/write
Delfye was the last of the freighter Yamaya’s crew to disembark. Well, maybe Conrad was still aboard; from the way she talked, he guessed the ship’s owner rarely left her vessel.

The sammaran had said his goodbyes and declined the crew’s offers for drinks and the other distractions Blue Heaven offered. He had not eschewed friendly relations with the others during the weeks in transit, but everyone knew he was a temp, onboarded to fulfill mutual needs. The Yamaya’s--of an engineering assistant--and his--of transit to the colonies.

Smells, always the smells. Delfye had been on Terra a long time. Long enough to convince himself he had forgotten his life among the stars. He might meditate away the familiar thrum of a well-worn fusion drive, avert his eyes from the sprawling starfields out the viewports, or work and sweat away the stomach-churning shifts between poorly-tuned gravitational dampers. The smells though--recycled air, irradiated plasteel, and vaporized synthetic lubricants--those always brought back a flood of memories of before. Memories that unbalanced the sammaran more than the familiar weight of his cybernetic limb. Memories of--

Focus, old man. You’re not here for that.

Delfye took in the familiar terminus of Blue Heaven. Much had changed in a decade, even if it had the same stink. More non-humans. Maybe Sol’s economy was on the upswing again. Hopefully--that would make it more likely for Genecorp to keep her in-system. If Aishe was shipped off via a NLS popsicle hopper, that would complicate things for him, especially if he took a warp ship, and arrived four thousand years before she did.

Haha. Not likely you’d even end up in the same sector if you made that mistake. He thought with a grimace.

So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen, by finding the right person to ask the right questions. He counseled himself. The sammaran crossed from the Yamaya’s gangway airlock to the nearest of the glitchy monitors, then parsed through the information screens until he found a map of Blue Heaven.

“Hey, don’t sweat it, stations freak me out too.” The Aeros girl sitting across the table from Aishe said conspiratorially. “No sky!”

“Wh-- Who are you?” The blue-eyes of the youth dropped from the picture window looking out over the interior of Blue Heaven to the winged person who had taken a seat in front of her.

“I’m Miiya Aether!” The girl chirped. “And, before you ask, yes, these are real.” She louvered the feathers on both wings. “And, also yep, I can fly in up to one-and-a-half gee’s.” She grimaced apologetically. “Sorry, I can’t carry you, though, except maybe in quarter-gee or lower, but you can pretty much fly on your own, then.” The grimace became a grin again. “I’m an Aeros. Ever seen one of us before?” Be fore Aishe could reply the girl went on, “I’m human, like you, this is just a gene edit I inherited. You could get it done too, but then you and I would both get fired. Haha.”

“Because I’m a…” Aishe made the connection immediately, but was cut-off by Miiya once more.

“Yardstick! Haha, they tell us not to use that term, but you might as well get used to it.” The winged girl bubbled. “Yeah, you’re a pureblood… um… ugh hair?” Miiya ventured, looking down at the tablet in front of her.

“Ughyr” Aishe corrected, possibly for the hundredth time since she had left Urumqi. “From Xinjiang.” When Miiya’s eyes crossed a little, she added: “Asia? …on Earth? …Terra?”

“Oh yeah!” Miiya jerked a thumb over her shoulder, as if indicating the actual direction toward Terra. “That one! All yardsticks come from Terra.” At least that’s what her materials had said. “Well, I am your Personal Youth Ambassador. PYA. Miiya the Peeya.” She quirked an eyebrow, looking up and back. “Doesn’t sound all that flattering, actually.” The grin returned. It seemed to be her default expression. “I’m not sure why they call it “personal”, I have, like, five other kids assigned to me.”

Aishe was taken a little aback by the person before her referring to her as a “kid.” The winged girl seemed to be at least two years her junior. But maybe that was another mutation? Decreased ageing? Miiya had not stopped talking, and she did not seem inclined to do so anytime soon. Aishe had never known anyone so exuberantly loquacious, but there were many things off Terra that were new, some that she liked and some that she found disturbing. She decided that she liked this noisy, irreverent mutant.

So far, her experience as a ward of GeneCorp had been full of wonder, and this she--when able to get a word in edgewise--related to Miiya. Aishe had never been farther than Kashgar. While her village was ostensibly electrified and had a few network connections, they still relied on truly ancient tech like solar and solid-state batteries, cobbled onto practically-prehistoric stone, wood, and brick buildings. She knew of starships, cybernetics, Genetic Engineering, and off-world colonies in theory from teachers and the village tinker, but experiencing such a massive flood of tech firsthand all in the span of a few days had been a bit overwhelming.

“I know! That’s why I’m here! To help you adjust!” Miiya chirped. “Don’t worry, I’ve never lost a kid yet!”

