FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Riptide stared up at the bulky square cargo vessel he was working on; every single piece of it had been built for efficiency. It irked him quite a bit. Corporate ships up here on the space dock lacked the character of the ocean-going vessels on the surface of terraformed Venus. He missed them. He missed pulling barnacles from those vessels or having to strike deals with the artificially induced wildlife to give him work space in exchange for them not attacking each other.

His long, vertical-finned tail did not stretch up to anthropomorphic legs but instead of bipedal locomotion he moved more like a snake body with shark scales and fish fins. He had lungs but his gills were what he preferred to breathe through; it always felt strange to inhale through his nose. He took another breath as he turned his wrench. You would think a square box would be the same as the next square box from corporations, but no, they were all proprietary parts, different operating systems, and even different wrench sizes.

Why? Because every corporation wanted only their own engineers to be able to do things like overhauls and know exactly where things were on their ship. Yet it did not matter to the dockyards over Venus, it just meant every single ship engineer and dock worker had to have a dozen different tool drawers, several speciality kits, as well as a special order department for parts, employing nearly as many individuals as the rest of the entire dock combined.

Riptide sighed as his mind wandered while he kept turning the wrench. The cargo was being loaded in his docking port and he had to finish this routine maintenance. It was hard work; honest work, though. Repairing little micro-meteor impacts, fixing metal wear as best he could, and ensuring that the delicate electronics under the hull-plating had not broken or been damaged. He wished that those impossible inventions known as shields from the long-since past science fiction films and television like Star Trek worked in these moments. It would have made his job a lot easier, but sadly, no, physics simply did not allow a shield to generate an energy field stable enough to repel solid kinetic projectiles. His mind fell back upon his mother, who had worked these very docks and had these very problems up until six years ago. The last time the Venus-Station had an accident.

It was a fairly easy-to-miss thing, a back-up battery on a military class vessel for the PDC system. It looked offline and it did not give any electrical signal until a warning on the computer went off. The PDC turned on and tried to destroy anything that the proximity warning was being triggered by. That meant every single dockworker within ten meters that was moving more than a meter per second. His mother and sixteen other individuals were rendered to pieces of flesh and meat in seconds as the PDC efficiently sweeped side to side, until someone on the bridge managed to notice, get to the console that the point defense arm was attached to, and turn off the massive chaingun.

Millions of credits in damage had been done to the dockyard from stray fire and the ship captain was fired and jailed despite it not actually being his fault. It was the fault of some technician on the ship that hadn't checked every back-up battery twice before clearing work on the electrical system to those turrets. Instead was a scene of carnage that younger Riptide didn't know about until he went to go on shift that night and found out for the last time in his memory, all of Venus dry dock was closed to any vessel while holes were resealed, the dock was cleaned up, and investigators worked to assign blame.

He shuddered as the memory of his mother's end drifted away from his mind and he pushed out the image of the dock's "Days Without Accidents" sign. Since it still showed the number of days since his mother's death. He hadn't transferred back to planetside work because of the much better pay up here in space. The pay was the reason he endured a reminder of his past. If he could find something that paid better he would take it.

His PADD buzzed as he closed the last panel and knocked it a few times, making sure it was actually closed before taking out his PADD in case he dropped it.

"Wingum Riptide, report to docking bay 14 as soon as you finish your current assignment. Jaminson is running behind and the ship, Adrift Sphere-- which should have arrived yesterday--arrived today. He needs your assistance." Riptide rubbed the lemon yellow backside of his head, right down to the dorsal fin on his torso, scratching it to try to stimulate some brain and spinal function at this announcement.

"Awww, come on, just because he's backed up doesn't mean I have to pick up the slack." Riptide tossed the PADD back into his toolpak. He let out a sigh that sounded a bit ragged and higher pitched than you would expect from a creature of his size. He removed the safety harness and pushed off the vessel he was standing upon, floating off into the dockyard for a brief moment.

It felt like swimming through water, as he held his breath to make it feel more and more like he was underwater again. Oh, how he missed swimming through the oceans of Venus. This feeling of weightlessness, even if it was in air, was the closest he could get to it up here in the dockyard. He had only seen the oceans of Venus twice a year since he'd come up here and there were not the same oceanic friends he had made friends with now. He'd long since outlived them or they had long since moved on to other ocean-going dockworkers. Their lesser intelligence makes them forget him with time; as if he never existed.

It made those trips back bittersweet, but this, floating through the atmosphere void of the dry-dock was peaceful. Yes, ships had to enter through the outer airlocks and sometimes he had to put on a suit and go to ships too big to fit inside, but this was his place, his space. His eyes closed, the flow of the air recyclers were like the currents of the ocean. He pushed himself forward, his cybernetic implants able to find the place in space now that they could cluster pockets of air to create push off points. He simply began to swim, opening his eyes as the need to breath finally took over and the illusion of the ocean faded away with the air pulling through his lungs. He opened his eyes to see what ship he was going to next.

He could navigate this shipyard without needing to see. Between his shark Ampullae of Lorenzini, sense of smell, and experience here, he would know every nook and cranny. Finally, it was time to break the monotony of working in a shipyard. He was staring at a vessel in Bay 14 that he could not identify at all, save for the light blue paint and name on the front and back, "Adrift Sphere".

