Name: Christopher Evans Garrett
Age: 17
School: Malahide Community School, Malahide, Co Dublin
Docking Arm H
I see the station up ahead. Its metallic glint is hard to miss when surrounded by the inky blackness of space. Its docking arms turn gracefully around the central hub, a slow melancholy dance to music lost in the void. These outer-reach stations are always depressing.
I pass through the cargo hold one last time. Stopping to tap a tuneless beat on one of the crates. After all my preparation I still have an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I return to the cramped cockpit, unable to shift my nervousness as I sit into the soft red leather cushioning of the helm’s chair. With a sigh, I turn off the autopilot and slow to a stop. Without the constant rattling of the engines the ship feels eerie, the silence crashing through my ears.
After a few moments to re-accustom myself to the sound of nothingness, I return to the task at hand. In a sea of flashing lights and chromed switches my eyes turn to the jet black casing of the radio set. With practised efficiency I switch it on, tune it to channel 16 and pick up the transmitter, “Bostia Merchant Dock, Bostia Merchant Dock, this is Réalta, please advise a working channel, over.” My voice sounds raspy and dry; with no need to talk for the last two weeks my vocal cords are out of practice. “Réalta, Réalta, this is Bostia Merchant Dock, please proceed to working channel 64, out.” The voice from the station sounds robotic and false, the voice of an AI. I quickly change to channel 64 and assume the AI is already there.
“Bostia Merchant Dock, this is Réalta, I’m looking for a frigate berth for the next two days, over.”
“Réalta, this is Bostia Merchant Dock, we have one frigate berth available. Proceed to arm H, hangar 4. I have sent the rotation adjustments to your navigation computer, out.”
With the ship now manoeuvring to match the rotations of the docking arms, I move closer to the station, guiding the Réalta through the giant doors of hangar H4. After deftly completing the docking procedures, the Réalta is quickly grounded in the cavernous space of the hangar. With a groan I rise from the comfort of my chair and squeeze out of the cockpit, the monotony of the docking procedures having calmed my shaky nerves. I stroll through the dimly lit corridor that leads from the cockpit to the living quarters, a long tube of titanium bulkheads and unadorned walls.
I key in the code for my cabin and its bulkhead opens with the sound of an old motor struggling to move its weight. In contrast to the spartan cleanliness throughout the rest of the ship, my room is a vibrant, colourful mess. Hung from the ceiling are tapestries and coloured cloth I’ve collected from every planet I have visited. The ship’s lighting shines through the cloths, turning the room into a kaleidoscope of colour and disjointed images. The reason I have come here lies disguised on a cheap wooden coffee table in the far right corner of the room. I pace over to it and fish through a sea of instant meal wrappings and hydration packs to pick up a black metal tablet and a small circular chip, my cargo manifest and captain’s badge. I return to the cargo hold through a small maze of blank corridors. Weaving my way between cargo boxes in the almost pitch black of the hold I find the controls to open the loading ramp. I quickly walk down it and wait, patiently, for a dock official to inspect my cargo.
A robotic clerk comes in less than a minute, mostly humanoid but for its missing neck. A plasma pistol is in a holster on its side, presumably for when it catches smugglers, such as myself. “Welcome to the Bostia system,” the high-pitched whine of a broken voice box grates into my ears. “I require your manifest and captain’s ID please.” I hold out my documents for the robot to scan. “All documents verified,” it squeaks. “Please proceed to the holding bay with your relevant cargo.” The robot stands to the side of the ramp, ready to melt me into human stew if it thinks any of the crates floating down on gravlifts don’t match my manifest. Lucky for me this station is in the process of repairing its radiation shielding and it needs a lot of lead. A thin layer of lead on the inside of a container, coincidentally, reflects almost all scanning equipment currently available. Another coincidence is that due to this system’s unusually high levels of security, not many smugglers are desperate enough to try smuggle in Pink Lotus, one of the most powerful and illegal narcotics in the galaxy.
With the clerk fooled, the easy part of this job is over. I escort the crates to a cargo lift and let out a shaky breath, trying to maintain the calm that I had leaving the safety of my cabin. The lift shudders to life and starts its journey up an unlit shaft. When I reach the halfway point on my upward journey, I press a crudely added switch on the side of one of the gravlifts. The whine of four overused and overworked gravity motors intensifies into an almost deafening roar. I look down at the scratched and muddied analogue display beside the gravlift’s on/off button. Next to it the shine of a newly added control panel sticks out like a sore thumb. The new panel’s digital screen has the number 11,340kg in white characters on its green screen. The analogue display races to match this number, putting more and more pressure on the lift beneath it to simulate the weight of four crates filled with lead.
I feel myself get lighter and lighter as I approach the zero g in the central hub of the station. This is my last stop. The cavernous space of the holding bay stretches the length and breadth of the station and five floors have been removed to give it height. The cargo it stores is held in place with a mix of steel wires and cables, a chaotic mess of crates and containers to the untrained eye. I begin to float myself as the lift speeds up. It hits the end of its shaft with a clank and sends me, along with my cargo, flying into the customs control room, dead centre of the cargo hold. The room’s specialised forcefield slows me, along with my cargo, to a graceful stop in one of its holding bays.
I take a moment to compose myself, relaxing my face and forcing myself to stop wringing my hands. I walk the crates up to be scanned, pushing them ahead of me, one after another. Four robot arms reach out from the sides of the bay and stop the containers just short of the scanner, to be checked individually. The first crate in the line is pushed into the scanner and heavy lead-lined curtains fall behind it, protecting anyone in the area from the fatal dosage of radiation used to help scan the crates. A light above the scanners turns red as the machine starts up, the hum of electricity fills the bay as the crate is scanned twice, the light above turning green after the second scan. The light turns red once again and the crate is weighed. The green light comes, on cue, and gas rushes into the tight space to clean the crate and scanner of the residual radiation. The crate is then moved to the far side of the scanner and out of my sight.
The second crate cycles through the scanner just as quick. When the third crate is moved into the scanner I notice something – the analogue display on the final crate says it’s still too light. When it gets pushed into the scanner I realise what I have to do. Time slows, the two scans seeming to take minutes rather than seconds. When the second scan finishes I jump into the scanning room through the thick protective curtain. Immediately I’m hit with the urge to vomit. The radiation claws and itches on my skin, my lungs burning even though I refuse to breathe in. I begin to lose consciousness. The machine seems to take hours to weigh me. I hope against hope that the computer will take the slight difference in weight as an acceptable margin for error. Just when I begin to think I’ve been caught, the light seeping in from the outside turns green and the glorious feeling of anti-radiation gas fills the room. After the gas is cleared I breathe in; deep lungfuls of sweet, sweet recycled air. The scanner curtains rise as an audio prompt is played outside for the captain to enter the chamber. I manage a slight, painful chuckle and climb to my feet. I stumble out the other side and smile. A familiar face, bought and paid for, greets me. My uncertainty slowly changes to joy as I realise I’ve pulled it off. As they saunter over to help me regain my footing I find comfort in the fact that I have succeeded. However, I also begin to realise something else; I’m stumbling down a dark path and I fear that when I wander off its trail, no one will be there to save me.
