Incursion Vector

048

[▲] Weigh Anchor, Lalande Repair Yards R4

Lalande was one of the oddest space stations Nim had seen in her life, and she had seen a lot of them for comparison.

The place consisted of four stacked rings, each almost two kilometers in diameter and a kilometer apart, connected at six places by elevator conduits which ran through each ring. The free space inside the rings was filled with repair drones, massive crates of miscellaneous parts kept in a precise three-dimensional grid, and supply shuttles of various designs ferrying things to and from the ships docked to the first and second rings. The third ring was reserved for people who staffed the station, their families, and private facilities maintained for them like a commissary, recreation and gym facilities, schools, and even restaurants and bars which were exclusive to those living and working on Lalande.

The fourth ring was for the tourists and stopovers, of which there seemed to be quite a few. Since Lalande was a contractor for the Alliance but was still technically a Colonial holding, that meant that the weird laws of the Federated Colonies were in play. There were micro-fines for everything from spitting on the deck to using any number of enumerated curse words in certain areas where minors were deemed to frequent. All fines were finalized when a person's ship left the dock and added to whatever fee was charged for their ship's repairs or refueling.

Yet the only uniformed law enforcement Nim had seen were the ass-scratching idiots at the intake corridor that checked her ID, informed her of the automatically charged fines, handed her a computer containing a list of violations that were chargeable, then seemed to fall back asleep once they had gone through everyone getting off the elevator behind her. Not once did they bother to even ask about the small concealed arsenal everyone was carrying inside their gray zippered coats. Karda was packing a half dozen high-yield low-profile grenades which anyone with half a brain should have confiscated due to the fact a pair of them could blast a hole through the side of the station and suck all the tourists out into the black.

Nobody in a station uniform uttered a word.

As for external defenses, there were no fighter patrols, a sparing few long-range turrets rigged to each of the rings, and not even an extended perimeter of ship mines to attach themselves and explode through the hulls of ships not broadcasting friendly IFF to buy time for escape pods—which where conspicuously absent from the fourth ring entirely. If the incursion aliens just happened to pop in everyone on the station was pretty much dead. Unless they had a concealed bank of engines somewhere capable of pushing all the rings to FTL, anyway.

Then again they were still dead, as getting the engines out, fired up, and pushing the station would take far too much time from what they had already seen of the new lawn dart ships.

Once they made it through the laughable customs station Leo and Damien had left to check on the repairs being performed on the Tiaha fleet. Leo was in need of backup as he was about to launch into yet another debate with his grandfather over getting a replacement for his blown-off leg and Damien happily volunteered to provide it. Nim, Calli, Karda, Keiji and Vic ended up walking the entire circumference of the fourth ring twice before any of them decided on a place to stop. Somewhere along the way Vic had found himself another printed book, this one a flopping copy of Treasure Island that was missing its back cover and some of the last pages. It looked and smelled like someone had given it to their starving pet before they'd decided to sell the thing but Vic was so thrilled with his souvenir Nim decided against mentioning that Captain Silver's escape was probably in an ancient pile of canine crap at the opposite end of the galaxy.

The Weigh Anchor was the only bar on the fourth ring that looked like they could actually swear within its confines without being micro-fined into insolvency. Every other place was a weird kind of hybrid bar and restaurant with a clearly marked 'profanity-restricted' hologram over the door. It probably explained why the place was nearly standing room only and the sole reason they were able to find somewhere to sit down was because Errant and the 332 had secured an entire back room for themselves. Apparently everyone except Methuselah knew exactly where to go on the station.