He stopped himself in the air hovering there. This ship was clearly a scavenger class, a unique class of vessels that were assembled from the pieces of other ships. This vessel was ugly, the ugliest malformed thing he had seen be built into a ship. The engines were white with gold trim and silver lining, the sleek rounded housings from a Proteus Corporation corvette. The main body was the same kind of semi-hexagon box of a MarsCo freighter he had just been working on.

He was approaching from the front and could see the modification to put the spinal mounted cannon in the MarsCo box freighter's hull jutting out, the weapon had the hallmark shape of something off an Inner Ring Police Force vessel. Two spyglass pylons had been added, extending from the sides and mounted with torpedo racks, counter measures, and point defense turrets, but they certainly had a very bolted-on quality to them.

The last item, however, truly made the vessel just feel like someone without a basic understanding of ship design had added it. On the front of the ship was the bridge structure from a patrol class vessel similar to a Pulse-manufactured ship, which had just been bolted onto it and slotted in like a Lego that didn't belong there but for some reason fit in that slot. The odd tent shape to it made a jarring contrast with its grass green color on the very ugly baby blue main hull. Overall, this vessel was hideous.

He made his way around the front to the dockyard seeing two individuals standing on a ram extended by the rear to the dockyard. A third individual was just inside the doorway. He made out a large taurian canidae of some sort in hard ruby-red MarsCo armor moving very heavy freight boxes off the ship. The canidae worked while a tall slender fox woman, who wore no visible armor but instead had a long faux-leather dress and tunic that only covered down to her navel.

The bird creature started off the ship, he got a good look at her. She wore a lab coat that did not actually cover her wings while she was clearly a lateral, more animal than humanoid.

"Well this is gonna be an interesting day." Riptide whispered to himself as he landed upon the dockyard and activated his magnetic skater. A device like magnetic boots but for those with a serpentine or fishoid lower body that acted more as a series of magnetic plates wrapped around the tail that would unclamp from nervous signals from the body to move like a tank caterpillar across any magnetic surface.

"Oh hello there, we have several crates that need to be unloaded, could you help us out? We also need some regular maintenance done, if you can spare someone, mister?" Orishan approached the unknown shark as she spoke very diplomatically and deliberately. She also held the last word to emphasize it was a question and hopefully get a proper introduction.

"Wingum Riptide, assistant level six engineer number 771-AlphaGold-813." Riptide spelled out both his name, title, and serial number so the fox he was talking to wouldn't mistake some other lemon shark vector or another shark vector in general for him.

"Cossette Orishan, captain of the independent ship, Adrift Sphere." She replied with a confident smile across her lips and took a certain step forward while extending her hand to shake Riptide's.

Riptide was hesitant-she just said independent ship. There were hundreds if not thousands of vessels across Sol and yet, having a fully independent ship was nearly unheard of. Maybe fifty total of the vessels existed. Semi-Independent was usually possible, whereby you were independent but had a corporate sponsor who helped build the ship and would have an interest in the ships profits and seize the vessel if the crew died or went criminal but a truly indy ship? That was something Riptide had never seen in his nearly twenty years on these docks.

Slowly he recovered and extended it to her. His rough shark skin was very different compared to the silken well groomed fur of the captain. Clearly she was a captain who worked with diplomacy and giving orders rather than working with her own two hands to make tasks done upon the vessel.

"Well, let me get your paperwork settled and we can see to your repairs. You did say independent ship, you're not semi-independent but full indy?" Riptide wanted to clarify before going much further. Completely independent meant they would have to pay for all services up front, no credit because no corporate backing.

"Yes, Mister Riptide, we are fully independent. I assure you, there are no corporate sponsors and we will deal with all our requirements with upfront credits or hard currency." Riptide was once again caught off guard. One, this captain was the kind of smooth operator you would expect of a smuggler or pirate preparing to hustle you for everything you were worth. Two, hard currency? Hard currency was a myth to Riptide, everything was done with credit chits linked to electronic accounts. Actually having hard currency was the equivalent of humans paying with gold Spanish doubloons in the pre-vector era; so unheard of it was believed to be impossible. That is until someone actually found Blackbeard's treasure in the 2300's.

Rekyte came running up. He was a bipedal standard coyote vector, wearing a strange cowboy hat. Why he wore it was because he liked it, it was his family's tradition being from the polar regions of Mars, where pre-vector humans had raised cattle on green pastures. Settled by humans from a place on Earth called Texas. "Hey, y'all got this? I need to get to bay 43, something about a ship called Sunrise causing some issues because of the cargo they got getting out of control. Some minor corporation called Stable-Tec claiming it's theirs."

Riptide rolled his deep red eyes and turned towards Rekyte, "Yeah, I got this one. Get on to bay 43 before something explodes." Riptide then turned back to Orishan. "Alright, you've got my attention. Your PADD, if you don't mind?"

Orishan passed over the pad containing the paperwork. "Remarkable how paper hasn't actually been used for these things in nearly seven hundred years, yet we still call it paperwork." Riptide smiled and snorted at the comment as he started to review the paperwork.

He worked his way over to the bay's computer mainframe and started to work on it, trying to match the paperwork to what they had on record. While he waited for the system to load and update, he took a long look at the ship. It was battered and beat up, clearly having been through a lot. Some of it was micrometer impacts. At least three separate areas were charred and dented from weapons fire. One of the PDC's was clearly not working anymore, as it was still extended from its internal housing and laid over, unable to really move or retract back for reloading, maintenance, or repairs.

