Space Storm

Chapter 1

'You!'

The young man turned, switched off his electric broom and smiled awkwardly back at the voice. The voice belonged to a mountain on legs that caused total eclipses without even trying.

'Sir?'

'Who the hell are you?'

'Ah. Oakey, sir,' replied the skinny young man.

'Never mind okay,' bellowed the mountain, A K A Captain Zak Sideiron. 'What's your damned name?'

'Oakey, sir. Gary Oakey. Cleaning operative fourth class.' Hard to say fourth class with a sense of pride, but Oakey managed it. 

'Right. And what are you doing on my ship?'

Oakey pointed at his broom. 'Sweeping it, sir.'

'Exactly. Why are you sweeping it? We have gizmos to do that.'

To anyone meeting Oakey for the first time, he didn't look like the brightest star in the galaxy, but he realized he had to justify his existence to the captain. 'Well. To be fair, gizmos never were very reliable. Have you ever known a gizmo really get into all the nooks and crannies?'

'Well...,' said Sideiron, stroking the long black thatch that passed for a beard. The beard was a futile attempt to cover a long scar on his cheek. 'I never really did like the little shits. Creepy. Always getting under my feet. But as captain, I need to know all my crew. All one hundred and twenty three of them. You I don't remember.'

Oakey's face screwed up in a pained expression. 'No? Well, I suppose I do tend to blend into the background.'

'When did you sign up, Oakey?'

'Quite last minute, sir.'

'Which agency are you from?'

'The Topclean Agency. I saw it as a way to progress my career.'

Sideiron raised an eyebrow which was really just an extension of his beard. 'Topclean? I never heard of them.'

Oakey's brain went into his version of overdrive. 'Well see, sir. I'm on a few agency lists. Gotta be, these days. Can't afford to be picky. So I signed up with Topclean, but maybe it was that other one? I'm hopeless with names, sir. I know it began with a C or D or was it B?'

'Bestclean Agency?'

'Yes. That's the one, sir. See? You do remember me.'

'Where's your security fob?'

Oakey started patting his pockets. 'Might be in my bunk, sir. No. Wait a minute. I think I have it here, sir.'

As the young man tried to retrieve the fob, Sideiron was wondering how a retard like Oakey got an agency clearance to work on ships, when he heard his wrist alarm bleep. 'Forget it. I'm needed on the bridge. Don't loiter, Oakey. Get back to work.'

Oakey attempted an awkward salute and said, 'Right away, sir.'

The steel floor vibrated with every step the captain took on his way to the bridge. Oakey sucked in a very deep breath and let out an even longer sigh. The irony hadn't escaped him that his master plan to sneak onto one of the biggest freighters around and blend into the dozens of crew members, had found him exchanging words with the captain himself within the first hour after lift-off. Perhaps the big ox would be too busy to even remember a minnow like him.

'Live in hope, die in despair,' he muttered to himself, immediately wishing he hadn't.

The death penalty option allowed by The Allied Council of Planets had never been repealed. Any stowaway found on any member vessel could be ejected from the said vessel at the captain's discretion. And Oakey knew for a fact it still happened. He had heard it from a guy in a bar who knew somebody who had told him a friend of a cousin had been on a ship.....Anyway, it was definitely still the law. Either way he had no intention of putting it to the test.

He glanced both ways along the corridor, saw nobody, opened the storeroom where he had found the broom, adjoining the main shower room and toilets, stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The low power light automatically came on, casting eerie shadows from the assorted cleaning equipment.

'At least the rent is cheap.'

Oakey was an unwavering optimist. If he ever fell into a vat of crap he would say, Could have been worse. Could have been acid.

The storeroom was a reasonable size, considering all the junk stored in there. On a ship the size of The Oasis, with a crew of one hundred and twenty three, it was inevitable a team of cleaning operatives would be in and out at all hours. But as the ship was only an hour into its journey, Oakey figured he had a few hours to rest up. He needed time to think.

