Objects in Space
copyright 2012 Faeriemage
...are closer than they appear.

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“You know this is the third outfit that you’ve tried on this morning?”

“Yes, Alfred, I know.”

“I still don’t understand why you persist in calling me that. My name is…”

“Unimportant. You’re my butler, for all intents and purposes.”

“I’m a full service AI with heuristic…”

“Exactly, butler.”

If Alfred had been able to, he would have signed at that moment. Of all of the things in this world that he hated, and there were a lot of them, he hated his creators most of all. To think that they would create him able to interact on an emotional level, but then never allow him to express those same emotions as he saw fit.

At least they installed him in a warship. He might not be able to take out his frustrations on his creators, or this little prima-donaa who walked his halls, but he could take it out on someone, and it looked like someone was about to receive his wrath.

“Angela, I have detected the presence of six ships on the edge of our scanning range.”

Angela rushed to the bridge, half dressed, in order to take a look at the consoles there.

“Hmm…not a standard formation. I wonder if they’re playing with me.”

The main screen came to life. “Looking good, Angela.”

Blushing, she closed her top and did up the ties. “Shut up, Brad. My AI made me think I might actually be in trouble. I rushed only to find you bozos.”

“We’re not the ones clowning around. I don’t know anyone who changes clothing as much as you do.”

“I just wouldn’t be comfortable wearing this clothing out there.”

“I get it,” Brad said with a knowing look.

“No, you don’t. Maybe sometime I’ll meet with you, but right now I think we have a mission to accomplish.”

“You and your missions. Don’t you get tired of the cloak and dagger?”

“It’s like the clothing, Brad. It gives me an outlet. Besides, isn’t part of the point here to push the limits?”

“Ok, babe. Whatever you say. There are some limits I’d like to push with you though.”

Angela blushed again, but didn’t smile.

“You know your part in this thing, then?”

“Yeah, we got it covered. I just hope that you uphold your part of the bargain this time.”

“That was a one time occurrence. See you on the other side, Brad.”

***
Angela always marveled at the view of space from behind a thin sheet of plastic. She knew that some people just couldn’t take it. They felt like they were a single step away from death having nothing but a simple space suit to protect them from freezing to death.

She was under no illusions of death by so called ‘explosive decompression.’ The physics just didn’t support it. It was much more likely to be instantly baked on sun side, and frozen on shadow side.

Well, it would be like dying in an explosion. There wouldn’t be enough time for your mind to process the pain before you were dead, which was as close to a painless death as anyone could hope for.

That, however, didn’t get her any closer to actually completing her part of the mission.

Space was really cool, in her opinion. There was no friction to stop something from moving, so Newtonian Laws of Motion ruled the day. She’d leapt out of her ship almost three hours ago, and only now as she approaching her destination. The time before now had been floating and looking around her at the majesty of creation. That and the occasional adjustment of her trajectory to make sure she landed in the proper place.

While it was difficult for her opponent in this little game to detect a single person floating in space, it was not impossible. Wearing the completely plastic suit helped that as well, but the main problem was the speed she was moving.

Saying that she jumped isn’t exactly accurate. Her ship was specially designed with a very deep airlock. Specifically it was three feet wide and twenty feet deep. With the artificial gravity of the ship, she was able to get a running start, and then when she peaked her speed, usually around twenty-five or so miles per hour, she would cut the gravity and “drift” out through the airlock.

Before she became really successful, the threshold speed of the sensors on most space stations had been thirty miles an hour.

Of course that was before she became successful.

Her helmet chirped. “Angela?”

“What is it, Alfred?”

“Just so you know, you are about three degrees off course at this point.”

“Good to know. You didn’t ping me with the laser just to let me know that.”

“It seems that active sensors have been upgraded again. We’re going to have to start from about a hundred twenty miles or so next time.”

She chuckled to herself before continuing, “So, what you’re saying is that I’m going to have a much longer trip home than out?”

“Pretty much exactly what I was thinking, yes.”

“Ok, good to know.”

“Alfred out.”

“Angela out.”

She adjusted her course minutely from the information on her HUD. She’d never been this far out of line before and was beginning to wonder a bit about this job. Something was beginning to feel off.

***
She was looking in the right direction when Brad and his fellows appeared around the station. Each began their approach to the station and she could almost imagine the chaos that their appearance was causing.

A space station was even more anal than a ground based air traffic control tower. After all, if an aircraft crashed it was only a lost of the aircraft and its cargo or passengers that suffered. If a spacecraft crashed into the station it could mean the loss of life of everyone aboard.

Angela smiled as the ships began to slow their approach and were moved into a proper closing pattern. She never saw if any of them docked, as she was coming in for a landing herself at that point.

She laughed to herself at that point. Her final course correction had been as close to perfect as you could expect. She was only three feet from the maintenance hatch she’d been aiming for.