Riptide let out a sigh, "That looks expensive."

Orishan nodded to him, "We've got the money for it. Especially after we deliver this cargo," She emphasized her point by kicking her strangely mixed style boot against the gray cylinder containers that were wrapped together by metal bands. The boots she wore were a combination of showy higher heels and more practical working boots you would expect someone working on a farm on Ganymede to use. It was something that caught Riptide's attention for a moment and how much they probably cost to have both form and function like that.

Everything might be 3D printed for the most part, but that doesn't mean that the cost of designers, programmers, and materials were not still expected to be paid. His daydreaming was shattered by the sudden beep from the computer. It was giving him a 411 error, unknown missing component. It wasn't that the paperwork wasn't there or filled out incorrectly, just that the computer was unable to find some piece inside it to use for verification.

Orishan took a nervous glance at the avialae, which nodded back and gave an oddly reassuring--but very creepy to Riptide--cooing noise. Riptide couldn't place where the creepiness came from. It was the kind of feeling one would get when they met the uncanny valley or a holographic projector was giving something that wasn't quite right and you couldn't place what.

"I can't seem to get your clearance verified here, it's given me an error that I don't get. Ya think maybe I should wait or call up to the foreman and see there?" Riptide asked as his radio squawked with more issues and it occurred to him if he couldn't work on this ship, he might have to go to fix that problem.

He took a good long look at the Adrift Sphere and the condition it was in. He thought about it and looked at the PADD Orishan had given him. He read it carefully, everything appeared to be completely in order. Nothing he saw was out of place, all the i's were dotted and t's crossed as the old human saying would express. He raised the skin above his eye, an eyebrow if he had one but being a selachii, he did not have any hair on his body.

"Make you a deal, pay for the repairs up front and I'll do a full overhaul on your ship and spend my entire shift on it." Riptide offered. The paperwork was in order; if everything was paid for the foreman wouldn't complain. He might even give him a bonus or a commendation for a pay raise and promotion if everything was paid for.

Orishan smiled and seemed to express just for a moment, relief. The dingo next to her seemed to immediately get a lot less tense for some reason he couldn't fathom. "But I will need your dingo there to help me around the ship. What's yer name?" Riptide's speech was broken by his inability to say 'your' or more precisely the 'our' phase. Which meant to him words like your, our, color, and armor were problematic.

"Blanc! Jackson Blanc, sir!" Jackson reported with a sharpness as he started to salute and stopped himself.

"Sir? I work for a living. Guess yer're a former marine?" Riptide began to caterpillar over to the cargo, scanning it in. The cargo at least didn't cause an error report. He nodded to them and then started counting the number of canisters. The count matched everything he had in front of him so he nodded.

"Alright, Jackson, let's get to work. Captain Orishan, what was that avialae doing on your ship exactly?" Jackson looked around confused as he no longer saw the bird; She was clearly somewhere else on the dock or had headed inside the station.

"That was Hoary, she is our ship's doctor and science officer. Something wrong?" Orishan asked as she moved to make sure she was Riptide's dominant point of focus in his field of view. She had to make sure his attention was on her, not looking for Hoary.

From Riptide's point of view, he saw the cylinder canisters, Jackson's front feet paws, and well, Orishan's precisely cut tunic and her breasts. Not something he was actually interested in, mind you, but he could at least admire the view for a second. Then he finally brought his gaze up to her eyes, "She just had this unnerving noise she made, wanted to make sure it was normal."

Orishan nodded at him and gave a reassuring smile, "Oh, that coo? Yeah it's just a noise the species she is from makes. She takes some getting used to; I wouldn't expect you to be that easily unnerved. Now, about my ship: I'll give you a credit chit and get some of the physical currency reserves if that runs out; Will that suffice for making repairs?" Orishan motioned towards her beat up and worn out vessel.

Riptide took a few moments to look it over and started scrolling through as he wandered up to the vessel, and placed orders for parts while his other hand extended to receive the credit chit to link up to the PADD. Orishan handed it to him and he started charging it as he ordered panels, parts, and got to the badly damaged PDC to examine it for replacement parts before he made it simple and ordered a whole replacement PDC because it would take more work hours to repair than simply replace.

He went inside the ship and noticed how the unusual various components actually made a coherent internal system. He started on the bridge and took a second to admire the unique pilot position that was clearly designed for the taurian dingo, Jackson, to operate out of. The bird perch on the bridge was near something he did not expect to see on this ship; a fully equipped scientific sensor and analysis suite.

That was something less than five percent of vessels had. It simply wasn't necessary except for deep exploration vessels or deep space rescue ships. It was also clearly designed for Hoary to operate from. He took note of the standing captain's position on the bridge. It was made to lock her feet into place and support her torso with a harness, but she would be standing instead of sitting. That was something very different indeed, considering that high g-forces in combat might result in problems like aneurysms or blood vessel's popping when you hit prolonged high-G maneuvers.

He was beginning to wonder what other secrets were on this ship. He kept making his part list, having finished with the lower deck, the bridge, and now on the upper deck; making his way back to the airlock and loading ramp. He got to the ship core on the upper deck and paused. It was contained in a spherical metal unit like most fusion or fission reactors he would expect, save for that this one was completely submerged in coolant. As in, he could not access the core unless he went swimming.

