Outcasts of Gideon

Dewey Buck : Part 1

Dewey sat at the controls of The Aion. He could hear passengers moving about the cabin below. Before him, the monitor cycled through several cameras. Each was a different view of cargo loading and mission prep. Lights and dials were at his disposal in preparation for the shuttle's return flight. He had plenty to occupy him. He should be reviewing his departure checklist or preparing passengers for transit. Instead, his mind was somewhere else.

He was recalling each step that he'd taken that morning. He'd gotten up at half the fourth like always. His small lodgings were as messy as usual. No more, no less. The early morning created a dark hallway walk to his lav, but he found no obstacles. There he bathed, brushed his teeth, and dressed for the day. Nothing unusual in any of that.

He'd stepped out into the cool morning air of Pyroeis without incident. As usual, there was no one else on the side street where his apartment building stood. Even the walk across three streets to the transit station was his alone.

There he encountered a single passenger, an old woman he'd seen many times before. She remained at a distance, turning her head away when he looked toward her. Nothing strange about any of that. No messes or things to step over. Nothing to brush aside.

He wasn't the first to arrive at the shuttle station, but that wasn't unusual either. He reviewed each step as he walked through the mostly empty administrative building. The voices he heard weren't familiar to him as he passed dispatch, but he saw no faces to acknowledge. He assumed they were cleaning or security staff.

Nowhere on his route did he find anything that was out of the ordinary. Yet here he sat with a large, dark stain near the top of his favorite pair of jeans. He was sure the stain hadn't been there when he'd put them on. He removed this pair from the laundry a day prior. There wasn't a stain then. He must have picked it up along the way. But where?

Why he was wearing jeans was a question he frequently had to answer. Of course, he liked wearing them. They were comfortable and easy to wear. That's what he usually told people. The fact that almost no one else wore them any more didn't bother him. Their lack of practicality in space travel was also unimportant to him.

Many often pressed him further. "You're a shuttle pilot. Don't shuttle pilots wear uniforms?" Of course, the other pilots of the Lackey Shuttle Service wore the standard issue uniform. When he'd first signed on, he did as well. Now, he considered his personal attire a perk of seniority.

He'd been flying this particular shuttle for better than a decade. He started his seniority argument about seven years earlier. He was in his late twenties then. That's when he started wearing jeans on the job. It's also when he convinced the company to make unusual modifications to this shuttle. By that time, even the owner called the Aion "Dewey's shuttle."

"Dewey," a voice boomed from the shuttle's comm. It took him a few seconds to recognize it as the crew lead on Phaethon.

"What?" he shouted back.

"Why aren't you through your checklist yet? Stop daydreaming and get your ass in gear."

His face grew hot. He closed his eyes and tried to make it go away. It didn't.

He typed a command into the console. The departure checklist came up. He marked off the first few items. "I'm only a couple minutes behind schedule. Nothin' to worry about."

He switched the vid to the passenger cabin. There were three passengers seated for the return trip. Two he recognized. They were regulars on this run. He'd never talked to them, but he'd acknowledged them more than once in passing. Probably not miners. They weren't dusty enough. The third passenger looked like a surveyor. Dewey couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a surveyor on his shuttle.

Dewey reached toward the controls. They were placed high because he'd asked for it. Handles helped him hang on under thrust. When he reached his long, thin arms like this, he could see his fading tattoos. One of them was his inspiration for the control placement.

"Why do you have them so high?" Dawn once asked him. That was when she'd first come to work dispatch.

"It's freein'," he'd said. He presented his left arm, flexing the modest muscle. On it was a faded tattoo depicting a young man on a late Twentieth Century "low-rider" motorcycle. In the drawing, the rider's arms extended well above his head, hanging from long handlebars. "See, they called 'em ape hangers. How cool is that?"

"Dewey, you're a shuttle pilot."

"I know I'm a shuttle pilot. I can dream about bein' on the open road, free and clear, can't I?"

It was a dream he never tried to achieve on Pyroeis. There weren't enough roads. Even if he could afford to build an ancient relic like a motorcycle, there was nowhere to ride it.