don’t need to bring out the probes again. I can chat better without a <expletive> bot up my aft, anyway. You want the report again, you got it, but it’s on the same course, affirm? Same thing I’ve been sayin’ since it happened.
“Like I says before, I was pullin’ a four-term tour on the Courser, doin’ survey work for the Mining Consortium in the Ceti-Philos system. Wasn’t much un-sat about the whole damn thing, tell the truth. Ceti-Philos is a Big Reddie, and dim as a chemstick, so we were clockin’ maybe five, six rads an hour—which is ship-top fine, affirm? No rad-cakes getting’ mixed in the chow causa that, and no rock watches or pirates out there, neither. Smooth duty, the whole way. We’d coast in pullin’ no more than a gee and a half to some sphere, slide down the g-well into our stable circles, and then let the rock-heads do their biz sphere-side while we played ‘who’s-got-the-rivet’ in the wardroom with our thumbs up our afts.
Had some ship-top vid-flicks—Attack on Colony 12, Space Raid 3, Moon Honeys—that Burle Midge rocks the screen, affirm? ‘Course, we only had those three, and even my man Midge gets hull-down flat after a stretch. Boring, sure, but I’d just finished ten terms doin’ cut and run salvage tours in Hubspace and my chips were half to fried. I needed some smooth duty, affirm?”


(Rodgers and the interviewer exchange a few extraneous comments herein excluded.)
“I’m just tellin’ ya to give it another scan, chief. The flick ain’t so un-sat. Effects’ll make ye jettison cargo—scared me near to blankin’.
So, anyhow, as I was sayin’, the duty was smooth but <expletive> boring, affirm? Now, I’m a man of actions, and while spendin’ two hours in the head makin’ lady-eyes at porno-spreads is fine, the whole order was gettin’ un-sat with my active standing. I weren’t alone in this fig, neither, so’s that’s why the skipper set up option duty sphere-side, where you played stick-jock in a rover for one of the rock heads. Still smooth, affirm—all yer doin’ is drivin’ ‘em around and playin’ papa so’s they don’t decom their vac-suit or take a drop down no ravines—but you got to feelin’ like yer earnin’ yer cred, leastways. So, I tag my sign on the list, and soon enough I’m called on deck in the shuttle bay for duty.
“That’s when I met Doc Evans. There he is, suped-up in a vac-suit fresh outta the hold, creases still trimmin’ the sleeves, and portin’ a duffle fulla sci-tech diag junk. ‘Figs,’ I cast to myself, ‘I get the ship-top chump of ‘em all.’ I mean, the guy’s callin’ his vac-suit a damned spacesuit, like he was gonna be doin’ the low-G-hop with Armstrong on pre-colony Luna.
“He told me his sign like I was gonna know his specs or somethin,’ and started some chatter about sphere-side university crap. I muted him out and stowed gear in the rover. He was still in chatter when I was running the checks on the con, so I figged he wasn’t readin’ my mute order, which was smooth by me. If he don’t mind, I don’t mind, affirm?
“The drop was smooth, ‘ceptin’ Evans. He’s a chump, like I casted, so’s he sicks-up in the rover twice during drop. That negs his chatter, but didn’t put ‘im high up on my list of rock heads, neither. Inside’a one of them survey rovers is maybe twelve, thirteen meter cubed, so’s two sick-ups fulla his fancy mess chow is enough stink to set me near to chokin’-out. I told him as much, and he says he’s ‘bad on drops.’ Figs, it all figs. I told him he’s a damn chump and next sick-up I’m gonna blow-out a porthole just for the fresh air. Well, he don’t ride that one too well, and starts to bitch-chat. ‘Course, I had all this beamin’ up to Courser in the comms, so’s the boys upstairs could listen in on the fun. Evans reads this when he hears ‘em laughin’ over the line, and he gets his wires crossed somethin’ awful. Clammed up his pink, sunny face, all right, and gave me the cold-eye the rest o’the way down sphere-side.”


(Rodgers is asked if he felt any hostility towards Evans)
“There you go again, with that Evan’s chatter. Look, read my broadcast top-down, chump—Evans wasn’t nothin’ to me. I’m a spacer, he was a rock-head chump. I had my job, he had his. I couldn’t give two creds what his sun-tanned sphere-side aft thoughta me, said about me, or nothin’. I don’t lay down no courses with jump-chumps, affirm? Not with you, not with Evans. Gimmie the Big Empty, a good can, a decent crew, and a cred or twenty in my duffle, and the rest of you fat-ass planet-jockeys can stay chained on your rocks and think the <expletive> universe aerates yer panties, for all I care. You SPIT-NET jackboots keep jammin’ spacers and spin ‘em as some kinda pirates gone legit, and I’m castin’ you for the last time that we ain’t. Don’t think yer better’n me, affirm?”


(Rodgers is asked to skip to the fifth hour of their survey mission)
“Can we get some chow in here? I’m runnin’ on slag and oxy-wash; nothin’ munchin’ for what…twelve hours?”