"Orishan, why is your reactor submerged?" Riptide asked, looking around rather puzzled, trying to figure out if this was some emergency measure or if the reactor was designed with the intent of being submerged.

"Oh, it was designed that way. Provides a whole lot more coolant efficiency and allows us to push well beyond the normal maximum output when we need it." Orishan explained this as if it were perfectly normal but it made Riptide raise an eyebrow.

What could possibly require you to push a reactor so hard they would need such a coolant setup? He made some notes and then started to remove his clothes-The lower pants staying on for privacy while his shirt and toolbelt came off. His PADD was waterproof and he would need it as he dove into the coolant substance.

Riptide's gills opened up and his cybernetics started absorbing the radiation for him. He could survive in radioactive environments that would kill most organisms. His augments also allowed him to survive extreme temperatures, some that could melt steel and others that could freeze nitrogen. He could stand in them-though it was uncomfortable-but still come out fine after a few hours of exposure. This coolant was a nice place for him to swim, moving from fixture to fixture; checking every part of the reactor. He was determined to make sure this ship was in like new condition and not have to work on another thing all day.

Once he finished there, Orishan was standing out of the pool of coolant on the catwalk that stretched across the pool in the engineering bay; a pair of towels and a freshly printed pair of pants for him. Considering he had to put on the pants from the side due to his long lower section and tail, he wondered how she had gotten his size but didn't argue as he dried off and she turned to allow him privacy to redress. "So, you work on scavenger class ships often?"

Riptide chuckled, "You need not make small talk with me, I get it. I'm a selachii, I'm scary."

Orishan turned her head over her shoulder, "You're not scary, at least not to me. Just an unknown at the moment. I assure you, you've been the best spark of luck and light on this ship in the last several days." Riptide was taken aback as Orishan still was all smiles when she turned to face him. Despite the massive amount of credits she was putting up for repairs, she still seemed happy with his willingness and ability to deal with the various potential problems and laundry list of fixes.

"Well, it's not every day I get to work on a ship this unique, much less one that will put all the skills I've learned here on the yard to the test. I think I could learn a lot about ships here." He turned to her after getting dressed and started to slither past Orishan, "Especially how to integrate different proprietary corporate systems to work together."

It was just going to be a particularly long day as Riptide spoke to her. He arrived back at the docking pad, working his way down the ramp to where three dozen containers full of ship parts and repair equipment had arrived. Rekyte was dropping off the last heavy metal crate and looked up at Riptide as he pulled the pallet into two pieces, one with the parts he needed and the other with parts he was dropping off for Riptide. "Hey now, you gonna get anything else done today with all this you ordered?"

Riptide grabbed his radio off his belt and as if on queue to answer the question, clicked it, "Hey, bossman Frank?"

There was a moment of pause between them before the radio squawked back to life, "Shit... who is this? What?"

"Hey Bossman Frank, this is Riptide. I'm over in bay fourteen. I'm gonna be here all day with this one, sorry, but there is just too much to do here. You'll be happy to know they are paying up front through." Riptide hoped the second half of that would soften the blow of his absence from any other work that day. It did not.

"Oh, for fucks sake! Dammit, we're already down three today; are you telling me you're gonna spend all day on one stupid ship?" Riptide smiled knowing that, in the moment, he would be pissed off but later when he had the accounts receivable, he would be certainly much happier.

Rekyte dropped his jaw wide open, the coyote unable to believe what he just heard and saw as Riptide gave him a toothy shark grin and started to open the crates full of ship parts, panels, electronics, and then checked for the crate that contained a brand new PDC, pulling it open and motioning Jackson over towards him.

"Hey Jackson, I need this pulled out of the crate and put up there with the one that's broken, I'm gonna start there." Riptide managed as he pushed off to get the other electronic pieces and steel plating he would need for the repairs. Step by step, piece by piece, each damaged outer plate was replaced, mended, or repaired by plasma torch, screwdriver, hammer, or just old-fashioned elbow grease.

Riptide was happy here. No one would pressure him all day to do anything else, especially after they saw the long list of requested parts and repairs marked for being conducted. Orishan simply followed him around like he expected any captain wanting to monitor the work being done on their ship would. Even if she might not entirely understand what they were doing, it was enough to ensure her own paranoia wouldn't be triggered. Jackson got hands-on experience with Riptide to work on various parts and pieces.

Riptide's ten hour shift turned into nearly nine hours of just repairing the Adrift Sphere. Finally after all the work of his shift and clocking in two hours overtime, Riptide let out a content sigh. He'd even gotten to swim in water and work under it like he would have done on the surface of Venus, minus the sealife he so desperately missed. Riptide might have even taken a little extra time in the reactor coolant than was necessary, just to enjoy it.

He exited the ship with Orishan and Jackson in tow finally with nothing else to do. The ship needed a paint job, but at least mechanically and electronically it should work as good as new. It had cost a fortune but Orishan had paid for it all; no questions asked. Riptide, for the first time in a long time, felt both accomplished and less stressed than he had in a while. His sole concern all day had been this one ship. He would miss this day for a while yet, at least he felt that way.