Several huge storage lockers were lined up in a straight line across the rear. He opened one and as he expected, it had full shelves of piles of standard issue uniforms. White for officers, red for technicians and so on. Knowing his place in the scheme of things, he selected dark blue. From experience, Oakey knew dark blue, like the patched up, stained example he was already wearing, was enough to get him past lazy security people with only the cursory flashing of his I D. The man he had borrowed the I D from years before, had a passing resemblance to him, if you ignored the fact the three-dimensional image was that of a huge black man, with a shaved head and an unfriendly demeanour, not the new, scrawny, white owner of the I D.

Oakey stripped and wriggled into the clean one-piece. 'Fits like a glove with the fingers missing. At least it doesn't stink.'

Behind the row of lockers was a space the full width of the room with just a small gap at the end of the lockers to get it. The space was caused by the overhead ventilation duct being a whisker too low to allow the lockers to sit right back against the wall. Somebody in design had slipped up. But that suited Oakey as it presented him with a possible hiding place until he had merged into the crew so he could become part of the regular routine. Average build adults wouldn't squeeze through the gap, but the skinny stowaway forced his way to his intended hideout. Making a mental note to self, he would remember to find some bedding the next time. But it had been a long and testing day, so the steel floor soon become his mattress and he drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 2

It was a shock to his system, waking up in the enclosed space in total darkness but Oakey quickly remembered where he was and why. He had no idea how long he had slept, but his aching body suggested at least a year. He now had two urgent needs, one of them being food. Feeling his way to the gap at the end of the lockers, he had started to squeeze through it when the light came on accompanied with frustrated moaning and unnecessary clattering.

'Mary do this. Mary go fetch. Mary do all the shitty jobs.'

The locker Mary was fumbling around in was the last in the row and next to the trapped Oakey who was beginning to turn as blue as his uniform.

'Just because I'm the youngest shouldn't mean I get picked on,' moaned Mary as she started taking off her dirty uniform. 'This is a bloody freighter, damn it. State of the art. State of the ark, more like it. Disgusting, I call it.'

Oakey was on the cusp of passing out and let out a moan of his own. There came a pause and the locker door was slammed hard enough to hurt Oakey's ears. Mary gasped and cautiously peeked into the gap and gasped again when a strange face stared back at her.

'Who the hell are you?'

'A dead man if I don't get out of here fast.'

Oakey held out his hand to her and she grabbed it in both of her hands and pulled hard, freeing him with an audible plop and he dropped hard onto the floor, gasping at her feet.

'You are surprisingly strong,' said Oakey. 'Pretty, too.'

Mary remembered she was standing in her underwear and held the clean uniform in front of her. 'Who the hell are you? And stop staring at me.'

Oakey forced his eyes to look at the floor as Mary wriggled into her clean uniform. 'My name is Oakey. Gary Oakey.'

'I'm Mary Rawlings. You gonna tell me why you were stuck back there?'

'I...err, well. Somebody has to clean back there. They decided I was the only one skinny enough to get there. Like you, I get picked on.'

'You heard me?'

Oakey got to his feet and shrugged. 'I didn't have much choice. Thanks for helping me by the way.'

'Hey. We victims have to stick together. I thought I knew all our cleaning crew.'

'I'm a last minute sign up. My first trip on this bucket.'

'My second. I nearly didn't sign up for this trip.'

Oakey beamed what he considered his special smile. 'I'm glad you changed your mind. I might never have met you otherwise.'

Mary felt her cheeks warm up but couldn't find a response to that flattery, so instead she said, 'I'm off to eat. Coming?'

'Music to my ears. I just need the toilet but I'll be right with you.'

There were facilities next to the adjoining shower room and Mary waited for him.

'After you,' said Oakey, not having a clue where they were heading.

Mary led the way to the communal lounge which was the dining area although it doubled up for many other uses, including physical exercise and training and team sports, compulsory on the ship. It helped alleviate boredom and bonded the crew. Oakey hated team sports; his diminutive frame having been pummelled in the few times he'd ever taken part, including his years in the orphanage. When he saw the way the floor was marked out for sports with various types of nets and hoops in their respective places on the walls, he was relieved people were only eating. This was his fifth ship, so he understood how most of them ran.

'Food any good here?' asked Oakey.

'The kitchen supervisor is okay. Meals are bland but mostly edible and naturally there's no shortage of fresh fruit and vegetables. Here.' She picked up a tray and passed one to Oakey. 'Just don't try anything too adventurous.'