Over the course of their meet-and-greet luncheon, Aishe learned not to take Miiya’s somewhat-unnerving proclamations too seriously. She also discovered that Aeros were voracious eaters. “H-how…?” She began, when her ‘mentor’ returned with a fifth plate piled high from the buffet.

“I know, right?” Miiya said around a mouthful of sandwich. “I used to think thmm wamf sumffn…” She swallowed. “...wrong with me, too, cuz I didn’t grow up around Aeros.” She cocked her head to the side in a dismissive gesture. “But, no, this is just the way we are. I’m REALLY different--and not just the wings. I can see a lot farther than you, my blood is thicker, my bones are lighter and more flexible, even my muscle tissue is different from yours under a microscope.” The Aeros girl was getting into her role now, genuinely excited about the talking points she had been encouraged to cover with her charge. “And there’s soooo many other edits out there; people who can see in ultraviolet, people who can live in high-radiation without medicine, miners, sailors, soldiers, swimmers, and flyers, like me!” She paused both talking and taking in food on the inhale for a moment. “And this program--you--make it all possible. GeneCorp helps other companies baseline their genetic engineering; keep us all in the same Genus--at least--and make sure we don’t edit in any mutations that could result in problematic hybrids.” She paused and took a swig of a fizzy orange drink. “Whoo. That was a lot, and I think I got it right. Essentially you’re here to make sure I don’t grow a beak and start laying eggs!” She amended: “Or my kids, someday, I guess.”

Apparently the only silences Aishe could expect were awkward ones, and that was what ensued. Miiya filled it by eating, Aisha was simply grateful for a moment’s peace.

Delfye

“For frett’s sake!” Delfye grumbled into his muted comm as he headbutted the “silence master alarm” panel inside the helmet. Either his oxygen was thirty seconds from depletion and death, or it wasn’t. Probably wasn’t, since this was the fifth time today that the suit’s processor had picked that particularly annoying alarm to ring. “Shut the frett up, already!” He counseled the balky bit of tech.
“This is only slightly better than EVA in my underwear.” Delfye groused as he reamed out another injector pintle deep inside the engine of the rustbucket he was working on.

That’s probably not accurate the mechanic reflected. If you spaced yourself in your underwear, at least you didn’t have any expectation of coming back alive. With a third-hand suit like this one--which did, in fact, smell as if its last owner had died inside it--it was more of a 60/40 proposition, and he wasn’t sure on which side of that he’d peg the odds of survival. But this kind of suit was what you wore when your papers were faked by a half-feral orc back in Kashgar, which meant that you worked for one of the shadow economy’s unlicensed and unbonded shipwrights, which meant you worked on vac-docked scows like this heap, which meant the boss didn’t give you a good suit, or even one with functioning emergency systems.

It also meant you better check in with the bridge of said scow every few minutes, to remind them that you were waaaay up the nozzle of their fusion drive, and not to enable the turbopumps or something else lethally stupid. Delfye had helmed tramp freighters like this one before. Its docking papers were probably about as real as his work visa, so it might need to leave on the quick-like. Delfye would like to be afforded at least a snowball’s chance of backing his bulky-balky-suited-self out of their engines before they lit them off and made him an extra crispy tech.

“Oh, of course the yfretting comms are out.” He grumped as he got nothing over the channel--not even static.

…

It had been a minute since Delfye had stepped off the Yamaya. More like three days, actually. He’d spent the first interviewing the Private Investigators on the Asteroid that were within his budget. That had not taken long, since there weren’t many. His pay from crewing up on the Yamaya had been pretty meager, and now it was gone. After buying a network pass for his implant, he’d had enough left to afford the retainer of the prosaic grizzled veteran ex-cop, or the slightly less-cliche inexperienced pretty face, operating out of her flat. He had opted for pretty face. She had seemed hungry for work and not stupid--just inexperienced, which Delfye supposed was just another form of stupid, if a transient one. However, he expected she would at least get out there and get him the publicly-available information on Genecorp drift markers, without leaving his own fingerprints all over the nets. Ex-cop… well, Delfye didn’t have good experiences with law enforcement, and he hadn’t trusted the PI not to “forget” his tasking or forget that he was not supposed to share whom had tasked him with it.

So, pretty face. He was supposed to meet her at 2100 local with the other half of her fee. He should have it in-hand by 2030, the way this job was going. If he wasn’t mechanic fricassee by then, that was.

…

Delfye finished up in the plasma chamber, backed out of the engine nozzle, and clambered back to the airlock stationside without incident. He had the sneaking suspicion that the fusion rocket had not had the requisite gas purge before the boss had sent him in to work on it, but his radiation detector was just as nonfunctional as the rest of the suit safety systems, so there was no way to know for sure.

It didn’t matter, anyway.