With their cargo changed over and repairs done, the crew of the Adrift Sphere loaded up and it undocked, heading for one of the outer docks; since the inner ones were only for cargo transfers and repairs, if you just want to dock up and hang around, you had to go to the outer docking arms. Riptide picked up his tools and cleaned up bay 14, his shift ended hours ago but all the work had been high paying for the company. He could hear the bonus check for going above and beyond hitting his account. Maybe he would take a few unpaid days of leave back to Venus and just enjoy the water. Maybe he would go see his father, in the retirement home and just play the ancient game of chess or hnefatafl if the pieces could all be found.

He slithered towards the punch out clock, pulling up one of his sleeves to expose the RFID chip in his wrist to clock out. His toothy smile and friendly waves were calming for the shift that didn't normally see him. He got to the gate and the intercom buzzed, "Wingum Riptide! Superintendent's Office, NOW!"

Riptide's mood immediately deflated. That kind of voice was not one you wanted to hear. Further, he checked his radio and found the battery had died some time ago. He had no idea how long they had been trying to contact him.

"Oh, what now?" He turned around and started to make the long trek back across the main thoroughfare towards the large central column. This was the place where the bureaucracy sat. They could look out and see what was going on around them. Traffic control not only could use sensor data but visual data to make decisions. From here, a dozen spires lined up with different bays.

Delivery and Security drones buzzed in lines above this central spire. Riptide made his way down the long ramp. They would know where he was, every moment of the day. Why had they not simply sent down a security agent? It would have been more efficient and it wasn't like the RFID tags in their employees wouldn't make it easy to trace where they were on the docks.

Riptide got to the elevator and the security guard snorted at him, "Word is, you're in deep shit this time."

Riptide raised an eyebrow at the black clad security guard with an obscuring visor and took an inhale, letting an energy back inside his throat light up his mouth with some bits of electricity. "Trouble? For what? I did my job."

The security here always wore those suits. The name tags were never visible on purpose. They are a part of the same union with the dockworkers but had to be viewed as impartial between the corporate supervisors and unionized dockworkers.

The elevator whirled to life, sending him upward towards the offices located halfway to the traffic control at the top and the customer waiting areas just above that. The lift stopped and Riptide checked his shirt, making sure he buttoned it up and straightened his clothes. He wasn't sure if this was because he took the time to change his own schedule, or the customer hadn't paid for everything, or something he simply did not know.

He approached the door and reached to press the buzzer and the door popped open as his finger was just short of the door. His boss was a large horse, while he was standard in the sense of his morph shape, he was huge; bigger than Riptide and slightly larger than the white dingo that he had seen on the dock. Cloven hooves for feet but human, five fingered hands. He kept tapping those hooves against the rug under him. The rug was some ancient designed thick afghan to keep the noise of his hooves tapping on the metallic floors silent.

He looked up from the pale faded green door buzzer to his boss, who was currently leaned forward with a folder on his desk. He looked up and did not speak a word but merely motioned to the chairs in front of him. Both were cheap metal folding chairs, something easy to move around and replace rather than anything fancy. After all, mechanics and dock workers were going to come into his office covered in grease, metal scrap, and so many other things that would ruin a chair of any fabric or any form of niceness.

Riptide shuffled in and wrapped his tail around the chairlegs while taking a set near his pelvic and second dorsal fins. "Alright boss, I did my job, we made money and we got a very happy customer. What's the trouble?" Riptide felt the fatigue now rubbing off on him. He had worked a twelve hour shift. He was hungry, the old selachii instincts to hunt for food welling up but he could suppress them. He was frustrated, his muscles ached and he had been avoiding sitting down to not have to endure this rush of exhaustion.

This boss, Fred Halberk, grunted in response. "Do not adopt that tone with me, Riptide. Not on a fuckup of this scale." He reached up and threw the folder at Riptide, bouncing it off his chest. The folder only stayed together because of the gym clips around the top bottom and sides holding it tight. Riptide caught the folder and started to undo the clips on it.

"What did I do wrong?" Riptide was genuinely caught off guard as he looked into the folder and found right on top was a "Do Not Service" poster on top for the Adrift Sphere from the Inner Ring Police Force. "What does the IRPF have to do with this?"

Fred sighed and sunk back into his seat, "The Do Not Service order was rescinded sometime last night. But yeah the IRPF wanted to search the vessel for contraband. The computer error wasn't properly entered yet." He let out a groan and sat forward as he slowly stood up onto his hooves. A long pony tail dragging on the chair behind him poking out of his khaki pants. His nose let out a distinctive horse noise.

"Look, I am pretty pissed about this but they want someone to hang for this. Whatever their cargo was, it is long gone and the IRPF have no reason to search the ship anymore. Whoever was entering that information into the computer, was doing it while you were trying to check them in. The point is, the IRPF want to see someone fired or the fines to be paid are gonna be through the roof." He turned away from Riptide and stared out over the dock. Fred observed all the individuals moving around the dock. His eyes following a drone over the head of several security personnel heading towards some disturbance or another.

"Now, I hate to break this to you but I'm not going to get fired for this. I can't fire Rekyte, he actually did his job for once. You were the only one of our workers who I can say for sure was involved with this error." He turned back to Riptide and let out a deep sigh, he reached into his desk and pulled out a PADD, passing it over to Riptide. "I need your signature here acknowledging your termination."