Now, her true passion showed itself. Brad and people like him wouldn’t understand this, but women’s fashions mattered. Even if a man wouldn’t notice a problem, women would. They’d notice if you were wearing something that simply wasn’t available on the station. However, wear something just slightly out of date and you’d be noticed as well. You needed to hit that center point where you weren’t fashionable and weren’t out of fashion.

This was the reason that Angela owned more than a hundred thousand credits worth of clothing and that her ‘closet’ comprised almost a third of the interior of her tiny ship.

She quickly stripped off the now useless plastic suit and smoothed out the dress that she was wearing underneath. Out of a pack she took the shoes that matched and then seamlessly moved into the population of the station.

If only life were as simple for her when she was at home, then she might not feel the need to play these games.

And she considered this to be a game. It was too simple to be otherwise. Get in, retrieve some object or other, and get out. Smuggling was too simple a term for it, but she would be considered one.

Usually what she stole, however, was information. Information was so much more worth its weight than any other object she’d ever stolen.

It wasn’t long before she left the populated sections of the station behind. Now came the fun part. She walked confidently down the hallways. A left ahead and then a right, and she was in front of the office she was looking for.

She opened the door quickly and stepped inside.

“Mr. Connors, I was wondering…”

She cut off when her information proved correct and the aforementioned Mr. Connors was not in his office. She sat down to wait on one of the chairs. The thumb drive at her hip was one of the newest models that just needed to be within bluetooth range to be able to connect up. What wasn’t standard was the hacking package she’d installed on it.

There was a slight vibration when the drive got the data she’d programmed it to find. She rose, walked to the desk, and wrote a note. It was the same one she always left.

“Thanks for the game.”

Getting out was as easy as getting in, and that’s when she really started to worry. They should have discovered her note by now.

What was going on? Something about this really didn’t track. The fun part was always getting out of the station without getting caught. That was why she left the note. The makeup that blurred her features on the internal monitors was an added bonus.

No one knew what she looked like, except for a few like Brad who she’d met in person a long time ago.

This time, however, contrary to every protocol she’d tirelessly memorized about this station, there was no police presence. No port lock down. No response whatsoever.

She shook it off and continued to the maintenance hatch and her suit.

"Hello, the suit." She called out quietly. The voice activation system on her suit replied in her voice, "Hello, Angela." Only once in all the time she'd been doing this had she lost her suit completely. Someone had moved it. Since then. she'd used the voice activation system to tell her where it was.

She dragged the suit over to the airlock so that she could prepare for her return journey.

***
The return trip was always longer than the trip out. A maintenance hatch wasn’t a big cannon, and air moved at a set rate from inside to out when the outer hatch was opened while the ‘lock was still pressurized. Then it was a matter of the ship being where she needed it.

She smiled thinking about it. Alfred was always there to catch her. She cried a tear or two as she thought about what the most likely outcome of today would be.

It was for the best, though. Time to retire anyway. They were getting too close to catching her as it was. This one last score would be enough to set her up, if not for life, then at least for a long time, and if she got a real job, then maybe she could keep herself in the luxury that she loved for a long time to come.

Space was still beautiful, and with nothing to do but watch as she waited she looked at the stars. They were nothing like the stars on Earth, but that was to be expected. She was halfway across the galaxy after all. The constants were the other galaxies. On earth they looked more like stars with the intervening atmosphere softening them out. Out here, she could see the sweeps of starts that made them up and not just the center point that suggested the galactic core.

Her current field of view wouldn’t let her see the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but she’d seen that enough in her life. She lived here after all.

She supposed it was something like being stuck on a single planet and wanting the ‘alien’ vistas of a beach or desert when you had seen nothing but deciduous forests your entire life.

Then the ship was looming over her suit and collecting it into the capacious airlock.

Just as the door closed, a hail came from the space station.

“Unidentified craft, you are ordered to stand to and prepare to be boarded.”

A voice called into the airlock, “Angela, we’ve got a problem. They spotted us.”

“Be there in a moment, Alfred.”

“I’m sorry, but the lady of the ship is currently indisposed, could I help you?”

“You have thirty seconds to heave to. Noncompliance will be met with deadly force.”

“Angela, I need you up here now!”

The AI was getting frantic. This wasn’t supposed to happen. There’d been no active sensors on him. He was the next best thing to a hole in space on passive sensors like video.

“Be there in a moment, Alfred.”

“Not good enough,” switching channels the AI spoke again to the station, “I’m sorry but we need a moment or two longer, I’ve not been authorized to take any…”

He never completed that sentence; in fact he never did anything ever again. The core of his computer home, as well as the rest of the ship, was an expanding cloud of dust and debris. The fire that had consumed the atmosphere only lasted a moment or two and wasn’t much more that a flash. There isn’t much that burns in the vacuum of space, and the wreckage of the small pirate vessel was not exception. There was nothing left of the ship in less time than it took to read this paragraph.