The sammaran extracted himself from the suit, hung it--and the shop tools--up, collected his wages, and left the seedy little repair shop. The sweat from the long day in the malfunctioning EVA suit was dry by then, but the stink of his labors clung to him. Well, tough luck. He thought to himself. He wasn’t trying to impress his PI. She’d just have to hold her nose while he forked over the credits if she had done her job right.

Before he continued on to his meeting, Delfye took a moment to pause on the main causeway of the upper section of the docks. Above him, resting on her landing pads, the sleek hull of a ship named “Ravana” gleamed in the station lights. Delfye did not know much about that vessel, save that it was new--it’s keel must have been laid after he disappeared to Old Terra--and very, very fast. The engineer could tell as much just from looking. The ship was a cluster of big engines--warp, exo-and-atmospheric, sublight--with only the minimal amount of pressurized crewspaces. He really wanted to steal give it a thorough inspection.

Can’t; can’t have wants. The sammaran reminded himself, closing his eyes and silently repeating the mantra the master had given him. Focus.

GeneCorp Blue Heaven Branch Office

The GeneCorp office and manufacturing facility in Blue Heaven has changed quite a bit over the centuries the corporation has maintained a presence on the asteroid. The current friendly, polished, carpeted and tastefully-decorated office, dormitory, and living spaces are a far cry from the endless rows of cloning vats, training barracks, chemical tanks, and windowless high-security research laboratories of the original installation. While some laboratory spaces remain, they are now bright sterile places viewable from behind glass on the visitor tour.

The offices of GeneCorp handle some of the day-to-day business of the multi-system corporation. Besides the research laboratories, the rest of the facility is given over to the Genetic Marker program. Sample subjects are brought up from isolated regions of Terra, inducted and trained in the GM program, and either remain on Blue Heaven, or are deployed to satellite offices in other star systems.

To this end, there are well-appointed dormitories, classrooms, dining, exercise, and recreational spaces, for wards of the corporation. GeneCorp GM employees are often inducted as children or youth in order to maximize their useful service period, and they often come from isolated or impoverished backgrounds. GeneCorp provides a secure and supportive youth training environment that meets the needs of all program inductees.

It is not--as some detractors claim--an orbital prison designed to keep unfortunates and orphans as corporate slaves beyond the reach of Terran law.

At least not at first glance.

Delfye
(OOC: Apologies, this was supposed to be posted earlier)
Finally, after several more hours had gone by, the speaker in the cell crackled to life. ”Why have you come to Blue Heaven? What are your intentions?”

Huh. How do you like that? No introductions, no formalities, or threats. Delfye thought. They must be pretty scared. “I’m here to check up on a friend.” He replied simply and truthfully. The questioning did not last long.

“In light of your… special circumstances, GCIS has elected to drop all charges and set you free, so long as you agree to leave Blue Heaven.” It looked like Delfye was not going to be talking to any warm bodies--at least no GeneCorp ones.

“Okay.” Delfye shrugged. “How?”

“You will be provided with a ship, and a cargo manifest with a delivery roster. GeneCorp will pay two-hundred thousand credits, half up front, half upon delivery.” The disembodied voice replied.

The sammaran’s eyebrows rose. Apparently sometimes it paid to be a cursed monster. “I want one million. Also, you’ll file age-of-majority termination of the conservatorship for Aishe, daughter of Alim, publicly, with ICON.” If he was going to get turned into vapor, might as well get a good price for it.

There was a long silence. Delfye stood and faced the camera. “Have we reached an impasse?” He asked. “Do I need to create a different solution?” He tapped a finger to his ocular implant.

Not long after, Delfye walked free.
(To: Back to Docks and Maintenance)


Station Security

As much as they enjoyed the lack of oversight, that being independent contractors entailed, the station security personnel did not particularly ken to being called “rent-a-cops.” “Get yourself a mirror.” Was the growled reply to Tetsuo’s question.

A maintenance worker was more helpful. ”They let ‘im go. Turns out it was just a couple of those ---hole GeneCorper teens joyriding again.” The worker groused. ”If your talking about the owner of the pod they crashed, I think I saw him head back down to the docks, a little while ago. You probably just missed him.” That information might not be too helpful to Tetsuo, but--luckily--maintenance was not in any great rush to get to their next job, and the worker was more than happy to stand about jawing for a bit.

”Say; d’ya know what that thing on his face does?” The worker asked. He then proceed to describe Delfye, his ocular implant, and other cybernetic enhancements in pretty fair detail. If Tetsuo was very observant, he might recall having seen someone similar working on a light freighter back at the docks. If he wanted to go back and question the man, though, he would first have to extricate himself from the “conversation”--more of a monologue, really--with maintenance--which had turned to the worker’s favorite ZB team, and their pathway to this season’s championship.