Riptide reached for the form. Nothing special. A termination form informing him he was no longer working for the company. Company health services would not be continued. His vacation time was forfeit and would not be paid. He would not receive any form of severance. Absolutely nothing and he was being docked for all time on his last paycheck he was working on the Adrift Sphere.

None of it was illegal but every single sentence just reflected the status of their society. Workers could be fired if they violated anything to do with the company rules or IRPF and most of them did not have unions. Having a union job was much more secure but very hard to get into. Here Riptide knew that one day he might be fired and get absolutely nothing. This was what every worker feared and there was no one to advocate for him. He could fight it, but then no one would hire him after he took his previous employer to court.

Who was going to risk it all if they did not have millions to do so? There was no safety net he could fall onto. Unless he was being laid off, firing for any reason would result in no worker's compensation or unemployment. "So that's it then? I'm just fired after years here?"

Fred nodded to him and gave a frown, "Not fair and not a nice way to put it but pretty much exactly right. Sign the document or I will have to have security escort you to jail for the night for non-compliance and trespassing."

Riptide took the stylus and signed, glaring at Fred in such a way that the supervisor had to clear his throat and felt the rise of heat from his adrenaline giving a flight response due to the gaze of an angry and hungry predator dead on him. Riptide thrust the PADD back and got up to leave, "I'm going to get my tools. You don't own those and I'm taking them with me."

Fred just waved his hand dismissively as he took the PADD and held out his hand, "I need your access badge and company issued PADD as well." Riptide slammed the PADD into his hand. They both knew this wasn't right and yet Fred was going through with it. He then took off his access badge and put it in his hand.

Lastly, Riptide reached up to his finger and pushed on hard, till it started to change color and bruise before the RFID chip pushed out and he placed it on the desk. "Anything else?" Riptide was not happy as he spoke. He glared in a way that made Fred feel as though he were being looked through or sized up for a meal. Riptide's species was a predator afterall, and Fred was certainly making a hungry tired predator very unhappy.

Riptide considered punching him. He considered using his cybernetics to overload the bio-batter in his throat and let the corresponding electrical blast tase them both. He considered seeing how much damage his teeth could actually do to Fred before security came in. All of these thoughts of violence he knew were wrong, and he had to dismiss each of them before turning to leave.

"Riptide, if it is any consolation. I'm sorry. The system takes vectors in and grinds them up and splits them back out. I hope you find something before you have to go back to the surface." Fred was right in this case. Riptide and he both knew if you did not have a job on any of the four orbital Venus stations; they would ship you back planetside even if you owned the property.

Water, oxygen, and food were always in tight supply in space and they could not just have freeloaders sitting on the station who were not employed for some purpose. Though, the upper classes seemed to be able to ignore this because 'Job Creator' could be their job here. Riptide wished at that moment, he was one of those upper class individuals.

Riptide gathered his tools and personal effects, moving them back to his small apartment. It was only three rooms. A bedroom that had a couch and bed along with a small desk, a kitchen, and a bathroom with a shower and toilet. That was it. He shoved his toolbox into the space between his bed and couch and looked around. This was all he really had. It wasn't fantastic or nice, it was nicer than most on the station but it had taken years to get an apartment of this size and he knew it would disappear if he lacked employment on Cerritos Station in thirty days.

Tonight however, he would drown his sorrows. He took a moment to head down the street to a ramen shop and bar, The Golden Noodle. It was a spot he visited often when he wanted to celebrate or just relax outside his apartment. Tonight however, was the night he was just going to enjoy decent food and okay beer. He took a step in, looked around the busy bar and started to move towards the bar when he noticed something.

That strange avialae creature from the Adrift Sphere was sitting by herself, a mostly finished bowl of ramen in front of her and several empty cups of tea as well. Her push frame crown lit up with a gold aura that also created another aura around a PADD she was reading and a teacup. "What are the fuckin' odds? Ya know what, maybe I can get even." Riptide walked up to the table, and slammed his hands down onto the table, shaking all the empty tea-cups and the mostly empty tea-pot on the table as well as nearly tipping over the bowl of ramen. Only stopped by the avialae's quick reaction with her talon to keep it from spilling over.

"How may I help you?" She was unphased and unintimidated by the display Riptide had given. She did not even bother to look up from her PADD.

"You got me fired, you and your crew did. Why?" Riptide snarled as he pushed his way into being seated next to Hoary. He leaned into her and snarled to emphasize he could be dangerous and Hoary strangely remained very calm.

She took a sip of her tea and motioned for him to have a seat with her wing while she made proper room for Riptide to sit down. Calmly one piece of her platter moving the tea she was still drinking and the ramen she had nearly finished, before simply putting a menu in front of Riptide. "That better? Since you are being rather insistent about being my date tonight."

Riptide stared at her, the way she calmly mocked his threats, deflected them as if they were unimportant and then for spite, invited him to eat. It was so disarming. He had to stare for a bit, taken aback; debating if she were serious or so confident she could mock him when he was three times her size and clearly had the features of a shark to rend another vector to pieces. She was calm, unflinching and unaffected by his presence. She knew something, he did not.