(Rodgers is promised food and is asked to return to the fifth hour of Evans’ and his survey mission)
“First off, I wasn’t runnin’ no scans or doin’ no surveys—I was stick-jock, that’s it. I affirm what you’re pokin’ at, chief, and I told you I ain’t takin’ the drop for nobody, not Evans especial. If that rock-head read them before collision, he didn’t tell me nothin’ about it. I was just drivin’ ‘cross flat-out purple dust and shit-brown rock nothin’ for clicks and makin’ chatter on the com with Smitty upstairs—he was comms officer aboard Courser—that’s it.
“So we were at maybe 110 klick-hours velo, I was preppin’ to shift her into fifth when wham! My proxy-alarms shoot up a red-light fiesta and, through the foreport, I see a…well…a thing. You goons know it better’n me by now—I’ll wager a new can ‘gainst my auntie on that. It was all yellow-green and had a look of some kid’s toy made outta plasti-fiber and silly foam. Anyhow, I try to pull a 270°, but I’m at 110, and the rover ain’t made for no shake-‘n-bake rally, so smack, we collide. I don’t get a visual of the crash, ‘cause I’m already closin’ my eyes and mouth so’s when the impact foam comes out—like it was—I don’t get a chem-party in my chow-bay, affirm? ‘Course, Evans is screamin’ like a girl and the foam runs down his throat like frickin’ engine-coolant ice cream. We’re spinnin’ and rollin’ and goin’ through some major washout and my eyes are still closed and my hands clappin’ tight on my harness. Honest truth, I thought I had just signed my own coffin slip—life before the eyes and all that <expletive>.
“By the time we came down to zero velo and the foam is bubblin’ off, the first thing I hear is Evan’s chokin’, and the first thing I think is how bad his chow is gonna taste for the next four cycles or so. Sure, that impact foam’ll keep ya from makin’ bulkhead paste, and it goes gaseous in fifteen seconds even, but you get it in yer vents and ain’t nothin’ gonna taste like nothin’ but heavy chems and sour burn.
“Anyhow, I run the checks on the meat and bones, and find nothin’ too un-sat. I cast Evans if he’s runnin’ green, but, like a chump, he’s twistin’ like a man in a decom chamber with no vac suit. Thinks he’s dyin’ with the foam in his mouth, and I ain’t no chaplain, so’s I let him figure it all out with that big University brain o’ his and crack the hatch for recon.
“Ceti-Philos 9 is a Class C sphere, so’s they say you can breathe there. ‘Course, when a sci-tech signs you a ‘breathe’ order, that translates from twenty hours to four minutes before yer lungs collapse on themselves or some microbe makes filter-screens outta yer insides, so’s I’m holdin’ my air for a full ten seconds ‘fore I suck down my first taste. Went down the tubes like sub-zero temp jet fumes, but I didn’t choke-out, so’s I fig the place’ll do for dust-off.
“I could read Evan’s bitch-talk from the rover’s guts, so’s I knew he didn’t choke-out, but he’d cracked a strut or two and was wheezin’ like a lung-dead geezer. Read <expletive> pissed, too, so’s I made to run a check down the rover to assess my DC protocols.


(Rodgers is asked to go through his damage assessment of the rover)
“Chief, the whole land-can was a negatory, chips to rivets. The Cat Type-M212 is a scow trash mod—I told the skipper as much on Courser—but it weren’t like they were gonna junk a whole damn rover on my spec-annie. Anyhow, she was rolled on her left flank, so’s I had a pretty good scanpoint of the action. A ship-top rover mod, like the Schmaus A-77, woulda been runnin’ green in this action, but the <expletive> Cat…it had a fore-axle cracked, our right forward wheel was off, the electricals had four shorts, and the Baby Hot had a crack and was pissin’ maybe forty rads an hour from the power core. I had to set her to blackdown just to keep the rad count from the fry-line. That’s a strict priority 1 protocol, or I woulda belayed that action, affirm? That <expletive>-ed us good. No power meant no coms and no life-support, which meant me and Evans were gonna get some Ceti-Philos 9 quality recon time, breathin’ that jet-fog air and gettin’ purple dust up our aft vents while we waited for the Courser to run a sweeper scan and maybe find us before we choked out.


(Rodgers is asked if he thought their situation serious at the time)
 “Chief, dust-off was nine-hours on a hot-zone from Sunday leave, affirm? My professional assess was we were goin’ for the Big Float in a space shoebox. That’s what no coms makes, chief, nine-mark-double nines outta ten.


(Rodgers is asked whether he told Evans this or not)
“By the time I gave Evan’s the hoist outta the rover, he wasn’t lettin’ me say nothin’ ‘tween his threats. I coulda’ dented his fat bulkhead for the <expletive> scow trash he was broadcastin’, affirm? ‘I’m going to have your license!’ he says, and ‘What are you, blind?’ and ‘can’t you even evade a stationary rock?’ Now, here’s a chump who’s don’t even rate how to stick-jock a land-can, and he’s givin’ me the bitch-chatter? <Expletive> him, I say, we didn’t collide with no stationary rock. Bogey was mobile, rock-head, clockin’ 50 click-hours velo minimum. Maybe if them Cat scow-trash proxy-alarms had better’n dumpin’ range and my nav ports were bigger’n forty centimeters, maybe I coulda pulled evade on ‘em, but ‘maybe’ is a low-prob option, affirm?
“That’s when he casts a pre-empt on my bitch-chat with a ‘Well, what did we hit?’ That reads as quality, so’s I hup it out a ways, tracin’ our trash-trail to the impact point. That’s when I first get’s the visual of ‘em. They were…”


(Food is brought in, and Rodgers stops talking until he is served. He opens a carbonated beverage can and sips)
“Ugh! What’s the specs on this junk lube? Whuzzat, bananas? What chump chem-boy stuffs banana in a frickin’ soda? You coulda thrown down the cred for a decent java brew, ya jackboot sun-humpers…”


(Rodgers is commanded to return to his story or the food will be removed)
“I roger that, chief. I ain’t gonna cut my tether now, no sir. Them tater-mash looks ship-top fine. Anyhow, what was my X on this report?”

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