'I never do,' said Oakey, wondering about the fresh food comment Mary had made. Indeed, there was an impressive display of nutritious food on display. 'I never saw so much of the healthy stuff in one place.'

'That's what comes of being on this ship. Haven't you been on the hydroponics decks yet?'

'Err, no, not yet.' Something was registering in the back of Oakey's mind. 'Of course. That's why they call this bucket The Oasis.'

They selected their food and settled in a relatively quiet corner. When Oakey had been looking for a ship to stowaway on, he had been looking for one thing. A non-military ship, just a big commercial outfit with a big crew he could hide amongst. What the freighter actually carried didn't matter. Snippets of information gelled in his mind and he realised The Oasis was a three year old vessel dedicated to supplying food and plants to any planet in the A C P alliance. The ship carried seeds, seedlings and fully developed crops. The actual destination was still unknown to Oakey, and this was irrelevant to him. Since he had turned fourteen he had made a life of sorts for himself, drifting through space and life, and this had served him well for nearly nine years.

Most of the space security was concentrated on military ships. There was little to gain from hijacking commercial ships, although a couple of failed attempts to do so and blackmail the corporations owning such ships met with the response of, Yeah, ok. Whatever. Blow the damn thing up if you want. For one it's insured and for another, you'll die if you do. A brief and fiery exchange resulted in the would-be hijackers turning themselves in to the ship's security. After the third time this happened, they just gave up.

Mary said, 'I've asked for a transfer to hydroponics. Much nicer than cleaning up after the slobs on this ship.'

And, thought Oakey, possibly an easier place to hide amongst all those plants. 'Yeah. I've thought about it myself.'

Mary seemed to be studying Oakey's face as if trying to decide if she liked it. He had light brown hair, almost blond. He was pale and his nose was on the long side and thin. His eyes seemed to be smiling as much as his full lips. She liked his eyes. Very blue. 'The manager is a friend of mine. I could put in a word if you like.'

Thinking Mary was even prettier than when he had first seen her, Oakey said, 'You'd do that for me?'

Mary shrugged. 'Don't see why not. Do you have any experience with plants?'

'Sure,' lied Oakey. 'I worked on a farm on Fraggelon for a spell.'

'Fraggelon? I never knew they had farms on Fraggelon.'

Oakey hadn't actually been to Fraggelon, so only had a vague idea of the planet other than processing helium three for fuel took place there. 'It was a failed experiment. Some joker decided it would be more cost effective to at least try to grow stuff. Didn't even last a season. Still, a good job while it lasted.'

'So how did you end up here?'

'How does anyone end up anywhere? We just go with the flow.'

There were things in Oakey's life he wasn't proud of, all done in the name of survival and self-preservation. He had a long list of minor infringements and one or two more notable incidents that authorities on several planets would no doubt be delighted to have a quiet word with him over. Oakey didn't regard himself to be a criminal or even a bad person, just a survivor. He suspected a few might disagree with that point of view. Sideiron for one, but with luck the busy captain would soon forget they'd even met.

Being a stowaway was only one down in ship-law from mutiny and either crime didn't end well for transgressors who got themselves caught. In his view of the universe, all he had done was to bypass the formalities of being recruited and would be only too willing to earn his passage if found out. The law, however, thought it only reasonable for such a captain to be legally permitted to expel stowaways out of the airlock.

Mary said, 'I've been with the same agency for four years. They always promise me a decent job and I always end up on minimum pay in some shit job. And believe me. When it comes to being a sanitation operative, there's always a lot of shit involved.'

'Yeah, tell me about it.'

'Still. It could be worse. Rent free with all food and lodgings. And with nothing to spend the wages on, the money mounts up.'

Oakey agreed, other than the money part. He had precisely ninety-seven creds to his name, won in some dingy bar playing three-dimensional pool. And even that money he'd had to make a run with, chased by the drunk fool he had hustled. The phaser shot had almost parted his hair.

Mary cleared up the plates and cutlery. 'We should get back to work before somebody thinks we're not pulling our weight.'

'Yeah. I have stuff to do. You will talk to that manager about the hydroponics section?'

'Right after my