"Are you serious? Inviting me on a date now, when you cost me my job and you have an angry shark that could rend you apart seated next to you?" Riptide snarled as he snatched the menu and started looking through it. He snapped his jaws at her to emphasize his point as he started to look through the various types of ramen and beer to eat.

"I may be a medical officer, but I am a close quarters combat expert. I do not carry a weapon as I never need them, my talons would render you asunder if we actually started a fight before you could move more than a few centimeters. Now, you insisted upon eating with me, let's eat together." She tapped the menu with her wing insistently to the menu. "Since you lost your job, I will take care of the cost and we can discuss what you want to do versus what you can do."

Riptide genuinely now finally felt defeated. He had done his job like he was supposed to, at least he thought he had. An error he did not understand had gotten him fired. On top of that, he had been tempted to act against his supervisor and be violent only to stop. Now he was seated next to a bird that gave him uncanny valley shivers and just dared him to make a move but was being somewhat diplomatic. Any power he ever felt over his life, just disintegrated before him.

He pointed at the katsu pork ramen and sighed, "I'll take that and a kirin beer." Hoary smiled at him, or the approximation of what the avialae could do for a smile.

"Excellent, now what do you want to do?" Hoary replied as she willed her pushframe to punch in the order and made sure to mark it as extra-large to hopefully sate the shark's physical hunger while adding another pot of white tea to the order for herself.

"What?" Riptide groaned as he turned to Hoary and looked at her in disbelief, raising the skin on his head where an eyebrow should be in curiosity.

"Look, we did not intend for anyone to lose their job. Further, our cargo was not actually dangerous, the IRPF just wanted to acquire it and prevent a discovery. A very hit and miss type of political job. One corporation wants what we have and has paid for it; the other corporation wants it for themselves and we refused the counter offer so now they are gonna take it by force. Now it is out of our possession." She motioned to the menu as a robot came over and her pushframe placed the excess dishes into it and took her tea and his beer from it. All keeping them surrounded in the gold energy aura from the crown across her brow.

"Do you want to just go back to Venus?" Hoary pushed the beer up to Riptide with her wing. It was nearly the size of a normal sized vector's forearm and almost as thick as her talon curled into a fist. Riptide popped the tab and took a long drink as he thought it over.

The feeling of the oceans upon his skin would be nice but money would be incredibly tight, even with his savings. He would still have to pay for his cybernetic implants and other debts he had that kept him from going too far from the planet. He would be happier but much poorer and conveniences like this ramen shop would become once a month instead of once a week, if that.

He could find new work up here but he doubted it would be as lucrative as the jobs on the docks and honestly, even with his qualifications he simply wouldn't be happy to work above water or at least not able to experience the feeling of drifting at will. Here inside the residential area, the rotation of the station kicked in and gravity or some approximation of it kept everyone pulled down to the station ground. Riptide kept thinking on it and finally gave an answer, "I don't know. I hadn't figured that out yet. That is tomorrow me's problem."

Hoary took a long sip of her tea, slowly pulling it back from her beak and raised her eyebrow up as she did so. "What if our captain might have joked about giving you a job?"

Riptide turned his head and nearly lost his beer when he heard that. "A job? What? On a ship?" Riptide knew that there were tons of ships in Sol but most had crews of between five to ten. Some of the IRPF seizure ships or military vessels might have fifty total crewmembers. With populations of several million or in the case of Mars, billions; a place on a ship was literally like winning a lottery ticket, getting struck by lighting, and having a sinkhole appear under you on the same day.

Riptide set his beer down and turned to her, blinking a few times. "I think we could use an engineer full time on our ship. Orashen has been in agreement. So the question becomes do you wish to speak with the captain after we finish eating, or not?"

Riptide had a long thought going through his head, one was of revenge on these vectors. Another was the possibility these people had set this up on purpose. But the one that really got to him, was the chance to be on a ship with all the benefits and risks that came with this. He mulled it over as his ramen arrived and he took a deep inhale of the spices. Even if they were fake, they were still delicious. He looked at her before he took his first bite, "What's your last name, Hoary?"

Hoary cleared her thought, "I don't have one, you in or out to talk to the captain?"

Riptide nodded to her, "In."

Just as he did, someone wearing full red, green, and black armor walked up and put his rifle butt onto the edge of the table. Riptide turned to Hoary and gave her a look, "Do you want me to handle this one?"

"Shut it shark, I'm here for a bounty and that bird is it." Hoary made a motion with her wing as she took a sip of tea.

"Be my guest, impress me." Hoary sat back as the bounty hunter turned to him and grunted.

Riptide turned around baring his teeth across to the bounty hunter. "Don't make me turn you into fried sushi stupid shark, just get out of th--" There was an electrical charge building in Riptide's mouth, a bolt of lightning sparked out and lashed across the floor, even hitting the rifle he was holding and forcing him to drop it off the table to the floor as Riptide picked up the bounty hunter and finally get to release his anger.

"What the hell!?" Riptide grabbed onto the bounty hunter's shoulders before he could recover from the light tasing. This wasn't the first time he'd defended himself or for that matter, gone after someone. They did have pirate ships sometimes show up and try to slip into the dock, after all.

He shoved the Bounty Hunter's head and shoulders into his mouth and bit down. Some of his teeth fractured or broke loose from the plated armor but what he was using weren't those teeth. He was using the battery inside him to form an electrical shot of white hot plasma from a cybernetic implant in his throat.

While never intended to be used this way, the battery was supposed to provide him with power for tools and an access plug hidden in his wrist. He'd had an illegal surgeon modify him to give him a ranged weapon no one would ever find. A blast of white hot plasma slammed into his mouth. His skin implant and upgrades would keep him from sustaining any damage from the plasma blast. The bounty hunter struggling in his mouth suddenly went limp as the smell of burned flesh reached Hoary's nose and interrupted her tea.

"Riptide, that is a bit excessive don't you think?" She mentioned casually as he dropped the bounty hunter to the floor and the barkeep pulled out a shotgun and cocked it loudly to load a shell.

Hoarty took the last sip of her tea and pulled a credit chit from her lab coat pocket, swiping it over the machine at their table, paying the bill and adding a 50 credit tip; which was Riptide's entire rent for a month. "We're going, calm down. The tip should cover up, he's just a bad bounty hunter who thought he could get lucky."

Hoary calmly stood up as she finished her tea and used her Pushframe as Riptide dropped the dead body from his mouth and spat out any pieces of metal he'd gotten in there. "So lemon shark, right? Means you form tight bonds, don't you?"

Riptide corrected his jaw and sighed, "Yeah, and no need for the shotgun there; I can only do that once every few days, gotta recharge the battery to go again." Riptide took the very large bowl from the pushframe aura and slurped it down rapidly instead of enjoying it slowly. "Yeah, lemon shark, looks like I'm stuck with you now."

Hoary nodded and they headed back towards the ship. She pulled up a communication device and radioed out to Orashen on the way; that she was coming with someone to interview.

*****

Riptide stood on the bridge with Hoary, Jackson, and Orishan. Jackson had brought his heavy machine gun with him and Riptide couldn't help but notice the tattered IRPF uniform inside of a picture frame on the wall. It was on the side near the pilot seat, the nametag under the glass of the destroyed uniform read, "Georgia L." It was clearly none of their uniform's as it was too small for any of them and he had seen no one named Georgia on the ship. Riptide blew it off and waited for Orashen to finish reading his resume.

Hoary was standing on the perch he noticed in front of the sensor console and they were still docked to Cerritos Station. Jackson did have his large machine gun that looked ancient by the design and slight modifications for him to be able to hold it and keep it. A large list of places had been scratched onto the breach mechanism on both sides from Riptide's point of view.

"Alright, I understand that apparently we got you fired?" Orishan asked Riptide as she put her PADD down after reading all of his background. She brought her hands together, interlocking the fingers in front of her snout and leaned back in her captain's position. The harness did not activate but she clearly was used to standing in the location and it offered her quite a bit of comfort.

"Yeah. Ya did, at least indirectly so." Riptide's reply was gruff and the kind of tone that one would say; it should be obvious. He folded his arms and looked between the captain analyzing his every move, the white dingo's friendly smile, and the bird who was calmly monitoring her screens, for what he did not know. They were docked and anyone cocky enough to fire a shot at the station would find themselves bombarded with enough firepower to make a corporate heavy cruiser regret all its decisions. It irritated him that Hoary wasn't paying him attention, "What exactly are you looking at over there, bird?"

"Your vital signs, monitoring your brain waves, and anything else that might indicate deceit or intentional fabrications." She was casual as she talked, her pushframe pulled the monitor up from its mounting and turned it around. There was a layout of his body, his blood pressure, heart rate, brain activity, and muscle tension points.

Riptide honestly had not expected advanced medical equipment on the bridge. He had noticed the scientific suite, but this was a bit much. "You have medical scanners on the bridge?" He stood up and looked a bit upset as his arms dropped to his sides, wondering what else Hoary had gathered from the medical scan about him.

"Calm down, I am the ship's medical officer and in the event of damage to your person; I need to be able to correctly assess that damage and keep you alive. Anywhere on this ship, is that going to be a problem?" Hoary talked to him in a very clinical way as Jackson smirked and placed his heavy M2 onto his hip holster that ran the length of his lower body as he stepped forward chuckling at Riptide.

"Is this supposed to be funny?" Riptide grumbled and turned to Jackson, baring his teeth.

Jackson laughed harder, "Yeah he'll fit in. This is honestly normal for Hoary; She's very much the clipboard eggheady-type but deep down she cares." Hoary gave a grunt in Jackson's direction as he spoke.

Orishan got off her standing lean and walked forward slowly, smoothly running her fingertips across the captain's console and walked towards Riptide. "Well, I'm going to be honest, the readings Hoary has been sending are a bit odd for me to understand but she predicts you have a metamorphic implant, correct?"

Riptide snapped back towards her, the efforts to diffuse him from Jackson having only added to the confusion. "Yeah, so what?"

Orishan sighed, "Well the only way to know what those metamorphics do, is to see you transform. So before I sign on off you're hiring, what exactly do you transform into?" Orishan asked as she took hold of a cold cup of coffee on the captain's console. "I mean, transcendence is a dangerous thing if you don't know what it can do; so what does this metamorphic implant of yours do and are transcendence energies involved?"

Riptide let out a sigh and nodded, "Yeah, it stores the kinetic energy and biomass inside of a transcendent pocket."

Orishan finished her coffee and cleared her throat with an inviting smile across her lips, "Show me."